logging has become an ever-changing way to share your knowledge, build your brand, and earn a passive income. But, with millions of blogs all trying to get your attention, becoming an expert in your niche is the best way to stand out. This is my story, and I hope that it inspires you.
Over the past sixteen years, I’ve seen the blogging world change quite a bit. It’s gone from something that no one ever heard of to a world of TikTok creators with millions of followers. When I began blogging in 2008, my goal wasn’t to become a niche blogger. I simply wanted to share my day-to-day life of trying to live more naturally in rural Vermont.
I had gone from a high-pressure office job to staying at home part time and working a part-time retail job due to several health challenges. This required a massive cut in expenses which encouraged my husband and I to learn part-time homesteading to save money.
We knew absolutely nothing about homesteading. So as I began to learn, I thought it would be fun to document what we were doing. My first blog, Confessions of an Overworked Mom, started this way.
Getting Started
When I first started blogging, I began with the free Blogger platform. I had no intention of monetizing my blog at that point. I just wanted a way to share my story. If you want to make money with your blog, I highly recommend you start with the paid WordPress platform. It provides much more flexibility and customization.
Here are the first steps to take:
- Choose a topic. To become a niche blogger, a narrow focus is crucial. Be sure it’s something you can talk about for a longer period of time. And make sure it’s something you won’t get tired of writing about.
- Decide if you want to spend money. If you want to start out without spending money, begin on the free Blogger platform.
In 2008, blogging looked nothing like it does today. Blog posts were simply a collection of thoughts, often written diary style. SEO was virtually unknown, and photographs were often tiny, grainy, and definitely not professional.
Quite often, my first blog posts were a simple paragraph with one or two photos. They often started with “Today I” and included a few photos of the skill I tried to learn that day. It might have been baking a batch of muffins from wild berries or sharing that I found a source for free seed packets.
One morning, I woke up to an email from a brand. They wanted to send me three bottles of barbecue sauce in exchange for including them in a post on my site. I was amazed. I could get free things by blogging? And, this moment changed blogging for me.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Am I knowledgeable about the topic?
- Do I have experience or education on the topic?
- Will I get tired of writing about this for several years?
- How hard will it be to get photographs to add to the blog posts?
- Do I have the time needed to devote to this regularly?
Expanding Your Niche
Brands began to contact me to offer free products for my thoughts. I realized that blogging could actually help me save money. But, some of the items I was offered didn’t fit what I wrote about. What to do?
I decided to open a second blog, The Socialite's Closet, to focus on fashion and beauty. When you have a niche blog, it’s important to stick to your topic. If you write about cooking, you don’t want to add in a blog post about changing your windshield wipers.
Here are a few reasons you might want to expand to a second blog.
- You have a new interest that doesn’t fit the original niche.
- You want to diversify in case you lose traffic to your original blog.
- You are tired of the original topic, or it’s not taking off like you hoped.
Confessions of an Overworked Mom was still my number one love and is, to date, my blog with the most traffic and income. As I started writing about fashion and beauty, I realized one thing. While I loved dressing up, I hated taking photos of myself.
The Socialite's Closet never took off as much as my first blog for this reason. I had no interest in traditional fashion blogging which included daily photos of what I was wearing. Thankfully, I was moderately successful in creating content with mostly stock photos.
You can find great free stock photos on Pexels.com and Pixabay.com.
If you plan to open a second or third blog, be honest with yourself about what you really enjoy doing. You won’t enjoy blogging if you don’t like what you’re writing about.
Not All Experiments End the Way You Want
In my spare time, I read a lot of fiction books. Reading is a wonderful way to relax after a long day. I decided to start a book review blog, so I could earn affiliate income, which was becoming a popular monetization method at that time. Amazon has an affiliate program that is very popular.
I had dreams of a site devoted to thousands of books that would earn me passive income while I read free books. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan for the amount of time it would take to read thousands of books.
The site floundered for a few years before morphing into a blog focused on family fun, which includes books, movies, and toys. Thankfully, I now have a three-year-old granddaughter who loves the toys I am offered.
While it didn’t end the way I thought, In Our Spare Time has become a blog I enjoy writing for. When I was starting this blog, I also switched to the paid WordPress platform and purchased a blog design for my blogs.
Don’t be afraid to change things up if they aren’t working the way you thought.
Blogging to Earn Money
I was still working at home five years later, although I wasn’t homesteading anywhere near as much as I was before. And I found it difficult to make enough money to support my family after my husband became disabled.
My page views weren’t large enough to earn me the multi-thousands a month that some large bloggers made. So, I had started looking for ways to earn money working at home. My small pet sitting service was born. Of course, a pet sitting blog followed slowly after that.
While my pet sitting service did fairly well for several years, the blog Other People's Pets never really took off. I didn’t take into account that there were only so many topics I really wanted to write about related to pet sitting.
A key lesson I learned from this is to make sure the topic you choose is one you really want to write about. Plus, make sure there is a way to monetize it if that’s important to you.
Each of my blogs is very different, and almost all are monetized in different ways.
How do you...?
I started my fifth blog, Ellen Blogs, with the simple goal of answering questions. Because people saw me as a prolific writer, I got tons of messages asking me how I did things.
How did you add a yummly button to your blog? What is a nofollow link?
Rather than explain these things over and over again, I created a blog with the simple goal of answering these questions. It worked quite well for a while.
Unfortunately, I realized that I am NOT a technical person. So, while I knew how to do a few things by trial and error, I had absolutely no interest in becoming any sort of tech person.
Despite several people’s urging, I also had no interest in charging people to answer their questions. I wanted to help people, not make money off them.
So, while this blog is monetized, it remains a small blog that earns very little money. The niche was too broad, and I lacked the technical knowledge and desire to grow.
However, many bloggers use their blogs as a way to sell eBooks or provide a coaching service. There are plugins that let you incorporate Shopify into your WordPress blog to complete the sale and collect money.
You can also create a YouTube channel and monetize that once it’s large enough. Before YouTube changed its monetization size requirements, I was earning ad revenue with their program. Once I have enough views, I will join again. If you are interested in making money with YouTube, then there is a lot of information that explains the best way. To get started, try this video:
Not all blogs will earn money the same way. Here are a few ways I have monetized:
- Display ads on my blog to receive ad revenue.
- Earn affiliate income through programs like Amazon’s.
- Drive traffic to other websites using a related content plugin. (I use PubExchange to earn money with this.)
- Sell content connected to my blog: eBooks and in my Etsy store.
SEO and Content Creation
At this point in my blogging journey, writing posts had become much more technical. It wasn’t just enough to write about your day and include a few grainy photos. Bloggers needed keywords, SEO research tools, professional camera equipment, and a lot more time to devote to blogging.
Today, you can take very good photos with a smartphone, and there are many great free tutorials on YouTube that will explain how to take better photos and how to learn basic SEO skills.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s how you write your blog post to let search engines know what the post is about. If you don’t use SEO tactics, the chance that your post will be found by readers is very slim. The better you use SEO to structure your post, the more likely your site will appear on the first page when someone conducts a search on Google, for example. This is vital for new traffic to your website.
You will also need to have sharing tools on your blog post to allow your readers to share your content to social media sites like Pinterest, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook. I use the free plugin Hubbub Lite which works quite well.
By this point, Confessions of an Overworked Mom had reached its highest level of pageviews and monetization. I had given up my part-time job and easily supported my family through blogging. This was the height of sponsored posts, blogging trips, and ambassador programs.
If you are starting a niche blog today, I highly recommend you use paid tools to find keywords that match your topics and that people are most searching for, if you can afford it. I like Keysearch to research your keywords. It’s well worth the money. You can find many YouTube tutorials that explain how to use it. Here are some tutorials to start with if you are interested in using SEO strategy for your blog:
And, Then It Happened
Blogging became a full-time (and then some) job. I was quite comfortable and convinced that blogging would carry me through for many years and well into retirement.
And then...about six years ago, blogging changed almost overnight. While there’s no clear reason for this that people agree on, the end result was that sponsored blog work (paid) almost dried up.
There were very few brands willing to pay bloggers to create blog posts. Bloggers went from having so much work that they had to turn it down, to looking for outside jobs.
Personally, I connect it to Fyre Festival, where so many content creators were caught “faking” their content. There were other instances of a huge Instagram star posting a photo of her in bed drinking tea that she absolutely loved. Unfortunately, followers could see that the cup was completely empty, and the authenticity of bloggers and social media stars came into question.
Whatever the reason, blogging changed, and it required that people change along with it. Niche bloggers carried on better than general bloggers at this point, but it was still a challenging time.
My advice to you is to never rely solely on blogging for your income. I recommend you either have a backup “real world” job or that you diversify by writing books, creating content on a site like Upwork, or becoming a virtual assistant.
Look at what you enjoy doing and go from there.
- Love photography? Sell your photos to others or hire out as a photographer.
- Enjoy making videos? Start a YouTube or TikTok channel.
- Have technical skills? Design or hire out your technical skills.
- Organization queen? Hire out as a virtual assistant and work for others.
- Like to write? Sell your content to larger bloggers or write ebooks.
Blogging to Flip Blogs
While I stayed at five blogs for a number of years, I decided to expand again with the simple goal of making more money. These weren’t personal blogs where I shared information about my life. They were very much niche blogs created to monetize and, eventually, flip for sale. I had gone back to working a full-time job. And, I saw these new blogs as future income.
Here are the next three blogs I purchased and/or created in no particular order. I didn’t have a lot of time at this point to work on them. However since the goal is to sell them when I want to retire, I am not in a rush.
Almond Flour Baking – This is a blog about baking with almond flour, as you can probably tell by the name! Of all the blogs I have, this is my one big mistake. I mentioned I hated taking fashion photos. It turns out, I hate taking food photos just as much. So, writing on this blog requires buying content, which is an expense I don't want for a blog that earns no money.
Go Outdoors Camping – While I don’t love camping, this blog was very affordable and fun to write about. Rural living and preparedness are definitely still passions of mine, so this is enjoyable, and eventually, I will focus on it more.
Try to Garden – This is a joint project with my sister who lives in Georgia. We both love gardening, so it seemed like a natural fit. We purchased this blog already created. Unfortunately, I neglected to do my research and didn’t realize that the previous blogger who sold it to the blogger I bought it from used some questionable blogging practices to create the content. We have a LOT of work to do to fix this, so it makes money.
Like any business, the goal is to make money. Creating a blog to sell is fairly common, but it can take a lot of time to grow a blog to a size that’s worth selling. My goal is to buy at a low price to be able to maximize my earnings. Then create enough blog posts to bring traffic to a site that will allow me to monetize. Very few people will want to buy a blog that isn’t earning any money.
Typically, people will pay no more than twenty times the monthly revenue amount the blog is earning.
Buying and selling blogs may be new to many people, and the topic could be an article on its own. Just like buying and flipping houses, buying and then working on a blog to get it up to a level of selling is one option. Flippa is a website you may want to check out if you are interested in this stream of income. You will need to grow your blog to a decent size so that it earns regular income before you’re able to sell it there. Otherwise, there are a number of Facebook groups, where you can also sell blogs.
Can’t it Just be Fun?
You may be asking yourself if blogging can’t just be fun. Yes, it can. With the recent (2024) Google algorithm changes, many bloggers have given up as they saw their income shredded.
Some have sold their blogs, and others have gone back to work and decided to just blog for fun. While I am still earning, the income is nothing like what it was at the height of blogging.
Eventually, most of my blogs will be sold and put into my retirement accounts. I doubt I will ever sell Confessions of an Overworked Mom, as it is part of me at this point. Being a niche blogger has allowed me to write about so many different passions over the years that I wouldn’t do my blog writing journey any differently.
My most recent blog is a free Blogger blog that I actually forgot I had. I used to list sweepstakes and giveaways, which I have long since stopped doing. So, I decided to turn it into a blog about entering contests.
It’s Your Turn Now
If you want to get started creating a niche blog, here are some tips. Picking the right niche is the most important part of niche blogging. Start by asking yourself:
- What topics am I excited about?
- What hobbies or skills do I have?
- What subjects could I talk about for hours?
Remember to choose a niche that really interests you, so you won’t get tired of writing about it. Blogging requires consistent effort, and it’s easier to stay motivated when you really love what you’re writing about.
If you’re skilled in designing, you can design your own. But, it’s important that your blog looks professional if you want to work with brands and be trusted by your readers. Since I don’t have this skill, I hired someone.
Here are some basic videos on designing blogs if you’d like to try:
Once you have chosen a topic, purchased your domain, and designed your blog, use a tool like Keysearch to choose topics to write about. Create a consistent content creation schedule, and write quality content in your niche. Track your success by using a free Google Analytics account.
Once your blogs get larger, you can apply to ad revenue companies and start running their ads on your blogs. The easiest one to begin with is Google AdSense. However, you won’t earn much this way. As you get larger, try sites like SheMedia and Mediavine that pay better.
Then, sit back and watch your blog grow. Adjust and modify as needed. Don’t be afraid to change things up as you and your blog grows. The digital world is always evolving, and so you can expect to evolve with it and learn a lot!
Congratulations, you’re a niche blogger.
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Ellen is a content creator and blogger managing nine unique blogs that cover a variety of topics. She finds inspiration in their busy, everyday life, juggling work, creativity, and everything in between. Through helpful tips, relatable stories, and fresh ideas, Ellen loves connecting with readers and sharing content that resonates.
