I had been doing tons and tons of research on how to get started with blogging. A few months ago I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. My experience was absolutely phenomenal!
After weeks of researching online how to get started, I finally drilled down on the niche I was going to talk about on my website. To be honest, I really didn’t know what to expect. I just knew I wanted to make some money talking about what I loved, musical Instruments.
But something extraordinary happened. I actually made money, $3,649.85 to be exact, in over 2 months.
I’ll have you know that I did have a bit of money saved up to get started. So, by no means was I empty-handed. By following some very specific principles from the book “The Richest Man In Babylon,” I was able to save quite a bit of money before I jumped in. My whole life and way of thinking about money changed after reading that book!
Make sure to get yourself a copy and read it!
In addition to teaching solid financial principles, the book talks about paying yourself first. And that was the thing that caught my attention. Pay yourself first.
Well, that’s what I did from my earnings teaching saxophone and teaching flute. I was able to save at least $1000 to get started!
I took the savings and hired everyone, from content writers to web designers and SEO research specialists.
So, here it is!
Net earnings by the way:)
1. I leveraged Google Adsense
After finally getting my blog approved by the Google AdSense team, I added their contextual links onto my site. Well, several sites! I worked extensively to create highly targeted and useful sites full of great content.
For those of you who don’t know what Google AdSense is: Google AdSense has advertisers that will bid to put ads on your blog. If someone were to click on the ad, you’d be paid for that click.
2. I Jumped into Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing, commonly known as referral marketing, is when you promote products belonging to other companies. If someone purchases the product from the link on your website, you’d get paid a percentage of the sale, anywhere from 4 to even 50% of the total sale. One of my sites was promoting something valued at about $2500. I made 10% each time the product was purchased!
Now I’ll admit, I promoted the site using paid advertisem*nt with Bing. I also had sponsored ads going on Facebook as well. But these ads were extremely targeted, and customers were looking for the product I promoted.
3. I Built a Dedicated Audience
Before I launched my site, I already had people lined up to visit it. I started by telling my friends and family about the site I was building. Trust me on this, starting with people you already know is a good way to get a head start with traffic. I built a list of people via social media that might be interested in the products I was promoting.
By the time I launched, I was already getting tons and tons of traffic to my site from friends and social media. That, coupled with the sponsored ads I had going on various social media platforms, put my site in a good place in Google’s eyes. But still, Google wasn’t the main source of my traffic. This brings us to my next tool.
4. I leveraged Email Marketing
I had email signups on all my blogs. Once I built a large enough list, I sent emails out once a week! The emails were probably the largest source of my traffic as Google still took more than a month to start ranking many of my sites. My emails consisted of highly targeted, high-value content for the users, and they went out consistently every week.
5. I Used Targeted Sponsored ads
I would say that this was my first choice for traffic since I knew my SEO efforts would take some time to bear fruits. With the leverage from my savings, I was able to get immediate traffic to my website. With the help of tools like Buzz Sumo, I was able to drill down on viral content to get ideas. I then created Facebook posts similar to those that had already gone viral within my niche.
But here’s the kicker, even though my posts were getting lots of traction without sponsoring the ads at first, I still created a budget and sponsored those posts with high engagement! This worked like a CHARM!
6. I Leveraged Almost All Social Media Platforms
You might be wondering, “Isn’t it best to focus on the few social media platforms that interest you?” Well, maybe. But there is a way to manage multiple social media accounts easily without pulling your hair out! And It wasn’t really that time-consuming at all for me. Yes, it took time to set up the various social media pages at first, but after that, I used tools like hoot suite to schedule posts to all of those sites.
And here’s the real formula:
- The viral posts went out on all social media platforms.
- All of those social media posts pointed directly to my blog.
- Traffic from all of those platforms landed on my site, and in a Very Big Way!
- Google saw this and rewarded me in the SERPs.
To Sum It Up
Affiliate Marketing was my highest earner in the first two months. Bringing in about $1700. Google AdSense came in second with close to $1100. The rest came from my own information products that were created and posted on my site. My products were also promoted in my email marketing campaign. The gross was much higher than $3700, but I just wanted to give you guys my ROI.
Now, I won’t say that this will work for everyone. Keep in mind that I started off with $1000 to use for marketing and content creation. But I still think anyone can do this and it really is pretty simple when you think about it! Blogging could be an excellent way to earn additional income if done properly!
If you have similar stories about your own blog, I’d love to read about it! Even if it didn’t work out, please leave a comment below. We’re all here to learn about how to earn with blogging!
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