Blogging is one of the easiest problems to start from home, but it’s not always lucrative. Insider spoke to two bloggers who make over $100,000 a year from their websites. They shared six strategies for getting started and making an income from writing.
Creating a blog is easy, but making money from it is not. It can be one of the cheapest and easiest ways to make money from home, if you do it right.
Insider spoke to two bloggers who turned their hobby of writing into six-figure businesses. They gave six tips on how to do it.
1. Use a call to action
North’s blog was based on his experience of immigrating from the UK to Portugal.
Courtesy of Samantha North
It can take months, if not years, to build an audience large enough to generate lucrative ad revenue. Samantha North, 40, started her blog, Digital Émigré, in September 2020 while moving to Portugal from the UK. The site was intended to provide advice and tips for obtaining residency in European Union countries.
Traffic was slow for the first few months. To find his audience, North created a Facebook group, called Get US Citizenship, where he shared blog posts on his website.
In every blog post, I would add a call-to-action link that offered $175 consultations for people who want to take the plunge. He said he would take about six calls a week.
2. Use keyword research to rank higher on Google
Search engine optimization can help generate organic traffic that can translate into advertising revenue.
North said he researched the terms people were searching for and used those as a starting point to create content.
He said he would notice people searching Google for long, specific terms such as “bank accounts for British expats in Europe” and then base a blog post on those terms to attract readers.
If I saw that people were generally looking for information about citizenship in a European country, I would write five articles on this topic, each focusing on a different country.
North said that when he started publishing blog posts using SEO every day in May 2022, he noticed a marked increase in his search traffic: within six months he went from 5,000 visitors to his website per month to 100,000 visitors.
3. Use AI to help you write more content
Writing blog posts can be very time consuming. North turned to artificial intelligence tools like Jasper and ChatGPT.
He said he learned how to flesh out chatbots’ directions. “If you give very detailed instructions about tone, style and contour, you’ll get much, much better results,” he said.
North used AI to describe his posts, write headlines and put ideas into bulleted lists. He said he found using AI tools to group keywords into topics helped him generate ideas.
“Let’s say you had 100 keywords, you could use AI to group them into logical topic areas,” he said. “Then you could write 10 blog posts about one topic cluster and another 10 blog posts around another cluster.”
4. Subscribe to ad management services for passive income
Bonds started her blog about jobs for stay-at-home moms after struggling to earn an income from home.
Courtesy of Whitney Bonds
Bloggers do not need a minimum amount of traffic to generate income with Google AdSense. But when they reach a certain traffic threshold, they can sign up to ad management platforms, which can be more lucrative.
Whitney Bonds, 34, was working a 9-to-5 job when she became pregnant with her second child. She wanted to quit her job, but needed to contribute income, along with her husband, to support her family.
He started looking for ways to make money while staying at home and came across bloggers who claimed to earn $100,000 a month.
“I wanted to create a website for moms like me who are looking for legitimate ways to make money from home,” Bonds said.
In January 2018, she created Tried and True Mom Jobs, where she shared the stories of mothers she had found in Facebook groups and interviewed.
When he started getting traffic from search, he signed up with Mediavine, an ad management service for bloggers with at least 50,000 visitors per month.
Bonds earned $50,000 from ads alone in his second year. He said ranking high on Google helped make his income more passive. “Once you get into the search results, you’re really set up for long-term growth,” he said.
North started by using the ad management site Ezoic. With about 30,000 visitors a month, he earned about $1,000 a month. When it reached 50,000 readers a month, it was introduced to Mediavine.
“With Ezoic, I had to adjust the ads myself and play with technical stuff, which I didn’t like,” he said. “I wanted a more hands-on experience.”
5. To be successful with affiliate marketing, sell the products you use
Bloggers can earn a commission through affiliate marketing, which encourages readers to buy something by clicking a trackable link or using a unique code.
Bonds received her first affiliate commission, $500, after advertising an accounting course she had used on her website in 2018. She described it as a “light bulb moment.”
Bonuses included links to courses or products on their blogs. For example, in a post about good paying work at home mom jobs, she mentioned someone who had made money doing proofreading and included an affiliate link to a proofreading course she had taken.
He said to avoid scams, he would make sure he knew someone who had taken the course.
Last year he made six figures from his place; about half of their revenue came from affiliate marketing and the other half from advertising revenue.
North said she tried to promote only things she had used or tried herself.
He said using affiliate platforms like ShareASale helped keep affiliate marketing passive. “The only issue is managing the affiliate links — making sure none are broken, making sure each post has the right affiliate links,” North said.
6. Contact brands to partner
North said brand partnerships could be more lucrative than affiliate marketing. North earned £115,000 in 2022, with around half of his income coming from affiliate marketing and referral partnerships.
He said he approached companies that offered services relevant to his niche, such as moving companies, lawyers or tax advisors, for ad hoc collaborations.
“It’s more labor intensive than affiliate marketing, but it’s also more tailored,” he said. “Commissions are usually higher and easier to negotiate.”
I would write a post about getting a certain visa and include a link at the end for the reader to fill out a form to introduce themselves to a lawyer in their network. If a reader hired one of the attorneys through his website, North would earn a commission. He said he would make sure he knew the lawyers so he could give them as collateral.
Insider has verified these figures with documentation.
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