The ideal time to start monetising a blog
Wondering how to monetise your blog?
- Advertisements
- Affiliate marketing
- Sponsored posts
- Selling a service or a product
- Donations
Let's be inbox buddies!
Want to fast track your blog's growth?
I hope that you've benefitted from this blog post as I've written it from my experience and with lots of love. You can request a tutorial or a blog post that you'd like to read about from me in the future here.
It's March already! Ever since I decided to to say "I'll start next month" to the gym membership I'd been planning to enroll myself in 3 months ago... time sure has flown me by. Jokes apart, I'd like to bring you the wallpapers for this month. As always the smartphone/iPhone version is free for download for all as a token of thanks for supporting my small business.
I hope you'll enjoy this freebie!
You can get your hands on this wallpaper for free. Or you can buy me a coffee and get the entire pack of matching wallpapers here.
Let's be inbox buddies!
01. Navigate to the backend of your blogger template
02. Search And Add Code
line-height:1.6;
03. Save your work
Don't wish to put up with the hassle of doing this all by yourself?
Custom Work - Minor Customisations
Let me take care of making any line height and blog post text related issues and problems for you if you find the tutorial too complex. Just sit back and relax while I work out the styling kinks for your blog. Trust me, I love working wih blogger and have helped 60+ bloggers with their blogs till date. This number inceases every month by God's grace. I'd love to help you out as well. Still not sure? I've been a product expert for blogger in the official forum for years now! Let's touch base and help you with your blog.
Let's be inbox buddies!
Want to be part of my community?
This year I decided to start a free resources section for all the wonderful readers of this blog. I love writing for you but now it's time to start offering free wallpapers! I love making them and have been designing my own for a very long time. Ever since I learned to design I believe?
I hope you'll enjoy this freebie!
You can get your hands on this wallpaper for free. Or you can buy me a coffee and get the entire pack of matching wallpapers here.
Let's be inbox buddies! I'll only e-mail you when a new blog post goes up, there's a freebie up for grabs or it's something you might be interested in.
In today's blog post, I want to show you how to set-up an auto-updating recipe index for your food blog on blogger. This has been one of the most requested tutorials of all time.
- You'll need a blogger theme that has a gallery page layout enabled on label pages or a theme can be easily customised to have gallery pages on label pages.
- You'll need to have all your blog posts sorted into the labels you want
How to get a gallery enabled blogger theme
Step 01: Grab the HTML
Step 02: Install the CSS in your blogger theme
- Go to Theme > Customise > Advanced > Add CSS
/* Recipe Index Code by Balkeni Studio
-------------------------------------- */
div.recipe-index {
margin: 5px;
border: 1px solid pink;
float: left;
width: 48.8%;
}
div.recipe-index:hover {
border: 1px solid #777;
}
div.recipe-index img:hover {
opacity: 0.5;
}
div.recipe-index img {
width: 100%;
height: auto;
max-height: 400px;
object-fit:cover;
}
.desc {
padding: 15px;
text-align: center;
}
.post-body img, .post-body a img, .post-thumb img, .post-thumb a img {
margin:0;
}
@media screen and (max-width: 1216px) {
div.recipe-index {
margin: 5px;
border: 1px solid pink;
float: left;
width: 100%;
display: block;
margin: 0 auto;
margin-top: 10px;
}
div.recipe-index img {
width: 100%;
height: auto;
max-height: none;
}
}
/* END - DO NOT REMOVE THESE CREDITS!
-------------------------------------- */
Step 03. Make A Recipe Index Page
Step 04: Adding in your content
- THE LINK TO YOUR BLOGGER LABEL: This is the link to the label of the category you want to use. To grab the link of your label, just view a post with the label you want, then click on that label, once that page loads, just copy the link from the address bar.
- THE ALT TAG FOR YOUR IMAGE: This is purely for SEO purposes and for people with disabilities like visual impairment when they read your website. You will write the name your image describing what it is here. For example, apple pie.
- THE LINK TO YOUR IMAGE: You should have your image for the category uploaded in the media for your blog, just right-click the image you want to use and grab the link of the image and paste it in this section.
- NAME OF THE CATEGORY: You will add the name of your category here.
Cookin' Daily - A Responsive Blogger Template
Cookin' Daily is a premade blogger template specially designed for food bloggers, or bloggers in the health, wellness, lifestyle or nutrition industry. It comes with a custom landing page and an auto-updating blog recipe index, beautiful gallery pages and a blog layout that's optimised for running ads on your blog and offers your audience a great user experience by keeping it simple yet branded and easy for your audience to find any post they are looking for!
If you've got any other tutorial or blog post in mind that you'd like to read about, make sure to send in a request here. I'd love to write for you!
Blog Header
Logo
When you are considering starting a blog with Google's Blogger platform, it can be scary if someone tells you that blogger is not a good blogging platform, one of the most common reasons cited is not being able to monetise your blogger blog effectively or at all
And so, I've decided to help you understand why the statement above is not true. You can have a blog on blogger and you can monetise it effectively and even to great lengths. It's no different from having a blog on any other blogging platform.
I have been blogging on blogger for a bit over 4 years at the time of writing this blog post, I do earn from my blog. And my blog along with my work is the only job I have ever had. I've not worked a traditional 9-5 a day in my life, I do however work 8 hours a day usually.
I'm here to prove to you that it's not only possible to run a blog successfully on blogger but also your entire business if you know what you're doing. But more on that in a moment, let's first learn why blogging on blogger does not affect your ability to be able to earn from your blog.
How do bloggers actually earn an income from their content?
- Advertising using an ad network or selling direct ad spaces on their blog.
- Affiliate marketing
- Selling services/products
- Paid sponsorships/Brand sponsorships
- Donations
Why bloggers on blogger may have an advantage over other bloggers who use different blogging platforms?
- Out-of-the-box blogger is SEO friendly, with means to be able to make it even more so. You can add meta tags, custom robots tag and enable meta descriptions and so much more. It's easy and most of it is just a few clicks away, not very complicated.
- Blogger is free. This makes it a great choice not only for those on a budget but even those that do not have budget constraints. Whether you are a new blogger or a more experienced one, blogger is a platform which allows you to host your blog for free forever. It doesn't matter how many visitors you get - which on other platforms cost you, the more you have the more you pay. And the best part about having a free platform is that you can invest your budget into other things like a premium blogger theme that makes your blog look more professional, or a logo — the same money you would have given away to your blog host if you were on another platform.
- You can easily integrate AdSense into your blogger blog. In fact, there is an earnings tab that tells you if your blog qualifies for AdSense if it does you can sign up with a few clicks, it's easy and you can start earning a passive income right away if you have enough audience on your blog.
- Blogger is affordable. Custom services and tech support for blogger is usually more affordable than for other platforms. I offer tech support and services for the blogger platform, and it is quite affordable. If you're new and can't afford to pay, you can join my Facebook groups for free help or help based on a donation. It's all about building a loving and nurturing community where you don't have to feel guilty, bad or ashamed of not having a budget and wanting help. We don't judge. All bloggers are welcome.
- Blogger is simple and easy to use. It's straightforward. You can create pages and you can create posts, you can categories them and a lot of it is drag and drop. The rest is just clicking of buttons here and there. Support is available through the official support forum, or you can even get in touch with me (I'm a product expert who volunteers in the official support forum too.) And if all else fails just write about it in the comments section of this post and hopefully I'll have a resolution for you.
What are the most common myths attached to the blogger platform?
- Blogger owns the content you create: No, that's not true. As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, blogger's terms of service and content policy never indicate that they own the content you create.
- Blogger does not have plugins: That's true. But the thing is, blogger is made differently and does not need plugins. It uses widgets and you can code in any custom functionality you might need on your blog. Personally, I have custom features and codes added in that help me make click-to-tweet sections, tables, buttons and more. You could have them installed on your blog too, I offer these as part of my services and they are usually a one-time setup. Moving forward, you just have to copy and paste code snippets in your blog posts. I've helped clients add star ratings, Facebook like buttons, recipe indexes and more.
- Customisation options are limited: This used to be true because bloggers gives you only a handful of templates to choose from. And without coding knowledge, it was quite limited what you could make your blog do. But now, you can choose from a variety of blogger templates that are fast, SEO-optimised, and look beautiful on all devices as they are responsive. The best part, they are very affordable!
- Blogger templates are not optimised for SEO: SEO is a vast topic, to think a template can help you get a Google Page #1 rank shows in of itself your lack of SEO knowledge. There are many on-page, off-page and technical aspects of SEO and they keep changing apart from some basic ones. My own line of blogger templates are SEO-optimised to the point they can be. My clients do report an increase in traffic after using one of my templates but I believe most of it is to do with a good code-structure and the design of the templates that make them look professional. Many people have commented on the fact that you can no longer tell the difference between a blog designed on blogger or any other platform because of how customisable the nature of the blogger platform is!
- You can't sell your products on Blogger or have your own store: Back in the early 2000s the options were truly limited, but now, you can sell directly on your blogger blog. Physical or digital products. Even your own services, for that matter and it's one of the most affordable ways to sell online through your blogger blog. If you don't like this solution you can even use other solutions like blogger shop set-up that I offer to my clients. It's a shop hosted on a blogger blog, managed and maintained by you. I offer free training, advice and consultation if you opt for this package. If you want to see a demo of the blogger shop and what yours could look like, have a look at Balkeni Studio's Blogger Shop. It's customisable and you can choose from a range of designs and costs only a one-time setup fee instead of a monthly recurring fee!
- Blogger is old and can be shut down any minute by Google: Blogger is old, but as of late it has received many a complete revamp, a mobile responsive structure and many new changes. I would doubt Google wants to shut it down after it is spending so much time re-vamping things around. But in the scenario, years later, if Google decides to shut it down, I'm sure it will give us options to migrate our data and enough time to do so as well. Companies and products are shut down and abandoned all the time, but I don't think its time yet for blogger as the community here is thriving.
Can you actually monetise a blogger blog?
Conclusion
Or help me spread the word!
Over the years bloggers on blogger have always had a bit of a tough time. They've complained that the HTML section of the post adds some many extra "<div>" tags to their blog posts. In my time using blogger, I have also seen this happen to my own posts sometimes and If I didn't write and format my posts correctly, the HTML quickly becomes a mess.
Recently blogger came out with a new update, this introduces a new system that blogger never had before and it does tackle the problem of blogger generating extra "<div>" tags every single time in blog posts when a line break was added, or when a new paragraph was created.
I'll talk to you about the new system in a bit and what it means for blogger going forward but for now, I'm happy to report that I'm no longer facing the DIV problem anymore where it just creates an endless stream of div tags in the HTML mode of my post.
So why was it a problem?
When Blogger adds extra div tags in blog posts it creates unnecessary HTML in said blog posts, this can cause your blog posts to sometimes behave in an unusual manner when it comes to the formatting of the post. The main problem that bloggers were encountering was that these extra div tags were creating problems with Mediavine; a premium ad network. And when ad revenues drop, it becomes a source of panic, worry and in some cases complete overwhelm.
I regularly tell my clients and other bloggers on blogger to share all bugs, glitches and problems directly with the blogger team by using the feedback button. It's a question mark icon, next to your blogger account image in the blogger dashboard on the top-right corner. At the time of writing this post, it's actually the third icon from the top-right.
This small act makes sure blogger is free from glitches and you get the best blogging experience on blogger.
How was this problem solved?
Well, blogger announced some updates this month. These updates involved the introduction of a new updated way of generating HTML in blog posts, including <p> (paragraph) tags. When you start using <p> tags, you won't notice anymore casual div tags in your posts and if you're still using the old way blogger generates HTML for blog posts, then pressing shift+enter on your keyboard will create a <br> (line break) tag for you without any extra HTML getting generated in your blog posts.
How to toggle between the old blog post HTML and new HTML generation?
It's quite simple, and like most other things in blogger, you can do so with just a small click in your blog post editor. Once you're in the blog post editor, you'll see a handful of icons that allow you to edit and format your blog posts.
They look like this.
You'll see this image says Paragraph, in your case, it might say either of these two:
- Paragraph (new HTML generation)
- Normal (Old HTML generation)
Just make sure to set whichever mode you prefer before you start writing your blog posts in your blogger blog.
And that's it, you're done.
I hope this blog post has helped you understand your blogger blog better and will help you use your blogger blog in a more efficient way. I hope this post will also solve any of your Mediavine ad displaying problems in your blogger blog.
- For bloggers on blogger (best for bloggers on blogger, come discuss all your blogger related stuff, issues and more directly with a blogger product expert — that's me.) Join here
- For new bloggers (Promote your blog posts in the weekly promotional thread, find like-minded people, network and grow your connections, plus blogging tips to help you go from $0 to $500/month). Join here
If you've been wanting to start a blog, and were considering blogger as your blogging platform of choice but were immediately told off by other bloggers, then you will find confidence in this post because we are about to prove everyone wrong, once again.
If you're new to this series, Blogger on Blogger is my brainchild. It's my interview series that I've started to let people know that's acceptable to start your blog on the blogger platform, and whether your blog makes money or not is dependent on a hundred different factors none of which are labelled as your "blogging platform".
In this interview, Brenda, a full-time blogger will share why the blogger platform works for her and might work for you too, there's no need to be afraid of the platform.
Is your blog hosted on the blogger platform? If yes, then how long have you been blogging? And what do you blog about?
Yes, my blog is hosted on the Blogger platform. I started this blog in April 2009. In 2012, while recovering from double ankle surgery, I decided to move my blog to Wordpress.org. I moved myself there, with the help of an eBook.
I had a lot of trouble on WP with getting hacked, etc., so after a year I moved it back to Blogger. On WP, you can simply add one too many plug-ins and your blog disappears till you figure out which one was the culprit. I had that happen a few times. And it's pretty scary when you go to your URL and it's empty!
In the interim of moving my blog back to Blogger, a technical problem with my domain host (Godaddy) caused me to lose all my posts from 2009-2013. But I didn't give up. I just started all over again. Since I post daily and sometimes twice daily, I now have quite a few posts built back up.
I had several blogs before this one, so have been blogging a total of about 9 years.
I blog about home, garden, frugal tips, my everyday life, and a little bit of everything.
Why did you choose blogger to be your blogging platform and do you currently earn an income from your blog? If yes, would you say it’s full-time or part-time?
Blogger is simpler and it is free. That is the main reason I like it.
Have you worked with brands on your blog before? If yes, were they worried you’re not professional because you’re on blogger or was your blogging platform never a concern?
Yes, I make a full-time income. I have an annuity that isn't nearly as much as I make blogging that helps out. But I work full-time and would estimate that it is a full-time income.
Do you think it matters what platform you use for blogging? Or is it the content and value you give to your readers that attract them to your blog?
My blog platform has never been an issue with brands. But for 2017 I decided not to work with brands or guest posts or anything other than what I'm doing daily. I don't think readers like sponsored-type posts, as I don't like to read them myself. So I just decided not to do any of that anymore.
According to you, what are some of the pros and cons of blogging on blogger?
I have been on quite a few blog platforms in my time. I started out with Typepad. I then went to Wordpress.com. Then Blogger. Then Wordpress.org, and back to Blogger. I really think it is about the content, not the platform.
Why do you think blogger is a better blogging platform in comparison with the other blogging platforms out there?
My main problem with Blogger is that it's hard to get help when something happens. I have had my blog URL hijacked and taken over by a blogger in Italy who was on Blogger also. I have had my blog stolen. And I've had trouble finding someone who could help me figure out what to do.
I truly believe that a company that works solely with Blogger would be quite beneficial. I think a lot more bloggers would stay on Blogger if that was the case.
Maybe a private forum of some variety would also help. Perhaps even a forum with a Blogger company that has a small monthly fee. As I rarely have gotten the Blogger forum help to respond to my questions.
Is support, tech help, and customisability (of templates, etc.) an issue on blogger? Do you feel that your blogger blog lacks on these fronts?
No, I use third party templates, so I can get pretty much whatever I want for a good price. I have also learned over the years and can fix or customize some things myself.
Blogger gives you lots of areas in which to customize with their platform. So that is nice. I don't have any trouble figuring out how to do something if I really want to do it.
Is it true that you don’t own your content on a blogger blog and blogger can shut down your blog any second?
I don't know what exactly gets a blog shut down, but that has never been a problem for me. I think you own your content just as much with Blogger as you do with Wordpress.org.
Because if you happen to not pay your hosting bill with WP, there goes your content! No hosting company is going to keep your blog online if they don't get their money on the stated date.
Blogger is its own host and therefore that isn't going to happen. Although I have heard a few cases of blogs disappearing. So I don't really see the difference.
Do you think you one can’t effectively monetise a blogger blog? Is it hard to monetise a blog that’s on blogger?
I personally have never had a problem making money on Blogger.
Blogger is a very limited platform, once your blog grows, you’re going to have to shift to some other platform. Do you agree with this statement? If yes/no then please give your reasons as well.
Not true. Blogger is not limited at all. It has no limits.
Any advice for those that are just starting out their journey on the blogger platform as a new blogger?
I really think that when people on WP tell you that you can't do this or can't do that in terms of growing your blog on Blogger, it is a complete falsehood.
I don't see Blogger as limited. Instead I think the blogger might be limited in their abilities. Because if you reach out to others and do some research, you can do the same things on Blogger that you can do anywhere else. It just might take digging a little bit more.
But I've never minded digging!
Know More About Brenda

Social Icons