So you have started a new blog and you are looking to monetize it. Or you are thinking of starting a blog as a side hustle to bring in a second income. Blogging for profit may seem easy from the outside, but there is a lot to consider and it can take a good year or two of working on a blog before you turn a profit. Very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blogs. Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for a few reasons. Before you start thinking about how to blog for profit, you need to think about how you want to start and what direction you want to go in.
Set A Long Term Plan
You are not going to get rich overnight. Sometimes bloggers start a blog with unrealistic expectations of being the next Zoella. But what they don’t take into consideration is how important their DA is. And how much their reach and readership mean when they are trying to make money from their blog. So many people that set up a blog, fail within weeks and months because they had unrealistic expectations. Not getting paid for work straight away can crush your enthusiasm and love for the blog you are building.
The first thing that you need to do is create decent and readable content for your readers. Then you need to share your content to get it read by people. Every time someone clicks on your blog to read a post, it counts as a visit. When someone wants to advertise on your blog, they will ask for your readership because they want to know where their product is going to be seen and by whom.
You will also need a decent DA (domain authority). This is a measurement of how important your blog is on Google. The higher the DA, the higher up a Google search page, your blog will be. The reason that companies will ask for a high DA is that they want their website to be connected to a respectable high DA. Some people who are looking to make money fast on a blog will buy a used blog with a high DA. But these blogs are usually full of PLR content that appears on dozens of other blogs. So a blog of DA52 that you have bought might not be worth the money because it’s full of rubbish content.
Decide How You Want To Make Money On Your Blog
There are so many ways of making money on your blog. And you can choose one or two of the options or you can just choose one way to make money. Firstly there is affiliate marketing. This can be a good long-term way of making money on your blog. But it will only work if you have a decent amount of traffic because you will need to rely on your readers clicking affiliate links and ads. When they click an affiliate link and buy a product, you will make money. So the bigger the purchase, the bigger the profit you make. If you are writing about a product, and you add an affiliate link, you are more likely to get someone to click it.
People get FOMO so they want to see what the product costs and read more details. Even if they don’t buy on that occasion, but they go to buy something else you should get a small percentage of that money as affiliate money. This is a great passive income, but you might have to wait 2 or 3 months for the money. Then there is usually a minimum threshold to reach before you can get the money.
Sponsored or guest posts are usually a quick turnover way of making money. Basically, you put people’s guest posts on your blog and they will pay you an admin fee for your time. You can add a guest post for someone and then be paid within hours. So smashing out a few a day is a sure way to be using your blog for profit. But this work doesn’t come in every day and you can go weeks without money.
If you use any of these ways to make money, you must mark your blog posts as affiliate blog posts or sponsored blog posts. This makes the reader aware of it being paid for.
Remember To Register With HMRC
When you start making money on your blog you need to register as a business. This isn’t hard and you need to think of a business name. As soon as you have earned £1000, you need to start declaring the money. But when you declare, you also get to add expenses. So if you are paying for websites or other costs, you take this off your income.
Once a year you do your self-assessment taxes and it is pretty easy to do yourself but you can also get an accountant to help. Once you start making money, you won’t look back.
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