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Blogs are like opinions: everyone’s got one. And for good reason! 

A well-designed blog full of helpful and relevant content is one of the most powerful advertising tools on the planet. It reels in potential customers and shows them that you’re a subject matter expert. Essentially, having your own blog builds your online reputation. In fact, businesses small and large who maintain active and useful blogs can lead to more company sales, a higher ROI, improved customer relationships, and more scalability. 

Have you ever wondered how to start a blog and make money from it? We are here to tell you why now more than ever is the time to bet on yourself and take that leap of faith into the world of blogging. Learning how to create a blog can set you up for success, and running your own blog can prove to be a lucrative career.

In this post, we’ll go over all the key things you need to know on how to make a blog for your business. This includes everything from why blogs are such an important brand-building strategy to the more technical details of how to start a blog. Then, we’ll dive into the core strategies bloggers use to monetize their blogs, so you’ll have a roadmap to turning your blog into a serious source of passive income. 

Whether you’ve had a few failed attempts at creating a blog or if you are brand new to the world of blogging, let us take you from zero to blogging hero and teach you how to make money blogging.

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Here are some shortcuts, if you’re eager to skip ahead to a specific section: 

Related: How To Monetize Your Expertise

The benefits of blogging

Learning how to start a blog can have some serious benefits, including some that may not be super obvious! From getting your website to rank better on search engines, to building and maintaining your brand’s relationship with audiences – there are a few key reasons why every creator and business should add blogging to their marketing strategy. 

Listed below are some of the major benefits of blogging that you shouldn’t ignore:

  1. Boosting your website traffic

Strategically-written blog posts are a fantastic way to increase your website traffic. Blogs that are useful or engaging to a specific target audience will receive more views, shares, repeat visitors, and organic discovery. Having a blog will ultimately increase your brand exposure, and draw outside people to the rest of your website. This is how you gain traction for selling your products and services – but more on that later! 

10xTravel founder Bryce Conway’s guest column for the Thinkific Blog shows the traffic-boosting power of great blogs. 

“After 3 months of trying and failing to grow our website, it became clear that we needed to start blogging if we ever wanted to build an audience,” Conway explained. “There simply is no better way to do it.” 

Conway later explains that by sharing expertise on popular issues in his industry, he received a massive uptick in website traffic and grew his readership to over 20,000 monthly readers. Now, he works with a network of freelancers to create stimulating content on current and hot topics in the media. That’s a model you can copy, regardless of your industry.

We won’t go too deep and bore you with sales jargon, but this strategy is known as inbound marketing. You blog about a subject people are actually searching for, and viola! Along the way, they discover your brand. This strategy is effective because it also means you don’t have to pay for ads in order to get seen, which is outbound marketing. 

  1. Getting discovered on social media platforms

We all know the power of social media in 2024… and content creation for social media platforms is the backbone of business exposure. 

Did you know that blogging can actually boost your social media visibility? Blog content isn’t just good for driving traffic to your website – it can also inform people of your business, leading them to your other channels as well. 

For businesses that utilize content creation, content from blogs can also be repurposed for social media. By doing this, you’ll build your brand’s audience and reach leads you wouldn’t find otherwise.

For example, suppose you sell lint rollers, and you write a blog post about strategies for removing cat hair from couches. You go in-depth, and write about every possible way to take the feline out of where you recline. That post and the research you put into it are your foundation. 

To take it one step further, you could create an X thread where you break down your hair removal strategies in under 280 characters. It’s shorter, more digestible, and gets you access to a brand-new audience. Equally, you could create an Instagram carousel that features your top five tips for getting cat hair off couches. Better yet, you could even film a TikTok showing how to lint roll like a pro. 

Suddenly, that blog post isn’t just a piece of writing. It’s an entire mini-content marketing campaign, with elements you can spin off to promote your brand on different social media channels.

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  1. Building your online reputation

As you can see from the above example, blogging is an effective way to build your online reputation and establish yourself as a subject matter expert.

A blog is a great way to showcase your brand values to your target audience, and the content you create today can influence customers for years to come. Maintaining a blog also humanizes your business more, showing potential customers your passion, authenticity, and trustworthiness. Bottom line is that if your customers trust your brand, you’ve just increased your customer lifetime value (CLV). 

Word of mouth is a huge player in the game of advertising and social media marketing, and a consistent, high-quality blog that has relevant content is how you build your brand reputation and prove your worth. 

  1. Generating long-term business

Consistency is key… to generating long-term business and loyal customers. Once you’ve created a blog post, it’s yours alone (and it exists forever). You can update and republish key posts yearly to keep them highly ranked, and people will continue discovering your brand through your blog, all on their own. Long-term customers will also appreciate being updated with the most relevant content. 

Best of all, your blog content will make first impressions for you. When a customer or client reaches out for the first time, they’ll already have a perception of you formed by reading your blog posts. Maintaining updating a blog will help build long-term customer relationships, and you’ll be viewed as a reliable source of knowledge. 

  1. Professional expression

Let’s say you’re a lifestyle influencer or an interior designer… maintaining a blog is a great way to keep your audience engaged and up-to-date. People follow you because not only do they like your clothing style or home feng shui, but they love your personality and trust your recommendations. If you write a blog about something you’re passionate about, you can get your followers hooked on a brand new thing – while also gaining new audience members at the same time. 

Starting a blog in any profession will help snag professional opportunities simply by expressing your passions. Not to mention, this is a great way to open the door to sponsorships, affiliate marketing, and ads (more on this later on)!

Showing your audience tidbits of what excites you is what will keep your followers hooked – don’t underestimate the power of influence. So, get out there and learn how to start a blog that lets the world know who YOU are! 

Related: 12 of the Top Social Media Courses to Level-Up Your Marketing

How to find your blog niche

Before learning the ins-and-outs of how to start a blog, it’s essential that you discover your niche! 

Finding your niche – also known as the thing that differentiates you against your competitors – allows you to specialize and build a brand that proves you’re the very best at what you do. Essentially your niche is the core area of focus for your business.  

If you’re an established business that already has a niche, there are ways you can narrow or widen your area of speciality to capture the attention of a brand new audience – listening to what people want or are looking for is how businesses grow and continue to thrive. 

On the other hand, if you are just starting your own business, then the world is your oyster! While you may have a general idea of what area you are going to specialize in,  choosing a niche is important as this shows the world why your product or service is different from your competitors. Finding a niche helps narrow in on who your core audience is, which is essential to building a successful marketing plan as it involves looking at the needs of your target audience. 

Whether you pick a hyper-competitive niche with established players or a super specific niche, it all boils down to understanding your audience, and how you can make your business stand out. 

Finding your unique angle 

When learning how to create a blog, it’s vital to understand your niche and how this relates to your customers. Your blog will be the focus of your content, and it’ll help reel viewers into your business. 

Here are some tips on how to find a successful and profitable niche to write about in your blog: 

  • Find your passion – Finding your niche comes down to finding what you are passionate about… what could you talk about for days on end? What is your expertise, and do you have skills or knowledge to share with others? If you are passionate about something, it means you’ll want to invest more time and energy into your blog. And trust us, people will see when you are a subject-matter expert in something – this won’t go unnoticed by your viewers! 
  • Look at your competitors – One of the most important steps to finding your niche is looking at what others in your speciality are doing… what blog topics haven’t they written about? What areas are your competitors’ lacking in that your business could make up for? What are they doing really well?
  • Find your audience – While you may have a general idea of who your audience is, in order to make your blog stand out it’s important to go a step further. Research exactly who you want to target by looking at demographics such as their age, location, how they like to shop, what their typical spending range is, and what they are most interested in hearing about. 
  • Stand out from the crowdYou’ll want to do some very basic research to learn what topics people are searching for within your niche, as this will help you stand out from the crowd. Analyze your niche through Google Trends, which is a great free way to measure search volumes (a.k.a. how many times people search for a phrase in Google every month). Then, think of some core keywords related to your niche. Google Trends simply tells you which pathways people are taking to reach your niche online, helping you gain better visibility. 
  • Create a sub-niche – If you have a popular niche, a great way to expand into a new audience is to develop a sub-niche. Ask yourself which areas within your niche still haven’t been saturated, and focus on that. If you write about a specific topic within a topic, you’ll come across as a master… which will help your blog and business stand out, too. 

Caring about your niche is absolutely crucial, as it’ll set the foundation for a high-ranking blog. And as we mentioned before, a successful blog will expose other facets of your business, drawing new people in. 

Related: Customer Engagement: A Comprehensive Guide

How to start a successful blog

So, now that you understand the hype AND benefits around blogging, let’s get into the nitty-gritty details about how to start a successful blog in 2024.

  1. Pick a blog name

When starting your own blog, you need to have a solid plan and strategy, right from the get-go. And the first step involves choosing a catchy and captivating name for your blog. 

Now that you’ve developed your niche (or sub-niche!), it’s time to choose a name for your blog. This is the name that people will search for and remember, so it’s important to choose something simple, memorable, and true to your brand. 

Keep in mind that when picking your blog name, you’ll want to consider your target audience, the subjects you’ll be writing about, and how it aligns with your brand values. 

Here are a few different naming strategies you can use for your new blog:

  • Use your business name – If you already have an established business and website, then this step is easy because you can simply use your business name. 
  • Use your personal name – If you’re a consultant, solo entrepreneur, or a course creator, consider going with the name that you already go by. This puts you front and center, and will make your blog feel extra-personal. Plus, it’s a great way to build your personal brand. Tip: if you have a super common name, try using your middle name!
  • Look for inspo in your nicheIf your blog is focused on a particular field or industry, using your business name or own name might not make the cut. Instead, you might want to use a broader title that reflects the sort of content you’re blogging about. Look at keywords in your niche or related words that you could use as a starting point for your blog title. 
  • Try a blog-name generatorAnother good strategy for naming your blog is plugging some keywords into a blog naming generator. Pick a few terms that are related to your industry, and let a naming tool like BlogTyrant’s do the hard work. There’s no shame in letting a robot help you brainstorm… as long as you have a good, original name, it won’t matter how you got it!
  • Survey your existing audience – If you have an established following, why not poll or survey your audience to find out what name is the most popular? This also works for companies as you can ask employees which name they think works the best. Sometimes getting an outside opinion is the best way to decide. 
  1. Establish your blog hosting platform

Before you can get started building your blog, you’ll need to set up a hosting platform. This is essentially purchasing your domain name (a.k.a. your blog’s name) – this is the web address your blog audience will search to read your articles. 

It’s extremely important to choose a reputable host. If you go with a bottom-of-the-barrel, extra-cheap hosting provider, your blog may see performance issues, such as lag time while loading. You might not notice this, but search algorithms definitely will – which means you’ll risk not showing up in search results. 

But don’t worry, hosting isn’t too expensive! In fact, many hosting providers will only cost you a couple coffees per month, and they’ll keep your blog up and running around the clock. 

Here are some of our top recommendations for hosting platforms in 2024, some with their own CMS included (in no particular order): 

  1. WordPress – for customization options
  2. Hostinger – for affordability 
  3. GreenGeeks – for security and eco-friendly 
  4. DreamHost – for easy access 
  5. Squarespace – for templates
  6. Nexcess – for flexibility 
  7. Wix – for drag-and-drop
  8. CMS Hub – for marketing 
  9. Weebly – for e-commerce 
  10. Thinkific – for monetization 

Now that you own your own domain name, you’re ready to build your blog through a Content Management System, also known as a CMS.

The most common CMS is WordPress, an open-source classic used by brands of all sizes. There are many great ones out there, though. Here are our top picks to get you started: 

CMS platforms let you build your own website without having to code. Your CMS is where you’ll go to create new pages, publish articles, and update old content in the future. If you’re a blogger, picking a CMS is like picking a significant other – so choose wisely! 

  1. Create and publish content

Once you’ve got your website domain and CMS platform set up, your next step is creating and publishing content. 

Content creation is a topic in and of itself, and there is a ton of strategy that goes into choosing what to write. We’ve already got a comprehensive guide to writing blog posts that’ll get you going. But at the core, you’ll always want to ask yourself these key questions: 

  1. Who is my target audience? 
  2. What interests them?
  3. What problems are they trying to solve?
  4. What can I teach them? 
  5. What is relevant to them?

This approach will stop you from veering outside your niche, creating off-brand content, and from writing about topics that someone else has already covered. And it’ll help you find interesting, hidden stories to bring to life for your audience. Remember, consistency is key with your brand!

  1. Design and user experience

Once you brainstorm some ideas and create content for your blog, the next step is to make sure your blog design is aesthetically-appealing and user-friendly. This ensures that your readers have the best experience. 

Start by choosing a blog theme and making sure everything you write and publish is consistent with this theme. These design practices will help your blog look well-thought out and boost traffic to your website. 

It’s also a good idea to think about if you want your blog to be mobile friendly – it’s worth considering as more and more people are opting to learn from their mobile devices these days. 

Related: What is M Learning? Mobile Learning Pros/Cons & Tips

  1. Market your blog

Now that you’ve learnt how to make a blog and have some content ideas circulating, the next step is learning how to promote your blog so that you reach a wider target audience. 

The first strategy we’d recommend is repurposing blog content for your social media channels, as we mentioned previously. This strategy has proven to be the most effective in promoting blogs.

Turn a long-form blog post into a carousel post on Instagram, create a deep dive thread on X, or film a TikTok of someone simply speaking that breaks down the main points of your blog, and then direct people to your website for the full story. Tip: leave some cliffhangers that’ll have your audience jumping over hurdles to find out more.

This kills two birds with one stone. It solves the “what do I post on Instagram” conundrum, and it drives people back to your original blog post. 

As well, don’t underestimate the power of email marketing – this is also another successful way to promote your blog. Create a blog newsletter to gain subscribers, which you can promote through social media. Once you have a list of readers, use call-to-actions (CTAs) on your blog newsletter to incentivize people to read your latest post. 

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Besides content repurposing and email marketing, another key tactic is making your blog become more searchable – which is the whole point of writing a blog! To get your blog seen by those far and wide, it’ll be useful to learn a little bit about search engine optimization (SEO). You don’t have to become a know-it-all expert, but it is definitely worth familiarizing yourself to increase traffic to your website. 

SEO is the process of organically increasing your blog’s visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). You can leverage this process by doing some keyword research, which involves finding high-ranking terms and weaving them into your blog post. This will rank your website higher in searches and drive more people to your blog. 

Related: 17 Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic in 2023

How to monetize your blog

At this point, you’ve learnt how to start a blog and now have all the tools you need to get your blog up-and-running.

Now for the highly anticipated question: how do you actually monetize all of your blog content?

First, it’s important to understand how content creators make money:

  • By driving customers to an existing product or service 
  • Sales through online courses 
  • Selling awareness to a third party 

Here are some proven strategies used by bloggers on how to make money blogging.

  1. Sponsored content

Once you have a dedicated audience, intertwining your blog with sponsored content is one of the best ways to monetize your blog and make passive income. 

In exchange for a per-post fee, you’ll blend advertising for a company’s product into your blog posts. This is a win-win situation. For you, the benefit is money. For your sponsor, it’s a trustworthy, third-party piece of content that promotes their product – if it’s done well, it’ll seem flawlessly organic, which will build a lasting relationship between you and your sponsor. 

Sponsored posts can actually take a variety of forms, including: 

  • Posts written by you about a sponsor’s product
  • Links to a sponsor’s website and/or product pages
  • A list that includes positive coverage of a sponsor’s product
  • A product announcement that gives a limited-time discount to blog readers

It’s important to note that you should always let your readers know when your blog has sponsored content. This will maintain their trust – which is why it’s also wise to be choosy with sponsored content. If you actually use the product or service you are sponsoring, you’ll instill trust in your readers and they’ll be more drawn to your content.  

If you focus on all of the blog-creating tips we mentioned above, you’ll soon have an organic following which will have sponsors knocking on your door. Remember, focus on creating quality content that stands out in your niche, and in time, they’ll come to you.

  1. Ads and affiliates

Affiliate marketing is probably one of the most common – and effective – ways to make money through blogging. 

An affiliate program is an agreement with a business where they pay a creator a commission each time someone makes a purchase based on their recommendation through clickable links or unique codes.

Essentially, through your blog you provide affiliate links to products, and every time a customer that reads your blog makes a purchase using that link or code, you get a commission fee. 

Again, since you are incorporating products or services into your writing, you’ll want to advertise products that your audiences are interested in. The audience that reads your home cooking blog probably doesn’t want to buy moisturizer… but they’d definitely be interested in crockpot recommendations. 

We know from experience that there is a lot of confusing information out there about affiliate networks. We’ve pulled together a shortlist of nine reputable affiliate programs that you can join today: 

  1. Instagram Affiliate
  2. FlexOffers
  3. AWIN (prev. Affiliate Window)
  4. Amazon Associates Program
  5. CJ Affiliate
  6. Affiliaxe
  7. Thinkific Affiliate Program
  8. ShareASale
  9. Udemy Affiliates Program

Ads are also another way to monetize your blog. Enabling Google AdSense (Google’s advertising toolkit) on your blog is a great way to turn the clicks your blog is earning into direct deposits to your bank account. 

How does it work? You make your blog available to Google’s network of advertisers and allow ads to be displayed on your site. Ad impressions and clicks then add up to a monthly AdSense payout. AdSense is free to join, the eligibility requirements are low, and your advertising income can scale as your blog does, too. 

  1. Online courses

Blog articles are a great way to introduce people to your company or personal brand – especially if you offer an online course.  

Online courses are the fastest and most scalable way to drive revenue from your blog. If you haven’t thought about starting an online course, well here is your sign to get one up and running ASAP. Assembling your expertise into easy-to-digest courses is valuable to anyone seeking knowledge on a specific topic, and it can be quite lucrative too! 

The best part is, once you’ve created an online course, it’s done! While you might need to update it every so often, it’s still a finished asset that you can send your blog audience to forever. And if your blog becomes a go-to within your niche, your bank account could skyrocket – seriously, we’ve seen it happen many times.

For more inspiration, check out our guide to successfully creating an online course.

Related: How to Price Your Online Course (Complete Guide to Course Pricing)

  1. Digital products

If an online course isn’t for you, we’ve got you covered with the next best way to monetize your blog – through digital products. 

More people are shopping in the virtual world in 2024, and there is almost no limit to the kinds of digital products you can market. Creating and selling digital products will help you open up a passive revenue stream that requires minimal input from you. The best part? You can leverage your digital products within your blog, reeling in customers and increasing your revenue. 

Blogging and digital products pretty well go hand-in-hand, and if you’re new to the creator industry here are some digital product ideas to get you started: 

  • Ebooks 
  • Printables
  • Templates
  • Designs
  • Photography
  • Music and audio
  • Software and games
  • Worksheets

There is a huge demand for digital products, and they are a low-cost, low-hassle way to open a new revenue stream. And if you already have digital products that you’re selling, this is even more of an incentive to create a blog as this is one of the best ways to promote your digital goods. 

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Key takeaways

There you have it – a complete guide on how to start a blog and make money blogging in 2024. 

Now that the gears in your head are turning on how to create a blog for your brand, keep in mind that the fastest, most effective way to monetize your blog and build passive income is to start creating courses or selling digital products. 

That’s where The Leap comes in. The Leap is a free, AI-powered, all-in-on creator store that enables you to start earning money, today.

We totally get it: getting into the digital product game can be more than a little overwhelming (“I just don’t have the time!” “Where would I even start?!”) And that’s why we created The Leap, a free tool that helps you build, sell, and promote your digital products in a snap.

Bottom line: The Leap makes jumpstarting your creator monetization journey a breeze. Our platform empowers you to make more than just your first few dollars, but to build a sustainable income engine by transforming your knowledge into profitable digital products.

Make the jump to The Leap. Try our all-in-one creator store for free today.


This blog was originally published in May 2022, it’s since been updated in February 2024 to include new info.