Learn how to make money blogging from Neil Patel

Something big is happening in the world of work. How come so many people from all walks of life and all ages are creating blogs and entire businesses online?

Can blocks of text mixed with a sequence of images possess such immense power?

And honestly, how many people want to read the minds of ordinary people like you and me?

Neil Patel’s blog receives over 2,436,112 unique visitors each year and generates over a million dollars in income a year. Below is the revenue in 1 month:

This guy generated $381,772 a month, a staggering number for a blog. You may not be able to generate that much money. But Neil thinks you can make a number equal to 1/100 of his.

And in this article you will have a step by step guide to create a blog and grow it and learn how to monetize a blog in just 47 minutes.

Step 1. Unleash your inner ideas

If you want to create a blog, you don’t have to have a big idea. Your blog needs to focus on something specific.

Remember that no idea, no matter how good, is truly unique.

But you have a unique experience. You have your own voice. And perhaps you have a strong personality that attracts others like your family and friends.

When it comes to choosing a niche for your blog, you should ask yourself these 2 important questions:

1. Would you like to learn about this topic?

If you don’t love the topic of your blog, it will show in your writing. You shouldn’t create a blog if you don’t love what you’re blogging about.

No matter what topic you are writing about, you need to love it, and be curious about it. Otherwise, you will quickly run out of ideas. Most importantly, you won’t be able to create consistent content to build your audience.

If you are unsure about the topic you intend to blog about, seek advice from your family and friends. It could be fitness topics, recipes, or relationship advice.

2. Are other people interested in the same thing?

You might sound like a 23-year-old guy who’s obsessed with knitting. But there are other people out there with the same interests as you.

Do a Google Search and you’ll find 539,000 results about people just like you.

You are probably wondering if your idea is too weird. Or maybe it’s too wide?

If you want to create a travel blog, stay away from generic words like “travel.” (travel). Picking a specific topic is like “backpacking”.

Step 2: Name the blog and buy web hosting

This is an interesting and important step because the name of your blog is your brand. It is also how you are remembered. But don’t think about it too much. The key is to take action and get motivated.

When you create a blog from scratch, you need 2 things.

The first is the domain or domain name. This is the name of the blog. My blog example is . Domain name will cost you about $10/year. If you don’t find the right domain name, don’t worry you can still create a blog and change the domain name later.

Read more:

The most detailed guide to buying a domain at NameCheap.

Instructions to buy cheap domain names at GoDaddy.

The second is web hosting or web hosting service. Web hosting is a service that allows your blog to be accessed over the Internet.

Without web hosting your blog cannot be found in the online world. Without a domain name, your blog will have no address. These two are inseparable. You need both.

There are many web hosting companies with different prices.

If you are creating a new blog, I suggest you to use the hosting service of HawkHost or A2Hosting .

Read more:

3 best foreign hosting services you need to know

Guide to buying a host for newbies

HawkHost discount code + special gift

A2Hosting review: WordPress hosting speed and high security

When naming your blog, you should consider the following:

Step 3. Install WordPress – blogging software

You cannot create a blog without blogging software. I use WordPress for all my blogs because it’s friendly, free and powerful.

Even without technical knowledge you can install WordPress in just a few clicks.

After you have purchased your domain name and hosting, you can refer to this detailed WordPress installation guide for yourself .

It only takes a few minutes to install WordPress.

Step 4. Design your blog with WordPress theme

In the blogging world, the WordPress design part is called a theme

Initially, your blog should look like this:

It’s not a pretty design, but it works.

There are thousands of free themes to choose from. But too many themes also make you confused and take time to find the theme you love.

You can change the theme at any time, so don’t waste time finding the perfect theme right now.

First, you need to login to the WordPress Admin. You can access the following path: yourdomain.com/wp-admin (Note if you install WordPress on A2Hosting, the admin page path has changed as I mentioned in the WordPress installation article )

Here, you need to log in using your account created in the installation step above.

If you are new to WordPress, looking at this dashboard screen can be daunting but you will become an expert with a little practice

To install a new theme, hover over ” Appearance ” in the Sidebar and click on ” Themes” .

WordPress provides you with several default themes named ” Twenty-[year].

These themes are not very beautiful so we will look for more eye-catching themes. Click the ‘ Add New ‘ button at the top to access thousands of free themes.

Your interests and mine are different. Luckily, WordPress has a ‘ Feature Filter ‘ that allows you to search for themes that match your style.

As soon as you click on Feature Filter you will see 3 groups ‘ layout’ , ‘ features’ and ‘ Subject . ‘ as below:

Apply the filter, you will be amazed by many beautiful themes. These themes can be worth thousands of dollars if you hire your own designer. But great point, it’s free.

If you click on the thumbnail of the theme you can preview what your blog will look like using that theme. Evaluate it to see if it fits the style and theme of your blog.

As soon as you are satisfied with the look and feel of the theme, click on the ‘ Install’ button .

Once the installation is complete, click on the ‘ Activate’ button . So you have installed the theme for your blog.

If you can’t find the right theme you like, you can buy premium themes from a few reputable providers here.

You have now activated the theme. Let’s move on to customizing your theme.

Step 5. Customize and Optimize Your WordPress Blog

There are countless things you need to customize your WordPress blog. We’ll do the important stuff first.

Themes are the foundation of your design and include core functionality. WordPress has plugins that help you to add or extend the functionality of your blog

For example, you can use a plugin to add a forum, contact form or slider to your blog. While they may be basic features, they are not always available by default.

The first step you need to click on the Customize button on the theme you just activated.

The options here vary depending on the theme you choose. The main entry you need to correct is ‘Site identity.’

Here you can enter your blog’s name and tagline if you like. When you’re done, click the Save & Publish button

Optimize SEO (search engine traffic)

SEO is industry is billions of dollars.

SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that people can easily find it in the search results for a particular keyword or phrase.

If you are new to SEO, SEO can be daunting because it is also a bit complicated.

But, with WordPress you can easily optimize the technical aspect of your blog.

Most of your SEO efforts are about creating engaging and valuable content for real people, not serving search engines. Whether through text, images or video, your mission as a blogger is to build relationships with your readers.

To help you easily optimize your website for SEO, we will use a plugin called Yoast SEO.

Go to the plugin section in the sidebar, and click the “Add New” button.

Search for the term ‘Yoast SEO’ in the search bar and it will appear first in the search results.

Click on the “Install Now” button. Then click the Activate button as soon as the installation is complete.

You can access the plugin’s settings from the new SEO menu in the sidebar or by clicking the button at the top.

From the Dashboard, go to ‘Your info’ and provide a basic information for your blog.

Make sure the website name and tagline are correct. Then identify yourself as a company or an individual

Click on the Save changes button and we move to the next step.

Next, go to the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab and click on ‘Google Search Console.’ Google Search Console is an essential tool for webmasters. It allows you to submit your website to search engines to improve its position in search results.

Sign in to your Google Account.

Once you are logged in, click on the ‘Alternative methods’ tab and select ‘HTML tag.’

A drop-down dialog box will appear with the new code. Copy the unquoted string like below:

Next, paste this code into Google Search Console and click the Save Changes button.

Finally click the Verify button.

Next, go to the ‘General’ tab and click the Open the installation wizard button.

Yoast will guide you through 10 steps to optimize your WordPress blog.

The first step is the welcome screen you can skip

In the second step, you choose the environment that best suits your site. Most likely, you will choose the production environment. It is the actual website you are planning to drive traffic to.

Step 3 is the type of website. Select the blog and click and the Next button.

The next step is to establish yourself as a company or as an individual. We already configured it in the previous section, so you can skip this step.

In step 5, you can add a social profile associated with your blog. Click ‘Next’ when you’re done.

Step 6 is about post visibility (determining whether to appear in search engines or not). The default setting is fine to use. Make Post and Page visible and Media hidden.

Next, you will have to decide whether you are a multi-author or a solo blogger. If you choose to add another writer in the future, you can change this setting later.

If you want to let the Yoast SEO plugin pull data from the Google Search console, step 8 is where you do this.

Click on the ‘Get Google Authorizatin Code’ button

A popup appears asking you to allow Yoast access to your Search Console data. Click on the ‘Allow’ button to allow access.

In step 9, you can check your website again and choose a Title Separator. Title separator is the character used to separate your blog title and the name of the website in the title meta information. The meta title information will be what searchers see for your blog in Google search results.

For example, if you found this article, you might see ‘Learn how to make money blogging from Neil Patel- Thinh Nguyen’

Which character to choose is just a matter of preference. Click ‘Next’ when you are ready to continue.

Finally, you will see a message congratulating you on successfully optimizing the SEO settings for your WordPress blog.

XML Sitemaps

The final Yoast SEO setup that needs to be done is the XML sitemap. An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the URLs present on your website.

It helps Google and other search engines crawl your site for new posts or pages. Luckily, Yoast has the feature to automatically update your sitemap, so you just need to enable the feature. And then don’t bother with it anymore.

In the ‘Features’ tab, in the Advanced settings pages section, scroll back to Enabled and click the Save Changes button to save the settings.

A group of menus will appear in the sidebar below the SEO section. Select XML Sitemaps.

Read more:

How to create XML Sitemap and submit to Google Search Console

Set up permalink

Perrmalinks are static hyperlinks that lead to a specific post or page. By default, WordPress places the permalink in the format yourdomain.com/postid

This URL is not user and SEO friendly. People won’t know what your page is about before viewing it.

You should change the permalink structure.

In the WordPress Admin sidebar, go to Settings -> Permalinks.

There are several options for you to choose from. I choose the ‘Post name’ structure for all my blogs. This structure will use keywords from the title of the article to create a unique permalink.

Save the setting you just changed.

Now we have the job of building the blog. The next problem is what will you write for your blog?

Let’s continue.

Step 6. Brainstorm the topic of the blog

The majority of your blog posts come from your personal experiences, successes, failures, and new lessons.

People often use the following question as a search query

Therefore, you should also start with a few questions of your own. I used a systematic series of questions and processes to come up with my blog idea.

No need to worry. It is not complicated and does not take time to implement.

By following the following process, you can find about 50 topics in half an hour of concentration.

Grab a pen and paper or open your favorite word processor.

The goal of this exercise is that you have 10 answers to each question. If you have more ideas, write them all down.

It’s time to look through the reader’s lens with these 5 questions.

1. “What excites, entices and stirs the passion within the readers?”

For example:

2. “What are the common challenges my readers experience?”

For example:

3. “Personal Traits My Readers Possess”

For example:

4. “What do readers love about your niche?”

For example:

5.  ” What do readers hate about your niche?”

For example:

Here are a few examples you might draw from an answer on your list:

Try to come up with a catchy headline to entice the reader to continue reading the rest of your article.

Thinh Nguyen’s comment

In this section Neil Patel teaches us the technique of generating ideas for your blog content by understanding the needs of your audience. Besides, you also learn how to create catchy headlines and entice readers to keep them watching your blog content.

Step 7. Write Your First Content

WordPress uses an editor similar to your favorite word processor.

Click on Posts in the sidebar of WordPress Admin

On this screen, you will see a list of posts sorted from new to old. Since we have just been working on a fresh WordPress installation, you should see a default post that is Hello World. Please delete it.

To create a new post, click the Add New button at the top or in the admin bar.

You will be taken to the post editor screen and can start blogging.

Click on the Toolbar Toggle’ button and you will see a few more options to help you beautify your post. This new tool is especially useful when you are creating subheadings for your articles.

First, you enter a title you got from the brainstorm in the step above. As soon as you finish entering the title, WordPress will generate the permalink based on the keyword you used in the title

You can start typing your article content in the editor until you are satisfied with the content.

You’ll want to add something visual to your post. Images will help engage the reader and can illustrate concepts better than words.

To add a new image, make sure you place the cursor where you want the image to appear. Click on the ‘Add Media’ button.

Now, drag and drop your image file into the media box

Once the image has been uploaded, select your image and click on the ‘Insert into post.’ button. You can resize and attach a link to the image. This link may lead to the original image of the image.

Your image will automatically be inserted into the post. Your post should look like this:

After you finish the article, you need to re-optimize using Yoast SEO plugin

Yoast has a specific configuration section that can be found directly below the post editor.

The 4 main configurations are SEO title, slug, meta description, and focus keyword

Completing these settings will spawn a preview of your post when seen in Google search results.

Create an SEO title that is catchy to click and a meta description that explains what your post is about

Yoast SEO plugin provides updates as soon as you start optimizing the title and description.

Try to have a multi-item analysis with a green status, but don’t overdo it if you can’t get a perfect score. If you can have 80% of these items green that’s fine.

Finally, if your blog has a thumbnail (avatar) you should put a profile picture. A profile picture will appear next to each post.

You can set your profile picture by clicking on the ‘Set featured image’ section at the bottom of the right sidebar.

The media window will open and you just need to drag and drop the image you want. As soon as the upload is complete. Click the Set featured button.

Before you publish your article, you can see what it will look like by clicking the ‘preview’ button above.

Before you click the Publish button, you want to make sure your post is exactly what you want it to be.

Here is a checklist you need to consider when you click the publish button:

If everything is OK you are ready to publish your first post.

Scroll to the top of the page and click the publish button to publish the article immediately.

Congratulations, you have successfully built a blog that looks great and is optimized for search engines. Tasty right?

Step 8. Create an editorial calendar

One fatal mistake I’ve noticed many bloggers make is to blog only when they feel like it.

They have forgotten that new fans want more content and blog owners have failed to provide more valuable content to their readers.

Unforeseen situations will arise. You’ll let new movies steal time that you should have spent blogging.

Life always presents you with challenges, whether you’re blogging or not

Don’t underestimate stability. It is something that you need to prioritize.

Neil Patel has written thousands of articles during his 10 years of blogging. This is not because he hits 7000 words a minute.

For the simple reason he adhered to the editorial schedule without any compromise.

The plan isn’t just for big publishing companies like the New York Times. They are human beings just like you and me.

Think about the plan like this.

If you have a doctor’s appointment on your calendar or a lunch date with a friend, you’ll have to honor it. In the worst case, you have to reschedule at the next free time.

The editorial calendar is similar.

They make challenging goals easy to achieve in small steps. They keep you organized. They streamline social media and email marketing efforts.

And you’ll be surprised how an editorial calendar can even help you become an organized person.

We are creatures of habit.

The better you keep the deal, the faster you grow your readership.

So, how do you get started and how much will it cost.

Doesn’t cost anything.

Just need to open the Excel spreadsheet. If you have multiple writers, you can share the sheet using Google Drive.

Start with these 4 columns: Published Date, Title, Keyword, and Caption,

Your needs may be different from mine, so you can add columns if you want. Some extra columns might be ‘Author’, ‘Category’ and ‘Audience’ (the audience you want to target).

The simpler you keep this file, the easier it will be to use.

Review your calendar on devices like Android, iPhone, or on the sticker on the fridge. How often do you post?

Monthly? Weekly? Daily?

Be careful with the goals you set, because if you constantly fail to meet the deal, it can cause you to give up.

Next, go through the answers you found in the brainstorming section above and add them to the “Title” column.

Your title doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s only when you publish that you need a catchy title.

The “Keywords” column is used for SEO purposes. If you’re targeting a specific keyword you’re looking to rank for, enter it here.

If you still don’t have any keywords in mind, you can do keyword research later.

Finally, we have a “Comment” column.

This section is the perfect place to write down the great ideas in your head. Captions are a great tool for you to stay focused on your topic and work it out in a coherent way

You should write down 25 article topics with a deal that you are confident you can keep up with.

This is half the number of articles the writer writes once a week.

OK. You have an editor, but not a calendar. Go to Google Calendar, and set up a new calendar. You can do this by clicking the downward arrow next to My Calendar

Click the Create New Calendar button and give it a name, description, and time zone. You can share this calendar with other team members.

If you don’t have a team, talk to a partner or close friend who is willing to hold you accountable for your goals.

After you have filled in all the necessary information, click on the ‘Create Calendar’ button and start getting to know your new best friend.

Make sure your calendar is selected in the left sidebar and change the schedule view to weekly.

Click on the timeframe of 1 day that you intend to publish the article and add the post title as ‘Even Title’. I suggest you set up notifications one day before the date you intend to publish the article.

If you just write whenever it’s convenient, you’re on a dangerous path.

You will eventually run out of ideas, lose motivation, and forget what prompted you to create your own blog.

An editorial calendar is a quick fix to a blogger’s procrastination.

Step 9. Make money from blogging

The final step is to monetize your blog. You may not be thirsty for instant blogging money. If that’s the case, it’s a good thing.

Listen to me.

The usual way to sell something would be like this:

This approach has been unsuccessful for many individuals and businesses, because they did not build an audience before creating it.

They are purely based on need.

That’s why blogging is the perfect channel to make money

You can build an audience through a variety of means, like email lists, comments, and social media channels.

Ask the audience

Blogging allows people to come into your life. If you think about your favorite bloggers, you probably feel you know them on a slightly personal level.

Plus, your market research just got easier. Neil Patel regularly asks a question at the end of every post and it spawns hundreds of comments. This helps Neil better understand the needs of the readers.

Alternatively, you can send email with a survey using Google Forms, to get valuable information about what your target audience wants.

By building a blog, you open doors to speak to your target audience. People who give you honest feedback on what they want from you.

If 90% of survey respondents told you they wanted a course in digital marketing, what do you think they want?

A digital marketing course they are willing to pay for.

Make money from advertising

If you don’t want to sell physical products or services, you can do what other publishers are doing.

Sell ​​ad space.

Anyone can place an advertisement on their blog using Google Adsense. But the real money comes from selling ad slots privately.

If you build a blog with a lot of traffic, you can sell ads to big corporations. The only thing you need to do is add their banners and keep doing what you do best writing about your passion and expertise.

Sell ​​physical products

Neil Patel used to generate very good revenue in the nutrition niche.

Neil and a friend named Mike built a blog from scratch and turned it into a $100,000/month revenue blog selling a cod liver oil product on Amazone.

Their success is mainly due to their blog publishing valuable content and understanding the needs of their audience to direct them to the Amazon sales page.

The reason why making money is the last step in creating a profitable blog is because money shouldn’t be the main goal when starting a blog. Build your audience before you think about saving money.

Once you’ve built relationships and community, your readers will steer you in the right direction by sharing their needs.

If you want to save money, it will be your task to fill their needs.

Conclusion

Creating a blog is easy. Creating a successful blog and making money requires hard work, dedication, and courage.

But the rewards are worth the risk.

Blogs are cheaper and more accessible today than in the past.

Like anything else in life, there will be obstacles in your way. But I encourage you to move forward with your passion and share it through your blog.

Everything you need to get started is in this article.

As you begin your blogging journey, remember that you are talking to people.

Be you. Take a risk. Be honest and transparent.

As you consistently create great content, your readers will focus on your blog, listen, and respond.