I started blogging a few years ago in the year 2017, I also changed my website domain names a few times since I didn’t know what to do during my first years as a webmaster of my own website.
Honestly, I started blogging with zero knowledge at that time.
After I learn that you could earn money from blogging I quickly jumped in to create a blog with just very little knowledge about it, what was even silly was at those times, I didn’t even know what a blog means.
At first, I started publishing a blog on Blogger.com because of the reason that Blogger.com is the easiest way to create a blog for beginners.
But after years of experience, determination, and research, I was able to learn all the basic and some advanced stuff in blogging, now After five years of blogging I already earn money from it, and if you are curious how do bloggers make money, let me give you some ideas how we do it.
For us to know how bloggers make money, we need to know first what blogging is, and how to start a blog.
What is a Blog?
A blog is a kind of website where people or individuals record their activities on the internet, this is often called a Weblog.
A blog can also be a part of a website that companies or individual uses to increase the engagement and online presence of their website.
To make things shorter here is the thing — a blog can be a website, Not all websites is a blogs, but a blog can be a part of a website.
How to Start a Blog or a Website?
Actually, there are a lot of things you can start a blog, There are even some ways where you can be published or start a blog for free, let’s discuss them one by one.
How To Start A Blog For Free
As I said a blog is a kind of website or a part of a website right? to start blogging we first need to have a website, and luckily there is a way to create a website that you can use for blogging purposes for free.
Blogger.com
If you want to create a blogging website for free, the easiest to do it is through Blogger.com, It is probably the most popular blogging platform today, and it is also owned and maintained by Google so you don’t have to worry about its security.
Blogger.com enables you to create a simple website by using their premade themes, it also gives you the freedom to choose your own free domain name that looks like this “https://websitename.blogspot.com/” which I do not recommend since a shorter URL is what Google favors most.
Just for the sake of the word “free”, choosing a free domain name from Blogger.com is one of the ways how you can create your blogging website at Blogger.com without spending anything.
You can also use a custom domain name that you can purchase, and use on your Blogger website. There are also some free custom domains that some registrars are offering which you can use on the Blogger website.
I suggest that you should not use a free domain name, because it is one of the greatest mistakes that I ever had in my life in blogging.
Why? Free domains are sometimes ugly and the main reason why I don’t recommend free domains is the “trust”, When you start a blog you’ll need to rank your content in Google search to get some visitors.
Always remember that a website that doesn’t have visitors are dead site. One way to get visitors to your blog is by getting the trust of Google to make sure that your blog ranks well on search results.
Why Google is the key to your blog visitors? It works like this– a search engine is a kind of technology that scans websites on the World Wide Web and ranks them according to a search query.
There are also other search engines, but Google is the most used search engine and dominates the rest. To give you some idea, did you know that 92.49% of all search queries are from Google? which is indeed a pretty high percentage of all the reach queries worldwide, It is also the main reason why most publishers or bloggers want to get the trust of Google to appear there website to Google search results.
Another reason why you shouldn’t use free domains for your business or blog is that free domain names are often used by spam websites, which is why Google might have a trust issue with it.
A free domain name might also have some security issues. A free is free, and you can’t have full control over it, if the domain registrar suddenly discontinues the free domain they can shut it down and you can’t do anything.
So Instead of using a free domain name, I recommend that you always choose to buy a domain name, If you’re looking for a cheap domain name you can buy it on Namecheap, you can visit their website through the button below this line to get a huge discount, you can get your first domain for only $5.98.
I also created a guide on how to choose the right domain name for your business, you can check it out too.
Related Content: How to choose the right domain name
You can always create a blogging website on Blogger.com without any cost by choosing not to purchase a domain name.
But If you really want to earn from your blog, I recommend that you use a paid domain name like a Top level domain name with a .COM extension to make sure that you get a better rank on Google.
WordPress
Another way to create a website for your blog is through WordPress Blogger.com can also create a website on WordPress, it is more advanced and more customizable compared to Blogger.com.
There are two kinds of WordPress, The first one is WordPress.com which is a managed version of WordPress, You can create a free website on WordPress.com but you can be monetized from it, not unless you subscribe to the premium version of the managed WordPress that cost $25 a month which in my opinion was expensive for a starting website.
Another version of WordPress is the Open source version, an unmanaged version of WordPress which is what I highly recommend. You can download it any time free of charge, what I even like about the unmanaged version of WordPress is the DIY functionality.
Although the managed version of WordPress also has DIY features, some of its custom features are missing, but in the unmanaged version, everything is under your palm, and you can do whatever you want to do.
The only thing that you need is Domain names and hosting, I already mentioned the domain, and I recommend Namecheap for a cheaper price.
In addition, the thing that I love about Namecheap is that it is so easy to manage a domain in Namecheap, you can also find some tutorials about Namecheap because a lot of YouTubers and bloggers are using Namecheap for domains.
I’m also a domain investor and I own a lot of domain names and manage those domains on Namecheap, but I didn’t find any issues with using Namecheap, which is why I highly recommend Namecheap to everyone.
For the hosting provider, I highly recommend Cloudways why? because it is the hosting that I’m using on my website.
Cloudways is a Cloud hosting made easy, the pricing is scalable with the lowest price of $10 a month that can cater to 20,000 monthly visitors.
Cloudways is also the cheapest managed cloud hosting out there, yeah Sure you can host your website directly on Digital Ocean which is cheaper, but DigitalOcean has a huge learning curve, I even admit I didn’t know how to host a website on Digital Ocean directly, at least for now.
But in Cloudways you can host your website in Digital Ocean with just a click of a few buttons, it was cheap and fast, and it even fixed some issues with my previous hosting provider.
If you dont know yet, website speed is essential on a website, since it can contribute to a lot of search ranking, and in Cloudways I’m pretty sure you will be satisfied with how fast their Cloud hosting is.
I will continue to host my website on Cloudway because I’m satisfied with their service which is why I also recommend Cloudways to anyone including you.
Another reason why I highly recommend Cloudways, especially for beginners is their customer support, my previous hosting provider also managed to fix some of my website issues.
In Cloudways they are much faster in responding to my issues, and they have live chat support that is available 24/7 and usually responds in just 3 minutes, so whenever you need a helping hand you can just send a message on their live chat, which you can’t find in unmanaged Cloud hosting.
For starting a blog on WordPress, Cloudways is the best hosting that I recommend. You can visit their website by clicking the button below.
I also mentioned that an Unmanaged WordPress needs to be downloaded and installed by the hosting provider of your choice, By using Cloudways, you don’t need to install it manually, you just need to sign up and when you have access to your Cloudways dashboard, you just need to create servers based on your budget and install the WordPress application.
Do I say create a server and install a WordPress application on Cloudways to create your own website? well, the term is kinda of intimidating for beginners but believe me, creating a server and installing a WordPress application in Cloudways are so easy, you can do it with just a few clicks.
So would you choose Blogger.com or WordPress? —- The quick answer is WordPress hands-down, Blogger.com is only for beginners or when you start up blogging, but when your knowledge of blogging is growing, you will need more advanced tools and functionality that you can’t simply find on the Blogger.com website.
Another reason that I choose unmanaged WordPress against Blogger.com is the ownership, Blogger.com is owned by Google every blog website that is created by Blogger.com is not owned by anyone but only Google.
Google has all the right to take down your Blogger.com website if it wants to.
But in Unmanaged WordPress, the website is all yours, you grant 100% ownership of your website, and you are free to do whatever you want to do.
How To Start A WordPress Blog In Cloudways
Step on Start a WordPress
To give you an idea of how you can start a WordPress blogging website on Cloudways, you can take a look at this short video.
Use my special Cloudways promo code to get 10% OFF discounts for the first 3 months.
Cloudways Promo code: MIRAGE10
Proven Ways How To Earn Money From Blogging In 2022
Okay, now that you know about blogs, and how to start a blog or a website, let us now proceed to know how bloggers make money.
Bloggers Make Money Through Ads
The very first thing in this list of how bloggers make money is through ads. I know as a normal person you might hate ads, but I apologize since a lot of bloggers rely on monetizing their blogs or websites with ads.
Ads pay differently based on the website niche (Topic), and web traffic (web visitors), the more visitors the blog has, the more income Ads generate.
There are two ways you can earn from Ads, The first is through a click, you can earn every time your visitor clicks on your Ads.
Another way is based on how many visitors your website has, it is called CPM or cost per thousand visits, The ad revenue will be calculated based on 1000 visitors on your website, which means the more visitors you have on your blog the more you earn but still depends on the niche of your blog
The most common Ad that bloggers are using is Google Adsense, but it is not what I recommend, instead, I recommend you apply to Ezoic.
Ezoic is an Ads technology that pays more compared to Google Adsense. They are the official partner of Adsense but Ezoic pays more.
Ezoic also has also some free tools that can greatly help your business like free premium CDN, free caching tools, and other useful tools that you can’t find in other Ad technology.
By the way, I only recommend using Ezoic if you choose WordPress for your blog, If you choose Blogger.com you can use Adsense instead because Ezoic is not available on Blogger.com.
Bloggers Make Money Through Affiliate Network
The second way on how do bloggers make money is through an affiliate network.
Ads pay bloggers for clicks and Impressions, but in affiliate — bloggers can only make money per commission. How does it work?
Well, It looks like this, for example, one of my articles is about a gaming phone, Each phone on the list has a buy button that is connected to Amazon, my affiliate partner, and whenever someone buys a phone using my affiliate link I earn a commission.
But here are the rules, don’t ever ruin your visitor’s trust over an affiliate, only promote an affiliate that you trust and can help your audience.
Another example is Cloudways and Namecheap, whenever you use the link that I provide I earn a commission, but I didn’t recommend Cloudways and Namecheap not just because I’m an affiliate but also because they are the best, they are the hosting and domain registrar that I’m using for this website.
Bloggers Make Money Through Sponsored Posts/ Sponsored Articles
Another way on how do bloggers make money is through sponsored posts, as its name suggests a sponsored post is a kind of post or article that is sponsored by brands to promote their products.
It is a kind of content that has been requested by brands to create for them to increase their brand exposure, but even for a sponsored post, a blogger should always have the right to express their opinion about the product.
If you are new to blogging and have your first sponsored post always make sure that you publish sponsored content that is based on your own opinion.
Bloggers Earn Money From Ad Space Renting
Another way to make money from a blog website is through Ad Space renting. An ad from Google Adsense Ezoic or other ad networks and technology is called a programmatic ad, those are the kind of ads that have been automatically posted on your website.
Ezoic or other networks including Adsense do all the heavy lifting, they are the ones who do some of the negotiations with brands, and bidding, to place it on your website based on your visitor’s interest to make it easier for you.
You just publish content and the ad networks provide ads for it, but Adsense, Ezoic, or other ad networks don’t do it for free. They provide all the technical stuff but they earn a commission on every ad they provide on your blog or website.
In Ad space renting, you are all in charge to do the negotiation with brands that want to rent ad space on your website, you also do the HTML coding for the banner ads, in short, you do all the stuff to run the direct ads for you.
The question is why would you accept direct ad space renting if there are a lot of things that you need to do?
Well like I said pragmatic ads are easy to implement but the ad network has a commission on your ads earnings, in direct ad space renting you will get all the earnings from the ads, which means you’ll earn more in ad space renting compared to programmatic ads.
Bottom Line
That’s it if you are completely new to blogging or creating a website, I’m pretty sure that you learn a lot from this article, how I wish I read a detailed explanation like this when I was just starting a blog almost a decade ago, but I didn’t and it causes me a lot of troubles and failures, but still, I didn’t stop blogging, I learn from all my mistake and continue on my passion.
When you are a beginner in blogging or planning to start blogging always remember that every blogger starts as a beginner, even those that are successful in blogging start as a beginner.
Blogging is not a business to get rich quickly, you will need a lot of time and effort to grow the traffic of your website, as you enter the journey of blogging you will stumble upon a lot of failures, but it’s completely normal, always do a lot of research to grow your knowledge, but your best teacher is your own experience.
Before we end this discussion I want to leave to you this word of wisdom “True success is not based on how much you achieve but based on how many failures you get and still continue to success”
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A blog will earn from Adsense based on clicks and impressions of the ads.
