How to Start a Money Making Blog: Part 1 Do Your Research

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Want to Know How to Make Money Blogging?
Start Here!

Are you like me? Chafing at traditional office work hours, eager to work from home, sad about leaving a little one behind every day, but absolutely unsure how to do it?  Because bills? You’ve maybe heard that you can make money blogging but you have NO IDEA how that works? Maybe like me you have a little one or two at home? And every morning when you have to walk out the door and leave them with someone else you feel WRONG?  You’d love to know how to start a money making blog but you’d also love to learn Chinese and they seem equally attainable goals.  Which is to say, they do not seem attainable at all.

How do Bloggers Make Money?

If you are like me and didn’t know that you could make money with a blog, you should probably start where I started: The Pinch of Yum Income Reports. These Income Reports were my first aha moment.  I had always WANTED to start a food blog, people had even ASKED me to start a food blog. But I simply couldn’t envision a way in which I would have the time to do it.  I had no idea how to start a money making blog.

A random bit of bored googling led me to the Pinch of Yum income reports.  Whoah.  At the time of this writing, their most recent income report shows that they earned over $50,000 from ads alone. And it also showed they earned from things like affiliate marketing, and sales of their own products.  Ohhhhhh.  I see now!

And then a deeper dive took me to the following Income Reports:

• Jessica Gavin’s Income Reports – She made almost $3,000 in November 2016 blogging.  Check out the various ways she did it in her traffic and income reports.
• Start a Mom Blog Income Reports – The most recent report at the time of this writing shows that she made $9,000 blogging in the month of December 2016.
• Just a Girl and Her Blog Income Reports – Her most recent income report at the time of this writing is for December 2016 when she made $41,700 blogging.  THAT IS NOT A TYPO.
• Making Sense of Cents Income Reports – The most recent report at the time of this writing, which is for January of 2017, shows that she made $139,233 blogging.  And just to be clear – THAT IS ONE MONTH’S INCOME.

These income reports were not only inspiring but educational.  Oh!  THAT’S how bloggers make money!  I never knew!  And some of them are making A LOT of money.  By doing something that they love.  By doing something that I think I would love doing.  And off I went to research how to start a money making blog.

I have spent months now researching blogging for profit online, and I’m going to help you cut that time down.

If you are interested in starting a blog of your own, you may already know there’s a wealth of information out there that can help you get started.  And if you haven’t jumped down that rabbit hole yet – well, it is definitely a rabbit hole.  There are tons of how-tos, don’t dos, and resource lists out there. Starting a money making blog is both easy and hard.  Starting a food blog is another step entirely. I’ll get into in greater depth about food blog specific issues and resources in some later posts (photography! recipe plugins!).

Replicating Success

So over the next few weeks I’m going to be posting a few blogging tips I’ve compiled in case you want to do this yourself. I’ve created a resources page, in case you just want to dive in and get started.  I’ll follow it up with some other things I’ve learned about branding, marketing, and content creation.

And maybe we can do this together you know?  Because I am by no means an expert.  I’m just a new mom, who happens to be up nursing a lot at night and so has lots of time to read about all the different ways you can make money blogging.  And a new mom whose heart breaks every time she walks out the door in the morning leaving her smiling baby boy at home with someone else.

Read: MOTIVATED.

My husband and I have been doing TONS of research. I wanted to build this page so that you don’t have to spend the countless hours googling and Pinterest pinning that I have.  In fact, you can check out my Pinterest board here for more links and info on how to start a money making blog enterprise. The following are a few more links I found helpful in my early stages of figuring out this whole blogging business.

Links to Get You Going on Your How to Start a Money Making Blog Research:

• • • Pinch of Yum’s How to Start a Food Blog – This is a great primer for anyone looking to start a food blog, but also a good basic resource for anyone looking to start a blog of any kind in terms of set up.
    • Blog Tyrant’s Ultimate Guide on How to Start a Blog and Dominate Your Niche – This is a very thorough, easy to read guide on starting any kind of blog.
    • Minimalist Baker How to Start a Food Blog – Again, a great basic guide on getting started with food blogging.
    • Start a Mom Blog’s Guide – It doesn’t have to be a Mom blog.  Suzi’s guide and website is a great resource for any new blogger.  She also has a step by step ebook and course on how to start a blog that goes into a bit greater depth than the blog posts mention above.  The course includes colorful printables that will help you figure out what to do first, next, and so on.  Check it out here.

I also thought I’d mention a few podcasts here. Because maybe you aren’t up nursing in the middle of the night, and would prefer to get some research done on your commute, your jog, your grocery run…

Podcasts About Blogging to Inspire and Educate You About How to Create a Money Making Blog:

• • • Food Blogger Pro – This is a very easy podcast to help you get your feet wet in the world of blogging.  Again, its helpful for those planning any kind of blog, not just food blogging. If you ARE planning a food blog though this is a must listen.
    • Smart Passive Income – This one is a deep dive into online marketing.  There’s some good inspiring and actionable info here though.
    • Amy Porterfield – Amy Porterfield is very well known and well respected in the online marketing world.  Her podcast has been immensely helpful and inspiring to me.  There’s a ton of info there about developing products, webinars, courses, social media, etc.  Her most recent course launch garnered her nearly 2 million dollars.  Yeah, I know.  Big numbers.  But she breaks things down simply, and is very encouraging.  Check it out.
    • Simple Pin Media – This is a deep dive for all things Pinterest, but trust me, you’ll want these tips.  Pinterest is usually the number one driver of traffic to blogs, so getting to know Pinterest well from the blogging get-go is going to start you ahead of the pack.

If I had one thing to say about how to start a money making blog or an online business it would be this: don’t get overwhelmed.

Start with whatever you can do, and build from there.  Maybe that’s just checking out a few of these links.  Maybe its finding your domain.  Or maybe its creating a pin for your future best money making blog post.  The reality is it doesn’t matter.  You’ll build your blog one step at a time.  And then one day, you’ll log in, and there it will be, shiny, pretty, and hopefully as lucrative as it is a satisfying and enjoyable way of spending your day.

Be patient with your productivity, and passionate about your purpose.  And just keep at it.

Or at least, that’s my blogging motto!

Now to figure out Chinese…

Are you ready to start a money making blog? Have you recently started a blog?  What’s your biggest challenge so far?