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If you’re like me, by this point you’re probably starting to wonder how to make money with a blog for beginners?

After all, it’s been 3 months since I started my family travel blog Travel With A Plan and I’m finally starting to see a little income come in.

In the spirit of transparency and in helping others who are in the same (new blogger) shoes, I am keeping a diary of my blogging experience in real-time.

My hope is that you will find encouragement in my strategies and progress. Or, perhaps you’ll leave feeling really good because your new blog is crushing my stats!

Either way is a win!

Stick around until the end of the post where you find links to my entire (free!) New Blogger series that includes my ongoing blog income reports as well as how I eventually started making 5K/month after only 2.5 years of blogging!

Some links on this page may be affiliate links. If you click on links and purchase them, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

How To Make Money As A New Blogger

There are several ways to make money with a blog for beginner bloggers (blogs that are 1 – 3 months old) that don’t yet have a large audience.

New bloggers can make money blogging by:

  • Ad network sales (ads served to readers based on their preferences; beginners typically start with Google Adsense then Ezoic).
  • Affiliate sales (purchases and bookings made through links for which you receive a small commission at no extra cost to consumers)
  • Freelance writing (writing stories for other travel blogs for a fee)
  • Writing sponsored posts (getting sponsored for writing a post for a brand or destination)
  • Sell ad space on your website

Once you become more experienced and your blog has domain authority, as well as higher monthly pageviews and sessions, there are many additional ways to make money blogging.

Any monetization strategy, however, takes time, dedication, patience, and most of all, a focus on search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO

In order to make money as a new blogger, you absolutely must optimize each and every blog post that you write.

In fact, I started optimizing my blog posts for the search engines from day 1.

Some of the strategies that I’ve used during months 1 – 3 of starting a new blog include researching applicable keywords and using them in blog post titles, subheadings, blog post context, and meta descriptions.

I continue to monitor the appropriate use of keywords by using the Yoast SEO plug-in to achieve the ‘green-light’ in these areas.

Another SEO strategy that I use as a new blogger to make sure that all of my posts are at least 300 words in length.

In fact, blog posts with 1000+ words rank best for SEO and longer posts ranging from 2,400-3,000 tend to get the added benefits of more shares and increased reader engagement.

“According to research done by popular blogging platform, Medium, the ideal lengthfor blog posts is 1,600 words (or seven minutes of reading).

WESFED Web Development

The icon that will lead you to find your blog post word count is the circled lower case letter “i” at the top of your post editing page.

See the screenshot below.

Screenshot of where to find blog post Word Count in wanting to make money as a new blogger

Search Engine Optimization is an area in which I definitely still have a lot of work to do. Looking back on the past 3 months, I find it hard to imagine having mastered SEO along with everything else that comes with starting a new blog.

I plan to continue to research and grow my SEO strengths and domain authority (DA) as the days, weeks, and months go by.

You can learn more about blog post SEO here.

How to Make Money As A New Blogger With Pinterest

Since organic traffic from Google takes time to kick in, I am focusing on Pinterest to drive traffic to my site. Pinterest continues to be ranked as the best social media platform for bloggers for a few different reasons.

First, unlike Twitter or Instagram, your content has a long lifespan as your pins can go viral days, weeks, or even a few months later.

Second, you can rank on Pinterest just like for Google by optimizing your pins and boards using keywords. You don’t need to have a huge number of followers. Anyone can find if you connect them to your content through using keywords.

I went from 29 Pinterest followers my first month, to 532 Pinterest followers my third month just from pinning, re-pinning, and following others. Along with pinning 20% of my own content, I re-pin 80% of others, as well as am active on several group boards within my niche.

Another accomplishment is that in a little less than 3 months, I have increased my Pinterest views from 0 to 109,344 by remaining consistently active.

Graph of pinterest growth on how I make money as a new blogger

The more posts you have, the more pins you can create, thus more chances to attract traffic from Pinterest.

Pins

As of now, I am attempting to ‘make’ 3-4 different pins for each blog post that I write. Some experts recommend creating as many as 5 pins per post. Having multiple pin images not only improves your reach but also your SEO for Pinterest.

Creating multiple pins is also recommended because different colors and layouts will appeal to different viewers. 

As mentioned in Lessons Learned During Month 1 of blogging, I use Canva to create all of my pins.

Tailwind

Being that I have a full-time job outside of blogging, it is unreasonable to think that I can be pinning consistently at all hours of the day as the algorithm suggests.

Further, the suggested amount of pinning and repinning is where the recommendations get a little hard for me to pinpoint.

In comes the pinning tool Tailwind! Tailwind is a Pinterest scheduling tool that saves you time by allowing you to bulk upload and schedule pins at recommended optimal times.

After using the free version for 2 weeks, I quickly realized how essential this tool was in my Pinterest success. I recently upgraded to the Blogger Plus Plan for $9.99 a month and have been loving it!

For ease of use and a lot less clicking, read up on how to develop Tailwind Board Lists and Smart Loops for optimal pinning strategies. 

Site Stats

As I mentioned, 95% of my site traffic is generated by Pinterest at this point, with only 5% being organic traffic from a Google search. If you are wondering, this is normal in the first year of blog start-up.

You can see below that I have had 1,450-1,650 site visits per month with an average of 66 site visitors a day.

Screenshot of page views as a new blogger

On February 20th I sent a launch notification regarding the creation of my blog to my friends and family. That day I had 476 visitors!

In conclusion, I really hope to see these numbers continue to increase. I promise you that I am working tirelessly on writing quality content and on finding ways to drive traffic to my site.

Perhaps you are finding yourself in a similar situation and looking for ways to engage more readers?

Hosting

I continue to use and recommend Bluehost as my WordPress hosting service. Not only is the $3.95/month pleasing to my “beginner blogger’ budget, but their customer service in dealing with newbies like me totally rocks!

Having had no previous web development or design experience prior to Travel With A Plan, I have called the 24/7 U.S. based customer support line for help 20-30 times (literally) in my first 3 months live. They have remedied every issue within minutes and have never tried to up-sell me any additional features or services.

If you haven’t already, lock into their amazing services here today!

Blog Posts

When writing blog posts it is common knowledge that quality and consistency are far more important than frequency.

The goal that I have stuck with and continue to accomplish is to post 1 new quality blog post each week. I feel that this is important in the beginning in order to increase my blog’s content and to work on building an audience that wants to stick around.

After 3 months of starting my blog, I have 14 published blog posts (foundational content) and several static pages (filler content).

Grammarly

I continue to use Grammarly as my editing tool while writing each post. Grammarly is an online grammar and spell checker, as well as a plagiarism detector.

Grammarly is super easy to use and install and gives me major peace-of-mind knowing that my posts check out good with the grammar police. If you haven’t already done so, download Grammarly for free today!

What steps or strategies do you use to drive traffic to your site? Likewise, what steps are you taking to make money as a new blogger?

Jen

How To Make Money As A New Blogger: My First $13.33

If your goal is to make money in your first few months of blogging, having previous blogging experience will help.

Having started my blog from scratch with no idea how to make money as a new blogger, making $0 during my first month of blogging did not surprise me.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to have made $13.33 by the end of month 3! Though it is not much, it’s money that I didn’t have before (insert smile!).

Here is the breakdown of my current affiliates and generated revenue:

  • Google Adsense: $1.35 (pay-per-click)
  • Amazon Affiliates: $11.78 (commission from purchases made off of my site)
  • Booking.com: $0
  • CJ Affiliates (Grammarly): $0.20

Due to the lack of a bigger audience, I was denied from Shutterfly and SkyScanner’s affiliate programs. I have pending applications with Expedia and TripAdvisor.

Read: My 8 Month Blog Income Report (Check out the money that you can make after 8 months of blogging!)

Month 4-6 goals:

  • Continue to write 1 quality blog post per week.
  • Explore creating more social media accounts such as Facebook and Instagram to help increase reader engagement.
  • Start researching ways to collaborate with other brands and bloggers. Add a “Work With Me” page to my homepage.
  • Learn how to analyze my site stats and Pinterest analytics to work towards increasing the efficiency of my writing and pinning strategies.

What social media platforms or other marketing strategies do you use and are they helpful in promoting your brand? I’d love to hear from you!

Jen

Now, on to planning our next family adventure!

Hello, fellow bloggers! Click here to follow my journey and continue reading my For Bloggers series:

Monthly Blog Reports:

Blogging Tips:

*Before leaving, be sure to check our Travel Resources Page to find exclusive travel discounts and to book hotels, rental cars, and guided tours.*

Pin it!
Click here to discover exactly how to make money as a new blogger!  Top U.S. family travel blog Travel With A Plan has kept a diary of her earnings and reports to you just how she made money as a new blogger!  #howtomakemoneyblogging #makemoneyasanewblogger #howtomakemoneyblogging #howlongdoesittaketomakemoneyblogging #blogincomereport
Click here to discover exactly how to make money as a new blogger!  Top U.S. family travel blog Travel With A Plan has kept a diary of her earnings and reports to you just how she made money as a new blogger!  #howtomakemoneyblogging #makemoneyasanewblogger #howtomakemoneyblogging #howlongdoesittaketomakemoneyblogging #blogincomereport

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