Starting a Blog That Makes Money: A Guide to starting a blog that makes money

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Discover actionable steps for starting a blog that makes money, from niche selection to monetization, and start earning sooner.

Starting a blog that actually makes money isn't just about writing what you love; it's about combining that passion with a smart strategy. It all comes down to picking a profitable corner of the internet, creating content that genuinely solves a problem, and then weaving in monetization like affiliate marketing or your own digital products.

The secret? Treat it like a real business from day one, not just a casual hobby.

Building Your Foundation for a Profitable Blog

Before you fall down the rabbit hole of domain names and WordPress themes, we need to talk about the one thing that will make or break your blog: the foundation. A shaky foundation—a poorly chosen niche or a vague audience—is the number one reason most blogs never earn a single dollar.

I know, this initial planning stage isn't the most exciting part. But trust me, this is where you set your blog up for success. It's the difference between shouting into the void and creating content that people are actively looking for—and are willing to pay to get help with.

Finding Where Passion Meets Profit

The sweet spot for any successful blog is where your genuine interest, real audience demand, and clear monetization potential all overlap. So many new bloggers get this wrong by focusing only on what they love, completely ignoring whether anyone else cares enough to read about it.

To sidestep that common pitfall, get brutally honest with yourself:

What could I talk about for hours? Your passion is the fuel that will carry you through those early months when traffic is just a trickle. You have to pick a topic you won't get sick of after writing ten articles.

Are people already looking for this? Jump onto Google and see what the autocomplete suggestions are. Check out Google Trends. Are there active forums, subreddits, or bustling Facebook groups dedicated to this topic? Those are all great signs.

How would this blog actually make money? Start brainstorming income streams from the very beginning. Could you sell digital guides, promote affiliate products, or offer one-on-one coaching? If you can't come up with at least two or three solid ideas, the niche might be a financial dead end.

A crucial first step to ensuring your blog's success is finding your niche, as it allows you to laser-focus your content and build a tribe of dedicated readers.

Defining Your Ideal Reader

Once you've got a niche, you need to get crystal clear on who you're writing for. "Anyone interested in personal finance" isn't an audience; it's a crowd. You need to build a detailed picture of one specific person.

Go beyond the basics. What keeps them up at night? For that personal finance blog, maybe your ideal reader is a 28-year-old freelancer who's completely stressed about managing an unpredictable income while trying to save for retirement. Suddenly, everything changes.

When you know this person’s fears, goals, and daily struggles, you can create content that feels like it was written just for them. It guides your tone, helps you pick the perfect topics, and ultimately builds a loyal community that trusts what you have to say.

Validating Your Blog Idea

Okay, last step before you start building. Before you pour months of your life into this, you need to validate the idea. This is all about gathering cold, hard evidence that a real, paying audience exists for your blog concept. It’s about proof, not just a gut feeling.

Here are a few quick ways to do this:

Scope out the competition: Find 3-5 successful blogs in your potential niche. Are they running ads? Do they have affiliate links all over the place? Are they selling their own courses or ebooks? If others are making good money, it’s a fantastic sign that the market is healthy.

Check search demand: Use a free keyword tool and see if people are actually searching for the topics you want to write about. A decent search volume (think over 500 monthly searches for your core topics) confirms that people are actively looking for answers.

Survey your potential readers: If you have any kind of social media following, just ask them. Pop into a few relevant online communities and ask, "What's your single biggest challenge when it comes to [your niche]?" Their answers are pure gold.

Nailing this foundational work—the niche, the reader, the validation—is the bedrock of any profitable blog. Get this right, and everything that comes next gets a whole lot easier.

Choosing Your Platform and Building Your Brand

You’ve validated your niche and you know who you’re talking to. Awesome. Now it's time to build your blog's home on the internet.

The platform you pick is your digital foundation, and your brand is the personality that makes people want to stick around. These two things need to work hand-in-hand to create a professional, trustworthy presence that’s absolutely essential for a blog that actually makes money.

I see so many new bloggers get stuck right here, paralyzed by endless tech options or the pressure to create the "perfect" brand. Let's be clear: the goal isn’t a flawless website on day one. It's to get a clean, functional, and memorable site live quickly so you can get back to creating content.

The Great Platform Debate: WordPress vs. Modern Solutions

For years, self-hosted WordPress was the undisputed king for serious bloggers. It's incredibly powerful, endlessly customizable, and gives you 100% control over your content and how you make money from it. But that power comes at a cost—a steep learning curve filled with themes, plugins, security updates, and general maintenance headaches.

Today, there’s a much faster path. A new wave of no-code tools has completely changed the game. For creators who value speed and simplicity above all else, I highly recommend a modern stack: using Notion for content management and a tool like Sotion to instantly publish it as a beautiful, high-performance website.

With this setup, you can write and organize everything in Notion—an app you probably already love—while Sotion handles all the technical heavy lifting. It takes care of the site-building, design, and can even manage paid memberships for you. You get a pro-level blog without touching a single line of code, which is a massive win when you’re just starting out. To dive deeper, check out our guide on the best sites to host a blog to see which approach truly fits your style.

To help you visualize the options, here's a quick look at the most popular choices for bloggers today.

Blogging Platform Comparison

This table breaks down the key differences between the major players, helping you match a platform to your technical comfort level and long-term goals.

Platform	Best For	Ease of Use	Monetization Flexibility
WordPress.org	Bloggers who want maximum control, scalability, and plugin functionality.	Moderate	Unrestricted
Notion + Sotion	Creators who prioritize speed, simplicity, and a seamless writing experience.	Very Easy	Excellent
Squarespace/Wix	Beginners who need an all-in-one builder with drag-and-drop design.	Easy	Good
Substack	Writers focused purely on building a paid newsletter community.	Very Easy	Limited

Ultimately, the right choice is the one that minimizes friction. A simpler tool that you actually use is always better than a powerful one that gathers dust.

Crafting a Brand That Connects

Your brand isn't just a logo. It’s the entire vibe of your blog—the feeling people get when they land on your page. A strong brand builds trust, makes you recognizable, and turns a simple blog into a professional operation.

Start with Your Domain Name

This is your address on the web. It needs to be simple, memorable, and connected to what you do.

Make it easy to spell and say. Ditch the hyphens, numbers, or weird spellings.

Aim for a .com extension. It’s still the gold standard and what most people type by default.

Check for availability. If your first choice is taken, don't panic. Try adding a simple, relevant word like "lab," "hq," or "collective" to make it unique.

Once your blog is live, you'll be plastering that link all over your social media. To keep your online presence tidy and make it easy for followers to find your content, a good link-in-bio tool is a must. It puts all your important links in one clean, accessible spot.

Develop a Simple Visual Identity

You don’t need to spend a fortune on a designer right away. A clean and consistent look can be built from just a few key pieces.

Logo: Start with a simple text-based logo or use a free online tool to create a basic icon.

Color Palette: Pick 2-3 primary colors that fit the mood of your niche.

Fonts: Choose one bold, clear font for headlines and a simple, readable one for your body text.

Consistency is everything. Use these same visual elements everywhere—your website, your emails, your social profiles. This repetition is what builds brand recognition and establishes the authority you need for a blog that makes money.

Developing a Content Strategy That Attracts and Converts

Alright, you've got your platform and a brand identity is starting to take shape. Now for the fun part—the engine that’s going to power your blog’s growth and profitability: your content.

This isn't about just filling pages with words. It’s about building a strategic system designed to pull your ideal reader in from search engines and build enough trust to turn them into a loyal follower. This is where the real work of starting a blog that actually makes money begins. A solid strategy means every article you publish has a purpose, solving a specific problem for your audience while nudging them closer to your monetization goals. It's the difference between guessing what people want and knowing what to write next.

The blogging world is massive—there are over 600 million blogs out there. It’s all part of the much bigger content marketing industry, which is on track to become a $2 trillion market by 2032. That explosion shows just how much creators and businesses are banking on high-quality content to drive real results. You can dig into what this means for bloggers over on BlogHunter.

Uncovering What Your Audience Is Searching For

Your content strategy has to start with one thing: what your audience is actually typing into Google. If you just guess, you’ll end up writing articles that no one ever finds. The real goal is to pinpoint the keywords that signal a user's problem or question—the exact topics where you can swoop in and provide the best answer.

Don't let "keyword research" scare you off. You don't need a suite of expensive tools to get started. Just start thinking like your ideal reader.

Brainstorm "seed" keywords: Kick things off by listing broad topics in your niche. If you’re building a blog about eco-friendly living, your seed keywords might be "zero waste," "sustainable products," or "natural cleaning."

Use Google Autocomplete: Type those seed keywords into the search bar and watch what suggestions pop up. These aren't random; they're real searches people are making. "Zero waste for beginners" is a perfect article idea staring you right in the face.

Check "People Also Ask": That little box in the search results is a goldmine. It's packed with related questions your audience has, and every single one can be a subheading in a larger article or a blog post all on its own.

This simple process hands you a validated list of topics that already have a built-in audience. You're no longer creating content in a vacuum; you're directly answering your readers' most pressing questions.

Building Topical Authority with Pillar Content

Search engines like Google want to rank experts. One of the most powerful ways to show Google you're an authority is by using the pillar-and-cluster model. It’s a smart way to organize your content that signals deep expertise in your niche.

Here’s how it works:

Pillar Post: This is a huge, comprehensive article that covers a broad topic from a high level. For our eco-friendly blog, a pillar post could be "The Ultimate Guide to a Zero-Waste Kitchen." We're talking a 3,000+ word beast of a resource.

Cluster Posts: These are shorter, more focused articles that dive deep into a specific subtopic you mentioned in the pillar. Think "5 Best Reusable Food Storage Solutions" or "How to Start Composting in an Apartment."

Internal Linking: This is the glue that holds it all together. You link from all your cluster posts back up to the main pillar post, and the pillar post links out to each of its supporting clusters.

Creating a Sustainable Content Calendar

Consistency is everything when you're trying to grow a blog, but it’s also the number one reason new bloggers burn out. A simple content calendar is your secret weapon against this, turning your big-picture strategy into an actionable, week-by-week plan.

You don't need fancy software. A basic spreadsheet or a Notion database is perfect.

Column 1: Topic Idea: Drop in the blog post titles you found during your keyword research.

Column 2: Target Keyword: Note the main keyword you’re aiming for with SEO.

Column 3: Content Type: Is it a how-to guide, a listicle, a product review?

Column 4: Status: Use simple tags like "Idea," "Drafting," or "Published" to track progress.

Column 5: Publish Date: Be realistic here. One high-quality post per week is infinitely better than four rushed, mediocre ones.

A system like this removes the daily anxiety of "What should I write about today?" When you sit down to work, your topics are already waiting for you, letting you focus all your energy on producing amazing content. Of course, writing compelling articles is a skill in itself, and our in-depth guide to copywriting for bloggers is a great place to sharpen your abilities.

Smart Monetization Models Beyond Basic Ads

Just slapping some ads on your site and hoping for the best is a painfully slow way to build a profitable blog. Sure, display ads might bring in a trickle of passive income, but the real money is made when you start thinking bigger. The most successful bloggers treat their site as the hub of a real business, not just a place to publish articles.

This means shifting your mindset from renting out ad space to creating and owning your own valuable assets. When you explore more direct ways to make money, you take full control of your earning potential and build a much more resilient, profitable brand.

Mastering Affiliate Marketing Authentically

Affiliate marketing is usually the first stop after ads, and for good reason. It’s all about recommending products or services you genuinely use and trust. When a reader clicks your unique link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission. The key to making this work is trust.

Lose your audience's trust, and you've lost everything. Pushing a shoddy product just to make a quick buck will poison the well for good.

Choose Wisely: Only partner with brands that make sense for your niche. If you run a blog about sustainable living, promoting a composting bin you’ve personally tested is a perfect fit. Recommending a fast-fashion brand? Not so much.

Integrate Naturally: Don't just throw up a list of links. Weave your recommendations into helpful content. Write an in-depth review, a comparison post, or a tutorial that shows the product in action, solving a real problem for your reader.

Disclose Clearly: Always be upfront about your affiliate relationships. A simple disclaimer at the top of your post is all it takes. It’s not just good practice—it’s often a legal requirement.

Done right, affiliate links stop feeling like ads and start feeling like genuinely helpful recommendations. That’s a win for you and your readers.

The Power of Selling Your Own Digital Products

Want the highest profit margins? Start selling your own digital products. You create it once, and you can sell it forever. It's hands-down the most scalable way to make serious money from your blog.

Creating your own products also cements your status as an expert in your field. You’re not just writing about a topic; you’re providing a tangible solution.

A few popular ideas to get you started:

Ebooks: This is a fantastic entry point. You can even bundle your best blog posts into a polished, in-depth guide.

Templates and Printables: Think checklists, planners, spreadsheets, or design assets that save your audience a ton of time.

Online Courses: If you really want to dive deep, a video or text-based course lets you teach a valuable skill and charge a premium for it.

The income gap between bloggers is huge. The high-earners are 2.5 times more likely to sell their own products than those who rely on AdSense. While it's true that only about 2% of blogs generate over $150,000 a year, that small percentage represents millions of creators who figured out that diversified income is the key.

Building Recurring Revenue with Paid Memberships

For the ultimate in stable, predictable income, a paid membership is the holy grail. You offer exclusive content or community access to your most dedicated fans in exchange for a recurring subscription fee.

This model is a game-changer for blogs built around a strong community and deep expertise. You can use a tool like Sotion to easily put premium content on your Notion-powered blog behind a paywall, handling payments through platforms like Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, or Gumroad.

What could you offer members?

Exclusive, in-depth articles or video tutorials.

Access to a private community forum (like a Discord or Slack channel).

Monthly live Q&A sessions or webinars.

Early access to new content and products.

By creating a private, high-value space for your biggest supporters, you build a loyal tribe that is literally invested in your success. This is how you transform a simple blog into a thriving online business.

For a deeper look, check out our complete guide on how to monetize your blog with a variety of strategies.

Here’s a quick comparison of the monetization methods we've discussed to help you see how they stack up.

Blog Monetization Method Profit Potential

Method	Typical Profit Margin	Setup Effort	Scalability
Display Ads	100% (but low revenue)	Low	Low
Affiliate Marketing	5% - 50%	Medium	Medium
Digital Products	90% - 100%	High	High
Paid Memberships	90% - 100%	High	High

As you can see, the methods that require more initial effort—creating your own products or building a membership—offer significantly higher profit margins and scalability. While ads are easy to set up, their potential is limited by your traffic. True growth comes from owning the transaction.

Your First 90 Days: A Realistic Action Plan

An idea without action is just a daydream. You’ve got the strategies, but now it’s time to actually build this thing. The next 90 days are what will make or break your blog, setting the entire trajectory for its growth and, eventually, its profitability.

This isn’t about chasing some crazy traffic goal or making thousands overnight. Forget that. This is about laying a solid foundation, building the right habits, and taking focused, consistent action. We’ll break this down into three 30-day sprints, so the huge goal of "building a business" becomes a series of simple, weekly tasks.

Month One: Foundation and First Content

The first 30 days are all about getting your house in order and publishing your first foundational pieces of content. Momentum is everything in the beginning, and this month is designed to build it—fast. The goal is to go from zero to a live, functioning blog with a core set of genuinely helpful articles.

Here are the mission-critical tasks for this month:

Finalize and Validate: Lock in your niche. Get crystal clear on your ideal reader. Then, do the competitor and keyword research we talked about to make sure people are actually looking for what you plan to write about.

Platform Setup: Pick your poison—whether that’s a traditional WordPress setup or a lean Notion and Sotion combo. Get the site live with a clean design and basic branding. Done is better than perfect.

Publish Cornerstone Content: Write and publish 4-5 high-quality, SEO-optimized "pillar" posts. These are the deep, comprehensive guides that will become the backbone of your blog’s authority for years to come.

This initial sprint is the most technical part, but nailing it means the next 60 days can be all about creating and promoting.

As you build, it's helpful to visualize where this is all going. Monetization doesn't happen all at once; it's a phased approach that builds on the trust and traffic you generate over time.

Think of it like this: ads are the low-hanging fruit early on, affiliate marketing comes next as you build trust, and selling your own products is the ultimate goal once you have a loyal audience.

Month Two: Momentum and Audience Growth

With your foundation poured, month two is all about creating a rhythm and attracting your first real readers. This is where you forge the consistency that separates a successful blog from a dead one. Your focus shifts from setup to pure production and outreach.

The main objectives are to hit a steady publishing cadence and begin building your most important asset: your email list.

Consistent Publishing: Get a content calendar going and stick to it. Aim to publish at least one new blog post every single week. These can be shorter "cluster" posts that support and link back to your big pillar articles.

Master One Channel: Don't try to be everywhere. Pick one social platform where your ideal reader hangs out—maybe it's Pinterest, X (formerly Twitter), or LinkedIn—and pour all your promotional energy there.

Launch Your Email List: Set up a simple email capture form using a tool like ConvertKit or MailerLite. Create a small, insanely useful lead magnet (like a checklist or a short PDF guide) to give people a reason to sign up.

Seriously, don’t spread yourself thin. Getting good at one promotional channel will bring you far more results than being mediocre at five.

Month Three: Monetization and Analysis

In the home stretch of your 90-day plan, you’ll introduce the first, simplest layer of monetization and start paying attention to your data. By now, you should have a small but growing trickle of traffic and a few dozen email subscribers. It’s time to see what’s working and plant the seeds for future income.

Your goals are straightforward: implement basic monetization and learn from your early analytics.

Introduce Affiliate Links: Go back through your published articles and sprinkle in relevant affiliate links. Only add them where they feel natural and genuinely helpful. Don't just stuff links everywhere; recommend products you actually stand behind.

Outline Your First Product: You don’t need to build it yet, but start brainstorming. What’s a common, nagging problem your audience has? Could you solve it with a simple ebook, a set of templates, or a short workshop? Sketch out an outline.

Analyze Your Data: Finally, dive into your website analytics. Which posts are getting traction? What search terms are people using to find you? This early data is pure gold—it’s your audience telling you exactly what they want more of.

By the end of these 90 days, you won't be a millionaire, but you will have a fully operational blog with a solid content base, an email list that's starting to grow, and the first hints of monetization. This is the repeatable system. Now, you just have to keep going.

Of course. Here is the rewritten section, crafted to sound like it was written by an experienced human expert, following all your specified requirements.

Your Top Questions About Profitable Blogging, Answered

Jumping into the world of blogging always stirs up a ton of questions. I get it. You want to know what you’re really in for before you invest your time and energy. Let's cut through the noise and tackle the big ones I hear all the time.

How Much Does It Really Cost to Start a Blog That Makes Money?

Honestly, you can get a real, money-making blog off the ground for under $100 for the entire first year. It's one of the most affordable businesses you can start.

Your main costs are simple: a domain name (usually 20 a year) and some reliable web hosting (which can be as cheap as 15 a month). That’s it to get started.

You can be smart about it, too. For instance, if you're already organizing your life and content in Notion, you can use a tool like Sotion to publish your site directly from there. It's a clever, cost-effective shortcut. Don't worry about fancy themes or expensive marketing tools right now—they can wait. Your biggest investment at the start is your time, not your money.

How Long Does It Take to Make Real Income From a Blog?

Let’s set some realistic expectations here: blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. For most new bloggers, you're looking at about 6 to 12 months of consistent work before you hit that first milestone—maybe your first 500 month. This usually comes from things like affiliate links or a few display ads.

Do I Need to Be an Expert to Start a Profitable Blog?

Absolutely not. You don't need a PhD or a fancy title. You just need to know a bit more than your ideal reader, or—and this is a great approach—be willing to document your journey of learning something new.

Credibility isn't just about a long list of qualifications. It's built by consistently putting out helpful, well-researched content that solves a real problem for someone. You can be the guide who's just a few steps ahead. Sharing your wins, your "oops" moments, and what you're figuring out along the way makes you relatable. That trust is often far more valuable than a formal degree.

How Many Posts Do I Need Before I Can Monetize My Blog?

There’s no magic number, but a solid rule of thumb is to aim for 15-25 high-quality, SEO-optimized articles before you flip the switch on monetization. That’s usually enough content to start getting some love from Google and to show ad networks you’re a real, established site.

But the game changes if you're planning to sell your own products. In that case, the quantity of posts matters less than the quality of your relationship with your audience. You could launch a product to a super-engaged email list of just a few hundred people and do incredibly well. The focus shifts from traffic volume to audience trust.

Ready to turn your ideas into a professional, profitable blog without the technical headaches? Sotion empowers you to launch a beautiful website directly from your Notion pages in minutes. Manage members, sell subscriptions, and build your brand—all with zero code. Start your journey today at https://sotion.so.