Are you interested in learning how to become a full-time blogger? Becoming a full-time blogger has completely changed my life. I earn a great living (I’m on track to earn over $800,000 blogging this year), I love what I do, I get to help lots of people manage their money better, I’m my own boss, I travel full-time, and more.
Honestly, life couldn’t be any better.
Related: Why I’m Happy I Made The Decision To Leave My High Paying And Secure Job For Blogging
I know many other people who have successfully become full-time bloggers. They make a great living from it and have greatly improved their lives.
Starting your own blog can lead to many positives, including possibly becoming a full-time blogger.
Trust me, it’s possible.
Just a few years ago, I didn’t really even know what a blog was. I started a blog just because I wanted to have a hobby, improve my financial life by publicly talking about it, and so on. I never started my blog with the hopes of earning a living.
Funny enough, I actually knew nothing about blogging when I first started.
I had no idea that people could even make money with blogs. I learned everything slowly and through trial and error, and I really came to love blogging.
After around a year of blogging, I was already making a few thousand dollars a month from my blog, which is a great start to earning a living from blogging.
And, I absolutely LOVED what I was doing.
Due to my experience, I’m often asked what is the best way to become a full-time blogger. Continue reading for my top tips and enjoy!
Note: You can sign up for my free How to Start and Launch a Successful Blog course here, or by filling out the form below.
Create a plan if you want to become a full-time blogger.
If you want to quit your job and become a full-time blogger, I recommend that you first create a plan.
You’ll want to think about a few things, such as:
- How you’ll make money from blogging
- How much money you need in order to quit your full-time job
- When you want to leave your job by
- How much money you want to save in an emergency fund
- How you plan to continually grow your blog
- What goal(s) you are working towards
- And much, much more.
Creating a plan allows you to lay everything out in front of you. This way, you’ll know what you’re working towards and know what to do.
Determine what you’ll blog about.
To become a full-time blogger, I always recommend creating a blog around a topic that you are passionate about, that you are an expert in, that you like, or something else along those lines.
Doing this can make sure blogging stays fun and not a chore.
You can blog about several topics or you can blog about one specific thing, such as personal finance. I write about finance and topics related to that because it’s a topic I enjoy.
However, any topic will work, and any topic can make money blogging.
Yes, your blog can be about anything and/or everything. It’s entirely up to you and what you want to do.
Here are some possible topics for your blog. And, the list doesn’t end here. Choose one, all, or some. It’s all up to you.
- Lifestyle
- Home
- Family
- Finance
- DIY
- Small business
- The outdoors
- Fitness and health
- Food
- Inspiration and advice
- Animals
- Travel
- Games
- Relationships
- School
- Electronics, and more!
The beauty of having a blog is that it can be about anything you want.
Related: Want To Make Money From Home? Here Are 17 Of The Best Online Jobs
Start a blog.
Learning how to become a blogger means that you’ll actually have to start a blog!
You will never know if you like blogging, or if you can become a full-time blogger, unless you start one.
Luckily, starting a blog is affordable.
No, you don’t need a ton of technical skills or anything like that. I started my blog when I didn’t really even know that they existed. Even if you aren’t too computer-savvy, you can still start a successful blog! There are many people who have successfully started a blog even though they didn’t know much about them.
So, the next step of becoming a full-time blogger is that you’ll need to actually start one!
In my easy tutorial, you can start a blog for less than $3 a month, I lay out all of the technical details so that you don’t get confused.
Publish high-quality content.
A blog needs high-quality content, especially if you want to become a full-time blogger. It’s necessary if you want your readers to come back for more.
This means that you’ll want to:
- Write about things that you believe others will enjoy. If you don’t enjoy anything that you write about, then others probably won’t as well.
- Do your research. This may include reading other articles, looking up statistics, reading books, and so on.
- Create content that is engaging. Your writing should make a reader want to do something or engage with you.
- Write in your own voice. To stand out from others, you should write in your own voice and develop your own writing style.
- Edit your content. You should never just write content and publish it. You’ll want to reread and edit it. You should be checking for flow, grammar mistakes, and so on.
Love what you’re doing.
Blogging is a ton of fun. The best blogs are written by those who love to write and love everything that goes into blogging.
However, that doesn’t mean blogging is just that simple.
It’s quite easy to spend day and night working on your blog, so enjoying it is something that I believe to be very important. There are always new things to learn, things to research, networking opportunities, writing, and more to do. So, enjoying what you do will make everything much better and even easier.
Network with others.
Networking is extremely important if you want to become a full-time blogger and learn how to earn money blogging.
Many bloggers see other bloggers as competition, and this really holds them back. You should be open to making blogging friends, attending blog conferences, sharing content with others, and more.
Networking can help you to enjoy blogging more, learn new things about blogging, make great connections, and more.
Related: How To Start A Successful Blog In 10 Steps
Find ways to monetize your blog.
Obviously, if you want to become a full-time blogger, then you’ll need to find ways to make money from blogging.
Luckily, there are several ways to make money blogging. These include:
- Affiliate marketing – Affiliate income is when you place an affiliate link in a blog post and try to earn money from people buying the product through your link. This can be a good way to make money because if there is a product out there that you love, all you have to do is review the product and hopefully others will be interested in buying it as well.
- Blog sponsorships – Paid blog posts and advertisements are when you place an advertisement on your blog in exchange for money. This might be in the form of a sponsored review, a guest blog post, a sidebar link, an advertisement within a newsletter, and so on. There are many different forms of paid advertisements on websites.
- Display advertising – Display advertising is when you place an advertisement on your blog in the sidebar, below a blog post, below your header image, or in some other location on your blog. Then, for every so many views that the advertisement sees, you earn a certain amount of money.
- Creating your own product – There are many products you could create and sell on your website, such as a book, course, etc.
I recommend checking out my online course for bloggers, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I earn over $50,000 a month through affiliate marketing, and in this very informative online course, I share my exact strategy and tips. If you’re a blogger, then you NEED this course.
Read further about the different ways to make money blogging at The Ultimate Guide To Making Money Blogging – How I Earn Over $50,000 A Month Online.
Improve your page views.
Continually working towards growing your number of page views can help you to improve your income. Due to this, you’ll want to continually improve these numbers so that you can become a full-time blogger.
There are many different ways to increase the number of page views you receive on your blog.
Below are tips to improve your blog’s page views:
- Be active on Pinterest – Pinterest is one of my top traffic sources, and it brings me around 200,000 visits a month. I recommend creating great images, making sure the description and title of your images are catchy, pinning regularly, and only pinning long images. In case you are wondering, I use Picmonkey to edit all of my images and Tailwind to schedule them. I highly recommend purchasing this Pinterest strategy guide, as I use it for my Pinterest strategy and it has helped me tremendously.
- Find other social media sites to be active on – Besides Pinterest, there are several other social networking sites that you may want to check out. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, and others.
- Post regularly – For most blogs, you should publish content at least once a week. Going for weeks or months at a time without a blog post can lead to readers forgetting about you.
- Guest post – Guest posting can lead to new readers checking out your blog and subscribing to it. This can be a great way to reach a new audience.
- Make sure it’s easy to share your content – I love sharing posts on social media. However, it gets frustrating when some blogs make it more difficult than it needs to be. You should always make sure that it’s easy for readers to share your content. This means making your social media icons easy to find, having the information that needs to be shared (title, link, and your username) already input, and so on.
- Create catchy headlines – The title of your post can be a major factor in influencing readers to click over or not. This is an area that I am continually working on, because headlines are extremely important!
- Learn SEO – SEO (search engine optimization) is not something I could teach in such a small space. However, I recommend doing your research and learning more about what it is and how it can help you.
- Make it easy for readers to browse – If you want more page views, you should make it as easy as possible for readers to read your other blog posts. You should make it easy for readers to find your blog homepage, categories, tags, search bar, and so on. Also, I recommend including links in every single one of your blog posts, so that readers can easily find related topics.
- Start an email list – A great email marketing company to check out is Constant Contact. They have great customer service and a free 60 day trial (no credit card required).
I recommend purchasing my friend Lena’s book, How I Went From 17K to 350K+ Monthly Page Views In 9 Months. It’s very affordable and informative, and I’m sure you’ll get your money’s worth. I bought it myself and have implemented many of her tips on my blog.
Are you interested in learning how to become a full-time blogger and make money from blogging? Why or why not?
Recommended reading: How To Start a Finance Blog and Make Money
How To Start A Blog Free Email Course
Want to see how I built a $5,000,000 blog?
In this free course, I show you how to create a blog, from the technical side all the way to earning your first income and attracting readers. Join now!
Leave a Reply
Great information. I would like to start a blog and be as great as you are. I don’t know where to start I have a lot of things on my mind to blog about. Thanks for the help.
Hello Michelle,
I am very happy today because today I find a very useful and Interesting post, Its not easier to Quit a full time job for blogging, but if you are passionate about blogging then you need lot of time for searching and publishing High Quality content for your Blog.
Thanks for Sharing your experience with us.
Thank you so much for your words of encouragement and sharing your knowledge!
This is so inspiring – I have had a blog now for close to a year (admitting to not being consistent) and I have been struggling knowing which direction to take. Thank you for all of your insight and expertise!
Great post! I’ve been blogging for a long time, but only started focusing on monetization as well as social marketing and networking this year. Unbelievable! Earlier I just wrote… and did some SEO. I find it so much more fun to blog, now when taking my business seriously. Enjoying your affiliate marketing course, by the way! 🙂
Hi Michelle,
Love the guide! I’ve just created a mindmap as a plan using the points you mentioned above! thanks for the guidance.
I was wondering though when you’re talking about Pinterest you mention to only pin long images,
what did you mean by this exactly? and what’s the reasoning behind this?
Thanks a bunch for your time if you get a chance to reply, I really appreciate it!
Jamie
If you take a look at Pinterest, long images are what do best and what fit the platform (even Pinterest says to only pin long images). Short images just get lost in the shuffle 🙂
Long images are exactly what I have in this post – vertical, rectangular images.
ooh, i see what you mean now!!
Thanks for the quick reply and constant inspiration!
I’m currently searching for a new theme and constantly checking back to your site as I think it’s definitely one of the more user-friendly looking blogs to read!
Hope your well!
Great post!! I will put some of these tips into action.
Hello Michelle,
Excellent tips!
While all of these suggestions rock, I really find the tips about blogging about something you’re passionate about and having fun the most essential ones that a lot of people gloss over. I, myself, missed this one when I started my first website and blog roughly 4 and 1/2 years ago, and while I was able to have some success it fell on its face later on as my inspiration and drive fizzed out.
You can’t maintain the energy to do all of the things that need to be done for a blog if the passion isn’t there. Great reminder, and if anyone who is new to blogging is reading this now, take Michelle’s word for it. She’s spot on!
I’m going to have to consider jumping in on your Pinterest course, because cracking 200,000 visitors a month is quite the feat!
I’ll be tweeting this article out, now. It’s much appreciated, and I’m sure my peeps will get a lot out of it. 🙂
This is such an informative post! I have had my blog for a few months, but it was just for fun and now I am starting to get more serious about it. I am quickly realizing that I have a lot to learn!! I totally agree with the comments about how amazing the blogging community is! Everyone is so nice!
Hi Michelle,
Great article. I’m on my journey to blogging and I have to say it feels good to read about success stories like yours. But sometimes I do wonder, will the blogging world become saturated… What do you think about that?
It’s always a pleasure to read your posts!
RN Didi
Nope, I don’t think it’ll become saturated. The world is a big place.
Thank you so much for this post! As a new Blogger it’s so inspiring to have this article as a “game plan” to getting my Blog up and going. It’s nice to know veryone starts where I am right now. As I get frustrated I can tell myself that successful bloggers like you once was where I am. Thanks again for such a great post!!
Awesome info Michelle.
Becoming a full-time blogger is my ‘big hairy goal’ for 2017 and this post is SO helpful.
Thank you!
I want to preface this by saying that I respect and believe you (no reason not to) when you stake claim to what I’m about to address… this comment/question has no ill-intent, nor am I trying to be a critic. I write all of this with a smile on my face and would high-five you for your success in person if I could, so please don’t hear something I’m not saying) 🙂
I’ve read many of these comments and I’m surprised that I’m the only one (out of the ones I’ve read) that has anything to say about the outlandish-ness of you saying you are “on track to make $800,000 this year” and I’ve also seen people in the blog/podcast world that are niche-markets, B-level and below celebrities that may not be household names who claim to make insane amounts like you (i.e. Pat Flynn, the only example I could think of at the moment).
$800,000 a year equates to ~$15,000 per week and maybe I’m to assume that you’re just saying $800 is gross and in reality, your books show $770,000 in expenses, netting you $30,000/year in income…. or you could have that reversed and you net $770K in income, nobody knows but you and your accountant.
I say all this to say that it’s frustrating to see those numbers and I can’t even make EIGHT dollars in a year. Worse than that, I have had my current blog (mind you, it’s like my 5th blog in ten years and I already quit my job 3 years ago and spent 2.5 years preparing to launch this one) since August 2016 (7 months) and I have 8 followers, only 2 of which are organic subscribers that I didn’t bug the crap out of until they let ME add their email manually, and never hear any feedback when I post.
I guess I’m just venting and looking for some encouragement because this IS my biggest life passion and I have plenty of time to devote to it now, so I’d like to see some results!
I welcome all wisdom, encouragement and if you’ll check out my site and maybe share some constructive criticism.Thanks so much!!
I was on Ruth Soukup’s blog and I remember reading something she said and taking it to heart. When you’re first starting out, you don’t need to be on every single social media site. Just focus on one platform, master that, then move on. I liked reading that because, as a newbie blogger, I needed that reminder and know that it can be TOTALLY overwhelming. I definitely want to quit my day job, so thank you for this post and thank you for mentioning the Pinterest guide. Because I think I want to focus on that media aspect first.
Great post! And thank you for the blogging course via email. It was extremely helpful!