Start Your Own Free Blog and Earn Money With 4 Easy Steps

2023 is a new year and if you’re looking to start a side hustle, then start your own free blog! I know, you’re probably thinking, “is blogging even a thing anymore?” The answer is simple: YES. Successful businesses start blogging as a way to connect to their audience and show authority in their industry. They share tips, advice, and information about their products. While blogging doesn’t ensure immediate results (sometimes it can), it’s a great way to market your products and services and build trust.

#1 Starting Your Own Free Blog

Starting your own free blog isn’t a difficult task but it can be overwhelming. The first thing you need to do is to figure out where you want to blog. You can use sites like WordPress, Blogger, and even Wix. Understand that your free blog won’t have a customized URL. In order to have a link like, “your name” dot com, you need to have a domain that is then hosted by a service like Bluehost.

What’s a Domain? What’s hosting?

A domain is the location of a website. For example, my site domain is “theinkpot.us.” In order for you to have your own custom domain you need to purchase one. But here since we’re discussing free blogging, you can custom-create your blog name and it’ll be followed by “.wordpress.com,” or “.blogspot.”

Hosting is a service that allows your files to be available on the world wide web. Now I know what you’re thinking. If I create a free blog, does that mean my posts aren’t available on the web? They are available but by having your own domain and hosting service (the best and most affordable being Bluehost), you present yourself professionally with authority.

Think about it, as you’re searching for a review on a handbag that you really want, you’re more likely to click on a link that looks professional, like the PurseForums. That doesn’t mean you can’t establish the same authority. It will be a challenge but with the right work, it’s possible.

Whatever website you choose for your blog, you’ll have a choice of themes. Some themes are free and most are paid. But that’s ok! You don’t need to buy a theme to be successful. Although I pay for hosting for my site, my theme is free!

Find a theme you like but be sure to make it simple and use tools like Canva to create images, logos, and graphics for your site.

Now that you have a name and a site for your free blog, what’s next?

#2 What is the purpose of your blog? Why did you start a free blog?

With any freelancing career, especially if you’re thinking of turning your blog into your business, the first thing you need to ask yourself is: Why am I doing this? What purpose will my blog serve?

Think about what you want to specialize in, or your niche. I know, if you’ve searched the net about starting a free blog, you’ve definitely come across the word niche. Some people might tell you that it’s not important at first, but I beg to differ.

It’s ok if you don’t have a specific niche. But you need to have an idea of what you want to write about. Doing so will provide you with a foundation that help you in the long run. Learn from my mistakes.

I write about Beauty, Lifestyle, and Women’s Health. While these topics are still general, I’m starting to narrow them down further. So take a moment and think about what you want to write about and then head over to Ubersuggest.

What is Ubersuggest and do I need it for my blog?

Ubersuggest is a tool that will help you with keywords. Now hold on a second, I don’t want you to get intimidated by this as I was. But keywords are essential for search engines to be able to see and rank your site.

Your free blog can rank on Google.

YES! Content is everything! But in order for you to have the right content, you need the right keywords.

After you know what you want to write about, think of a few words that relate to your niche. For example, if I know that I want to discuss gaming laptops on my site, that’s one of the keywords I would look up. Ubersuggest will give you a list of related keywords, even the ones that your competition ranks for.

Keywords are important in SEO.

What’s SEO?

SEO is search engine optimization. So the keywords I mentioned before, come into play with SEO. When you do a search on Google, let’s say for gaming laptops (continuing my example), you will get a SERP or a search engine results page. You’ll see a whole listing of relevant sites that match the “keyword” you searched for.

Depending on how your blog ranks on Google for certain keywords, your blog will be further up on the SERPs. Makes sense? Let me make it easier.

Like Indian food? Let’s search on Google for Indian food recipes:

The first site you see, “indianhealthyrecipes.com,” is at the top of the SERP. Let’s ignore my spelling mistake, I know you noticed it. This site ranks the highest for our keyword search!

There are other factors that play into SEO as well. For example, you need to build backlinks to your site as well. Backlinks are provided from sites with a higher authority, linking back to your page.

How can that be achieved? Guest blogging and working on content for other sites. The more backlinks you have, the more you rank and the more authority you establish in your niche.

#3 How do I write an amazing blog post?

It’s not as easy as opening a page and just writing whatever comes to mind. Once you have researched your keywords and understood what your competition is, you need a catchy title. A great title will not only attract a reader but it’ll also help you rank. How? Use your keywords in the title! For example, if your keyword is: quick healthy recipes, then your title can be:

5 Easy and Quick Healthy Recipes for College Students

Quick Healthy Recipes with Less than 10 Ingredients

3 Quick, Healthy Recipes That Your Kids Can Follow

Titles like these will immediately catch your reader’s attention. Notice though, the keyword that we want to use, that we want to rank for, is in the title and towards the beginning. Also, be sure to keep your title within a certain limit. Part of your title not being displayed in a SERP is one of the worse things to happen. Keep it unique, simple, and catchy. I know this can sound daunting, but remember Ubersuggest? In their Labs section, there’s an AI tool that will provide a title and meta description for your post.

Writing your first blog post

Write your post with intent. You may be the best writer that you know and while that’s great, I would still suggest downloading Grammarly. You don’t have to pay for the subscription at all. Use the free version and improve your writing as you blog. The added benefit is that Grammarly has a plugin that will allow you to edit anything you write, not just your blog! I’ve seen a great improvement in my writing and it’s helped me as a proofreader as well!

Use the keywords as you’re blogging!

As you write about the topic you researched keywords for, be sure to use those keywords in your copy. Don’t oversaturate your copy, but use the keywords in your introduction once, and then add the keywords (naturally! please don’t sound like a salesman) in your headings and copy.

Headings are great ways to break up all the paragraphs you’ve written in your blog post. It’s highly recommended to incorporate your keywords into your headings as well! But don’t overdo it! Again, make sure that you sound natural with the use of your keywords. Don’t just shove them in there.

Images are important as well! If you have your own image, one that you own the rights to, feel free to use it! Make sure that your images relate to your posts because that too helps in ranking! If you don’t have an image to use, try sites like Unsplash, Pexels, or even Canva, but be sure to credit the owner. Those images are free to use, but it’s always important to give credit where due. Canva is one of my favorite graphic editing websites and if you were to invest in something (remember we’re trying to start a free blog) besides hosting, I would suggest Canva Pro. All the images I’ve used to decorate my site, add to my pages, and the theme behind my Instagram, I created using Canva!

Finally, length matters. Hold up, I know, haha, but it’s true. For Google to give your page any credit, your posts need to be a minimum of 1000 words! But again, if you’re writing something about what you love, it shouldn’t be that hard. Using statistics and real facts to support your ideas will help too! But be sure to cite your sources. You want to be the authority in your niche and for that, you need sources and facts. Lose the fluff. Don’t write unnecessary sentences. It’s a huge turn-off!

#4 Start Your Own Free Blog and Earn Money? YAS!

This is probably the part that most, if not all of you are interested in. How can you make money with your own free blog?

Simple.

The first thing you want to do is make sure that you’re getting a good amount of traffic to your blog. There are many ways you can do this, one being proper SEO which we have already discussed. But other ways include sharing your posts on Social Media or guest posting for high-traffic blogs.

Offer a Service or Product on Your Free Blog!

Advertise something you’re good at. Post about a service that you can offer to potential clients. For example, if you’re good at creating thumbnails, then post about that and share your samples for people to see. If you want people to be able to purchase directly from your blog, you’ll probably need to upgrade to a paid site. Otherwise, you can link to another site where you have your storefront.

For example, this is what I offer on my blog as a service:

Ads

After maintaining decent traffic to your blog, you can rent out your site space to companies that want to place ads on your site. This kind of works the same way as YouTube. You can use Google Adsense to help investors place ads on your site, depending on the traffic that comes in. I’m sure you’ve noticed that you see ads for the things you search for on Google. For example, if I’m looking for a specific skincare product and then visit your site, I’ll see an advertisement for the product on your site! Cool right?

Yes, the internet sees everything. That’s how they know what ads to put up so that there’s a higher chance of you clicking them to make a purchase.

Affiliate Marketing

I’m not an expert in this niche, but if you’re good at digital marketing, you can use your blog to be an affiliate marketer. You work with a company and promote its products. Sound familiar? Many Social Media Influencers do this exact thing! If you want to know more about how to land a sponsorship make sure you read my older blog post. Check out my cold-pitching master guide as well!

2023 is your year! Start your own free blog and start writing! Remember to write with intent, give value, establish authority, and more importantly, have fun while you do it!