How to Start a Blog That Makes Money (And Gets Free Traffic)
Of those who make money, not all make a living. And not even all make a decent side income. But what’s also true is that a lot of bloggers succeed. The opportunity you’re looking at is: Without further...
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Reality check: Not all bloggers earn money. Of those who make money, not all make a living. And not even all make a decent side income. But what’s also true is that a lot of bloggers succeed. The opportunity you’re looking at is: Without further ado, let’s get you started in creating a profitable blog. We’ll also look at some ways to attract free traffic from search engines. Here are some niches proven to be profitable: Is your ideal niche not on the list? Check these things: But what about blogging about something you’re actually passionate about? Obviously, the best scenario is that your interests or hobbies match a profitable niche. Otherwise, it’s easy to lose interest in your blog. But you can also look at it in a different way. If you treat your blog merely as a business, you don’t need to be passionate about the niche in order to succeed. You can, for example, set up blogs in all of those niches and hire someone to create content. There are more than 600 million blogs out there (Web Tribunal). There is likely a lot of competition for what you want to create, so a good idea is to find a way to differentiate. Here are some ideas: Think of the angle of your blog as a long-term investment. It will help you to establish a brand that people will want to come back to and recommend to others. Below are nine ways to monetize a blog. Depending on your chosen niche, there may be additional opportunities (for instance, food blogs can develop recipes for other companies). Usually, bloggers use several methods at the same time. Keep in mind that some methods (or advertising platforms) will be available only for eligible blogs (usually, it’s about having enough traffic), and some are reserved for bloggers who have already made their name in the industry (speaking, coaching). This is the part where you need to get creative. My advice: It’s just like choosing a name for a business, i.e., the same rules apply: Now for the big question: Should you choose a “search engine optimized” name and domain? Does that even exist? Google says that there is no SEO boost for exact or “partial match” domains, so it discourages doing this (source). What this means is that you should choose a domain name for reasons other than SEO. You can use a domain with a relevant keyword, such as “bike blog,” if the content of the blog is relevant to bikes. But you can also choose a more abstract name. Google will still mostly evaluate the content quality and links. You basically have two choices here: While the second option may sound like the best, there are many good reasons to go with the first option. The most popular self-hosting option is WordPress, which is run by some 40%-45% of websites globally. You get this platform for free, but you need a server, a domain, and an SSL certificate to run it. Sounds a tad technical, but it’s quite easy to set up, and you can be ready to go in less than an hour. What’s more, some hosting companies have solutions tailored for WordPress, which makes the process even easier. In my opinion, the main reasons why so many people go with WordPress are that it’s easy to use, free, customizable, and has plugins for everything, including SEO which is important if you want free traffic. Hosted platforms like Wix or Weebly offer everything under one roof, but you won’t have the same degree of customization (fewer plugins and probably fewer templates to choose from). As for the cost, I was able to get the full package needed to run WordPress for a whole year for approximately $18 with a local hosting provider. This includes: And I set everything up in minutes. Of course, once my visitor count reaches the threshold, I’ll need to get a more expensive plan. Let’s compare that with hosted solutions. All of them have free tiers, but let’s assume we don’t want their branding and we want our own domain. Here are the prices: Pro Tip If you’re going with the self-hosting option, choose a provider with servers located in the country you want the most traffic from. This will give your site a speed boost for that country. Two choices: You can either have a custom-designed template or get a generic one for free (or a couple of bucks for a premium one). If you go with a custom template, you’ll get something original and tailored to your needs. On the downside, you’ll need to wait to get it done, and it’ll cost you more. You’ll also need to make sure you’ll get the support for at least a year. So what most bloggers do when starting out is use a free template or pick one from a marketplace like Envato. As long as your blog doesn’t look exactly like your competitors, you’re going to be fine. With time, you can invest in something custom to make your blog look unique. In web design, usability trumps aesthetics. So try to keep these things in mind when choosing the look of your blog: Most content management systems (CMS), such as WordPress, allow you to jump between templates with a few clicks. So do try a couple of looks and see what fits best. By this time, everything is set up to start creating content. But we won’t simply start writing post after post on random topics—our approach will be strategic. We will do two things here: Naturally, since it’s your blog, you can write about anything you want. But if you want your content to be profitable, content designed to rank is your best bet. Basically, it’s the kind of content that people are looking for in search engines. So instead of just “brainstorming” ideas, we’ll do keyword research to see what people search for, how much traffic we could get, and how hard it would be to rank. For this, you’ll need a tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. And since our blog is new and we want to rank relatively quickly, we’ll try to find easy keywords to target. Here’s how the process works. You can: Since there are over 8K keyword ideas in that list, there’ll be plenty to fill up your editorial calendar for months. You can also make the list more manageable by increasing the minimum volume, further decreasing KD, or excluding unwanted keyword patterns (like keywords related to brands). And here are some examples of relatively easy keywords from that list: You can also get keyword ideas from competitors. It’s a great technique to find the less obvious keywords. In our case, those are food and cooking-related keywords that don’t contain the word “recipe.” Here’s the process in Ahrefs. Doing that research on the Pinch of Yum blog resulted in nearly 2.5K keywords. Let’s look at some examples and their Traffic Potential: An important thing to check when choosing keywords is the dominating content type. This is the key part in identifying search intent: what users expect when they search for something. If you see that the first page on Google is dominated by a content type you can’t create or one that doesn’t make sense for your website (for instance, a product page), skip that keyword because your chances of ranking will likely be low. Check out our in-depth guides to master keyword research: Note What about non-SEO content? Is it worth it if it likely won’t bring organic traffic? I think the answer is yes, but the decision is up to you. If you think that a given topic will be interesting to your readers, you can still distribute it on other channels (email, social). That kind of content can still generate pageviews and increase engagement on your blog. What’s more, non-search-based content can still help you with SEO. If it gets links, it can help your site increase authority and make it easier for you to rank for all your keywords. A content calendar (aka editorial calendar) is a system used to organize, manage, and schedule content production. Why do you need one? As a beginner blogger, you likely won’t need a complex calendar. You can get everything organized using a free tool like Notion, Asana, Trello, or even a Google Calendar. So here are some ideas for logging in useful information in your calendar: While we’re at it, I think Notion offers great (and free) functionality for creating content calendars. You can create a database of topics and switch between views to get the perspective you need at any given moment. Google wants to serve relevant and helpful content for any search query. So our job as bloggers is to understand what a searcher is really looking for and how to make that content stand out from the rest while still serving what is expected. That’s what content optimization is all about. We’ll look at four things here: Choosing the content format is basically about deciding whether any given blog post is going to be a: As for the content angle, it’s the unique selling point of a page. It should catch the attention of the searcher and indicate what is special about the page. For example: “best, free, in 2023, top, etc.” How do you come up with both of them? Just like we did with content format during content research—turn to the search engine results pages (SERPs). For example, for the keyword “how to make money online,” we can see that listicles dominate the SERPs, and some of the interesting angles already used are “at home, realistically, quickly, easy, for beginners.” What this SERP shows us is the kind of content that best serves the search intent. So if we align with search intent but still offer something unique and compelling, we likely stand a good chance of ranking. In other words, we need a listicle and an angle that hasn’t been used yet—something like “5 Tried and Tested Ways to Make Money Online.” The talking points and the assets you include in a post matter not only for the reader but also for search engines. They can help make your content more relevant for the target keyword, rank for secondary keywords, and attract more links. First comes the structure of your post. You can get a good understanding of how the top content is structured by using our free SEO Toolbar. Just go to any top-ranking article for your keyword, open up the toolbar, and go to the Content report. For example, here we can see that one of the articles on “how to make money online” mentions a number of ideas that we could cover. Moreover, it offers an interesting way to categorize money-making ideas, which is something we can work with too. This is already enough to get a sense of what relevant content looks like. To go a level deeper, you can check secondary keywords the top content ranks for and the words used frequently. Here are a few examples from that list that could make good points or subtopics for an article on making money online: Naturally, this doesn’t mean you should copy articles you see ranking on Google. Despite the outcomes, Google is constantly trying to reward the best-quality, most original content and demote the copycats. So treat these reports as inspiration for creating a unique piece that brings something new to the SERPs. Besides common points, it’s a good idea to include link-worthy content (aka link bait): original research, infographics, free resources, original thoughts, inspiring stories, etc. Not only will they make your content more interesting, but they can also entice people to link to it. Links amplify the reach of your content and improve your link profile (if they’re quality backlinks). Tip If there’s a featured snippet showing for your keyword, it’s usually a good idea to optimize for it. This could be your shortcut to the #1 result on the SERP. For example, a featured snippet might be a hint to include a definition of the target keyword or to structure your post in a certain way. To learn more, check out our full guide on how to optimize for featured snippets. Producing quality content is the best way to engage readers and make them come back. If you have an idea of how to create better content than the competition, you should definitely try it. But besides that, you need to know what Google deems as “quality content.” After all, your content should bring you traffic from that search engine. So according to Google’s guidelines, quality content is interesting and useful, and that means it’s: Let’s not forget about the “boring but necessary” technicals of optimizing for search engines. Here are some easy best practices worth following: In this section, I want to show you a few ways you can effectively promote your blog for free. Obviously, none of the ways are about investing in ads. The reason for this is that unless you sell some high-ticket product through your blog, like a course, physical product, or community membership, you likely won’t get a positive ROI with ads. Simple math: If the average cost of the ad is higher than what you get paid for displaying ads on your blog, you lose money. Let’s dig in. Building an email list sounds like a set-and-forget cliche tactic, but don’t underestimate it. Let’s hear from Abby Lawson of Abby Organizes: Our email list has become one of the biggest if not THE biggest contributor to our business’s success, and if I had started growing it earlier, it would be even bigger than it is today. Our email list allows us to keep in touch with our followers more easily and get to know them better. It has helped us to sell more products and grow our traffic. Without it, I don’t know that we would have been able to make the leap to both Donnie and I blogging full time, and we are so grateful to our subscribers for following along on our journey. Email is going to be your direct line to readers. You pay next to nothing to reach an audience that you know is interested in your blog (or actually nothing if you get a free email tool), and you can use the list to offer products or services. Do you need to reach for some hacks to get people to sign up? I doubt it; it’s a surefire way to get unengaged subscribers. The best way to get people to subscribe is to set up a sign-up form next to really good content. Sure, you can offer some kind of special deal for your subscribers, such as exclusive content. But make sure to make it relevant. By the way, let me mention an important yet counterintuitive practice. Once you get your list growing, delete contacts that haven’t opened your emails for the past couple of months. It will help you achieve better email deliverability and keep your email app costs lower. Since you want free traffic from Google, you’re going to need links. The more competitive the keywords you go after, the more quality links you’ll need. Why links? Links are one of the most impactful ranking factors for Google. There are two ways to build links to your content: It’s actually best if you combine both tactics. This is so that when you contact people and pitch your content, you’ve got something compelling to link to. There are quite a few techniques for outreach link building. Let me show you an example: broken link building. It’s where you find broken links pointing to your competitors, then you contact a referring website and ask to include your link to relevant content instead. To do this at scale, use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer: That’s the basics. Since we live in times when links are the currency of the web, it can be tough to earn a link. Check out our guides on link building and outreach to increase your chances (without spamming people): Your target audience is dispersed across multiple channels, each with distinct outreach potential. So by repurposing, you can extend the reach of your content: And so on. For example, you can find some of our content from the blog repurposed on our YouTube channel, and vice versa. You can do that with all your content. But if you’re a team of one, you’ll likely want to prioritize. Head over to our guide on content repurposing, where we show how to estimate if your time investment will be worth it. Think other blogs, newsletters, podcasts—these are the places where your audience likely hangs out. And before they come to you, you need to go to them. If you are featured in those places: Finding these places isn’t hard. You probably already know some good ones, and you can use Google to find more. To know which of them can give you the best link, use Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar while searching on Google and look at the Domain Rating of the website (the higher, the better). Keep in mind: The ones with DR >80 may be harder to get into. One neat hack to do in Ahrefs is to look up articles by a prolific author and exclude that author’s websites from the results. This way, you can find sites where the author has written as a guest and pitch those sites too. Here are more free and effective blog promotion tactics you should consider: There are other things you need to do besides pushing new content. Ideally, you’ll want your site to be free of any SEO issues. However, it’s enough to stay away from the critical ones that can seriously impact your rankings or even prevent you from ranking. For this, you’ll need SEO tools that will monitor your site automatically, report issues, and suggest solutions. These two should be more than enough: Check out this short post on how to use these tools to spot and fix technical SEO issues that really matter. Updating posts can help you reclaim lost rankings and improve pages that never ranked high enough. Underperforming content can be divided into two categories: To find articles worth updating, you can use two types of tools. The first one is our free WordPress plugin. If you’re going to go with WordPress for your blog, this tool will monitor the rankings for the target keyword and, based on that, suggest the appropriate action. You can also use a rank tracking tool like Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker. Track your main keyword targets, then use the position filter to find pages ranking from 1 to 10 (for updating) and from 11 (for rewriting). Once you find your underperforming blog posts, there are a few things you can do, depending on the case: … and more. Read our full guide to republishing old content for SEO for more tips on the topic. Frequently asked questions about starting a profitable blog. Here are the most popular ways of monetizing a blog: Depending on the monetization method, payment rules also differ. For example, for affiliate marketing, you can get paid even after 30 days from the purchase and only if the product hasn’t been returned. Whereas for sponsored posts, you can expect advance payment. In this article, you will find nine ways to monetize a blog (as seen in the table earlier). But depending on the niche, this number can vary (for example, there can be up to 18 ways to monetize a food blog). It’s possible to start a blog with absolutely no money using free blogging tools and free hosting. However, it’s not necessarily the best way to start. Blogging is competitive, and the best blogs use paid services and tools to gain an edge. Instead, try to keep your costs low if you’re tight on budget. For example, use a free blog template instead of a custom one, find cheap WordPress hosting, and use free tools where possible. Pay for tools only if you see them as a good investment. Last but not least, if you’re low on cash and you want to use blogging as your main income, this may be hard to achieve. Blogging can take time to return a considerable profit, so it’s best if you prepare to have other sources of income before that happens (don’t leave your day job just yet). If you want to start a blog that makes money, it all comes down to: You can start blogging on the very same day, and it doesn’t require any special skills such as coding. Although, you’ll need to fill in some “blanks,” such as your niche, name, and the topics you’ll write about. There are essentially five types of blogs that make money: Most common reasons why bloggers fail: In all, 77% of internet users read blogs (Social Media Today) and nearly 26% of people in the U.K. aged 5–18 are reading blogs (Statista). Bloggers who publish two to six times per week are 50% more likely to report strong results (Orbit Media). But you can publish less and be successful. For example, Financial Samurai, one of the most prominent blogs in the financial niche, has been publishing three posts per week. Taking a blog into profitability can be a tedious job. But if you’re serious about committing your time to it and you like writing, blogging can turn your life around—just like it did for these people: Got questions or comments? Let me know on Twitter or Mastodon.NicheTypical contentBlog exampleLast monthly income reportPageviews (from last income report) Food and cooking Recipes categorized by type of meal and diet, cookware reviews, tips and tricks, listicles Pinch of Yum $95,196 (source) 4.245M Health and wellness Food, relationships, fitness, beauty, psychology Hot Beauty Health $9,655 (source) 208.6K Parenting Pregnancy, child-raising advice, product reviews, food recipes, stay-at-home parent jobs, kid activities, household tips The Soccer Mom Blog $11,288 (source) 500K News Anything newsworthy in one niche or multiple niches (also gossip) HuffPost Acquired by AOL in 2011 for $315M, then acquired by BuzzFeed (source). According to this source, it generates $14M/mo. 5.8M (monthly organic traffic March 2023, via Ahrefs) Tech Software and hardware reviews, exclusive deals, how to use software tools, comparisons, listicles, making money online, tech news, buying guides, gaming 99signals $5,242 (source) 18K (monthly organic traffic on the date of the report, via Ahrefs) Personal development Life hacks, financial freedom, wellness, psychology, motivation, spirituality, fitness Let’s Reach Success $6,652 (source) 115.5K Pets Pet health, product reviews, activities for pets, traveling with pets, pet adoption, training, tips, listicles You Did What With Your Weiner $7,720 (includes income outside of the content, source) 40K (monthly organic traffic on the date of the report, via Ahrefs) Entrepreneurship Making money online, starting a business, interviews, complete courses, how-tos, inspiration Smart Passive Income $166,559 (source) 68K (monthly organic traffic on the date of the report, all blogs, via Ahrefs) Finance Investing, saving money, retirement, financial product reviews, buying guides, family finance, mortgages, gig economy, debt, career advice, entrepreneurship, financial freedom Millennial Money $33,473 on average (source) 1.5M visits in 2017 Fashion Outfit ideas, home decor, beauty, style tips, gift ideas, listicles, buyer guides Chic Pursuit $11,376 (source) 135.3K Lifestyle Anything related to solving life’s problems and living a happier life Abby Organizes $41.7K (source) Over 400K Travel City guides, listicles, traveling tips, gear and location reviews, life on the road, digital nomadism Local Adventurer $41K (source) 541.8K DIY/crafts DIY decorations, DIY weekend projects, handcraft tutorials, life hacks, product reviews, food recipes, DIY repairs, renovations Jennifer Maker $15,158 (source) 125.4K 
You can look for affiliate programs used on any site with these four steps.MethodHow it worksTypical rate Advertising You display ads on your blog and get paid based on the number of clicks or impressions the ads receive. $0.1–$0.5 per pageview. Affiliate programs You promote products on your blog and receive a commission for any sales made through your unique affiliate link. 5%–50% (up to 90%) per sale. Sponsored content You receive payment for publishing content that promotes a specific brand or product on your blog. $25–$1K per article. Selling products You sell physical or digital products on your blog and keep the revenue generated from sales. Depends. For example, if you’re selling books, that could be $9–$30. Online courses You create and sell online courses on your blog, and students pay to access your course content. Usually $400–$1K per sale. Depends on the market. If there is a lot of competition and your blog is not yet popular, you should consider a lower price tag. Subscriber-based memberships You offer premium content or services to subscribers who pay a monthly or annual fee to access it. Usually $20–$100 per subscription. Events and speaking You generate income by speaking at events, conferences, or workshops related to your niche. Usually starts at around $10K and goes up to $100K for high-profile speakers. Coaching and mentoring You offer one-on-one coaching or mentoring services to readers. The usual rate in the U.S. for an hour of coaching is between $50 and $250. Running a blog can contribute to your popularity and allow you to raise the stake. Selling the blog You sell your blog to a buyer who is interested in acquiring your content, audience, and monetization methods. The average price of a content site is $101.4K, according to Empire Flippers. 
Total: $18.
TP refers to the Traffic Potential of a keyword.
A food blog that doesn’t offer salad bowls as a product probably shouldn’t target the keyword “salad bowl”—top results are dominated by product pages. “Salad bowl recipes” is a whole different story.
Content format and angle
What to include in your post
Our article on standard operating procedures (SOPs) for SEO ranks with a featured snippet because we included a definition of the general term of SOPs.Create quality content
Technicals
Build an email list
Build links
Repurpose your content
Blog post templates—a video that got over 50K views on YouTube.
Blog post templates—an article that generates an estimated 1.4K organic visits monthly.Follow your audience
DR is a 100-point scale.
Other tactics
Some of the most linked content on the popular blog makingsenseofcents.com are interviews.Monitor SEO health
Update posts regularly for SEO
How do bloggers get paid?
How to start a blog with no money?
How to start a blog as a beginner?
What kinds of blogs make money?
Why do most bloggers fail?
Do people still read blogs?
How many times a week should I post on my blog?
Final thoughts
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