How to Make Money Blogging in 2021

If you want to learn how to make money blogging, you need to ditch the cookie-cutter advice you’ve been reading.

“Expert” bloggers tend to give you generic advice like write about your passions, stay consistent, form good writing habits, and create great content.

Before anything else, you need to learn how to start a blog. The first step is getting web hosting and a domain name. I recommend Bluehost as it’s the #1 recommended host by WordPress and has more than enough features to do everything outlined in this guide.

This article is all about making money this year – I won’t give you a vague list of options like affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, online courses, or advertising.

Instead, we’ll focus on scaling your blog like a startup by choosing your niche, scaling your content, and monetizing your blog to make $10,000/month in 90 days.

Let’s scale your new blog like a startup.

Choose Your Blog’s Niche Based on Market Factors, Not Your Passions.

There’s a reason that 95% of bloggers fail, and it’s not why you think.

The current myth is that bloggers fail because they aren’t “passionate enough.”

“Push through failure to succeed,” they say.

Google “why bloggers fail,” and you get the same answer from the #1 result: bloggers fail because they aren’t passionate enough.

I officially reject this notion.

The real reason bloggers fail is the same reason that any business fails: it’s not profitable.

Take my passions, for example.

I’m passionate about a lot of things – drumming, flying airplanes, traveling, astronomy, distance running, personal development, Detroit-style pizza, etc.

However, if I wrote an endless amount of blog posts about one of these topics without making any money, I’d burn out 100% of the time.

Additionally, some bloggers claim, “I’m not in it for the money” or, “It’s just a hobby.”

Hobby bloggers are just new bloggers that don’t know how to make money yet. In any creative digital field – whether it’s design, web development, photography, copywriting, or video editing – there are beginners and experts.

And since most bloggers start as beginners by writing about a passion and try to figure everything else out later, they’re destined to fail.

Plus, blogging advice is outdated, written only to rank on Google, and encourages a generalized approach to appeal to the broadest possible audience.

Bloggers don’t fail because of a lack of passion (they have that in spades).

Bloggers fail because they can’t transition from blogger to business owner.

So they choose a non-lucrative niche targeting a low-value audience. New bloggers forget to leverage networking and connections to their strategic advantage. And they don’t have enough market demand to scale traffic.

I want you to succeed.

Before launching your blog, it’s crucial to choose your niche based not on passions, but three business factors: audience budget potential, professional leverage, and market demand.

1. Audience Budget Potential.

To offer a valuable product on your blog, you need to solve a pain point for your audience. That’s obvious.

As a blogger, you should deeply understand your audience’s challenges so that you can offer the most in-demand solution. Check.

Start by looking at niches where you’re a member of the target audience yourself. This way, your domain expertise shines through faster.

But don’t think that after you’ve gotten that far, you should open up a generic list of 100 niches and narrow it down that way. Watercolors? K-Pop? Travel? Good luck with that.

What is the #1 most important factor when choosing your blog’s niche?

How much your audience is willing to spend.

It’s that simple.

Let’s break it down.

So in this example, let’s say you’re planning to start a blog in the home design niche.

Your blog topics may pull in different readers. Visitors could include professional interior designers, college design students, and even stay-at-home moms who want the latest home decor inspiration.

To monetize this niche, you would create a new blog and move your readers down the sales funnel:

First, you’d create content to attract an audience
Then you’d build out a home design “freebie” to get email opt-ins
Next, you could use affiliate marketing to promote home decor brands
Finally, you would offer your email subscribers a $300 online course (with a money-back guarantee) about 10 Expert Interior Design Tips for the Perfect Home

Nothing is wrong with this approach – this tends to be what most bloggers do, and it can earn some passive income after a couple of years of building your audience.

But is it a lucrative audience? Stay-at-home moms, college students, and a few professionals with an average salary?

Here’s the secret.

By changing just one word in your niche, you can increase your blog’s income potential by 200x.

All you do is change “home design” to “retail design.”

Let me explain.

By adding a B2B component, you just shifted your audience from individuals to businesses and increased your blog’s income potential by 200x.

Think about it this way. If you’re selling to large businesses instead of individuals, you make more money for two reasons. The first is that they have more funds available. Second, it’s not coming out of their own pocket.