Earning your first $1,000 as a brand new blogger is the best feeling it in the world. It means you have created a successful blog and you’re able to scale it and take it to new heights. Starting a blog has been so much fun for me. I love how I get to write posts that help other people who are looking for information on starting a blog. When I first started Blogging, I learned from trial and error. It took me some time to start earning money from my blog. Once I started earning money, I was able to continue to grow my blog and my income.
As a new blogger, it can be frustrating to not know where to begin or how to start making money. In this post, I’ll share with you ways to starting making your first $1,000 as a brand new blogger.
This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure for more information.
First things first.
Start A Blog
If you haven’t already, the first thing you want to do is to start a blog. I have a tutorial that walks you step-by-step on starting a blog from scratch. You can check out the tutorial here. Once you have the basics outlined, let’s move on to the next step.
Once your blog is setup, the next thing you want to do is to produce quality content.
Start Blogging
The second thing you’ll want to do is to create your first blog post, if you haven’t already. Don’t just throw something out there to say you have a blog post. Write a quality, valuable, informative article. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your article is around at least 800 words. This varies by niche though. Chose a length that feels right to you. There are no hard and fast rules here.
My posts are usually between 1,500 – 5,000 words long. My niche is geared towards helping people start a blog and earning money online. My niche is a bit more informative and my posts are generally longer. If you’re a fashion blogger for instance, your posts may not be as long as mine as your blog posts will consist mainly of images. Every blogger is different and it depends on your niche. A good rule of thumb is to check out what other bloggers in your niche are doing and possibly use their blog posts as a guideline for your own.
Related content:
- Is Making Money From A Blog Actually Possible?
- How I Earn Over $10,000 Per Month Blogging
- How To Start A WordPress Blog
- How To Start A Money Making Blog From Scratch
Join Affiliate Networks
Affiliate income is one of my main sources for income for my blog. Affiliate income is when you refer someone to a product or service that you’re promoting in your blog post. You’ll want to join sites such as Shareasale and MaxBounty to sign up as an affiliate.
You don’t want to overwhelm yourself with signing up with too many affiliate networks. These are enough and have plenty of offers for you to choose from.
Why sign up with an affiliate network?
Signing up with an affiliate network means you are able to choose from different merchants who are willing to pay you a commission for referring someone to their product or service. Let’s take a look at how to sign up with Maxbounty for example.
You’ll first want to create an account with MaxBounty. The sign up page will look like this:
You’ll want to click on the highlighted area that says “Become An Affiliate”. Once you’ve clicked on the link, you’ll be taken to a page where you can sign up as an affiliate for MaxBounty.
You’ll click on the “Join MaxBounty Now” button to sign up. Once you’ve clicked the button, you’ll be directed to fill out your information, such as your name and to create a password for your account. You’ll continue on to setup the preliminary basics for creating your affiliate account.
Once you’re all setup, you’ll receive an email or get a call from your AM (account manager) once you’re approved as an affiliate. This process usually takes about 24-48 hours. Once you’re approved, you’ll receive a welcome email from your account manager who will periodically send you promotional emails on new merchants and also let you know when they are running promotions for bonuses and prizes.
If you’re a new blogger who is new to affiliate marketing, your AM will ask why they should consider you as an affiliate. Don’t be afraid to say that you’re new. I was new when I first started and I was approved based on providing my AM with my strategy for promoting merchants. Here is an example of what I said:
“I plan on using MaxBounty to promote merchants who are best fit for my blog. My blog is geared towards people who want to start a blog from scratch and earn money online. I plan on promoting merchants that fall in those categories. My strategy for promoting my affiliate links will be within the guidelines of the merchants.”
That’s it. That’s what I said and I got approved. When your AM calls you or emails you (in case they can’t reach you by phone), feel free to tweak my message to your own to help along in the approval process.
Now, once you are approved and ready to go, you’ll have access to your Dashboard. This is where you’ll find new merchants and top merchants promoting their product or service. My advice is to stick to your niche! If you are a beauty blogger, don’t promote cash loans or car insurance products or services as they are unrelated to your niche. Stick to what your audience may be interested in, such as, fashion. Some examples are Shop Adorn and Born Pretty.
Once you’ve selected a few merchants, it’s time to embed your links. If you already have a blog post (which you should have done in the step before this one), if it is related to your merchants, you’ll want to link them in your post. If your blog post is unrelated, you’ll want to create a new blog post related to your Affiliate Links.
Rule of thumb: only use merchants whom you find trustworthy or have tried their products and services yourself. 95% of the affiliate links I use on Bonne Chic are services and products I use or have used in the past. The other 5% have been thoroughly vetted and I deem them as trusty-worthy products or services that I find helpful to my readers. You don’t want to lose your credibility over a few dollars. Make sure they are products you stand for and believe in.
Post On Pinterest
Once your blog post is completed, you’ll want to post on Pinterest. I use Tailwind to schedule all my pins. This way, my work is cut in half. You’ll want to create a business account on Pinterest if you don’t have one already to start creating boards to pin your blog posts. If you’re new to Pinterest, I suggest taking McKinzie Bean’s course on Pinterest, Pin to Profits. She has an awesome course that actually helped me increase my Pinterest traffic by over 200%.
Keep Pinning
The key to pinning is that you’ll drive traffic to your blog. When you use beautiful and creative images, this encourages other people to save your pins and re-pin them as well. This drives traffic back to your blog. Over time, this will result in more traffic to your site (free might I add, unless you are using Pinterest Ads) and more clicks to your affiliate links.
I recommend only using a handful of affiliate links at first. You don’t want to overdo it. Keep focusing on blog posts that provide the most value. Maybe you’re working on a “how to” guide that’s very informative. You might want to consider pinning that blog post and promoting it so other people are able to view your blog post and re-pin it as well.
By using this method, I was able to earn money blogging without paid advertising. If you’re looking to grow your blog steadily and you don’t have a huge budget for advertising, try this method. As long as you stick with it, you’ll increase your income.
The key to earning money through your blog is to reach as many people as possible. No, you don’t need 1 million pageviews a month to earn money blogging, you just need to follow a plan that works. This works. As your blog grows, you can invest in paid advertisement to increase your income.
Don’t Ever Give Up
Like I mentioned before, blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s a real business that requires work. Yes, blogging is fun and super rewarding but at the end of the day, it is a way to earn a living. There will be times when your pageviews are stagnant. Maybe even you’ve lost some traffic. Don’t ever stop. This is just the nature of the business. If you keep at it and keep pushing, you will be where you want to be with your blogging goals.
When I first started using Pinterest, I focused on pinning 90% of my content and 10% of other people’s content. I know that a lot of blogger’s may tell you to Pin a lot less of your own content but that just doesn’t make any sense in my opinion. If you’re starting out, you’ll want to get your content out there as much as possible. Pinning 90% of my content has worked for me and has helped increase my blog pageviews and traffic.
I usually pin 10% of other blogger influencers I follow who are also in my niche. This has helped me with my Pinterest traffic tremendously. I’d also encourage you to do your own research and take a course on Pinterest. Once you have the information you need, make your own decision based on what’s best for you.
Have Fun!
This is only the beginning! Blogging is such an exciting and wonderful way to express myself. I love helping others and I want to help you get to where you want to be with your blogging goals.
Comment below on how you plan on to increase your blogging income 🙂
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