7 Steps to Starting a $3,000 per Month Blog

I think most of us want to escape the day job. Even if we don’t fully escape it, we would like to make some extra cash that we could put into savings. Or, maybe we could keep the day job, but also have more hours in the day to pursue a hobby or passion.

The starving artists, the bartending actress, the homeless athlete, the forgotten author… we know the stories all too well. It is difficult to follow one’s dream and simultaneously break through to a profitable career.

For me, blogging lowered that bar and allowed me to monetize one of my hobbies. I’ve always loved cycling and dreamed as a youth of one day being a professional athlete (even though professional cyclists make very little money).

Those dreams didn’t materialize, but I had a lot of fun and made a lot of great memories along the way.

So, when I heard that folks were making money by blogging, I was intrigued. And it was only natural to start a blog about my favorite sport.

It took about 9 months for my blog to get its legs and start performing well. I had to write the content, and some content pieces will perform better than others. It took a few months of trial and error before I figured out what pieces of content would attract the customers and which ones were a bomb.

To give you an idea, it took three months just to get my first 30 blog posts up. Of those 30, only 3 of them ever drove significant traffic. I had to be willing to stick with the craft and learn what worked.

Today, my site, Daves Cheap Bikes, receives about 2,000 visitors a day and makes around $3,000 per month from suggesting bikes and gear to new cyclists. It’s an excellent second stream of income that I can use for paying off debt, buying vacations, and investing in real estate.

A I have to do, is sit down and write for a couple of hours when I get home from work. The upside is that I enjoy writing and I enjoy cycling.

For those of you itching to create your stream of income, here is a 7-Step launchpad to get you started.

How to Replicate My Success

Choose A Niche You Love

You are going to spend a lot of time investing in this niche, and it needs to be one that you won’t easily get bored with. You will likely write 100,000-200,000 words before your site truly becomes profitable. That is a lot of time to be looking at your screen!

Passion shows. If you choose a niche purely for the paycheck it can offer, it is easy for that to show through your writing. When you choose a niche that you love, you are likely to engage in the niche in your free time. Passion gives you real anecdotes that you can insert into your writing to bring it to life.

People want to visit blogs that are run by real, passionate, people. Choosing a niche that you love goes a tremendous way in guaranteeing your success.

Choose A Niche That Is Profitable

You need something to sell to your audience. Hands down, Advertising is the easiest way to achieve this goal. Google Adsense and Media.net are two examples of programs that pay well. All you have to do is insert a little snippet of code on your site and the ads automatically display.

However, advertising tends to pay rather poorly. A better choice would be to partner with a site that has items to sell. This partnership is called an “affiliate program”. There are countless affiliate programs available (you can even create private affiliate offers). Amazon Associates is one of the most well-known programs online.

Affiliate programs tend to pay better, and for myself, they offer the best income with the least amount of effort. However, there is one other option that pays even better.

Selling your products it the most lucrative option for bloggers. Many of them sell courses or import products from overseas and sell them for handsome markup.

This last option provides the greatest profit and the most control but is also the most time-intensive.

Create a HELPFUL blog

It doesn’t help to create useless drivel. Every blog post must answer questions that your customers have.

My favorite strategy is to visit forums in the niche or even places like Quora to research the questions that your audience has.

And then I research the best answer. Even in situations where I have a strong preference, I’ll talk to my friends in the sport and get their opinion.

By the time I present a blog post to my readers, I normally have 4-8 hours of effort invested in it. It is an extremely useful piece of information that they can use.

This provides an added benefit for myself in that the research tends to lead me to obscure answers that no one else has. Deep research and writing on obscure topics in my niche helps me rank for unique search terms in Google and brings more traffic.

Connect With Other Bloggers

Connecting with other bloggers might be one of the favorite parts of my job. People only come to your site when they hear about it or find it when searching for an answer to their questions. Every week, I reach out to four or five bloggers and ask them if I could create a piece of helpful content (like this one) for their readers.

This relationship allows me to help more people and connects me with cool bloggers all around the world. The discussions that arise from the comments on these blogs often help me identify new problems that my audience is struggling with

It is an immensely reward enterprise and a favorite part of this gig.

Create an Engaging Social Media Group

Our users are beginning to use social media as their primary way of staying in touch. Depending on your audience, they may prefer one platform more than another.

An excellent example of this is the crafting niche which spends most of their time connecting on Pinterest. Expanding your Pinterest exposure is essential for the health of these blogs.

Be Patient

Blogging is a slow business to build. It does not move quickly. A blog typically needs 30-50 blog posts before it begins to get noticeable traffic. And, you may need a similar number of blog posts on other bloggers’ sites.

A site this size takes time to build. The excellent news is that it builds on itself. As your site gains depth and trust, the audience tends to tell their friends about your site, and the growth speeds up.

Joining facebook blogger groups is an excellent way to keep your spirits up while you plod along. Most sites take about 9-12 months before they are making any significant income. As long as you stay consistent in working on your blog for an hour or two every night, you will reach your goal of creating a healthy side income.

Blogging is challenging. It requires me to put myself out there and open myself to critiquing from total strangers. But it makes me a better writer, and has taught me a lot about catering to the needs of a community and building an online brand.

Plus, I have the constant motivation to ride my bike and get into better shape.