5 Tips to Make Money Blogging Even If You’re Broke

You see such a heavy emphasis on how to make money blogging if you’re broke but few bloggers focus on the “broke” part.

To cure a disease you need to find the root cause of the malady.

Yet you may banging your pretty little head against the wall because after following the advice of well-meaning, successful bloggers, you’re still flat broke and your blog makes enough money to buy a bottle cap each month.

Goodness knows I’ve been there with you. I first intended to convert my blog into an ATM machine. Years later it still wasn’t offering withdrawals.

I eventually learned that when you’re flat broke you have a money problem that must be solved from the inside out.

How to Make Money Blogging

Accepting the truth of the prior line will change your life immediately. You’ll follow all the good, practical advice offered by profit-earning, successful, well known bloggers, leading to fabulous results over the long haul.

Follow these 5 tips to make money blogging. Even if you’re dead broke.

Figure Out Why (and Make it Fun….and Freeing)

If you’re low on cash you have an energy problem. Stop resisting money. Start falling in love with blogging about a passionate topic.

During my “Broke Joke” years I blogged primarily to make money. When the money did not arrive after 1 day, or 1 week, or 1 month, I flipped out. I tried harder to make money through my blog and struggled even worse.

I moved away from a fun, freeing, passionate driver toward a strained, serious, desperate driver. This created an endless cycle of misery and financial heartbreak.

I referred to this as the meal ticket approach to blogging when covering common blogging mistakes recently. Blogging to just make enough cash to eat, today, sends off a desperate, strained, money-blocking vibe.

Blog your passion. Make having fun your predominant driver. What can you talk about all day long? Blog about it. The blogging fun becomes the reward so you won’t be as needy or desperate to make that sweet cash. This step alone will ease money-related anxieties.

Now it’s time to dive into some unpleasant but harsh realities connected to your broke-ness. Few bloggers take this step but the brave minority leapfrogs their money issues quickly.

Address Your Money Issues Immediately

Being broke has nothing to do with blogging. Nor does it have anything to do with your job. Being broke has nothing to do with the economy. Having no dough only has to do with some past trauma, anxiety, worry or panic you cling to related to money or something even beyond money, like the loss of a loved one.

If you skip this step and try to “practical tip” your way out of your money problem you tend to ignore sound, proven blogging advice. Meaning you’ll be blind to good blogging advice.

Look down at the following tips. Unless you address how you *really* feel about money you will ignore tips 3, 4 and 5. Not only that, you will move in the opposite direction. Manipulating people. Trying to do it on your own. Trying to build your blog on free, shared hosting platforms.

I know. I’ve made these mistakes repeatedly over my 8 year blogging career. But I turned things around by addressing my limiting beliefs and fears concerning money. Most of the lower energies were rooted in my childhood.

Practical Exercise

Spend time in quiet. Observe your earlier years on planet earth. How did your parents view money? Did they see money as scarce? Did they work themselves to the bone just to barely make ends meet? Write down the low energy, painful feelings you experience when dwelling on your money history. Feel the deep, dark emotions. Then, after a good cry, or maybe an intense burst of anger, take a deep breath and burn the piece of paper over the sink as a cathartic cleanse.

Burn the paper to release these money blocks/lower energies for good.

Regularly revisit your resistance to money based on your financial past to clear out the head trash. Tune into smart blogging advice by releasing the money lies that parents, siblings and the general public at large freely offered to you.

This may not seem like something you’d read on a blogging tips themed blog but following this advice has led to miraculous breakthroughs in my blogging life.

Focus Your Energies on Helping Not Manipulating

Broke bloggers often try to manipulate people to give them money, using trickery, dishonesty and other desperate approaches to force money from confused souls. The end result: either more financial struggles, a loss of reputation, legal troubles or all three.

Helpers get paid. If you have little cash to your name tap into the invaluable currency known as “help.”

Readers buy your products or hire you based on how freely you help them with their problems. Whether you have money or not means nothing to someone you inspired to crush a devastating problem or to live a stunning dream.

People hired me to coach them when I only had $25 in my checking account.

People hired me to coach them when I was making $3000 a month through freelance writing alone.

The individual could give a crap less whether I was a boxcar hobo or living in Fiji. I helped them. They hired me. Or they bought my eBooks or blogging audio course.

Help people by answering their questions through email. Ditto on Facebook. Ditto on Twitter. Be thorough. Be generous. Show off your knowledge. Your temporary broke-ness is usually indicative of holding back your help.

Blogger newbies should dive head first into learning, studying, implementing and tracking to become helpful to their readers. Consider using the 5 Hour Rule followed by billionaire icons like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Oprah to increase your skill set and helpfulness each week.

How to Help

• publish blog posts
• publish videos
• share podcasts
• offer advice through email or social media, answering questions thoroughly to
  help generously

Help. Attract money by becoming a trusted, helpful resource in your niche.

Make Friends to Go from Broke to Booming Blogger

Bloggers regularly state that I seem to know everybody online. Admittedly, I knew a few less folks than “everybody” but I am a connected blogger.

As a rule, broke bloggers believe in publishing a blog masquerading as a cyber diary. If you build it, they won’t come. If you build it and make friends, readers will arrive by the boatload.

Make friends by promoting fellow bloggers on social media sites. Shout them out. Link to their latest posts on your blog. Refer your blogging buddies to other bloggers who may be able to help them.

Be generous. Become popular. Watch your blogging reach grow like a weed on steroids. Observe how steadily your blogging income grows.

Invest the Few Bucks You Have in a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog

I saved the best for last.

If you don’t have $10 to $30 to invest in a self-hosted WordPress blog per month stop what you’re doing right now. Go get a job. Build your savings. Then, invest in a domain and hosting.

Famous people like Seth Godin can get away with using a free blogging platform because he’s already gained the trust of his audience.

He could send out blog post updates by carrier pigeon and his loyal readers/minions would wait beside their windows for the latest Godin jewels of wisdom, delivered with a nasty little pigeon deposit or two.

Whip out your credit card. Buy a domain and hosting. Stand out from the crowd. Tailor your blog just how you want it. Own your cyber real estate. Maximize your branding and earning potential.

Set aside $120 to $360 of your money each year for a domain and hosting and say to yourself:

“Even though I am struggling financially, by investing this money I will position myself to earn thousands of dollars, then $10,000, then $100,000 and more over the next 5 to 10 years.”

Dwell on that statement before you even dream of attempting to make money blogging through a free, shared hosting solution.

It’s impossible to achieve this branded, one of a kind look unless you pay for a self-hosted, WordPress blog.

If you can’t afford a few hundred dollars each year to devote toward a domain and hosting you will have an extremely difficult time making money with your blog.

Conclusion

Take it from a guy who’s been down to his latest 4 pennies and who’s also traveled the world as a full time blogger over the past 5 years. Each of these tips works darn well if you’re trying to make coin as a bootstrapped blogger.

Are you struggling to make money blogging because you’re broke?

Do you follow any one of these tips?

What is your biggest blogging struggle as far as trying to monetize your blog?