How To Make $7,000 Each Month In Your First Year of Blogging
A realistic plan that can actually work
A few years ago, a popular YouTube channel called Income School made a video about how to make $1,000 per month in your first year blogging.
This year, they made a brand new video about how to make up to $4,000 per month in the first year.
It’s a good video with an aggressive but realistic blueprint.
Most new bloggers struggle to make a few hundred dollars during their first 12 months.
One of my friends managed to make $7,000 per month.
This is the story of how he did it.
Disclaimer: This is the necessary disclaimer to let you know that making this much money in your first year of blogging is rare. Most people make between a few hundred dollars up to around a thousand or so per month. Others make nothing.
The Ingredients of a $7,000 per Month Blog
I don’t want to bury the lead, so here are the main ingredients that went into his four-figure per month website.
The ingredients:
- He chose a profitable niche
- He chose a low competition sub-niche
- He purchased an existing domain name
- He selected the Generate Press Premium and the Marketer template
- He did really good keyword research
- He nailed monetization
- He scaled his content quickly
The rest of this article will break down each one of these elements.
He Used Trojan Horse SEO
For a full rundown of Trojan Horse SEO, check out my article on the topic. Here, I’ll give you a brief summary of how my friend applied this advanced strategy.
It’s advance not because it’s complicated but because not many people apply it.
My blogger friend chose the highly profitable and highly competitive finance niche. Most bloggers who go into this niche face a serious uphill battle against high authority competitors.
It’s basically a money grab where the biggest and strongest websites usually win.
However, my blogging friend didn’t go after the biggest money topics. Instead, he chose a low-competition sub-niche in the wider finance niche.
That’s Trojan Horse SEO—sneaking into a competitive niche with a low competition sub-niche.
I can’t tell you his sub-niche because that would be giving away his trade secrets. What I can tell you is that every competitive niche that I’ve ever studied has several, if not many, profitable yet low-competition sub-niches.
You just have to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of niche research.
It’ll probably take you a while, but at $7,000 per month, I’d say it’s well worth it.
He Skipped the Google Sandbox
Another version of Trojan Horse SEO that I didn’t mention in the other article is purchasing an existing domain.
The benefit of purchasing an existing domain name is that you can take advantage of the domain's authority and age.
What that means is that you effectively skip what bloggers call the “Google Sandbox.” The sandbox is typically a 6 to 12 month period of time where new websites don’t get indexed and don’t rank very well on Google.
It’s a very slow and often depressing time for bloggers.
Most new bloggers work a full-time job, have families, and squeeze writing blog posts into the early or late hours of the day.
Grinding away at blog posts for 8 to 12 months without any positive results can feel terrifying. When you choose an existing domain name that has age and authority, Google looks at your new website through the lens of the domain name.
Your website gets authority and trust by association.
Instead of waiting 6 to 12 months, Google might start ranking your articles immediately. The more age and authority of your domain name, the better your articles will likely rank.
The better your articles rank, the more traffic your website will get and the more money you can make from display ads and affiliate marketing.
The finance niche is well known for having high ad earnings and affiliate commissions from financial products, software, and services.
Therefore, if you choose the right sub-niche and purchase an existing domain name, then you’ve done most of the work of building a profitable website in under a year.
In case you’re wondering, you can buy existing domain names at pretty much any domain registrar.
Here are a few places to look (not affiliate links):
One word of warning: Not every domain name is the same. Domain names with Google penalties or shady histories will hurt you, not help you.
Doing your homework and research really matters.
He Selected the Right Theme and Template
My blogger friend went with the Generate Press Premium theme and the Marketer template.
These two choices gave his website super-fast speed.
This is a simple, fast, and professionally looking combination that helps with Google ranking.
All four of my websites run on the free Astra theme in WordPress.
However, I’m going to experiment with the Generate Press Premium theme on the website I build next year.
He Used a Propriety Bend of Keyword Research
He’s a very smart person who doesn’t give away all of his keyword research secrets. What I do know is that he uses a combination of the Google Autocomplete Method along with some keyword research tools.
I know that he partly relies on Google autocomplete to find low-competition, high-volume keywords.
He also uses tools like Moz bar to check out his competition.
I’ve written about the kind of keyword research that I strongly believe he does before, so I won’t repeat it here.
If you’re interested, check out these other articles:
- How I Rank Articles on Google as a Beginner Blogger
- 7 Google Tricks to Find Better Keywords
- 5 Types of Content I Write to Scale My Website
Browse my complete list of articles about building profitable websites.
He Nailed Monetization
My blogging friend makes $7,000 per month from a combination of display ads and affiliate commissions.
When he was eligible, he signed up with the Ezoic ad network.
Once he reached enough page views, he then transferred his display advertising account to Media Vine. In some of his high-performing articles, he links to affiliate services and products.
Those are the two pillars of his profits.
As far as I know, he does not offer his own informational product or course.
He does plan to add more of his own YouTube videos to his articles to further monetize his website through YouTube to add earnings. His YouTube channel will also drive traffic to his website.
This cross-promotion should increase his earnings.
He Scaled Quickly
He started making money fast on his website. Within the first few months, he has successfully demonstrated the potential for his sub-niche.
With only 30 articles, he was already getting 20 to 30,000 plus page views per month. He was also starting to make a few thousand dollars.
That early success motivated him to scale as quickly as possible.
By scaling, I mean hiring writers and pushing out more quality content related to his most profitable topics.
As I understand it, he put another 50 to 75+ articles up in the first year.
With nearly 100 high-volume, low-competition keywords in play, his page views soared to a hundred thousand plus per month.
While he’s currently making $7,000 per month, that amount will likely double and triple in the next year.
That’s 14 to 21,000 or more per month.
I don’t know about you, but that’s a life-changing kind of money to me.
How To Steal This Blogging Strategy
It’s really cool that my blogging friend has been able to launch a brand new website with such immediate results.
But how do you do it?
Here are the major steps:
- Choose a high-profit, high-competition niche like finance or health and fitness.
- Choose a low-competition sub-niche within that bigger niche.
- Buy an existing domain name that has been around for at least a year, and has a domain authority above zero. The more age and more authority the better, but also the more expensive.
- Develop the skill of keyword research with lots of practice. Find 30 high-volume, low-competition keywords and write articles on those 30 topics. Then rinse and repeat.
- Research, find, and link to affiliate products and services in your niche.
- As soon as you’re eligible, join a display ad network like Ezoic.
- As soon as you validate your sub-niche by Google rankings, monthly page views, and affiliate commissions, start to scale.
- Either hire a team of writers or challenge yourself to push out as much high-quality content as you can as quickly as possible.
In the first year, aim to post a hundred articles. As long as they are quality articles based on good keyword research, the faster you put content up on your site, the better.
Final Thoughts
The latest news is that my blogging buddy started a second site in another related sub-niche. He’s validated his process once, so he sees no reason not to replicate it for even more income.
Now, it’s your turn.
