How to monetize a blog from day one -surefire ways

“Blog monetization is math, not a magic”

Money is the byproduct of your blogging business. First, you have to establish your business, build authority then it is naturally monetized.

Before asking yourself how to monetize your blog (which is every blogger’s ultimate goal).

You should ask why did you start your blog?

If you are doing a blog just as a hobby and for creative expression. You don’t need to read this post. If you are seriously doing the blog as a self-employed business then this post is for you.

You should take your blog as a business not just as a blog. Whether it’s online or offline, a business needs sacrifices, patients, hard work, and dedication. You should have a proper business plan, strategy, and model.

As promised in the headline of this blog post, you can make money from your blog from day one, but for that, you need a solid plan, monetization strategy model, product or services of your own or of the third party (affiliate), knowledge and skillset for a blogging business.

Blogs don’t make money, your businesses make money. Money will be made by gaining customers and the only way to gain customers is to sell them something. To sell them something, you will need to gain their attention first.

Do bloggers make money?

Of course, they do though income potential varies according to bloggers’ niche, market as well as the content, consistency, experiences, and many others.

But before finding the answer to this topic, you should know the blogging statistics, its size, and the opportunity to make money from it. The blogging business is a billion dollars business with proper tactics, systems, strategy, plan, and model. You don’t believe it, Read well the statistics presented to you below and take it in mind and think, how you could make money from your blog.

Source: quoracreative

Now, lets’ look at the survey taken by the Problogger among around 1500 of their readers who were real bloggers. The result will amaze you as only 10% of their readers won’t make money. Others have made money from their blogging even it’s $10 in a month.

Did you notice one thing in this chart? why only 4% are making 5 figures while others are earning the surviving amount of money expects that 10%. Because that 4% are the real bloggers. They think like CEOs and develop systems to scale their blog as a startup, a real business not just a blog, as a hobby.

That’s why you have to think like you are a business owner, not just a blogger when you start your blog. You can too make that much money with your systems, strategies, and your scaling capacity.

What is the goal of your blog?

This is the big “WHY”. Why did you start your blog? or what is the goal of your blog?

You have to fix in the first place the goal and purpose of your blog. As we are discussing this post blog as a business, your goal also should be obvious to establish a self-made business through a blog.

Most of the bloggers’ goal is the same to make a profit from it, to run a self-employed business but there are other bloggers too who start a blog just for expressing their creativeness, their passion, to impact their readers, and just as a hobby.

Source: growthbadger

Source: Corvertkit

Although your ultimate goal/purpose of the blog is to make money, It won’t be possible without providing value first. When you provide value through your content to readers, solve their problems, fulfill their satisfaction, build trust then only they convert into customers.

“I help {Group of People} do {How you help}”

Like this, your goal should be. It should be your mission statement. Your destination in the blogging journey helps you show the directions and intent; guiding your blogging activities to move forward.

What are the blog monetization requirements?

The Mindset

First and foremost, when you are doing something and/or starting any kind of business, your mindset should be correct and strong.

You are starting your blog as a start-up, a real business as we are focusing on the profit from day one in this post. You should know the hard truth but real in the context of a blog.

90% out of 100 won’t succeed in the blogging business. Only 10% are succeeding in it because that 10% have a clear vision, the right mindset, and marketing strategy. They won’t give up in the initial phase of business.

Blogging is a long journey that you have to maintain with a lot of unpaid hours before monetization starts to work. Most of the new bloggers will quit before their first dollar rolls in.

However, if you passed through that initial stage, build up your audience, publish new quality content regularly, find your target audience and bring them onto your email list – you have a very good chance to succeed.

The domain and hosting

While we are talking about a real blog business, a serious business, there should not be questions like how to start a free blog and make money? Yes, you thought right. There is a possibility and there are sites (WordPress/blogger) where you can start your blog. But it will be like building your assets like factory/home in other’s land/lease land. When you have to remove it or when you lose it you won’t know. Besides that, you have limitations on free sites.

You should have to choose wisely your domain and hosting company as these factors also affect the monetization of your blog. These are the only investment you need to start a start-up blog. Take this like seeding a plant, from which you can get fruit in the future.

Choose the best hosting provider and register your domain name as your blog address. Install the CMS system which is of course WordPress along with proper theme and plugins.

The Niche

Your blog niche doesn’t have to be revolutionary, but there should be a unique/brand voice in it.

Source: growthbadger

From the above data, you can clearly see that rather than writing about anything that comes to mind, you should create a specific type of blog with a strong and centralized focus. Use your blog to build your expertise in a particular area and to fulfill the specific needs of your readers.

Choose the topic that you enjoy most, that has a readership, and which has the power to transform your readers. If you are still confused and feeling difficult, you can read this blog post – the quickest and easiest way to finalize your blog niche.

Quality Content

The number one rule of blog success is in-depth, quality content.

Although the number of your blog posts matters in blog monetization, the quality is more important for your blog success. The key factor in blog success is well-researched quality content that is relevant to your blog niche and your readers’ demand.

There should be pillar content (also known as 10X content of digital marketing) in your content plan as well as its extension. You should categories them well. The content is the backbone of your start-up, the blog. So you should conduct very wisely your content strategy plan.

Here is an illustration to understand the pillar content and its extensions contents from HubSpot.

This one is an illustration of – what is the role and importance of quality content in your blog and for your blog’s success from growthbadger. This data shows that whether bloggers earn 5-6 figures or 2-3 figures, they took the most important factor for making a blog successful is the quality of content.

The value

Nowadays in this age, your readers have an almost infinite choice for finding content to read on the internet. If you want to be heard, you need to provide value through information, education, or entertainment. The value directly relates to your goal and/or purpose. You should make your blogging goal to bring value by being a resource for your readers.

If you want to make money from day one, You should create content on your niche that is useful, solve problems. You have to think about your readers’ common challenges, problems, transformations, and then create content that addresses those challenges, problems directly so that you can transform your readers. You have to know your target audience.

Your content should be unique, original, or exclusive content or information that your audience can not get anywhere else so that they consume, educate, get their answers and thus share on different platforms. You can also add free downable like e-Book, White papers, Research studies, and a lot more which will add value to your blog post.

Engagement/The traffic

Trafic and their engagement to your site equate to your income.

Your blog is a money-making machine suppose, the traffic is your gas (which comes from different gas stations link Facebook, Google, Youtube, Instagram, etc. ) and engagement is fueled given by traffic to that machine, your blog – to run it effectively and efficiently.

Traffic and their engagement is your ultimate way to make money from your blog from day one. As you can see there is not any business without customers. The traffic is your customers, the way to make money from your blog. When you have steady traffic flow on your blog, you have a business in your blog.

The traffic and engagement help you build trust, authority, expertise in your blog niche. Your readers i.e. traffic read your blog, follow you because of your expertise in that niche. You have in the form of a blog what they are looking for. They are engaging in your blog post because of your valuable content. Your readers are your real business community. They join and subscribe to you because they believe in you.

Therefore, you shouldn’t miss the chance to grow your traffic and their engagement in every way possible. Another factor that affects your blog monetization related to traffic is an Email list. You may hear that “Money is in the list”, in the context of blogging, it’s very true. You have to grab the chance to grow your email as much as possible then you can make money promoting and/or selling them.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

In the beginning stage of the blogging business, and also you are reading this blog post because you want to make money from day one from your blog, it’s almost impossible to think about more investment, am I right?

The only and best way to get traffic in your blog post and ultimately make money is through organic traffic from search engines and other social media channels. Here you have given a little more time to learn and apply the techniques and procedures of SEO as you have got an only one way to get traffic in the early stage.

You have started your blog because you are interested in digital marketing and making a living through it. So it can easily assume that You know that SEO is a long-term journey. It covers keyword research, on-page and off-page SEO, Links, quality content, Content structure, and more. It is a vital component if you want to rank your blog in search engines especially Google.

You have to optimize your blog covering all the SEO essentials so that you can rank well on the search engine and get more traffic in your blog. The traffic in your blog is equivalent to income from your blog.

Here is an example of how Organic traffic influences your blogging start-up business and why SEO is one of the most important marketing channels for bloggers.

Marketing and promotion strategy

The most popular ways of marketing and promoting your blog post are social media marketing and email marketing. These strategies are what you can do free of cost and the most effective way. These are the ones you must use in the early stage.

After growing your business, you can use paid marketing and promoting methods too. Whatever strategies you going to use, the most important for success is the value you provide and the relationship with your readers. Nurturing your list and building trust and relationships should be your main focus before monetizing your blog.

Besides these free and paid marketing and promoting strategies, you can use another path too. You can choose Video (youtube) and/or audio (podcast) for your marketing and promotion of your blog.

Source: growthbadger

How to monetize your blog from day one?

Now, you have got what you need (the blog monetization requirements) to monetize your blog from day one. You just have to select the right monetization strategy in the beginning stage. There are around 40-47 ways to monetize your blog in the list coming down but you are not going to learn and apply all of them coz you are not that experience well and can not apply in the early stage.

As a general rule, bloggers make profits from their blog mainly 4 approaches. Profit through an ad network, profit through affiliate sales, profit through private advertising, and profit through selling own products and services. Whatever ways there are to monetize a blog, they all fall into these 4 categories.

To make money from your blog from day one in the early stage, the best way is to have your own product and services with high value and market fit.

But in the beginning, you can not create and/or give that kind of core offer. So the best way to monetize your blog is through the most popular two ways – Google AdSense and affiliate marketing. Even you make a penny from your blog, it will provide you with great motivation. So you have to try everything to monetize your blog in the beginning.

Later, on your blogging journey when you will have gained experiences and learned new knowledge, then you can add on the ways. On the journey, you will have already gained trust and authority. You have built your own blogging community, your e-mail lists, and most importantly a steady monthly valuable traffic.

So why wait, lets dive in to find out ways to monetize your blog from day one.

Google Adsence for blog monetization

Source: Codefuel

This is one of every blogger in the early stage used to monetize the blog. Although most of the top-earning bloggers don’t depend on it, it’s a good start for every beginner blogger. You don’t have to spend a penny just have to follow the Google standard.

Google Adsense enables you to earn money by displaying ads on your blog. You get paid by Google when a visitor clicks on the ad or based on ad impressions according to the type of ad. The ad can be text, images, video, or interactive media. These ads are selected by an automated ad auction system that selects the highest bidder among bidding users of Google Adwords.

There are also certain requirements to earn from Google Adsense though. And you have to get approved by Google so that they put ads on your blog. If you follow Google’s content policies and other eligibility criteria you will get easily approved.

The eligibility criteria are:

• Unique and interesting content
• Clear navigation
• Non-plagiarized content
• Enough traffic
• At least six months old site
• Age must be 18 years above
• Non history of abusive experience site

Here we are talking about the blog as a business and most bloggers advise you Google Adsense is not the way of doing business. But it depends on how you utilize this opportunity as there are also bloggers who are earning 5 figures income from only Google Adsense. It depends on your blogging site, your niche, your market, your traffic as well as your dedication and strategy.

One good example of good earning from Google Adsense by India’s top blogger is presented to you. So you can see the possibility of making money from this opportunity.

Source: Bloggerspassion

It doesn’t matter how much you make in the beginning stage, you just need motivation and certainty of making money from a blog. Most bloggers give up because of a lack of motivation and not making any penny.

Hence, the conclusion is GO FOR IT. One of the best opportunities in your early-stage and make money from day one.

Affiliate Marketing -another way of blog monetization

There is no doubt that every blogger use affiliate marketing because it is the easiest and fastest way to make money online as well as from your blog. Stats show that it’s a billion-dollar industry and growing every year.

Source: Findstack

Both Google Adsense and affiliate marketing have some criteria to follow. Affiliate marketing is easier than Google AdSense and can earn a lot more than Google Adsense. The amazon affiliate is the most popular one among others when it comes to affiliate marketing.

As mentioned above the best way to make money from blogs is by having your own products and services. No worries, even you are just a beginner and don’t have your own products and services, You have got affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is the process by which you earn a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products and services. You don’t have to your own products and services, you have a third party’s products and services to promote and earn money in your niche.

Isn’t it super cool?

So why not, grab this opportunity to monetize your blog from day one.

Source: justlearnwp

Different ways to monetize your blog

You should be feeling encouraging and happy that you have got the ways to monetize your blog from day one.

Besides these, you have a lot more potential to make money from your blog. With growing knowledge and experience in your blogging business, you can apply a lot more monetization strategies to your blog. There are so many methods that if one strategy won’t work for you. You can try and/or utilize another method.

So don’t be upset seeing statements like ” it’s not quick rich scheme”, ” blogging is the long journey”, ” 90+% of blogger out there who make less than a dollar a day blogging”, etc. They are only showing the bitter truth. You have to see the next side of blogging and should think positive way.

Only those bloggers are not making money who doesn’t take it seriously as a business. You should think about the bloggers who are making 6-7 figures yearly and living life through blogging. Get motivated, keep consistency in your blogging with quality content, grow your business then you will see the tip of the iceberg.

Here are other possible ways to monetize your blog in the form of a list.

This mindmap from Problogger is one of the best ways to understand easily the different ways of monetization of your blog.

Final words

It is your call how do you take your blog.

To make money from your blog from day one, you should be and think like CEO and treat your blog like a business. Most blogger fails because it’s not profitable. Monetization is the only way you get motivated and give you the energy to keep momentum in your blogging business.

I want you to succeed and make money from your blog. For that, you have to transfer yourself from blogger to business owner. Treat your blog like it’s your start-up that you start to reach your destination/goal.

Setting the right monetization strategy, planning with market demanded niche, Writing valuable quality content, Following the right marketing and promotion methods, Building authority and trust, and Developing a sound community with good relationships are the factors you should consider to monetize your blog from day one.