Do these things sound familiar? If so you have come to the right place!
Today I am going to walk you step-by-step on how to become a full-time blogger in less than a year.
These were the 5 steps Brittany and I took to create a successful blog. Our blog allowed me to quit my job and earn a full-time income working from home.
We now have months where we are making over $10,000 in a single month. It’s still surreal to even think about.
If you are already a blogger or have been thinking about starting a blog this article should help you simplify the process and get you pointed in the right direction for success.
1. Start Your Blog or Website
This might seem obvious, but all too often people have a “failure to launch syndrome”.
You can start your own blog here with our easy step-by-step tutorial. Using our tutorial you can start your blog for as little as $2.95 per month and receive a FREE domain name when you use our tutorial to get started.
We also put together a free 7-day email course on how to start a successful money making blog. If you have not gotten started yet this is a great place to start, just fill out the form below.
2. Launch Your Blog
After you have actually started your blog, the next step in becoming a full-time blogger is launching it.
Here are the 5 things we focused on when launching our blog.
1. Grab your social media handles. Something a lot of new bloggers forget to do. When it comes to branding you want to make sure a majority of your social media channels are the same. Starting out stick with the “big 4” (Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). We like using name checker to make this process easy.
2. Create a few pieces of content. Before you launch your blog, you need to create a few pieces of content for people to read. You need to plan what you’ll write about. When we started we only had 3 articles for people to read. I would suggest having between 3-5 before launching.
3. Decide a theme and look for your blog. For some reason, this is always a tough decision. Pick a theme you are okay with starting with and know that it can always be changed in the future. Don’t do what we did and change it 3 times the night we launched hahaha.
4. Understand the importance of collecting emails. When it comes to connecting with your readers and earning income nothing is more important that your email list. You can set up a free account with MailChimp to start. Once you are a few months into blogging and starting to make money we highly suggest you switch to ConvertKit.
5. Take a deep breath and hit publish. Go for it! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Understand that your blog will never be perfect and it will always be a work in progress.
3. Drive Traffic to Your Content
Once you have a good set of content (between 5-20 posts) it’s time to start driving traffic. The absolute BEST way to drive traffic as a new blogger is Pinterest. It’s a visual search engine that is evergreen. It’s completely different than any other social media platform.
After taking Pinterest Traffic Avalanche and Stupid Simple SEO we started getting ~100k-page views a month to our site. The best part is all of this traffic was FREE organic traffic from Pinterest & Google.
Once you drive enough traffic (25k-100k monthly sessions) you can apply to an ad network like MediaVine or AdThrive. This is where passive income starts with your blog. From our own personal experience, you can start getting paid between $15-$25 per 1k user session on your site. We have been easily paying our monthly mortgage with our ad revenue alone!
Here is another great article we wrote that goes a little deeper into driving traffic to your blog 10 Blogging Tips That Will Make You Grow Quickly.
4. Start to Monetize Your Blog with Affiliate Marketing
When we first started blogging we had no idea how to turn our traffic into income. But we took the time to learn how to monetize our blog which really propelled me forward in becoming a full-time blogger.
The fastest and easiest way to start making money from your blog is through affiliate marketing.
I can honestly say I have never come across a professional blogger that does not use affiliate marketing to drive sales from their blog.
We avoided learning affiliate marketing for the first 6 months of running our blog, HUGE MISTAKE!
Within a month after taking Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing we started earning hundreds of dollars a month promoting products and services we were already obsessed with.
Here are our favorite affiliate networks to start with:
5. Create Your Own Product or Service to Sell
This is the last step in becoming a full-time blogger and start to make some serious money.
As crazy as it sounds we have been blogging for over a year and the only product we have to show for it is our blog coaching service. That’s not to say we are not brainstorming digital products, other services, and courses.
Most professional blogger making $5,000 per month or more have their own product and services they sell. This is by far the most profitable way to monetize your blog, but also takes the most time and effort.
It is important to realize that you cannot just start your blog and jump to this step. It is critical to take each step and master it before moving onto the next.
It would be near impossible to sell your own product without a large number of engaged readers that you have built trust with.
6. *BONUS* Don’t Give Up!
Okay, we have one final step and we saved the best for last. The #1 reason bloggers fail is they give up too quickly.
Becoming a full-time blogger takes time, effort, and a little bit of grit to get over the learning curve.
If you truly want to become a full-time blogger you 100% can. You just have to get started!
Keep moving forward each day and realize the time you put in today will pay off a year from now.
