Can You Make Money From Blogging in 2022?

by | Jan 6, 2022

The internet is full of smartly dressed, smooth talking folk who promise you that “Making $20,000 a day passive income is easy”. But is it really that easy? Or is the bulk of the online passive income market simply people trying to sell the idea that anyone can make a passive income online and get rich?

Honesty is the Best Policy!

I could lie to you, I could begin telling you about how easy it is to make a second income alongside your day job. Hell, I could tell you to give up your boring day job and just work online blogging. Just a few affiliate links here and a little Facebook marketing there and boom – you’re on the road to $50k a day!!

But, of course, I’d be lying. The truth is, it isn’t very easy to make money online and this fantasy many have of online passive income doesn’t really exist, well not in the way most believe at least.

To build any passive income takes time and commitment, these things don’t happen overnight. If you want to work today and get paid a fixed amount tomorrow, get a day job, this isn’t for you.

However, if you are willing to consistently put the time and effort into something that has no guarantee of paying you a financial reward, something that could take months, or even years to bare any financial return then maybe, just maybe you have half-a-chance of succeeding in generating a passive income.

Blogging in 2022

So, if you are serious about it, if you enjoy working your ass off with no guarantee of financial reward, then what you waiting for, let us begin!

Step 1. Find Your Niche

The most obvious place to start is here. What will you write about?

I recommend writing about something that you are passionate about. While it is possible to create a blog on something you have little to no interest in, the chances of success are severely diminished.

Try to really drill down on your niche, so a broad niche would be blogging about cars, but if you wanted to draw in a specific audience, likely a more passionate audience you may want to blog about mini-coopers. It will, of course reduce your potential audience, but the audience you have will be a far more loyal one.

Just about everything has an audience, the internet is a big place, however if you are trying to choose between one topic or another, use google trends to find out which has the bigger potential audience.

Google trends allows you to compare search term popularity. You can select which countries to include in the search and over what time frame.

Step 2. Name and Branding

A good name and logo is important. However, it can also be something which many people get caught up on for far to long, often bringing the project to a standstill.

We are also talking about a blog here, not a rival to Apple or Facebook (sorry, META). So while the name should be well considered, don’t get caught up on it for too long.

It is always good if you can get a domain name that matches your name. So always consider this when trying to come up with a name. Ideally, a .com domain is best, but this is becoming less important as time goes on.

Sometimes it could be as simple as your own name. If you are writing a blog about yourself and your daily adventures then maybe your own name, or at least part of it, would do just fine.

Step 3. Hosting

So, you have your niche; you decided on a name. Now you just need to turn your idea into a functional blog.

There are many ways we can do this. It really depends on your own technical abilities and how much you are willing to learn.

Personally, I think if you are serious about diving into the World of Blogging, you should know how to use WordPress, even if at a very basic level.

Here I will guide you through setting up a WordPress blog.

Cloudways is specifically designed for speed and simplicity. It scales. It has a built in migration tool for moving a website over from another server, and, more importantly for those new to this, it has a simple automated tool for installing WordPress. 

So the first step is to head over to Cloudways and setup your free trial account.

Head over to Cloudways, click on the ‘Start a free trial’ button.

    You will now be asked to enter your name, email, and a password for your account. Answer the two questions and tick the terms & conditions box (assuming, of course, you do actually agree with them, did you even read them?)

    Once you have submitted your details you may need to complete some form of verification. If so, this is straightforward enough and you will receive instruction on how to do so in the email you provided.

    Once you have been verified for your free trial account, you can login and get started. The first thing we need to do is create a new server.

    So make sure you are in the server tab of your account located in the top far left. Then press the ‘Add Server’ button.

    Now you’re ready to name your server, choose its specification and install WordPress.

    Now give your WordPress application and server a name. Select the project as main.

    There are different servers offered to host your new website on. In this example we will use Digitial Ocean.

    Set server size to 1GB and then choose a location for your server. In this example we’ll use London. Then click ‘Launch Now

    At the moment we will use the Cloudways address supplied to access your website, I will show you how to attach a custom domain name to the server later on.

    Now click the ‘Applications’ tab and then click on your newly created application.

    Using the login details displayed, you will be able to login to your new WordPress installation. The username will be your cloudways email and the password can be seen by clicking the eye symbol after the obscured password.

    Now you can navigate your browser to the admin panel URL, which is shown above your login details.

    Now enter your login details onto the WordPress admin login page.

    If you’re new to WordPress, it’s worth having a look around the admin panel before you go any further to familiarise yourself with the layout.

    Down the left-hand side of the panel is where you can navigate around admin area. At the top, is your admin toolbar, where you can quickly create new posts, edit posts and get back to the dashboard.

    The menus and options available will expand when you install plugins or themes to your WordPress installation, but don’t worry about that for now.

    If you want to change the layout and look for your website, the first place to start is by checking out available themes for WordPress. There are thousands of free ones available as well as paid ones.

    While there are plenty of very usable free themes, we highly recommend considering Divi, which is a paid theme and framework for WordPress.

    Divi completely changes how WordPress works with a built-in, fully customizable layout editor. In my opinion it is by far the best addition you can purchase for WordPress, what’s more, it is its totally affordable.

    With the power of Divi and WordPress, you can easily make stunning looking websites with ease at an affordable price. There are two options when purchasing Divi, either a yearly subscription which is currently set at $89 per annum, or a one-off charge of $249.

    The latter one-off payment for life option is by far the best value. With lifetime support and updates, unlimited usage for as many websites as you choose, you really can’t go wrong.

    Divi offers a 30 day money back no quibbles guarantee as well, so if you’re not feeling the love for Divi, then it’s at no cost to you.

    Once you have your website ready, you will of course want a unique domain name for your site.

    Cloudways themselves do not offer domain registry services, as their one focus is on providing reliable & fast hosting, so you’ll need to head over to somewhere like Namecheap.com who offer a whole range of domains at competitive prices.

    Take your time picking a suitable domain name, try to keep it short and avoid hyphens and other special characters.

    While the most popular and recognized domain extension is .com, there are literally hundreds of extensions to choose from – so take your time and pick wisely.

    Once you have purchased yourself a domain name, you will need to attach it to your Cloudways hosting account. This isn’t as terrifying as it may sound, so please bear with me.

    First, you will need to head back to your Cloudways account, then navigate to ‘servers’ using the menu tabs at the top of the screen. Then click on your server. Take note of the IP address of your server:

    Now, click on the www button located on the right side of the screen, next to the server name – click on your WordPress application from the list.

    Click on Domain Management, now enter your website domain address that you just purchased in the Primary Domain box.

    Click ‘Save Changes’

    Now you’ll need to set up your website domain name to point to your website hosted at Cloudways. There is a guide for setting this up on Namecheap over on the Cloudways support site HERE

    For all other Domain registrars follow these instructions:

    1. Log into your DNS provider panel or console.
    2. Navigate to your DNS Management page. The location and name of this page vary by provider, but it can be found under Domain Management or Advanced Settings and then select the domain name that you want to update.
    3. Locate the Records section. Choose to create an A Record from the drop-down list and then complete the below fields:
      • Host / Name  – Just enter ‘*’
      • Value  – Put the IP address of your Cloudways server in here.
      • TTL – Enter the lowest possible value allowed.
    4. Click the Save Changes button to apply the changes.

    Once you have updated your DNS records, it can take up to 24 hours for the new settings to become active, though we normally find everything is updated within just a couple of hours. Head over to your website domain name and it should take you to your WordPress installation. Your online!

    Step 4. Interesting Blog Posts

    In order for any blog to be successful, it will need a constant stream of interesting information.

    A good way to ensure there are always plenty of things to write about, particularly when you are lacking inspiration, is to note down commonly asked questions related to your niche.

    For example, I know that people visiting this website are likely interested in cryptocurrency. So a good way to pull in new audience members is by having commonly googled questions answered in posts surrounding cryptocurrency.

    For example, Add Binance Smart Chain to Metamask or Add Polygon Network to MetamaskThese types of posts are great, not only do they ensure you always have new content to add, but also you will often find they will be some of the highest trending posts you write.

    Try to consider all the potential topics your readers may be interested in and write them down. From this list of topics, you can then look at ways to attack them from different angles.

    Readers sometimes just want to read about your own personal experiences in dealing with something, other times readers may be looking for some advice or ideas. You want to try and appeal to all these people, and keep them coming back for more!

    Step 5. Let Readers Join Your Mailing List

    Having a place where readers can subscribe to a mailing list is far more powerful than many realise. Think about it, if you can encourage a reader to give you their contact email, suddenly this anonymous person is a someone. A someone who can be encouraged to return to your blog, a someone who can now quite easily become a customer.

    So, be sure to give your readers the option to sign up to your mailing list.

    Tools like Mailchimp make this very easy, just setup your free account with MailChimp and then using a WordPress plugin, add a place for readers to sign up!

    How you interact with your mailing list is a whole separate topic, which is too detailed to get in to here. But for now, you can at least begin building up a list of your most dedicated and loyal readers.

    Step 6. Making Money From Blogging

    The most common ways to generate money from your blog are through affiliate marketing, google adsense, subscription services, merchandise and products, additional services.

    I recommend utilising any and all of these methods where possible, but try to avoid looking like you are selling something. People quickly lose interest when they think you are after their money.

    A much better approach is to get your readers to want something from you.

    When it comes to affiliate marketing, make sure you stay relevant to the blog post. For example, in this post I showed you how to set up hosting a WordPress Blog. I recommended Cloudways as your hosting provider using an affiliate link and also suggested the DIVI framework plugin for WordPress also via an affiliate link.

    These are both services I personally use and believe are very good value for money.

    Try to avoid over selling something and try to offer products and services which give discount to people who use your affiliate link. This way you are offering your audience something, a discount, rather than just pushing something to make a quick buck.

    Using services like Amazon Associates can work well on some blogs, though it does really depend on what your blog is about. The same goes for Google Adsense. These placement advertising methods are well tried and tested, but not necessarily the most effective way to monetize your website.

    Most bloggers, in time, will have built up a significant amount of content as well as subscribers to their mailing list. Once you have established yourself as a perpetual blogger with a faithful audience, it might be worth considering writing books that can either be sold physically or digitally (eBooks).

    What type of book exactly, will of course depend on your niche – but if people like what you have to say for free on your website, then there is a good chance that some will be willing to pay you money to receive additional ‘exclusive’ content.

    Here at the People Empowerment Project we offer additional content and services in return for a subscription fee. This can be a great way to monetize your blog.

    Step 7. Crypto Grows on Trees

    If you read my previous article entitled Crypto Grows on Trees, then you will be aware that there are a growing number of platforms that reward contributors to post.

    As well as paying you to post, these sites also increase your blogs visibility. It’s a win-win situation, all it requires is a little extra time.

    I recommend heading over to the article to find out more on this.

    Step 8. SEO, Social Presence ect. ect.

    Writing and maintaining a blog is just a small part of being successful as a blogger. To be honest, you don’t even have to be a particularly talented writer if you can get this bit right.

    Search Engine Optimization(SEO) and social presence are critical for anyone attempting to make money online. It doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do, if people cannot find you, you may as well not exist.

    This is a very complex topic so once again, I won’t go into detail in this post – but be aware that this is a very important part of being a successful blogger. Do not overlook it!

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