Get a jolt from turning your brain waves into cash. Honor the Lord as you do it.

When most people think of a side hustle, they think of driving for Uber or Lyft. The more affluent might think in terms of stock market day trading. Christian writers have a different motive; not only do they want to earn extra money, but they want to serve the Lord.

The problem with these endeavors is they require a significant investment. You must pay for and maintain a late-model car from your driving profits, or you need to have enough capital to ride the ups and downs of the stock market. Making a decent side hustle income is not as easy as it seems.

Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. But it has the potential to provide stable income over the long haul. Plus, many people get a charge out of creating a better world by helping others.

Most people are looking for a side hustle that requires:

A minimal investment to get started.
Produces a decent part-time income.
Has the potential to enable them to say goodbye forever to their day job.

Most of all, people want a side hustle they can do from home. Blogging meets all of these requirements.

What Does a Blogger Do?

Blogs started as “web-logs,” which were places where individuals shared their daily lives online. People wrote them “Dear diary” style.

Today, some blogs continue to have a diary or journal flavor. However, the real emphasis is on being passionate about a particular subject area and curating content on that topic. Personal revelations are usually only exposed in the context of the blogger’s own experience in a specific post.

Give Readers What They Want

To be a successful blogger, you must create a blog on a particular topic. You must identify a topic that interests you and has a ready audience. Offbeat topics require you to find an audience, and that’s often a time-consuming, expensive, and futile activity. The top four blogging topics right now are:

Health and Fitness — People want to learn how to eat better and keep fit. You can have a blog on one of the many aspects of health or one that focuses on a particular aspect of fitness. If you have a passion for any of these topics, it may be the right one for you. Readers continually consume a massive amount of content on all topics in this category.
Parenting — “Mommy Bloggers” are extremely popular. Young moms are eager to connect with more experienced moms to learn the tips and tricks of child-rearing. There are many other standalone subjects related to parenting that you can specialize in, like pregnancy, potty training, homeschooling methods, and hundreds of other family-related issues.
Financial Information — You do not need to be a Certified Public Accountant to write on financial topics. Ordinary people are seeking ways to make and save money. You can help them if you have a successful personal track record with entrepreneurship or money management. Maybe you’re just really good at finding bargains; you can build blog traffic on that topic alone. Learn about laws in your area before you offer advice on regulated subjects.
Food and Recipes — This is another evergreen topic. People are perpetually interested in all aspects of food and cooking. You can have a blog about grocery shopping, or if you prefer, you can have a blog about cooking utensils and how to use them. You can start a blog on “101 ways to make tacos” or one about Mexican food in general. You can apply this idea to any aspect of food preparation and cuisine.

As a Christian, can you blog on any topic you wish? Yes! In fact, I have written and recently updated a guide called Blogging for Jesus. It’s about how to create a Christian blog on any topic. Buy it here.

A blogger should aim to accomplish only one thing. That is, he or she wants to solve problems for readers, either through personal experience or research. When you offer solutions to your readers, the money will come, and it may come faster than you expect.

How to Compete in a Crowded Field

You have probably seen hundreds of blogs on the subjects I’ve mentioned and other evergreen topics. Why would you want to start a blog when a particular field seems saturated?

High competition is marketplace proof that tens of thousands of people — perhaps hundreds of thousands — are looking for answers on these subjects. That should be an encouragement to you. Readers are already looking for you. All you need to do is make your blog easy to find.

Infuse your personality into the topic, whatever it may be. There may be a hundred posts on the same issue, but yours will be different if your personality lights up the content. You have had a different upbringing and education from others, and unique experiences that make you one of a kind. Your perceptions are unique, and that matters.

You don’t have to be a gifted writer to start blogging. Writing is a craft anyone can learn. You can become a powerhouse writer if you are insatiably curious and if you place a premium on research and fact-checking.

How a Blogger Earns Income

Your blog will attract readers when you use your personal energy to offer solutions. The more readers you attract, the more money you’re likely to make.

What is the source of that income? Here are the three primary ways people make money with their blogs.

Advertising

Most people think that advertising is the primary source of blogging income. And why not? Everywhere you look, you see ads. Truth be known, display advertising is usually the least lucrative of moneymaking methods.

Affiliate Programs

Many companies pay bloggers a commission for every sale they make. You are free to present the offer in several different ways, such as a graphic ad, a text link in a post, or as a part of a review of similar products.

The company does not pay you for showing the link thousands of times, nor do they pay you for clicks. They pay you only when your reader purchases using a link containing your affiliate code.

As you can imagine, this can be lucrative.

Selling Your Product or Service

I started my first blog in 1998. The opportunity did not yet exist to make money with advertising or affiliate offers. I relied on selling my books. It was far more complicated then because services like Amazon and PayPal did not exist.

Today, I have the traffic and the infrastructure in place on several blogs to make money through advertising, affiliate offers, online courses, and sales of my books and T-shirts. The process is entirely automated. I invest my time in writing helpful blog posts on a consistent schedule, and money appears in my bank account.

That can happen to you. Start your blog as a side hustle, and you can enjoy watching your influence and income grow over time.

As I have mentioned, the number of site visitors (traffic) you lure to your blog is crucial. Your chances of financial freedom are slim if you only have 1,000 visits per month, but your blog will become a powerhouse when you get 50,000 or more visits per month.

How to get quality traffic to a blog is a different topic. Still, you need to know that you must have traffic to turn your side hustle into a career, and getting that traffic is an essential part of a blogger’s job.

Ready, Set, Blog

Many people imagine that blogging works like a Las Vegas slot machine. They want to punch a button and hit the jackpot. They expect a maximum payout for minimal effort.

That is a beautiful dream, but it’s seldom the reality. Blogging for cash is work. However, diligent people who learn the skills can often start making rent money in the first six months and far more as time goes on.

Determine if blogging is the right side hustle for you. Not only can you earn money, but you can give glory to the Lord with your work. If it is right for you, start your blog now. You cannot generate any influence for Christ or cash until you start. Flip your creative switch and add some light to your life by becoming a blogger.