How To Make Money Sharing Your Passion (With a Simple Blog)

You want to turn your passion into a profitable blog/ website. Awesome!

But is this really possible, and if so, where would you start?

The short answer is yes, it is possible. The idea is to start with your passion, and align this with an opportunity.

There is more to it than this of course, but it’s not complicated. You just need to understand the process and how everything fits together.

By the end of this article, you will have a much better understanding of how to earn money blogging about any passion or interest. You will see the sheer potential that exists.

More importantly, you will see how you can take advantage of it with both hands.

What Is Blogging All About?

Many people have differing opinions on what constitutes blogging.

Some feel that blogging is just a tool to drive sales, some people think you are ‘selling your soul’ if you promote something on your blog! Then, there’s everything in between.

What do I personally think?

A blog is a great way to help people, while reaching your goals at the same time.

It’s not JUST about helping people, and it’s not JUST about making money. It’s a healthy balance.

You provide people with valuable content for free, and you make money when they buy stuff you promote on your blog. As long as that ‘stuff’ actually helps your audience and is promoted in an ethical manner, theres is absolutely nothing wrong with this!

Let’s be honest, if there was no potential to profit whatsoever, I guarantee you that the VAST majority of bloggers would stop blogging. Yes, even the nice looking ones that everyone loves! And yes, even me.

Regardless of what any successful blogger tells you, profit is a BIG driving factor at the end of the day.

And fair enough.

Why should someone slave away producing high value content for 5-7 days per week, month in, month out for nothing!? No way.

But that doesn’t mean that profit is the core driving factor of your blogging efforts either. Not at all. It’s just part of it.

The single most important element in ANY successful blog is giving people valuable content. You focus on what you GIVE to people first and foremost, and the financial rewards come naturally. This is a very important concept to grasp.

The point of all of this… you aren’t just blogging about cats with no vision of profit, and you aren’t trying to ‘sell’ people stuff either. Your blog is there to help people, and in return, you make money in an ethical, transparent nature.

Passion Vs Profits- The Great Debate

You’ve probably heard some say that you “can’t make money from your passion” or something to that effect. I’ve heard this, and it’s a one sided argument.

Bullshit. You absolutely can make money with your passion.

However, it’s not quite as simple as “following your passion” either, and not all passions are created equal in terms of profit.

Like most things in life, it’s about finding a balance between the two. Too many people try to put things into ONE basket, because it’s easier that way. In reality, it’s rarely ever THAT simple.

In the case of blogging, the idea is to START with your passion, and research opportunities in various ways to determine what opportunity there is within that space. In other words, you align your passion with a very real opportunity.

Why is starting with your passion a good idea?

It helps you stay motivated and give people more value.

How interested would you be blogging about surfing if you’ve never surfed? And how much time are you going to spend research that topic when you don’t even care about it?

Very little.

As a blogger, you are going to be writing lots of high value content for people within your niche, since this is the ONLY way you are going to get rankings in Google, and traffic to your blog. Plain and simple.

So, writing about stuff you care about is going to help you stay motivated and offer people the most value possible.

The Process Of Making Money From a Blog

The process of making money with a blog/ website can be broken down into 4 simple steps:

Believe it or not, this is how simple the process is from a ‘birds eye’ perspective.

Many people get lost in the details, but when you boil it down, it’s that simple.

I’ll now walk you through each of these 4 steps so you know will have an understanding of how it’s done in more detail.

#1 Choose Your Passion/ Blog Topic

Most of you already know your passion, I’m not a ‘passion guide’ so I can’t help you there!

Once you have a grasp on this though, this will form the basis of your blog topic.

As mentioned earlier, we want to align our passion with an opportunity. In particular, we want to align our passion with a profitable niche idea. In this context, a niche is just a group of people searching for something online.

To find out what kind of opportunity exists within a given niche, you need to do some research.

There are the 4 main questions I ask myself when researching a potential niche:

• Will I have enough to write about to create a resourceful blog?
• Roughly how many people are interested in this topic?
• Are people spending money on related products within this space (online)?
• What level of competition am I up against?

This is a good starting point to get a gauge on the profit potential.

Blog Topic Research Example

The best way to illustrate the research process, is to show you an example.

Let’s say I am passionate about “Deep Sea Fishing” for example, and I want to start a blog in this space.  I’m personally not into fishing, but many people are.

Anyways, we need to get more specific than the above topic though.

How specific? Well, that is another topic in itself. Some people create broad websites with lots of content, enough so that they could easily create content for years to come. While other people create very targeted, niche blogs/ websites.

Chances are, if you have a passion about something and you are interested in ‘blogging’ then you will want to choose something on the broader side of the spectrum.

For example:

• Deep Sea Fishing Tips (helps people learn more about this topic in general)
• Deep Sea Fishing Rod Reviews (reviews ONE type of product- niche blog status)

I’m going to roll with the “Tips” idea as my example blog topic.

I want to make sure it’s targeted enough, but I also want to have enough topics to write about well into the future. This means I am going to be in a position to grow my traffic exponentially over time.

So, will I have enough to write about to create a resourceful blog? You’d be surprised.

At first glance, you may think that Deep Sea Fishing Tips won’t give you much to write about? If so, you could not possibly be more wrong.

By doing some basic keyword research, I discovered that there’s well over 5,500 people searching for “Deep Sea Fishing” in general each month, and a TON of searches across many related, and more relevant topics to my blog.

So, there is clearly a group of people interested in this topic, and I have plenty to write about. Check!

#2 Build Your Blog/ Website

Once you’ve decided on a topic, you need to build a blog. I personally use WordPress as do many others, because it’s awesome. It’s simple, reliable, and very effective.

And you can learn how to create a website here.

Note: try not to concern yourself with ‘fancy’ blog designs. You are wasting your time doing this I can assure you. I’ve done this myself and I don’t even want to think about how much time I’ve wasted on stuff like that. Just build a basic blog, and move on.

#3 Attract Visitors To Your Site

This is where the vast majority of your time is going to be.

As a blogger, you will be looking to leverage the multitude of free organic traffic available through search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, along with organic video traffic through YouTube. This is free, targeted, and high quality traffic when you follow the right process.

It does take time to build this type of traffic, yes, I won’t sugar coat it. But it’s well worth the effort in my opinion.

To know what kinds of content is worth publishing, you need to understand what people are searching for within Google. This involves keyword research.

The link I posted earlier walks you through this process. If the following section confuses the crap out of you, read that post.

To research good keywords, I use a tool called Jaaxy.

This keyword tool is awesome, but not the only one out there. This is just what I like to use, because it works well for me.

Keyword Research Example

The first thing you want to do is come up with a general list of MAIN topics. You know your niche so this shouldn’t be too difficult.

For example:

• Tips and techniques
• Best DSF locations
• Types of equipment
• Product Reviews
• Common types of deep sea fish
• Easy DSF recipe ideas
• News and events

I could go on, but you get the point here. Here is a nifty mind map I created to show you what I mean:

Try to think of the main ideas within your respective niche, as this will give you the basis of what your blog is about and what you are going to write about.

Once we have our main topics noted down, we then do some digging to expand upon this.

Here are some of the ideas I came up with for “tips and techniques” using Jaaxy:

Nothing too exciting at this point, but it’s a start. The ‘Avg’ represents search volume, and ‘QSR’ represents competition. I always aim for a low competition keyword (QSR under 100 ideally) and as long as 30 or more searches are there, I go for it. I could go into more detail, but that’s all you need to know for this article.

Click on the link above to learn more about Jaaxy metrics.

Anyways, I’m now going to drill down to find some ideas within our main topic of “types of equipment”. No particular reason for choosing this. I just did.

Here are some topic ideas within “types of equipment” I brainstormed:

• Rods
• Reels
• Fishing knives
• Tackle
• Baits
• Lures
• Boat rod holders
• Nets
• Boots
• Clothing
• Boats
• Lines
• Traps
• Many more ideas

As you can see, there are tons of content ideas within ‘equipment’ alone. But we are only just getting started here.

Here is the extended mind map to show you how this branches out:

Each of the above ideas, can easily branch out into hundreds of addittional articles for your blog.

Really? Yes. I am dead serious about this and I will show you what I mean.

I chose “rod holders” for no particular reason, and came up with 25 article ideas within several minutes:

We now have a targeted list of articles to produce that can potentially bring in 1000’s of unique visitors to your blog each and every month. You only write that article once, and it brings in traffic for (potentially) years. I have absolutely no doubts that I could come up with another 100+ articles for “rod holders” alone. Really.

Is the reality of how powerful blogging truly is, starting to dawn on you?

It should be. If not, pinch yourself!

Here’s a quick breakdown of where we are at so far:

• The Example Blog- Deep See Fishing Tips
• Main Blog Topics- These are our main ideas (I chose “equipment” as an example)
• Blog Sub Topics- These branch out from our main topics (I chose “boat rod holders” as an example)
• Blog Post Ideas- These are individual blog post ideas (I came up with quick list above)

By the time I get through all the ideas within my one main topic idea of deep sea fishing equipment, and all of the related sub-topic ideas I could easily have 1000’s of targeted article ideas! Within ONE main topic alone.

More importantly, this will result in a steady stream of targeted traffic coming to my blog each and every day.

This is how profitable blogging is done in a very practical manner.

You start with an idea, do some research, and plan out the framework of your content. You then research individual keywords to come up with an endless supply of ranking opportunities. Some articles will cover broader topics and take a lot more time to produce, some are going to be much shorter and easier to rank for.

To be clear, I am not saying you should pump out 10,000 articles!

My point is that by following this process you can tap into a virtually unlimited supply of free traffic. As you progress, you will learn which topics are worth your time, and which aren’t based on your niche and other factors.

I had never looked into this niche before writing this post, and was able to uncover some serious potential in a very short space of time. Imagine what you could do when you KNOW your niche.

You may be starting to see the incredible, and I do mean incredible, potential within the online space for marketing with a blog. There are 100,000’s of niche ideas out there in just about any topic you can think of.

Google wants to rank good content. It’s in their best interests. So do your homework and produce good content around good keywords. It works.

Ok. Enough number crunching.

Imagine you have a blog, plenty of content and some traffic coming in… now what? How do you make money from all of this?

#4 Make Money From Your Blog

This is the part most people are interested in knowing, and hopefully, didn’t skip to!

If so, ‘unskip’ now. You’ll thank me later.

Assuming you have read the previous content, let’s talk money.

There are many ways you can ‘monetize’ your blog. Some better than others. I am not going to list of all these, but I will talk about 3 main ways you can monetize content. In order of my personal preference.

Advertising Banners

One of the easiest and most common forms of monetizing your blog content is through ad networks like Google Adsense.

There are MANY of these, but Google ads are simple and effective for what they are. You also know you will get paid what you are owed since you are dealing with a trusted company.

I used Google Adsense myself a while back and I can safely say it was NOT a good money maker. I came to the conclusion that in order to see the real profits with that method, you absolutely need massive amounts of traffic.

As in, over 100,000 plus unique sessions per month or you are wasting your time.

Even then, I still don’t believe it’s the smartest way to make money from your site. But that’s me.

Either way, it’s an option, and it does produce money for you. In some cases it makes sense to do this.

Selling Your Own Products

Many people use their blog as a way to build an audience, and then promote their own products.

This is a very powerful strategy. You can sell all kinds of relevant digital product such as eBooks, courses, coaching or some other digital product. The ideas depend on your niche and what you want to offer people.

When it comes to digital products, production costs are low, and delivery is instant in most cases.

There are also many ‘plugins’ and themes that facilitate ecommerce right within your blog in a simple and easy manner. Alternatively, you could list your item for sale on a third party site and simply direct people to buy it from there.

As you can probably tell, this is not my area of interest. At least, not at this point. I don’t doubt this is an awesome way to make money from your site, but I prefer the following option.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is what I do, it is essentially promoting someone else’s products for a commission.

All you need to do is find quality, relevant products within your respective niche and join their free affiliate program. Many people join the Amazon Associates program which is easy to get accepted, and allows you to promote 1000,000’s of their products as an affiliate. Instantly.

Once accepted into any given affiliate program, you simply lead your visitors to a page where you promote that product. There are many ways to promote within your content, but one popular and effective method is with a detailed review.

What would you promote? Something relevant, that pays you more than just a few cents.

As part of my main ‘equipment’ topic listed earlier, one of the many products I could promote is a ‘fish finder’.

I could write a bunch of different articles about fish finders. I could talk about how they operate, the technology, review individual products and so on. Again… at least 100 article ideas here. Easy.

Somewhere within EVERY one of those articles, probably at the end, I would link my visitors back to ONE review article for my “#1 recommended fish finder” that contains several affiliate links to the following Amazon page:

The commission rate is pretty low (5% for this I think). However, this is likely going to be an EASY sell.

Why? People TRUST Amazon and will much more readily purchase items from them. You are promoting trusted brands, with real consumer reviews, on a trusted website. Believe me, this makes a HUGE difference.

Anyways, do a detailed review of the product yourself, and link to the sales page. This is a proven model and you will make sales this way.

Believe it or not, you could even promote fishing boats as an affiliate. Which could be far more lucrative.

You might be thinking that people don’t buy stuff like that online right?

Wrong. This is becoming more and more common. Granted, most people who buy boats online would be buying the lower ends stuff at under $1k but that $100 is still a nice commission. You are aiming to make a lot more than just one sale each month.

Aside from that, you could promote digital products that give you much higher profit margins such as a course on improving your deep sea fishing techniques. Many digital products come with a 30% or even 50% or higher commission rate.

There are countless ideas for things you can promote when you get into this stuff.

Just make sure whatever you promote is high quality, relevant to your audience, and is going to meet your income goals.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this post has shown you some of the potential out there and got you thinking!

You absolutely, undoubtedly, CAN make money from your passion. And a blog is the perfect way to do it.

Some topics are going to be more lucrative than others though. This is to be expected. But if people are searching for something, you can rank and get traffic for it. If you can get traffic, you can make money. The process is simple, and it works.

That said, you will need to commit to writing a lot of content. That’s just how it is with blog marketing.

If the thought of pumping out regular blog posts scares you, then this probably isn’t for you. It’s not hard when you get the process down pat though, and you can even outsource this once you are making profits and have a rhythm going.

Remember, you are passionate about your topic! So, it’s WAY easier to write about something you love which is why this is such an awesome business model.

By following a proven process and focussing on value above all, not only can you help people, but you can make money blogging about your passion as a result.