How To Make Your First $1,000 Online With Blogging & SEO

How I Made My First $1000 Blogging 

I started off just like everyone else.  I knew nothing about blogging and SEO or how to make money online.

I had tried several business models such as Amazon FBA, but it wasn’t until I finally came across blogging and monetizing my own website by converting traffic from SEO strategies that I found success.

I started the blog you’re on right now to share my journey and what I was learning along the way.

The first post I published was this one: Best One Funnel Away Challenge Bonus.

As a brand new blog on a newly purchased domain, I was happy in the first few weeks to get a single visitor to my site per day from Google.

It wasn’t until five weeks later that my first post made it to the first page of Google, and I actually made my first sale for $100 having had less than 100 visitors total come to my site up to that point.

I was ecstatic and knew then that I just needed to repeat the process of creating new blog posts, putting in relevant affiliate links, and waiting for my posts to rank in Google.

Ultimately, it took writing a total of 50 blog posts and 6 months of hard work before I made my first $1,000 blogging by getting traffic from Google using SEO.

If I’m being honest, getting $1,000 after just 6 months as a beginner with a brand new blog is probably on the fast end of the spectrum.

To put things into perspective, I didn’t have a single day where I got more than 20 visitors a day from Google to my blog during that entire 6 month timeframe of writing 50 blog posts.

Most people aren’t willing to put in the type of work that’s required to make $1,000 online, but I’m more than confident that you can do it and are committed to doing it if you’re reading this post right now.

You just need to have the belief and persistence that’s required to make it to the other side.

If you’re interested, here’s where you can find some update posts that I made when I was initially creating my blog.  I go over the traffic, analytics, and lessons learned.

• Blog Progress Updates: Analytics & Lessons Learned

Now, let’s talk about how you can actually make money from your blog.    

How Do Beginner Bloggers Make Money?

There’s actually a plethora of ways for beginner bloggers to make money online.

A lot of beginning bloggers though immediately start trying to monetize their website with Google Adsense.  However, I recommend against doing this with a new blog and waiting until your blog is more established. 

In fact, I wrote an entire post on how to monetize your blog without ads:

• 14 Best Ways To Monetize A Blog Without Ads For Beginners

Here’s a quick overview on the best ways to make money from your blog:

• Affiliate Marketing: Recommend another company’s products using your affiliate link to receive a commission percentage of the sale.
• Email Marketing: Collect email addresses of visitors to follow-up to promote affiliate products and future blog posts.
• Content Lock Certain Posts: You can lock certain blog posts that you’ve created in exchange for an email address or for a low cost.
• Free Training With Affiliate Links: If you’re wanting to go all in with a specific affiliate product or program, a great way to start getting sales from the traffic on your blog is by directing visitors to a free training you create with relevant affiliate links.

The best thing you can do when getting started is to focus on creating blog posts to bring in traffic first.  Once you’re getting more traffic, you can start to implement different monetization strategies.

How Soon Can You Make Money Blogging?

If you’re focusing on getting traffic purely through SEO, then the soonest you can realistically make money blogging is within a few weeks to have enough time for your posts to rank.

As a blogger with a new website, you need to gain E.A.T. (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) and authority in the eyes of Google which is only gained over time with backlinks.

Here’s a post I wrote on how to rank high in Google without backlinks:

• How To Rank High In Google Without Backlinks [For Complete Newbies]

A great way that I’ve found to get backlinks is using HARO (Help A Reporter Out).  You can sign up to get requests for quotes from reporters and other bloggers that will in turn link back to you.

It’s a great way to earn more backlinks with a new blog.

How Often Should You Blog?

As often as you can, you should write blog posts. 

I found that it helps to create an entire list of all the different blog posts with their titles that you want to create upfront.

From there, you can set a schedule for yourself for writing the blog posts.  The most important thing is to stay consistent. 

What Is A Good Blog Post Length?

The best way I’ve found to determine what a blog post length should be is by looking at the competition for that specific keyword.

With a new blog, you’ll want to focus on more long-tail keywords so you aren’t going after way too competitive of keywords that you’d be unable to rank for without any backlinks.

The best way to analyze the competition quickly is by looking at the top ten results for a keyword that you’re planning to write a blog post on and seeing how many words each post has.

From there, you can figure out how long you should write your blog post.

What Is The Best Way To Get Visitors To Your Blog?

The best way to get visitors to your blog for the long-term is by focusing on SEO.

Not only do you have a good chance of a blog post ranking in Google for years, but you’ll also be getting super-targeted traffic that can be converted into email subscribers or sales.

For the short-term, I’d recommend answering questions on Quora or using Pinterest to drive traffic back to your blog.

How Do You Convert Website Visitors Once You’re Getting Traffic?

One of the best way to convert website visitors once you’re getting traffic is by having them sign up to join your email newsletter.

To do this, you can create free lead magnets that give value to someone once they subscribe and put in their email address.

I’d recommend making one central lead magnet across your entire site that’s specific to your niche and also individual lead magnets specific to your posts that are receiving the most traffic.

Once you’ve got someone as a subscriber, you can send them back to your latest blog posts and also promote directly various products to start earning commissions and sales.

What Goals Should You Set To Stay Focused And Make My First $1000 Online With Blogging & SEO?

The best way I found to set goals when blogging is to set a goal to write a certain number of posts by a specific date.

Creating more content is something that’s under your control and is up to you to complete the goal.

The number of website visitors and corresponding sales will ultimately come as a byproduct of creating excellent content and promoting it to your email list and on social media.

Do You Need To Buy A Course To Learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

I personally have not taken a course to learn SEO, so it isn’t necessary to take one.

However, it can definitely help you to focus more clearly on your blog over time by having all the steps laid out for you in a course and could potentially save you time in the long run.