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I turned blogging into a full time job, and it’s probably my proudest achievement to date. After all, I created this business from nothing. I blogged as a hobby and enjoyed what I did, but from the moment I realised I could earn from blogging, I made it my goal to make it my career. Now blogging is my family’s main source of income.
Before I blogged full time, I was a mature student, and desperate to make blogging work for me. I was a mother of two, and I didn’t want to go back into traditional employment when my degree was over. I’ll admit I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and dbdn’t quite understand important things in the beginning. The more time I put into it though, the more I learned and I’m happy to share my knowledge in the hope it saves at least a few people some time!
How I Turned Blogging into a Full Time Job
Blogging full-time didn’t come about over night. When I first started earning, I’d sort of fallen into it. Someone approached me and asked me to write a ‘sponsored post’ for them. This means they wanted their service promoting on my site, so they could borrow my audience, and they paid me for my trouble.
In the early days, I had no clue about what my site or audience was worth, so wasted a lot of time by wildly undercharging. The best thing I did was make some friends who were at a similar stage to me, so we could compare stories, warn each other of contacts who don’t pay, and generally offer a bit of moral support.
The first stage – finding work
If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you’re already blogging and you’re hoping to find tips to turn your existing blog into a nice little earner. So for that reason, I won’t bother discussing audience building or starting a blog from scratch.
I’d been lucky in the beginning, and work found me. I stumbled through the first six months of business waiting for brands to find me, and not putting myself out there for work. If my inbox was empty then I just waited until it wasn’t.
This was mistake number one. If you’re not actively looking for work, then it’s not going to find you. When I had figured out a more proactive approach, I got to work right away. The first thing I did was to sign up to as many influencer agencies as I could. Intellifluence is a great platform as it has lots of opportunities it allows you to pitch for, and always pays when it says it will. It also supports its influencers and allows them to flourish.
Aside from agencies, dedicated Facebook groups and Twitter hashtags are good places to apply to for work and find contacts for collaboration.
Grow your social platforms
Blogging is a game of juggling. You’re maintaining more than a website, and in order to grow your audience, it’s important to experiment with a few social platforms. One of my other sites does really well on Pinterest while I find Instagram and Facebook are great places to grow my audience. I’m still trying to get to grips with TikTok tactics, and I’ve promised myself that by next year I’ll have a flourishing account.
I know that there are lots of things that you can do to help grow on social media. For example, I know friends who have made use of resources like the best site to buy TikTok likes in order to increase their reach and engagement on that particular platform, but I’m definitely one for putting in the work and watching my following come organically. Looking at the TikTok stats on Cell Phone Deal, increasing reach on TikTok can be particularly useful for marketers, as it is a fast-growing marketing tool.
Always bring quality content
Updating your site or posting on social media alone won’t do the trick. Your audience wants you to bring value to their lives, and if you’re updating just for the sake of it, you’re going to lose followers. As frustrating as it is, audiences are fickle. You need to work to find them, then work even harder to keep them.
If you’ve lost your mojo , the general rule of thumb is to do one of these things: inform, entertain, impress. If you can’t bring hacks or tutorials, you need to entertain. If you’re having a real mental block, you can pinch one of my winter blog post ideas for a bit of inspiration.
Learn SEO
This was the biggest one for me. I was so rubbish at SEO in the beginning, I just couldn’t get it to click. I read every resource, I asked friends and experts and spent money on tools. I’ve pretty much cracked it now (unless everything changes again) but the biggest thing I learned is that you have to have the basics down, and build on it from there.
Even if you understand nothing right now, make sure your blog posts are well written with no mistakes. Don’t write long sentences and avoid long paragraphs. Split blog post into headings and pepper images throughout to keep the reader’s attention. Images should be correctly labelled before uploading (sometimes I forget) and the image should be described in alt text.
It’s really important you do the basics of SEO as your learn more advanced skills. If no one can find your site to read, then no one will know it’s there to work with!
Keep doing all of those things and your earnings will continue to increase. Fingers crossed your journey to full-time blogging is shorter than mine!