How to Set up Your Money Making Blog

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Looking to set up your own money making blog? Not sure how to get started blogging? No problem…this post is for you.

This post is intended to take you step-by-step to set up your own blog. It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie with zero experience blogging. I actually encourage newbies to continue reading because by the time you’re done with this post (and it is long), you’ll have a better understanding of blogging, how it can benefit you and how to set up your own blog in about 10 minutes. Ready?

First, before you begin setting up your money making blog with the steps below, I want to let you know that blogging while fun and not too hard, does require you put in the work (and a lot of it) in the beginning before you see any money.

In other words, I wouldn’t quit your day job just yet.

Many people see other blogger’s success and tell themselves they want to do the same thing. So, they set up a blog and work on it for about a month or two. Then, they get discouraged because nothing is happening with their blog. They’re not getting much traffic, no one is clicking on their links, no one is buying anything.

You see, at first, you’ll go through a period of time where it’s going to feel like you’re putting in the work with no return. And, this is completely normal. Nobody builds a blog and has instant success overnight. In fact, many people don’t even start making money until they’ve been blogging for at least 6 months (sometimes longer).

The thing you need to understand with blogging is it’s a serious investment of time on your part in the beginning and it may seem like it’s never going to take off.

Don’t let this stop you. 

Keep working on it, regardless. You know why? Because once you have that strong foundation set up for your blog and are consistently working on it, promoting it, tweaking it, and making it better with time..somethings going to happen. It will be like a “click” just happened and all of a sudden you start getting affiliate sales, your ad income goes up, your email list starts growing, people are commenting on your posts, people are sharing your posts and you’ll feel AMAZING (and very happy you didn’t give up).

Just keep in mind as you’re building your blog — it’s a process you’ll need to go through before you see the breakthrough. Have faith in yourself and your blog and keep doing the work.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way. Phew! 🙂

Benefits of a Blog

So why do you even want a blog in the first place?

Well, that’s something you’re going to have to figure out for yourself. But, typically, a blog will help establish you as an expert in your chosen niche. It will help connect you with other cool blogger mamas. It will draw in clients/customers/referrals (whatever you’re promoting). It will make you money (and lots of it) even when you’re sleeping.

How awesome is that? Say what? Make money while I sleep? Yep! Probably not at first, but if you stick with it, yep it sure will. 🙂

I love that the most…do the work once and keep getting paid for that work. Each one of your blog posts on your blog is working day and night for you drawing in readers, building your network, making you money, etc. Now imagine a year from now and you have over 100 posts? When you start building a loyal following you’ll have people coming back to your blog because:

• They’re attracted to your writing
• They love and resonate with what you’re writing
• They connect with you
• They trust you
• They buy from you

But this won’t happen if you quit. So don’t quit.

Choosing your Niche for your Blog

So, before you go on to the next steps below, you first need to figure out what your blog is going to be about. That way you can set up your domain name to match it. I like to tell people to choose a niche for their blog that they’re passionate about. This makes it much easier to stay motivated and people will notice that passion you have (and expertise).

Your niche can be anything. Some examples are:

• Make money online, blogging or building an online business
• Health and wellness
• Fitness
• Parenting
• Relationships
• Finance
• Lifestyle (can write about multiple topics here like budgeting, making money, parenting, gardening, etc.)
• Mom blog (that’s what mine is here..I help moms live more simplified and happier lives)

Once you decide on a niche for your blog, you’ll want to come up with a few topics within that niche. For instance, looking at my blog you’ll see I have several topics within my lifestyle/mommy blog. These are:  Mommy tips, relationships, saving money and making money. Don’t go overboard. You don’t want your blog to be all over the place.  Just pick out I’d say, no more than 5 topics.

Now, you’ll think of sub-topics. These are topics within your main topics. For instance, you’ll see on this blog I have a main topic as “Mommy Tips”, but when you hover that tab, you’ll see that I have sub-topics within that main topic which are: parenting, organizing life and self-improvement.

If you come up with let’s say “health” as the main topic, some examples of sub-topics would be weight loss, healthy eating, fitness, etc.

Once you have your topics and sub-topics, you’re ready to start writing. There will other things you’ll need to help with the functioning of your blog like plugins and widgets. But, I won’t go over them in this post. If you want to learn more about them, you can sign up for my “set up a blog” newsletter below and I do go over things like that and more.

How I Earned My First $1,000 Blogging

I had another blog before this one which I used exclusively to promote my home business. This blog I have set up a little differently with different income streams. But, that first blog I would write “how to” articles to help people build their own home-based business. Anything from:

• How to promote your business on Facebook.
• How to be a video marketing guru
• How to get 20 referrals into your business in 30 days

Things like that. It was a huge success too. Well, maybe not huge cause I wasn’t making millions. But, I was definitely growing my own home business, teaching others how to grow theirs. In the process, I had a lot of people leave their own network marketing business to come join mine because they weren’t getting the proper training or support from their team leaders.

I no longer have that blog anymore. Quite honestly, I lost it when I went through my divorce. My ex-husband didn’t take it from me or anything. I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to keep up with my blog, and I didn’t renew my hosting. Pretty stupid actually. I should have backed up my blog so I would have all of it for the future.

But, that was a hard time back then for me and there’s no point dwelling on what could have been, right? Moving forward, here I am today. 🙂 Much happier.

Anyway, enough about me. I just wanted to give you an idea on how you can become an expert in your niche and make money with your blog. That is one way. Other ways are displaying ads, sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, email marketing, etc. There are numerous ways to make money blogging and again, my email course below goes over all of that.  Before I start listing the steps to start your own blog, I want to leave you with one more tidbit of info:

[Tweet “It’s super easy to start a blog. It’s much harder to stay consistent with it to make the money you’re quite capable of making.”]

Other posts to help you:

How to Write a Blog Post That Drives Traffic
6 Out-of-the-Box Ways to Make Money Online
Learn How to Make Money Blogging – The Wealthy Affiliate Review
Learn How I Went from 257 Monthly Viewers to Over 76,000 in 2 Months 
Blogging For Money – Blogging & Affiliate Marketing Training

Okay, let’s get to it.

4 Steps to Set Up Your Blog

Steps to get your blog set up. This really only takes a few minutes.

1. Create and register your domain name.

A domain is the address people will go to when they go to your blog. My domain name is Rockinghappiness.com.

Do some brainstorming to come up with a domain name that’s going to fit the theme or niche of your blog. Some people use their own name. So that would just be www.yourname.com.

There are many places to register your domain. A popular site where you can get your domain name and hosting is Bluehost. The place I’m with where I get my domain names and hosting (step 2) all under the same roof is through Wealthy Affiliate. Another good thing with Wealthy Affiliate is they offer some seriously comprehensive training on BLOGGING and making money from your blog and they have their own affiliate program and community of like-minded people to network with.

You can even start up an account with them for free and access their blogging training. Plus they give you a way to get your blog started using a free domain name and hosting so you can get started right away without having to purchase your domain name. But, eventually, you’ll want to buy a professional domain name.

But, yes I still DO recommend Bluehost if you don’t want to go with Wealthy Affiliate. While I’m not with them, I’ve heard nothing but good things about them and you can get hosting starting at only $3.95 a month.

2. Host your Blog

There are many places to host your blog too. Bluehost, like I mentioned, hosts your blog too. Again, I host my blogs with Wealthy Affiliate so I have everything under one roof. Plus, hosting comes with your membership there, you don’t have to pay extra for it like you would with the other hosting companies. But you’re free to decide what you want to do. 🙂

I have a review of Wealthy Affiliate you can read to see all the goodies it has to offer you in addition to domain names and hosting. For instance, you can earn $100+ per person you get to also sign up for Wealthy Affiliate. But, there are many other perks, so head on over and learn more about them. 

3. Install WordPress

Most hosting companies will have a tutorial on how to install WordPress and get your blog set up. Some do it for you. Wealthy Affiliate does it for you so you don’t have to worry about that part. But, if you decide to go with Bluehost, they have a set of instructions you can follow, but here they are in a nutshell:

Bluehost comes with a one-click set-up for WordPress. The instructions are very straightforward and simple and they guide you through it. You’ll have your WordPress site set up in minutes.

Installing WordPress with MOJO Marketplace

MOJO Marketplace offers you the one-click install set up and it’s integrated right into your Bluehost cPanel dashboard.

1. Login to your Bluehost account and go to your cPanel dashboard.
2. Go down to the section marked “website”.
3. Click on one-click install or the Install WordPress icon.
4. Either one will bring you to MOJO Marketplace where there will be an install button.
5. Click the install button.
6. From the drop-down menu, click on your domain name where you’ll want to install WordPress.

MOJO Marketplace will name your site “My Site” and use your email address for your username. It will also generate a password for you. You can change all this information in your settings.

7. Click on the checkbox for the terms and conditions.
8. Click on the “Install Now” button.

That’s it, your done!

4. Choose a Theme

Your theme is what your website will look like when someone visits your blog. When first starting out, you have access to many free themes, but I highly recommend that you eventually (sooner than later) get yourself a professional “paid theme”. That’s what I did. I just uploaded a paid theme, and it was super easy and affordable.

The one I use is the Genesis Framework through Studiopress. This also comes with free child themes, but you can choose more professional ones too. I use Modern Blogger Pro through “Pretty Darn Cute”

Uploading your theme is super easy. Here’s how to do it:

1. Log into your WordPress site

2. Click on Appearance and then Themes

3. Click on Add New

4. Click upload theme

When you purchase your theme you’ll be provided with a zip file that you’ll download to your computer. Make sure you save this download, but if you lose for any reason, you can always log back into Studiopress or where you got your theme and there will be a way get the download zip file again.

5. Upload your zip file

6. Click on Activate

That’s it.

If you go with the Genesis Framework and a child theme, you’ll need to upload the Genesis Framework first and then upload your child theme. They have their own tutorial videos that will walk you through step-by-step. But, the process is basically the same as the above steps.

5. You’re done baby! You’re ready to start blogging! Next, you’ll want to learn how to write a blog post that drives traffic.

How easy was that, right?

As far as getting the right plugins, widgets and so forth with your blog, you’ll find tons of free blogging courses out there you can take to learn what to do next with your blog. You can also sign up for my “How to Set Up your Own Profitable Blog – How to Earn Thousands” newsletter below.  Plus, I’ll also be adding resources and information on blogging tips frequently to my blog in the “blogging” section too. So, definitely come back to RockingHappiness.com so I can help you make money with your blog.

The one thing you’ll notice from successful bloggers who are making a lot of money from their blogs (I’m talking $20,000+ a month) is that they all implement affiliate marketing and Pinterest. Most if not all (myself included) have also invested in themselves to learn how to drive tons of traffic to their blogs and implement affiliate marketing correctly and my advice is YOU should too.

Blogging Courses I Recommend When You’re Just Getting Started

While there are tons of courses out there to help you learn about making money with a blog, here are some I recommend to get you started.

The She Approach To Boosting Your Blog Traffic Ebook

This ebook shows you how to reach your targeted audience and turn them into loyal blog readers. It teaches you how to apply a strong SEO foundation to help you leverage free organic traffic from search engines like Google. Then, you’ll also learn how to use social media platforms and automate your own system with them to drive quality, targeted traffic to your blog and blog posts.

Free Affiliate Marketing Course (Free)

This is a free affiliate marketing course that teaches you everything you need to know to make your first affiliate sale and continue bringing in more sales from your blog.

The Affiliate Marketing Training Bundle 

This is a comprehensive affiliate marketing course that teaches you how to build the foundation to literally make affiliate sales in your sleep. It’s a great resource for bloggers struggling to make even their first affiliate sale and those who can’t seem to make $1,000 or more in affiliate sales and are looking to scale their affiliate marketing strategies so they can grow their income.

Pinterest Primer – Build a Solid Pinterest Foundation (Free)

This is a free Pinterest course that shows you how to use Pinterest to drive loads of traffic to your blog. It’s the same strategy that has allowed Mckinzie to go from a brand new blog with no monthly page views to over 20,000 monthly page views in just a few months, profiting almost $2,000 in her first 90 days.

Pins to Profit – List Building

This course teaches you all the steps you need to take to build profitable landing pages for your affiliate products and use Pinterest to build a huge email list and make sales. It’s your next step after you’ve taken the free Pinterest Primer course above.

Other posts to help you:

How to Write a Blog Post That Drives Traffic
6 Out-of-the-Box Ways to Make Money Online
Learn How to Make Money Blogging – The Wealthy Affiliate Review
Learn How I Went from 257 Monthly Viewers to Over 76,000 in 2 Months 
Blogging For Money – Blogging & Affiliate Marketing Training