Online business owners and side hustlers tend to take the idea of the “weekend warrior” to the extreme.
You might only have two days… but can you start an online business that’ll replace your full-time income before Monday?
It sounds outlandish to some people, but it’s not totally out of the question.
If you’re ready to get a new side hustle off the ground — without waiting months for cash to trickle in — here’s how to make money with WordPress in 48 hours.
Steps To Make Money With WordPress In 48 Hours
You won’t likely make a boatload of money with WordPress in 48 hours — no one is this lucky.
But you can easily get a blog up and running in the span of two days, and you can even make your first dollar in that time if you direct your efforts well.
Follow these steps to start and monetize your WordPress blog in the next 48 hours.
1. Create Your Website
Setting up a website seems like the most intimidating step for some, but it’s actually the simplest step to start making money with your blog.
To set up a website, you need:-
(i) Hosting:
This is your real estate on the World Wide Web; you have to pay for the space that holds all the information for your site.
Common affordable hosts for first-time WordPress bloggers are Hostinger, Bluehost, SiteGround and DreamHost, all recommended by WordPress.org for easy integration with the WordPress platform.
(ii) CMS:
A content management system (CMS) keeps your blog posts and media organized on the backend of your blog.
WordPress continues to be the best CMS for blog businesses, because its content management features are more robust than managed-hosting competitors, yet it’s easy enough for beginners to use.
(iii) Domain:
This is your address online, the main URL to your site.
You can buy domains through tons of brokers for about $10 a year.
Popular brokers include GoDaddy, Google Domains and Namecheap.
Note that you can instead set up a website with managed hosting and an included domain through WordPress.com — you might even be able to get set up for free.
But managed hosting WordPress sites come with more restrictions for monetization than self-hosted sites, and you might not be able to monetize the way you want to.
WordPress recommended hosting sites come with easy integrations that let you set up your WordPress site with the push of a button — no code required.
You’ll just sign up for your hosting plan, then follow the directions to install WordPress from your dashboard.
You can also find directions to direct your domain to the site through your hosting dashboard.
Once you install WordPress on your site, you can manage the site’s backend including all pages, blog posts and ad plugins, from your WordPress dashboard.
2. Develop A Brand
To build out your website and make a plan for monetization, you have to figure out what your brand is. That starts with:-
(i) Choosing a niche:
What topic will you cover (for example, home improvement, personal finance, law)?
(ii) Defining your audience:
Who is interested in your topic? Who are other sites in your niche not serving?
This is who will read your blog.
(iii) Name your purpose:
What broad problem does your audience have that you’ll help them solve (for example, wanting a nice home without spending a lot of money, having a lot of debt or being in legal trouble)?
To turn your brand from an idea into the building blocks for your business:-
(i) Choose a name:
Pick a name that – 1) conveys what you do to your target audience, 2) is available as an easy-to-remember domain and 3) helps your site’s SEO by hitting on a relevant high-level keyword or phrase.
(ii) Design a logo:
Design a logo you can use on your website, social media and marketing materials.
You can hire a designer to do this quickly through a site like Fiverr or create a simple logo for yourself through Canva.
(iii) Create a style guide:
Jot down some brief notes — you can add to it as you go later.
Include information about your brand colors and fonts, plus notes on your brand’s written voice, tone and personality.
This will help guide you and any freelancers you hire as you create content.
(iv) Write an about page:
Your website will need several pages eventually, but the first one to start with is your “about” page.
It lets visitors know what you do and who’s behind the site, and it’s important for fostering trust, especially as a new business.
Start with a brief about page that states your niche, audience and purpose, plus a bit about you and others who contribute to the site.
Once you’re ready to add all this to your site, you can explore WordPress themes to pick the right layout and feel for your website.
You have the freedom to customize the elements of your site, but using a theme helps you get set up quickly and easily, without knowing a bit of code.
As you build your brand and website, look through these stock image sites for visuals:-
3. Set Up Email Marketing
A long-term strategy to make money with WordPress is to build an email list, so you have a community to share your content with.
It’s easy and free or cheap to set up, so do it when you’re starting a blog so you can start capturing readers’ contact information right away.
You can set up an email list in a few clicks through any of these service providers that are a good fit for bloggers:-
(i) Mailchimp:
Start with a free plan for up to 2,000 contacts (10,000 monthly sends).
You can set up automated sequences, segment your contacts with tags and groups, and design emails without code using a drag-and-drop editor.
(ii) ConvertKit:
Start with a free plan for up to 300 subscribers.
You can send email broadcasts and build sign-up forms, but you have to upgrade to a paid plan for automations and Facebook custom audiences (for cross-platform marketing).
(iii) Moosend:
Get a free 30-day trial, then continue with a monthly plan based on your number of subscribers.
Send unlimited emails, and build automations, landing pages and sign-up forms.
Once you’ve created an account with your email service, grab the code it provides to embed a sign-up form on your website.
Add it to your footer and sidebar, so it’s on every page visitors see.
4. Add A Revenue Stream
Now you’re ready to monetize your blog!
Bloggers have tons of options to make money online, but affiliate marketing is the best way to make money with WordPress in 48 hours.
(i) Affiliate Marketing
If your goal is to have money coming in as soon as possible, start with what’s called an affiliate arbitrage model: buy visitors to your site, and earn a commission for sending sales to your affiliate businesses.
You make a profit this way by earning more in commissions than you spend advertising your content.
You can find affiliate marketing opportunities in just about any niche, so don’t be afraid to get creative and blog about something you enjoy.
To quickly find businesses offering commissions for referrals, sign up for these affiliate marketing platforms:-
You can also manage affiliate links directly within your WordPresss dashboard — and even set up systems to add affiliate links automatically to keywords — using these WordPress plugins:
In the longer term, you can form relationships with sellers who want to reach your audience and join more exclusive affiliate programs or even develop custom affiliate marketing deals.
(ii) Display Advertising
Another monetization option you can set up fairly quickly is display ads.
These will generate less revenue than affiliate marketing, but they’re another way to take advantage of traffic coming to your site.
Use a WordPress plugin to easily add and manage ads on your site from within your WordPress dashboard.
Check out these plugins recommended by WordPress experts:-
(iii) Long-Term Monetization Opportunities
You can’t get these up and running in two days, but once you have an audience for your site, you could diversify your revenue streams by adding:-
- Sponsored content: Let brands pay you to place content on your site; either they pay you to create a post about them, or they write it and just pay you to publish it. Brands might also sponsor newsletters, courses or events you create.
Digital products: Create and sell digital products for your niche, like online courses, ebooks, webinars, videos, memberships (on your site or another platform, like Patreon) and more.
- Services: Use your website to promote services you can provide online, like freelance writing, design or development; consulting; and coaching.
5. Create Blog Content
Start with a few affiliate products or services you want to promote first, and create blog content to promote them.
In the long term, you’ll want to create content for your niche that’s not solely driven by affiliates, because this develops trust with readers.
But to make money in the short term, focus on a few blog posts that’ll convert for your affiliates.
To write blog posts that sell:-
(i) Focus on a single problem, and present a single affiliate product as the solution.
(ii) Keep it short and sweet. Write enough to interest and convert the reader, but don’t write any more than is necessary to sell the product.
(iii) Don’t get too technical. Use words your reader would use to talk about their needs, not language a company would use to describe the capabilities of their product.
(iv) Write for a specific reader within your audience, like women between 25–30 or recent grads in nursing. Even if the product appeals to a broad audience, your marketing will work better if you speak to a specific audience; you can create multiple similar blog posts to target different demographics.
If you want your money-making blog up and running in 48 hours, you’ll probably need help with content.
Hire freelance writers who know your niche and understand a little about affiliate marketing or writing sales copy to create effective content.
You can find freelance writers of all levels through broker sites like Upwork.
Creating SEO Content
A longer-term strategy for your site is to create blog posts optimized to attract readers through search — people with specific queries.
SEO (search engine optimization) posts are usually much longer than posts designed for affiliate arbitrage, and they’re more focused on providing comprehensive information to answer a reader’s question (like this guide, which helps readers who searched “how to make money with WordPress in 48 hours”!).
SEO content is ideal for bloggers, because it can bring in traffic long term without additional costs.
Add relevant affiliate links, and those posts can turn into truly passive income.
6. Promote Your Blog Posts
To start making money right away, you need to quickly drive traffic to your affiliate posts.
That won’t happen naturally for a brand-new website, so you have to get posts in front of your target audience.
Start with your own social media followers — share your posts on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn to drive as much free traffic as you can.
If you don’t already have a substantial following in your niche, you’ll have to run ads to get your posts in front of new people.
(i) Social Media Ads
Facebook ads have traditionally been a good source of traffic for affiliate arbitrage, but that’s always changing as the Facebook algorithm and mobile data policies change.
Don’t discount it entirely, but proceed with caution to see how your ads perform before spending a lot of money on the platform.
You can also advertise on other platforms, including Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest, depending on where your target audience is most likely to be.
Cast a wide net in case your account gets held up in the approval process on any platform.
(ii) Paid Search
You can target readers looking for content like yours with paid search ads through Google Ads.
This platform lets you pay to have your post show up at the top of search results for relevant keywords.
Paid search ads usually perform better when you write content optimized for search, the same way you would for organic search.
But if your affiliate post responds well to a particular query, it could do well in paid search without being optimized for the keyword.
Conclusion
You can make money with WordPress in 48 hours — you just won’t replace your day job in that time.
But setting a goal of earning your first dollar within two days is a great motivator to keep you focused on the most efficient moves for your business from the start.
To get started, you need WordPress hosting and a theme, a simple business brand, an account with an affiliate marketing platform, and a social media page on one or more platforms for running ads.
And, of course, you need blog content. You can write it yourself or hire freelancers to help you create content more quickly.
Optimize your posts for conversion by focusing on a single problem and presenting a single affiliate as the solution.
There’s a lot you can do to grow your business, connect with your audience and develop your brand in the long term, but these simple steps can help you get the business off the ground and make money fast.
FAQs
Your earning potential is more dependent on the quality of your content and site than on how many pageviews you get. You can drive 100,000 visitors to your posts every month, but you won’t make money unless your posts are optimized to solve their problems and your posts are optimized for conversion.
As a benchmark, your website should have at least a 1% to 3% conversion rate, which is pretty typical. If your click rate is lower than that, work on making your content more helpful and relevant for your audience.
You can create a Google AdSense account and display ads on any self-hosted site. You can display ads by using the code from your AdSense account, or add them with a WordPress ad management plugin, like AdSanity. You can’t add AdSense to a managed-hosting WordPress.com site, but you can join the WordAds network to make money from display ads.
You can monetize a WordPress.com blog with affiliate links, sponsored content, selling digital products, memberships, and WordPress’s native ad network, WordAds.
The quickest way to make money as a beginner blogger is through affiliate marketing (unless you’re a first-time blogger with an established audience from another kind of business). Affiliate marketing lets you monetize your site without creating products of your own, and you can use paid media to attract your target audience to monetized posts.
