Do you have a passion?
Do you have a hobby?
If you do, then why not start writing about it online, sharing your knowledge with other people and making money by doing it?
Have you heard about bloggers who make a living thanks to their blogs?
jeffbullas.com, pinchofyum.com or chrisguillebeau.com - the owners of these blogs make money online writing about something they are interested in.
Could you do the same? Sure you could? But it takes dedication and effort!
Blogging is not a sprint but a marathon. It?s not a fast way to start earning money online.
If you?re looking for a way to make a quick buck online, then you should stay away from blogging.
Most bloggers, before they started making decent amounts of money online by blogging, worked on their blogs for at least a few years.
Some of them it took 2 years to become successful and some others it took 5 or 7 years to start making a full time income online and quit their day jobs.
How is it going to be in your case?
That depends on whether you?re willing to learn and use the right tools that will help you achieve your goals much faster.
In this blog post I?m going to tell you where you can get the right education and what tools to use to build a profitable online business as a blogger.
Where can I learn to make money blogging?
It goes without saying that education is one of the most important components of success.
Doesn?t matter if you run an offline business or an online one, you first need to acquire the proper skills in order to achieve the results that you expect.
If you?re just starting out online and you?re sure that blogging is the thing that you want to focus on so that you could leave your 9-5 job someday then I would recommend you to try out a newbie-friendly educational platform called Wealthy Affiliate.
Why Wealthy Affiliate?
Because it?s perfect for beginners like you and once you become a member you get pretty much everything you need to start building a business with your blog.
Although Wealthy Affiliate is called an educational platform or a training site, in fact it is a lot more.
Thanks to the technology created by WA you can build your first blog within a minute or two.
As a free member you can create 2 free websites on a siterubix.com domain.
As a Premium member you can build 50 websites. (25 on your own domain and 25 on siterubix.com domain)
Apart from that you also get access to the Wealthy Affiliate keyword research tool.
Why do you need a keyword research tool? It?s helpful in finding the best keywords that you should target in your blog posts.
You should always focus on long-tail keywords because they make it much easier for your blog posts to rank higher in Google.
Another reliable keyword research tool is Jaaxy, but you need to pay for it separately, it?s not part of the WA membership.
However, from my experience, WA keyword research tool is almost as good as Jaaxy.
But that?s not it yet.
Blog builder and keyword research tool are just two things to make your life easier as a blogger.
There?s something else that is even more important than the ability to build websites quickly and to find the right keywords for your blog posts.
It?s the skills that you acquire by learning.
Your skills will let you build a successful business even if you don?t have the right tools to do it.
One of the first trainings that you should go through within Wealthy Affiliate is Certification Course consisting of 5 levels.
Level 1 ? Getting Started
Level 2 ? Building your own traffic producing website
Level 3 ? Making money
Level 4 ? Mastering Social Engagement
Level 5 ? Achieving Maximum Success through Content Creation
Another valuable training is called Affiliate Bootcamp consisting of 7 phases.
Below you can have a look at what lessons the first phase of the training consists of.
Apart from that there are weekly live webinars during which you can learn different aspects of affiliate marketing and making money with your blog.
Then there?s also a live chat support thanks to which you can ask questions and receive answers from other Wealthy Affiliate members.
If you?re a newbie and would like to find out how affiliate marketing works and how to become an effective affiliate marketer and start making money blogging, then Wealthy Affiliate is definitely the right place for you.
Although Wealthy Affiliate could significantly help you in growing your online business by providing you with the right tools, training and support, there?s more you can do to take your blog to the next level.
Themes and plugins for your WordPress blog that will help to turn it into a money making machine
First of all it would be best to use a theme that:
- was built for speed
- contains smart conversion elements
- is designed for user engagement and readability
- easily creates sales pages and opt-in pages
- is fully customizable
- is fully mobile responsive
- contains built-in features that replace typical plugins.
Do such WordPress themes exist?
Yes, they are created by Thrive Themes.
These are some of the best themes for everyone who has a blog for making money.
There are many other places where you can buy a great theme for your blog, but you won?t find many themes that have been created specifically for doing an online business.
Such themes have certain built-in features (that you won?t find anywhere else) thanks to which your blog will run faster, will rank better in Google, will enable you to build your list of subscribers easier, will look great on any device and more.
For example, have a look at the Rise theme which is perfect for blogging and affiliate marketing.
What truly sets our themes apart is that they are built around features and functionality that help you get more traffic, more social shares, more sales and more email subscribers. The foundation of our themes is not design, it's function.
?We also collaborate with experts in various online business fields like publishing and conversion optimization, to get an inside view of how we can make Thrive Themes the best for real-world use. The themes are built and developed by people who have real insight and are at the cutting edge of their fields. - Thrive Themes
Now that you have your blog created and your chosen theme installed on it, you can start creating content and promote different affiliate products (or your own products) within this content.
If you have a blog you need to create content, there?s no way around it.
The more content you produce and the higher quality content it will be, the more traffic you will bring to your blog and make more sales as a result.
Thrive Themes created a great plugin called Thrive Content Builder.
It?s probably the most advanced WordPress plugin for creating content thanks to which writing content on your blog will be a pleasure.
This drag-and-drop WordPress editor will let you enrich your blog content with many different elements.
You?ll be able to quickly create:
- social sharing buttons
- table of contents
- calls to action
- content boxes
- ?click to tweet? boxes
- content grids
- countdown timers ? and more
In my opinion this is one of the most essential plugins that you should install on your blog right away even if you?re just starting your blogging journey.
You will see how much easier it will be for you to do different things with your content thanks to this plugin.
For example, creating a table of contents for your blog post is not that easy in a standard WordPress editor, however it?s a piece of cake when you use Thrive Content Builder.
What?s more, this plugin also includes a full suite of landing pages.
So you will not only be able to create great looking content using the Thrive Content Builder editor, but also, quickly and easily, build landing pages or edit the existing templates in order to promote different products or build your email list.
Is this all what you need to become a successful blogger and start making money online?
You already know where you can quickly build your blog and learn how to monetize it.
You know that Wealthy Affiliate will provide you with training, tools and support and Thrive Content Builder will let you build stunning content faster and easier.
But in order to really change your blog into a money making machine you need to start building your email list.
Of course landing pages are very useful for this purpose, but there?s something better.
It?s opt-in forms and pop-ups that you can place on your blog anywhere you wish.
Imagine what results you could achieve, how big email list you could build, if you could place opt-in forms within your content or at the end of your content, if you could use pop-ups on page load or while a visitor tries to leave your site.
For this and much more allows you another plugin created by Thrive Themes called Thrive Leads.
Remember you?re not building your blog just for fun because you have nothing else to do, but in order to make money with it so that one day you could leave your 9-5 job and make a full time income online.
If you take blogging seriously and you really want to achieve your goal of making money with it, then you should take advantage of the best solutions available.
One of such solutions is Thrive Leads ? lead generation plugin for WordPress.
What can you do with Thrive Leads?
You can create different opt-in forms which you can either use to build a list of subscribers or to redirect visitors to a different page on your blog or outside of it.
Here?s a full list of different kinds of forms that you can create with Thrive Leads:
- PopUp Lightbox
- ?Sticky? Ribbon
- In-line Form
- 2-step opt-in form
- Slide-in
- Opt-in widget
- Screen filler overlay
- Content lock
- Scroll mat
- Multiple choice form
If you want to learn more about Thrive Leads, click on the following link: Best List Building Tools.
Conclusion
Now, the question arises.
Do you really need all this knowledge, themes and plugins in order to become a successful blogger and make money?
Well, actually you can do without themes and plugins when you?re just starting out, but you cannot do without the right knowledge that will enable you to make a faster progress and avoid making mistakes that many beginners make.
You have to learn the basics, that?s the first and most important step in your blogging journey.
You have to learn how to write SEO-friendly articles, how to promote your content, how to find content ideas from keywords and more.
And Wealthy Affiliate is just prefect for that.
Later, once you decide that blogging is what you want to do for a living, you can invest in better themes and plugins that will take your blog to the next level.
Remember, that in order to make money online you need to be ready to invest some money in your online business sooner or later.
But first of all you need to be determined, persistent and hard working.
If you get discouraged quickly then probably blogging is not for you.
If I were you and thought about making money with a blog this is what I would do.
1. I would first create a free Wealthy Affiliate account just to see how it works.
2. If I were satisfied, after a month I would upgrade to a Premium account.
I would go with the monthly membership first (probably for a month or two) just to check what the Premium account has to offer.
3. If I were still satisfied I would pay for the whole year upfront instead of paying for each month separately. It?s a cheaper option.
4. Because blogging is all about creating content I would definitely purchase the Thrive Content Builder plugin as soon as possible.
5. Then, after a few months, once I would notice that my blog is getting more and more traffic, I would invest in the Thrive Leads plugin and probably an autoresponder.
Remember that you can always become a Thrive Member and have access to all the themes and plugins created by Thrive Themes.
This way you would have everything that in my opinion you need to become a successful blogger and make money with your blog.
The rest is up to you. If you don?t quit you will not fail.
?
Winners never quit, and quitters never win.
-Vince Lombardi