If you’re a mental health professional, or someone interested in their own mental health in general, you probably enjoy learning about and writing about mental health. And starting a blog could be a great outlet – not just as a creative hobby, but as a money making business.
The question is: how do you start a mental health blog, and get paid to blog about mental health?
In this post, I’m going to cover:
- How to start a mental health blog
- Blogging about mental health in general
- Blogging FOR mental health
- And lastly, getting paid to blog about mental health
Table of Contents
How to Start a Mental Health Blog
In my post about “How To Start A Blog: A Basic Beginner’s Guide“, I go through the very basic steps of how to start a blog.
I would highly recommend WordPress.org for this.
Essentially the steps to starting a mental health blog include:
- Choosing a niche (in this case, mental health)
- Buying a domain (this is like the address of a house)
- Choosing your hosting (this is like the foundation of a house)
- Choosing a theme (this is like the design of the house)
- Learning SEO basics
- Writing great content
- Creating an opt-in
- Driving traffic
Blogging About Mental Health
There are many benefits to blogging about mental health.
The more people create content around the topic of mental health, the less mental health stigma exists. This helps those with mental health struggles come forward for resources and support they need, rather than hide their struggle or suffer in silence.
There are some things to be aware of when writing about mental health, however.
If you’re a licensed mental health professional, make sure you understand your local laws regarding how you can serve people online, and how your online content should be separated from your mental health blog. In some states, therapists and counselors are able to seamlessly integrate their in-person business with their blog, but in others, these branches of your business need to be separated.
Coaching is very different than counseling for example. So if you plan to leverage your blog to get coaching clients, you need to be very clear what the differences. One of my former clients was able to successfully do this, but it took some mindset work and a lot of work on marketing language. (Read Janika’s story here on how she added coaching services as a mental health professional.)
Blogging For Mental Health
Blogging FOR mental health is a different story.
If you’re starting a mental health blog for your OWN mental health, the ways you’ll monetize will be very different.
It’s important that your audience know that you are NOT a professional, that you are writing from experience, and that you point towards credentialed professionals for more detailed information.
Get Paid to Blog About Mental Health
Lastly, how do you get PAID to blog about mental health?
In my post “Blog For Money”, I go into this in detail. In short, there are many ways to make money online and many ways to monetize a blog in general.
Here are some of the ways you can monetize a mental health blog:
Ads and sponsorships
- Blog Ads: blog ads include ads like Google adsense, where ads are places on your site. You can earn money with impressions and clicks from the ads.
- Blog Sponsorship: With sponsorships and brand deals, a company will pay you to mention or promote them to your audience. They may ask you to write a blog post, an email, social media post, or review a product.
Partnerships
- Affiliate Marketing: affiliate marketing involves promoting someone else’s product or course with a unique tracking link given to you by the affiliate. If a blog reader clicks the link and then buys something, you might get a small commission from the sale.
- Joint Venture: A joint venture is similar to an affiliate, but you partner with the product provider to collaborate on the promotion together. This involves more work on your part, but results in a higher payout.
Original offers
- Create a course: you can create a course to sell to your mental health blog readers
- Create a Physical Product: create a physical product, like a care package or subscription box
- Provide a Service: potential mental health services could include counseling, or done-for-you services (like a self care plan)
- Provide Coaching: coaching is different from counseling, and if you are a licensed professional, make sure you understand the laws in your area
Read this post to learn about the pros and cons of each monetization method.
Should You Start a Mental Health Blog?
So, should you start blogging about mental health?
It depends on your goals, but if you like to write and are looking for a side hustle or a new way to get clients for your business, then starting a mental health blog could be a great option!
Go here to book a strategy session and see how I can help you start your own blog.