How to Start a Blog and Make Money in 10 Steps

Before you start your blog, you need to choose a niche. These days, most readers aren’t looking to read personal blogs from people they don’t know; they’re interested in reading blogs on specific topics, published by subject-matter experts or people who are writing from experience.

Start by listing your interests and areas of expertise. What’s a topic you could talk about for hours? What subjects do you know thoroughly, either through formal education or personal study? What can you realistically establish yourself as an authority on? The more vested you are in the topic, the easier it will be to consistently create content about it.

Here are some of the biggest blogging niches:

• Beauty and fashion
• Food
• Health and wellness
• Home improvement
• Parenting
• Personal finance
• Travel

Because these topics are so broad—and so popular—you’ll face a lot of competition if you want to write about them, so once you pick a general theme, try to narrow it down further. For instance, if you decide to write about food, you could focus on gluten-free recipes or meal prepping for diabetic people.

Refining your niche with search engine optimization (SEO)

According to Mark Slack, an SEO professional with over a decade of experience, you can brainstorm ideas by playing around with free SEO tools.

“Don’t blindly choose topics to write about,” he said. “Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to do keyword research to find out what people are searching for.” Ahrefs, a digital marketing and SEO company, provides a free keyword generator that you can use to find frequently searched Google keywords related to particular topics.

Similarly, Slack recommended using Google Trends, which lets you see which topics people are searching for and how this varies over time and by location.

Targeting your content

A big part of discovering your niche involves understanding your audience so you can tailor your content toward them. Consider your intended reader’s:

• Demographics: What’s their age, gender, occupation, and average income?
• Interests: How does that affect their interests, hobbies, and so on?
• Concerns: Do your readers have any “pain points”—sources of annoyance or stress—and if so, what can you offer to solve their problems?

You might have to lean on stereotypes here a bit, but that’s OK. The point is to form a broad impression of your potential audience, with the understanding that there will be exceptions. This will still help you target your content.

For instance, if you’re interested in writing a travel blog and you determine that your audience probably consists of young people with relatively low incomes, you might be able to gain traction by including a lot of novel tips for traveling on a budget.

Consider the potential for profitability

Don’t forget to consider the profitability of your chosen niche. We’ll talk about how to monetize your blog a little later, but if you want to turn it into a money-making enterprise instead of just a passion project, it’s important to confirm that you can turn a profit down the road.

Check your niche’s potential profitability by researching your future competitors. There should be enough of them to indicate that your topic is in demand, but not so many that your voice will be drowned out.

To get your blog going, you’ll need a blogging platform, also called a content management system (CMS). This will allow you to create and manage your posts.

The most popular CMS by far is WordPress, an open-source software suite that’s used for nearly half of all websites. It’s a good choice for most people, but not necessarily everyone. Your ideal platform depends on your technical skills, budget, customization needs, and goals.

Consult the table below for a brief overview of the most-used CMSs and how they compare to each other. (Note that WordPress.org is a blogging platform, whereas WordPress.com is a hosting platform—we’ll explain what that means in the next section.)

Top Content Management Systems

If you’re not sure, you can’t go wrong by just opting for WordPress. While it can be very complicated (“WordPress developer” is a whole career path), you don’t need to become an expert or even use most of its features to run a successful blog.

Hosting platforms give your blog a home on the internet. Your CMS might include hosting, in which case you won’t need to choose a separate host. If that applies to you, skip to the next step; otherwise, you’ll need to pick a platform.

Consider the following factors when deciding on a website host:

• Cost: Hosts have yearly or monthly fees. Make sure you pick one you can afford.
• Uptime: Obviously, it’s important for your site to be functional most of the time. Pick a host that’s known to be reliable.
• Bandwidth: More bandwidth allows for faster load times, which is important to keep both Google and your readers happy.
• Storage: More storage lets you publish more content.
• Security: When you vet a prospective web host, make sure their security certificates are up to date. This is particularly important if you go with a smaller provider—they might be less likely to keep up with the latest security measures than large companies.
• Customer support: Look for a host that offers 24/7 support if something goes wrong. Most major web hosts do.

There are many hosting platforms to choose from. The table below lists some of the most popular:

Major Web Hosts for Blogs

Many people opt for self-hosted WordPress blogs. To do that, pick a host, buy a domain, and install the free WordPress.org software yourself.

Your blog needs a name to identify it. Arguably the most obvious choice is your first and last name (i.e., yourname.com). Alternatively, if your blog is connected to your business (or another side hustle), you could use the name of your company.

If you want to be more creative, here are some tips:

• Try to include a major keyword related to your niche.
• Resist the temptation to use an unusual name just to attract attention. The primary objective is to communicate what the blog is about, and you don’t want to risk confusing people.
• Experiment with different tones—formal, witty, inspirational, or friendly—until you find one that feels right.
• Search Google to make sure someone isn’t already using the name you’re considering. If a title is taken (or too similar), readers will have a hard time finding you.

If you’re stuck, try using a generator to get your creative juices flowing. Wix, a popular blogging company we mentioned above, maintains a free blog name generator that you can play around with.

Always check whether the social media handles and domain name for your name are available.

How to register your blog’s domain name

As you might already know, your blog’s domain name is its URL—a string of text followed by an extension (often .com) that identifies your website. This is what people will type into their web browser to find your blog, and it’ll ideally be the same as your blog’s name.

Most hosting platforms provide free subdomains that include their branding (e.g., yourblog.wordpress.com). Most web hosts offer custom domain registration for writers who’d rather not have their blogs live on a subdomain, although you’ll usually have to pay for this.

If you can’t register a domain through your host, choose a domain registrar, such as Squarespace. These registrars will tell you if the domain is taken and suggest close alternatives if it is.

If the name you want is available, you can purchase it right away. Most domains cost less than $20 per year, but a name’s desirability influences its price. If you want to register a common dictionary word for your blog’s URL, for instance, that will probably cost a lot more.

Once you have your CMS, host, and domain name, it’s time to set up and customize your blog. This process will differ depending on your platform, but generally, you can follow these steps:

Pick a visual identity and create a logo

Your blog should have a cohesive look and feel. Decide on its appearance, including the colors and fonts it’ll use. Try to match the tone you picked earlier. If your blog is about something serious, you may want a minimalist color scheme, whereas if it’s something fun (like a travel or food blog), you can be more playful.

You’ll need a logo to help readers recognize your brand. You can hire a professional designer, although if you’re the artistic type, you can also use a program like Canva to create one yourself.

Choose a blog template

Unless you’re skilled enough to code your website from scratch, you’ll need to create your blog with a template.

The platform you’re using will probably provide plenty of these. Select one you like, then change the colors, fonts, and layout until you’re happy with them. Note that some templates are free, but others cost money to license and use.

Build your other pages

After designing your blog, decide what other pages your website needs. At a minimum, you should have About and Contact pages so people can get to know you and reach out to you.

If your site is more than just a blog, you’ll need separate Home and Blog pages. You may also want a Shop page if you intend to sell products (including digital ones).

Make sure search engines can find your website

Starting a blog will do you no good if no one can find it. Google and other search engines need to index your website.

Use Google Search Console (GSC) to allow Google to map your site. GSC also provides data about your traffic and your visitors’ activity on your site, which will help you tailor your content for your audience.

Configure your settings

Don’t forget to adjust your blog’s settings. Some of the most important ones relate to privacy, comment moderation, and SEO.

Study up on SEO

On that last note, it’s also a good idea to spend a few hours reading up on current SEO best practices.

SEO has a bad reputation among many non-bloggers, who associate it with outdated practices like “keyword stuffing” (including search queries in your content in excessive and unnatural ways), but these days, it largely boils down to common-sense strategies to make your site easy for both human beings and Google to read.

You don’t need to be an SEO expert to have a successful blog, but you should make sure you’re not doing anything to sabotage yourself. For instance, look into how to structure a blog post’s URL and how to write clear anchor text (i.e., text that links to another page or site).

Install useful plugins

To customize your blog, you can install plugins, which are small pieces of software that supplement your CMS’s functionality. Also called add-ons, these can fulfill dozens of functions, including:

• Creating forms, pop-ups, or other components on your site
• Providing advanced SEO tools
• Monitoring and analyzing your traffic

Some plugins are free, but you’ll have to pay for others.

A word of advice: use plugins in moderation

Plugins can be very useful (and fun to play around with), but according to Mark Slack, it’s important not to go overboard with them—particularly when it comes to front-end plugins, which change the appearance of your site.

“Beware of using too many WordPress plugins,” he said. “If you’re a newbie without a developer, it’s hard not to rely on them, but the more front-end plugins you download (say, to help you make accordion-style dropdowns in your blog posts), the longer it’ll take your website to load, which will harm your rankings.” (Page load time is believed to be an important factor for SEO.)

Slack added that if you’re serious about your blog and see it as a long-term side hustle, you should consider hiring a decent developer to design custom features for it instead of solely relying on prebuilt plugins, which tend not to be very well-optimized. “Consider it an upfront business cost for getting started,” he said.

Now that your blog is set up, it’s time to fill it with content. Before you start writing, you need to brainstorm topics and decide on a content strategy.

Consider your audience again. What are they likely to be curious about? What’s a challenge they’re facing that you can help them solve? What excites them the most? Use your keyword research from earlier to find relevant topics.

Try using the topic cluster model

The topic cluster model is a great way to brainstorm content that will rank highly on Google. Start by thinking of a broad topic, then break it down into several subtopics, denoted by keywords (queries that people are searching on Google—again, use SEO tools like Ahrefs to check this).

Keep dividing until you have a lot of ideas that are each specific enough to be their own blog post. You can confirm your intuition by conducting Google searches of your own. If a query returns a selection of highly relevant results and those results don’t overlap with another keyword with higher volume (i.e., one that has more monthly searches), there’s a good chance you should write a post about it.

This approach will yield a lot of related topics. Over time, you can add internal links between these posts, which has SEO benefits and will keep readers on your blog.

Create a content calendar

Decide how often you’ll post—for instance, weekly, biweekly, or monthly—and on which days, then create a content or editorial calendar to plan which topics you’ll post on which days.

Doing this work in advance will eliminate the stress of picking topics on the spot. It will also make you more efficient and focused.

You can create this calendar on paper or with a digital spreadsheet. Alternatively, you can use tools like ClickUp or Monday, or this Airtable template.

At this point, it’s time to actually start writing! Although this is just one step, it’s by far the most important. There’s no one right approach here, just as there’s no one right way to create any other piece of writing. You just have to put pen to paper (or, more aptly, put your fingers on your keyboard) and try to write something that you, yourself, would want to read.

That said, many of the best blogs are friendly and informative, integrate storytelling techniques, and answer questions, solve problems, or appeal to the reader’s curiosity.

To create each blog post, consider following these steps:

1. Conduct keyword research: As discussed above, before you start writing about a topic, make sure it’s something people are actually curious about and searching for. Keyword research can also give you an idea of what secondary topics to address in each post.
2. Create a catchy title: Your post should grab the reader’s attention. Importantly, it should do this without misleading them about the content.
3. Outline your main points: Create an outline to structure your post logically and stay on topic. Include headings, subheadings, and numbered or bulleted lists to help the reader follow along.
4. Write the post: Following your outline, write the post. Don’t worry about it being perfect; you’ll edit it later. As you write, keep an eye on your SEO research documents, but incorporate the topics you discovered into the post naturally. Don’t stuff keywords where they don’t belong.
5. Edit the post: Read over the post to make sure it flows well, then look at the language itself and correct any errors you find. Tools like Grammarly can help you edit your work (although be aware that Grammarly isn’t perfect, and it may mistakenly flag some correct sentences as errors).
6. Add relevant images: Use pictures to enhance your content and break up the text. Make sure to add alt text to each image.
7. Publish the post: Hit “publish” and tell people about your new post on social media or in your email newsletter, if you have one.

Note that you don’t have to follow an SEO-centric approach like that for every single post—sometimes, you may want to just write what you feel like. However, following that guide (at least most of the time) will ensure your content is coherent and well-positioned to perform well on Google.

Making your content skimmable

Most people skim blogs, meaning they read them quickly, honing in on the sections they’re most interested in and ignoring the rest.  Many people also prefer to consume their content in other forms.

It’s a good idea to incorporate multimedia elements into your blog. In addition to images, you can use infographics, graphs, and charts to emphasize data or statistics. This may be particularly helpful for people who consider themselves visual learners.

Eventually, you can also add videos to your blog (a great option if you’re also interested in becoming a YouTuber), although doing so is a lot of work and not something every blogger needs to do.

If you want people to read your blog, you have to tell them it exists. To drive traffic to your site, consider promoting it via:

• Social media: Share each post on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn. Focus on the platforms where your readers hang out.
• Guest posts: Write guest posts for other bloggers in your niche, or have them write for your blog. Medium is a great platform for this. If you’re particularly ambitious (or you’re a big name in your field), you can also try pitching an article to an editor at a publication like Forbes.
• Email marketing: Starting an email newsletter is a great way to grow your audience. Offer subscribers early access to your content. Look into Substack, which lets you seamlessly turn your blog into a newsletter.
• Online communities: Don’t underestimate the power of networking with other bloggers. Join Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, or online forums to build relationships, support each other, and potentially connect your audiences.
• Discussion sites: Ask and answer questions with fellow bloggers on sites like Quora or Reddit. You can build your own knowledge and a community at the same time.
• Paid ads: You might not want to invest in ads in your blog’s infancy, but it can be a great strategy once you’ve seen some growth and have a large content library.

Making money with your blog is a long game. It won’t happen right away, but your earning potential will grow along with your audience.

Popular monetization strategies

Here are some of the best ways to earn passive income from your blog:

Affiliate marketing

Sign up for affiliate programs for products you like and would recommend. You’ll get a unique link to share and a percentage of the profits when anyone purchases that product through your link.

Make sure to disclose that it’s an affiliate link. This will build trust between you and your audience.

Sponsored content

If your blog gets popular, companies may be willing to pay you to write about their products and brands.

Be honest in your reviews, let your audience know you’re being compensated, and try to weave this into your content in relevant ways to avoid annoying your readers. Of course, it’ll help if you genuinely like the products that you review.

Ads

You can rent out ad space to businesses or fellow bloggers. You can also use Google AdSense, which lets Google choose appropriate ads for your audience. You’ll earn money each time readers visit those links.

Products or services

If your hosting platform supports e-commerce, you can sell digital or physical products like courses, e-books, printables, clothing, journals, and more. If you’re a service provider, this is also a great way to promote paid services like coaching, writing, graphic design, or marketing.

Memberships or paid subscriptions

Create a membership program with exclusive content for paid subscribers. Some of your content should remain free, but you can charge for extra, high-value features like private webinars, a community Slack channel, or one-on-one consultations. Patreon is a particularly popular platform for blog monetization.

Don’t go overboard when you monetize your blog

Before you start monetizing, consider how it will affect your audience. What messages are you sending? Do the products you promote align with your personal values and brand identity?

You should also track your monetization efforts to make sure they’re working and, importantly, aren’t interfering with each other. We contacted one blogger, Shane Dayton, co-founder of the gaming blog Assorted Meeples, who told us that when he first placed ads on his site, he was startled to find he was actually making less money than he used to.

After investigating, he discovered that this was because his readers tended to click on either ads or affiliate links—but not both. Because his affiliate deals made more money, paradoxically, the more successful his ads were, the less he made overall.

“Once the ads were removed, the numbers returned to normal,” he said. “This taught me to never take common wisdom at face value without testing—because there are always exceptions.”

Keep an eye on how much you’re raking in each month and how this number is affected by your evolving monetization tactics. Use Google Analytics to follow your performance metrics, such as views, clicks, comments, shares, and average click-through rate (CTR).

Don’t be afraid to stop doing something that isn’t working and pivot to something else, particularly if one method seems like it’s interfering with your overall strategy or alienating part of your audience.

When it comes to blogging (or any other form of content creation), consistency is key. Maintain a regular posting schedule to keep up your momentum.

Posting frequently may be a stretch if blogging is a side hustle that you’re juggling on top of a full-time job. However, it’s important. According to Mark Slack, there’s a good chance major search engines won’t be willing to rank your site until it has a decent-sized corpus. The faster it expands, the faster Google (and its competitors, such as Bing) will take it seriously.

This advice is backed by a fair amount of hard data. According to an analysis by Marketing Insider Group, writing eleven blog posts per month can generate almost three times as much traffic as writing only one post per month. 1 More traffic leads to more readers and subscribers, and consequently more money.

Don’t compromise on quality

The need to build your site quickly doesn’t mean you should write sloppily written, generic, or poorly researched posts. Search engines like Google will keep an eye on how much the readers you attract actually engage with your content. If your posts disappoint or bore them and they quickly click the back button, Google will notice that, which will be reflected in your rankings.

In particular, resist the temptation to post large reams of AI-generated content, such as posts written with the help of ChatGPT. Google penalizes content that it sees as low-quality or spammy, and experimenting with AI is something that you should only do if you’re (very) experienced and sure of what you’re doing.

Tips for expanding

As you scale, keep an eye on your metrics to figure out what content resonates best with your audience. This should also inform your promotion efforts.

To expand your reach, consider offering your content in multiple formats, such as reading popular posts aloud on a podcast or in videos.

Some of your content will be “evergreen,” meaning it will stay useful forever, but the information in other posts will become outdated after a while. It’s important to periodically update old posts with timely data and insights. Strike a reasonable balance between refreshing old content and creating new posts. Again, when it comes to making money through blogging, consistency is key.