This post may contain affiliate links. That means that if you click the links and make a purchase I may receive compensation at no additional cost to you. I do not recommend any companies that I do not persoanlly use and love. Please read our disclaimer for more info. So once you have gone to a web host and created your website it is time to design your blog and begin to monetize it. If you have not done that, check out my post on setting up your website here: Part 1: How to Start a Blog Let’s Get Started! Create a visual design! Once you have selected a theme, you can start designing the look of your blog. This is something that you can edit at any time so don’t stress over this. I am constantly thinking of new ideas and trying them out on my blog. Make sure you are including pictures in your blog. Each of my blog posts has a unique header picture. But be careful that you’re doing this legally. You can’t take any pictures and use them, you need to have the right to use these pictures. I get my pictures from iStock Photos and from Pixabay. iStock photo is a paid service where you pay per photo or you can pay a monthly fee and have access to a certain amount of photos. Pixabay is a site that is free to use. So you’d probably want to start with the free site and then move to a paid site that has better quality photos. Start Writing The most important part of your blog is the posts. Everywhere I read says that you shouldn’t launch your blog until you have 10 posts. I don’t see the purpose in waiting. As you start creating posts your traffic will grow, but making them live before you have 10 won’t hurt you, you’re just not going to get a lot of traffic to begin. What are you going to write about? You probably already have a general idea and used your topic to create your domain and website name. But often you may want to get a little more specific. Go to Pinterest and see what people are posting about and what common searches are. I went to Pinterest and searched for “teacher blogger” to get started. I used this to start to see what market was out there, what common searches were coming up and what areas were still missing. I teach middle school inclusion, its a pretty specialized market so I will sometimes post topics that are more general because there aren’t too many people searching specifically for middle school inclusion topics. Monetize! Once you have created your blog it is time to monetize. In order to have a profitable blog, you need to spend time focusing on driving traffic to your blog. The best way to do that is through social media. I created Pinterest and Instagram accounts for my blog. You can use Twitter and Facebook too but I find that trying to spread yourself between four social media accounts can be overwhelming and you will not be successful at any of them. For help with this process, I turned to the courses at Create and Go. They have an amazing course on Pinterest traffic. Affiliate Marketing A lot of the companies that you use to run your website are going to offer affiliate programs. After trying out the service and deciding I like it so much that I also want to promote it, I seek out finding if they have an affiliate program. Some of these programs are Bluehost, Tailwind, Convert Kit, and Share a Sale. There are also companies that offer affiliate programs for marketing their products. You can find a list of these products through Share a Sale. There are other websites that do similar programs but I have only ever had luck with Share a Sale. Also, Amazon Affiliates has a great program. Part Three of this series will focus on: Email Marketing Creating Products and More! Find Part Three: Building Your Blog Business Here!