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How I Made My First $200 Blogging

Posted by Elna on

I started this blog a year ago, and within four months of starting, I was making money.

But, it wasn’t a lot (around $20). But that didn’t matter! I did it! I made an income with my blog, and I was happy with that. For the next couple of months, I made some money, but it never topped over $50.

I started to lose motivation and told myself I wasn’t even focusing on monetizing my blog. This gave me permission to “forget” about it and return to it later.

Does this sound like you?

You’ve decided to monetize your blog, and you hear a lot of ways to make an income, so you try them out but three months later and you only have enough for your Starbuck’s frappie.

I knew what I was doing wasn’t successful so I didn’t put a lot of time into it. It wasn’t until January 2017 hit that I sat down and made a solid and legit plan to make money with this blog.

And it worked! I made my first $200 a month after laying out my plan. So, what did I do? How did I go from making barely $50 to $200?

If you haven’t started a blog yet, now is the time! Start your money-making blog in three easy steps with this step-by-step tutorial!

I Used Affiliate Marketing

Okay. This isn’t really the way I made $200 because I used affiliate marketing at the beginning of trying to make money blogging. But, I wanted to put this in because affiliate marketing is an easy way to make money as a new blogger.

The problem many newbies encounter is not making a lot of money doing affiliate marketing. And I fell into that trap easily. This is what I did:

  • Signed up to be an affiliate for products I use and love
  • Linked to these products in any post I mentioned these products
  • Waited for the money

That’s all I did. Whenever I blogged and mentioned an affiliate product, I just used my special affiliate link and linked to it in that post.

Why was this the wrong thing? Because new people to your blog are reading about the topic of the blog post and if your affiliate product isn’t the sole topic of the blog post, your promoting isn’t much converting.

It’s not a great way to make money by affiliate marketing this way. There’s a much more effective way, and it was the way I was able to make $200 in one month of trying it.

I Created a Post Around My Affiliate Product

Boom!

That was it. I focused my blog post about the affiliate product. The first post I did like this was for SiteGround. The post is about how to start a blog.

I knew this would be the perfect post for my blog since a lot of my followers and subscribers are brand new to blogging. Many of them don’t have a blog, or they’re thinking of one.

As soon as I made that post and started promoting it on Pinterest, I got eyes on that post!

So, how do you create a post around your affiliate product that speaks to your reader and gets them to convert? One of the most effective things you can do is show the features of that product.

What is so amazing about that company’s product and how does it relate to you and your audience?

If you can talk about this and even show the features in a video, then that makes it valuable and actionable.

Another thing I did was tell a story. I told my story about using the product or why I decided to use that product. This can be very powerful for a lot of people who are on the fence about using that product.

For my ConvertKit post, I talked about why I switched from MailChimp to ConvertKit. This can help a lot of people who are using MailChimp and don’t know if ConvertKit is the way to go.

The big takeaway is to give a juicy and valuable post for your affiliate product. Once you know it aligns with your audience, then write a post that shows them the features, what it is, why you like it and how to use it.

If your post answers those questions, then you’ll get more eyes on that post, and it will be more valuable for your audience.

The Little Things I Did to Make My First $200

Other things I did that month to grow my income was:

  • Create side bar graphics and linked my affiliate post there
  • Created multiple pins that lead back to that affiliate post
  • Put my affiliate link in my welcome series

When new people visited my site, they can click on the post on my side bar or, if they sign up to my email list, they will get a link in the welcome email.

These little things helped me get traffic to that post and make it more likely to convert visitors.

Other Ways to Make Money on Your Blog

There are many ways to make money online, but only a few are long-lasting, sustainable and attainable. For me, I started making money online by offering a service on my blog.

For me, it was freelance writing. I was able to quickly make my first $1k within months of finding work, and it’s still a great income stream for my business.

Another way to make some side income is to create a product. It can be a digital product, or you can sell an item on your blog. Nowadays, it’s easy to set up shop online and on a budget!

While I don’t have a product for Twins Mommy, it’s something I’m working towards as I want to serve my audience best.

For more ideas check out these posts:

It All Starts With a Blog

Do you have a blog? If not, it’s easy to start a blog, and it’s budget-friendly too! Once you have a blog, there’s no end to how you can monetize it. Create multiple income streams, and you can live off your blog mama! It’s totally possible!

Now it’s your turn – have you generated income from your blog? Tell me the story!!