How to Make a Living out of Your Website
In 2018 BrandNewBlogs was started as a hobby project. We just wanted to show the world some interesting facts about domains, WordPress and websites in general. Soon we gained some popularity and started to earn $1-$2 every day from Google ads.
It was fun and a nice little pile of dollars that covered domain registration fees and part of our hosting plan.
We never wanted to run an online business, it was really out of our scope at that time. Then we found this site and things changed quickly. Now we are running a real online business, something we never expected!
This is how we did it and this is how you can do it, too!
Information is key
First of all, running a website is easy. If you know exactly what you are doing. But to get this know-how you really need to work hard and collect all the pieces of information one by one.
It’s kind of like a puzzle. A long and tiring process with a lot of trial and errors, dead ends, mistakes. You have to google a lot and read through tons of material on different sites, most of which are pure junk with old, outdated information. We’ve been there.
Just the amount of time till we found out how important it was to use proper analytics, keyword research tools, setup a good cache, use our content management system to its real capabilities, start a good marketing campaign and use social media to grow our audience, it took almost a full year.
And even then, we were only progressing bit by bit, not really knowing what exactly we were missing and what we were doing right or wrong.
Then we bumped into Wealthy Affiliate, kind of by accident.
The beginning (of growing your site)
After registering you become a Starter member (which is the name for free membership, you don’t need to enter any information other than your e-mail address).
WA is huge! I mean we were already used to seeing huge numbers, like those 100,000 domains registered every single day, but this is a community of more than 1 million people, wannabe online enterpreneurs and marketers of all kinds.
Once you register you can check out their stuff and blogs, success stories and failures, you can gain some audience and followers, just like on Instagram.
But, which is more important, you get access to lots of information on website management, building your true audience and marketing in general. We were amazed by how many things we were doing wrong. Once you see the big picture it just seems obvious, but till that moment you really never know what you are doing right or wrong.
BNB visitor numbers
When we started applying those methods and practices offered, soon we noticed a change. The chart above shows our monthly visitor numbers from the beginning.
Of course, a lot of content was added during that time, but applying WA methods just gave us a clear direction. Upwards. We started our first campaigns, created our Facebook site (which grew beyond 10,000 followers by now) and started to apply real marketing strategies learnt in the online courses on WA.
As you can see it was in July, 2019 when we registered and then it took about 3 months of education and work to see some decent growth in numbers. Then it just exploded and we really started to grow, funnily enough, with less and less efforts after the third month.
What you get for your money (and for free)
As you would normally expect, good information costs money and there is no exception to this rule. But as you can see in the chart below, there are quite a few features that you get simply by registering.
I did not want to include the whole chart, because it’s so long, but the most important features (in our subjective opinion) that you get for free are the following:
- Training help for 7 days
- 10 lessons of the whole material
- 50 training modules
- 30 keyword searches
- Chance to network with other members
- Website builder and hosting
Only these 6 great free features can get you going. You can even host a free website, though of course it’s rather like a free blog just to try things out. If you are serious about creating a website, you will need a real hosting plan. We use the Dynamo package at WebHostingHub, which is really awesome, but as you can see WA can also provide hosting for Premium members, or you can pick any hosting company you like as long as they are reliable (and fast).
Raising the numbers (and using them the right way)
In the online game everything is about numbers. You want to grow your content, raise your visitor numbers and earn more. It’s not a fully linear process, efficiency is really key here.
You can double your visitor numbers and earn 10x as much from ads and affiliate programs if you know what you are doing.
Or you can have lots of visitors and see no real gain on the financial side. Seeing general website statistics, I think this latter it’s much more common among websites (fun fact, we never wanted to be online enterpreneurs as we didn’t believe it was that profitable, you really need to change your perspective to start seeing opportunities). Growing and interacting with your audience the right way is substantial.
And this was probably the area we got the most help from the community and the invaluable training materials. You don’t even need to commit to Premium membership to be able to start the course and apply the ideas.
What you can expect
First of all, there is no substitute for hard work. You should have an idea and an area of interest for sure (though there are lots and lots of ideas within the community if you lack one, really amazing by the way) and the willingness to learn. But the best part is: it’s fun anyway. And you should keep it fun, otherwise it’s just another 9 to 5, so choose wisely!
BNB figures….never thought it was possible
When we started our pet project, BrandNewBlogs, it was really a hobby. And it kind of still is a hobby, as we still have our jobs.
But as you can see on the chart above (which contains a summary of all the ads and various affiliate revenues), things can escalate real quick if you amp up your game. For almost a year we were doing trial and error (not even really caring about incomes, to be honest), then we took a conscious approach once we found the community.
One thing we have learnt is you should never go on your own when there is professional help out there!
If you browse our articles you can already find lots of good information that will help you start your site and it’s all free, it’s for you, enjoy! (And we are still planning to add more content soon!).
But if you need a really well structured material and a full, detailed course on website management, affiliate marketing, growing your audience and marketing in general, you should really consider joining the WA community and complete at least their free basic course, it can already make a huge difference in your online game.
Sign up with your e-mail address by clicking the banner below, no other information is required for creating your free profile to be able to look around inside:
8 COMMENTS
best bro
thanks
Thanks for sharing this informative article.
This is very informative and your free courses are also very good. Thanks and keep it up.
nice information..
As of today this is the most in-demand job or business you can do, as everybody is staying at home. Thanks for sharing this great opportunity
This is a topic that is close to my heart… Take care! Where are your contact details though?
Greetings! Very helpful advice within this post!
It is the little changes that will make the biggest changes.
Thanks for sharing!