Interview With Janice Wald from Mostly Blogging On Building a Money-Making Blog in 2024

Welcome to the BloggersPassion interview series. It’s been a while since we did an interview and this time we’re glad to present you Janice Wald from Mostly Blogging.

If you’re curious to know about how to build a money making blog even if you’re a beginner, the interview with Janice Wald is just for you.

So let’s dive into the interview without further ado.

Quick note: As you all know, for every blogger interview series post, we often try to add a take away wherever it’s needed to help you quickly grasp the tips and strategies shared by the blogger.

Interview With Janice Wald from Mostly Blogging

1. Can you please introduce yourself to Bloggers Passion readers. Please tell us about your blogging journey. How and when did you get into blogging?

Janice Wald is an author, speaker, freelance writer, blogger, blogging coach who blogs at MostlyBlogging.com where I mostly share practical blogging tips for bloggers.

Have you ever seen the movie “Julie and Julia?” I did and it changed my life.

The movie was about a blogger. At first I thought blogging would be great for my daughters; then I thought that blogging would be great for me.

I’d just finished my Master’s Degree. I now had a great deal of free time as well as an increased confidence in my writing abilities. Blogging became the perfect forum to continue writing which I love as well as help teach others.

I’m a teacher with a Master’s Degree in Education. Blogging enables me to write and teach so blogging is a perfect outlet for my interests.

2. How do you bring more visitors to your site?

I offer unusual incentives for opting into my mailing list. People want those free incentives so they sign up for my list. For example, I have a Follow to Follow Directory on my site where you can share your blog links (so I will add links to your site).

If people want me to add their blog URL, they need to sign up for my blog. I promote those optins on Twitter and in Facebook groups so people learn about the incentives and come to my blog. Boosting your followers on Twitter and Facebook is advantageous so that when you promote your optins, more people see them.

Using hashtags on Twitter when you promote your optins will ensure that you receive targeted traffic and ultimately subscribers interested in your content and possibly your products.

As you see, these methods will get your targeted traffic. I have many other incentives for signing up for my email list: Your readers’ ideas for how to get people to optin to their mailing list may vary depending on the niche. Optin ideas helpful for every niche can be found here.

As far as other techniques to get traffic to my website: I start with keyword research.

Ubersuggest is a great keyword research tool. It’s free and the number of keyword choices on the report it generates will make your head spin.

Successful keyword research will bring people to your site organically from search engines. After publication, I promote everywhere. I have a routine.

In order, I promote at the following sites:

On Day 1, Twitter, Facebook, Flipboard, Pinterest, Instagram

On Day 2, I promote the same post at LinkedIn, Scoop.it, Medium, and ViralContentBee.

More information about these sites can be found here.

These methods have several advantages:

1. I’m getting both organic and social traffic.
2. I’m getting links from the sites where I leave my links which helps my SEO.
3. Since I’m breaking up the promotion over a 2-day period, I have time to promote at all these places.

Takeaway: Social bookmarking sites work like a charm when it comes to promoting your latest blog posts. Not only they give you quick exposure to your content but when you use high DA bookmarking sites, they give a nice boost in your rankings too.

3. What are the top 3 blogs that you often read and why?

I’m a huge fan of Neil Patel. I’ve learned a lot from him especially in the area of SEO.

Other than Neil Patel, I subscribe to Social Media Examiner. I find valuable social media tips there. I use to read a lot of Jon Morrow’s articles at Smart Blogger. His posts focus on how to improve your blogging skills. Between the 3, I get a well-rounded education.

Bloggers should be continually learning to hone their craft. Things can change without warning and bloggers need to know to inform their readers.

4. What blogging tips do you wish everyone should know about?

I wish everyone knew it’s vitally important to be patient for success. First, the longer you blog, the more you’ll learn, and the better you’ll get. Next, Google favours blogs with longevity.

I am not a patient person. Blogging has made me more patient than I use to be. More information about my struggles to overcome an obstacle to blogging success, impatience and so on can be found on this post.

Takeaway: Be patient. Be consistent. Blogging isn’t a get rich quick scheme. If you focus on long term goals, you’ll make money. It’s as simple as that.

5. If you had to start from scratch, how would you make money from blogging?

I would have self-hosted immediately. It’s easier to monetize if you self-host. I heard that WordPress.com frowns on bloggers accepting money. I had goals for monetizing.

These goals including selling advertising space to relevant advertisers in my sidebar and using Google Adsense. I heard you could be suspended or banned at WordPress.com if you engage in these activities, so I moved to WordPress.org.

Takeaway: The best way to start a money making blog is to choose the right blogging platform such as self-hosted WordPress as it makes all the blogging related stuff so much easier from getting traffic to increasing sales.

WordPress is also the largest CMS in the world.

6. What’s the #1 tip you’ve for someone who wants to get more comments on their blog?

Here are a few ways to get more blog comments.

• Reply to your comments so people know when they comment in the future, they’ll get replies. Ask the readers to reply in the Call to Action. For example, if I were blogging about tools, I’d ask the readers to state their favorite tool in the comments section.
• Hold a giveaway. Pick a winner randomly from those who comment.
• Have the CommentLuv plugin on your site. The CommentLuv plugin enables people to see your headlines which encourages people to comment.

You asked for my #1 tip, so if I had to pick only one, I’d pick hold a giveaway. They’ve been successful on my blog. I received so many comments. I’ve heard they result in many comments for other bloggers as well.

Takeaway: Giveaways work like a charm not only for increasing your blog comments but also to boost your website’s traffic and sales. Here are few tips to promote giveaways to reach wider audience.

7. What premium blogging tools do you use. Why?

Here are few of the the paid blogging tools that I use.

I use Social Warfare pro, CommentLuv, the paid version, and my tech helper set me up with a caching plugin

• Social Warfare: When I switched to HTTPS, I feared losing share counts. Social Warfare keeps them
• CommentLuv enables people to see your headlines encouraging comments
• Caching plugin: my tech helper recommends it

Takeaway: You need to spend money on the right blogging tools if you want to build a money making blog. Invest money and time before you think about making any money out of it.

8. What do you think about the future of blogging?

Happily, blogging is stronger than ever! Businesses even have blogs now and paper becomes more obsolete by the day.

Do you know authors are required to have blogs? Apparently, publishers want to know there is interest in their writing before supporting them. More and more blogs appear by day.

Takeaway: Blogging is growing rapidly. If you want to generate leads and sales for long term, blogging is the best way to go.

9. What are some of the difficulties you faced when you first launched your blog?

I wasn’t patient enough and I couldn’t decide on a niche. Someone actually called my blog “bipolar.” There are people who believe they don’t need a niche. Your readers will be confused without a niche.

You want to be a thought leader in your niche. Wouldn’t it be nice to be an influencer in your niche? How can you be if you don’t have a niche? If you want to write about different topics, have different blogs. Good luck finding the time to maintain different blogs. My advice is to find one niche you love and stick with it.

Takeaway: It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, you need to be persistent and make sure to become the goto guy in your industry if you want to build loyal readership around your blogs that helps you grow your network, online reputation, traffic, sales and more.

10. What are your favorite tips for starting a blog that actually makes money?

Once my Domain Authority ranking started to rise, I received many offers. Your Domain Authority Ranking rises when people link to your posts or you link to your posts from other websites, preferably with a higher DA than you have.

Also, sponsored posts on my site turned into more sponsored posts because brands found me on Google.

I know other bloggers make money through affiliates and PPC ads, but my primary sources for making money are through sponsored posts and freelance writing. You can find more ideas for making money blogging from this article.

Takeaway: Once you focus on building an authority site with high quality content and backlinks, you can find a gazillion ways to monetize your site no matter what industry you are in.

11. What kind of content goes viral online. Why?

If you fill needs for your readers in ways no one else does, your posts will go viral.

Your headline matters a great deal. Make your readers a promise in the headline that you keep in the post. People will click.

Look at an example of one of my posts. Here is the headline:

“8 Proven Ways to Write LinkedIn Posts That Will Boost Your Influence”

I make them a promise. If they read my post, their influence will increase. This post has received over 6400 page views!

My guest author did an experiment (read it from here). He guaranteed he could get the guest post he wrote for me to Page 1 of Google. He did and within a short period of time. The post has received thousands of page views.

Takeaway: As we often say at BloggersPassion, case studies work like a charm. If you’re creating blog posts and articles to generate traffic, find ways to come up with ideas around case studies, research a lot and make your case studies as detailed as possible to make them go viral online.

Final thoughts about the interview with Janice Wald from Mostly Blogging

Janice Wald has been creating quality content for a long time around blogging, SEO, traffic and so on.

If you skim through her blog posts, it’s guaranteed that you’ll find at least one thing that takes your blog to the next level. So go check out her blog and subscribe to get latest updates.

Hopefully the interview with Janice Wald from Mostly blogging helped you better understand about building a money making blog. If you’ve any questions, you can use the comment section below to ask.

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