I earned my first $100 from blogging, what next?

So you are the one who stuck it out, did more than what others thought possible. Wrote amazing articles, made a great website, had sleepless nights, made every last thing work perfectly and now you got your first $100 from your blog. Feels amazing, doesn’t it? Except that this feeling won’t last long if you don’t spend that first $100 the right way. I made a mistake when I started earning from my blog, don’t want you to do the same. So let’s answer today’s question on Inspire2rise, “I earned my first $100 from blogging, what next?”

Got the $100, my story: What I did.

When I got my first $100 from my blog I was just a random excited kid some 3 years back. I got crazy as I never even had that much money in my hands. In INR it’s just around 6K INR but even that was a lot for me. I spent it like crazy, ate too much costly stuff for a week. Sold my old phone, pooled in some money from this stock and bought a new smart phone (that I didn’t need), misused some on transportation even for distances which were less than 1 km, even when I was a hale and hearty teenager who wouldn’t loose anything from a simple walk. So, all in all I just wasted the whole $100 till I had none left and was thinking how to raise the same again quickly.

This had me thinking. I realized my foolishness as I began to see all of the missed opportunities because of the wasted money. So I want to save your from falling into a similar trap. Here’s some of the greatest things I have learnt about money and how to manage it if you are a blogger!

What you should do with your $100?

REINVEST.
PERIOD.

Yes, you might want to spend all that you earned but to make this more reasonable reinvest half or more of the amount you earned back in your blog. This would make stuff a lot easier for you in the near future!

Now that we told you that you need to reinvest, where should you actually reinvest your money?

Where to reinvest money on your blog?

• Invest on Quality content.

So you can churn out great quality content daily? Weekly? It doesn’t matter how much you write, one thing I know for sure is that when you are blogging you can never have enough content.

There’s no upper ceiling like this much’s too much. So invest in some good quality writers who can help you to push your publishing skills to the next level!

• Invest on great design.

If you have an awesome design, something that just works then it’s good. But if that’s not the case then you need to spend some bucks on it. Get yourself an unforgettable custom design, it can be on the genesis framework or something built from scratch. Just make sure it is unique and serves whatever niche your site belongs to in the best way.

For example: If you run a tech blog make sure it has content being shown in a magazine style way which grabs the attention of the user at once. For photography blogs, the focus should be on good quality high-resolution images, and so on!

Also read: Ultimate guide to typography for websites

• Invest on the often forgotten factors like Site speed, security and funnel optimization.

Website loading time is really important. You can always set up free plugins like W3 Total cache or make a move to a good hosting from a free hosting or shared setup. But at the end of the day if your site doesn’t load up in less than 2-3 seconds don’t expect visitors to stay and of course a high bounce rate will surely follow!

Having a secure website is also essential for any long-term goals to materialize! Read our WordPress Security guide in order to secure your website. If you have a Blogger blog then don’t forget to set up two factor authentication in your Gmail account for an extra layer of security and always work on trusted machines.

Funnel optimization means having whole user flow and UX designed in such a way that every single visitor on your website is converted into a long-term subscriber, product buyer or any other role that you wish for your readers. This means that you have fine tuned every component to the best possible variant for generating more leads. You can hire an expert for this or spend some money on good courses so as to learn and master the art of leads generation.

• Invest on Ads. (Only if you have figured everything else out correctly!)

If you have figured everything else out and don’t need to spend any money on those things then you are ready to spend money on advertisements to push your blog to the next level. Advertisements don’t work good in all the cases. First and foremost create a resource that your readers would love to have, something like a free e-book, a course or something that is of great value even to the common layman. Then market this specific thing heavily via ads. If your e-book or course is paid then in many cases you can even generate more than what you spent on advertisements.

Also read: Tips to increase Google AdSense CTR

And never ever spend all of your money on frolicking, as they say “Make hay while the sun shines!“. Just keep working step by step on your blog and use your first earnings in a good manner. Once you start giving to your blog you might be surprised at how much your blog gives you back! 🙂

So do you have any suggestions? Want to ask something? Add something? Then don’t forget to comment on this post! If you liked this post then do subscribe to our newsletter and our social channels!

Stay Inspired to Rise!

Read more on Inspire2rise:

• How to manage your Blogging along with studies
• Sureshot Ways to Beat Procrastination for Bloggers
• You don’t need to be an A-Lister to be a Kick Ass Blogger
• Unconscious blogging mistakes you are making

Aditya Nath Jha

Aditya Nath Jha is an Engineer from New Delhi, India. His areas of interest include Gadgets, WordPress, speed optimization & latest technology. When he is not busy blogging he loves to write poetry, compose his own songs and has a taste for music! Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, Instagram. And watch his videos on YouTube.