How I Made $80,000+ My Second Year Blogging Full-Time

In 2018, I more than doubled my business income, graduated from college, and created my first digital product.

This was also the first year I spent a lot of time focusing on personal development, which meant a lot of growth in the way I solve problems, time management, set goals, and so much more, which is crucial for growing a profitable business.

Blogging isn’t easy and I essentially worked for free for a long time, but I took it seriously and treated it like a business and now Im a full-time blogger.

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Here are the strategies I used to help grow my blog into a profitable business. 

#1 Creating a product

At the end of 2018, I created a product with my sister called Making Sense of Sponsored Posts.

Over 600 students have taken my course so far and have landed major brand sponsorships, charged 3x what they’d usually charge, and worked with brands multiple times.

The process of creating a product was intimidating and overwhelming and not nearly as easy as I thought it’d be.

Creating and selling products requires advanced marketing tactics, and I didn’t have a sense of direction or where to start, which is why I enrolled in Six Figure Blogger.

Six Figure Blogger gave me the foundation and formula to form, gather research, product creation, high-converting sales pages, and most importantly, how to send thousands of people to my sales page.

I could’ve created a digital product without Six Figure Blogger, but it would’ve been a flop because I would’ve skipped so many important marketing tactics, such as sales centered content and email trust funnels. 

If you’re a blogger who is ready to create a product to sell on your blog, you need to take this course.

Take action now: Before we begin, get access to How To Send An Email Pitch To Land Sponsorships checklist. This quick checklist will help you stand out from other influencers and increase your brand sponsorships.

#2 Changing my mindset

My mindset was holding me back in my business. 

At the beginning of 2018, I felt stuck and lacked confidence, and my time management, and goal settings skills were nonexistent.

Over time, I learned how to create effective time management skills, boost my productivity, and set goals and complete them promptly. 

#3 Quality content + resourceful

When I first started my blog, it was all about creating content, even if the content had nothing to do with health and finance.

Some posts were only 100 words!

This year I focused on creating quality content that was geared around the purpose of my readers.

I used to write for myself, but now I write to help others.

Now, I provide so much more value and resources to my readers and always make sure to overdeliver.

Start a blog today for just $2.95/month with my step-by-step tutorial here. It’s easy, painless, and takes less than 20 minutes to start a blog of your own. With my Bluehost discount, you get a discount from $7.99/month to $2.95/month.

#4 Focusing on Google SEO

Google SEO is the best way to increase your traffic because you can target an audience who is actively looking for the products and services you’re an affiliate for.

And before you waste your time scouring the internet for free, outdated information on SEO, I recommend checking out Easy On-Page SEO for Beginners. Included is a 12-step template to write articles, 9 steps to do after you hit publish, and other valuable info. This is written by a blogger who gest 350,000 page views per month with 60% of the traffic coming from Google. The guide is only $37 (at the time of writing) and is easily worth quadruple the cost.  

It is VERY important that you are diversifying your traffic and not relying on Pinterest. Do. Not. Rely. On. 1. Traffic. Source. 

To show you how important Google SEO is, just 1 year ago only 25% of my traffic was coming from Google. Now it’s 50%. This is amazing because this traffic is targeted, unlike Pinterest and Facebook. My affiliate income has also been rapidly increasing and I’m pretty sure it’s because of the targeted traffic from Google. 

#5 Completing courses

If you’re a blogger and reading this, you can probably relate.

I owe a lot of my growth in my business to courses because I was able to learn things so quickly.

…however, there have been many times where I’d get a course and not even finish it.

2018 was the year of finally completing these courses.

Not only did I go through every lesson, but I did the necessary action and did the work.

I didn’t just read the course; I’d go through each lesson, do the action, and see the results.

I think a lot of bloggers get courses, *maybe* complete them, but most people do not do the action and work the course says to do.

Do you have a blogging course that you’ve gone through and honestly did all of the actions and work?

#6 Affiliate marketing

Improving my affiliate marketing income has been a huge goal of mine.

To increase my income, I did a few things, including:

• being as resourceful as possible and including affiliate links where helpful
• built more trust with my readers
• increased conversions with several strategies
• focused on affiliate programs that have free trials
• did the actions and strategies in Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

Are you interested in making money on your blog but not sure how to get started? Grab this free eBook called Affiliate Marketing Tips For Bloggers that shares the best affiliate marketing programs, how bloggers get paid with affiliate marketing, and the best tips for making money with affiliate marketing.

Final thoughts

You can totally make money with your blog and all it takes is simply getting started! 

What to read next: How I Make $3,000+ Per Month With Sponsored Posts

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