How to Monetize Your Blog from Day One [2024 Update]
Wondering, HOW DO BLOGGERS MAKE MONEY?
Want to know how to monetize your blog from day one? Well, you’re in the right place because I hit six-figures after just 15 months of blogging — and I’m going to tell you how to make money on your blog from the very beginning.
While not everyone sets up their blog content to make money from day one, I did. I treated my blog like a business from the beginning, and as a result I made money from it rather quickly.
👩💻 If you’re also serious about making money from a travel blog, I highly recommend taking a course. Head here for info on the best travel blogging courses. If you want to read a full review about the best one I’ve done, head here.
While I made $0 in 2020, the year I started my first travel blog, I ended 2021 with $8,490 USD. After just two years into blogging, I was successfully able to monetize my blog, and closed out 2022 to earn $272,769 USD 🤯
Once I figured out how to monetize my blog quickly, I created several more blogs — and I now have 5. Ehen I launch a new blog thee days, I prioritize monetizing it the right way from day one.
By implementing the 5 tips and strategies listed below, you can also monetize your blog from day one and avoid making some of the mistakes I made at the beginning which made monetizing a little harder for me.
How to monetize your blog from day one
What does monetize your site mean?
Monetizing your site means turning your site into a source of income through various methods including affiliate marketing, ads, sponsorships, email marketing, and more.
Essentially, it’s finding ways to make money from the traffic that comes from your website.
These are just a few of the options available that will allow you to earn money while blogging.
How to monetize your blog from day one
Steps to Build Your Blog Foundation
Ready to learn how to start and monetize a blog from day one? It starts with a solid foundation and a clear strategy.
Starting with a solid foundation and strategy is one of the most important factors that will set you up for success from the beginning.
🤓 questions to consider to start with a strong foundation:
- What is your niche? Is it profitable? Are you passionate about it?
- Who is your target audience? What do they want from you, and what can you offer them?
- How will you make money? What methods do you plan to use to monetize your site?
Taking time to lay a strong foundation from the start will pay off in the long run and help you monetize your site faster. Below are some of the first steps you can take to lay a solid foundation for a successful blog.
How to Monetize Your Blog from Day One: 5 Essential Steps
1. Be Clear About Your Goals
To succeed with monetization early, you first need to have a clear set of goals. Following these goals will help you optimize your strategy to hit your targets. This is an essential step in creating a successful monetization plan.
🤓 Questions to ask yourself to help set your goals:
- How much money do you need to consider your site monetized?
- What are your blog traffic goals?
- How much content do you need to generate the necessary traffic?
- When do you want to hit those goals?
- What is your why? What motivates you to hit these goals?
How to monetize your blog from day one
2. Understand the Ways to Make Money from a Blog
Now that you’ve gotten clear about your goals, it’s time to learn about the different avenues you can take to start a blog and get paid.
Most bloggers jump right into thinking How do you monetize a blog?, and How quickly can you monetize a blog? The answers will vary for every website, and every niche.
Regardless, you’ll want to understand how to monetize WordPress blogs in your specific niche. For example: How to monetize food blogs may be vastly different from how to monetize travel blogging.
While both niches might be monetized through affiliate marketing, email marketing, ad networks, sponsorships, and digital products — the methods can be different — so let’s continue to dive deeper into the best way to monetize blogs.
How to monetize your blog from day one
3. Pick a Niche
To get started, it’s important to choose a niche you’re passionate about and in which you can continue to produce valuable content over time.
Aside from your interests, you’ll need to check the traffic, trends, and competition related to your niche.
While “the riches are in the niches,” as the old saying goes, you’ll want to make sure you aren’t niching down too far. However, the easiest way to monetize your blog from day one is with a niche.
Though many new to blogging would consider “travel” a niche, you can certainly get more specific.
For this, consider niches like family travel, RV travel, traveling with pets, aged 50+ travel, London travel, Southeast Asia travel, California travel, honeymoon travel, cruise travel, etc.
Remember that your niche needs to have a decent amount of search volume or you won’t be able to monetize your blog through ads or affiliates (at least not very well).
How to monetize your blog from day one
4. Learn about SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is all about making your website visible to search engines like Google so you can drive traffic to your site.
When you create content for your blog, SEO should be the very first thing you think about — because what’s the point in creating valuable content if nobody can find it?
Learning SEO will allow you to optimize your site, increase organic search traffic, rank #1 in Google search results, and help you find an audience to monetize your blog.
How to monetize your blog from day one
5. Create a Content Strategy
Your content strategy will help you stay on track and make sure you have the right content out at a consistent rate.
Wondering where do you start? When it comes to a great way to get started blogging, there is only one word you need to know: Keywords.
Want to learn more about keywords and keyword research? I have a online course about it called How to Find Affiliate Keywords (That Will Make You a Ton of Money).
Keywords are essentially what people type or speak into Google (or any search engine including Bing and Duck Duck Go). These search terms should lead them directly to the information they are seeking.
Finding the right keywords that you can rank for will help you start your blog off on the right foot. I recommend and use Keysearch for doing keyword research fast and effectively (snag my discount code below).
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You can purchase your Keysearch subscription here, and use my discount code KSDISC to get 20% OFF. With the discount, it’s less than $14 USD per month — but worth 10 times that much!
How to monetize your blog from day one
5 Best Ways to Monetize Your Blog From Day One
For those of you wondering, how do I monetize my blog? or how to monetize personal blogs? — This section is for you.
Right off the bat: There isn’t just one best way to monetize your blog. In fact, there are tons of options, and some may work better than others for different niches.
My favorite part is that once you learn how to monetize blogs, you can do it over and over again. In fact, I have five blogs, and ALL of them are monetized.
So, just how do you make money blogging? Here are a few of the best ways to blog monetize successfully.
How to monetize your blog from day one
1. Affiliate Marketing
One of the most popular ways to monetize your blog without ads and the best way to monetize a blog from day one is with affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is where you promote a product or service and make a commission when people make purchases through your affiliate links.
All it takes is one person using affiliate links on your site for you to start making money.
Over half of my income comes from affiliate marketing, so you might think I’m biased. But, I can assure you that income from affiliate programs can be pivotal when done correctly.
Understanding affiliate marketing isn’t just finding the best products to promote but also the right keywords and an audience ready to buy.
My Affiliate Marketing 101 Masterclass will teach you my money-making strategies so you can start monetizing blog posts the right way.
How to monetize your blog from day one
2. Advertisements on your site
You see it all the time — ads popping on as you scroll through websites. There are various ad networks available for you to take advantage of to place ads on your site.
Some only require a few thousand monthly page views, like Monumentric and SheMedia, while other places like Google AdSense and Ezoic have no minimum traffic requirement.
Premium ad networks like Mediavine and Raptive (formerly Ad Thrive) require up to 100,000 monthly page views before joining.
Joining an ad network requires some forethought, as each one is different. SheMedia, for example, may be lenient on its page view requirements, but they require a one-year contract.
Mediavine, one of the best and most popular ad networks, requires a minimum of 50,000 page views to apply. On a personal note, I have several sites on Mediavine, and love working with them.
🤑 How much I make on ads: Ads account for about 35-45% of my income. My earnings from Mediavine alone vary from about $8,500-10,000 USD per month.
Lastly, You’ll want to consider the RPMs (revenue per thousand impressions) as well. Some networks average higher RPMs than others, which may sway your decision when it comes to choosing one.
Either way, learning how to make money from blog ads is a great way to monetize your website and a goal you can work towards from day one.
On the other hand, if you’re wondering how to start a blog for free and make money, ads may not be the best option because you need a lot of traffic to make a lot of ad revenue — and traffic takes time.
Free website builders like Wix usually won’t allow you to place ads on your site, which is something to keep in mind when starting a blog.
How to monetize your blog from day one
3. Sponsored Content
Sponsorships aren’t just for celebrities and influencers; bloggers can partner with a business to sponsor posts, emails, press trips, or products.
It may seem daunting to approach a business with a sponsorship proposal, but getting advertising on your blog is easier than you might think.
Businesses are always looking for partners and ways to spread awareness about their brands.
To get started with this, you might want to reach out to any companies you know, use and love. With these, you can make authentic recommendations to your audience, which makes product promotion easier.
How to monetize your blog from day one
4. Offer Paid Subscriptions or Consulting Services
No matter what your niche is, you have skills and expertise that others would love to use or learn from you. That’s where paid subscriptions and consulting services come in.
With these offerings, you have the freedom to set your schedule and pricing, thus creating a revenue stream that works for you.
Monthly subscriptions provide consistent income, while consulting services can be high-ticket offerings.
This is a great way to monetize your blog with very little traffic. As long as you have the right audience, you can start selling your services from day one.
How to monetize your blog from day one
5. Digital Products: Sell Travel Itineraries, Guides or E-Books
Digital products are a great option to monetize your blog from day one.
Similar to affiliate marketing, you only need one person to purchase your product to make money with your blog. Products can include video courses, e-books, travel guides, custom travel itineraries, T-shirts, and more.
Not only can they provide another stream of income, but once they’re created, most digital products are completely passive income.
Learn how to monetize travel blogs with itineraries and e-books, and you can make money off them again and again with little effort — and you can earn while you sleep 😴
How to monetize your blog from day one
Blog Monetization Requirements
Monetizing your blog requires planning and goal-setting from the beginning. In my first full year of blogging, I only made $8,490 in total.
However, after understanding the necessary steps to monetize my site and implementing them correctly, I managed to earn $272,769 in year two (and yes, I track every single dollar I make).
🤓 monetizing through Affiliate Marketing
There are different requirements to keep in mind before learning how to make a monetized blog.
For affiliate marketing, it’s important to choose affiliate partners and products that align with your audience’s interests.
Amazon Associates is where many bloggers start, but it’s not the only option, and it’s not necessarily the best option for everyone.
Need some inspiration? Check out these 55+ Best Affiliate Programs for Travel Bloggers.
🤓 monetizing through ad placements
If you’re wondering how to monetize a WordPress blog or how to monetize Wix blogs, the free version of Wix doesn’t allow ad placements or online store integrations.
With free tools like this, the ways for how to start a free blog and get paid are, well, limited. However, since you own your WordPress site, you are able to monetize it without restriction.
For this reason, it’s important to make sure you’re using a web builder and WordPress plugins that support your monetization goals, as each ad network has its own set of requirements before accepting your site.
For example, Mediavine’s entry requirements include 50,000 sessions in 30 days and original, long-form content. Before getting started, be aware of the entry requirements, so you know what goals to work towards.
How To Monetize Your Blog from Day One: FAQs
Now that you know how to make money from your blog, here are some frequently asked questions about when to monetize your blog and learning how to make money with your blog from day one.
How to monetize your blog from day one
How to monetize my blog without Adsense?
You can monetize your blog without Adsense by utilizing other revenue streams such as affiliate marketing, digital products, email marketing, sponsorships, and more.
By planning and implementing these other options, you can monetize your blog without relying on ad networks. In fact, many bloggers find Adsense isn’t very profitable at all, and earn only pennies each day.
So, if you’re wondering how to monetize my blog with Adsense, I would actually recommend you look elsewhere because other blog revenue streams will be more lucrative.
Learning how to monetize your blog with Google Adsense won’t make you much money in the long run — especially if your goal is how to create a blog for free on Google and earn money.
How to monetize your blog from day one
How long did it take you to make a living from your blog?
When it comes to how long does it take to monetize blogs and making a living from your blog, everyone’s journey is different. However, with proper planning, goals, strategies, and execution, I know it’s possible to turn your blog into a profitable business within two years (because I did it).
Making a living from your blog will require using successful monetization methods from the beginning, building valuable content, proper SEO blogging strategies, hard work, and most of all, time.
There’s a common saying in the blogging works: Blogging is a marathon, not. a sprint.
This basically means don’t expect to make money blogging in three months. It takes strategies, time, patience, hard work, consistency and implementation to learn how to monetize.
🔎 How hard is it to monetize a blog?
Unlike what some might think, blogging is NOT a get rich quick scheme. It is a long game, it’s not easy, and it takes a lot of work.
However, it also has a low barrier to entry because you basically only need a computer and your phone camera to do it. In this regard, it’s much easier to monetize a blog than open a car dealership.
However, when thinking about how to use your blog to make money, I always suggest enrolling in blogging courses so you know how to blog the right way — which helps you make money blogging MUCH faster.
How to monetize your blog from day one
How soon can I monetize my blog?
While I don’t think you can monetize your blog from day one, you can start taking steps from day one. If you stay consistent with your blog, it’s possible to turn your blog into a profitable business within two years (because I did it).
If you’re wondering, Should I monetize my blog? My answer is yes.
Don’t wait to monetize your blog, either. The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll be earning money — and you contrary to popular belief, you don’t even need to use social media.
In fact, I don’t do any social media, and earn multiple six figures from blogging each year.
With a strategic plan and implementation of monetization methods, you can begin selling your digital products, promoting your affiliate products, and building partnerships as soon as you begin.
How to monetize your blog from day one
How many views do I need to monetize my blog?
The question of How much traffic to monetize blog do I need? is one I see come up a lot. While there isn’t a magic number of views you need to monetize your blog, with 25,000 monthly page views, you should be able to earn about $1,000-3,000 USD per month.
Every niche is different though, so when you’re trying to figure out how to monetize a food blog, how to monetize a finance blog or how to monetize a travel blog, those income numbers will vary.
Regardless, the best blog monetization approach still means you’ll need to have a few thousand page views before you can expect consistent income from your blog.
In reality, it only takes one particular person to buy your product or use your link for you to earn affiliate income — but the more traffic you have, the more people will be buying.
This works the same with blogging ad income; the more eyes on those ads, the more money you earn. In short: Getting more traffic consistently is the best monetize blogs approach of them all.
How to monetize your blog from day one
How can I make money blogging in one month?
It’s very unlikely that you’ll make money blogging in one month, especially with your fit blog.
As they say, blogging is a marathon, not a sprint — so auilding a successful blog and learning how to make money blogging takes time.
You’ll need valuable content, a loyal audience, and time to rank on Google. For Google to rank your blog in the top spots on page one, it must like and trust your site — and that can take about six months.
Nevertheless, I do think you can set your blog up to make money in your first month if you’ve already done it on another blog. I have personally managed to do this, but it was only a few hundred that I made in month one.
To earn full time income from a blog, know it will take time, hard work, and patience to see the money roll in. If it were easy to start a blog and make money from day one, everyone would be doing it.
Final Thoughts: How to Monetize Your Blog From Day One
We’e reached the end, and I hope this article answered the question How do I monetize my blog? for you!
I also hope you’re feeling confident and ready now that you know how to start a blog and make money from home.
If so, you’re on your way to earning income and getting paid to blog daily — because in order to earn, you have to get started. No one starts out perfectly, but you have to get started in order to one day see blogging success.
Monetizing a blog is starting a business, and should be treated as such, but by focusing on monetizing, bloggers have the potential to earn a lot of money.
Whether you choose to focus on affiliate marketing, email, ads, or digital products, you can successfully monetize your blog early on by following the steps outlined in this post.
In conclusion, achieving any great goal requires the right strategies and implementation. Blogging is NOT common sense; there is a right way to do it, and a wrong way to do it.
If you want to learn how to become a travel blogger and make passive income online, I highly suggest investing in a travel blogging course with step-by-step instructions so you start it off right.