How to Make Money When You Are a New Blogger

If you’ve just recently started a blog… Congratulations!! And I’m so glad to see that more and more people are approaching this fantastic way of expressing themselves.

But, if like me, you’ve thought of taking blogging to the next level or just using a blog to make some extra money, you probably interested to know how to make money as a new blogger.

This post contains affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost for you. Please read my disclosure policy for more info.

How to make money when you are a new blogger

If you are wondering if it’s possible to make money blogging, even if you are a new blogger, my answer is YES.

Whether your goal is to make some extra money or to make an income from your blog.

Making money with a blog is possible as long as you are SERIOUS about it. You have to treat your blog like a business. This means planning, creating and spending time on it.

This also means “crafting” converting blog posts and, depending on your finance, investing in courses, ebooks, etc.. Unfortunately, you cannot just hope to publish something and make money overnight.

If you think about big brands, they’re not where they are today by luck or hope. But behind their success, there are people, decisions and even fails that brought them there.

By writing so, I also want to tell you that it will take TIME to start making money with a blog. And probably a lot of MISTAKES.

So, don’t get discouraged if you don’t make money as soon as you start. I’m not an expert myself and learn something new every day. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know what works and what doesn’t.

With this in mind, I want to share some of the things that work very well for me and can help you in making money if you are a new blogger.

Do not go for a free blogging platform

I know, free blogging platforms are very tempting, especially at the beginning when budget is short.

But the first problem you’ll encounter is that no one will take it seriously.

And on top of that, it will be very difficult to apply to ad networks, affiliate programs or even personalise your blog with nice themes or plugins.

So, the correct way to start to make money with a blog is to have a self-hosted blog where you can install WordPress.org.

A lot of readers contact me saying “I already have WordPress blog, what is WordPress.org? Is it different from WordPress.com?“

LET’S CLARIFY any confusion.

WordPress.com is the FREE platform and even if you pay for your personalised domain name, you DON’T OWN your blog. And this means they can delete any data and content you create.

On the other hand, with WordPress.org, you OWN your content and have FULL CONTROL of it. This is when you go self-hosted with a web hosting company like Bluehost.

When you use WordPress.org through a self-hosted provider like Bluehost, there are many advantages:

• Choose a variety of free and premium plugins;
• Customise your blog in whatever way you like;
• Install Google Analytics to track your readers’ interests;
• Claim your blog on Pinterest and create rich pins (= more traffic)
• Apply for ad network and sponsored posts (= earn money)

Read also these step-by-step tutorials: How to start a Blog in 2019 on WordPress with Bluehost or How to go self-hosted with your blog.

Promote your blog

It’s a hell of a job, but if you don’t show your blog out there no one will visit it! Hence, no one will purchase your product/service or through affiliate links. So you need to actively promote your blog every day.

In order to make any money, you need people. People interested in what you write about and what you offer/sell.

So, start testing where those people hang out. Don’t just post your latest post hoping that hundreds of other bloggers will visit it.

Test all social media (that fit your audiene of course) and see which one is more successful. When you start to see good results in a strategy you implemented, keep that one and refine it.

If it’s working why should you change it?

When starting, I suggest to focus on social media at the time. Is definitely better to have 1 strategy in place than 4 not working. Once you’ve mastered one platform, pass to the next one.

UPDATE: After testing different strategies I arrived at the conclusion that is better to focus on those social media that can bring “passive traffic”.

What do I mean with “passive traffic”?

I mean those social media that work like a search engine and, once you publish something, it can be found after weeks, months or even year just by typing the right keywords.

I’m not saying that you should leave the others because they are not worth. Every blog and blogging journey is different so what works for me can or cannot work for you.

Is good to mix strategies and have different sources of traffic. My advice is to just don’t focus on something that, for a little change, might not work as expected. But instead, is better to rely on those social media that bring “passive traffic”.

Read also “How I made $276 blogging in my third month” and why I stopped focusing on Twitter to promote my blog.

Display adverts in your blog

Placing ads in your content and blog is a great and easy way to start making money as a beginner. And especially passive money.

Of course at the beginning, you won’t earn hundreds of $$$ because it really depends on the number of visitors. So, the more your blog grows, the more ads earning you’ll make,

As a new blogger, there are limited networks you can join. Even Google Adsense is now stricter to join now and, for example, I’ve been rejected all the times I’ve tried.

So after the advice of other bloggers, I opted to go for . They offer contextual adverts, meaning that your visitors will see what they’re interested in and more likely to click instead of random ads.

They offer a good PPC revenue and it’s relatively easy to be accepted into the program even if you are a new blogger.

Want to give it a go? Use to earn 10% more on any revenue you generate in the first 3 months! Click to get started.

Join Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are an easy way to make sales if you are a new blogger. The best part of it is that you don’t need to create any product or course! You are using someone else’s and promoting it.

You can join affiliate programs of things you use on an everyday basis and recommend them in your blog.

For example, my blog is with Bluehost. One of the reasons why I decided them rather than other provider is the unbeatable price per month. Furthermore, their outstanding customer service really convinced me they are great and worth to recommend. So, I decided to join their affiliate program. If someone is using my affiliate link to make a purchase, I’m earning a small commission.

So, if you’re reviewing a beauty product positively why don’t you recommend it and leave an affiliate link?

Or alternatively, you can make a post about “X things that helped me with Y”, advise these X things and leave the affiliate link for your readers to buy and you can earn a commision.

Easy peasy 🙂

You can join affiliate programs directly on the brand’s website (if they offer it) or through affiliate networks.
My favourites that accept new bloggers are ShareASale and iGain. They are free to join and you can make some good extra income.

Invest in your knowledge

You’ve just started out and I know that there is LOOOOAD to learn. Everything is new and, most of the time, it takes time to learn.

And in the meanwhile, while you try and re-try, mistake after mistake, you miss the possibility to make some money.

As I said before, everyone’s blogging journey is different and can take more or less time. But if you find something that teaches you how to reach your desired goal, why not taking the leap?

There are so many courses and ebooks out there for every budget and some of them are even free!

You only have to research what is best for you and your goal and how much you are willing to spend.

For example, this affordable Pinterest course helped to finally drive consistent traffic to my blog daily, with little effort.

As you can see, the number of followers just went crazy after implementing Ell Duclos’ strategies

And you can notice WHAT A DIFFERENCE in the views from Pinterest before taking the course, and a couple of days into it.

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With this course and another app called Tailwind, it really takes me little effort to reach those results. When before, instead, I was spending hours and hours, manually pinning, scheduling and everything that you could possibly do… to just get 2 views a day.

And guess what… When you free up time, you’ll now have more time to spend in learning something new (and maybe more profitable for your blog)!

So investing in your knowledge is definitely a win-win.

Write sponsored posts

Sponsored posts are another great way to earn “bigger” money cause usually they pay more than the options above.

In a sponsored posts you are paid to talk about a product or a service from the brand who reach you or they reach you.

Again, you can reach out to brands directly or join networks which connects bloggers with brands.

It’s not easy. There a lot of competition and brands can reject you if you haven’t the requirements.

Usually, they are interested in the level of engagement of your readers and followers with your blog/brand.

My advice is, as a new blogger you can try to reach to smaller brands. For example, something local or with a small reach. They probably have a smaller budget which can be beneficial for you. They cannot afford to pay $500 for a sponsored post but maybe they can afford $100. And for a new blogger is a good starting point.

In Conclusion

These are some of the most helpful tips I implemented myself to start making money as a complete new blogger.

Of course, as your blog grow, your knowledge and experience do too and you can aim to bigger things. But the things above are a good starting point for everyone who wants to bring blogging to the next level.

I’d love to hear your journey! Let me know in the comment below in which stage of your journey you are and if you are planning to monetise your blog.

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