The Ultimate Blog Podcast - Don’t Wait to Monetize: Here’s What to Do Now (Even If You Don't Have Traffic Yet)

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

If you're holding off on monetizing your blog until you have more traffic, a bigger email list, or a massive social media following, take this as your wakeup call. This episode of the Ultimate Blog Podcast is part three of our three-part series all about making your first $100 blogging. Amy and Jennifer are busting the myth that you have to be a “big” blogger before you can start earning money, and sharing how you can monetize from day one.Check out the show notes for this week's episode!Make sure to listen to Episode 184, to learn how beginner bloggers actually start making money, and Episode 185, to learn which monetization method is right for you!💵Your First $100: 5 Beginner-Friendly Ways to Monetize Your BlogDo you love this podcast? Say thanks by leaving a positive review and/or rating!  

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. This podcast is the podcast we wish we had when we started blogging. I'm Amy Reinicki. I'm Jennifer Draper. Our episodes dive deep into how to monetize your blog, sharing unique insights and practical tips. We bring you in-depth interviews with successful bloggers and experts who offer valuable, actionable advice.

Our mission is to educate, support, inspire, and empower you in your blogging business. Welcome to The Ultimate Blog Podcast. Hey there, today's episode 186. And if you haven't listened to episode 184 and 185 yet, we would love for you to go back and listen to those as well. We are really talking to you about how to make that first hundred dollars in your blogging business. No, a hundred dollars is not a lot of money. We get it, but we want you to just start making money.

We hear from a lot of people who have started that they're like, well, I just haven't started making money yet. And we want to empower you that now is the time. No matter where you are, now is the time. We want to bust that myth that monetization has to come after you've grown your traffic or you have a big following over on social media or you have so many people on your email list. That's not the goal. That's not the intent. What the intent is, is when you start your blog, deciding then that you're going to monetize early and you're going to monetize from the start because when you start monetizing early by creating a business from the beginning,

what you're doing is you're fueling that growth right out of the gate. You're taking yourself seriously. Other people are going to take you seriously as well because you're in it to help people and also make a living while doing it. So one of the biggest misconceptions that we hear that we have to kind of like work through often is that you do have to wait until you have all of those things. And we really want to talk to you about how you can shift that mindset because I do believe that that is a mindset shift that you have that has to kind of be reworked. And I think it comes

from this place of fear. If I can be honest, it's a fear of what if this fails or what if I don't have what it takes. And so what you do when that fear is present is that you just over prepare. You over prepare, you overthink, and you tell yourself, I just got to get it right. And what you're doing instead is you're just missing all of that momentum of the excitement in the beginning. I want you to think about where you are, like when you start your blog, like when you have this grand idea of like, this is what I want to do and like you have it and you haven't started all the other things yet.

And that might be you who's listening right now or it might be you that you remember five years ago. But that that person who is so excited about what you are going to do and what you are going to share, that's what you have to channel when you think about how you're going to make money doing this. Yes, it is about what we're passionate about. Yes, it is about how we can serve people and help people, but we can't do that for free. Many of us cannot do this job for free.

And so how do you learn? How do you do that? You learn by doing. You learn by taking that next step. That feels really scary. You learn by signing up for the affiliate program and then making sure that every blog post has a link, uh, getting on your stories and sharing links there. You do it.

You, you sell it is selling hate to break it to you. You don't, if you don't like that, just change that word in your mind because you are selling as well. And that's okay. You're what you're doing is you're meeting an intention with a need and you're building that trust with your audience. So call it selling, call it whatever you want, but understand that what you're doing is helping people.

And when you wait to do that, that's where we get in that rat race of not being able to like figure it out. And instead we start telling ourselves, I'm not good at this or I'm not going to make money doing this. And when you get to that point, I personally feel it's kind of hard to get back out of it. It takes a lot more work to get out of that mindset than to just start from the beginning and say, I'm going to do this. I know I don't have the traffic that I quote unquote think I should have, but that's okay. I can do it anyway. Or I don't have a huge email list yet. That's okay.

You can still do it anyway. You just have to have courage to begin and you're going to feel a little scared. That's normal. We all did. The first time that we sold something, the first time that we shared a blog post, the first time that we got on a podcast, I can't even tell you how scared we all have been in those instances. And we have a lot of people within the ultimate blog roadmap who just sharing like their blog with their friends and family that that is that is scary. That is so scary just to do that,

to say, I'm taking this thing that I'm really passionate about and I'm going to put myself out there. But you can do that. And you can monetize while doing that and you just have to have the courage to move out of that place of fear, like I said. And instead of over preparing, instead of overthinking, just move yourself towards action. Yeah, I think that fear kind of makes us say to ourselves, we kind of lie to ourselves and say, well, it's not perfect. Like I need to do this or I need to do that and then I will be ready or this needs to be at this level in order to be able to share it with the world. But that is just us lying to ourselves.

I mean, we've all done it. We still do it. You have to talk yourself out of it on a regular basis. But what you can do right now is just let go of that perfection. And like we've talked about throughout this whole series, you're changing your mindset and what you are truly doing here. It's not just about like, hey, I'm going to set the world on fire with this newest product, but it's that you are starting to test out what works. You're getting all of the kinks worked out.

You're just testing things. And that way, as your audience grows, as your traffic grows, you've got those things figured out and then it's just starting to click. You're starting to see that one product that you made that maybe made you a few bucks over those first few months or even the first year. All of a sudden, you're really making some money on it. You created that way back when, and now it's actually working. Take the time to just let this work itself out and start to put in some strategies right now that you can test out. So just some examples if you're like, oh I don't know, I don't

know if I can do this, I don't know if I even have a way to do this. So here's some real-world strategies that you can try. It doesn't require you to have a ton of traffic. So create that digital product. You know we talked about you know creating something that is useful to you that you know would be useful to your audience. And maybe you have a few followers on Instagram. Well, create a nice call to action there. Test out a few ways. Maybe it's a real, maybe it's an example. Maybe you're sharing in a story. Share that a few different ways and see if you get questions about it. See if anybody responds. See if anybody buys it. Maybe you can create like a little workshop.

We've talked about that as an option. Sharing your expertise or teaching people something, it's a really simple way to just start something without having to create a big like course or anything and maybe you're in some Facebook groups with people that are in the right niche for this and find out if you're allowed to share and share about your workshop there start to just like put the word out about what you offer and how you can help maybe you're just offering a service to somebody that already knows you maybe you're connected with some other bloggers and you you kind know, like you get to talking and they're like, hey,

this is one of my pain points. And you're like, oh, I love to do what you don't like to do. So how about if I offer this to you for this price and it's a win-win for us all? Just sign up, sign up for Amazon affiliates. Like if you don't know where to start, you can buy anything on Amazon. So sign up for Amazon affiliates. Like if you don't know where to start, you can buy anything on Amazon. So sign up for Amazon affiliates and start putting links in your blog posts so that they're there as you start to grow traffic. Share them on your Instagram if you've got a following there wherever you can. You're not going to make a ton of money right away, but everyone starts somewhere. And with a platform like that, you can just get in the habit of sharing things that are valuable also to your audience.

So simply taking this action is just helping you understand your audience, get in the habit of like Amy said, you start to feel natural. It will start to feel good because you'll start to see that you are actually helping people. And so, you know, throughout this, you're going to build an income, you're going to learn, and it's'm going to try this. What do I do? If you haven't heard, we created a guide for you. And we're really excited about this guide because it gives you five ideas to get started. So they're ideas that don't require you to have a big audience. They're things that you can sit down, you can do today. So if you go to theultimateblogpodcast.com slash 100, you can buy today. So if you go to the Ultimate Blog Podcast dot com slash 100 you can buy this guide it's just five dollars and it will help you make your first hundred dollars. Within each idea you'll choose one of the ideas and there

are worksheets attached to each of them. It will help you from brainstorming all the way through taking action. We want you to use this guide. So if you are interested and you purchase this, we want you to follow through. We want you to do the worksheets. We want you to take your next step. Set a deadline for yourself on your calendar and implement this and don't overthink. We want you to get started today and earn your first hundred dollars because you deserve it. We hope that these last three episodes, if you've only listened to this one, go back and listen to the other two before 184 and 185. And we hope that you just feel empowered. We hope that we've

given you some belief to just take that next best step knowing that you're worthy of earning money on something that you're worthy of earning money on something that you're passionate about. You can, like the lie that we've been told that we have to hate our jobs in order to earn money, you don't have to, you can love your job and earn money and you should, you should do that. And so we wanna be there to root for you and to help you.

If we can support you in any way, you can always email us at hello at sparkmediaconcepts.com and we would love to support you on your blogging journey. Remind you of your why. And if you don't know what that is, or if you don't know what your niche is, you can also email us anytime and we can chat about that too.

Anytime that you just need some support in this blogging community, we would love to be that for you. So feel free to reach out. And we hope that these last these last three episodes, they were quick, they were easy, and we hope that you heard a resounding theme that it is easier than you might have thought and it just takes you doing messy action and moving forward. So can't wait to hear how you're earning your money and we hope you have a great day. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Blog Podcast.

If you'd like to learn more about building your blog, visit theultimateblogpodcast.com backslash newsletter to get signed up for our email newsletter. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for tuning in today and we'll see you next time.