Today’s guest blog post is written by Kristen of Mochi Mommy. Kristen started blogging in 2019, and in under two years, she grew her blog to an average of 15,000 page views a month. After a year of blogging, she started getting sponsored blog posts, and in the past six months, has made $250 in passive income just from Google ads. We recently polled our followers on Instagram for questions related to starting or growing a blog; here are Kristen’s answers below!
How I Got Started Mom Blogging
One of the questions asked on Instagram was, “How do you get started blogging?” Not gonna lie; starting a blog takes a lot of background work before you can actually start making money. Here’s my general checklist of things to do to start a blog:
- Define your purpose
- Find your niche/target audience
- Decide on a name for your blog and domain name
- Find a web server that will host your blog (e.g., Bluehost)
- Choose your blogging software (e.g., WordPress)
- Choose the theme and appearance of your blog (i.e., branding)
- Line up 3-5 draft blog posts before launching
- Research SEO if you’re trying to make money from blogging
Items 3-7 on the list I consider “logistical” steps to starting a blog, which I won’t get into here since it’s way too much information. However, I want to break down steps one and two more because I feel that those are the MOST important parts of starting a blog.
How to Find a Niche as a Blogger
Someone on Instagram asked me how I found my target audience. What that really goes back to is my PURPOSE in blogging and my NICHE.
Before you even get started blogging, you need to ask yourself WHY. These questions might be helpful to think about:
- Why do I want to start a blog?
- What makes your blog unique?
- Who do I want to read my blog?
- What benefit will my blog provide?
- What are my blogging goals?
For example, maybe you want to start a blog to write about your daily life and feelings. In this case, your blog would be more for personal therapeutic purposes. You may not want the entire world reading your blog, and it’s not likely that people will be searching on Google for the things you write about. Trying to make money from this type of blog would be really difficult.
Now let’s look at my blog in contrast. The reason why I started Mochi Mommy was to preserve my culture and pass it down to my children. So, I decided to post about my family’s recipes and cultural traditions. There are other Asian American parents like me out there with similar goals, so I automatically knew they would be my target audience. And now I automatically have my niche: Asian recipes and family lifestyle.
How to Make Money Blogging – Food and Mom Blogging Niche
Okay, so let’s say one of your goals for your blog is to make money. In general, blogs can make money from three main sources: ads, affiliate links, and sponsored posts.
Ads are the easiest way to make money but are also the least lucrative (unless you have tons of views). You can sign up for Google Adsense and put ads on your blog for free from the very beginning of your blogging career.
Affiliate links can make you more money, but usually, you need a little bit of a following before you are accepted into any network. And again, you’ll need to get quite a bit of traffic to your blog, as you can imagine that not every single reader is going to purchase through your link.
Sponsored posts paid me the most last year. I signed up for influencer networks where I can apply to campaigns for sponsored posts. However, again, you need to be approved to join these networks. Usually, that means you need a certain number of page views.
If you want to learn more about how much money I made from these avenues last year and what influencer networks I use, you can take a look at my year in review blog post here.
How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
Alright, so by now you can tell that in order to make money from blogging, you really need to get a lot of traffic. Where does my traffic come from?
Most of my traffic comes from Pinterest, but Pinterest, like Instagram, has an ever-changing algorithm. So for more consistent and reliable traffic, I make sure to use SEO.
If you don’t know what SEO is, that’s a HUGE topic that I can’t really get into now. But basically, it’s all about how to get Google to read your blog post as being relevant when people use Google search.
Should I Pay for Ads to Get Blog Traffic?
So, I’m not an expert on using ads, so I can’t say for sure whether or not it works. To be honest, I’ve NEVER used ads. And if I can grow my blog traffic to 15k viewers per month without ads, I would say why should I start paying now? That’s just my two cents!
Okay! Those were all the questions from Instagram that were submitted to me. Was this helpful? Do you have more questions? Comment below or find Megan or myself on Instagram and let us know! Thanks for stopping by!
-Kristen
Looking for Additional Resources?
You’ve come to the right place! Check out The Best Apps for Creators on Instagram and the fan-favorite How to Pitch and Respond to Brands as an Influencer.
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