You want to start a money making blog, but you have no money. What are you supposed to do?
As you know, starting a blog is the same as starting a business and spending a little money to make money is needed if you’re serious about monetizing a blog.
One of the biggest mistakes I made with blogging was assuming I could figure it out on my own.
Not only is that not true, it was also an enormous waste of my time! I spent COUNTLESS hours per week, week after week, researching, reading and writing before I launched. I was determined to get blogging all figured out.
What you don’t realize as a new blogger, is that blogging posts just gives you basic info, bloggers don’t usually tell you the tiny details or give you their strategy you really need to understand to do well blogging unless you purchase their courses or ebooks. Reading countless posts was helpful but it didn’t give me the strategy details I was looking for.
It wasn’t until the Ultimate Bundles sale on the Genius Bloggers Toolkit came out for 5 days in October 2017, that I realized HOW MUCH value there was in getting help from expert bloggers. If you haven’t yet heard about the Genius Bloggers Toolkit, you receive over $5K worth of blogging ebooks, courses and videos for only $97!
I know $97 seems like a lot to spend, but I can almost guarantee, even a couple months down the road after you’ve already spent way more than $97 to get blogging help, you’ll be kicking yourself for not buying GBT.
If you’re reading this and are disappointed you missed the October enrollment or the May 2 day flash sale, click here to get added to a waiting list reminder so you don’t forget about the sale in October!
FREE & LOW-COST BLOGGING RESOURCES
If you’re absolutely on a super tight budget and truly don’t have the extra cash to spare on your blogging business, highly recommend to at least use one of my quick cash examples to pay for high quality hosting to get your own domain name. Fortunately, the #1 rated blog hosting company is only the price of a cup of coffee each month!
Here are a few of my favorite free recommended resources you can start your blog with and switch to a paid plan later as you grow:
- Mailerlite– The #1 rated free email service provider
- Canva– a free basic service to make your Pinterest pins
- Manually pinning – you can have just as much success manually pinning for free as you can by using a scheduler like Tailwind. If you’re on a tight budget, manually pinning is a good way to start until you save up enough to pay for a time-saving Pinterest scheduler like Tailwind.
With my Tailwind code, you can try Tailwind one month for free ($15 value) and they give me a month free too! 🙂
Exra Free Resources for You!
How to Start a Money Making Blog + the FREE 7 Day Rapid Start Pinterest Course – If you don’t yet have a blog set up and are just doing blogging research at this point, make sure to read my in-depth step-by-step post on exactly what you need to do to!
I’ve had people tell me that my free Pinterest course has more value than many paid courses people have paid for!! That meant so much to hear! That’s honestly how much value is in it. Everything you need to know to get started with Pinterest and start getting rapid traffic with Pinterest is included.
HOW TO PAY FOR BLOGGING EXPENSES
I’ve been a side hustling stay-at-home-mom basically forever, and the extra money I make helps to pay for my projects, pay for my business expenses, family extras and helped to cover emergency expenses.
Paying for blogging expenses isn’t any different! These are the ways I’ve made a little extra money for our family, and within ONE MONTH these can easily help you have $200-$300 extra bucks in your pocket to pay for your blog hosting, Tailwind, or maybe the #1 email service provider or maybe join something like a membership site.
#1 eBay
I used to make $1000-$2000/mo only working 10-15 hours/week selling kids stuff and vintage items on eBay. It is SO EASY to sell on eBay! You literally can do it from your phone. To get started, look around your own home and see what you can sell. I can almost guarantee most of us have a couple hundred dollars of stuff sitting around the house you can sell on eBay this week!
I wrote an extensive post about my eBay experience, it literally tells you all of my eBay secrets since I’m no longer selling kids items on eBay. Even if you’re interested in selling something other than toys and books like I did, my post will help you get started.
#2 Surveys
Surveys are super easy to complete and they require no product or start-up costs.
If I had to narrow this list down to the 2 EASIEST ways to make a little extra cash to pay for blogging expenses, it’d be with surveys or by selling extra things around your home online (or hold a garage sale). You can literally just complete easy surveys while you watch TV at night or whenever you have an extra free 15 minutes.
Just doing this for one month even will pay for your blogging start-up expenses! It’s recommended to sign up for numerous survey companies since you won’t qualify for every survey or every survey company. Here’s a handful of my favorite survey companies to get started with:
- Pinecone Research– This is hands down my favorite survey company! They pay $3 for survey, each takes 15-20 mins and you can cash out after making $3!
- My Survey
- Harris Poll– By signing up with Harris Poll, you help shape policy for government agencies, large corporations and non-profits.
- VIP Voice
#3 Sell Services on Fivver
Ok, ok, you want a side hustle that relates to blogging to help pay your bills? Fivver could potentially be your starting point. While I haven’t tried this myself, if I needed money FAST for blogging, I’d offer up a Fivver service related to blogging.
The premise with Fivver, is you offer your services up for a super low price like $5, and as you get more reviews, you can charge more. Or you can offer something basic for $5 and have upgraded packages for sale as well.
What do other bloggers struggle with that maybe you could help out with? Some ideas:
- Using the free version of Canva to create Pinterest pins for other bloggers
- Creating Media Kits in Canva for other bloggers
- Editing posts
- Offering Pinterest services to apply for group boards or schedule other bloggers pin through Tailwind or Board Booster
- Offering up any other talents you might have!
Here’s the link to get more info about getting started with Fivver
#4 Ebates ~ Online Shopping App
Ebates ~ Ebates is a simple online shopping cashback app that pays you a % back from your online purchases. So you’re basically getting paid to do the shopping you were already planning to do.
This isn’t a side hustle like selling online or starting a mini business on Fivver, but by diligently using a shopping app like Ebates could easily pay for something like your blogging email service or your monthly fee for a membership site you want to join.
- We’re getting a little over $200 back from hotel stays we just booked for a summer vacay.
- We even made $60 in the very first month by being diligent about going through eBates for all online purchases.
Ebates even gives you $10 just to try their app.
You can sign up for Ebates and redeem your $10 below (if you try it within so many days of joining)
#5 Ibotta ~ Grocery App
Ibotta ~ Ibotta is a coupon grocery store app that basically pays you to go buy food. It’s an awesome way to save money at the grocery store without cutting coupons, plus using Ibotta diligently will help give you a little extra cash each month.
Ibotta even gives you a $10 welcome bonus just for giving their cool app a try. Who knew using a coupon app would actually be fun?
I made over $30 with Ibotta in our first month of using the app!
You can try Ibotta and redeem your $10 welcome bonus here.
#6 Sell Used Books on Amazon
This is sort of similar to selling on eBay, but for those preferring to sell through Amazon, selling used books you find at garage sales, from Goodwill and other places is an easy place to start with Amazon sales.
While I don’t personally have an Amazon store, I’ve read in numerous places selling used books is often considered the best place to start. SO many garage sales only charge .10-.25 for soft cover books and hard-back books usually go for $1. There’s not many items you can buy for this low of a price if you’re looking to start reselling items on the side.
Selling extra items like books on Amazon isn’t my area of expertise, a really great free Amazon course I recently took will definitely help you get started.
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D0 you have other great ideas to help pay for blogging bills or that help you make a little extra money on the side?
We’d love to hear about them! Please post below or on the Pinterest pin to share your ideas 🙂
Who knows? Maybe you’ll enjoy some of these ideas so much, you’ll keep doing them even after your blog is up and running and profitable.
Happy Blogging!
These are some great ideas. For some reason Surveys have never worked out for me.
❥ tanvii.com
I have tried a few of these out before but to be honest I never found anything in these apps that I actually would buy. Maybe they have added more items by now?
This is seriously an amazing resource list! There are so many great ideas on here!
I am going to try the surveys! Blogging has had more expenses than I was prepared for.
love these ways to make money! its totally doable to have it pay itself