is it worth starting a blog this year does blogging still bring a good income I bet you're asking yourself with questions I was in your shoes about five years ago but today I'm a full-time blogger earning over ten thousand dollars a month on average so I will honestly tell you what works today and what's the fastest way for you to grow a Blog from scratch if you're in doubt about blogging I want to ask you one thing how much do you lose if you try and start a blog my business expenses as a blogger are very low it's a business with the highest Roi you can imagine I do this while working at home I am in control of my own schedule which really helps because I have a toddler and I can spend the time with my daughter while she's small in this video I will lay out a step-by-step plan for you to get your first thousand dollars a month with your blog and if you want to get started with this plan today join my free seven day course to start your blog check the link in the description below and let's get started with the first step so first you need to understand how you will make money when I started my blog I did what most of the people do I tried to apply to Google AdSense as soon as I could to run some ads on my blog that's what you were going to do right well let me tell you maybe you shouldn't yes adding ads from Google AdSense or media.net is the easiest thing that you can do with a new website to start making some money usually it's enough to have about 20 blog posts on your site and something that a lot of people don't know about actually you need to have a privacy policy page before you apply but if you ask for my opinion I don't think that you should even bother applying to AdSense when you have very low traffic something below a thousand visitors per month when your traffic is lower than this amount you will be earning less than 10 dollars with display ads yes less than ten dollars a month so it's not worth sending your small audience away from your site for so little money in my opinion so what would I do if I started my blog these days knowing everything that I've learned in five years my top recommendation for you is to find affiliate products that you can promote in your Niche you can work with large affiliate networks but don't even bother joining Amazon Associates this is like Google AdSense just from affiliate marketing very low commission rates very high risk of getting your account blocked for no reason at all and you will just get your two and a half dollars that you will earn probably in the first year stack there now if not Amazon Associates which other large affiliate networks would I recommend you well impact CJ Affiliates share sale reward style ClickBank partner stack to name a few but which ones will work for you the best really depends on your Niche reward style is best for fashion and Home Decor bloggers for example partner stack will work great if you have a size it with some software reviews I think I gave you all the names of the networks too quickly right well you can pause and re-watch that part of the video if you want to point out the names of these affiliate networks and I think you should join them as soon as you edit just a little bit of content to your website and maybe created your about page so that it looks like a legit website and so it shows these networks what are the main topics that you are going to cover on the site depending on your Niche you could even partner directly with some product sellers because some products are really worth if they cost a few hundred dollars and you can get some very generous affiliate commissions of about 30 and all the way up to 85 percent this kind of commissions are pretty normal in the world of digital products like eBooks online courses and such because their product margin is close to a hundred percent so they can afford giving you a huge commission for sale you will hardly find commissions so high if you promote some physical products as an affiliate you could find many digital products like this on ClickBank or digistore24 in this case you could be making a hundred of dollars or more per customer in commission if you think about it let's say your content linked to an affiliate product like this is convincing enough even with a small traffic volume you will be able to make your first thousand dollars on your blog say with a commission of a hundred dollars you just need to sell the product to 10 customers to make a thousand dollars a month getting back to display ads I said I wouldn't even install AdSense at all and I would start with affiliate products but when is the right time to consider ads on your blog well I could say that there is a network called izoic that can accept your blog with almost zero traffic just like Google AdSense but I would still not even try to join ezoic or Google AdSense that early so I think that you should try and apply to any AD networks when you get at least about 10 000 monthly sessions and you can do it with izoic or monumentric advertising networks and this would be the time when you actually should also apply to Google AdSense because both of these networks will require you to First join Google AdSense as it's the biggest advertising partner for them as I mentioned you can totally keep applying for Google AdSense when your blog is brand new and actually that would help you keep your blog from any kind of problems or bands with Google AdSense because when you work with AdSense directly as a new blogger you could easily do something wrong accidentally and that would then your site your domain and it would close your doors to any premium ad networks in the future because all of them including zoic monumentric she media mediavine and Thrive they all work with Google as their biggest advertising partner and if your domain has a bad history with AdSense it won't be accepted to any premium ad networks ever so again maybe this 10 dollars a month or less that you could make with AdSense on a brand new blog are just not worth the risk for your domain in the future when you get at least 20 000 monthly sessions on your site you could try to join she media Network and then when you get 50 000 monthly sessions on your site you can apply for mediavine this is a premium ad management company that I use and you'll be paid about 10 times more for the same traffic that you could get with AdSense for example but keep in mind that about 80 of your audience should come from the United States to be accepted to mediavine in this sense Pinterest traffic can be very helpful because it's much more popular in the United States compared to any other parts of the world and when I started my blog in the first few months I was trying hard to get some traffic with Google SEO but I soon realized I realized it was hopeless it takes forever to get some domain Authority with a new blog on Google so I focused on Pinterest traffic and it worked by the end of my first year of blogging I had enough traffic to join mediavine and 93 of my traffic at that time was coming from Pinterest I will show you my mediavine dashboard here when I edit the video so I made my first fourteen hundred dollars in a month with mediavine ads entirely thanks to free Pinterest traffic I just wanted to make it clear because I hear this a lot from people who hear somewhere that Pinterest traffic is not accepted in mediavine or other premium ad networks this is not true at all Pinterest is a completely valid traffic Source moreover over your RPM the revenue per thousands of visitors on your site can be the same and sometimes even higher than for Google SEO traffic check out this in my mediavine dashboard my RPM for Pinterest traffic is even a bit higher than for Google Traffic if you find the information that I shared so far helpful give me a thumb up subscribe for more blogging tips and click on the Bell to get notifications when I publish my new videos and if you have any questions the best place to ask me is in the comments below the video now let's talk about selling your services as your monetization strategy when you're 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 or YouTubers and offer your services at their content writer as an editor as a virtual assistant you could also offer any other services and promote them through your blog like making voiceovers translations graphic design or anything else that you're skilled at and what you can do remotely just with the laptop and the internet connection but it can be any kind of services really in any industry I know a very successful blog about all things legal by Amira and her blog is called a selfguru.com and guess what that girl now sells her legal templates for bloggers and she earns a lot more than her colleagues each month because she has established herself as an expert through her blog I'll show you here is her income report when she made 78 000 in one month the majority of this income came from her legal templates over 67 000 and she sells these templates through her blog 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 think about it you're still working from home and you might be earning enough to replace your nine-to-five job your blog works as a free way to Market your services I personally used my blog to sell my one-on-one 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 level of income at my day job and while it takes some hard work up front without getting paid for from the first month of 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 keep trading your time for money not if you keep providing this one-on-one Services it can be quite difficult to get requests from potential clients and say sorry I don't do this one-on-one 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 blog and it's selling your own products you can even sell physical products but I don't know much about this business for me things like manufacturing branding delivery dealing with refunds with Customs all of this is a bit too much I prefer to sell digital products online the ROI is usually very high and if you've built your blog or website to heal to help you sell these products you can have a great income without spending anything on paid advertising you can sell lots of different products that don't require much of support for example ebooks printable files something 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 or if you're like a mirror from a self Guru remember I just mentioned her today you can sell legal templates instead of providing one-on-one services to bloggers you can sell them templates of various legal Pages it's interesting that I see so many bloggers keep procrastinating on the idea about creating their own products for too long until they almost get a burnout from chasing the page views to monetize their site with display ads I've talked to several one-on-one clients of mine who were established bloggers with large audiences and the only way they used to monetize was through ads when asked why why you're not selling products the answer was I keep telling myself that I'm not ready yet I'm not good enough to sell a product but come on thousands of followers across multiple social networks not ready this is a 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 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 question help them grow celebrate their wings together and so on I wanted to dedicate the first part of this video to monetization strategies because I know for most of the people who start a blog it's a way to make extra income on the site so what you want to know first and foremost is how a Blog will make you money now that you have some clarity on this the next thing you need to do when starting a blog is decide which topics you will be blogging about in other words what will be your Niche so step number two pick a niche for your blog and beginners often make a mistake thinking about niches it's easy to start a blog about whatever your experience in life is or about your hobbies and not giving a thought about whether or not this topic 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 blog initials for this year I'll give you a link in the description below this video so you can watch it later and 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 something like home decor DIY recipes parenting diets and weight loss lifestyle in general Beauty and Fashion relationship advice even if you're not sure about a specific Niche you want to choose Pinterest is actually the platform that is not looking for a very narrowly Niche website like Google does you can have a broad lifestyle blog and take advantage of all the trending topics on Pinterest to get as much traffic from this platform as possible even with a brand new Vlog 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 that and watch my free Pinterest masterclass I'll give you a link in the top right corner and in the description below this video now step number three is pick your blog name or your domain name so when you have an idea about your blog the next thing to decide is what will be your domain name the address of your site and the common sense rules that you should keep in mind when you are searching for a domain name is first it should be short and easy to remember and you should avoid using numbers and hyphens in domain name and you always should do your best to get a domain name in the.com zone and even in the worst case scenario you could settle with DOT co-zone but anything like.net or dot Biz is really a bad idea for many reasons and I don't want to go into my details in this video or else it will never move to the next steps but if you want to know all the details about choosing a domain name and all my tips about it I have another video that will help you and the link will be in the description below you can watch it later and don't use any weirdly misspelled words just because the keyword that you wanted is not available as a domain in.com Zone because wrong spelling will always confuse people and they will end up on the competitor's side generally I think people tend to overthink the step of choosing a domain name because your domain name can even be simply just your full name of course if it's not a very popular name because then it would be taken under your name you can blog about anything and you can even switch the niche if you think if you want to change the niche later now step number four technically start a blog so once you have an idea about your domain name you can go ahead and register your blog the process will take you about 11 minutes if you use my video tutorial I'll give you a link in the info icon and also in the description below but I want to give you just two important things that you need to keep in mind when starting a blog one is called content management system and for this I highly recommend you to just stick to WordPress it's the most suitable platform for what a blogging website needs if you were building at just a portfolio with just a few pages I would say go ahead and use Wix or Squarespace but if you want to build a Blog WordPress is the best platform and it's free the second thing to choose is a hosting provider I have to stress this out you need to start a self-hosted blog if you want to make money with it you shouldn't use any platforms that own your site you don't want to have something like anastasia.blogspot.com or anastasia.wordpress.com yes you are hosting your site for free but your site will be limited in many ways they will tell you which ads you can run and which not and when you apply to any affiliate networks no one wants to work with these three sites they want you to have a self-hosted Blog if you think that you're going to start on a a free platform and then switch over I can tell you the technical hassle that you go through is just not worth it when I started my blog I used Bluehost and I think it's a solid hosting option for beginners because they have a smooth installation process for WordPress their plans are the most affordable and they offer a 24-hour support through chat and you can even get a free domain name in the package with your hosting so you can use the link anastasiablogger.com Bluehost click on the link in the description below this video because I partnered with Bluehost and they provided an exclusive price for my audience now step number five is making your blog pretty and fast and you can do it through choosing the right WordPress theme so the way your blog looks and how fast Pages can load depends on your WordPress theme there are lots of options out there some are completely free and if you want to try a three a free theme I would recommend you to check out restaurant to start with it's one of the fastest WordPress themes and the site speed is a really important factor for Google SEO Astra has a very generous free version as well as a premium version and the other fast WordPress themes I could recommend you are called Sniff oceanwp and if you're looking for a premium theme I would give you a name of generate press it's a really good and fast theme now step number six is start driving traffic to your blog when it comes to getting visitors to your website the best thing you can do is focus on one platform at a time otherwise you will 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 could be Google SEO traffic like something that would be mostly interesting for men might have low potential traffic on Pinterest because the majority of users on this platform are women so again my personal top list of the platform starts with Pinterest and you can get your first traffic spikes with Pinterest within maybe like three or four months while with Google you might need to wait at least a year with Pinterest it doesn't matter if you have an old domain name and if there is any domain Authority it works great for almost any Niche and you can see that it worked multiple times for so many of students on my Pinterest SEO traffic Secrets program and they're all from different niches you will find a link to my Pinterest course in the info icon and also in the description below my second favorite traffic source is Google SEO or search engine optimization for Google search traffic is more stable but 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 more time and effort to make Google SEO work a brand new site might need to wait for at least a year before seeing any significant traffic from Google and by waiting I don't mean just starting a blog and doing nothing I mean that you will will be working really hard optimizing your site and writing content optimized for keywords and maybe building your backlinks to the site but 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 video content from their own platform rather than to some third-party websites 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 before you ever made a scent out of your blog right the best advice I can give you is just 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 will figure out everything along the way as I promised I'll give you a plan to starting your blog and making your first thousand dollars with it I know how everything is overwhelming when you're starting that's why I created a free blueprint that is delivered to your inbox within one week every day you will get one lesson together with my video tutorials I will also teach you in it about all the monetization options that you can use on your blog so check the link in the description below this video now if you want to know the most profitable blogging niches for this year check this video up there and I'll see you in the next one