I was terrified when my husband lost a job that was supposed to be a refreshing promotion, and I started to blog for money, debt payoff in mind.
We had been chipping away at our debt for years and had seen some improvement. Now we were faced with the possibility that all of our hard work might back slide in a vortex of unemployment and getting behind.
(Side note: None of that happened and everything is dandy.)
I had been working full time and playing with blogging for years. It was a fun side job that I had been attempting to monetize.
And now with our income temporarily sliced in half, I wanted to figure out if I could use my blog. You know, blog for money, debt payoff, start a side gig, every online entrepreneur’s dream.
Blogging For Money
It might be a new idea to you that there are thousands upon thousands of people who make full time incomes exclusively from blogging and blog related sales.
If you are thinking about blog for money debt payoff, then you are probably using blogging to supplement another income. You want to start making extra money. And maybe you want to replace your income eventually.
There are a lot of ways to blog for money.
You can find ways to generate passive income, or you can build a more in depth project if you’re looking for a longer term investment.
Blogging For Money For Beginners
Even beginners can make money from a brand new blog. One of my clients (admittedly an overachiever) wrote 16 articles and launched a blog in 5 weeks.
She quickly used my unique pinning strategy to build up her traffic and get approved for Google Ads. After less than 6 weeks with a brand new blog, she was officially covering expenses and making a little on top.
This is an extreme example.
But if you have an existing blog you are way ahead already. And the point here is that even someone brand new, with no blogging or tech experience, can launch a blog and monetize it very quickly with a little guidance.
The Key To Paying Off Debt With Blogging
If you are going to blog for money, debt payoff needs to be at the forefront of your mind.
Passion and interest drive most bloggers when they first start blogging. And if your priority is to make as much money as possible, these things are still important. But if you can go deeper and really focus your blog around your potential customer, it will be easier to grow your income over time because you’ll know what to sell that people will buy.
So, here is what I consider to be the critical things to focus on if your goal is to blog for money, debt payoff being the end result.
Have An Impactful & Focused Message
You need to captivate people quickly. If you are going to sell things to people, they need to trust you and feel like they know you.
The more passionate you are about your message, the stronger this will come across to your audience. Having a message that moves you will make this work a lot easier. And if you want to make money fast, you need to build an audience fast.
How To Build An Audience
Have A Specific Niche
A broader audience does not translate to more people or more sales. Having a specific niche is going to make your message more unique and have more depth and weight. Many bloggers fall into the trap of not wanting to narrow down.
But you want to be a specialist, and not appeal to the masses. The more specific your niche and specialized your knowledge, the more top shelf your services are going to be, and the more you will be able to charge.
Know Your Audience’s Pain Points
To speak deeply and powerfully to people you have to have an intimate knowledge of how they suffer, and be able to communicate that in a way that resonates with them.
What is your audience suffering from? How are they hurting? What in their lives do they want to be better? Typically our avatar or client is a past version of yourself. So think about your own transformation story. Feel those feelings again and get to know our client’s pain.
Have A Powerful Solution
Now that you have identified your client’s problems, how are you going to find a way to solve it? How will you ease the discomfort of your client? If your solution is not valid, then you will not be believable and no one will trust you enough to be loyal to you.
Provide A Transformation Story
Your audience may not know what they need. They think they know how they are hurting and what will fix it. But it is your job to sell them on why your solution is best for them.
And you do this by showing.
Share your transformation story. Let them see how your story relates to them. They are not interested in the How. They are interested in the What. Impress upon them the results, not the content,
Build Know-Like-Trust
If you are going to sell things to people, they ended to trust you to feel comfortable spending their money.
You can do this a few ways.
One is to simply be consistent. Be available. Show up.
Establish Authority
Establish authority by building valuable content on your website.
People who come to your site for this info will see you as the source if this info. Establishing authority builds trust quickly.
Join groups, answer questions, network and be helpful where you can.
Start your own Facebook group and be a facilitator who is active and engaging.
Focus On The Economical Solutions
An endless amount of tools exists now to make life easier for bloggers.
You can get anything from a topic suggestion generator to completely built out funnels for dynamic and detailed courses.
If you are trying to blog for money, debt payoff being your priority you are going to want to focus on making as much as possible, but also spending as little as possible.
Free And Cheap Resources For Bloggers
Flywheel
Flywheel is a web hosting site. If you are going to monetize a blog, you are going to have to have a host so you can get rid of that sub domain. Flywheel is cheap, $15 a month, and pairs with WordPress which is next recommendation.
WordPress
WordPress is a free tool with an endless number of free plugins to go with it. You can use a free WordPress theme as a template to create a seamless, gorgeous site with no tech, code or HTML experience whatsoever.
MailerLite
If you want to try and make money from a blog, building your email list is going to be critical in establishing consistent sales and growing an audience you have access to. MailerLite is a free email tool that will allow you to create email opt in forms and send out campaigns to your email list.
Canva
As a blogger, you are going to have to design some things whether you like it or not. Canva has a free membership with as much functionality as you would need. They have templates for all different kinds of applications and platforms, so you do not have to have design experience to make something really visually pleasing.
Pinterest is not a social media platform. It is a powerful, visual search engine. And it is easier to generate traffic as a beginner with Pinterest than with SEO.
You can use a free Pinterest business account and use pins to direct traffic for free to your website.
Learn how to get free traffic with this epic list.
Blogging Media Kit
A blogging media kit is kind of like a portfolio of your work, your niche, testimonials and other documents to establish credibility and present your brand to possible partners and affiliates. It does not cost you anything and can be a powerful tool to have available if a potential affiliate or partner requests one. Learn how to put one together here.
Focus On Quick Wins
The third most important thing if you are trying to blog for money, debt payoff being the end goal is to focus on quick wins.
What Other People Try
A lot of people who want to make money from a blog will start a website, write as much content as possible and work on getting Google traffic to their site. Write as much as possible, get some backlinks by writing even more extra content, try to build their list with the traffic that they get and haphazardly post on social media while pinning on Pinterest every once in a while.
What I Try
By focusing on quick wins, we are motivated to keep going. It is a proven system that when we set small goals for yourself, we are much more likely to keep up momentum.
This is similar to the debt snowball method versus the avalanche method. We will talk about this more later. But in short, even though the avalanche method is actually more effective, the snowball method has a higher success rate because the small wins keep people going to the end.
It’s the same with blogging. We have to experience small wins to reach bigger goals.
How To Monetize A Blog FAST
For more info on how to monetize a blog as fast as possible, check out the full article here.
There are a ton of ways to monetize a blog, but what I focus on is how to monetize as fast as possible even if you are a beginner.
Here is my personal step by step recommendation. Now everyone is different, and everyone is in a different place. If you want to discuss your strategy specifically, I’d love to chat about what’s going on with you.
Niche Down
You can’t niche down too far. The more specific, the more specialized your knowledge, the more you can charge for your goods and services.
Create A Free Offer
You need to start building your email list asap. And people do not wan to give their email address way for nothing. So you need to create something for them in exchange for their email address.
Create a free offer for your audience. It has to be relevant and important to your reader. It has to be something that they find valuable enough to give up their email address. Then create a form on your site for people to enter their email address in exchange for your free offer.
Put Ads On Your Site
If your goal is to make money as fast as possible, there is no reason to not get ads up on your site. The sooner, the better. Get your readers used to seeing them and start generating some minimal passive revenue.
Once your traffic builds to over 25k monthly sessions you can qualify for higher paying ads, but start with Google Ads.
Drive Traffic
You should be implementing SEO strategies even as a beginner. And it is a long term strategy, but it will still generate some traffic. You can also post on social media and utilize share threads in Facebook groups.
But as I mentioned earlier the number one way to get traffic as a beginner is to utilize Pinterest to drive traffic to your site.
Choose A Platform
Pick a platform to establish trust with your audience, whatever suits your brand or where you think your readers are. Pick a place to show up, be consistent and let your audience get to know.
Launch Something
Scalable
Something scalable might seem easier, but it is a quantity vs quality issue sometimes. Scalable items can be mass produced with less effort. Think t-shirts, online courses and worksheets.
Not Scalable
If you want to make money fast, the best way to do this is to charge more for less services. And products that you cannot scale are premium because they are limited in quantity. Think of things like your time or personal coaching.
Tips On Faster Debt Payoff
To wrap up, I would love to share some personal tips I used to get out of debt. We were once several thousand in hole, and by being consistent and using these strategies I was able to pay off a surprising amount of debt very quickly.
Cut Up The Cards
I know this may seem challenging or even impossible, but if you have the cards you will always keep using them. You will always feel like you need them. It will be difficult, but when they are not there you will find you miss them less than you think.
Stop Buying
Try a shopping strike, or challenge yourself to empty the pantry or not get any groceries for 2 whole weeks. You might be surprised what you find, or shocked to see how much you spend throughout the week on one off purchases.
Pay Yourself First
This might seem counter intuitive when paying off debt, but you should always pay yourself first. 10% of every check before anything is touched should go into savings. If you only save what is leftover at the end of the month, you will find that you never save.
Pay Off Small Debt First
There are two ways to payoff debt. The avalanche method pays off the largest debt first. Tis is actually more effective because you knock out the higher interest payments and then have much more for the smaller debts.
The other method is the snowball method, in which you pay off the smaller debts first onto the larger ones last. Though this is less effective, it is more successful because the small wins motivate people to keep going.
Often big goals make it feel like we are not getting anywhere, and make it difficult to be motivated to keep going.
Focusing On Short Term Wins
If you are trying to blog for money, debt payoff being the goal then you want to monetize your blog as fast as possible and then utilize the right strategy for your debt payoff.
The great things is that the small win strategy works in both of these areas, and is a great way to think professionally and personally moving forward.
