How to gush the dollars blogging. Here’s my story if you missed it. Know how I was telling you, towards the middle of that page, that I was heading on holiday? Well, here’s the doorway to today’s worksite to make money with my blog:
As my son plays with his friend on the beach, my feet are up my fingers are having fun on the keys of my phone. And I’m lovin’ in the refreshing sea air.
Here’s the current situation:
Why anyone would do any other internet business is beyond me. And yes, I do believe the average, everyday person can be successful blogging. Yep, it still works today, in 2023. No, you don’t hear as much about it. Mainly because everyone likes to jump to the next hot trend. FBA this, dropship that. Podcaster. YouTuber. Instagram influencer. TikTok whatever-er. This is a good thing. For the first time since I’ve been online, blog competition has been going down, not up.
Are you giddy with anticipation? You should be. Grab your favorite beverage (just sip slow!) and let’s begin.
I’ll be using affiliate links. If you buy through them, I do earn a small commission. It won’t cost you any extra. Actually, it’ll save you money. I’ve secured deals for you on everything you’ll need. And these affiliate links are the only reason I’m willing to teach you all of this, for free, instead of charging you five grand for a coaching program. I’d be happier ‘n’ a hippie wearing bell bottoms if you made sure to click on them before purchasing.
Bluehost is who you’ll wanna use to buy your domain, as well as create and host your blog. They cover the cost of the domain for the first year. They allow you to get an email for your domain, if you want. It’s free for the first month. You get an SSL certificate to make your blog secure. Without this, browsers scare people out of visiting your website by telling them, “Warning: this site is not secure.” Bluehost hooks you up with a CDN to ensure your blog pages load lightning fast. A key factor for ranking high in Google. They have excellent 24/7 support. A money-back guarantee. Just an all-around amazing company. Unless you want nonstop tech headaches and hundreds a month in hosting fees, they’re your best bet to start a blog to make money.
Use my Bluehost affiliate link to save money:
There’ll be a big “Get Started” button. Click it. You’ll see a list of their different hosting plans:
If you want multiple websites, go with ChoicePlus. If not, Basic is all you need. Click “Select” on the appropriate box. That brings you to this screen:
Use the box on the left to search for your new domain. Click “Next” to see if it’s available. If you can’t find or decide on one, you can just click “I’ll create my domain later.” On the next page you’ll need to fill out your account info:
Below that, it’ll show you your package details:
While I – grab myself a drink, you adjust your “Service Term” to pay for one or three years at a time. You’ll save the most by leaving it on the thirty-six month price. Yes, for a measly two and a half bucks a month, you can start a blog and profit as much as you want. I’ve turned that measly investment into millions and millions of dollars. It’s ridiculous.
If you’re getting a domain now, under “Package Extras” you’ll see an option for “Domain Privacy + Protection.” That’s the only one I’d suggest you leave checked. It hides your personal contact info. That way, you don’t get spammed with sales messages. All that’s left is to submit your payment info:
Then agree to the terms, click “submit,” and you’re in business. Literally. Bluehost automatically creates you a WordPress blog. The same exact thing I’m using to make money six-figures-plus per month blog. Easy peasy. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to customize it to your liking. Until then, I’m gonna enjoy a beach walk with my son:
I’m back, and I’m only drinking herb tea today. Promise. What words come to mind when you look at my blog? Plain. Simple. Minimal. Clean. Right? Compare it to other blogs. Which of them loads quicker? Which is easiest to read? Navigate? Stay focused on? Which looks better on mobile, where eighty to ninety percent of all visitors will be viewing it from? I’d be surprised if you didn’t say Gushher every time. When it comes to design, less is more.
Your readers are going to Google, searching for something, they want that something served to them on a pretty pink platter. Don’t make them work for it. Don’t waste their time. Don’t make them scroll and search and dodge banners and opt-ins and widgets and whatever else. I’m self-deprecating about my blog because it is so unassuming. But make no mistake, this thing spits money.
You also need to understand, what’s good for your audience is what Google wants anyway. Their job is to pair searchers with not only the most relevant results for whatever they typed (or talked into their phone), but also the blogs (websites) that offer the best user experience. They track this through things like total number of pages viewed per visit, average time on site, interactions (did they scroll, hover, click, watch a video, share an image, etc.), and more.
If your blog is bloated, cluttered, confusing; if you’re annoying people with pop-ups and autoplay videos; if the formatting or font or color scheme is hard on the eyes? They’ll just start to hit the back button. You can’t make money if that happens. Worse, Google will take note. Now it’s harder to rank going forward.
It’s really just common sense. If you were reading your own blog, from your iPhone, how would you want it to look? Would you wanna squint at tiny white text laid over a black background? How about some flashing banners in between each paragraph? Wait, I know: you’d wanna be startled by a video ad that starts blaring randomly from God-knows-where on the page, but only if you were sitting in a quiet waiting room full of people, right?
Of course not. And yet, go look around. This is the type of stupid stuff bloggers do. It’s like they hate money. Assuming you don’t, I’ve got good news. You won’t need to code anything or hire anyone to get the appearance and function you want for your blog. It comes down to picking the right theme. There are free ones and paid ones. Almost all of them suck. They were designed by just that: designers. Not multi-millionaire bloggers. They don’t understand search engine optimization (how to rank in Google and get free, targeted traffic), usability, conversions.
I do. And I’ve tried out dozens of themes over the years, and one is in a league of its own. It’s this one. I use it on all of my blogs, and you should too. Click my affiliate link to check it out:
Then click the green button. Go through that page if you want, or just take my word for it. The punchline is it’s blazing-fast, good for readers, good for Google, good for you. The next page will look like this:
Click for pricing. Depending on how many blogs you see yourself launching, here are your options:
Pick the one you want, then click on “Proceed to Checkout.” Follow the prompts. Create your account. Submit payment. Log in. You actually want to download the Thesis theme, not Focus:
You’ll see a big long license key. Mine’s blurred out so nobody gets the ole five finger discount. Highlight yours. Copy it. Now click “Download.” It’ll be a Thesis.zip file. Find it. Drag it to your desktop. Now log in to your WordPress blog that Bluehost so kindly made for you. On the lefthand side, hover over “Appearance” and click on “Themes.” Like so:
In the upper left, click “Add New.” Then, also in the upper left, click “Upload Theme.” Then “Choose File.” And select Thesis.zip which should be waiting patiently on your desktop:
Click “Open.” Then “Install Now.” Then activate it. Now hover over “Thesis” in your lefthand column, go down to “Thesis License Key” and click on that:
Paste in the license key you should have copied a few steps back. It goes here:
Save it to activate the Thesis theme. I don’t even bother with the Focus (skin, I think it’s called?) that came with your purchase. You can if you want, but I prefer Thesis and the Classic Responsive skin it comes with right outta the box. Aka exactly what you have right now. So if you made it this far, give yourself a big pat on the back. That was the scariest part. It’s all downhill from here.
But go have a look at your handiwork. In the very upper left, hover over your website name, then right-click on “Visit Site” to open it in a new tab:
It’ll look very similar to Gushher already. Only, yours will have a sidebar. The font is probably smaller. You’ll see some placeholder text. The links are red, aren’t they? Here’s how you tweak those things. Back inside your WordPress blog admin area, hover over “Thesis” on the left again and this time click on “Content & Display”:
From there, it’s self-explanatory. Check what you want, uncheck what you don’t want, hit save. Right now on Gushher, here are the only things I have turned on:
- Site title
- Site tagline
- Author description
- And skin attribution
Again, get it how you want it, then click the green “Save Display Options” button in the upper right.
Now hover over “Thesis” again, but now click “Design.” Then click on the “Links” box and use the slider to choose whichever color you like:
Below that, you can adjust layout, fonts, and sizes. Here’s what I have for Gushher currently:
- Layout: one column, six hundred pixels
- Primary font: Montserrat, eighteen pixels
- Headline font: System
- Subheadline font: System
You do you, but I would strongly recommend a primary font size of at least eighteen pixels. The average website’s is just way too small. Me, I like to pamper my readers, not punish them:
Just got home from our holiday, unlock the front door, oh boy!
Got to sit down, take a rest on the porch
Imagination sets in, pretty soon I’m singin’
Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door
Sorry, where was I? Ah, yes, blogging. Once you have the design and formatting just the way you want it, on the lower left, hover over “Settings” and then click on “General”:
This is where you can adjust your site title and tagline:
Now hover over “Settings” again (yep, lower left) and click on “Permalinks.” Select the one that says “Post name”:
Got it? Good. Now hit “Save Changes.”
Unlike most bloggers (a recurring theme if you haven’t noticed), I don’t use a single plugin. All they do is bog down the site. I just built you a speedboat; if you wanna throw anchors in the water, be my guest, but don’t come crying to me when you can’t keep up.
Now click on “Pages” on the lefthand side. Go ahead and delete the placeholder one that’s there. Then click “Add New.” Let’s make this your About page:
You’ll notice right away how easy the editor is to use. Literally just click and type. If you highlight a chunk of text, you can bold it, italicize, add a link. When you’re ready for a new paragraph, hit enter. If you want to add an image, video, extra white space, a subheadline, anything, just hit the “+” and search for what you want:
You couldn’t mess it up if you tried. For now, just get a sentence or two down, and hit “Publish” in the upper right. You can come back and edit it at any time. Now I want you to do the same thing to create a second page. So click “Pages,” then “Add New.” But title this one Contact. Add whatever you like. I usually just put my email. Got that done? Sweet. That’s all I do for pages. Three of them. Home, About, Contact. Your Home page will automatically be your most recent blog posts.
Speaking of which, let’s start blogging, shall we? I just got home from holiday. Got a nice tan going. Feeling refreshed. And, let’s be honest, I need to blog. I haven’t added any new posts in over a week. Too busy working on this guide slash lounging in paradise, consuming cold drinks, quesadillas, bowls of chips ‘n’ guac, and tacos.
Back to the grind.
On the lefthand side of your admin area, hover over “Posts” and click on “Categories”:
What is the one or two words that would classify what you just decided to write about? For example, here on Gushher, I’ve got the following Categories:
- Quotes
- Opportunities
- Reviews
- Millionaire
- Blogging
Give it a “Name,” capitalizing the first letter of each word, and a “Slug,” making sure it’s all lowercase:
You can leave the rest of the fields blank. All set? Click the blue “Add Category” button underneath it. You can come back and add more later, if you need to.
Now click on “Posts” in the left column. Trash the placeholder blog post that’s there. Once that’s done, click “Add New.” In the righthand sidebar, tick the box next to the Category you just created. Add a title. Make sure it has the main keyword people would search for to find it in Google. I like to put a picture at the top. Add some spacing under it. Then your text. I thought it would be fitting to use this as my example:
He cofounded WordPress. That thing we’re both typing on now. I probably owe him some money. Hell, at least a thank you card.
Wait, you are about to hit publish on your first blog post, right? No? You’re just reading, not taking action? Grr. That’s disappointing to hear, but I get it. That was me in the beginning. Wondering if it was really that easy. Doubting that it was. Overwhelmed by the big decisions. What niche? What domain? Paralyzed by what ifs and yeah buts. Reading income reports from other bloggers, imagining what it would be like to wake up and see that I had made thousands in affiliate commissions while I slept. Wanting it so bad. Yet, for whatever reason, frozen, unable to do anything about it.
And then one day, I did. And here we are. There’s no sage advice I can give you. It’s scary. I hope you’ll do it anyway. It’s worth it. And you’ve got a pretty good guy in your corner.
So go sign up for Bluehost. As soon as you do, they’ll create you your WordPress blog, free of charge. Go back through the steps. Let me know when you’re caught up. No really, happy to wait. What’s that? You say you took the plunge? And it wasn’t that bad? And you circled back and did everything I asked? Even got yourself a blog post ready to go live? You’re amazing. You eat glitter for breakfast and shine all day. Now, do you see that blue “Publish” button in the upper righthand corner? Click it. Boom. You’re officially a blogger.
Now what? Write another post? What should it be about? How often should you be posting? How will people find your blog? Google, right? But how do you get ranked? And how do you turn that traffic into dollar-dollar-bills-y’all? I’ll answer all that and more on the next page. Click below. Things are getting spicy!