A Beginner's Guide: Make Money Blogging

Do you want to know 3 simple steps every beginner needs to make a full-time income blogging?

You need to identify your target audience and determine what they really need, you need to establish a monetization plan for your site and you need to develop an editorial calendar for both your site and your social media accounts.

Step #1: Define who your target audience is and what problem you can solve for them

This step is important because if you try to write for everyone, you'll actually not interest anyone. You have to figure out who your target audience is before you EVER even think of starting a blog.

Who is going to read it? Where do they live? Do they have kids? What do they like to eat? What do they do for fun? Where do they hang out online?

The best advice I can give about defining your target audience is to figure out what their top problems are and how you can solve them. Most people go online to find an answer. If you have the answers they need, then they'll come back to your site time and time again.

Step #2: Establish a monetization plan for your site

Once you know your target audience and have identified their top problems, then you are ready to establish a monetization plan for your site.

Will you have ads on your site? Will you do affiliate marketing (promote other people's products)? Will you do sponsored posts (people pay you to write about their products)? Will you create your own products and sell those on your site?

Starting your blog with a monetization plan helps you design your site to incorporate those ideas. You can do one or all of them. Just figure out how you'll make money and design your posts to support that plan.

Step #3: Create an editorial calendar for both your site and your social media accounts

Now that you know your target audience and have a monetization plan, it's time to create an editorial calendar.

There are many online tools and plugins that you can use, but I prefer just plain old paper and pencil. Just print out a calendar for the next three months. List the top 3-5 categories that you write about on your site and brainstorm ideas that fit into each of those. You'll also want to do some keyword research to help you identify the right terms to use to help you get the most traffic.

I like to create a theme for each week (or even month). This helps me to create content in a more concise way. If I can write all of my posts about building traffic one week and then move on to list building the next, I know that I've hit all of the categories on my site and offered my readers diverse content.