Learn How to Create and Monetize a Blog
This list is designed to give you the inspiration and resources to start, market and monetize your blog/website for a side hustle income or even replace your 9-5 over time.
Successful Blogger Interviews and Tips
YouTube channels to learn tips and get inspired by successful bloggers who are making a great income from their blogs/websites
Get inspired by listening to how successful bloggers make over $10k-$50k/month and more. Listen to how they got started, their tips and apps they use to scale their blogs/sites to success. Jared Bauman's a great interviewer and I learn a lot from the...youtube.com/@niche-pursuits
Successful blogger Brandon Gaille teaches you the blogging strategies that top bloggers use to grow their traffic and monetize their blogs.
Adam Enfroy has great videos on how to monetize blogging. He covers the topics of affiliate marketing, SEO, blogging, content generation, keyword research and more. I enrolled in his Blog Growth Engine course a year ago and have found his course and ...
Ricky Kesler and his team give you practical tips and strategies on how to monetize your blog and keep you updated on new developments and how to fix things that are no longer working.
Sophia Lee makes over 75k/month from her blog. She shares her content planning and pinterest strategies so she offers a different perspective to some of the other YouTube channels.
Creating a Blog/Website from Scratch
Follow these great tutorials and YouTube channels to learn how to build a blog/website ready to monetize.
I like how he also takes you through his keyword research process and the prompts he uses to write an article using ChatGPT4.
Ferdy's free courses on YouTube are amazing! He literally gives you the step-by-step guide to learning how to build an affiliate website from scratch and more and it's TOTALLY FREE! He's a great teacher and his tutorials are even better than heaps of...youtube.com/@ferdykorpershoek
He takes you through the interface of 6 of the most popular website builders so you can decide which one suits you. These are: GoDaddy, Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, Shopify and WordPress.
Alex Cooper teaches you about the best WordPress themes to use, and shows you how to monetize your sites, and is willing to show you some of his sites as well as you can learn over his shoulder so to speak. I like his transparency and simple to follo...
Great looking templates, and easy-to-use website builder. Great for creating blogs and portfolios for creatives.
SEO and Keyword Research
These YouTube channels and resources can teach you how to organically rank your content in Google
I find Matt Diggity's tips highly educational and actionable.
Julian Goldie uses AI tools to bulk generate and rank content on Google. He conducts lots of experiments and shows you what he does. It's great to follow along to see how he uses the tools and the results he gets.
I always listen to the latest things Kyle Roof has to say in interviews etc.
Ahrefs is a premium SEO tool and this YouTube channels provides some great tutorials on how to use their tool and other tips to grow your organic traffic on Google.
Gael Breton and Mark Webster teach you how to create profitable authority websites. They talk about SEO, link building and more.
Best Affiliate Programs and Platforms to Join
Naturally add products, apps and services that are relevant to your blog post topic and join the company's affiliate program and a referral commision when someone buys the product or service via your link.
This platform Benable is a great affiliate platform as they've already partnered with over 35k sites that will pay you a commission when people purchase things from your lists!
This is the most comprehensive list I've found of the best affiliate programs out there. It's sorted by category too, so just click on your niche to find the right ones for you!
Everyone knows Amazon and they have zillions of products you can add/share in your blog posts. So it's a great place to start and learn.
A good list of affiliate platforms to join with clear desciptions of the pros and cons of each platform.
Since I'm based in Australia, I thought I'd add one in for the Aussie affiliate marketers out there.
Ad Networks
Displaying ads on your site is one of the most common ways to monetize a blog. You can earn money based on clicks or impressions. Placement and design are key - ads should be visible but not hinder the user experience.
Nina Clapperton lists the best ad networks based on personal experience.
If I was trying to monetize my site straight off the bat, I might look into these. Atm, I'm going to build my traffic up first.
AI Content Creation Tools
Speed up your content creation game with these AI writing tools. Use these tools for idea generation, outlining and generating a first draft of your blog post.
KoalaWriter's generates top-quality long-form SEO-optimized articles for you with just a few clicks! It also gives you real-time search results, has a great outline editor, and generates cool AI images ready to use commercially. You can also create Amazon Product Roundup and Amazon Single Product Review posts quickly!
SurgeGraph's a great AI long-form article generator and SEO tool-in-one. It gives you great keyword ideas and shows you the Keyword Difficulty as well as the Opportunity Score. You can Auto SEO-Optimize the article generated saving you heaps of time. Product AI ...
Claude is a cool, free AI chat app I love using. I've found it generates quite ‘creative’ and conversational outputs. It also tends to give a 100% or v.high ‘Original’ score in the Originality.ai AI detection app atm (if you care about that score, since Google say they're ok with AI content as long as it's 'helpful').
I like to use ChatGPT-3.5 as a starting point for brainstorming, outlining, generating a quick 500 word blog post etc. I've also got a subscription to ChatGPT-4 but sometimes I prefer the output from the ChatGPT-3.5 model.
Quillbot's also got a very useful tool called QuillBot Flow where you type in a topic and description and it'll generate a blog, essay, or research paper outline for you. You can also use Quillbot Search to look up articles from the web or academic articles!
Social Platforms to Help Drive Traffic to Your Blog
In 2024, you need to diversify your traffic sources beyond Google, especially since the Google Helpful Content Updates can really make your organic traffic take a dive.
Instagram's great for visual content and can drive traffic through engaging images, stories and videos. It's great for the lifestyle, fashion, travel, and food niches.
LinkedIn is the go-to platform for professional content and networking. It's ideal for sharing industry insights, professional tips, and in-depth blog posts. LinkedIn is particularly effective for B2B businesses, entrepreneurs, and professionals look...
Great for quick updates. Good platform for reaching professionals and tech people, news seekers and influencers.
It's known for reaching an ‘older’ audience, probably Gen X and older. You can reach people through Facebook groups and ads.
Threads is a cross between Twitter and Instagram. It complements Instagram, focusing on text-based updates.