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The Ultimate Step by Step Guide to Creating A Profitable Blog in 2019 

Blogging is an amazing way to make extra money. Here’s why: 

● You get to work from home and choose your own hours. ● You get to write about things you love. ● You get to teach others what you know, and make money doing it. ● You can create passive income that works while you sleep, travel, eat breakfast, etc. 

If you’d like to earn some extra money each month to help payoff debt or pad your emergency fund a bit more, maybe it’s time for you to start a blog!  

On top of that, many bloggers decide to go full time, meaning that they make a solid living from their blogs.  

Are you working a job you don’t really love? Wishing you could spend more time at home with your kids?  

Becoming a full time blogger is totally doable, and I’m here to help you get started.  

Let’s dive in! 

 

1. Start Your Blog  

If working from home writing about things that inspire you sounds like the 

business plan for you, it's time to start a blog!  

Blogging is an incredible way to share your ideas with the world and make 

money doing it. On top of that, the start-up costs are extremely low. You 

can expect to spend less than $300 to start your business off on the right 

foot.  

Your first step is to choose a niche. I absolutely recommend writing about 

something that you truly love and are knowledgeable about. It's simply too 

difficult and time-consuming to do otherwise. 

Here are a few profitable niches to consider: 

● Travel 

● Food 

● Personal finance 

● Business 

● Side hustles 

● Green living 

● Parenting 

● Pregnancy and motherhood 

● Christian Living 

● Language learning 

● Gardening and homesteading 

● Fashion 

● Food lifestyles (vegan, keto, paleo, etc) 

● Marriage and relationships 

● Health and Wellness 

Keep in mind that there are dozens of sub niches for each of the topics 

above. Spend some time brainstorming a list of things you love reading 

about and doing in day-to-day life. 

Once you've chosen your blog topic, it's time to start your blog! You can 

read my complete tutorial to starting your blog in less than 15 minutes 

here. 

Go on, get it set up now! The rest of this post will make a lot more sense 

once you do. 

 

 

2. Choose A Blog Template  

If you followed step one above, you now have a basic blog set up on a free 

template. Your next step is to choose a solid blog template that will help 

make your blog a business. 

Here's why I don't recommend using free blog templates if you're serious 

about making money from your blog: 

● Free templates glitch frequently and could cause downtime on your 

site. 

● Free templates are not SEO optimized and will likely prevent you from 

ranking well in Google 

● Free templates almost never have much in the way of support, so if 

something breaks you will be on your own. 

● Many of the WordPress plugins you need to run your business won't 

integrate well with a free template. 

I use the Thrive Minus theme and the Thrive Architect drag and drop 

builder. I've tried a number of different themes over the years, but this one 

is by far my favorite. It is clean, simple, and Architect makes it so easy to 

build pages exactly the way you want them.  

Plus, Thrive offers a number of other super useful web building products 

like their quiz builder, opt in builder, and comments.  

Here's how to install your new theme and Architect builder.  

1. Install the Thrive Product Manager. 

2. Install and activate your theme. 

3. Install and activate Thrive Architect. 

 

Drag and drop the building block you want to use onto any part of your 

post. 

3. Track Your Stats with Google Analytics  

Google Analytics is a free service provided by Google that tracks tons of 

data regarding your website and visitors. It's an absolute must-have tool 

that every successful blogger uses. 

And thankfully, it's really not hard to set up! 

Google Analytics will show you how many visitors are coming to your blog 

each day, where they're coming from, your most popular posts, and a ton 

more. 

This is information you will need down the road to figure out what kind of 

content your visitors really love, which pins and traffic sources are bringing 

most of your visitors, what percentage of them convert into email 

subscribers and buyers, and other important metrics. 

Here's a simple tutorial on how to install Google analytics tracking. 

 

 

4. Write Your Pillar Posts 

 

Now that your blog is set up and ready to rock, it's time to put some of 

your ideas out there! I recommend sitting down and brainstorming a few 

pillar post ideas. 

What the heck is a pillar post? 

A pillar post is a big, thorough post that guides your reader to a certain 

outcome. Pillar posts are called that because the content creates a pillar or 

backbone of your business.  

If you aren't sure what to write, think of the three biggest topics you want 

to talk about on your blog, and then create a pillar post for each of them. 

For example, a travel blog might create a pillar post called “The Ultimate 

Guide to Travel Hacking with Airline Miles”.  

The point is that for each of the subtopics on your blog, it's a great idea to 

have a big pillar post that serves as the backbone of that subtopic. Once 

you've written your pillar content, all of your other blog posts should 

interlink nicely with your pillar posts. 

For example, here are the pillar posts for this blog. You can see them on the 

nav bar as well as in my blog reel: 

Epic List of Money Saving Tips I Love 

50 Ways to Make Extra Money in Your Free Time 

FI Road Map (that's this post!) 

These posts are long and thorough and set the stage for the rest of my blog 

posts. They also easily interlink with my other posts, making navigation 

easier for my readers. 

I recommend writing your first two or three pillar posts first and then 

branching out into other related content. 

 

 

5. Set Up Your Pinterest Account  

Learning how to use Pinterest is by far the fastest and easiest way to get 

traffic to your blog. 

To this day it is still my number one source of traffic. Pinterest is perfect 

for new bloggers because it gives you the chance to get your blog posts out 

in front of thousands of new people instantly. 

Here's how to start getting traffic right away. 

 

A) Set up your business account. 

 

You'll need to become a business account before you can apply to rich pins 

(step 2).  

Creating a business account is easy. If you started with a personal account, 

you can convert it by clicking on the three dots in the top right corner and 

then clicking the "Upgrade Now" button. 

If you are completely new to Pinterest, you can start off by creating a 

business account from the very beginning.  

Once you've created your business account, you'll need to verify your 

website. Read this tutorial on claiming your website here.  

 

B) Enable rich pins. 

 

Follow this tutorial to enable rich pins on your Pinterest account. 

Enabling rich pins is a critical step to making sure your account looks 

professional, and you get the most traffic possible. 

Once you apply for rich pins and are accepted, all of your pins will 

automatically feature your name and the correlated board name below the 

pin.  

 

C) Add 5-10 boards about topics you plan to write about. 

The next step is to create boards that relate to your blog topic. You can see 

below that I have a number of different boards that all tie into personal 

finance.  

I recommend starting with 5-10 boards in the beginning. After that, make 

sure to add a couple of boards per year to keep your Pinterest account 

fresh and thorough.  

You'll also want to make sure to use keywords in your board titles and 

description. Keywords help Pinterest know what your boards and pins are 

all about. When Pinterest understands your topics, you'll start to see traffic 

flowing in easily.  

 

 

D) Fill your boards with 25-50 pins per board. 

Now you want to give Pinterest a little help in figuring out what your 

boards are all about. Spend a couple hours and add 25-50 high quality and 

related pins to each of the boards you've created.  

You can find pins in your home feed, or you can search for them in the 

search bar at the top of Pinterest.  

Adding related pins will help Pinterest identify your topics and see them as 

a valuable resource for other pinners. 

 

E) Create 3 pins for each of your blog posts.  

You'll probably notice that on each of my posts you see one pin image for 

my readers to save. But that doesn't mean it's the only one!  

Not only do I add one pin image directly onto each of my blog posts, I also 

create two more and upload them directly to Pinterest. Not only is this a 

best practice for maximizing how much traffic you get per post, Pinterest 

has come out and encouraged everyone to create multiple pins per post! 

 

F) Add your pins to every board that is relevant to that topic.  

Once I've created a pin, the next step is to add it to every board I have that 

is relevant.  

For example, my pin for this blog post will be added to the following 

boards: 

● How to Start A Blog 

● Business Tips + Blogging 

● Make Money Blogging 

● Blog Promotion + Marketing 

● Blog Traffic + Audience Growth 

● Women Entrepreneurs + Girl Bosses 

On top of that, I'll also add it to all of my business and blogging related 

group boards. This will help get my pin in front of as many eyes as possible.  

 

G) Add your pins to Tailwind Tribes.  

If you only do one task on Pinterest, make it this one! Adding my pins to 

Tribes really helped my blog get off the ground, and I still see residual 

traffic from them today.  

So what are Tribes? 

Tribes are a feature of Tailwind that allow a group of contributors to share 

their pins with each other and quickly get repins (which leads to traffic!) At 

first blush Tribes might sound like group boards, but they are better.  

Tribes requires everyone to repin other people's content with a 1:1 ratio for 

posting their own. So that means that for every one of your own pins you 

add to Tribes, you must repin another person's pin.  

This is a great feature to have, because it ensures that contributors are 

actually saving other people's pins, rather than just dropping their own and 

then leaving.  

If you want to start getting eyes on your pins and people clicking through 

to your site, I highly recommend signing up for a Tailwind account and 

joining some Tribes. 

 

Want to learn more about how I get thousands of visitors from Pinterest 

every month? Check out my best strategies for winning on Pinterest here. 

 

6. Start Collecting Emails  

This next step is absolutely key to making money with your blog. You need 

an email list! 

An email list is a group of people who love your blog and want to hear more 

from you. This is where you deepen the relationship with these readers by 

offering extra information and occasional promotional materials. 

If you've never heard of an email list before or are unsure how to start one, 

don't worry. It's really not that complicated. 

But please, please don't skip this step! 

The number one mistake new bloggers make over and over again is not 

starting an email list at the very beginning. 

Even if you don't have anything to sell right now, you should still start 

building your email list right away. 

Here's how to build an email list that is primed and ready for when you DO 

have something to sell.  

 

A) Sign up for Convertkit and write your welcome email.  

 

 

First things first. You'll need to sign up for a free trial of Convertkit. I've 

used a number of email automation software providers over the years, but I 

love Convertkit for a number of reasons: 

It's reliable. Emails get delivered without issue, and my open rates are 

much higher than with free services like Mailchimp. 

It was designed for bloggers. Convertkit was actually created by a blogger 

who couldn't find an email provider that had all the features he needed, so 

he created his own! 

It's got alllll the features! Convertkit allows you to create different 

sequences with automated emails that go out in scheduled intervals. It also 

allows you to create segments of readers based on tons of different 

demographics, as well as "tag" readers who do certain things (like buy your 

products, click certain links, open certain emails, etc) 

It's pretty intuitive. Honestly, I really can't stand complicated software. I 

don't have time to put 25 hours into learning how to use a new interface. 

Thankfully, I've found Convertkit to be pretty intuitive, and their how-to 

guides are useful and thorough.  

 

As much as I love using Convertkit, there is one drawback I've had to work 

around: 

Their forms are ugly. Like really, really ugly. Thankfully, I've found a way 

around this. I now use Thrive Leads and Thrive Lightbox (which comes with 

Leads) to create beautiful forms that then connect to my Convertkit 

sequences. Connecting the two is easy- Thrive Leads integrates with 

Convertkit so you don't have to do anything.  

You can see below how I connect my Thrive opt-ins to Convertkit.  

 

 

Once you have a Convertkit account, you'll need to set up a form and a 

sequence to be in business.  

Simply click on the "Sequences" tab at the very top of the page, and then 

click on the red "New Sequence" button to create your sequence and write 

your first welcome email. This email will be automatically sent out to 

everyone who signs up through your form.  

And now for the sign up form... 

If you'd rather create your own beautiful form with Thrive Leads, then just 

choose any plain form with Convertkit. (Nobody will see it, it will just serve 

to move subscribers onto your sequence.) 

When you create your form, it will ask you which sequence to connect it to. 

Go to the settings tab, and you'll see at the bottom of the Main Settings 

area that you can choose which sequence you'd like the subscribers of that 

form to be placed on. 

 

 

B) Create an opt-in freebie. 

The next step to building your email list is to create a freebie! This could be 

any type of digital file that you think would really help your readers: a PDF, 

audio MP3 file, an ebook, a report, a webinar, a video, whatever fits your 

audience!  

My Profitable Blogging Blueprint is an interactive, clickable checklist that 

puts all of the business building steps in order to help other bloggers create 

profitable online businesses.  

I made this freebie first as a PDF. Then I imported it into Adobe Illustrator 

and added all of the clickable and fillable areas to make it a more 

interactive experience.  

 

C) Create your opt-in form to gather email addresses. 

Since I've decided that Convertkit forms are too ugly for me to use (what 

can I say? I'm picky!), I created the form above using Thrive Lead's fun 

feature, Lightboxes.  

Creating simple and attractive forms is super easy, because the whole thing 

is drag and drop! 

You can see in the image below how I simply choose which feature I want 

to use, and then drag it onto the part of the opt-in form I want it to be. 

 

 

Once you've created your opt-in form with Thrive Leads, you'll be able to 

use that exact form on any page or post you want.  

You can set it to be a static form (like the one above), or you can have it 

automatically slide in after a certain number of seconds. This is the best 

way I have found so far to naturally build my email list. 

 

D) Place opt-ins all around your blog for people to find. 

It's important to make sure that you place your opt-in in enough places 

around your blog to make sure that people notice it.  

I recommend finding at least 3 spots on your blog for your opt-in form to 

live. Of course, you don't want to annoy your readers so don't go 

overboard. Keep it natural and helpful. 

On this blog, you'll see that I have opt ins in the following places: 

● My Start Here nav bar page 

● The "Free Tools" section of my homepage 

● As a pop up on popular blog posts 

● As a static form at the bottom of all blog posts 

● Linked to my pink notification bar (appears after 30 secs on page) 

 

E) Keep in touch with your subscribers. 

You've done all the work to get set up, and you've written your welcome 

sequence.  

By the way, your welcome series can be single email or it can be a handful of 

emails- up to you! 

The last step to creating a profitable blog using your email list is to keep in 

touch with your subscribers! After all, you don't want them to forget who 

you are.  

If you're short on time, just send a short email once every few weeks. You 

can always send more down the road.  

And trust me, when it comes time to launch your own product or promote 

your affiliate products, you'll be SO GLAD you took the time to set up your 

email list. These things take time to build, so it's best to start as soon as 

possible. 

 

7. Get Traffic to Your Blog  

Traffic is the lifeblood of your business. Without traffic, it's really difficult 

to make sales unless you have an email list. (One more reason I absolutely 

recommend starting your email list today!) 

For me, traffic has really come down to using Pinterest properly. There are 

a lot of ways to generate traffic to a blog, but for many of us Pinterest is the 

80/20. 

It's the 20% of effort that gets us 80% of the results. 

When I got serious about making a living from my blog, I decided to invest 

in a well-reviewed Pinterest course and ended up purchasing Pinterest 

Traffic Avalanche. And I'm so glad I did! 

My traffic doubled just a week after I started implementing the strategies in 

PTA. Alex and Lauren are the creators of Pinterest Traffic Avalanche, and 

they really walk the walk. 

If you check out their Pinterest profile (CreateandGo), you will see that 

they receive millions of monthly views and make more than $150,000 per 

month (yes, month!) from their blog. 

They've really got this Pinterest thing figured out and I was so grateful to 

learn from them. If you're serious about making money from your blog, I 

highly recommend giving Pinterest Traffic Avalanche a chance. 

 

8. Pick Your Monetization Strategies  

Steps 1-7 are really the backbone of your whole blogging system. They are 

the parts that bring the traffic, sign up the email subscribers, and track the 

data. 

Once you've done these things, it's time to make some money! Hopefully 

you've thought a little bit about how you will plan to make money with your 

blog, but if you haven't, that's okay too. 

There are tons of different ways that bloggers make money with their 

blogs, and yours is no exception. I recommend reading my post How 

Bloggers Really Make Money and choose 2-4 monetization strategies that 

sound like they would be a good fit for your blog. 

Now, that's not to say that you should start trying to implement all of the 

strategies at once. It's a much better idea to pick just one right off the bat 

and thoroughly implement it and tweak and test until it is working well 

before you move on to other strategies. 

Related Content- 

The 3 Blogging Courses That Turned My Passion Project Into A Money 

Making Blog 

 

9. Create Content that Sells  

At this point you're blogging system is set up, you're seeing a trickle of 

income coming in, and you're blogging your little heart out. 

This is the time for growth. 

One of the most important lessons I learned in Alex and Lauren's Six-Figure 

Blogger course was that successful bloggers create content that sells. 

It's too easy to just write for the sake of getting a blog post up there. That 

won't grow your income however. It's so important to create content that 

both helps your reader and helps you move closer to your income goals. 

How do you make money with your blog? What monetization methods are 

you using successfully? 

Every blog post you put out there should help support these goals. 

I highly recommend checking out Alex and Lauren Six-Figure Blogger 

course for a complete step-by-step action plan to creating a blog that 

earns you more than $100,000 per year. 

They currently make $150,000 per month from their blog, which is why I 

found their knowledge so invaluable.