How to make money with your blog (in your first month blogging)

Have you just started a blog and now you want to know how to make money with your blog?

Or maybe you haven’t started a blog yet and you wonder if it’s possible to make money in your first month?

I have to say, it’s not easy, but it’s definitely possible to make money in your first month blogging.

I’ll be completely honest here: I didn’t make money until my third month, but with everything I know now, I could definitely make money earlier.

If you haven’t started a blog yet you can read this tutorial on how to set up your WordPress blog in 15 minutes or if you’d like a more in depth walk through, you can sign up to my free course Kickstart Your Money Making Blog with this link.

In this post we’ll have a look at what your blog needs to be able to make money in your very first month blogging.

Let’s get to it!

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I may earn a small commission for affiliate links in this post at no extra cost to you. Please read my disclaimer  for more information.

How to make money with your blog

Before you even try to make money with your blog in your first month let’s answer the question: How do you make money blogging?

A lot of new bloggers have no clue how bloggers actually make money, so before you start your blog it’s a good idea to plan how you’ll monetise your blog.

There are several ways to monetise your blog, these are:

• Affiliate marketing
• Offering a service
• Ads
• Sponsored posts
• Selling a digital or physical product
• Selling a course
• Selling a subscription

These are the most common ways to make money with your blog. There might be other ways but for most bloggers the above methods will provide the bulk of their income.

As you can imagine, not all of these methods are suitable for brand new bloggers. You won’t be making money with your blog in your first month by selling a course. This takes more time to set up and will require an established audience to sell your course to.

The same counts for selling (digital) products and subscriptions, and for sponsored posts and ads you generally need to have more traffic than any new blog would have in their first month.

So this leaves you with two ways to monetise your blog in your first month:

Affiliate marketing and offering a service.

You can make money early on by offering a service, but generally it will take a few months to build an audience that trusts you and is ready to hire you.

Also not everyone has skills that can be used as an online service so for this post we’ll be looking at the easiest way to make money with your blog that anyone can learn: affiliate marketing.

Let’s have a look.

How to make money with your blog with affiliate marketing

The easiest way to make money with your new blog is through affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing where you, as a blogger, promote a product for another company. This company gives you an affiliate link that you add to your blog post and when your readers click on your link and buy this product, you get a commission.

To be successful at affiliate marketing it is important that you write informative blog posts that helps your reader solve a problem. If your affiliate product helps solve their problem, it will be a no-brainer for them to buy the product.

If you promote the right product it will be a win-win situation for you and your reader; your reader will be happy that their problem is solved and you will get paid a commission for your effort of writing the post.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make passive income from your blog. You write a post once and for months or even years, the money can keep rolling in.

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can write a post once and continue to make money from it over and over again. An evergreen post about a popular topic can potentially make you money for years. You’ll be able to make money while you sleep!

But to get to this point you’ll have to put in some work first!

The two main things you have to do to make money with your blog are: 

1. Write a helpful blog post that shows your audience how to do something and include a relevant affiliate product or service that will help them achieve their goal.
2. Promote this post on Pinterest.

What do you need to be able to do this?

1. A Blog
2. An Affiliate Product
3. Legal Pages
4. A Pinterest Business Account

It’s not that hard to do.

I’ll walk you through it.

Step 1. Pick an Affiliate product you’d like to promote

Picking a the right affiliate product is a super important step. Make sure you’ve used this product yourself so you can share with your audience why you love this product so much. A great way to make more sales in affiliate marketing is by showing your audience how you use this product or what results you get from using this product.

Make sure this product has an affiliate program so you can actually get paid for promoting it. To find an affiliate program, go to the product website, scroll down to the footer and look for a link that says: Affiliates. Click on the link and sign up to their program.

But don’t do this until you’ve set up your website, because some affiliate programs won’t accept your application if you don’t have a legit website.

You can also apply to affiliate networks. If you sign up to an affiliate network, you get access to all the affiliate programs in that network.

Some popular affiliate networks are:

• ShareASale
• Clickbank
• Amazon Associates
• Flexoffers

Once you know what type of affiliate products you want to promote on your blog, you’ll also have a clearer idea of who your target audience will be.

Do you need help planning your blog?

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ULTIMATE BLOG PLANNER WORKBOOK

To be successful quicker it will help to really niche down on your blog topic. For instance, if your target audience is moms, you could niche down to moms of new born babies. And then you could niche down even further and only promote eco friendly and organic baby products.

Knowing what products you want to promote and what audience you want to sell to, will also help you pick a name for your blog.

Brainstorm some blog name ideas and then check if your domain name is available in the box below. Simply type in your chosen blog name and click on the check availability button.

Always Google your domain name to make sure there’s no other business already using this (or a very similar) name. You wouldn’t want to get into trouble for using someone else’s business name.

Step 2. Set up your blog

To be able to write blog posts that you can add your affiliate links to, you need to set up a blog.

If you want to make money with your blog without restrictions you need to set up a self hosted blog with WordPress.org. WordPress.org is the best platform for blogging and it’s used by most professional bloggers. WordPress.org is the only blogging platform that has unlimited functionality, and will be excepted in all affiliate programs.

To set up your WordPress blog, you need to buy web hosting. Your web host is where your blog “lives” on the web. It doesn’t cost much to start your own self hosted blog, in fact it’s one the most affordable businesses to start!

> Check Out These Affordable Hosting Packages Here <<

Can’t I start with a free blog?

If you want to make money from your blog it’s NOT a good idea to start your blog on a free blogging platform because free platforms have lots of restrictions.

Affiliate programs also won’t take you seriously if you’re on a free platform and more than likely won’t accept your application.

So if you’re serious about starting a money making blog you need to set up a self hosted WordPress blog.

To make your blog set up as easy as possible, follow this step by step set up tutorial that will have your site set up in 15 minutes flat.

Step 3. Add legal pages to your blog

To be able to make money from your blog, you are required by law to have legal pages on your blog. Pus most affiliate programs won’t accept your application if you don’t have legal pages on your site.

Pages you need are:

• Privacy Policy
• Disclaimer
• Terms & Conditions

You can get all required legal pages in one affordable bundle here.

If you want to know more about blogging legally I recommend you sign up for this free legal course for bloggers.

Step 4. Set up your Pinterest business account

Pinterest is one of the best platforms to promote your blog posts on. This is because it’s not actually a social media platform but a search engine.

To be able to make money with your new blog you need to get traffic to your site. And because there is zero chance of your blog showing up in the Google search results in its first month, you need to make sure that your readers can find you somewhere else.

This is where Pinterest comes in.

Pinterest is perfect for promoting your blog posts. To get started, you need to set up a Pinterest business account with boards that are all targeted at your ideal audience.

So if your blog is about dogs, you need to create at least 15 boards all about dogs.

The board titles should have keywords in it that people are actually looking for.

For example:

• Dog Health
• Dog Accessories
• Best Dog Foods
• Etc

It’s important to start your Pinterest business account early on and fill your boards with relevant pins, so when you are ready to pin your first blog post to one of your boards, Pinterest already knows what your account is about, which will help your pin perform better.

If you need some guidance on setting up your Pinterest business account correctly, please grab my free guide: Pinterest Set Up For Success. This guide will not only help you set up your account correctly, you’ll also learn how to implement SEO and best pinning practices.

GET THE FREE GUIDE

Pinterest Set Up For Success

Step 5. Write a blog post about your affiliate product

Okay, now it’s time to actually write a blog post about your chosen affiliate product. Don’t worry if you’re not the best writer in the world, it’s more important to be yourself and write like you’re talking to a friend.

Write like you talk, this will make your blog unique to you.

A few quick tips:

• Make your font size at least 18pt, no one likes reading tiny text on screens.
• Break up your text in short paragraphs and keep sentences as short as possible.
• Use sub headings, this makes your text scannable and easier to browse through.

For more tips on how to write your first blog post, read this:

How To Write A Killer Blog Post

To make money with your blog through affiliate marketing, there are certain types of blog posts that will work better than others.

Here are a few types of blog post that work great for promoting affiliate products:

Personal Story

A good way to get your audience interested in your affiliate product is by addressing the problem it solves first.

If you can speak from personal experience it’s even better. Share your struggles and then show how this affiliate product helped you out.

Here’s an example of an affiliate post with a personal story.

A “How To” Tutorial

Show your readers how to do something with a step by step tutorial. You can take photos or screenshots or even a youtube video if this makes it easier for your audience to understand how to use your affiliate product.

Here’s an example of a “How To” post. 

Product Review

Write a detailed review about your affiliate product and give your honest opinion. Do not only mention all the positives about a product also let your readers know what you didn’t like about it. This will give your review more depth and it will look less like an ad.

Here’s an example of a product review post.

Product 1 Versus Product 2

This is similar as a review post apart from the fact that you are comparing 2 products.

Here’s an example of a product comparison post.

A Round Up Post

A great way to mention lots of affiliate products is by creating a round-up post.

Make sure the products are related and relevant to your audience.

Here’s an example of a round-up post.

Step 6 Promote your blog post

Once you’ve hit publish on your post your work is not done! Blogging is 20% creating epic content and 80% promoting.

Remember that Pinterest account you set up in step 4? Now it’s time to upload your first pin to Pinterest. You can design your pins in Canva or you can use this awesome tool that designs them for you.

Make sure your pins are vertical at a 2:3 ratio (I make my pins 600x900px) and add it to your blog post and add it to your most relevant Pinterest board.

For a detailed tutorial on how to upload your pins to Pinterest, read this tutorial:

How to add a pin to Pinterest

Quick tips for pin design:

• Vertical pin image 2:3 ratio
• Enticing must-click title
• Easy to read (fonts and text size)
• High contrast between background and text

Here’s an example of a pin design, make sure to save it to your blogging board!

It’s a good idea to create at least 5 pins for every blog post and upload them at least 2 days apart (you don’t want your account suspended because of spamming).

Related reading:

How to Create Tons of Pinterest Pins Super Fast

To make sure that your site visitors can share your blog post, you need to install a social sharing plugin. I use Social Warfare, which is super easy to use. You can use the free version of Social Warfare or you can get the pro version if you want more control over how your post looks when shared on Facebook.

If you’d like a detailed walk-through on how to start with Pinterest marketing, I highly recommend grabbing my FREE GUIDE Pinterest Set Up For Success here.

Other Ways To Promote Your Blog

For most blogs Pinterest will bring in the most traffic, but depending on your blog topic and where your target audience “hangs out”, you might also want to try different social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

It will also help to find a few Facebook groups that are relevant to your niche and connect with people there. And you can join blogging Facebook groups that have blog promotion and pin share threads that will help you get that first boost in blog traffic.

For more ideas on how to promote your blog, read:

How To Promote Your Blog Like A Pro

For long term blog traffic, it’s also a good idea to learn how to optimise your blog for search engines (SEO). This won’t help you in your first month, but it’s highly recommended to learn SEO for long term blog growth.

To learn more about SEO read this beginner’s guide:

SEO for Bloggers – The Essential Guide

These are the steps on how to make money with your blog in your first month!

I hope you’ve found this step by step guide helpful and you now know how to make money with your blog. Implement all these steps and let me know if you succeeded in monetising your blog in your first month!

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below and make sure to sign up for my Free Blogging Course for a more detailed guide on how to start your blog or sign up for my Free Pinterest Guide below.