How To Turn Your Blog Into A Full-Time Business
Friday, November 12, 2021 Being a full-time blogger is something that a lot of people dream of doing. It’s something I was dreaming about for years before I was able to do it myself. But after a long few years, I was able to go full-time with my blog! Here are some of the tips and tricks I used to actually make a full-time income blogging!
My back-story
My story of becoming a full-time blogger is very different from the typical stories. I was not making a full-time income when I started full-time blogging. I was making less than $100 a month at the time.
And that’s because I lost my job back in 2020, much like many people did when the pandemic began. I knew I had a choice. I hated the 9-5 lifestyle. I could either start a job I would hate, or I could take this golden opportunity I had in front of me and run with it. So, I chose to run with it. And within a few short months of having unlimited time to work on my business, I was able to scale to a full-time income!
Turning your blog into a full-time business is not easy. I genuinely don’t think I would be where I am right now if I didn’t lose my job the way I did. I was not one of those people who could manage both. Now, that’s not to say you should quit your full-time and start only blogging. But it was honestly the only thing that worked for me. If you’re not in the position to do that, try these tips instead.
How to turn your blog into a full-time business
Understand What Full-time Blogging Looks Like For You
The first question you need to ask yourself is, what does full-time blogging mean for me? How much money will you realistically need to quit your job and live comfortably? If you have a worse month than usual with your blog, can you still survive? You should add up all of your bills. How much are you spending a month on the necessities? It may be more than you think. Is there anything that you can cut out that you don’t need? How can you make that number as low as possible?
This way, you have a figure in your head. You need some sort of number that means full-time for you. Everyone is different. What I make may be way too little for your version of full-time blogging. Once you have that number, you can start to plan. Another great tip is to make sure you have a savings account. You really want to try and have 3-6 months of your bills saved up before you plunge into full-time. This will help you if there are any sudden expenses or unexpected issues.
Create A Money-Making Strategy
How do you plan to make money blogging? If you have no idea or even just a vague idea, you may be in some trouble. There are so many different avenues to making money online, and you need to get clear on which ones you plan on taking. You could try:
- Affiliate marketing
- Ads
- Sponsorships
- Selling your own products
- Creating your own services
Come up with 1-2 ways you can start making money. Feel free to brainstorm as many as possible, but then focus on 1-2 to start. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself. Once you’ve picked out the income sources you want to work with, it’s time to learn. Learn everything you can about those ways to make money. And then start implementing them on your blog. Challenge yourself to write at least one affiliate-focused article a month and then promote it a ton. Learn how to place ads on your site. Start practising your skills that you can later turn into a service. Here is a whole list of ways you can make money with your blog.
Then, break down how much you would like to make from each income stream. You can open yourself back up to all the income streams again if you’d like. Take the number you need to be full-time blogging and decide how much you’d like to make between each income stream. This will almost certainly change. There is something about having the numbers written on paper that makes it seem more attainable and tangible. You may find yourself putting in more work to get there because now you have a goal to smash.
So, for example, let's say you need $1,000 to be full-time. And you have affiliate marketing, services, and paid products as your income streams. You’d break it down like this;
Monthly income:
- Affiliate marketing: $400
- Services: $400
- Paid Products: $200
You can do this for as small of an amount as you want. Say you know your end goal will be $5,000. Breaking that down may be too daunting and unrealistic at first. So, try it with something smaller, maybe $500. Each time you hit a new monetary milestone, do that same exercise again with a higher amount!
Stop Making Free Only Content
One of the best ways to start making money is with affiliate marketing. It is a fast and easy way to get started. I thought I was doing things that would make me money, but it turned out I wasn’t. I was just creating content for free and not giving my audience even an option to buy anything from me. This is fine, in moderation, but if you want to turn your blog into a full-time business, you have to make money somehow.
I went through all the posts I was putting out and marked down each one that had a money-making opportunity in it. I realized ways I could tailor my blog posts to fit in more money-making opportunities. It could include an affiliate link, a paid product I created, or a way to sign up for my Pinterest management services. If you're able to add in little ways to make money throughout all your blog posts, you're likely to make some sales every day!
Build Up Your Brand
When you start turning your blog into a business, you need to create a brand that others can relate to and want. Try to make things such as social media uniform so that people can follow your brand. You want to create something that others will recognise straight away. When building up your blogging services, try to offer something unique and special to you. If you're passionate about what you offer, your clients will recognise that. You could also build up a portfolio and use quotes or reviews from other jobs you've done. Showing people what you can offer and how well you've done previously can help you turn your blog into a business. If you're able to create templates and colour schemes for things like emails and invoices, that can further build up your brand! Make sure you know about the legal side to blogging too. You don't want to get caught out! I've got a whole post about the legal side to blogging including tax and ads!
There are so many ways to go full-time with your blog and so many tips that I could share! Know how much you need to be a full-time blogger, then break down a plan to get there. Learn everything you can about the monetization strategies you want to use, and then stop making free-only content! Those were things I wish I had done sooner. I made a lot of those mistakes early on, so learn from me! I hope you found this post helpful! You could also read about the truth of being a full-time blogger if you aren't sure if it was a path you wanted to pursue!
AUTHOR BIO:
Hey! My name is Sarah, a blogger and YouTuber. I blog about productivity, mindset, manifestation, and blogging tips! On my YouTube channel, I mainly cover social media and Pinterest marketing! You can find me at my socials down below!
9 comments
I would absolutely love to blog as a full-time job as I love writing. But a bit of negative thinking comes in where I think, can I actually do it? Am I good enough? Where do I start? This blog post breaks it down really nicely and is really helpful. Thank you for sharing your suggestions and your experience.
ReplyDeleteLauren - www.bournemouthgirl.com
Great post, super helpful. I need to get on it with affs, I've been putting it off and losing money!
ReplyDeleteRosie
These are some useful tips! I currently work full time and blog as a hobby but I would love to begin making some money or doing more sponsored posts/brands. These are great and helpful, also congrats to you for the motivation and determination to just go for it and ace your business ☺️
ReplyDeleteI'm guilty of working for brands and small businesses for free. One time I said I couldn't do it for free and so they didn't work with me which I really regret now :/ I'm going to come up with a prices list and try to stick to it as best as I can. I'm not sure I'll ever go full time, but it's nice to not always be writing for free! x
ReplyDeleteBreaking down a big goal into smaller steps and than breaking down the smaller steps into manageable moves is a great way to start working towards something without suddenly drowning in work. I love the idea of going back over old posts and updating them to fit in with one's current brand vision.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!
Amazing tips! I'm still just getting started with my blog but I'd love to go full time some day, so this was super useful. It also reminded me to get on with signing up for those affiliate programmes - they sound super important! Thanks for sharing x
ReplyDeleteI love this! Blogging is so tiring, and people underestimate the work that's put into it. I know looking at your stats and barely seeing any readers with a low bounce rate is unmotivating.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's rewarding when you realize just how much progress you've made with your blog. Something, I needed to work on at the starting was building my brand. So new bloggers, could really benefit from this.
Just one tip for your blog! Increasing the font size, could help with viewers because it's quite small for desktop.
Of course, it's personal choice, just a suggesstion. :))
Sejal | www.thelazygal.com
Hello. I just found your blog and haven't looked around too much yet but I did enjoy this post, and now I have some questions. How do you first build a following for a new blog? I mean, you're not going to get sponsors or offers when you have zero followers. And please don't say to hit every social media platform hard. There has to be another way.
ReplyDeleteI was a blogger for over ten years and had a fair little following. I quit several years ago while going through some personal struggles. I completely deleted my blog, thinking I was done forever. More recently, I've decided to start a new blog and I've found it's waaaaay different now. It's impossible to gain followers!
Any tips or ideas are appreciated.
Thanks!
~Deb
It's excellent to know: you'll have a figure in your brain this way. You'll need a figure that represents full-time work for you. Everyone is unique. For your notion of full-time blogging, what I make could be far too little. You may begin to plan once you have that number. Another excellent suggestion is to open a savings account. Before you start working full-time, you should strive to save up 3-6 months' worth of costs. This will come in in if you have any unexpected bills or problems.
ReplyDelete