how blogging can help you make money

Over the years I have tried out many different topics to some degree, to base my blogs around.  One of the main reasons I begun blogging in the first place is purely because I love to write.  Like most people, I love to share my thoughts and opinions, and a blog is always the perfect way to express that.  What comes next is down to how I ensure that the advertising and marketing side of my blog is always constant and consistent.

 I do love to read too, and I am always searching the web for movie news, money news, music news, and anything to do with sports as well, particularly football, and golf as I also play golf myself.    So you see any one of these things I could write about in my blog.   But....  I have always wanted to focus on a particular niche, which is why I decided to explore and write about the subject of money, for the second time.

   

I have had several different blog sites, and tried out quite a few different blogging platforms.  Years ago I created a blog called Making Money, which I did on a site called https://www.webs.com/.  The only thing was I never bought the domain name and that was possibly down to the fact the name was so popular, I couldn't. That was very early on in my blogging days so it would have been about 10 years ago, and I was still testing the waters back then.   The blog never took off anyway, and to be honest, for me it's a project that has been left too far in the past now for me to pick it up again.

First and foremost, I am in no way implying that earning money through a blog is easy.   Because I can tell you from experience, it's not.   To be completely truthful it's bloody hard.   Regardless of what you choose to base your blog around, you cannot expect to start writing and expect Google Adsense to go, hey there you go, there's some ads now you will make lots of money!   It doesn't work like that.   I have only ever managed to cash out from Adsense ONCE.  That was roughly about seven years ago, and even now I think that was a fluke.

DO YOUR RESEARCH

Read, read, and then read some more.  Read everything, books, blogs, news, magazine articles, social media sites, Pinterest, anything and everything you can find.   Make a list (or if you are like me, make several lists) prioritize it, come up with some theories and then test them out, no matter how wild they may seem at first.

NICHE

Choosing a niche can be something that takes a little time to decide on.   The best thing I can suggest is to always choose a strong niche that you are passionate about.   This can be anything from movies to lifestyle, fashion, books, sport whatever, but the important thing is is to make sure you know how and why this topic is important to you, and how you can project your opinions to your audience.  

SET YOUR GOALS

Whenever you start an new blog post always have a think and decide exactly on what you want your end goal to be.  Visualize it, make notes, draw up a list of things you want to include that you feel is important to what you want to say to your audience.

MINDSET

This is probably the most important aspect of finding and learning ways on how to make money.  You do not want to start a big, potentially life-changing project when you are in the wrong mindset.   A positive mindset will provide strength.  Another easier way to put it is to 'be in the right frame of mind' when you start your blog post journey.

FOCUS ON YOUR AUDIENCE

This is an interesting one for me because my first instinct is to say that in general this blog is more targeted to a younger audience.   If I had begun writing this blog say 10 years ago, then perhaps yes, it would be just aimed at a much younger audience.  But to be completely truthful, I don't believe I can specifically put an age to which I am truly aiming for.   This is because you can earn money at any age, whether that be a tiny amount or a lot.   And the great thing is, is there are loads of different ways to do it.

FIND OUT WHAT'S TRENDING

I love the What's Trending website, and I have used it for a number of years now.  I really enjoy discovering all the amazing, and sometimes weird things that are going on in the world that others are talking about.   Although I don't immediately go to it for every blog post I write, it is still on my list of favourite sites to check out if I am looking for some extra links to add to a post that is specific and related to my article.  It's always worth a little gander every now and then, even if it's just for fun.

CHOOSE A MONETARY SYSTEM

The most obvious one for any blogger is Google Adsense.   Although it can sometimes take time to get accepted, it is one of the easiest blogging monetary systems out there.    In the past I have had three blogs that were accepted for Google Adsense because of the content that I had written.   As great as that sounds I  still struggle to make a lot of money one Google Adsense at the moment.  But there are others you can choose from, for example Affiliate Marketing is another way of money with a blog that I am currently exploring.  The Amazon Associates is another popular money making opportunity you can use with your blog.   You promote products on your blog in a link, and if one of your readers clicks on that link, and then buys the product you are promoting, you get a commission.   It's that simple.

There are many money making opportunities you can use with a blog.   You can even sell items on your blog if you have stuff you want to get rid of.   Ebay and ETSY are the top two places to do this.  Personally, I haven't used ETSY yet to sell anything, but I have purchased from there and it was so easy to do.   Ebay on the other hand I use very frequently to sell clothes and shoes, or the odd handbag the way you do.  Ebay is really easy to use.   I think it's all about the wording you use to sell your items and not just the photos.   And like Amazon Associates, you can easily post a link on your blog and write about what you are selling to gain some real interest.   If someone then clicks on one of your links whilst reading your blog, there is a chance it could lead to a sale.

One of the best things that you could do, if you want to start earning money with your blog, is to perhaps test a few of these theories out.   From experience, Amazon Associates was very easy and free to set up, and it is known that Amazon Associates is one of the best affiliate marketing sites there is. Whether it will convert many sales for me I am yet to see, but it is always possible that it will, you just have to have patience and a little faith.  That goes the same for Google Adsense.   It is free to set up a Google Adsense account, but you do have to be accepted by them.   The best way to do that is to include keywords into your blog posts.   Now this is something else I am investigating myself over the last couple of weeks since I started my dreamcashe blog.   As it stands as the moment, I feel as though I have not even begun to scratch the surface on what I am doing with 'keywords' so I shall leave that particular subject for a later date.

Anyhoo.  Let me know any thoughts you might have.  Thank you for reading.  

Until next time, take care.

Sarah

the beginning of the dreamcashe blog

Dreamcashe

Counting Pennies and Nickels.

There are so many people out there who start a second blog.  I know one or two bloggers out there who actually have more than two blogs. So why have I decided now to start doing another blog? Well, I have just come up with an idea for the title.  That is it.  Just the title.  I then searched the name 'dreamcashe' in the general Google search, and thought, that does sound really cool, I know I shall create myself another little writing project.  Considering I can be quite indecisive about such things, this was a pretty quick decision for me and I am so pleased.

If this blog does work the way I would like it to and I decide to delve deeper into my explorations, then this blog will be my seventh blog in ten years.   Seven blogs does sound like a lot I know.  I am not entirely sure what the average amount of blogs any one person creates over their lifetime.  I bet it is a fair few.   That is probably because people like to test different ideas for blogs before they find the one they really want to settle with.   Or maybe it's just me?

Something else I have decided not to do this time round, is spend hours of my time putting in 'blog designs' in every search engine on the internet.   You can't deny we've all done it, well most of us have, and it takes up an awful lot of time, time that could have been better spent writing your content instead of worrying about what it looks like.  From my own personal experience, readers don't just automatically come to view your blog just because you have your name up in lights.  I tried it (on numerous occasions) and it didn't work.   So...


I have decided to make a little list of things I would like to achieve with my new blog dreamcashe. I know this is not going to be the entire list because I am hoping to discover more challenges for myself along the way.   For now this is my first list:


1. Explore more (Ideas/Topics/Blogs)

2. Experiment more (With ideas, lengths of posts etc)

3. Improve my writing skills (With Grammarly and maybe a few other sites along the way)


As you can see it is only small.  This is because at this early stage of this blog's development I don't want to put too much pressure on myself by putting too much on my plate to do so early.  I doubt that would end very well.  I do prefer little and often as a rule.  But there is nothing wrong with a little gentle exploration to begin with.

Ever since I was nine years old I have always wanted to be a writer.  This contributed to my decision to become a blogger.   What some people don't realize is how easy it is to become a blogger.  The best thing to do if you want to become a blogger, and that goes for all fields, topics to talk about, theories to discuss, whatever, is to simply just start.   An do you know what one of the most important things about writing a blog (and writing in general) don't let anyone tell you, you CANT do it.  Because you can do it.   You just need to put in a little time, a little effort, and a little imagination.   It's amazing what you can come up with if you really think about it.

One of the key things I have already started to do is to read more blogs.   I can hear you thinking, don't you do that anyway, read loads of other blogs on different topics and products etc, being a blogger yourself and all.... for ten years, as I previously mentioned.   Actually no I haven't.   Not in the past.  This is the first time, in the year 2020, that I can honestly say that I have started to properly expand my blog reading and my blogging connections.   Most of those blogs I find through Twitter, but I do find through Google, which I also do from time to time.

I have always shared my blog on Twitter.   It is my first social network port of call for promoting any posts I have written, and it is where I can easily find other blogs to read and share.  I do read blogs about different topics, mostly Lifestyle in general, but I do enjoy reading blogs about Movies, Books, Art, Photography, and Mental Health.   As well as Twitter I also share my blog to Pinterest, Medium, Digg, and Mix, which is a new one I have found recently.  I also enjoy reading blogs on Bloglovin' which is a really great website to find blogs in all different topics and you can easily connect with other people and keep track of the things they love to write about, as well as sharing your own blog to Bloglovin'.   It doesn't matter where you share your blog as long as you do share it.  Because if you don't, who is going to know about it?

One of the things I mentioned earlier in this post was that I wanted to improve my writing skills.  Okay it was number 3 on the list, however I thought before I publish this post I want to check it for word length.  No I have not done that before either, there is a first for everything as they say.  Whilst I was also finding that out, I also found a link to www.grammarly.com I thought that might be an idea to check that out whilst I was doing a word count.  Let me tell you Grammarly is one of the best free tool out there for bloggers and writers.   If you have never used it before I highly recommend it.

I am really excited about this blog.   I think it will allow me to learn so much about myself, and my writing, and of course my blogging which I am always wanting to improve.   It is going to be a new little adventure for me.

Thank you for reading.


Sarah