How To Start A Blog And Make Money For Free (20 Tips)

To listen to the blog post “How To Start A Blog And Make Money For Free (20 Tips)” over reading it just click the link down below. 

Are you interested in how to start a blog and make money FOR FREE BUT you don’t have any money to invest.  Good news for you, that I am the queen of cheap and doing things for free or on a budget and I am going to tell you how to start a blog in the cheapest MOST none money having way possible. Not just start a blog but also make money from it.  I have been blogging for a long time.

You see this wonderful blog that you are currently reading, yes I started it, designed it, and did not spend much on it. BUT before this blog I started a blog that was an epic fail because I legit did not know what I was doing.  I was just stabbing in the wind because during that time people were blogging but it was not really considered a business, no one really knew that you could actually make money from blogging. So there was not a lot of information out there about how to start a blog and make money it.  You can also check out my video below where I talk about my blogging journey.

Lucky for you and unlucky for me, me stabbing around taught me a lot about blogging  and me being a single mom taught me how to do it for cheap.  Which is why I am the perfect person to tell you the cheapest way to start a blog or how to even start a blog and make money for free. Trust me. But first, don’t forget to click here to see all of my advice on blogging, becoming an influencer, and even a YouTuber because Lord knows I have tried it all AND I have had some form of income from all of them as well.  Now let’s get into it shall we?

1. How To Start Blogging And Make Money ~ Start By Choosing Your Platform

This may sound like common sense BUT in order to start a blog you have to actually choose a platform to start your blog on.  THIS IS IMPORTANT. My first blog failed because of the wrong platform.  You can choose self hosted or you can choose a platform.  I have done both and honestly despite what people say about you HAVING to be self hosted you can make money from both. So, let’s discuss the differences.

2. How To Start A Blog And Make Money For Free ~ Choosing Your Platform

There are plenty of platforms out there such as Blogger, foursquare, and a ton of others.  I am going to recommend wordpress.com and I will tell you why. First, this is literally the cheapest way in starting a blog with no money as wordpress.com is legit FREE. Like 100% free.

And they even have free themes.  Now of course you want your blog to look professional so you can choose from paid themes which range in prices based on what you can afford AND it is something that you can design on your own so that you do not need to hire anyone.  Another money saving tip.

Plus, as you make money you can easily transfer your site to WordPress.org which you can also get someone to do for free or you can even do it yourself. Also, they have a ton of options, plugins, and wordpress.com will make your site look the more professional given it is a free platform.  What I do recommend is to buy your domain. With a free wordpress.com it will say yourdomain.wordpress.com. That is the free one, yes you have to pay money for your domain but it is not much. If you cannot buy your domain then keep the default domain it is better to have something than nothing.

3. How To Start A Blog And Make Money For Free ~ Starting my blog on wordpress.com

When I first started my blog on blogger which was a mistake because there were NO options whatsoever to make my site look like the site you see today. I am on a self hosted WordPress site now BUT this is the same theme as my old site so you can get a decent site with WordPress.com and my theme cost about $50 and it legit looks the same. Once I found that I was growing out of my site or wanted to add ad options then I migrated it to WordPress.org (self hosted) and I was able to keep all of my content and the process as pretty much seamless. And I only did that after my blog grew and I knew it was something I wanted to stick with so there was no money wasted from starting out none self hosted.

4. How To Start A Blog And Make Money For Free ~ Pros of wordpress.com

• It is free.  

• You can upgrade your site and make it look better on a budget or as you get money. 

• Can easily be migrated to a self hosted site. 

• You have a lot of customization options and you can sale your own products. 

• They have their own version of adsense called word ads, which will make you some money but not a lot. 

5. How To Start A Blog And Make Money For Free ~ Cons of wordpress.com

• You do not own your site and if for whatever happens wordpress wants to delete your site they can (although unless you are doing or writing about something insane I am not sure why they would). 

• You cannot get paid by ads.  Yes they have word ads which is no real money. Most people start with Google adsense which can be done on a self hosted site and on wordpress.com you cannot join an ad network.  

6. How To Start Blogging And Make Money ~ A Self Hosted Blog

A self hosted blog is one that you own and I recommend WordPress.org. Now WordPress.org is technically free BUT you do need a host. Which you can choose anywhere. For me personally I used Bluehost because it is highly compatible with WordPress.org and the easier the better.

You can use my affiliate link (click here to sign up) for Bluehost.  Which at this time Bluehost is $7.99 a month which is not expensive. In all honestly, since they are both WordPress sites there are little differences to me. Like I stated above they have themes, ranging in prices that you can install on your own depending on your budget. They do have more customization options which can be important depending on how you want to sale things on your site (if that is your plan to make money) and nothing is going to happen to it as in WordPress is not going to just randomly delete your site.

7. How to Start Blogging And Make Money ~ Pros Of A Self Hosted Site

• The site is yours. You can do what you want and customize how you want and write what you want.

• More money making options. You can sign up for Google adsense that pays more then WordPress ads and as your traffic grows you can apply for ad networks such as Mediavine and Adthrive (which both pay way higher than adsense). 

8. How To Start Blogging and Make Money ~ Cons Of A Self Hosted Site

• Coming from wordpress.com to wordpress.org there is no tech help. BUT I do get tech help from Bluehost which does help with the wordpress side.  

• You are more responsibile for your site. Buying your domain name, renewing, backing up, etc. Where as wordpress.com does it automatically.   

9. How to start a blogging business and how to start a blog and make money

Notice that in the above title the word “business.”  This was my biggest mistake in starting a blog was that I did not treat my blog like a business. So that is what I am going to tell you, your blog is a business, treat it like a business, work on it like a business, and you will make money like a business. Do it like a hobby or just throwing caution to the wind and there is where your money will go. To the wind.

10. How To Start A Blog And Make Money Remember to write for your audience.

Your blog is NOT for you. Whatever you write it needs to help someone in some way. Either it makes them laugh, gives them advice, inspire them, educate them about a product also  known as a product review.

This is a big mistake for bloggers that they write what they want to write about themselves and then wonder why no one visits to their blog. Your blog needs to help people, share yourself and your stories YES, but most of all write things that help people.

11. How To Start A Blog And Make Money Be consistent

Your blog is a business.  That means showing up, writing a blog, and providing useful content.  Do not write one day, then you are gone for weeks, then you write again, gone for week. You will get no where.

12. How To Start A Blog And Make Money You NEED an audience.

As a blogger or influencer in general your audience is everything. If you do not have an audience you have nothing (as in money). You have no one to read your blogs, you have no one to buy your products, you have no numbers to get sponsorship. Remember to cater to your audience, write what they want you to write, listen to them as along as they are not trolls, and respond to them.

Build a relationship with your audience. Be on social media so that you can connect with them. The more you connect with your audience the better you will be. I highly recommend you read this article on the 1000 true fans.  Legit if you can get 1000 true fans, put out $100 worth of products a year (which can include ads and the other things we will talk about below) then that is 100K a year. But the key to a true fan is nurturing your audience.  Click here to read the article. 

13. How To Start Blogging And Make Money ~ Create the best site you can with what you have

No matter what your budget is just do the best you can and create the best looking site you can. People like to look at nice things a cheap site if done well can still do well if it looks neat and well done. But if it just looks like you do not care, threw up something, the pictures or random, or ugly then it will not draw people in.  Take your own pictures or you can search free stock photos. Choose a clean design and make it look the best you can with the money that you do have. Even if you choose a free theme.

14. How To Start Blogging And Make Money ~ Just be you

Yes, it is about providing content to your audience but you still have to be you. Show your personality, insert relevant personal stories where you can. It is about getting fans and the you will get them by them getting to know you.

15. How to Start Blogging And Make Money Learn.

I know there are so many courses and things out there. You can learn for free or get books you can afford.  Do  not go into debt trying to buy every single thing BUT you do need to learn about blogging. The more you  know what are doing the more successful you will be.

Before we continue I invite you to check out a Live Stream I did on how to find your God given purpose and make money from it below, just so you can get an idea of finding your niche and what to write about. Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel by clicking here. 

16. How to start a blog and make money ~ Making money with Ads

Now let’s talk about some of the basic ways you can start making money and it is not the same for everyone. It can be a combination of these things or just a few but here we go.

When you are just starting out a blog I recommend Google AdSense. But you will not get a lot of money with Adsense to be honest.  However, in my opinion it is better than not making any money at all. When I started with Adsense it took me a while to make $100 but that was $100 that I did not have before.

But really the goal is an Ad Network.  I am apart of Mediavine which you need 50K pageviews a month to join and then there are others such as Adthrive where you need 100kpage views to join.  Ad Networks can be a great source of passive income and if you can manage to bring in a lot of traffic it can be your only income.

The website Chasing Foxes is a wonderful example of that and you can view their income report here as well as tips on what they did. This blog also started making a full time income within 3 months of starting so YES it is possible. Here is there breakdown.

• Their  Pageviews: 1,639,903
• Mediavine: $16,364.55

Yes, they made 16k in one month from just ads. BUT they also got over a million page views.  So if you want to make most of your money from ads or all of your money from ads then you will focus on writing on topics that drive in traffic. If you study their site, their site does not have “fans.” Meaning that most people come to view an article and leave not to connect with the creator of the blog. That is because they focus on writing articles for traffic and that is it.  And joining an ad network will always pay you more than Google ad sense.

17. How To Start Blogging And Make Money ~ Making money with Sponsored Post

This means that you will partner with a company or brand and review a product that they have provided you.  Typically the company pays you as well for reviewing their product.  People can make a decent amount of money with sponsored post. Hundreds per post or even thousands.

What determining factor is:

• Is how much traffic you have.
• What is your niche?
• How engaged is your audience?

And you can get more money for doing a sponsored post and then also combining social media such as Facebook or Instagram, and video content. In this case you NEED to have fans. You need to show companies your analytics of your site and you need to have followers on social media.

This is where a dedicated fan base comes in, if you can show a company you have one then they are willing to pay more for sponsored post.  You can click here to learn more about what to charge for a sponsored post and also how to pitch to companies.

To get sponsored post there are sites that link you brands.  You become a member and then apply for relevant sponsorship.  Many people recommend pitching. Which means finding the company and pitching to them to pay you. Also click that link above and she will give you tips for pitching as well. Most people prefer this as they can get paid more and all the money is there own. If you go through a site they will take a fee.

18. How To Start A Blog And Make Money For Free ~ Affiliates Links

Affiliate links are a great way to make money if you have a blog where you are reviewing something such as beauty or fashion. Because most people will want to buy what you have on or buy products you suggest .  Some simple affiliate sites are Amazon Affiliate  (they have everything), EBay, Shop Style Collective, or if you like a certain company or brand 9 times out of 10 they have an affiliate program.  Affiliate means that you earn a certain percent off every sale that you make.  Now, in order for this to be effective you need to:

A. If you have a smaller audience you will make the most money by selling higher priced affiliates. Meaning selling $100 items will get you more commission then selling $10.  If you have a smaller audience selling $10 items will get you no where unless you have a lot of people  buying. 

B. Have people buying on a regular basis and a high commission. Getting in affiliate programs that will pay you 20% commission over 6% and then you will make more. 

C. You can make sales with any audience but the cheaper the items the less kick  back you will get.  

Check out this article for tips on how to make money through Amazon affiliates. He made 90k in two years.  Another great article is Making Sense of sense where she make $22,000 in a month from affiliate links (click here to see an article).

19. How To Start Blogging And Make Money ~ Your own products and services

This is a very popular option for MOST bloggers.  The reason being is because you can have 5 fans or 10 and you can create products.  You can price your products for whatever you want and you can sell them from the very beginning of your blog.  You can see my product page here.  Just to see you can sell whatever it is that you want. Some people may choose to sell their book, their e-book, course, or anything that is made by them.

NOW, in order to make money you need fans.  Some people feel that by pricing their course to be thousands of dollars that they can get one or two people to buy in a month and they have their income. You can always do what you want BUT I will say this. I personally do not adopt that mindset unless you are offering something that is truly worth that much and unless your course if giving people college credits I think some people go overboard.  Taking advantage of your fan base may have them buying from you once BUT they will probably never buy from you again.

One person that I love is Sarah Titus who makes six figures in month you can see her income report here.  She makes most of her money from her own products and they are not crazy expensive.  But most of her fans keep buying from her again and again and she gets more fans.  That is ideal. I have spent a lot on some courses that cost a lot of money and I can tell you from personal experience, 100% of them will never get my money again. It was over priced and did not deliver for the price.  So do not be greedy.

20. How To Start A Blog And Make Money For Free ~ Fan Funding

You can always make money from your site by asking for money from your readers. BUT I think there is a good way to do it and a bad way to do it. The bad way to do it, includes when you see people on YouTube begging and sometimes crying for money from their fans because their views or ad sense went down and then getting mad when their fans do not give it to them.

You can also put in a donation link and ask BUT do not beg or get mad.  Secondly, providing a service and allowing them to donate I think this is the best way. YouTube has fan funding. As in, if you decide to live stream about something want to talk to your fans and they can provide donation to you as you speak.

To make this work you need a dedicated fan base. People will donate to people they like. As for how easy this can be, for Patreon, let’s say for $5 a month you offer content, if you can get 1000 fans then that is $5,000 a month. And $5 a month is not a lot for most people so your fans will buy into it.  And you won’t feel like you are just taking advantage of people for no reason.

I know that this is a lot of information to take in but if you want to know how to start a blog and make money I feel like I gave it to you. There are so many money making options that you have to decide for yourself. And notice that none of them require money to do. Your biggest investment is going to be starting your blog which as we know is not expensive.  I hope that this was able to give you some insight and if you know someone who may want to read this blog then share this post with them.