Full Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. If you decide to purchase through my links, I’ll receive a commission. But you won’t pay more.
In this post, I want to show you how you can become a full-time blogger as quickly as possible.
Whether you’re looking to get more freedom in your life through blogging, or you want to reach financial independence, or just make enough money so you can quit your job, It’s 100% possible.
Many people have reached this goal and you can too.
I want to layout the important steps for you to follow to become a successful full-time blogger.
And also, how to build a thriving blog that’ll make you consistent money each and every month.
Wouldn’t that be great? Let’s get started.
Set Up Your Blog
There is one thing that’ll guarantee you never become a full-time blogger, and that is to doubt and overthinking things.
I want you to set all your doubts and fears aside, and just take the first step into starting a blog.
Read my step-by-step tutorial here that’ll show you how to set-up your blog with a good host (that’ll grow with your blog business), as well as all the technical side of setting up your blog.
Don’t worry, it’ll only take you less than an hour to set everything up and launch your blog!
And no worries. No one will find your blog yet because you haven’t shared it with anyone.
And Google takes a bit to find your content.
So if you’re scared that people are going to find you online and laugh at your website, then be sure that you’re the only one able to view your website.
And that’s a great thing actually.
You can experiment and play with your blog to set it the right way.
Am I able to simply play with my websites now that they’re constantly getting viewers? No way. I have to always make a copy of my website to try new things before pushing them out. So don’t be scared to start.
It’s actually a lot of fun designing and playing with your website design, colors, images, etc.
Pick Your Blog Topic Or Niche
The next step requires a bit of work. This should be easy if you already know what you’re passionate about.
Something you can talk about forever and you’ll never get tired from.
What are you good at?
Do you have any skills?
Can you transfer your job skills online? for example, if you’re a personal trainer, you can blog about fitness and health.
If you’re an accountant, you can start a budgeting/finance blog.
But regardless of which niche you choose to blog about, make sure it’s aligned with what you like or are passionate about. Because here’s the thing…
Blogging required months and years of continual work. You always want to be producing new blog posts.
And if you’re not really loving the topics you’re writing about, you’ll quit. Forcing yourself to blog doesn’t work.
Full-time bloggers are passionate about their blogs. They turned their passions into a business through blogging.
Blog Niche Ideas:
- Nutrition/Diets
- Busy Lifestyle
- Homeschooling
- Weddings
- Budgeting for Millenials
- Finance
- 10 Minute workouts (personal training)
- Meditation
- Spirituality/religion
There are endless niches and sub-niches to choose from.
Become A Full-Time Blogger
No, I’m not asking you to quit your job yet. But, mentally, you should already consider yourself a full-time blogger!
One important thing I don’t see people write a lot about is the mindset of becoming a blogger and an online entrepreneur.
You have to adopt the mindset that you’re committed to becoming a full-time blogger. Not just hoping for it.
There is a big difference between hoping and actually making the decision and committing to making it happen.
So before you even start with any technical side of blogging, decide that you’re a full-time blogger.
This decision will also motivate you and keep you going. There is no plan B. You’re going to make this work because you already decided you’re going to do it.
Honestly by this time, if as you’re reading these lines you’re re-thinking your decision or not sure if you want to start a blog, it’d be a good time to do some mindset work and figure out which beliefs are holding you back.
Perhaps you’re scared of what people will think about you when you announce that you’re gonna quit your job to become a full-time blogger…
…Or you’re scared of how people will perceive you.
If any of these things are running in your head, please read my post about how to handle naysayers and change your limiting beliefs so you can succeed as an online business owner.
Learn From The Best Bloggers
One of the things that transformed my blogging business was to model the best bloggers. It doesn’t matter which niche they’re in.
Instead of spending hours in beginner groups seeing what other beginners like you are doing. Go and check out the best bloggers and see how they got started and where they are right now.
IMPORTANT: Please don’t get discouraged by how good their blog looks. Professional full-time bloggers have spent years building their websites.
You can actually spy on their old blog version using tools such as the Wayback Machine. But what I want you to focus on is:
See how they write their blog posts: The length, the quality, the information.
What will stand out to your audience and rank in Google is the quality of your blog.
And it’s good to see how top bloggers are writing their blog posts. The last thing you want is to write short posts with barely any information.
I used to do that on my first blog. I’d write blog posts that were 300 words, a ton of typos, barely any photos, and then spend months wondering why I’m not on the first page of Google
You Need Traffic To Blog Full-Time
To turn your blog into a full-time business, you need traffic. Some traffic at least. You can actually start with very little traffic by selling services.
If you have a skill you can teach or can provide a service, then you can get 3-5 clients per month and start making a full-time income!
Click here to learn how to start a service-based business.
If you want to monetize your blog through premium advertisement networks or affiliate marketing, then you need at least good traffic to be able to convert some of that traffic into sales.
A great way to get started with Affiliate marketing is to make a list of all the products you love and already use.
You should never promote anything you’ve never used on your blog. People will lose trust in you and that’s something you can never risk.
When you make your list, you can search for these products online and see if the brand or company has an affiliate program for it. Usually, these are located in the footer of the page.
Search for “affiliate” or “ambassador” program. You can apply to them and when you’re approved, you can start using the assigned affiliate links. When someone clicks and purchases, you can a commission.
Amazon has a great affiliate program also you can sign up for. The only thing to keep in mind is that Amazon required you to get 3 sales in the first 180 days.
So make sure that you at least are getting some traffic before you apply.
Other affiliate networks to checkout:
- Shareasale
- CJ Affiliate
- Rakuten
- Clickbank
- Awin
Click here to discover 7 income streams to monetize your blog
Make sure to inform your readers that the post includes affiliate links (just like the one on this post!). It’s an important disclaimer required by law. Everyone does it and by now, I think readers are very used to it.
When you reach the minimum traffic requirement, you can apply for an ad network of your choice. I personally work with Mediavine. There are other ad networks you can work with depending on your traffic such as
- Adthrive
- Mediavine
- Ezoic
I don’t recommend Google ads. When I started my blog I signed up Google Adsense and put ads on my site. I was literally making 10 cents a day. The ads looked really bad. Some images were disgusting.
I had to take them down. I never reached the minimum payment after a year ($100). I ended up closing my account when I was able to apply to Mediavine.
I made $411 in my first month with Mediavine. I couldn’t believe it. My traffic was around 25k sessions.
Click here to read about how to increase your traffic quickly.
One of the best platforms to focus on as a beginner blogger is Pinterest. I highly recommend you get this course and apply the material. I reviewed the full course here after a whole year applying its strategies.
It helped me reach 200k pageviews/month!
Focus On Your 30 First Blog Posts
Do you know why 90% of beginner bloggers fail and quit? Because they write 5 blog posts, see no traffic and no money, and decide this blogging thing isn’t working.
I’m going to be straight forward with you. You will not get any traffic and you won’t be making any money when you just start the first month, the second month, or even the third.
Because you need content and people to find and read your content to click a link or give you enough views to make money from ads.
So here’s what you should do. Forget about money for at least 3 months.
Focus all your energy into creating amazing content that solves a problem for the reader.
Research topics and figure out what people are searching for. What problems can you solve for them?
Write detailed blog posts and apply the strategies in this post to get good traffic quickly.
30 blog posts are a great starting post! You’ll be able to start seeing some great results because you can make many Pinterest pins of each post and have enough posts to share and promote!
It’s also a good number for search engines to start noticing and taking your blog seriously.
Search engines aren’t interested in new blogs with zero authority.
They always want to show the best results for the user. So keeping that in mind will allow you to always check what’s showing up on the first page in Google about the topic you want to blog about, and always aim at writing a better, more detailed, more informative post.
Blogging is an amazing online business model. As a full-time blogger, I can say that my blog changed my life for the better.
However, it was a very challenging journey because I didn’t have anyone to show me what to do. I had to learn the hard way.
I spent money on many courses that didn’t deliver. And by the way, I share all the tools you need here to succeed as a blogger (The only tools you need!).
Create Multiple Streams Of Income
Who said that you have to limit yourself to ads and affiliate marketing. When you have a blog, the sky is the limit to what you can offer on your website.
As I mentioned before, you can get started with offering services. But there are so many other ways to monetize your blog:
- Sponsored posts
- Creating your own digital products
- Creating online courses
- Selling printable PDFs
- E-commerce business (if you want to sell physical products and display the store on your blog)
- Selling freelancing services (writing, photography, editing, copywriting, etc.) depending on your skills
- Publishing your own e-books
I wrote a blog post here about 7 income streams to turn your blog into a full-time income.
One last piece of advice…Keep going. Stay healthy by eating healthy and getting enough sleep. Burnout is real and you need to balance work and blogging in the beginning.
Believe in yourself and whichever decision you make, commit to it 100%.