How To Start A Profitable Blog: A 7-Step Guide For Beginners

Have you ever stayed up at night wondering what makes the difference between profitable bloggers and bloggers who go nowhere?

Your blog can be hugely successful if you have the right passion, tools and know-how.

If you’ve ever wanted to know how to start a profitable blog for beginners, I can help.

In this post, I’ll show you how to start a profitable blog for free, give you a free Blog Starter Checklist, tell you how much profitable bloggers make and more.

Let’s make this happen! 💪

How to Start a Profitable Blog Today in 7 Steps

It takes time and dedication to build a profitable blog. Putting together amazing content, promoting it, becoming an SEO expert, and properly monetizing your website don’t happen overnight.

However, with my help, I can get you started today in under an hour. Just go through these easy-to-follow steps and your website will be live today:

Step 1: Decide On Your Target Audience
Step 2: Set Up Your Hosting
Step 3: Register Your Domain Name
Step 4: Build Your Website
Step 5: Customize Your Blog
Step 6: Create Great Content
Step 7: Monetize With Affiliate Programs & Ads

Step 1: Decide On Your Target Audience

The first thing we need to do is find your niche and define your audience. Many blogs start off on a single topic and then move on to become a multiniche lifestyle blog (link to how to start a lifestyle blog).

The good news is that you can make money in almost any niche. The bad news is the better the niche, the more competition you’ll face.

Finding your ideal readership is key in any niche. Visualize this reader in your mind. What are their hobbies? This can help you gather the information that can lead you to the right niches to expand into.

Learn everything you can about this audience member. What’s their gender and income level? What are their various pain points? Why are they coming to you for information?

Once you’ve figured all of this out, move on to the next step.

Step 2: Set Up Your Hosting

A webhost is the company that owns the hardware your website lives on. There are tons of them with varying deals and promotions at any given time. But if you want to take your affiliate marketing blog seriously, go with the best.

Wealthy Affiliate offers great, reliable service. There are over 2.2 million users and they go out of their way to make website building and installation a breeze, even for total beginners.

As far as all of the add-ons that come with your premium package, you’ll receive all of this and more:

Reliable hosting and easy setup
24/7 Technical support
Free SSL certificate – Your blog is safe at all times and so is anyone using your website
Jaaxy keyword tool – Use this tool to help you create a profitable blog for beginners
In-depth video training
A friendly community of like-minded bloggers
Great pricing – Going broke won’t be an issue – Pay $19 the first month and $49/month after that or go yearly at $495 to get a discount on your membership, a free dot com domain, and $50 in community credits. Get the full pricing info here.

Go to WealthyAffiliate.com and enter your email address:

Once your account’s created you’ll find yourself on the welcome page.

Click on Websites and then Build a Website:

Click the Register a Domain option:

Then you’ll be taken to a page where you can pick a Premium pricing plan. Choose the one that best fits your needs. Now it’s time to choose your domain name

Step 3: Register Your Domain Name

A domain name is your web address. It’s not just the name of your website, it’s also your brand. You’ll be building out an entire business using this name, so make sure it’s exactly what you want.

Naming your blog should give your readers an idea of who you are and what kind of content you’re going to deliver. Here are a few ideas:

Cheapskatemama.com – Combine a personal finance blog with a mom blog (link to how to start a mom blog) and you’ll hit a large audience.
Yoganerd.com – Are you a nerd that loves yoga (how to start a yoga blog)? This could work for you.
Thehappyfoodie.com – Great name for a food blog

It’s a good idea to come up with multiple ideas. There is a chance your number one choice is taken so you’ll need backups, especially if you have a common name.

When you register your domain name, if it is taken, Wealthy Affiliate will give you some alternatives.

Find the name you want, click Add to Cart, and move on to the next step.

Step 4: Build Your Website

Hit the Build a New Website button, enter a title for your website and now you’re ready to pick a WordPress theme.

Different themes give you different layouts and customization and design options. There are a ton of free themes to choose from, so look for one you like, and remember you can always change it later.

I love the GeneratePress theme and use it for all my blogs. It’s free to start with and you can upgrade to unlock even more features as your blog grows.

Once you’ve chosen a theme, click Select and hit the green Build My Website button. Wealthy Affiliate will take care of the rest and your site will be live in less than 30 seconds.

As soon as it’s done you’ll be able to see your website under the Website tab and keep track of how your blog is doing under SiteHealth.

You’ll also get an email confirmation with your log-in details so you can access your blog’s WordPress dashboard. Congratulations, your blog is now live.

Step 5: Customize Your Blog

Take some time to go through the back end of your website and play around with the design options. You can do this easily by going to Appearance and Customize.

You can change the colors, fonts, and layout. You can build a logo completely for free with Canva or go to Fiverr and find a freelancer there who will do it for you.

For an affiliate marketing blog, keep the logo and color schemes simple, straightforward, and easy to read.

Step 6: Create Great Content

A great way to get ideas for your content is to do some keyword research.

A keyword is a focus word. Keyword research tools, such as Mangools, show you how many times a month a single word or phrase is searched for by users.

Keep in mind, the top-notch keywords are going to be taken by the heavy hitters. You are not the first person to promote and try to make money from a variety of affiliate products.

The most important use of these tools is to help you find keywords that can land your content on the first page of the Google search results.

Go through Mangools and try to find some low-hanging fruit, build phenomenal content around them and use these easy-to-rank keywords effectively.

Internal Linking and External Linking

An internal link is when you have a link from one blog post to another blog post on your website.

You built a great piece of content around a keyword that’s easy to rank. It gets traffic to your website. Now what? Use internal links to push readers to other content that has a lower chance of being ranked due to highly competitive keywords.

This content may have awesome affiliate links or just great informational content. Either way, keeping people on your website will increase sales in the form of ads. It will also impress Google, as the time readers spend on your website is a ranking factor.

Don’t forget to include external links in your content as well. This shows your audience and search engines that you know how to do research and back up your claims with legitimate data.

Creating Content

Start each post off with a catchy title and a short and sweet introduction that makes the reader crave more.

Write an outline for each blog post and think about the headers. Sprinkle some keywords into the headers as well as a few throughout your piece. Do not stuff them in. Make them natural.

The key to creating the best content for a profitable blog is to write posts that help people and give them actionable advice. What this means is you want to convince them to do something with this wealth of information you’re providing free of charge.

Affiliate marketing is the best way to turn your blog into a moneymaking machine.

You earn with affiliate marketing by recommending products to your audience you believe in, writing product reviews and having a resources page. Every time someone clicks through your unique affiliate links and buys you get paid a commission.

There is no limit or minimum to how much you can write. However, if you want to set a goal for yourself and your affiliate marketing blog, two to three posts per week will be ideal.

Step 7: Monetize With Affiliate Programs & Ads

There are several ways affiliate marketing bloggers can make money online. Two of my favorites are ad networks and affiliate marketing.

For ad networks, Ezoic is your best bet. They put ads on your blog and you get paid depending on how many views your blog has. They work with new bloggers and will continue to work with you as your site and revenue grows.

Affiliate marketing is my favorite way to earn money with a new website. Sign up for a program, receive a link from the company, and earn commissions when someone clicks on your link and completes a sale.

Below is a list of some of the best affiliate programs you can find on the web for a multitude of niches.

Here’s our complete guide to affiliate programs:

Top Affiliate Programs for Profitable Bloggers

Mommy Makeup

So you want to combine a mommy blog with a beauty blog? We’ve got the right affiliate program for you. Mommy Makeup offers a 10% commission and they’re another program utilizing Shareasale. If your mission is to help moms everywhere feel beautiful inside and out, this is a great program for you.

Chewy

Chewy has become one of the top online stores for everything pet-related. If people need treats, food, and even medicine, Chewy has them covered. As an affiliate, you’ll get paid a decent $15 on all sales. The program is completely in-house.

Thrive Market

Thrive Market is one of the hottest online grocery stores. They offer organic and healthy food alternatives.

They don’t offer much in the way of produce, but if you’re looking for snack foods, condiments, or pasta, Thrive Market is fantastic. Their affiliate program is top-notch, paying $25 per sale of new customers.

SeekingArrangement

Sometimes, a player has got to play. Sometimes, they just need to pay. Seeking Arrangement is a site that matches potential sugar daddies with potential sugar babies.

This program isn’t for everyone, but if you think your audience will get value from it, you can earn commissions of up to 75%. Sometimes, the player can get paid, too.

There are just a few examples of popular programs making people a ton of money. There are millions of products out there and are no limit to how many products you can promote.

The key here is relevancy – your blog will be more profitable when you promote products you know your target audience will love and appreciate.

See also:

How to Start a Profitable Blog FAQs

How to Start a Profitable Blog For Free?

Starting a free blog might be a great warm-up, but if you want to grow your blog then you’ll want to host it on your domain at some point if you want it to be profitable.

If you don’t want to pay for domains and hosting then starting an affiliate marketing blog for free with Siterubix.com is a good starter option. You can transfer your blog to your own dot com domain with ease whenever you’re ready.

How Much Money do Profitable Bloggers Make?

You can make 6 figures a year if you want. I’m serious – there are tons of bloggers from all over the world in a variety of niches and they’re all getting paid.

Here are a few of the best around and how they make their money:

Michelle founded Making Sense of Cents years ago as a hobby. It started as a personal finance blog (link to how to start a finance blog) and continued to grow, evolving into a lifestyle blog and she developed her own digital products. She now makes over $100,000 a month.

She now makes about a third of her income from her own affiliate marketing course.

Liz over at The Clean Eating Couple brought in over $150,000 after just two years of blogging. This income came from a combination of ads, affiliate sales, sponsored posts, as well as sales of her ebook.

Steve over at Nerd Fitness now earns over $100,000 from his website and has become one of the most popular health and wellness and fitness blogs around.

Just goes to show that there are no limits to how much you can earn and the beauty of blogging is it’s up to you how far you want to go.

How To Start A Profitable Blog: Final Thoughts

When it comes to affiliate marketing bloggers, knowing how to promote your content is just as important as writing awesome blog posts.

Find where your target readers hang out and promote to them. End-game content for your website will include coming up with your own ideas for courses and software to help other affiliate marketers.

If you want to ensure your blog reaches its full profit potential, take the free Commission Academy course.

Simon and Dale will walk you through the exact strategies they follow to generate millions of pageviews, gets 60,000+ email subscribers and make more than a full-time income blogging.

That’s it for today’s post. If you have any questions, let us know in the comments. We’re here to help.