I’ve been blogging for almost six years now and have been making a full time income doing it for over three years. It’s taken a lot of work, a lot of learning and a lot of mistakes to grow my little website into a real job, but it’s been worth every second!

If you’ve ever wanted to make money blogging but weren’t sure how to get started, you’re not alone! And when you launch your website, these four tips are ones that I wish I had known when I first started my blog. While I still managed to grow a successful business, these tips would have gotten me there even faster!

Spring for Proper Hosting

I didn’t want to take money out of my family’s budget for something that I wasn’t sure would be profitable, so when I first started blogging I used the free Blogger.com platform. Of course, as my website grew I quickly realized, like so many bloggers before me, that not owning and self-hosting my website was going to be detrimental to my business both because of the limited SEO customization that affected my traffic and the limited advertising options.

I then had to go through the hassle of moving my site and all my content to a WordPress website hosted by HostGator. I would have saved time, hassle and money by starting with HostGator in the beginning! And because HostGator offers easy one-click installation of WordPress, design services and 24/7 live support via chat, phone or email, launching my blog with HostGator would have been even easier than starting on Blogger! [Read more…]