Can You Earn Money Blogging?
I’ll be honest. I’ve never been one to read a lot of blogs on a daily/weekly basis. If one passed my way on Facebook or other social media which took my fancy, I’d read it, but it was never a priority for me.
However, I have always loved writing and kept a diary on and off throughout my life which I really enjoyed. So, when I quit my job to travel full-time with my husband, I pondered what I could do to make some extra cash, and kept thinking, “can you earn money blogging?”.
Disclaimer: Whilst this review is 100% my own opinion and I truly believe in the program, I do make a small commission if you click through on my links, at no extra cost to you.
What to Write About?
Not one to just jump into anything without thoroughly researching it first (yes, I’m that person who goes into a clothes store, finds a dress I like, but have to check out every other store in the mall before coming back to buy the first one anyway – my lucky husband!!), so the project of researching blogging began…!
The first thing to decide was what I wanted to write about, and what the point of the blog was. No one wants to read the random ramblings of someone’s daily activities…you know the ones I’m talking about! The key way to earn money blogging is to write about something you’re passionate about.
I wanted to write stuff that would actually be helpful to people, give advice, answer questions, offer recommendations, that kind of thing. What am I most knowledgeable about? Well, it came down to two things: Fitness, or Travel/Cruise.
Fitness and healthy living is something I’m passionate about, but there are also a few million people out there who are qualified experts and do it for a living…I know many friends from my Bodybuilding days absolutely killing this space, so I’ll leave it to them.
Which brings me to travel and cruise – something I don’t need qualifications for, but I certainly have the upper hand when it comes to experience, and, well, it’s kinda my full-time job now! I’ve worked in the cruise industry over a period of about ten years, in both the UK and Australia, and through that I have had the privilege of travelling both sides of the globe extensively. At last count I think I’m somewhere around 67 countries. And whilst most cruisers ‘tick off’ countries because they’ve been there for a few hours on a port day, I have repeated itineraries so many times that I have been able to really get to know these places and have favourite haunts which I can authentically recommend. Check out some of my posts such as:
- Cruise Ports of Iceland
- 11 Day Trips in Sydney
- Visiting St Petersburg – the good, the bad & the ugly
- Cruise the Baltics – Highlights of a Typical Itinerary
Do I Need To Be Technical?
So, topic and purpose decided, how do I get this thing up and running? I totally sucked at technology and didn’t have a clue where to start when it comes to building a website. Ironically, I started a degree in MediaLab Arts when I was 18, and dropped out because what had been sold to me as a digital broadcasting degree, got changed into a graphic design, web design/coding degree, and the HTML/JAVA/SQL etc just fried my brain! (I later switched to a ‘proper’ Professional Broadcasting degree, which I loved and completed!). Therefore I knew I wasn’t up for building a site from scratch!
Fortunately, you don’t need to, there are so many low-cost options out there, such as WIX, WordPress, SquareSpace… To get something up and running quickly, these will all do the job, but they have their limitations, and you’re pretty much on your own to figure out any issues. I also hate having a random extension URL, such as thefortysomethingtraveller.wix.com, for me I prefer thefortysomethingtraveller.com – it just looks cleaner and more professional, right? However, you need to pay for that, and I wasn’t going to hand over my hard-earned cash without making sure I was choosing the right server. I knew I needed to find an option which would create the site for me and make it easy to manage.
Wealthy Affiliate
My research kept leading me to some very appealing reviews on a site called ‘Wealthy Affiliate‘. The recommendations were from people who say they will be there as my mentor, to talk me through every part of the process and that I would also gain access to a wealth of knowledge from a global community and with free training along the way. All sounding good.
I also loved that it wasn’t promising a ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme. There are SOOO many of those out there, all a total croc! I’m not scared of hard work, my career wasn’t in an ‘easy’ industry, and I’m used to working all the hours…and to be honest, I suddenly had a lot of free time on my hands – that bit wasn’t an issue!
Even better, there is no risk, you can sign up for free, check out the training, build a website and basically get a feel for the whole thing before handing over your bucks. Yeah, I was sold.
The training covers absolutely everything, numerous ways to make money through your blog, affiliate links, google ads, selling products, creating eBooks…the options are endless, especially when you jump all in and upgrade to Premium, which made sense for me to do. Whatever you think of, someone is there with training to help you, around the clock. They also teach how to promote your blog, from SEO to social media, podcasts, Pinterest… Wealthy Affiliate is certainly a wealth of information!
The free access doesn’t give you the clean URL, but I’ve since purchased a couple (including this site) which are just US$13.99 per year… I’m ok with that!
Wrap Up
Anyway, I’m not here to do a sales job on you, I’m just telling you what worked for me and how I started to earn money blogging. If it’s something you may be interested in (let’s face it, we all have plenty of free time at the moment and maybe you’ve thought of setting up a cruise review blog, or sharing tips on cooking or embroidery) then this may be something you’d want to consider. There are thousands of people making 6 figure incomes from it, but they work seriously hard at it too.
For me, it’s something I enjoy doing, keeps me busy, covers some bills and hopefully gives advice to some of my readers, or at least provides a little entertainment/inspiration!
If you have any questions, feel free to give me a shout and I’d love your feedback below!
Thanks for reading, see you next time!
Wendy A x
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Great to learn about Wealthy Affiliate. There is so much bad info on the internet that sometimes I feel like I’m trying to drink water through a firehose! I’ll def check them out!
Haha! I know what you mean, I trialed a couple of others too, but the access to help is what I need the most, and they just didn’t cut it with that bit. I love being able to get help 24/7 and get so much encouragement – we all need that at the moment! Thanks for taking the time to read 🙂
Many people consider blogging as a hobby and it’s not until recently that I began to see it as a very lucrative business which great earning capabilities. I created my personal blog a few months ago but it hasn’t really picked up and I’ve been looking for some pointers on how to solve this. This post has been quite informative and I find it helpful. I’ll see how I can capitalize on the tips I’ve learnt here.
Thanks Carol, there are so many people who just start writing for a hobby but don’t realise that it can actually be earning them an income. Wealthy Affiliate is awesome in getting you set up to do just this, and there are many ways to do it too. We don’t all want to be promoting Amazon every day! Give it a shot and you’ll be amazed at the resources available to get you up and running. Thanks for taking the time to comment, I wish you all the very best with your blog 🙂
When I first heard about making money fr blogging opportunity, I didn’t know if it was a possibility that I should give it a go because i wasn’t much of the writer and creating content would’ve been a problem for me but with the training at wealthy affiliate, some confidence and the help of the community on wealthy affiliate, I was able to start my own blog and I’m doing pretty well now.
Having such a supportive community around you is so important! I love the encouragement and motivation from people who are truly killing this field, it really inspires me! I’m glad you’re doing well with your blog, that’s awesome! Thanks for reading 🙂
You pose a very interesting question? Can you earn money blogging? I was searching for that answer when I found your article. I like to write – the hardest part for me is to find something that excites me enough to write about. I appreciate your honest and straight forward suggestions about finding a topic to write about. How can I turn this love of writing into an income? You mentioned the different blogging platforms out there that were available. What about this Wealthy Affiliate that you mentioned? It seems to offer training as well as hosting services. What do you get for free when you sign up?
Finding a subject you really love is definitely key. To be successful you need to keep posting regularly and that can become a chore if you don’t love your subject matter. Think of your favourite pastime and you can probably find a way to put that into a blog – Wealthy Affiliate has lots of suggestions to help you too.
The freebies when you sign up include:
– 24/7 help (first 7 days)
– Website Builder
– Security Package
– Analysis
– Core Certification Course (10 lessons)
– Affiliate Bootcamp (10 lessons)
– 50 Training modules
– Keyword Research Tool
and much more! This link will provide more info for you, and please don’t hesitate to contact me directly if you’re interested in joining.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/order/signup?a_aid=3df3cd98
I find your story both interesting and motivational because you decided that you were going to do something constructive with your free time,which is the signs of someone who has ambitions and goals…which I admire.
I am also part of the Wealthy Affiliate community and can agree with you when you said you were sold (so was I).Before I joined , Wealthy Affiliate sounded too good to be true but when something is free,i like to try it out anyway, so I did and to my delight,WA lived up to its word…and that’s where my journey began.
They make it so easy hey! I really love being a part of the community and also from learning and getting the grey matter ticking over at a time when we are all getting a little stir-crazy in lock down! The Live training classes are awesome too, I’m glad you’re also having success, it’s not that hard when you put in the work 🙂 Thanks for reading!