How to Make Money Blogging – In Six Easy Steps

Introduction

Did you know that it’s not uncommon for advertisers to pay $300 per month for an inch tall ad on the side of a blog. Get ten of those and you are making $36,000 a year to blog.

Are you ready to start making money blogging? Maybe you’re just kind of thinking about it and want to know what it takes. Well it’s actually pretty simple. In this blog post, we are going to teach you how to make money blogging in six easy steps.

Step 1: Pick a Topic and a Domain Name

The first thing that you want to do is to pick a topic for your blog. Your blog can be about anything that you want. You should pick a topic that you are knowledgeable about but you definitely don’t need to be an expert. In fact, leaving some room for other people to offer their expertise is a great way to spark discussion and get more people to comment. After some thought, let’s say that you decide that you want to start a blog about pugs.

Next you need to pick a domain name. To make things easy we are going to get our domain and our hosting account (step 2) from the same provider, HostGator. To find a domain name, just go to hostgator.com and click on Domains. Use the search to find an available domain name. After searching for a bit, you find pug-hugs.com and decide that it’s the one! Don’t get it just yet though, we are going to do that in the next step.

Step 2: Register your Domain Name and Get a Hosting Account

In this step we are going to get a hosting account and register the domain name that we picked in Step 1. We are going to do this with hostgator.com

1. From hostgator.com, click on Web Hosting.
2. Since this is going to be a new site, you can choose their entry level Hatchling plan.
3. After selecting the plan, you will be taken to their order wizard. Enter the domain name that you picked in Step 1 into the “Enter Your Domain Name Here” field.
4. Pick whichever other options that you want, enter your billing info and click Create Account.

And with that, pug-hugs.com is born! You should shortly receive an email from Hostgator with the details of your new website!

Step 3: Set Up WordPress

HostGator makes it incredibly simple to install WordPress. Here are the steps:

1. HostGator will have sent you an email with a link to your control panel. Click the link to go to your control panel.
2. Log in and then go to QuickInstall (it’s under Software/Services).
3. From QuickInstall, click WordPress (it’s under Blog Software).
4. Enter your email, a title for your blog (in this case “Pug Hugs”) and your first and last name. These settings will be used to automatically configure your blog.
5. Press the Install Now button and WordPress will be automatically installed and configured.
6. When the installer finishes, click the provided link to go to your new WordPress site.
7. Add wp-admin to the end of the url (example: www.pug-hugs.com/wp-admin) to go to and log into the WordPress administrator panel (your password will have been emailed to the email address that you provided to QuickInstall).
8. (Optional) From the WordPress administrator panel, choose a theme for your site.

Step 4: Install AdPlugg

Next we are going to install the AdPlugg WordPress Ad Plugin. The AdPlugg WordPress Ad Plugin is one of the easiest ways to put ads on your site.

1. From the WordPress administrator, click Plugins and then click the Add New button.
2. Search for “AdPlugg” to find the AdPlugg WordPress Ad Plugin.
3. Click the Install Now link to install the plugin.
4. Go to www.adplugg.com and Sign Up for a free account
5. From inside the AdPlugg ad manager, create an ad and upload an image. Hint: you can find an image for your first ad by going to images.google.com (search for “your ad here”).
6. Back in your AdPlugg account, click Download and then Access Code and get your access code. You are going to use your access code to tie your AdPlugg account to your WordPress site.
7. Back in the WordPress administrator, Go to Settings and then AdPlugg and enter or paste in your access code
8. Still in the WordPress Administrator, go to Appearance and then Widgets and drag the AdPlugg widget into your sidebar.
9. You should now see your ad on your WordPress site, woohoo!

Step 5: Start Blogging and Promoting

Now you need some content. Write about anything that you want. For our first post we are going to write a welcome message to our readers.

1. From inside the WordPress admin, go to Posts and then Add New.
2. Choose a title for your post, how about “Welcome to Pug Hugs!” and then type a welcome message to your readers.
3. When you are done, click Preview to make sure that your post looks good.
4. Once you have proofread your post and are happy with it, click Publish to publish your post to your site.
5. Write new posts as often as you can to keep your site fresh with new content.

The quickest way to start getting traffic to your blog is to tell your friends and family about it. Send everyone in your email contacts the link and post a link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Step 6: Find Advertisers

Once you’ve got some good content and are getting some traffic, you are going to want to find some paying advertisers. Some good strategies for finding advertisers is to:

1. Find similar blogs to yours and contact the companies that are advertising with them.
2. Think about what your readers might be interested in buying and contact companies that make or sell those products. For our pug-hugs.com example, we might contact dog food manufacturers and pet supply stores. We’ll start with the small online pet supply stores that are likely looking for inexpensive advertising options.

Stay tuned…we plan to write more about how to find advertisers in a future article.

Conclusion

You’ve now learned how to make money blogging and in six steps you’ve built a small online business. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below and get busy blogging!