How to Start a Blog That Makes Money

One of the most common questions I get is how to start a blog. Inevitably, the second question is: how to start a blog that makes money. While there is no short answer to this one, I can certainly lay out how to get started. Anyone can do it, all you need is a topic that you are passionate about and the motivation to write about it.

First a little bit of background about how I got into blogging. It was almost on accident. I was a frustrated Nurse trying to start a nutritional counseling business on the side. I kept copying and pasting my recipes and emailing them to my clients, when one day I decided that it would be so much easier if my recipes just lived online somewhere and I could just direct people there. So one night I crawled into bed with my laptop and started up my free wordpress.com site.

First, I want to offer you up this webinar that I recorded with a blogger friend of mine: Arsy from Rubies & Radishes. We go over pretty much everything that I cover in this post. So, if you want to hear our stories, watch the video below. 

Step One: Come up with a Domain Name

A domain name is your desired web address, mine is www.realfoodrn.com. Come up with something that is easy to remember, easy to spell, and not too long. People will never remember your blog name if it is something like www.iliketoblogbecauseilikefoodphotos.com. Believe me, I have seen some interesting names out there. Heck, I started with www.nursemompaleo.com — yep, google it, my old site is still out there somewhere. Promise you won’t laugh!

With a free wordpress.com site you can simply use the web address that they provide you with. It will, however, contain the word wordpress in it. Ex: www.realfoodrn.wordpress.com. If that’s okay with you, then you are ready to go. If not, then you need to find a domain and have it directed to your host. I use Namecheap.

You can also get a domain name in the steps I list below. So read this post all the way through before you start anything!

Step Two: Set up a Website

You have to get a website up. There are two ways that you can do this: free or paid. I started with free because I never intended to monetize. But I eventually migrated to paid as my website traffic increased, so I could make money with ads and affiliates.
Here is the difference 

Free websites: I used wordpress.com. It is basically a storehouse for your content. The only problem is that you cannot have paid ads or plugins because the platform is free. So, your options are very limited. But, if you are not looking to monetize, then this is perfect for you. WordPress has ads on these sites, but you do not earn from them.

Paid websites: I migrated to wordpress.org and then paid a web host.  A web host is a company that provides space on a computer (server) to host the files for your website, as well as providing Internet connectivity so that other computers can access to the files on your website.

My website is hosted by Flywheel and they are amazing! If you want a super fast site with the ability to handle high levels of traffic then Flywheel is great. They also have awesome customer service! They also have a variety of different plans, to fit different budgets and traffic levels. I think they are the best bang for your buck, for the quality they provide! If you want to find a host that you will stick with long-term, then start with Flywheel. If you want to start with the absolute lowest priced host, you can certainly do that (see below), but as traffic levels increase you might have to pay someone to help you migrate your entire site to a bigger host. That is a big pain in the rear, I had to do it. It also can be costly.

But, when you are just getting started and have a very small budget, you can find web hosts that charge less than $5 per month. Some of the more popular hosts are Blue Host or Host Gator.