With everything that’s been going on in the world, I see a lot of people out of work or businesses shut down. If you’re looking for something that you can do from home, with minimal start up costs, then I would seriously recommend learning how to make money blogging with Squarespace. Even now, bloggers are out there hustling and earning real money just from writing.

How to Make Money Blogging With Squarespace

When I first started blogging, I wasn’t really sure it was for me. Veteran bloggers that I networked with recommended Wordpress, so I used that to set up my early blogs. Those first experiences taught me two things: that writing isn’t for me, and how blogging with Wordpress worked.

Even though I didn’t feel confident writing, I decided to go full in with blogging. Why? A lot of people are making money from it, and I figured that if they could do it, so could I if I worked hard.

Once I decided to take blogging seriously, the first thing I did was establish my ‘Hungry Being’ brand. I knew I wanted to create a YouTube channel, podcast, and of course the blog, so I secured social media accounts and a domain under that name.

Blogging isn’t that easy

The first thing I want to get out of the way is that blogging isn’t all that easy. Especially if you don’t consider yourself a writer. You won’t start making money right away, and probably will need to invest a bit upfront to get started.

If you stick with it, though, you could end up turning it into a serious income producing side hustle, or even a full time job.

Choosing a blogging platform

Once I really decided to work on my brand, I wanted my website to be easy to maintain. That meant having the domain, hosting, blog, and a custom website all in one place. Wordpress really wasn’t for me, so I started looking into other options.

I ended up comparing three website builders: Squarespace, Wix, and Website.com.

Wix and Website.com were both easy to use, but really didn’t work with my long term plans. First of all, I wanted to make sure I retained ownership of all my content, and second, I hope to launch an online store in the future.

Squarespace had the best options for both blogging and long term growth, so I decided to go with them.

How to make money blogging with Squarespace

I was able to lower my upfront costs by registering an account with my .edu address and taking advantage of their student discount. If you’re in school right now, blogging is actually a really good side hustle for students because it’s flexible to your schedule.

Once you create your account in Squarespace, you’ll be able to see all your domains and websites all in one place right on your dashboard. The back end is visual and easy to navigate, so you can jump in even if you’re not very tech savvy.

After getting set up, I recommend creating three to five posts right away to get started.

Monitoring blog traffic

With Squarespace, you have to either use a 3rd party program or pay for their analytics, but it’s important to know how many visitors you have. Right now mine are low because I’ve been focusing more on my YouTube channel than blogging, but I’m trying to get back into creating blog posts now.

My traffic was higher in January, but has fallen recently since I haven’t been posting very often, which is bad for traffic. The thing about blog content though, is that it doesn’t need to be perfect. You just have to put yourself out there and eventually people will find you.

It’s your blog’s page views that translate into how much money you earn blogging.

How do you make money blogging?

There’s three major ways bloggers make money; through advertisements, via affiliate marketing, and by brokering private deals.

Advertising

Even with lower blog traffic, I can still have Google ads on my blog. When people read my posts and see or click the ads, Google pays me a cut of that ad revenue. The amount they pay out depends on the page’s RPM value (Revenue Per 1000 Impressions), which varies based on your post’s content and market competition.

Once you get more popular, you can also join ad networks that work specifically with bloggers. They’re hard to get accepted to, but pay higher rates than something like Google Adsense.

Affiliate Marketing

You’ve probably heard of this before, but it’s basically earning a commission when people click links on your site that advertise another website or product. The most popular one is Amazon, but a lot of companies offer an affiliate program.

Once you sign up, you get a special link that’s tied to your account. Then when people click that link and visit their site, it saves a cookie on their computer for a period of time (Amazon is 24 hours). When they buy anything after clicking that link, not just the product you mentioned, you’ll get a commission on that sale.

You don’t have to be a big name blogger to get into affiliate networks, so anytime you’re talking about a product on your blog see if there’s an affiliate program for it somewhere.

Private Deals

Once you find your niche, you can start networking as a blogger. One of the easiest ways to do this is by finding like minded people, and then leaving thoughtful comments on their posts. That way their readers will see you, and might even check you out. You can also use social media to build your audience.

As your reputation grows, more people will be interested in working with you. That’s when you can broker private advertising deals with other like-minded bloggers, where they might pay for a post or advertisement on your blog.

Companies also offer compensation to bloggers for sponsored posts, but you usually need a fair bit of traffic to be accepted. Smaller bloggers might have better luck finding companies that will give out free products in exchange for reviews, though.

Other tips to help you make money blogging with Squarespace

First of all, don’t overload your website with ads. I understand the appeal in wanting to make a lot of money, but too many make it hard to read and your site will load slowly.

Second, while I don’t want to say that you should write something every day, you should definitely try and write as much as you can. Even if you don’t think you’re a very good writer!

Hopefully you can use these tips to make money blogging with Squarespace. While it might not happen overnight, blogging can definitely make you some extra money. It’s also a productive way to spend your free time, and might even be a positive creative or emotional outlet; something we all need right now.