How to make a full time income from your BLOG

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase through my affiliate links, I will make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting this blog! 🙂

Making money from a blog and travelling full time sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? But I get the skepticism. Blogging sounds very complicated and like it is a lot of work. And earning money while sipping on cocktails on a beach in Bali, sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

You read these income reports how people make close to or even more than their full time income and you think “Where’s the catch?”

I get it. I was once in your position too and I know how it feels to wonder whether it is truly possible. And I used to even read these reports from people how they made money in their first month blogging. But let me be very clear, I didn’t make any money in my first year of blogging. And I made my first income from the blog in my third month blogging full time and I made a whopping $25.40. But that’s nothing to be discouraged, because it was a start. And by my sixth month blogging full time, I was already making close to what I was earning full time in my corporate job.

And I am not here to tell you that you can make money blogging just 1 hour a week. It’s a lot of hard work.

But it isn’t that complicated you know.

And I am going to explain what it takes to be a full time blogger and to make a full time income from your blog.

I used to keep getting questions from my friends and people on my social media about how did I make it happen. And for the longest time, I used to reply to them all and send them personal messages. But then I decided to make it into a course. A FREE 7 day email course.

Get access to the free 7 day blogging course

And I promise I am here to share EVERYTHING you need to know in order to start making money from your blog. The FREE 7 day email course to starting a PROFITABLE blog will cover:

• DAY 1: How to set up your blog right:
  • Everything about hosting, plans, domain names and niches
• DAY 2: How to make your blog look professional:
  • Setting it up the right way, themes and plug-ins you will need
• DAY 3: All the tools and resources you will need as a blogger.
  • All the tools that have helped us grow our blog and monetise it. All the essential plug-ins and everything we need to make pins for our blog.
• DAY 4: How to write quality content:
  • Everything from structuring the blogposts, to finding content ideas, and optimising your posts for Search engines
• DAY 5: How to monetise your blog & ways to monetise:
  • How bloggers monetise their blogs and selecting which one is best for you
  • Our list of the best affiliate networks to join.
• DAY 6: How to market your content and drive traffic from social media:
  • How to set up your Pinterest the right way
  • How to get rich pins
  • How to use keywords to increase your reach on Pinterest
  • Everything you need to know to drive traffic while you sleep: Pinterest Marketing strategy
• DAY 7: How to stay motivated as a content creator and my top tips and tricks to stay productive and on top of your game as a blogger

Sign up below to get the FREE & day email course sent to your email and to get started on building a profitable blog from scratch.

That’s for everyone who doesn’t have a blog but is considering starting one.

But if you do have a blog and aren’t earning an income from your blog yet, here is everything I did:

SET GOALS:

Setting goals is super important. I can not stress this enough. Setting achievable goals will push you to work even harder towards your blog and towards earning an income from your blog. I have had days when blogging took a backseat because I had other things to manage at home.

But having goals for your blog keeps you more accountable and treat your blog as a business.

Now, what kind of goals do you need to set. I always say that setting SMART goals is important. I mean, everyone who has a blog would love to make $10,000 per month from the blog.But setting up this goal when you are just starting out, is unrealistic.

SMART goals are goals that are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Now, when thinking about goals for a blog, it is a great idea to set a few different goals for yourself. Traffic, social media followers, Pinterest monthly viewers, number os posts published can be a few of them.

Here are all the goals I set in my first month blogging as a business.

Setting measurable and time bound goals will help you track your progress and to also see where you need to put more efforts.

Do not under sell yourself:

A lot of bloggers are afraid of asking for money for consultation that they offer. I know a lot of people who are afraid of setting a selling price for a course or an e-book that they have spent hours and days into.

Stop selling yourself short. Similar thing goes for collaborations with brands as well. Before you think “why would a brand want to work with me?” or “why would a brand want to pay me for a collaboration?”, ask yourself how much time and energy you will put into creating content for that brand. And then tell yourself that you deserve to be compensated for your time and energy and that barter collabs just aren’t going to cut it.

And don’t be afraid to ask a brand for payment. More often than not, they will agree.Also, don’t be afraid to send a pitch to a brand that you really like. Worst case scenario: They will say no, but when you are just starting out, and even later, you need to pitch yourself to a brand and tell them why they should work with you. In fact, the first ever collaboration we got on Instagram was through pitching ourselves and our services to a brand and then negotiating what was fair price.

Choose your social media wisely:

Instagram, pinterest, twitter, youtube, facebook, bloglovin, google+ and what not. You certainly don’t need to have a following on all the social media to have a successful blog.

A lot of bloggers focus on multiple social media platforms because a lot of sponsorship networks demand that. But when you focus your energy into all of them, you realise that you don’t have enough time in your day.

Ever heard the phrase “Jack of all, master of none”.

That’s why it is best to start with 2-3 platforms and then later branch out. Work on building an audience on one or two platforms instead of trying to do everything at once.

If your focus is growing your blog, the only platforms you need to focus on will be Pinterest and facebook or instagram. Whether you should focus on instagram or not will depend on the kind of blog that you have. If you have a fashion or a travel blog, Instagram is a great platform. however, if you have a finance or money related blog, Instagram shouldn’t be your priority.

However, if you do have a decent following already, Instagram could be a great source of traffic as well, with the swipe up feature in stories. But I wouldn’t recommend spending hours everyday, trying to engage and grow an audience on instagram.

In fact, a lot of bloggers get majority of their traffic through only one platform, that is Pinterest. And same is the case with this blog as well. Our main source of traffic is Pinterest.

And along with Pinterest we use tailwind to drive more traffic to our blog. And it has been life changing, I kid you not.

Tailwind’s scheduler makes it so easy to schedule pins for Pinterest for an entire week in about 30 minutes or so. And ever since we have started using Tailwind for Pinterest, out traffic has almost tripled in 2 months.

Try tailwind for free here.

Offer a course or services:

This is something that a lot of bloggers tend to overlook when they are starting out. Sure selling your own course or services might seem overwhelming at first, but it is something that you need to consider.

And before you ask “well, what am I going to make a course about?” let me answer the question for you. Do your friends often come to you to ask for help on a particular matter? Well, maybe that’s something you could make a course or an e-book around.

Or if you don’t want to make an e-book, maybe consider selling some other services on your blog. We sell our Pinterest management services because we have spent a lot of time perfecting pins and are proud of the pins that we create now. And we think this could be valuable to some businesses who want to outsource their Pinterest management.

And we think that we all have knowledge that someone else doesn’t have and even if you think “everyone knows that”, you’d be surprised to see how many people are looking for that information and are looking for answers to their questions. And maybe your course or e-book could be the answer to those questions.

Write Valuable content:

Again, one of the most important things you need to do in order to have a successful blog. Do not write and publish a post just for the sake of it. Make sure whenever you are writing a blogpost, it is full of value for your readers.
No one like blogposts that are super short and aren’t packed with value. So make sure you are providing value to your readers, even if it means publishing just 5 posts a month instead of 10.

While talking about what is valuable content, we also always say that anything that can be shared in a blogpost, shouldn’t be made into an e-book or an email opt-in. Because your readers often feel cheated. So whenever you are creating an e-book to sell or any opt-in, make sure whatever you are offering is value packed.

But when it comes to delivering value, you also need to make sure that you do not end up sounding like a robot. Let your personality shine through your content.

Your readers want to have a better insight into your life and telling them a little more of your personal story, helps make better relations and builds trust with the audience. But that personal story isn’t where it should stop.

Because as much as your readers love reading your story and getting to know the person behind the blog, they want value.

They want to be compensated for the click and for their time. No one wants to come back to a blog where they felt like they didn’t learn anything new.

Do not try all income streams at once:

Having a blog and diversifying your income streams sounds like the smart thing to do, but you shouldn’t try all of them at once.

I have seen so many bloggers make this mistake where they put so many ads on their website that the readers are so distracted and the overall experience isn’t good.

And when you are starting out as a new bloggers, I understand that you want to make money from your blog, but trying everything isn’t the solution. ]Just like trying to grow on every social media isn’t the solution.

What you need to do instead is, focus on one or two streams of income. And when you are comfortable with them and have built up a consistent income through some, then expand to other streams.

When we first started this blog, we started with Advertisements, because that seemed like the most easy thing to do, but I personally, didn’t like the look of our website and so we decided to try something else.

And that’s when we decided to focus on affiliate marketing and selling our services. And it was the best decision we ever made. And affiliate marketing is the one thing that has helped us earn a full time income from our blog.

Affiliate Marketing sure seems like a tough thing to master, but we put some research into it and tried out a couple of things until we learned what works for our blog and our readers. They main takeaways are:

• Become an affiliate for products or services that you genuinely like and have tried. We hate pyramid schemes. Where people become affiliates of a product or a course, without ever trying it out themselves. How could you vouch for something that you haven’t tried yourself. And while some people say that it doesn’t matter and that it is a part of the business, we think it is a form of deception. And when you recommend something that you don’t genuinely use or love, it often shows in your writing.

• Know where to put Affiliate links: This one will take some trial and error as it did for us. But putting a disclaimer is a must and it lets your audience know that you are using affiliate links and they aren’t constantly looking for “the catch”. It works great when you tell your audience up front about your affiliate links and that this is how they can support your blog and compensate you for the time and energy that you put into writing detailed blogposts and giving that information away for free.

Keep updating yourself:

Just like software updates are necessary from time to time, it is important that you keep updating yourself too. Because what worked for bloggers back in 2008, might not work in 2020.

So it is super important that you keep learning new things and trying out different ways to be even more successful as a bloggers. Because when you do that, you always have value to provide to your audience. And your audience keeps coming back to you knowing they are not wasting their time.

I love updating my knowledge and just like any corporate job, I keep investing in myself too. Just the free online coaching aren’t going to cut it. Every year, I set myself a target and get a few certifications and finish some courses lead by marketing experts or what I think is relevant to my business.

But that’s just one way. I do have a separate notebook for learning as well. Whenever I come across something that’s valuable, I make sure to take down notes.

And every month, I love going back to these notes and considering how I can apply this teaching into my business and how I can do ever better.

And this continuous learning never stops and it shouldn’t stop, if you want to do this long term.

Again, if you do not have a blog and are considering starting one, the best time is right now. Sign up for my FREE 7 DAY email course to get your blog up and running and to set it up for success.

The FREE 7 day email course to starting a PROFITABLE blog will cover:

• DAY 1: How to set up your blog right:
  • Everything about hosting, plans, domain names and niches
• DAY 2: How to make your blog look professional:
  • Setting it up the right way, themes and plug-ins you will need
• DAY 3: All the tools and resources you will need as a blogger.
  • All the tools that have helped us grow our blog and monetise it. All the essential plug-ins and everything we need to make pins for our blog.
• DAY 4: How to write quality content:
  • Everything from structuring the blogposts, to finding content ideas, and optimising your posts for Search engines
• DAY 5: How to monetise your blog & ways to monetise:
  • How bloggers monetise their blogs and selecting which one is best for you
  • Our list of the best affiliate networks to join.
• DAY 6: How to market your content and drive traffic from social media:
  • How to set up your Pinterest the right way
  • How to get rich pins
  • How to use keywords to increase your reach on Pinterest
  • Everything you need to know to drive traffic while you sleep: Pinterest Marketing strategy
• DAY 7: How to stay motivated as a content creator and my top tips and tricks to stay productive and on top of your game as a blogger

As always, if you have any questions, leave me a comment below. I will be happy to answer them! 🙂