6 Pro Tips on How to Start a Blogging Side Hustle...

Imagine if you could start a profitable side hustle that’s flexible enough and with low startup costs.

A profitable side hustle that you can do during your spare time.

That’s blogging.

Learning how to start a blogging side hustle is one of the best ways to make extra income to supplement your full-time job.

In fact, according to Glassdoor, the average salary of a blogger in the United States area is $63,042 per year.

Source: Glassdoor

So you can even venture into blogging full-time sometime.

The good news?

You can make money blogging by writing about blog topics you’re passionate about or knowledgeable about.

You can even use this tool to write blog posts faster than ever before!

However, before you start a blogging side hustle, you need to familiarize yourself with certain strategies that can set you up for success.

As someone who has been blogging for a while, I have seen a lot of new bloggers making mistakes and ending up giving up along their blogging journey.

That’s why I have decided to put together this step-by-step guide on how to start a blogging side hustle.

In this post, I’m going to teach you the exact tips successful bloggers like Pat Flynn and Darren Rowse use to make $100k/month.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Choose Your Blog Niche Wisely

The first step for learning how to start a blogging side hustle is to carefully choose a specific topic that all your content will be based on.

Identifying a niche for your blog also makes it easier to choose a domain name.

As they say, the riches are in the niches.

There are numerous benefits to choosing a specific niche for your blog.

First, it can help you determine who to target with your content.

That way, you’ll be sure to develop content that people will want to read, share, and take the desired action.

Secondly, it’ll also help you choose an appropriate blog name and launch a successful blogging strategy.

Thirdly, it can help you establish your authority in your industry, which helps to build your credibility and reputation as a thought leader.

What’s more?

Picking a specific niche can make it easier to start, grow, monetize your blog, and generate income from your content.

Because your content is more likely to attract sponsors and advertisers who are targeting a specific audience.

How to Choose a Profitable Blog Niche

Picking the right blogging niches is a good idea for building a successful online presence. It’s also the most important step to learning how to start a blogging side hustle.

There are a few key factors to consider when choosing a niche that’s a good fit for your blog.

According to Semrush, a successful blogging niche must tick the three boxes below:

Source Semrush

Let’s explore the three factors to build a profitable blogging niche:

Expertise: With Google prioritizing E-E-A-T when ranking content online, you should choose a niche where you can write content that demonstrates your experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

In this case, you need to consider your passion, interests and hobbies, life, plus professional experience and accomplishments.

The interests of your audience: You need to ensure there is a high demand for your blog. So you need to conduct thorough keyword research to uncover blog topics that your audiences are interested in reading.
Niche profitability: Not all niches are profitable. Furthermore, some niches have limited monetization opportunities. To choose a profitable niche, consider the monetization models, your target audience, and competition levels.

Food blogs have the highest monthly income potential for example. Some other blog niches that do well are personal finance, lifestyle/mommy and travel.

Set Clear Blogging Goals and Objectives

Setting clear goals and objectives helps to lay down the foundation for your blogging success for various reasons:

They guide the entire process on how to start blogging as a side hustle from start to end.
They help you determine the direction of your blog
They help you determine how you can easily track your progress
They help you determine better ways to make money out of your blog

Here are things to keep in mind when setting your blogging goals.

They should be

Specific– i.e. increase traffic by 6% each month
Measurable– i.e. attract 500 readers every week
Achievable– i.e. attract 5,000 monthly visitors by month 6
Relevant– i.e. connect with 2 influencers to promote your content
Time-bound- rank on page #1 on Googlefor specific keywords within 3-6 months

Create High-Quality Content

Google wants to provide its users with content that provides value in their search results.

That’s why the search engine prioritizes quality content that addresses the readers’ search intent.

Quality content is the pillar of any successful blog.

Quality content is relevant, engaging, and useful for your audience.

It is content that is well-researched, well-presented, and tailored to meet your audience’s needs.

Therefore, when writing blog posts, you should not just focus on the quantity aspect but the value your content provides for your readers.

Why?

Because high-quality blog content builds trust, and credibility, and attracts loyal readers.

Quality content is beneficial in many ways including:

Improves your blog’s SEO.
Improves your reputation, encourages conversions, and establishes your blog as a reliable source, attracting readers back for more.
Generates high-quality leads.
Reduces bounce rates.
Engages readers.

To keep your readers engaged, you need to publish compelling blog posts.

Write the way you speak and share personal experiences and stories to connect with your audience emotionally.

Address your readers’ pain points and provide practical solutions to the problems they are facing.

To make your blog posts engaging, include high-quality images, videos, and infographics.

Note that the blog writing process can be challenging for new bloggers.

In that case, you may need to leverage AI writing assistants like ChatGPT or Jasper to brainstorm ideas, create great content outlines, and conduct keyword research.

According to Wordtune’s recent survey on AI writing assistants, bloggers who use AI spend 30% less time writing a blog post.

Source: Wordtune

The same survey also shows that leveraging AI writing assistants helps bloggers publish content more frequently.

Here are tips to publish high-quality blog posts that get noticed:

Conduct thorough keyword research (use this tool) to identify your target audience, their interests, and pain points.
Establish your goals.
Create a content calendar. You can use these top blogging planners as well.
Craft click-worthy titles.
Use visuals like images and videos.
Make your blog posts engaging and valuable.
Link to other blog posts and authoritative sources, as I have done in this post.
Leverage AI writing tools to speed up the process
Optimize your content for SEO.
Improve your writing skills constantly.

Promote Your Blog

Creating content that is engaging and valuable for your readers isn’t enough to attract massive traffic to your blog.

You need to build a strong online presence to attract people to your content.

The biggest part of learning how to start a blogging side hustle is learning how to put your content in front of your target blog readers.

Promoting your blog will help you build a significant audience, which increases the chances of making money blogging.

Remember that, getting traffic to grow your audience is not easy.

Take a look at GrowthBadger survey below where 79% of low-income and 43% of bloggers earning over $50K per year say getting traffic is one of the biggest challenges with blogging.

Source: GrowthBadger

In this case, you need to establish a promotion strategy that helps you grow your blog traffic so you can monetize it.

Here are practical tips to promote your blog and grow your audience:

Leverage social media

Social media is where a lot of people spend most of their time.

Therefore, not including social media in your blog promotion strategies is a serious blogging mistake to avoid.

According to a recent Semrush report, 73% of bloggers say they promote their content through social media.

So if you aren’t using social media, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to get your blog in front of a huge audience.

Here, you need to build a social media strategy and keep sharing every blog post you publish with your social media audience.

It’s also a good idea to create separate dedicated social media accounts for your blog on various social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Ensure you repurpose your blog content into TikTok or YouTube videos.

Here are tips to promote your blog posts on social media effectively.

Focus on the most relevant channels for your blog where your target audiences spend most of their time.
Engage actively via comments and build relationships.
Contribute to other blogging groups to share your expertise.

Invest in email marketing

Email marketing is ranked the second channel for 53% of bloggers to promote their content.

Here, you’ll need to create an email list and collect emails from your blog readers so you can send them a message every time you publish a new blog post and when you want to promote something special.

Here are tips for using email marketing to promote your blog content:

Include handy signup forms on your blog to collect email addresses and build an email list.
Create attractive lead magnets.
Segment your subscribers.
Select an email marketing platform that’s compatible with WordPress and web hosting.
Email your subscribers the latest post regularly.
Analyze the results and adjust your email campaigns.

Use SEO

Search engine optimization is also one of the best blog promotion strategies to learn as you learn how to start a blogging side hustle.

Because when people want to learn more about something, the first place they go is on Google. In this strategy, you need to conduct thorough keyword research to uncover keywords your target readers are using to find information online.

You can use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, Rankiq, or your preferred tool for this work.

From there, create informative blog posts that rank on the first page of search engines for relevant searches. Rankiq will help your blog posts rank on the first page of Google much quickly.

Incorporate the keywords you uncover into your blog titles, headers, and body text.

Ensure you optimize your blog posts meta descriptions and link to other posts within your blog.

Also, create guest posts to generate quality backlinks through external links from quality blogs to boost your site’s credibility and authority.

As you continue blogging, you can get creative and start creating podcasts or webinars.

Monetize Your Blog

After doing everything above correctly, the next step is to learn how to make money blogging.

Of course, the main goal for learning how to start a blogging side hustle is to build an income stream that can generate extra money to supplement your main job.

Since you have grown your online presence, let’s see how to monetize your blog.

According to the GrowthBadger survey mentioned above, 57% of bloggers earning over $50K per year say they use affiliate marketing to make money from their blogs.

There are many blog monetization techniques but the most popular options include:

1. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make recurring, passive income.

It’s used by successful bloggers like Ryan Robinson, Neil Patel, Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak, Steve and Jennifer Chou, Jon Morrow, Michelle Schroeder, and Pat Flynn just to mention a few.

According to the latest Glassdoor statistics, affiliate marketers make an average salary of $59,656 per year.

As an affiliate marketer, you make money blogging by promoting other people’s products or services.

In this case, you need to include affiliate links to various products or services within your posts.

When people click on the links and purchase the products you feature in your posts, you get paid a commission from the sale.

You’ll need to join affiliate programs like Amazon Associates, ShareASale, CJ Affiliates, and others to monetize your blog with affiliate marketing.

Here are 60 affiliate programs new bloggers can join to start making affiliate income.

2. Sell digital products or services

Another excellent way to generate extra cash blogging is selling your products directly via your blog.

In this case, you make your blog an online store where you sell items related to your blog niche.

You can sell digital products such as:

EBooks
Templates
Webinars and virtual events
Online courses
Tutorials
Checklists
Etc.

Take a look at how this blog makes money by selling legal templates and services that entrepreneurs need to legally protect their blogs and businesses online.

You can also offer professional services like graphic design, copywriting, SEO, and many more.

3. Paid subscriptions

You can also monetize your blog and make money online by selling subscription/membership plans.

Assuming you choose the two blog monetization methods above, you should offer your blog post free.

However, you can also lock some of your blog content so that readers pay to read.

You need to make the exclusive content in-depth and offer exclusive insights otherwise no subscriber would want to pay for mediocre content.

To get people to purchase your paid subscriptions, pique their interest by giving them a preview of the exclusive post and then get them to pay to access the content fully.

Here’s the legal contract template you’ll need for a paid membership so that your members know what to expect and to avoid any legal issues.

Manage Your Time Effectively

When it comes to how to start a blogging side hustle, you need to manage your time effectively.

Because you don’t have much time since you’re balancing your side hustle with other commitments.
So you need to ensure you use the available time effectively.

In this case, you need to use time management tools and techniques to make the most out of every moment.

Making money blogging also requires a lot of hard work so you need to stay consistent and avoid burnout.

Also, make sure to manage your finances wisely and here are 20 financial tips for bloggers and business owners.

FAQs on How to Start Blogging Side Hustle

Below are answers to some common questions we get on this topic.

How much time do I need to invest in a blogging side hustle to make it profitable?

The time you need to invest to make a profitable blogging side hustle will depend on factors like content quality, blog niche, marketing efforts, and audience engagement.

Can I start a blogging side hustle without any prior experience in blogging or web development?

Yes, you can learn how to start a blogging side hustle without prior experience. This is exactly how I launched my blog and made six-figures in my first year.

Most of the popular blogging platforms including WordPress and Blogger have user-friendly interfaces and templates, making it easy to use for beginner bloggers.

What are the most effective ways to monetize a blogging side hustle?

You can monetize a blogging side hustle in different ways including:

Selling digital products (courses, eBooks, webinars, etc.)
Affiliate marketing.
Google AdSense
Offering professional services like legal services, copywriting, consultancy, coaching, etc.
Offering paid membership subscriptions.

Note that the choice of your blog monetization method will depend on your niche and target audience.

How can I increase traffic to my blogging side hustle?

You can increase traffic to your blog using various promotion strategies including social media marketing, guest posting, search engine optimization, and creating valuable and shareable content.

Make sure to use these Pinterest tips to get organic traffic. Check out these blogging courses and top Pinterest courses for more help.

How can I make $1000 a month blogging give your best tip?

Speaking from experience, my best tip for making $1000 a month blogging would be to focus on affiliate marketing and creating your digital products to get the best return on your time and investment.

How long does it take to make $1000 per month blogging?

It all depends on your monetization strategies. Here’s an example of how this blog made $1,000 in the first month of launching.

How do I make my blog a side hustle?

A great way to make your blog a side hustle is to be consistent with blogging.

You need to dedicate a certain amount of hours on your blog to start building traffic and momentum. You should also be guest blogging on sites that have more traffic than yours to bring in traffic.

You can also leverage social media platforms to promote your blog and engage with your audience.

Additionally, you can monetize your blog through affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, selling digital products or services, and implementing ads on your site.

How can I make $100 a month blogging?

Follow the easy steps here to make your first $100 a month blogging.

You can even sign up for our affiliate program and make much more than that by simply promoting our legal templates to business owners.

Final Thoughts on How to Start Blogging Side Hustle Pro Tips

There is a lot that goes into knowing how to start a blogging side hustle.

By following these valuable tips, you will start a blog that not only resonates with your audience but also generates extra income.

Remember choosing your blog niche is about identifying your voice in a crowded digital space. Setting clear goals and objectives is a commitment to your vision.

Creating high-quality blog content is about crafting experiences for your readers. Promoting your blog isn’t just a marketing tactic, it’s about building a community.

As you start blogging, remember that every post you publish, every promotion you make, and every connection you establish with your audience is a step toward establishing yourself as an expert in your niche.

ABOUT GUEST WRITER

Chris Wu is the founder of AllinBlogger.com, which helps people learn how to start a blog and make money blogging. He also loves traveling and cooking.

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6 Pro Tips on How to Start a Blogging Side Hustle