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If you’re looking into blogging and making money, then your YouTube feed is probably bombarded with stories of how people are making $3000, $10,000, $100,000 or more A MONTH blogging. And you’re thinking, hey, that could be me! But wait, not so fast. Blogging and making money aren’t as easy as it seems. These are the 5 realities about blogging and making money people don’t usually tell you but you certainly need to know about so that you can MAKE MONEY FASTER.
If you’re a full-time teacher like me, or simply have a full-time “job” (being a stay at home mom counts), then you’re really pressed for time. And wanting to increase your passive income streams so that eventually you can spend more time with your loved ones sounds like an AMAZING idea. I am here to tell you that it is a lot of work. I’m sure that with consistency and perseverance you will reap the benefits within a year or two, but meanwhile, here are 5 realities about blogging and making money you need to know so that you can reach your results FASTER.
You’re going to discover how to speed up the learning curve so that you don’t waste time watching YouTube video after YouTube video hearing (sometimes) conflicting information about what platform to choose, what niche is best, how to do SEO properly, and which affiliate program to join.
So while plenty of people on the internet are talking about the importance of a pretty theme, how to create an outline for your post, and how crucial it is to have a content calendar, I’m here to give you a realistic view of what your first month of blogging is really like.
This post is all about the 5 realities about blogging and making money you need to know about to make money faster.
Reality #1 about Blogging and Making Money: the learning process is EXTREMELY time-consuming
I started my blog back in July 2017 and I had no idea what I was doing. I managed to set up hosting with Bluehost, I bought the domain to match my Teachers Pay Teachers store, and I knew that I wanted to help high school teachers like myself work smarter and not harder. I made a list of things that I wanted to blog about and created posts that in my mind would be helpful to any secondary classroom teacher.
But NO ONE read my posts!
NO ONE outside of my close circle of family and friends that I shared the link with. Why? Because I had no idea what I was doing! I wrote 8 posts from July 27th to August 31st and then did not write another single post until August 6th, a whole YEAR later! And then in that year once I thought this was definitely going to be the time I stuck to blogging, I only published TWO posts. That was it.
Fast forward to January 2022. I’ve always heard other TpT success stories on the importance of blogging to increase sales. So I knew that it was something I needed to do, I just kept putting it off.
Then somehow on my YouTube I get a video By Sophia Lee (BSL) about how as a full-time college student she made $9000 a month. Hmmm, I was hooked. I kept watching her videos and wow! Four years later she is bringing in over six figures A MONTH from her blog and she’s expanded to other business ventures.
I LOVE the videos that By Sophia Lee creates. Her videos are short and to the point about what worked for her. She’s super down to earth and she doesn’t pretend to know everything about blogging. On the contrary, I really like her because sometimes she’ll tell you, “I’m not sure what this is, but this is how I did it and it worked for me so I’m sure it’ll work for you.”
If you are serious about blogging and making money, you need to take courses and learn from the experts to speed up the process. While there are plenty of bloggers out there with courses, I’m so happy to have stumbled onto By Sophia Lee’s.
If you can afford it, BUY HER COURSE. Seriously. When I first starting watching her videos, they inspired me to once again take up blogging, and I’m hoping third time is a charm! I told myself, this is it. This is my chance to learn a strategy on how to actually build a blog that will not only help other teachers, but can also generate me passive income.
I made the commitment. I purchased both of her courses on blogging and Pinterest and I am SOOOOOO happy that I did. She breaks down the entire blog writing process step by step. I have started blogging consistently and am following her exact formula for making sure that my posts are not only informative and give my readers the valuable information I want to share with them, but that the posts are SEO optimized so that people who need this information can actually find it.
I sit with my computer open and have the BSL course open on my phone so that I follow her strategy to the T.
I highly recommend that if you do buy her course or any other course, go through the entire course first. I listened to it in the car, while I was cooking dinner and cleaning the kitchen, just about anywhere and everywhere I listened to the course. Once I finished it I went back step by step and did everything she recommends.
Now when I go back to my old posts I laugh, not because they’re bad. The content is still really good and important for any teacher, but they would never find my blog the way I have it written. Even now as I am coming to my first month blogging, you can still read these older posts (that eventually I’ll update) and see a huge difference.
So if you want to cut down on the amount of time it takes to learn how to STRATEGICALLY blog to make money, then you have got to buy a course. It is an investment. It’ll help you get started right away and will teach you step-by-step along the way. Even though the learning curve will still take time, you will be confident that your time is being well spent.
If you don’t have the money, search for By Sophia Lee on YouTube and start watching her videos. There’s a lot of valuable FREE information that you can start implementing today.
Reality #2: you must learn about SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is how you are going to get ranked on Google. This is how people can start to find your posts organically and more views on your website mean more opportunities for you to make money from blogging.
Visit ubersuggest.com and type in a key word for anything that you want to write about. Let’s do this together. Think of something popular to teachers, like classroom management. As of the date of this post, there are over 8000 searches on classroom management each month, but the search difficulty (SD) is 69 which is really high and if you were to create a blog post and title it Classroom Management, you won’t rank for it anytime soon.
But if you look up, “What’s Classroom Management,” then that has a search volume of 1000 but the SD is 15 in green. This makes this keyword a much better choice for SEO so if you’re looking to write a post on classroom management, or even creating a product on Teachers Pay Teachers, then using, “What’s classroom management” in your post and/or product will help you rank much faster.
Note: as of the date of this post you are allowed THREE daily free searches (per device) on ubersuggest. So if you don’t want to purchase a plan, research wisely (and on multiple devices).
Reality #3: learn how to drive traffic to your blog
There are many social media platforms that will help drive traffic to your blog. If you’re like me and don’t really post much on social media, then my advice is to choose one of them and stick to it. From what I’ve read and heard from other bloggers, they recommend focusing your attention on Pinterest. People go to Pinterest knowing that they will be redirected to another website. Creating pins is easy using free programs like Canva. Then, use a Pinterest scheduler, like Tailwind, to schedule pins so that you can spend more time creating valuable posts.
I’m still trying to figure out Pinterest. I have focused my attention this first month on devouring information and learning everything I can about setting up my blog. I have created about 5 to 6 pins for each post and am still in the process of learning how to use a scheduler. So more to come on that!
***Update: after 6 weeks I finally made the time to set up Tailwind to schedule my pins. WOW! It seems like a lot when you first dabble in it, but once you get the hang of it (which if you purchased By Sophia Lee’s Pinterest course she walks you through it step-by-step), it’s soooooo easy!!! And the best part is that you set it and FORGET it! Don’t delay on using a Pinterest scheduler such as Tailwind. It truly is a game-changer!
Reality #4: don’t neglect the legal stuff, especially if you want to make money on your blog
Hardly anyone ever mentions this, but there are certain disclaimers and privacy policies that have to be on your blog to avoid any legal problems like lawsuits. You even need these disclaimers to get your Google Adsense account approved. And of course, no one wants to give legal advice because, you guessed it, they don’t want to get sued for giving out misinformation. I AM NOT A LAWYER and trust me, I’m just starting out this blogging journey so I am in no shape or form giving you any legal advice. But here is the person I purchased a legal bundle from to help protect me become legally compliant and have peace of mind. The best part is you can join her affiliate program and get a 40% commission on anyone you direct to buy her products and easily make your money back.
Reality #5 About Blogging and Making Money: it takes money to make money
If you are SERIOUS about blogging and making money the way I am, then you KNOW that you will have to make investments at the beginning and be patient for them to bring in any earnings. I have spent money on my own website and domain from bluehost, I purchased a pretty theme from 17th avenue design, I purchased both courses on blogging and Pinterest from By Sophia Lee, I am a part of Kayse Morris’ CEO Teacher Membership which costs me $49 a month, I bought a lifetime membership to ubersuggest for unlimited keyword searches, I bought credits from depositphotos.com, and have now just spent a pretty penny on these legal templates.
So yes, blogging has turned out to be expensive.
It takes money to make money! My first month blogging has cost me a lot of money. Luckily I have my earnings from selling my products on Teachers Pay Teachers that I am using to invest in my new passive income stream journey of blogging.
If you don’t have that much money to spend, or better yet, if you ARE NOT SURE THAT BLOGGING IS FOR YOU, then you need to try to use as many free resources as possible to get going and once you decide that this is your thing, then dive right in.
- Kayse Morris has a FREE podcast and YouTube channel you can subscribe to where she shares so much information on how to become a teacherpreneur.
- By Sophia Lee has a blog all about blogging and a YouTube channel where she posts a new video weekly giving FREE tips and tricks on how she makes money on her blog.
- Ubersuggest lets you have three FREE keyword searches per device per day.
- Yoast SEO is a FREE plugin in WordPress to help you with optimizing your blog posts.
- Bluehost has cheap hosting as low as $2.95 per month
Now you know the five realities about your first month blogging: it takes a crapload of time to learn, you need to learn from the experts to speed up the process, especially how to use SEO to grow your audience, learn Pinterest to drive traffic to your site, protect yourself legally so no one comes after you, and yes, all of this costs money!!
This blog post was all about the 5 realities about blogging and making money your first month that you need to know about to expedite your money-making journey.
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