Is it still worth starting a blog in 2021? Aren’t all the niches saturated? Will I
make any money with the blog or will I just invest hours and hours of work with no results
in my bank account?
Well, I know you are asking yourself these questions because I’ve been in your shoes
just a few years ago. I was looking up at some bloggers who replaced their day job with
blogging income in just 2 or 3 years and I was convinced that THEY were lucky to get
into this business early and I was too late for the party.
See how I know exactly what you are thinking? And here I am, making consistently over 35,000
dollars monthly with my blog, in the best months reaching about $40,000 in revenue.
And my business expenses are still very low. It’s a business with the highest ROI you
can imagine. And I do this while working from home, while having the time to spend with
my child and not being glued to the computer screen all day long.
Hi! I’m Anastasia of anastasiablogger.com and on this channel, I share my online business
tips on Thursdays. If you want to learn more about, subscribe and hit the bell button to
get notified about my new videos going live!
I don’t know about you but I personally could never get another job to have THIS lifestyle
and this kind of income. And with blogging business - really the sky the is the limit!
I will show you later in this video all the details about different income streams I use
to monetize my blog. But for now, I hope I convinced you it’s worth your time watching
this video. One video like this can literally change your life.
It will be hard to make this video short but I tried to make all the information easy to
digest for you and layout out a step by step plan for you to your first $1000/mo with your
blog! I will tell you how to get this plan for free - at the end of the video, so stay
tuned.
Now, the first thing you need to do when starting a blog is decide which topics you’ll be
blogging about. In other words, what will be your niche.
1. Pick a Niche for Your Blog Beginners often make a mistake thinking about
niches. It’s easy to start a blog about whatever you experience in life, or about
your hobbies and not giving a though about whether or not this is a profitable topic.
But if you plan to actually make money with your blog, I recommend you to watch my video
that covers the most profitable blogging niches for this year. I’ll give you a link in the
description below this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dtnkfqRsJA
If you want to use a particular platform to drive traffic to your blog, for example, if
you want to start with Pinterest, you need to keep in mind that not all the niches do
equally well with Pinterest audience. It’s mostly female audience and so the niches that
do really great on Pinterest are: • Home Décor and DIY
• Recipes • Parenting
• Diets and Weight Loss • Lifestyle
• Beauty and Fashion • Relationship Advice
Even if you are not sure about a specific niche, Pinterest is actually the platform
that is not looking for narrowly niched websites like Google does. You can have a broad lifestyle
blog and take advantage of all trending topics on Pinterest to get as much traffic from this
platform as possible, even with a brand new blog.
This is why I strongly recommend anyone who is starting a blog learn about Pinterest,
and if you want to understand better HOW it can help you make money with your blog, then
watch my free Pinterest masterclass. I’ll give you a link in the top right corner and
in the description below this video. Now, the second step is choosing a domain
name for the blog. 2. Pick your Blog Name / Domain Name
The common sense rules that you should keep in mind when you are searching for a domain
name: • it should be short and easy to remember;
• avoid using numbers and hyphens in domain name;
• always strive to get a domain in .com zone, in the worst case scenario you can settle
with .co zone. Anything like .net or .biz is a bad idea for many reasons, I don’t
want to go too much into details in this video or else we’ll never move to the next steps.
If you want to know all the details and tips about choosing a domain name, I have another
video that will help you. The link will be in the description below this video.
• Ah and don’t use weirdly spelled or misspelled words just because the keyword
you wanted in not available as a domain. Wrong spelling will always confuse people
and they will end up on competitor’s site.
Generally, I think people tend to overthink the step of choosing a domain name. Your domain
can even be simply your full name if it’s not a very popular name. Under your name you
can blog about anything and you can switch the niche easily at any time.
3. Step: Technically Start a Blog Once you have an idea about your domain name,
you can go ahead and register your blog. The process will take you about 10 minutes if
you use my video tutorial, I’ll give you a link in the info icon and in the description
below this video.
Just two more things you need to choose when starting a blog.
1. One is called a content management system and for this I highly recommend you to stick
with Wordpress. It’s the most suitable for what a blogging website needs.
2. The second thing to choose is a hosting provider. For beginners, the best option in
my experience is Bluehost. Their plans are the most affordable, and they offer 24-hour
support though chat. You can even get a free domain name in the package with your hosting.
Check out the link in the description below this video because I partnered with Bluehost
and they provided an exclusive price for my followers.
4. Step Make Your Blog Pretty with a Wordpress Theme
The way your blog looks like depends on your Wordpress Theme. There are lots of options
out there, some are completely free, and if you want to try a free theme, I would recommend
to check out first Astra theme. If you want to start with a premium theme
right away, my top recommendation is Divi theme because it’s very flexible and user-friendly.
• 5. Driving Traffic to Your Blog
When it comes to getting visitors to your website, I recommend you to focus on ONE platform
at a time otherwise you’ll spread too thin and see very low results on all of them.
It does depend on your niche of course, but my general recommendation for beginners is
to start with Pinterest because this platform can give you traffic really fast. For some
niches Pinterest doesn’t work and in that case your first option would be Google traffic.
Like something that would be mostly interesting for men might have low traffic potential on
Pinterest because the majority of this platform are women.
So again, my personal top list of the platforms starts with Pinterest. https://prnt.sc/vs64uh
You’ll get your first traffic spikes with Pinterest within a few months while with Google
you might need to wait at least 6 months or even a year. With Pinterest, it doesn’t
matter if you have an old domain name and what is the domain authority.
It works great for almost any niche, you can see that it worked multiple times for so many
of my students of Pinterest SEO Traffic Secrets program – and they are all from different
niches. You’ll find a link to my Pinterest SEO Traffic
Course in the info icon and in the description below this video.
My second-favorite traffic source is Google SEO or search engine optimization for Google.
Search traffic is more stable because it doesn’t have the viral effect that you can see on
Pinterest. It’s good that Google traffic is more stable but it takes so much more time
and effort to make Google SEO work. A brand-new website might need to wait for at least 6
months or even a year before seeing any significant traffic and start ranking in Google. And by
waiting I don’t mean just starting a blog and doing nothing. I mean that you will be
working really hard optimizing your site and writing content optimized for keywords and
building backlinks to your website. The next one after Google comes Youtube. Probably
you realize that Google owns Youtube. So, you can often rank your videos higher than
your blog posts for the same keywords because Google gives priority to their own platform.
I get very little traffic from Facebook and Instagram and I don’t think these platforms
are good for organic free traffic generation. You would have to pay for ads to get some
traffic from these social networks and I assume you are starting a blog to make money not
to spend your money on ads before you ever made a cent out of your blog, right?
I could tell you so much more about Instagram but all of it would be about how you can NOT
get traffic from it to your website. I don’t want to waste your time for all these arguments,
just trust me on this.
I’m going to start talking about monetization methods for your blogs now. But if you find
the information I shared so far useful, give me a thumbs up and click the bell button to
get notifications when I publish my new videos!
Now let me show you what could be your monetization strategy as a beginner blogger and how you
can change it over time. Most of the bloggers start adding display
ads from Google Adsense or Media.net because it’s the easiest thing you can do with a
new website. Usually it’s enough to have about 20 posts
on your blog and something a lot of people don’t know about – you need a Privacy
Policy page before you apply! But if you ask my honest opinion, I don’t
think you should even bother applying to Adsense when you have very low traffic because they
pay very little for each 1000 visitors. When all your traffic is a couple of hundreds or
1000 visitors a month, you will be earning less than $10 a month. It’s not worth sending
your small audience away for so little money. So, my top recommendation for beginner bloggers
is to find affiliate products that you can promote in your niche. You can work with large
affiliate networks like Amazon, CJ Affiliates, ShareaSale, reWardStyle and others. Depending
on your niche, you could even partner directly with some product sellers. Some products can
cost a few hundreds of dollars and can come with generous affiliate commissions of about
30 and up to 50%. In this case, you could be making a hundred of dollars or more per
sale. If you think about, if your content linked to an affiliate product like this is
convincing enough, even with small traffic volume you’ll be able to make your first
$1000 on your blog, with good affiliate offers. When your blog traffic gets to at least 10,000/mo
sessions, you can apply to either Ezoic or Monumetric advertising networks. As I mentioned
before, you can totally skip applying to Google Adsense and actually it’s keeping your site
safe from any kind of ban or problems with Google Adsense.
When you work with Adsense directly as a new blogger, you can easily do something accidentally
that will get your site banned and this will close the doors for you to any premium ad
networks in the future. Because all of them including Ezoic, Monumetric, Mediavine and
Adthrive work with Google as their biggest advertising partner. If your domain has a
bad history with Adsense, it won’t be accepted to any premium ad networks ever. So again,
the $10 a month you could make with Adsense on a new blog, are not worth the risk for
your domain in the future. When you get at least 50,000/mo sessions on
your site, you can apply for Mediavine. This is a premium ad management company and you’ll
be paid about 10 times more for the same traffic than you could get with AdSense.
Keep in mind though that 80% of your audience should come from the United States to be accepted
to Mediavine. In this sense Pinterest can be very helpful because it’s much more popular
in the US than in other parts of the world.
NOW I’LL TALK ABOUT SELLING YOUR SERVICES When you are just starting a blog, it’s
often months of work without a single paycheck. While growing your audience, you can also
offer your services on the blog. For example, you could reach out to some established
bloggers and offer your services as their content writer, as an editor, a virtual assistant.
You could also offer any other services and promote them through your blog – like making
voiceover, translations, graphic design or anything else you are skilled at. I’ve seen
a very successful blog about accounting – and guess what, that accountant girl earns a lot
more than her colleagues each month because she has established herself as an expert through
her blog. The best part about selling your services
through the blog is that you don’t pay commissions that always apply if you use freelance sites
to find clients. Many beginner bloggers make the majority of
their income by selling their services in the first year or two, and you know what?
I think it’s great! They are working from home and earning enough to replace their 9-5
jobs. I personally used my blog to sell my 1:1 Pinterest management services for quite
a long time. I don’t do this anymore though and let me tell you why.
The most amazing thing about blogging is that you can build your career and skyrocket your
income to the levels that would take you decades in the corporate world. For me, I actually
am 100% sure I would never reach the same income level at my day job.
And while it takes some hard work upfront without getting paid from the first month
blogging, at some point if you don’t allow your limiting beliefs stop you from making
more money, then you can scale your business really fast.
But not if you trade your time for money. Not if you keep providing 1:1 services. It
can be quite difficult to get requests from potential clients and say sorry, I don’t
provide 1:1 services anymore but at some point if I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be able
to scale my business and income. And so… we get to the advanced way of making money
from your website. It’s selling your own products.
Selling Your Own Products You can even sell physical products but I
don’t know this business, for me things like manufacturing, branding, delivery, dealing
with returned products, customs, all of this is a bit too much.
I prefer myself and recommend others to sell digital products online. The ROI is usually
very high and if you’ve built your blog or website to help you sell your products,
you can have a great income without spending anything on paid advertising.
You can sell lots of different products that don’t require a lot of support, for example:
- Ebooks - Printable files like binders, guides and
so on - You can sell patterns and templates if you
are a DIY blogger - You can sell stock photos through your site
if you are a photographer. It’s interesting that a lot of bloggers
delay creating products for too long until they almost get a burn-out from chasing pageviews
to monetize their site with ads. I’ve talked to several 1:1 clients of mine
who were established bloggers with large audiences and the only way they monetized was through
ads. When I asked why? Why you are not selling products? The answer was – I kept telling
myself I’m not ready yet, I am not good enough yet to sell a product. But come on,
with thousands of followers across multiple social networks? Not ready? This is clearly
a limiting belief in my opinion, a lot of people are just looking for excuses to stop
themselves from making more money with their blogs. If by any chance this is your case,
you definitely need to work on your mindset. What I found the best model for me personally
because I like interacting with people and sharing my knowledge, I found that selling
printables is kind of boring for me. I prefer selling courses where I can work with my students,
answer their questions, help them grow, celebrate their wins together and so on.
A lot of people think that selling courses requires a ton of ads, that you have to constantly
do stressful launches and that it is a huge risk as you have to work upfront to create
the whole course and only when you launch you will find out if it can sell anything
at all. Well I tell you what… this is how you create
courses the wrong way. I can show you how I consistently am selling my Pinterest SEO
Traffic Secrets course on the evergreen funnel. I didn’t have to do a live launch ever since
I created the course. Actually if you want to learn an effective an stress-free model
for creating and selling courses, without having to create the entire course before
you ever see if there is any interest in your topic. Without spending thousands of dollars
on advertising before you ever sell one copy of your course. Then check out my program
on building and selling courses stress-free – I’ll give you a link in the info icon
and in the description below this video. Now to wrap this up, the best advice I can
give you is stop doubting yourself and procrastinating. Don’t waste even one more day thinking about
starting a blog if you want to start it, just do it and you’ll figure out everything along
the way. As I promised, I’ll give you a plan to starting
your blog and making your first $1000 with it. I know how everything is overwhelming
when you are starting. That’s why I created a FREE blueprint that is delivered to your
inbox within one week, every day you’ll get one lesson together with my video tutorials.
I will also teach you in it about all the monetization options for your blog, so click
on the info icon to check the link, it will also be in the description below this video.
The best time to start your website was yesterday. The second best time to start it is today!
I hope you enjoyed this video and found it useful. If so, give me a thumb up and let
me know in the comments below if you are thinking to start a blog, what is stopping you and
where did you get stuck. Maybe someone else in the comments or I will be able to help
you! Before you leave this video, here are a couple
of other videos on my channel that will help you start a blog and monetize it in smart
ways! See you in the next videos!