Welcome! We are so thrilled to share one of the most lucrative, secure and effective means of earning and extra income online that could potentially become a full-time business.
We’ve shared a few ways to earn online and will continue to share these ideas here. But this spot is for us to share our passion and love of blogging and how we earn money blogging!
Why we love blogging:
- We get to help others
- We get to share some amazing ideas
- We have a creative outlet
- We can share our passion with others
- We can connect with people all over the world
- We get to earn a nice living from simply sharing
- We get to reach our live’s goals faster
- We want to share this freedom, love and idea with you to better your life too!
The amazing part is that we started a blog because of the above listed reasons. But in a short time, not only do we get to live out our love and passions everyday, but we have ended up earning quite a bit. We haven’t done things completely right, we haven’t been perfect in how we have operated our site. It’s been a hobby that produces a fair amount of monthly income! How amazing is that!?! You can read about this here:
We have an entire series on How To Blog and the articles listed for the How To Blog Series are linked below after answering a few basic questions.
The primary thing to do is to just get started in the most simplistic, easy way. That’s where we want to help you start!
And if I have learned anything in this world today, I know that EVERYONE has a story to tell. Blogging is the outlet to tell your story and it could very well become a full-time income for you one day.
How Much Does It Cost To Start a Blog?
That’s the great news. It doesn’t take a lot, which makes it one of the most affordable business ventures. In fact, there are only two things you really need: a domain name and a website host. You can cover this for 3 years for around $125 and that is all you really need. Sure, there are other things you could have like a fancy design to make your site look professional and a myriad of other products for bloggers – but you don’t need any of this for a time (the default templates and themes are perfect for someone starting out). In fact, don’t get those additional items until you have started and have begun writing for a few months so that you can justify those expenses when the time comes. And when that time comes, those additional expenses will be vital to turning your passion for sharing into a business. But in the beginning those are the only 2 actually needed things to start.
And the better news is that they are the more affordable parts of running a blog, which is great news because it does take a few months before you can start earning an income.
You can get a website host for only $3.49 per month through Bluehost. We like Bluehost because they are very affordable and family friendly. And, there is no need to go out and spend money on a domain name because hosting through Bluehost also gives you a FREE domain name registration for a year!
Even better, use the following tool to see if the domain name is available.
How Do I Start?
Starting does not need a complete list of know-how and a complete series to begin – however, we are going to walk you through the process to set you up for success from the beginning! Note that is is very affordable and you can be up and running in less than 1-hour today by following the video and visual steps in steps #2 and beyond below!
Who Should Start a Blog or Website?
If you have a passion, hobby, idea, life-experience, unique circumstances, expertise in any topic of any kind….you can start a blog. Websites are also great for business, small business, stay-at-home-mom businesses as a way to be more connected with your customers. That’s all you need to start – a desire. Well, that, a host and many posts. You can literally write about anything! Just take your passion, hobby, expertise, where you live, whatever you do and write about it. There is nothing off the table.
Step #1 – Secure Domain Name and Website/Blog Host (please note, you don’t want the free version of WordPress or Blogger and you need to read this article as to why).
The BEST option is to sign-up through Bluehost where it will only cost you $3.49 per month to run your website through a special sale through THIS LINK HERE (this link gives you 50% off!). We have secured this super low price for our readers who are budding online entrepreneurs. You’re welcome. ?
Here’s an idea of the discount prices (50% off):
1-yr at $4.95 per month = $59.40
2 – yrs at $3.95 per month = $94.80
3 – yrs at $3.49 per month = $125.64 (BEST VALUE and this is what we recommend and then you don’t have to worry about hosting for a few years. :))
They provide you with a domain name as well. Once you sign-up, they will walk you through the set-up of your site so that you can start writing and sharing. DO NOT DO anything else or buy anything else as you will not have what you need or be overbuying because there is nothing else you need right now. Just keep it simple and affordable and follow the steps we share here.
Step #2: Get Your WordPress Site/Blog Up and Running
The beautiful part about the whole process is that it is super easy, even a non-technical person can manage to run a website or a blog by this simple process that we are going to show you in our video series.
Guess what! After step #1 and step #2 – you are OFFICALLY RUNNING! YAY!
Now of course there are other things we recommend that you do and complete as time goes on. But we do recommend that you spend the next hour updating a few things to make your site a little more user-friendly and visually appealing.
After that, our resources page will share “what to do next” along your blogging/website journey to make the most of your blog and it’s success!
Step #3 – Set-up/Reserve Your Social Media (FB, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter)
The next thing you need to do is important before you present your blog or site publicly. You need to secure your name in the popular social media channels. You will be using these channels to grow your audience, to connect with your audience and to deliver your content to this audience.
You want to have consistent branding and names across the board. Try to get the exact same name under all channels. We listed Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter, but you should also reserve this under Periscope, YouTube, Google+ (which is probably going away soon, but until it does…) and any other social media. Set-up an account (it takes about a minute to register for each one) and just reserve your name, even if you don’t plan to do anything with it yet.
The last thing that you want is for someone to steal your name on YouTube and then you can’t get a channel with the same name as your site. Now, the name could already be taken too. I have had this happen where I was able to get the name on all but one social media channel. I found something close, so it worked out okay!
Step #4 – Head to our main resources page HERE and move through the steps one-by-one.
We’d recommend not moving onto the next category until you have finished the previous one!
Finally, we would recommend requesting to be a part of our email newsletter for generating online income. We send out a new tip and helps once or twice per week to help you grow your online business.