Your Free Comprehensive Guide To A Profitable Blog

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more info. 

Hello! My name is Lisa, also known as Mrs. Mad Money Monster. Today, I want to share with you exactly how I became an accidental professional blogger and how you can too. I started Mad Money Monster in late 2015 when my future husband and I were on the cusp of buying a huge house we couldn’t comfortably afford. After we ran like crazy from the contract after a poor home inspection report, we pulled our heads out of our butts and made our money a priority. This blog was supposed to just be a chronicle of our journey (and still is), but it’s turned into so much more than that. So, if you’ve ever considered starting a blog as a side hustle, take the time to read how I turned mine from a passion project into a real money-making business!

How It All Started

When Mr. MMM and I nearly bought that expensive house, we had hit financial rock bottom. We weren’t being totally irresponsible with our money, we just weren’t making it a priority. Basically, we were being normal. We had normal debt (credit cards, student loans, mortgages, etc.) and we weren’t saving nearly as much as we could have been saving.

After committing to a more frugal and purposeful lifestyle, we started spending less and saving more. A lot more.

To stay accountable, we started this blog and began tracking our net worth. Tracking our net worth, by the way, was the single best thing we did to keep us motivated to stay the course and achieve our financial goals.

We use Personal Capital to track it. It was highly recommended all throughout the personal finance space and now I know why. It’s a fantastic, secure tool that takes only minutes to set up and allows you to see exactly how your money is performing in highly-optimized colorful little charts.

There are also quite a few calculators you can use to estimate what you’re going to need for your future. Oh, did I mention it’s also free? We love free. With that said, if you’re not already tracking your net worth, I highly recommend you give Personal Capital a try.

Launching Mad Money Monster

Let me start out by saying that when I launched Mad Money Monster in October 2015, I had absolutely NO IDEA what it meant to be a blogger. I had no idea how people read content on the internet. And, I had no idea what kind of content people wanted to read. To say I was completely clueless is an understatement.

I launched the website a month before we marched down the aisle at our amazing wedding and, at the time, I was just blogging about our personal journey with no real rhyme or reason.

I was, however, fortunate enough to snag my blog name on all the popular social media platforms. What I was supposed to do on those platforms, though, was a complete mystery.

It’s True – Content IS King

The concept of trying to help people with the content I was churning out 3 times/week was a foreign concept to me. Eventually, though, I realized that my blog should be trying to focus on solving problems or answering questions for my readers. After all, that’s what most people are looking for when they brave the world wide web.

This concept actually took me a solid year to figure out. In fact, I nearly threw in the towel on the website. The first summer after my launch (June 2016), my traffic reached an all-time low and I was barely putting out any posts. I was at a loss and didn’t know if I wanted to keep going.

I felt a nostalgic uptick when fall rolled around since I had launched it one year previous to that. When the leaves started turning colors and the air turned crisp, I felt like creating more purposeful content for my very small audience. So, I did. I kept going.

Increasing Dwell Time

You’ve likely heard the terms dwell time and bounce rate tossed around in the blogging community. Dwell time is the amount of time someone spends on your blog post. And dwell time directly impacts the bounce rate. Ideally, you want a high dwell time which will decrease your bounce rate.

By increasing dwell time, you’re more likely to have a new visitor who stumbled upon your blog to become an email subscriber or take action within your post via affiliate links or other opt-in offers. Oh, and Google LOVES websites with low bounce rates and will rank them higher in search engine results. Woot!

One of the best ways to increase dwell time and make sure a visitor actually reads your content (or at least skims it) all the way to the end is by creating catchy and SEO optimized titles and headings. One of the things newbie bloggers tend to do is to worry about the main title and not give any thought to optimizing the headings within the post itself.

Not surprisingly, if your post has a catchy title you’ll get people to click on your article, but if you have catchy headings, you’ll get people to stick around and read your article! Creating catchy headings will increase dwell time, and when someone spends a significant amount of time on your blog post they have just invested their time. And when someone invests their time, they’re more likely to become a subscriber or take actions within your post!

So, in addition to using the Key Tips For Content listed above, use Coschedule Headline Analyzer to ensure your titles AND headings are optimized and rock.

One Final Note: Not only will increasing your dwell time reduce your bounce rate and help your content rank higher in Google search results, it’ll also help you earn more revenue from ads if you ever decide to go that route.

Studying The Masters

By the time January 2017 rolled around, I made a resolution to take Mad Money Monster seriously and treat it like a business.

By studying some of the big bloggers in my niche, I realized exactly what people wanted to read. I started tailoring my content to meet those needs with a personal twist thrown in here and there. I mean, if you’re doing exactly what other people are doing, there’s no reason for anyone to come back to your site, right? Keeping it personal has helped the blog stand apart and hopefully feel more relatable to my readers.

January 2017 was a complete game-changer for me. No, I wasn’t making any money yet, but I was gaining exposure. Lots of it.

Building A Social Media Presence

I was following people in the personal finance space on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. I followed as many people as I could each day without getting banned. Some of those people even followed me back and I was getting noticed.

I made sure to like, comment on, and share content that I thought was engaging, entertaining, and helpful. Doing this, put me on the map with other bloggers. Soon, they were also liking, commenting on, and sharing my stuff, too.

It’s important to find a balance when starting to engage with more established bloggers in your niche. Don’t like, comment, and share every single post or Tweet. The last thing you want is to become annoying.

Twitter:

Twitter is highly interactive and conversational. Don’t underestimate the power of Twitter for building relationships. I also use a program called Buffer (there is a free and paid version) to schedule Tweets for my content. You can also use it for your other social media platforms.

With Buffer, I schedule Tweets to go out every 30 minutes to 1 hour to ensure I’m always being seen. Tweets don’t last very long, so by doing this, I get maximum exposure in front of a wide range of people.

I have had many people notice me on Twitter and contact me for sponsored posts. In fact, I had an editor from a huge financial publication find me on Twitter. That led them to ask me to write a piece for them. It went well and the publication has since asked for a second piece. It’s all about relationships.

Facebook:

Facebook can be tough for driving traffic to your site without paying for ads. I have noticed that the more personal the post is, the more people see it and engage with it. Throwing up a link to your latest blog post isn’t very effective on Facebook. You’ll need to make thoughtful, engaging, and entertaining posts to get any traction. On Facebook, you want to always post with engagement in mind.

For instance, always consider whether or not people will want to like, share, and comment on your post. If the answer is yes to all three, go for it. The more engagement your posts get the more favorable Facebook ranks your page. And when that happens, each post will be put in more newsfeeds. On Facebook, it’s definitely about quality and engagement over quantity.

Instagram:

Instagram is a way for people to get to know more about you on a personal level. It’s understandable if you don’t want that kind of exposure, but it really does make you more relatable. And when you’re more relatable, you’re generally viewed as trustworthy and authentic.

Pinterest:

Pinterest is known as the Kingpin in terms of free, high-converting traffic. People on Pinterest tend to search for what they want, grab it from your site, and be on their way. They won’t always turn into subscribers, but they are more willing to purchase quality products and services than people finding their way to your site from other social media platforms.

Commenting And Networking

Commenting on other bloggers’ articles within your niche is time-consuming, but also a great way to build rapport. When I first started taking my blog seriously, I tried to comment on all of the top blogs everytime they published a new post. I also tried to be one of the first comments for maximum exposure to their readership.

Granted, this is a good way of getting exposure, but it’s not going to drive huge amounts of traffic to your blog. It will drive some traffic – but it’s not going to blow your socks off. If commenting on relevant blogs is part of your overall strategy to increase exposure, I suggest only choosing a handful of blogs and focus on those.

Make sure your comments are thoughtful, quality comments. Throw away comments like “Great work!” or “I definitely agree!” are not worth your time and will get you labeled by the resident blogger as a nuisance just wanting clicks. Remember what they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Guest Posting

After you’ve been a quality commenter on a blog for a few weeks or months, you can try reaching out to the blogger to see if he or she would allow you to write a guest post for their site. I would suggest not going after a top blogger right out of the gate. Go for someone who is a little more established than you are and has a readership that would enjoy your guest content.

Below are some things to consider and include in your email pitch to a more established blogger. If you get a positive reply, celebrate and start writing! If you get a “no thanks” or no reply at all, don’t feel too bad. Some bloggers don’t publish guest posts and some are too busy to answer all of their emails. And who knows, your email could’ve made its way to their spam folder. Don’t take anything personally.

I was able to land quite a few guest posting gigs within the first few months of 2017. I went after some of the bloggers I had been interacting with for quite some time with an email pitch and landed a guest post almost every time. Each time one of my guest posts was published, I had a spike in traffic and a few more email subscribers. Little by little I was growing and gaining more exposure.

The guest post I’m most proud of was one I did for Budgets are Sexy. I had built up a bit of confidence at that point and had been featured on Rockstar Finance more than once, so I figured I was going to go for the gold.

Not only was my piece published on Budgets are Sexy, it was also picked up by Business Insider! Wow, did that ever pay off! Opportunities are everywhere when it comes to blogging. Just keep swimming.

So without further ado, here’s what you need to consider in your pitch!

Increasing Traffic

During the first half of 2017, I had been featured on Millennial Money Man, Budgets are Sexy, Business Insider, AOL Finance, and The Penny Hoarder. All those features led to exciting traffic spikes for a few days until the noise quieted down and my stats returned back to status quo. And my status quo was nothing to brag about. By that point, I was getting between 100 and 200 visitors per day. So after all of that work, I was still grossly disappointed with my traffic.

That’s when I decided to focus on Pinterest. My blogging friends over at The Savvy Couple highly recommended devoting my time to increasing my Pinterest presence if I wanted to see a significant increase in my traffic. So, that’s what I did. And let me tell you, the results have been unbelievable.

Within one month, I went from 9k sessions to 55k sessions! If you’re not familiar with what a Google session is, it’s 30-minutes or less. Basically, if someone stays on your site for up to 30 minutes, Google counts that as a single session. It’s also what some of the big ad companies use to gauge your traffic when it comes to approval. My goal was to hit 25k sessions so I could qualify for ads. I couldn’t believe how quickly I surpassed that requirement when I focused on Pinterest! Guess what? You can too!

Creating Pinterest Pins

While searching the web one day, I found a video that showed exactly how to make high-quality Pinterest pins using PicMonkey. PicMonkey is a site that allows you to edit photos and create beautiful pins with overlays, texts, and frames. I wish I could remember the video that I watched so I could link to it, but, unfortunately, I can’t. There is also a site called Canva that I believe does the same thing. I personally use PicMonkey for all of my Mad Money Monster photo editing needs.

After creating high-quality and, hopefully, high-converting pins, I have to get them on Pinterest and in front of the right people to drive massive traffic.

Manual pinning is great, but nobody has time for that. Pinterest interest (ha! I didn’t even try to rhyme!) peaks in the afternoon (before 5 pm) and at night (after 8 pm). Pinterest’s audience is also mostly female, so keep that in mind when creating your pins.

A+ Pinterest Profile

My #1 piece of advice is to look at what the big bloggers are doing in your niche on Pinterest and mimic that. Remember, Pinterest is a search engine above all else. So make sure all of your boards and pin descriptions are SEO optimized with keywords.

You’ll want to activate a business account or switch your personal account over to a business account to use Pinterest for your blog. Then, you’ll want to make sure you set up Rich Pins. Rich Pins will pull your website name and favicon/icon. It will give your pins a pro look.

Group Boards

Pinterest group boards are one of the top ways to gain traction from Pinterest traffic. There are a ton of group boards in every niche, but they’re not all created equal. It can be difficult to tell which group boards are worth going after.

As a rule of thumb, any board with over 20,000 followers is probably worth your time. Access Pinterest on a desktop to see how many followers a group board has. Unfortunately, you can’t see that kind of info on the app. Before trying to be added as a contributor to any group board, make sure your Pinterest profile is optimized and looks professional. It wouldn’t hurt to have at least a few hundred followers, either.

Group boards come in two flavors: Open and Closed. Regardless of whether a group board is open or closed, they all have rules you need to follow in order to remain a member in good standing.

Carefully read the description at the top of each group board to know exactly what type and how many pins are acceptable. Most ratios require 1:1 pinning, but some require 1:2 – meaning for every one pin you submit, the group requires you to repin 2. Not following these rules can get you kicked out of the group, especially on popular boards with a high number of engaged followers.

Open Group Boards: 

Most boards start as open boards. Some become popular and eventually close their doors to new contributors. Others remain open permanently. It’s all up to the board owner.

If you want to become a member of an open board, follow the board and the board’s owner. The board’s owner is the first person pictured in the circle immediately to the right of the title. Then, follow the instructions listed in the descriptions. If there aren’t any instructions listed, contact the board owner directly and ask to be added as a contributor.

You might need to do a little digging to find the board owner’s email address/contact information. Try their website. If you don’t find any way of contacting them, you can always add a comment to one of their recent pins or send a message through Pinterest.

Be sure to make your email personal and add your email address and links to your website and Pinterest page. This is very important. If they want to add you, they’re going to need to be able to find you.

Closed Group Boards:

The top group boards are oftentimes closed to new contributors, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be added as a contributor. Make sure you’re following the board and the board’s owner. It might also help to court the board for a bit before asking to be added. Repin and comment on pins to get noticed. Then, go for it.

Closed boards will not have instructions listed on how to become a contributor. You will have to contact the board owner directly. Sometimes it will work and sometimes you will just get ignored. Either way, it’s always worth a shot.

When emailing a board owner for a closed board, be sure to tell them how much you enjoy the board and that you understand it’s currently closed to new contributors. Let them know that if they ever do decide to reopen it, you would love to be added. And, if added, you would do your best to help grow their board by following the rules and adding only high-quality content pins.

This piece of advice goes for closed boards just as it does for open boards. Be sure to make your email personal and add your email address and links to your website and Pinterest page. This is very important. If they want to add you, they’re going to need to be able to find you!

When I go after closed group boards I keep a spreadsheet that details exactly which boards I asked to join and on what date I sent the email to the owner. I keep a link to the board and the owner’s contact information as well. If I get accepted, I update my spreadsheet to reflect that. I suggest you do the same. You don’t want to ask to join the same board twice. You’ll look unprofessional and definitely won’t get accepted.

Pinterest Scheduling Tools

To avoid manual pinning during peak Pinterest traffic times and to ensure proper spacing of pins, as opposed to blasting my followers with several pins all at once, I use Tailwind.

Tailwind offers a free service but limits the number of pins you can schedule for free. Since I wanted to drive serious traffic to my site, I opted for the paid version. If you opt for the paid version, you have the option of choosing a tier that will fit your needs. Let’s take a deeper look.

Tailwind:

• Tribes – similar to group boards and a great way to connect with bloggers in your niche
• Customized weekly pinning schedule for your content – add or delete suggested time slots
• Use Tribes to curate relevant content for your boards
• Schedule pins days or even weeks in advance
• Ability to shuffle your queue and add intervals to avoid pinning the same pin back to back
• Pin Inspector that lets you know your top performing pins
• Board Insights lets you analyze your top performing boards – including group boards
• Weekly Analytics that shows a summary of how you’re performing compared to the previous week
• Overall, Tailwind is an active tool with plenty of features that allows its users to have a little more control than Board Booster.

If you’re interested in attempting to explode your Pinterest exposure, use my exclusive Tailwind link to sign up.

My Personal Pinterest Strategy

I have been using my technique listed above to gain access to quality group boards. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I have been accepted to a couple of high-quality group boards, but I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that the majority of my Pinterest traffic can be credited to Tailwind Tribes.

Currently, I am a member of about 30 Tailwind tribes in my niche. I even created my own Tribe (*MadMoney). Feel free to use the link to join.

Each day, I publish 2 – 3 pins to as many relevant Tribes as possible. I space out my Tribe contributions, aiming for publication each morning, afternoon, and evening. The only downside so far is that I don’t think there is a way to automate publishing to Tribes.

But, I can go back in and see exactly who repinned my pins and how many people my pins will reach. For example, it’s not uncommon for some of my pins to be repinned to several group boards by the same individual, gaining me exposure in the hundreds of thousands – for Just One Pin. And THAT is the power of Tailwind Tribes and Pinterest.

As far as the Tribes go, I always follow the rules and publish the Tribes’ pins at least as much as I pin to the Tribe. Sometimes, the Tribe requires pinning 2 pins for every pin I share. For this kind of exposure, I’m totally fine with doing that.

So, if you’re thinking of giving Tailwind Tribes a try, go ahead and use my exclusive Tailwind link to get a $15 credit. Keep in mind, my results may differ from your results, even if you use the method I just talked about. So please read this article from Tailwind for more info: Typical Results of Tailwind for Pinterest Members.

Growing Your Email List

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, the money is in the list. And, it’s true. Your email list is your property and the people on that list actually want to hear from you! Because of that, they’re more likely to engage with your content and buy what you’re selling. That’s why it’s extremely important to get the people who visit your site to become subscribers.

Now, you also want to be absolutely open and honest with your email subscribers. They signed up because they trust you. Don’t break that trust by promoting subpar products and services.

Make sure you make it as easy as possible for a new or returning reader to sign up to your email list without being annoying. You know those opt-in forms that pop up as soon as you load a website? You know, the ones you close immediately. You’ll want to think long and hard before putting something like that up. Most readers hate them and might even leave immediately if one pops up.

Some can be effective without being annoying. I have found that my drop down pop up at the top of my page has a high conversion rate. Because of that conversion rate, I’m guessing it’s not too annoying. I have also read that the ones that pop up just before you’re about to leave a website have high conversion rates, as well. After all, the person likely stayed long enough to read an article. That means they invested some of their precious time and are more likely to give you their email address.

I personally use Optin Monster for this service and have not been disappointed. They offer a huge selection of templates and designs that are easily customizable for your site. It’s also easy to see which opt-in forms are converting and which ones aren’t.

Email Marketing

I currently use Mail Chimp for email marketing and haven’t had any problems. It’s great for new bloggers since they have a free service until you hit a certain number of subscribers. After you hit that magic number though, you’ll be paying a monthly fee.

A lot of the top bloggers use ConverKit for email marketing. ConvertKit runs $29/month to get started and is known for being intuitive and easy to use. If you decide to go with the gold standard in email marketing right away, feel free to use my exclusive ConvertKit link to sign up.

Make Money Blogging 

So, just how do bloggers make their money? Below are the popular ways in which most bloggers make money. How much money you make is going to be commensurate with how much time and energy you’re willing to commit to your blog. Just like anything else in life, you’ll get out of it what you put into it.

1. Sponsored Content

When a brand reaches out to you, or you reach out to a brand to publish a favorable piece about a product or service, this is known as sponsored content. Sponsored content means you get paid to promote a product or service. How much you get paid depends on a lot of things, like your niche, your traffic, and your social media reach.

Payments can range from $50 all the way up to a few thousand dollars. Just remember, that content is going to be on your blog forever, so make sure you don’t sell yourself short when setting a price.

You’ll also want to develop a Media Kit for your blog. A lot of brands will ask for one if they’re considering paying you to publish content. A media kit is a one-sheet that details the specifics of your blog. A simple internet search will yield tons of results with examples.

2. Affiliate Marketing

By this point, I’m sure you’ve heard about affiliate marketing. By becoming an affiliate for a product or service, you’ll receive an agreed upon payment for each sale, click, or lead you to send to a particular company.

For instance, if you run a cat blog and you really love the cat sweaters sold by Company X, you’ll want to check to see if they have an affiliate program. If they do, you’ll have to apply and be accepted before you can start making affiliate income from them. After you’re accepted, if someone purchases a cat sweater by clicking on your link to Company X’s product, you’ll receive a small payment.

The amount you get paid and how often you get paid will be listed in the terms of your affiliate agreement. You’ll want to read all agreements closely to see what is acceptable and what isn’t when promoting a brand. Breaking the rules could mean withholding payment and/or dismissal from the affiliate program.

Some companies run their own affiliate program, whereas others are part of an affiliate network. Individual programs require you to apply separately. Network programs require you to apply to the network and join their advertising partners inside the program.

3. Advertisements

Advertisements are a great (mostly passive) way of earning income from your blog. There are advertising management companies that will do all the work for you if you qualify. Two of the top dogs are Mediavine and AdThrive.

Mediavine currently requires 25,000 Google sessions per month to qualify and AdThrive requires 100,000 pageviews per month to qualify. With these ad networks, you’ll get paid a certain amount of money based on your traffic. And as you might expect, that could be quite a bit of money when you have that much traffic! Psst…Mad Money Monster will soon be running Mediavine ads!

You can also piecemeal your advertisements by getting paid directly from companies for specific ad placements on your site. For example, a company might pay you $50/month for a banner ad at the top of your homepage.

There are quite a few options when it comes to advertisements on your site. Although not every reader likes to see ads, it’s a great way to help offset the costs of blogging and even make a little money while you’re at it. After all, blogging is a lot of work, getting paid to do it completely acceptable.

4. Selling A Product/Service

Another great way to make money blogging is to sell a product and/or service. Many bloggers will offer coaching or create a course that teaches people how to do something. What you charge for your product or service must be reasonable or it’ll fall flat.

You could also create what’s called a Freebie to get people interested. Everyone likes free. If your freebie is actually valuable, you might be able to sell a product or service that you offer toward the end. It’s a sales tactic that is often used and often works. Just make sure you believe in the product or service you’re trying to sell. If you don’t, your readers will sense it and walk away.

This is an avenue to walk down after you’ve established yourself as a blogging authority within your niche.

My Absolute Favorite Blogging Resources

Hosting:

If you want to make your website “live” you’ll need a hosting service. I use Bluehost and have been extremely pleased with their reliability and customer service. I have had to make calls several times regarding things I couldn’t figure out. Their staff was more than willing to help me out and explain the exact buttons I needed to click to make things happen. With that said, I highly recommend giving Bluehost a try if you’re starting your blog or switching hosts. For the cost of one latte per month, you really can’t go wrong. If you want help setting your blog up with Bluehost, check out this step-by-step guide.

Themes:

When you’re first starting out, don’t stress too much about your theme. Your theme isn’t nearly as important as your content. Make sure you’re churning out great content before spending gobs of time on choosing a theme.

Mad Money Monster currently runs on the Thesis theme. It’s fairly simple to use, despite it being completely customizable. Computer programmers would have a field day with it! Here’s a link to the Thesis theme, if you’re interested.

I know another popular theme among bloggers is Genesis. Again, I believe Genesis is also highly customizable to meet nearly every blogging need. If you’re interested in Genesis, check it out here.

Email:

As I mentioned earlier, I currently use Mail Chimp because it was free to start out. One less thing I needed to pay for in the beginning was a bonus to me. So far, I’m happy with it, even though it’s not always the most user-friendly platform.

Other bloggers absolutely love ConvertKit and highly recommend it for conversions and ease of use. If you think you want to start out with ConvertKit, go ahead and use this link.

Pinterest:

I absolutely love using PicMonkey to create beautiful pins that drive traffic. It’s easy to use and a tool that I simply could not have in my blogging arsenal. If you are serious about making beautiful pins that convert, give PicMonkey a try.

As I mentioned before, Tailwind Tribes is what took my traffic from 9k Google sessions per month to over 55k sessions per month literally overnight. I cannot recommend Tailwind enough for increasing traffic.

And remember, Pinterest folks are more likely to convert to sales. So, if you’re driving traffic to your site from Pinterest, make sure you’re driving traffic to blog posts that have the potential to make you a profit.

Here’s the Tailwind link if you want to give it a try for yourself, but please keep in mind, individual results will vary.

Wrap Up

And there you have it, your comprehensive guide to a profitable blog all wrapped up in one post. This is the kind of stuff other people charge for. I hope you got some useful information from it that you can turn around and use to start your blog or make your current blog better.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about your own money-making blog!