Start a Successful Blog (How did I) and Make $500/month (Proof)

Blogging is a business that makes real money. To do this, you must have a blog. So, here are all the steps on how to start a successful blog in 2024. If you own a quality blog, you can easily make $500 per month.

Let’s first learn something about a blog and how to start it step by step. But before that I want to clear you how this article is going to help you exactly. If you are searching related to these terms in below, you are at the right place and go ahead to make money $500/month.

“How to Start a Blog”

“Start a Successful Blog”

“How do I Start a Blog”

“How to Start a Blog and Make Money”

“How to Start a Successful Blog and Make Real Money Monthly”

This post solves the queries listed in above. I have shown the easiest way to start your new blog and of course the most cost effective way to save your money.

Before going to starting a new blog step by step, first have a look how much I make money from blogging. I make standard amount of money every month through blogging.

– What is my authority to write on starting a blog and make money topic?

– Do I have real experience of making money through blogging?

Yes. I have knowledge and real experience of making money by blogging. I have been doing this since 2016. In the initial stage, I have lost a lot of time just for not having a proper guide to start a successful blog with earning proof. That’s why I was very confused!

But after a few months, finally I have created a new blog and started writing my contents. Continuous hard work and consisting on my own goal, eventually I have been successful in making money by blogging. I will show here all the details from starting a blog to earning proofs. Just go ahead…

This is the screenshot of one of my affiliate account. I do Kinsta hosting affilite. This is the proof of Kinsta affiliate income. I have been paid $50 (one time) + $36 (recurring) = $86 just for one referral.

Another income report is from Webflow affiliate program. I made $34.76 by promoting their website builder and hosting. I did nothing to promote this but an article wrote about a black friday offer.

From my PartnerStack dashboard, here is the income of this year. I am updating it in December 2022. That means, this is the total income of 2022 only from PartnerStack.

This is the CJ income of this year 2022. See how it’s much!

Don’t you feel happy when you make the same amount at the end of 2024?

Then must read the full article.

I have made total $106 from January 2022 to December 2022.

Yeah, that’s low but inspiring!

This is the screenshot of income of NameHero. I have made a sale and earned $50 flat commission.

This is the proof of A2 Hosting income. I have made $85 just for one sale.

This is the income report of CloudCone. It’s a cloud and vps hosting provider. I have already got a payment of $25 but this is not in this screenshot because I have received it before 2022. Now $15.85 is in pending.

Here see the GeneratePress Theme affiliate income this year. It’s pending now but hope I am getting this payment soon. This is the commission for only one sale.

Like GeneratePress, I have been able to make a sale of Astra Theme this year. So I made $14.10.

And the most exciting is that, I have made a sale of IObit software and earned €14.39 commission in Avangate.

This is the income report of RakutenAdvertising. I have made 3 Udemy sales and made $6.83 commission.

See the income of Brizy page builder affiliate program. I have made $59.52 just in one sale.

I have earned more money from other affiliate programs and sponsors. To see more income reports, go through the article.

Now think how easy it is to make money if you have a blog. You can do the same like me just starting a new blog how I’ve shown in this article.

When you will get payment emails like this, just imagine how much happy you will be!

This is the email of getting €19.44 in my PayPal account. I have made this amount of money by Buzzsprout affiliate program. I just have written an article on Buzzsprout podcast hosting on my blog and few days later I got a sale. How exciting it is!

Following this article, you will be able to start your first blog which is the initial step to make money online. I am saying this very much true because I already have done it. And I will show you my earning report below for building your confidence that you also can do the same.

Just 10 steps need to perform to setup and start a money making blog.

Hey! are you worried about these 10 steps?

It’s gonna be a long journey and hard too. I never can do it!

– Nope man! steps are very simple and easy to perform. And I will drive you from starting to money making whole path.

So, first let’s have a look on the 10 steps.

10 Steps to Start a Successful Blog and Make Money

1. Niche Selection
2. Domain
3. Hosting
4. Theme Installation
5. Plugins
6. Content Writing
7. SEO and Promotion
8. Backup
9. Make Money
10. My Earning Proof

These are the whole steps we need to perform properly to setup a successful blog. Now let’s dive into these 10 steps one by one and make it happen really.

1. Niche Selection

Niche selection is the initial steps we have to think about it before going to start a blog. Niche selection means topic selection in blogging world! So you need to select your topic on what you want to create your new blog.

Here I am mentioning some niche ideas:

“Blogging”
“Money Making”
“Affiliate Marketing”
“Traveling”
“Health”
“Technology”
“News”

These are the different niche ideas. From these you can choose any or you can find an micro niche after analyzing these broad niches.

Confused?

Don’t worry, I am here! Actually niches are two types: one is niche (broader concept) the other is micro niche (smaller concept). Niches listed above are broader niche. That means niches are big. And the following niches are considered as micro niches:

“Web Hosting”
“Face Care”
“Headphones”

Basically, when your blog contents will be on various topics, it will be call a broader niche blog. On the other hand, when your blog contents will be on a specific product or services, it will be called a micro niche blog.

Yes! Now I am sure you are enough educated about niche. Just select any from the list of niches on whatever you want to make your blog and move to the second step.

Also Read: 10 Best Blogging Niches in 2024 Which will be Successful

2. Domain

Domain name is normally the name of your blog. It’s must be unique because it will be the address of your website or store. There are some tactics to select a good domain. Here I have listed 3 quick tips to select your domain properly.

1. Domain name should be related to your niche. It’s not so important but you should consider it.
2. Make sure the domain name of the blog is not boring neither too difficult to pronounce.
3. Try to buy a (.com) top level domain.
4. The blog name and domain name should be one that easy to remember by the visitors. It’s not important but make a value to the blog.

Now how and where to buy your new domain?

But first let’s think about our new blog will be on blogging industry. That means our niche is “Blogging“.

So, we have selected our niche. Now, we need to find out the beautiful domain names related to our niche ‘Blogging“.

To do that go to LeanDomainSearch.com and write your niche in the search box.

Here you will see thousands of suggestions of related to your niche. Considering the 3 quick tips I have mentioned above, choose your domain name which you like most.

Completing the domain selection, you are eligible to move to the next step for purchase hosting. You don’t need to buy a domain separately. You will be able to buy it with your hosting. So, you can write down the domain name in a note. When you will buy this domain with hosting, you can easily enter it.

Also Read: 10 Best Domain Name Providers in 2024

3. Hosting

Now you have a domain name. You just need a hosting service provider to host your new blog. Hosting is that where your files will be kept.

For better performance and easy to rank on Google, your new blog need a best quality hosting. This will keep your blog always available to online.

A2 Hosting is the fastest hosting service provider at this time. Millions of users are using it. Websites hosted on this hosting, are super fast. As it is a multi-purpose hosting service provider, any business small or large easily can be handled by this hosting.

You just need to choose your package according to your blog level.

As you are starting a new blog, Shared “STARTUP” hosting plan of A2 Hosting is enough for you today. When you your blog will be money making like $500 per month or over, you can upgrade the hosting plan easily in A2 Hosting.

Now you might think,

– Ooops! How can I buy a hosting? I’m at the initial stage, I have no lot of money!

But don’t worry, A2 Hosting is cheaper than other companies. The good thing is that, although it’s cheaper hosting in price but the hosting quality is super fast! Your site speed always will be above 95.

Ok, now you need the step by step process to buy hosting from A2 Hosting. I’m here!

Step by step process to buy a hosting plan from A2 Hosting

Step -1: You might have done already! It’s just click on the above A2 Hosting link. Then click on shared hosting from the hosting menu.

Step – 2: Choose the hosting package you want to purchase. For you new blog, you can go with “STARTUP” plan. Click on “GET STARTUP” to buy.

Step – 3: Insert the domain name you want to register. Then click on “Check” to check the availability of the domain.

If available, click on “Continue“.

Step – 4: Check all the details about your order. Here mind that, you will get 1 year web hosting just for $35.88 USD!

Isn’t this low cost ever?

Ok, then click on “Continue” again.

Step – 5: Here you will have some options like DNS, ID protection and Email forwarding related to your domain. First check the domain name spelling, is it ok or not. And then you can select the options from the three which are free! Then again click on “Continue“.

Step – 6: Now check all details again and click on “Checkout“.

Step – 7: Then insert your Personal information, Billing Address, Password, Security Question and Payment details. Finally, click on “Complete Order“.

These are steps to buy a domain and hosting for your new blog. And you have done it properly!

Now you have domain and hosting, you can start your blog setup and design. So, move to the next step.

Also Read: 10 Best Web Hosting Providers in 2024

4. Theme Installation

The initial step is to make the website design is setting up the domain and hosting together. Just link the domain with hosting and install wordpress on your new blog.

Step – 1: Then log in to your WP admin panel of your site. To do that, insert your Username and Password.

Step – 2: Click on “Themes” from the “Appearance“. You will find it in the left bar.

Step – 3: Click on “Add New” to install a new WordPress theme.

Step – 4: Now search typing the name of a theme you want to install in the search bar. Here I want to install Generate WordPress theme that’s why I have typed “GeneratePress” in the search bar. Then click on “Install“.

Step – 5: Finally click on “Activate“. Your theme will be live in your blog now. You can have a look visiting your blog URL now.

GeneratePress is the most lightweight, fast loading and responsive wordpress theme. It make your blog any device friendly and SEO responsive. For ranking in Google, responsiveness and loading time matters a lot.

So there will be a big chance to rank your new blog if you use this theme on your site.

GeneratePress is free wordpress theme. You can use it easily. You will get enough features in the free version. Along with, it has a premium version with some exciting features.

More customization opportunity, full support 24×7 and free updates are available if you purchase the premium version. Price is also reasonable.

If you already installed the free theme of GeneratePress, you can use it for starting. When you have money, you can easily move to the premium version of this theme.

How to Activate GeneratePress WordPress Theme

It’s very much simple. First install the GeneratePress free theme and active it on your blog which you have already did in this article in the previous steps.

Now, just download the GeneratePress Premium Theme plugin from the above link and install it as a plugin in wp admin panel. Then activate it with the license key. Done! This plugin actually will be linked up with the installed GeneratePress free theme and make it premium version of the theme. After installation and activation of the GeneratePress Premium Plugin, all features will be unlocked.

Also read: 10 Best WordPress Themes in 2024

5. Plugins Installation

So, you have installed and activated the wordpress theme. And your blog design is ready. Now you have to install some necessary plugins to make your blog more beautiful and professional.

Are you worried about what plugins you need to install?

Ok, wait. I have listed all the necessary plugins for you. Just go to your WP admin panel and install one by one.

But before going to the list of plugins, first let me show you how to install and activate a plugin in your new WordPress blog.

How to Install a WordPress Plugin

Step – 1: Click on “Add New” under the “Plugins” tab from the left bar.

Step – 2: Then type the plugin name in the search bar and hit enter. Your desired plugin will be appeared. To activate the plugin, click on “Activate“.

These are the simple two steps to install a wordpress plugin. You can see all the plugins in the “Plugins” section in the left bar. Basically, plugins connection gives your blog extra facilities and features which you can’t do using only a theme.

So now you are eligible to install a plugin in your new blog. Here is list of some necessary plugins you need to install.

List of 10 must have plugins in a WordPress blog

1. Akismet Anti-Spam: It’s a free security plugin that protects your blog from spammers. Akismet is a anti-spam plugin for wordpress blog. It protects wordpress blogs from spam commenting.

2. Jetpack: Security, Performance check and Marketing tools included in this plugin. It’s a multi-purpose plugin that helps to take your blog to the next level. Jetpack provides you stats your site into the wordpress admin panel.

3. WP Rocket: It’s one of the best caching plugin for wordpress blogs. You can speed up your blog just installing this plugin. And high speed helps to get rank your site in Google. It makes your site loading speed less than 1 second.

4. Contact Form 7: Every website needs a contact form that helps the visitors to contact with the site owner. Contact Form 7 is a plugin that allows to create contact forms easily in wordpress.

5. Pretty Links: Link cloaking is a mandatory task for affiliate marketers. Pretty Links plugin helps users to cloak links to make a good look and professional. It’s a free plugin but if you need more features, you can use the premium version.

6. Social Warfare Plugin: Social sharing is must to make your content viral. This plugin gives opportunity to the visitors to share your contents with others in different social media accounts. It helps to get more visitors in your blog.

7. Ultimate Blocks: The no #1 gutenberg plugin. It has some exciting features that helps to create your content more engaging and beautiful.

8. WP Table Builder: To make your contents good look or any other reason, tables need in a blog. WP Table Builder plugin helps you to create beautiful tables with log of facilities.

9. Yoast SEO: SEO is the main task to rank your site on search engines. If you have a site but you don’t perform SEO of your site and articles, these will never ranked on top. Thus you won’t get enough visitors to make money! So, it will be a loss project and you don’t want to make it. For this you can optimize your site with this plugin to rank on Google.

10. Sucuri: Security should be the first priority of your blog. Think, your site is making monthly and one it’s got hacked or damaged by hackers or other any reason!

What will you feel?

But don’t worry, this will never happen to you if you use this security plugin in your wordpress blog. Any kind of attack will be defended by Sucuri. So, your site will be safe always.

6. Content Writing

Once all the technical part is set and done, it is time to ask yourself what will bring the audience to the site?

The answer is simple, people always look for valuable content.

So, a blog or website needs quality content to attract a lot of visitors.

If a website’s niche is entertainment, then it should have entertaining contents, entertaining videos, images etc.

How to Write and Publish a post on WordPress blog

You can write and publish your contents easily in a wordpress blog. Just follow the steps.

Step – 1: Click on “Add New” under the “Posts” tab from the left bar in the admin panel.

Step – 2: Write the title, description and other contents here. And then click on “Publish“.

How to start a successful blog contents?

You just do what you like to write. When a blogger create a blog on that niche he likes and he wants to write.

This will ensure that the blogger does not get bored and tired of what he’s doing.

10 Tips To Create Best Quality Contents

1. Discover evergreen topics and write

Articles should be around the subject which are significant not only to the blogger but also to the audience as well. Solve the problems of the audience asked most somewhere in the internet.

The target audience is quite similar. Hence share the experience of a particular issue and the escape process what people are really looking for. The most accurate answers will directly have a positive impact on the readers who will make a habit of bouncing back to the blog more often with love.

2. Keyword Research

Keyword Research is the most important task for content writing. You have to do this job perfectly to rank your article in Google.

To do this task professionally, you have to use some premium tools. These are called keyword research tools.

SEMRush is one of the best keyword research tool that helps to find out the best keywords for your blog. Using this you can easily rank your site.

SEMRush is a all-in-one keyword research tool. Try to rank a site without using a keyword research tool is like try to reach a unknown place without GPS and Google Map!

So, use the trial version of SEMRush initially and then migrate to the paid version when you have money. You can also try KWFinder the best alternative of SEMRush.

3. Write on Most Sharing Contents in Social Media

Write on these contents which are most shared in different social media site. In other word, try to write on viral contents which are related to your niche.

– How to find out these easily?

No problem, it’s very easy to find out most sharing contents in social media using a tool. The tool name is Buzzsumo.

4. Use Subheadings

When you write articles for your blog, you should use more subheadings. It will be killing article if you insert keywords into your subheadings.

Search engines recommends to use keywords not only in plain text but also in heading and subheadings. So, use this into your article properly.

Now you could ask, what are subheadings?

– Ok, simple. Here’s all these in below.

H2 – Heading tag 2

H3 – Heading tag 3

These are subheadings. Use these type of headings more and more as many as you need to make your article high quality.

5. Make your content Grammatical error proof

High quality contents must be grammatical and spelling error proof. It’s mandatory to make your articles reading friendly that users can easily read it and grab the understanding in it.

To solve this problem and write 100% correct articles, you should take a help to this tool. Grammarly (AI-powered writing assistant) make your article premium quality and any kinds of error proof.

6. Insert beautiful related images

Hey, do you know vision is more effective than listen?

Yes, that’s true. What you see that is more effective than what you listen. So, use some beautiful images in your article to grab the attention of readers. You can also present instruction using images.

– But how can I create beautiful images without hard work?

Ahhh! The only tool can help you to create catchy images for your blog. And that is Canva. Try this tool free although you can use the pro version later after purchase if you need.

7. Write enough words

Your article should contain enough words. I have researched on this topic that how many words should have been in a high quality article.

The real think is that nobody can say the exact number because it depends on the subject. When you start writing, you will understand how much words you need to write.

Basically, after doing a short research I have seen top 10 pages ranked on Google on different queries have different amount of keywords.

But if you wan to rank your article on Google, you should more words than your competitors. This is the trick!

So, before start writing, do a short research opening the top 10 pages google ranked already.

8. Use Quora to find out public questions

Nowadays, Quora is the most using Q&A platform all over the world. Here you will find people what’s are asking daily. You can easily get a lot of ideas of questions.

You can implement the questions in your blog with proper answers. Thus you will get ranked very soon and will get a big amount of traffic.

Because, you have written on the topic what people are really searching! I use this method to get ideas of my blog. You can check my Quora profile. I get more than 500+ views of my answers every month.

9. Update your content

This is going to be really beneficial to be on a top position on SERPs. Updated contents get ranked in Google easily. You have to update your contents when the subject information is updated. Do this first than your competitors.

10. Focus on Quality, not Quantity

Most people have developed wrong thinking over the years that it is mandatory to publish a blog post everyday.

No this is not necessary. I have seen a lot of bloggers who are making $3500/month but they only have around 30 blog posts!

But that does not mean that posting new blog content should be skipped for months.

So, instead of posting blogs 10-12 posts in a month, you should prefer posting 3-5 well written articles in a month.

How many blog posts need to make a successful blog?

I have researched a lot on this. I have seen, most of the blogs that are making at least $1000 per month, only have 30 to 50 articles!

Of course, the owners of these blogs publish new contents but two or three articles in a month.

Here is a point, they publish two or three articles in a month but all are highly researched and more than 3000 words.

So, publish valuable contents as much as time you need, no matter. And must try to publish at least one high quality content in every month. Number three will be the best.

7. SEO and Promotion

Now, you have already learned how to write contents for your new blog. Let’s imagine you have started writing your contents.

How can you promote your articles to get visitors?

There are many ways to promote your article initially when you don’t have any visitors in your new blog. Here are the major 3 methods.

1. Social media

You can get a lot of traffic from social media. After writing your contents, create account according to your blog name in different social media sites. You must have accounts on these social media sites.

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. LinkedIn
4. Instagram
5. WhatsApp

Sharing the content or blog post on these social media giants help you to get new visitors. it’s totally a free process. Just try to increase your followers.

Also read: 10 Best Social Media in 2024 Where You Must Have Account

If you want to make your social sharing easy, you can use a premium tool called Buffer. This tool helps you to sharing your blog posts automatically in scheduled times whatever you set.

Also read: 10 Best Social Media Auto Sharing Tools in 2024

Setup social media sharing buttons on your blog. You can place the buttons in any area whether in the left sidebar or under the article title. It inspires visitors to share your content on their social media accounts.

Also read: 10 Best Social Sharing WordPress Plugins in 2024

You can use a plugin for your wordpress blog to create sharing buttons in your articles. The best plugin for this work is Social Warefare. Try this for free!

2. Guest posting

Guest posting another best SEO method to rank your blog organically in Google. If you are good in writing, you can do it yourself just going to the sites related to your niche and contact with the owners. Ask them you want to write high quality articles for their blog, in exchange they will allow to place a do-follow link into your article.

If you don’t want to do this yourself, because it’s long term and quite hard process. You can go with a paid service. There are some marketplaces like Link Management where you can buy paid guest posts.

You can buy guest posts and get backlinks at a very low cost just spending $5 or $10 in these marketplaces.

Also read: 10 Best Guest Post Purchasing Sites in 2024

3. Email marketing

The another best method to promote your article is email marketing. This is a simple method just collect your readers email organically when they visit your blog first time.

Why readers will share you their email?

Easy, give a free PDF on how to start a successful a blog and make money $500/month and ask them to input their email. They will give you because they will be benefitted by this PDF.

How can you collect visitors email and send them article updates?

You can do it by using a email marketing tool. One of the best email marketing tool is GetResponse. You can setup full automation process using this tool.

8. Backup

So, you have setup the blog and have written contents. And also you are trying to promote the articles. By doing this, you are getting some visitors monthly.

It’s enough to guess the future of this blog. Just you have to be patience.

Now, for avoiding any kind of incident of getting website down, you should take backups of your blog on a regular basis. It might be daily or weekly.

Also read: 10 Best Plugins for Taking Backup of Your Blog

If you don’t want to use plugins for taking backup, you can do it manually. For this you have to use Filezilla to take the files backup and access the mySQL database for database backup.

9. Make Money

So after a long process of setting up and promoting your blog, now it’s time to monetize. You can make money using different ways.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best method to making money. This method doesn’t need thousand of traffic. You can make more money using less traffic by affiliate marketing.

Here is the list of top 10 best affiliate programs you should join to monetize your blog.

See more 100+ affiliate programs and join to increase your revenue.

10. My Earning Proof

I am going to show my earning proofs here for the motivation.

Who are thinking, is it really possible making money through a blog?

This proofs are for them. Yes, I make money from blogging.

I can make my own livelihood by this job. You can do this also. See the reports and start your new successful blog.

I have been paid $59.40 from my MyThemeShop Affiliate Program.

If you have a good quality blog, it’s very easy to make money by sponsored posts. When you have such a blog, companies or individuals will contact you to publish their article on your blog and pay you a good amount of money.

Here I have got and email from Vijay Devkar who is the affiliate manager of Astra WordPress Theme.

He proposed me to write and publish an article on Astra WordPress Theme. For that, he wanted to pay me $50!

I wrote the article and send him the link for checking. He check and send me this email.

Then he sent me $50 for just one article writing and publishing. I have made another more money by blogging and still I am making. It’s a lifetime job if you do regularly.

This is the total income from Hostinger affiliate. As you might know Hostinger is a well-known web hosting company, so it is very easy to get sales of this service.

See the full income report 2022 with live payment proof of $1215.68 and detail stats in this video. Don’t forget to Subscribe my channel to get update videos of make money online.

You must take it seriously as a regular work. It’s like the real job which should be taken professionally.

So just create your new blog and follow the tasks what I have shown you.

Simple! Just keep yourself with BlogLand and employ yourself on your own company (Good quality blogs are considered as a company). You can register it when you will be able to make enough amount of money.

A lot of example of such incidents. Initial blogs when came out successful of making a good amount of money, they turned into a registered company. The big example is that ShoutMeLoud.com.

Over to You

Hey, have you enjoyed this article?

These are the enough tips and steps to create your new blog and make it successful. Here successful means money making. If you start today, you will be able to make money within 3 months if you follow the all the steps and tips mentioned in this post. You will start making at least $500/mo. with in one year working.

Let me remind you the most important 3 things to be successful.

• Creation (Create your new blog)
• Promotion (Promote your blog in a right way)
• Patience (Keep patience, success never come overnight)

If you find this article is helpful for yourself, please leave a comment in below and share it on your social media. Thank you so much for being with Blogging Foundation. Best wishes for your success!