This is a guest post from Simon Cave. He is the founder of the Becomer the place where entrepreneurs find inspirational content, actionable tips and insider strategies from millionaires. Let me know if you would like to guest post on MMYW.

Let me get this straight, making a living by blogging takes time.

You must create content, build a community, build an email list, drive traffic to your site, find partners, create product(s) and service(s) promote them… which require hours and hours of work.

I know that many beginners give up before making a single cent online and that’s a shame because they can bring value to this world.

So yesterday I asked myself:

How can I prove beginner bloggers that making a living online is possible?

I figured that showing you how to build a profitable blog in a week would be the best way. Why? Because if you follow my steps and make money by the end of the week, you will know by experience that it’s possible for YOU to make a living online.

And there is nothing more powerful than that.

If you ask any blogger out there (even those who now make $100,000/month) how they felt when they made their first cent online, they will always tell you the same thing:

“I realized that it was possible for me”

And the funny thing is that no matter how successful they are today, they all remember very clearly their first cent and how excited they were when that happened.

So my goal with this blog post isn’t to show you how to build a multi-million dollar empire in a week but rather to help you make your first dollars online so you can get excited about it and persevere as a blogger.

Sounds fair?

Great, let’s get started then!

Find a profitable niche market (day 1)

The first step of this process is to find a profitable niche market.

If you want to start a successful blog, you can’t just write about everything that comes to your mind otherwise you will attract everybody to your blog and that’s definitely not what you want.

You have to find a niche for your blog or a theme if you will. Something that attracts people with a similar interests and needs.

When looking for a theme for your blog, you also want to make sure that thousands of people are interested in it. The more people are interested, the bigger the market you will be able tap into.

Here’s the process to choose a profitable niche:

List your interests, passions and skills to come up with niche ideas

We all have interests, passions and skills. It may be hicking, DIY, cooking, football, cinema, programming… you name them.

Make a list of 5 things you can think of.

Eg:

Travel
Entrepreneurship
Basketball
Movie making
Personal development

If you don’t know what your interests, passions or skills are, or aren’t sure how to use them to build a blog download my guide that will teach you to start a blog without any skills or knowledge.

Use Google keyword planner and Google search

Once you have your 5 interests, passions and skills (= topics), you want to use both Google keyword planner and Google search to figure out which topic is more likely to be profitable in the future.

So go to Keyword planner (create a free account if you don’t have one yet) and type in a few keywords that are related to your niche. This will allow you to know how many searches/month each keyword get, which will then give you an idea of the size of your market.

So let’s say that my interest is travel, I will look for keywords like “Best place to travel” “How to travel on a budget”…

You need to look for at least 20 keywords to get an idea of how big your potential market is.

Compare the average searches/monthAs you see in the above picture, “best places to travel” get 14,800 searches/month so there is definitely an interest for this topic, which means that there is an opportunity to build a blog in the travel market.

After making 20 keyword searches for each one of your 5 interests, passions and skills, you need to compare their average searches/month to figure out which niche market you should pick to start a blog.

To get the average searches/month, take each number of searches/keyword, add them up and divide the result by 20.

Eg: Travel (keyword 1: 14,800 + keyword 2: 5,500 + keyword 3: 2,000 + … keyword 20: 4,200)/20 = 5,200 searches/month

Travel (average monthly searches: 5,200)
Entrepreneurship (average monthly searches: 2,000)
Basketball (average monthly searches: 3,400)
Movie making (average monthly searches: 700)
Personal development (average monthly searches: 1,500)

In this case I’ll choose the travel niche because it has a higher average monthly searches.

Note: I know this example is rather obvious. Of course the travel market is attractive, it’s a billion dollar industry. But I just wanted to show you the process of making a research with Keyword planner.

Build a blog and start building an email list (day 2)

Now that know what your niche market is, you want to set up your blog.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to be tech savvy to do so. If you use WordPress, it only takes a few minutes.

Watch: How to Make a WordPress website

Once your blog is live, you need to set up a coming soon page and add a form to it.

Don’t create any content yet. Just focus on setting up your coming soon page and your form first so you can start building your email list.

Your email list is a vital part of your blog. You need one if you want to build a great community and make money online.

To set up your coming soon page and form, I recommend you to use a WordPress plugin like the Ultimate Coming Soon Page or Easy Coming Soon. These plugins will allow you to create a page like you see below and collect email addresses.

Promote your coming soon page (day 4 – 6)Every time people sign up to your coming soon page, you will get their email address and will be able to communicate with them via email.

This is probably the most important step of all. When your coming soon page is ready, spend a few days promoting it. You have to spend a lot of time doing it if you want to grow your email list.

Here are a few ways to do it:

– Tell your friends and family: Simply call them, text them or send them an email to tell them that you are starting a blog and that you would like them to visit your coming soon page and sign up. Also ask them to share it with people they know.

– Start conversations on Twitter: Use Twitter intensively to promote your coming soon page. And by intensively, I mean spend hours on Twitter interacting with hundreds of people. Visit the Twitter account of influencers in your niche and go to the follower section to find your target audience. Find active followers and engage the conversation with them. Visit their site, leave a comment, RT, fav their tweets ask them questions and promote your coming soon page whenever you get the chance.

Don’t be a spammer though, always get interested in them before you ask them anything. And the funny thing is, if you genuinely show that you want to get to know them, help them… you won’t even have to ask anything. They will automatically ask you “what can I do for you?”. Because whenever you show people that you are interested in them and that you make them feel great, they will always want to do something for you.

– Engage in online forums: Go to forums in your niche, answer questions, ask questions bring value and from time to time share your coming soon page with the community.

– Build relationships with other bloggers in your niche: Other bloggers already have a community and a following. If you can convince them to share your coming soon page with their community, you will be able to quickly grow your email list.

To do so you have to build a relationship first. So leave a comment on their blog, share their stuff on social media, if they have a podcast leave a review on iTunes, if they have a book on Amazon leave a review too. Bring as much value as you can before reaching out to them by email. Then you can send them an email and tell them that you are starting a blog and that you’d love them to help you get the word out.

The 4 strategies that I just share with you work great but keep in mind that it’s a numbers game. You need to reach out to hundreds of Twittos, bloggers and people on forums to make it work. The more you engage with people, the bigger your email list will be and the more money you will be able to make.

Send your email list a survey (day 6)

You want to send your subscribers a survey to know more about them. This survey will help you find out what your subscribers are interested in, what they want to learn about, what they need and more. This data will then help you find what products, services, software… to promote on your newsletter.

So ask your subscribers 10 questions related to the topic of your blog.

Eg: If my blog is about travel, I can send them the following questions:

Do you read blogs about travelling?

How often do you travel?

Where have you travelled?

How do you travel? (Airbnb, Coutchsurfing, camping, hotel)

Do you often travel by plane? By train? By car?

Would you say that your budget for travel is: tight? medium? Big?

[…]

To create this survey, you can use something like Google Form, it’s easy to use and gives you great stats.

To send your survey, you will need an ESP (email service provider). I recommend you ConvertKit it’s perfect for bloggers.

What you need to do is download the list of subscribers that you generated with the Ultimate Coming Soon Page or Easy Coming Soon and upload it to ConvertKit so you can start sending your subscribers emails.

Promote something (day 7)

Let’s recap:

You found your niche market

You created your blog with your coming soon page

You built your email list by promoting your coming soon page

You sent your subscribers a survey to know more about them

Now it’s time to find products, services, software, programs…that your subscribers will want to buy.

By asking your subscribers questions, you got valuable data, which means that you now know what they want and need. All you need to do now is find the right thing to promote based on their answers.

Eg: If 70% of people answered that they travel with Airbnb, I will send them an Airbnb voucher.

If 50% said that they mainly travelled by plane, then I will promote low cost flights.

If 65% answered that they travelled to Thaïland, I will also send them discounts on hotel

I adapt my promotion to what they answered in the survey.

Every time you promote something to your email list, make sure to join the affiliate program first. To do so, just google the name of the thing you want to promote and add “affiliate” (flight affiliate, hotel affiliate…). As soon as you join the program, you’ll get a unique link that you need to use to start earning commissions.

So on day 7, you will choose a product, service, software, app… that your subscribers want and promote it in your email with your affiliate link.

When sending your first email to your subscribers, don’t be spammy. Don’t send them an email just to promote something. Write something like:

“Hi,

I’m so happy that you joined my community!

As you know, I’m currently working hard on building my blog about… It means the world to me that you decided to join the adventure, because I’m doing it for you!

To thank you I want to offer you 20% on…. (add affiliate link) ”

And that’s pretty much all you have to do to start making money online.

Now that you read this whole guide, you must probably think that there is a lot to do in one week, and you are right. But I’ve never said it was easy.

Making money online is hard work. But if you follow the steps I just showed you, I guarantee you, you’ll make money.

And the excitement you’ll feel when that happens is really worth the work.

Want more?

Download my guide that will teach you how to start a blog without any skills or knowledge

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