How To Monetize Your Blog From Day One? (5-Steps)

Last Updated on May 25, 2023 by Jordan Alexo

So, you’ve or want to create a blog, and you’re already thinking about how to monetize it from day one. Is it even a good idea to do this immediately? The answer is “Yes!”

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need about how blogging works to make money.

From choosing the right niche, keywords, and ways to monetize your blog, how long it usually takes to earn money, and other essential tips to get started.

Key Takeaways

• Monetizing your blog from the start helps you focus on creating passive income and have a business-oriented mindset.
• You can monetize your blog with Google Ads, Affiliate Marketing, Selling Digital Products or Services, Sponsored Content, and more.
• It may take around 20 months to see money from a blog. However, 27% of bloggers make money after six months. You can speed up the process by publishing more blog posts, proper keyword selection, and SEO optimization.
• Blogging is an excellent way to make money online since there’s room for growth. You can earn passive income from multiple streams of income at once.
• The best niches to make money online are personal finance, health & wellness, food & recipes, travel, fashion & beauty, and technology.
• Your results depend on your niche selection and other factors. But most bloggers earn around $39K/year, while top bloggers can reach over $1 million monthly.

When Should I Monetize My Blog?

You should monetize your blog from the very beginning. This may sound counterintuitive, especially if you focus on building your reader base and establishing credibility.

However, you have several motives why you want to monetize your blog right from the start:

1. It puts you in a business-oriented mindset. You aren’t building a blog just for fun. Instead, it’s an opportunity to create passive income.
2. It changes your mindset from working on your blog as an amateur who writes content whenever they feel like it to that of a professional blogger who writes consistently.
3. You immediately look for products or services to promote and create informational content. This helps you have a clear focus and direction for your blog from the very start.

Now just because you monetize your blog from the beginning, it doesn’t mean you’ll make millions after a month or so. See, Google and other search engines take time to index your content and build traffic.

Your site needs to gain authority and credibility before you can start seeing significant earnings.

However, monetizing from the beginning helps establish a clear direction and focus for your content, ultimately leading to higher earnings.

How Does Blogging Work To Make Money?

The idea is simple; you create content that ranks well in the search engines. In other words, if you write a post about “Best AI SEO Tools,” and it ranks on the first page of Google, you will receive traffic to your site.

Suppose this post explains the ten best AI SEO tools and provides affiliate links to each one. 

When someone reads through it, clicks on one of those links, and purchases the tool; you receive a commission for that sale.

Now that’s affiliate marketing, but you have other ways to monetize your blog, such as:

• Sponsored Content: You can get paid for writing posts promoting a company or product.
• Google Ads: You can place ads on your website through Google AdSense and earn money whenever someone clicks on those ads.
• Selling Digital Products or Physical Products: You can create digital products like eBooks, courses, or printables and sell them on your blog.
• Offering Services like Consulting or Coaching: You can offer services like consulting or coaching in your niche and promote them on your blog.
• Creating Memberships or Subscription Services: You can create membership or subscription services where readers pay for access to exclusive content, resources, or a community.
• And more.

Also, you can choose several methods to monetize your site. So, you don’t need to stick to just one income stream.

Although the idea is simple, it takes hard work to create consistently great content month after month.

How Long Does It Take To Make Money Blogging?

So, it takes around 20 months to see the cash rolling in from a blog on average. However, that’s not set in stone! Let’s check out some facts:

• About 27% of bloggers start earning money within the first six months
• Almost 40% are making bank full-time just two years after starting their blogs.

However, you got several ways to speed up the process. For instance:

• Publishing Frequency: You should publish at least three to four posts per week to maximize your chances of ranking well in search engines and getting traffic to your site.
• Keyword Selection: Initially, focus on low-competition keywords related to your niche.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimize your content for SEO by including relevant keywords throughout your posts and ensuring proper formatting.

Also, you should consider using artificial intelligence (AI) tools for content creation, such as:

• AI Writers: These tools can help generate high-quality content quickly and efficiently. I enjoy using Jasper AI, Jenni AI, and Writesonic.
• AI SEO Tools: These tools utilize machine learning algorithms to optimize your content for search engines, increasing the likelihood of ranking higher in search results. I recommend Neuronwriter.

Note: If you want to make money after about six months, make sure to pump out valuable content frequently. Also, focus on lower competition keywords, and optimize your content for SEO.

Is Blogging A Good Way To Make Money?

I’d say blogging is probably one of the best ways to make money online. I’ll explain three reasons why:

1 – Scaling Up

You have no limitation on how much you can earn through blogging. For instance, you can start with a small blog and gradually expand it to become a media outlet, offering various services such as sponsored content, event production, and more.

Compared to other online businesses, blogging has a lot of room for growth.

2 – Passive Income

If you’re on a tight budget, it may take some time to start seeing money coming in from your blog.

However, once the money starts rolling into your bank account, you can hire freelancers or virtual assistants to help with your blog, reducing your workload.

Also, after you publish an article, it can continue to generate traffic and revenue for you for years, providing a source of passive income.

3 – Multiple Streams Of Income

You should see each blog post as a small mini-business—even more the ones where you monetize with affiliate links, ads, or product sales.

Just imagine the potential of having hundreds or thousands of these posts working 24/7 to make money for you.

How Do Bloggers Get Paid?

It depends on you decide to monetize your blog. For instance:

• Affiliate Marketing: You earn a commission from sales made through their unique affiliate links to products or services.
• Google Ads: You can display Google Ads on their website and earn money for clicks or impressions.
• Sponsored Content: You can be paid to create content that promotes a specific product or service on behalf of a brand.
• Sell Digital Products: You can create and sell digital products like ebooks, courses, or printables related to your blog niche. You often receive the money for these sales directly to your Paypal or Stripe account.

What commonly happens is that you receive payments through a combination of these methods.

Sometimes, it may get confusing, like you need to log in to different platforms to keep track of your earnings.

But hey, it’s all worth it when you see the money coming in!

What Are the Types Of Blogs That Make Money?

You have the freedom to write about nearly anything. However, you have a better chance of making money in proven niches such as:

• Personal Finance
• Health and Wellness
• Food and Recipes
• Travel
• Fashion and Beauty
• Technology Reviews
• Lifestyle

Often people complain these niches are oversaturated. But you don’t want to choose a broad category straightly. Instead, you want to “niche down.” In other words, focus on a more specific topic within these broad categories.

For example, instead of writing about personal finance in general, you could focus on a specific topic like saving money for college or managing debt.

As you can imagine, you have less competition and a better chance of standing out in a smaller, more specific niche.

Recommendation: Try to focus on a specific niche, and once you build an audience there, you can expand to other related topics.

How Much Money Can You Make From a Blog?

People always wonder how much money they can make from a blog. But this question depends on many factors, including your niche, traffic volume, monetization methods, and the quality of your content.

However, let’s check an average range:

• Bloggers can earn around $39K a year on average, according to Indeed.com.
• Top bloggers can earn six or even seven figures a year. For example:

1. Tim Sykes, timothysykes.com: $1 million per month
2. Chiara Ferragni, The Blonde Salad: $250,000 per month
3. Melyssa Griffin, melyssagriffin.com: $238,000 per month

So, you have the potential to become a millionaire with your blog. Or at least, have a decent side job that can earn you extra income.

How Do I Monetize My Blog From The Beginning (5 Steps)

Let’s check five steps to monetize your blog easily.

Step 1 – Choose The Right Niche

I already mentioned this earlier, but it’s worth repeating. You need to check out what specific niche you will focus on. Also, some niches have more potential for monetization than others.

For example:

• Finance, Nutrition, Fitness, Technology: You can monetize your blog with affiliate marketing programs. Once you have an audience, you may provide coaching, courses, and other services.
• Fashion & Beauty, Food, and Recipes: You can earn from sponsored content or brand partnerships.
• Entertainment: You can make money with Google ads or sponsored content.

Note: Making money with Google AdSense requires high traffic volume and ad clicks. So there may be better options from the beginning.

In fact, the best option to monetize your blog would be to start with affiliate marketing. However, not all niches are good for affiliate marketing. So research around to find the best niche for you.

Step 2 – Create a Blog

If you still don’t have a blog, create one. You need a few things, such as:

• Domain Name: Choose a domain name that is simple, memorable, and relates to your niche. You can get one from GoDaddy, Namecheap, or other domain providers.
• Web-Host Provider: Choose a reliable web-host provider like WPX Hosting or SiteGround to host your blog.
• CMS Platform: One of the best options is WordPress, as it’s user-friendly and offers many customization options. You have plenty of themes and plugins to choose from too.

After setting up your blog, it’s time to pass to the next step.

Step 3 – Keyword Research

I suggest having a list of potential high-ranking keywords in your niche. At least 10 to 20 keywords that you want to rank for. Also, you want a combination of informational and transactional keywords.

What Are Informational Keywords?

Informational keywords are those people search for when they want to learn about a particular topic. For instance, “How to lose weight” or “What is affiliate marketing.”

These keywords help you build your audience. You want to have keywords related to your transactional keywords and your niche.

So if your product or service is related to fitness, you can target informational keywords such as “how to lose weight,” “best workout routines,” or “healthy eating habits.”

What Are Transactional Keywords?

These keywords are those that people search for when they are ready to make a purchase. In other words, they are your money makers.

For example, if you have a fitness blog and want to monetize it through affiliate marketing, your transactional keywords could be “best fitness products,” “top-rated workout gear,” or “buy supplements online.”

If you’d like to learn more about how to find low-competition keywords, read this guide that explains everything more in-depth.

These search terms are particularly good if you want to promote affiliate products etc. If you intend to monetize your blog with ads, then you’ll want to focus more on informational keywords that will attract a larger audience.

Note: Your blog should have a good ratio of informational to transactional keywords. Often, a good rule of thumb is to have 70% – 80% informational and 30% – 20% transactional.

Furthermore, Google doesn’t like blogs that only focus on selling products and services.

Step 4 – Produce High-Quality Content Regularly

Once you have a niche list of keywords, it’s time to start creating content. You should aim to produce high-quality consistently.

It’s more important to create three posts per week rather than pump fifty posts out in a month and then disappear for the rest of the year. See, Google likes sites that update their content regularly and consistently.

If you keep putting out top-notch stuff, your readers will stay interested and want more.

Here are some tips for creating high-quality content:

1. Research your topic before writing and gather as much information as possible.
2. Organize your content in a logical and easy-to-follow manner.
3. Use eye-catching headings and subheadings to break up your content.
4. Reply to the search query with your content as best as possible, providing value to your readers and answering their questions.
5. Include relevant keywords in your content to make it easier for search engines to understand what your post is about.
6. Don’t forget to add high-quality images and videos to make your posts more interesting.

Always remember that the key to creating a profitable blog is consistently producing quality content.

Step 5 – Build External Links

Once you have ten or more posts on your site, it’s time to start building external links. You want to build your site’s DR (Domain Rating). This helps improve your site’s authority and increase its visibility on search engines like Google.

In other words, your blog has an easier time ranking for more competitive keywords when it has a higher DR.

For this reason, you want to get links from reputable and relevant websites in your niche.

What’s The Best Way To Build External Links?

You have several options for building external links for your blog. My favorite ones for beginners are guest posting and HARO.

What Is Guest Posting?

This consists of publishing content on other websites in exchange for a link to your blog. You want to reach out to websites relevant to your niche and offer high-quality content.

By guest posting, you not only get an external link, but you also have the opportunity to tap into a new audience and attract more readers to your blog.

What Is HARO (Help A Reporter Out)?

Another great option for building external links is HARO. This site connects journalists with sources; signing up as a source is free. You want to use HARO to offer your expertise on topics related to your niche, and if a journalist chooses to feature you in their article, they will link back to your blog.

Note: To build a successful blog, you want to create fantastic content first and build external links second.

Last Thoughts

Now you have a clear idea of how to monetize your blog from day one. As you may see, building a successful site takes hard work, research, and dedication.

You need to choose the right monetization method. For some blogs, affiliate marketing may be the most profitable, while for others, sponsored posts or selling digital products might work better.

Also, some monetization methods are only good for established blogs. So you need to be patient and keep producing quality content.

I suggest you have ten or more posts on your site. Next, you can begin to build external links to boost your site’s domain rating.

The best strategy for this is guest posting and HARO (Help A Reporter Out).

Furthermore, when creating content, it’s best to focus on 70% to 80% informational posts, and the rest can be more promotional or commercial.

This gives your readers valuable content while also promoting your products or services.

And always remember to produce high-quality content consistently – it’s better to create three posts per week than fifty posts in one month.

Lastly, add impressive images and videos when possible to make your posts even more engaging.

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment. Jordan Alexo will reply to you shortly.

FAQ About How To Monetize Your Blog From Day One

Let’s take a look at some frequently asked questions.

1 – How to get 1,000 views per day on a blog?

To achieve 1,000 views a day on a blog, it’s important to create high-quality, engaging content that covers topics people are interested in.

Also, to boost traffic, consider promoting your content on social media, collaborating with other bloggers or influencers, and improving your website’s SEO through keyword research and backlinking.

2 – Can I make money blogging about my life?

Yes, you can possibly make money blogging about your life. The question you need to ask is, “How can you monetize your blog?” Do you have a sub-niche you can connect to your personal life where you can promote affiliate products or sell digital products, for instance?

See, you need to always focus on the money. If there’s no way to monetize your blog, then it will be challenging to make a living from it.

3 – How long does it take to make $100 blogging?

If you spend about 2 hours of work daily on your blog, you should see your first $100 after about 200 to 1000 hours of work. However, this depends greatly on your blog’s niche, traffic, and monetization strategy.