How to Start a Personal Finance Blog to Make Extra Cash in 2022

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Personal finance is a topic that can be both interesting and lucrative.

If you're looking to make money from a side hustle, personal finance is one of the best subjects.

It's more interesting than expected and there are plenty of opportunities for monetization that go beyond blogging.

The industry is currently estimated to be worth an impressive $1.35 trillion, and many people with either a business degree or experience in the area have capitalized on this niche by starting their personal finance blog that educates readers about common mistakes made while managing money as well as how best to invest it for maximum return potentials.

Blogging – This is a very popular medium for sharing your knowledge/views and earning money online.

Just the thought of being able to earn money while sitting at home (or some beach/your favourite vacation spot) and writing articles on a laptop makes people fall in love with Blogging.

This article will tell you all about how you can start your Personal Finance blog in 2022.

1) Intro to Personal Finance Blogs

While all of us love money, not everyone is able to manage it properly. We all know people who regularly face money problems (especially towards the end of the month), buy things on loan, do unnecessary expenditure etc.

Personal finance blogs give tips on how people can improve money management. On these blogs, you will often find articles on money-saving hacks, planning for expenses, reducing debts, increasing assets, planning for financial freedom, early retirement etc.

Before we go into the details of how to start a personal finance blog, let me make it very clear. In India, Personal Finance is a complicated topic as most people think they are experts.

They get their expertise from friends/colleagues/internet and use the information to do financial planning. Hence, convincing people to listen to you and use your suggestions on their hard-earned money is difficult.

Despite this, there is intense competition in the Personal Finance blogging domain and many bloggers are trying to capture customer attention by writing articles addressing their needs.

So, do not get discouraged. If your articles are good and help people, you will start getting the audience and make a decent earning.

2) Things to Consider before starting a Personal Finance Blog

2.1. What do you want to write about?

This is the most important step in your journey.

Personal finance has loads of categories like financial freedom, early retirement, tax planning, tips to beat inflation, planning insurance cover, goal-based investments, tips on saving money, tips on managing money, ways on growing money, steps to become loan-free, finding alternate sources of income, suggestions on investing money, mutual funds, stock markets, overseas investments, etc.

To succeed as a personal finance blogger, you need to be clear on what you want to write about. Do you want to share knowledge/experience/wisdom with the world? Or do you want to express your views/opinion on things? Do you just want to help people by solving their queries or are you more interested in reviewing things?

Since a worldwide audience can read a blog, you can choose any category to start a blog. So think hard on what your interest areas are and what you want to write about? This will help you decide what categories of personal finance you want to focus on. 

2.2. What will differentiate you from others?

This should be very clear at the beginning of your blogging journey. Unless you create a differentiating factor and offer something different to customers, it will be very difficult for you to get an audience.

Do market research/competitor study to find out what they are not offering and what is in demand, identify what problems need a solution. Basis this, you may come up with answers.

Coming to personal finance, few differentiating factors can be focusing on alternative investments, overseas investments, cryptocurrency/bitcoins investment etc., writing blogs targeted for HNIs/higher middle-class income category/ teenagers/homemakers/senior citizens/freelancers/sports professionals (especially those who play at domestic level) etc.

2.3. Who are you to advise others?

When it comes to money, people do not trust even their family members. So why should they take advice from you?

This is the biggest question you will have to answer while starting a Personal Finance blog.

Unless you are a celebrity or well-known person in the field of finance, there are few chances that people will trust your advice. So as a blogger, you will have to build this trust with people.

You will have to show them that you have walked the talk. Or that you are giving advice based on either personal experiences or by being qualified on the category or by doing research and giving valid evidence.

You can write articles showcasing how you have (or will soon) achieved Financial Freedom, how you save money, how you plan to retire early, how your analysis/research can help people etc.

Or you can offer solutions to real-life scenarios/problems (like the Q&A sessions on major financial publications like ET Wealth).

You can also take case studies and come up with answers to the problems. This way, over time, people will start accepting that you know what you are writing about, will start taking you seriously and become your loyal followers.

2.4. Can you produce regular content on your category?

As a blogger, you will not taste success on the first day. It will take months and years for a growing audience base. So it is crucial to find out whether the category you want to write on is sustainable or not. If the category is very specific, it will be hard for you to write articles regularly.

For example, someone writing only on LIC policies might find it difficult to write articles after few months. In contrast, someone writing only about Endowment plans or Insurance policies will have more options to write on.

So choose your category/niche wisely under the personal finance domain.

2.5. Is the content evergreen or time-bound?

Evergreen content is those blogs whose content or information is relevant even in future. Time-bound blogs are those whose contents are relevant only for a limited duration.

It is advisable to produce more of evergreen content so that you have more relevant articles for your audience.

For example, articles written on Income Tax Rules for FY2020-2021 will not be relevant in 2022 or later. No one will read those in the next financial year.

However, the article written on ways to earn alternate income or ways to save money will probably be evergreen and more useful for anyone visiting in future.

2.6. Can you devote time on a regular basis?

As a blogger, you will have to do various activities – research, validation, writing stuff, SEO (search engine optimization), advertisement, social networking, digital marketing etc. Further, in the personal finance domain, things change very rapidly. You will have to keep reading and updating yourself to be able to write the correct articles.

You will also have to keep writing blogs and publishing them on a regular frequency. The more you write on one topic, the better your chances of being listed on the first page as google will think you are an authority on the topic.

Think if you have time to do all this. And remember that this is ongoing work. You will have to take out time every day (or every few days of the week) to focus on the blog. Only then will it grow and succeed.

Basis the above six points, you should consider whether you want to become a blogger or not. If you think you can manage, then continue reading our next section about how to set up a blog.

3) How to set up your Personal Finance Blog

3.1. Buy hosting plan and domain

If you are still determined to start blogging, the next step will be to buy a domain (your website name) and hosting plan (server on which it will run). You can buy both domains and hosting plans from various players like WPX web hosting, DreamHost, Siteground, Hostinger, Bluehost, GoDaddy, Bigrock etc.

Domain name plays an important role in getting visitors to your website. Try choosing a name that signifies what your blog is all about. Try keeping it between 1 – 3 short words combination.

And try choosing something easy to remember (and easy to spell). The last thing we want is someone typing the wrong spelling and going to some other website. For example, my website www.savemoremoney.in has three short words which are easy to remember, tells what the site is about and is easy to spell.

You can also take an example of the www.digippl.com website which is a short form for Digital People. Easy to remember and easy to type in.

Search & Buy Domain Name for Your Personal Finance Blog:

Just like Domain Names, Hosting also plays an important role in your website performance. It impacts your site availability vs crash duration, page load speed, number of users who can visit the site at a time, the security of the site and many other things. 

There are few free hosting websites like Wix etc. available in the market. But I will recommend you to stay away from them if you want to grow your website and earn money from it in future.

Among paid ones, choose those hosting sites which offer inbuilt support for WordPress. Most of the blogging websites in the world are built on WordPress and hence any hosting plan giving you inbuilt WordPress is preferable.

I personally use WPX web hosting for my site www.savemoremoney.in and have loved it. There is no downtime on website, page loads very quickly can handle large traffic to my site, I get free SSL for converting my site to HTTPS and the customer support is excellent.

Also, do not opt for higher versions of the plan. Buy basic plan if you are a fresher since you will be working only on one website and learning tricks of the trade (at least for the first year).

Tip => Do not go by money and buy the cheapest hosting solution. Look what it is offering and whether it is meeting your requirement.

3.2. Select an appropriate theme and set up your website

Now that you have purchased the domain and hosting, the next step is to setup the website. First, you will have to select a theme. Choose from existing themes on WordPress (among free and paid themes) to decide what layout you want for your website.

 

Tip => Do not spend too much time on it. You can always change the theme later.

 

To set up your website, take help of the customer support team of your hosting provider. Or follow any popular YouTube video.

3.3. Add basic plugins, setup your account on Google Analytics and Google Sitemap

It is not enough to just have the website setup. You will also have to install a few basic plugins to help you secure and optimize your site. Following are the list of few important plugins you should have:

Yoast SEO / Rank Math SEO => to help improve your search performance

W3 Total Cache => to help improve caching and increase page load speed

Akismet Antispam => to help avoid spamming

Updraft Plus => to help keep backup versions of your site

Installing these plugins is very simple. Just like you download the app from Google play store for your phone, you will have to install the plugin from the WordPress plugins section. Remember to activate them after installing.

Tip => As a beginner, you can go for free versions of these plugins if you don’t want to spend too much money.

You will also have to set up Google analytics and Google Sitemap and link them with your website. Google Analytics will help you be aware of your site performance while sitemaps will help you identify if there are any issues with linking and indexing of the website.

Usually, SEO automatically creates sitemaps. But it is always a good idea to keep checking in Google Sitemaps to know if all the posts are getting indexed and crawled properly.

3.4. Write your articles and do basic SEO optimization

Start writing articles on your chosen categories. Do at least basic SEO Optimization and publish the articles asap.

 

3.5. Publish and share with family, friends and others

To grow and make money from any blog, writing good content is only 50% of the job. The other 50% is related to making people aware of your website. Unless people know about it, they will not read. Hence, start sharing with family and friends as the starting point.

Take efforts to share on other social media platforms like FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, Insta, YouTube, Pinterest, Quora etc., to attract visitors. Gradually, over time, you will start getting more and more visitors if your content is good.

4) Important tips to keep in mind while starting a finance blog

Personal finance is often considered a complex topic by a layman. They do not understand terms like assets, liabilities, inflation, future value, compound interest, equities, debts, bonds, term insurance, side hustle etc. So always try to write articles in simple and easy to understand language to increase your audience base.

Remember to verify the facts and things you are blogging about. Do not give wrong information to people which may cause them to lose money.

See what you can give extra – either as a service (training or problem solving) or a product (templates or tools or solutions to help them manage personal finance). For example, on my website Save More Money, I provide templates in a few articles and also inform people that we do training on personal finance.

In Personal Finance, one answer cannot suit everyone. What you might think as a luxury can be a necessity for someone else. You will have to evaluate everything on case to case basis.

Keep yourself updated with the latest news in the world of personal finance. Read articles, other blogs and ensure that your content is latest, good and easy to understand.

Check Start a WordPress Blog guide in case you want to start your personal finance blog on the WordPress platform.

Conclusion

One rule of personal finance is always to keep looking for ways to earn extra income. Blogging can be a good side hustle to your permanent jobs. It will take time to give you returns. But gradually, it can grow as a full-time source of income. So take the plunge and onboard the blogging journey for that extra income and financial freedom.

About the author

Nishant Gupta writes articles on money-saving tips, Insurance, Credit Cards, Travel and Miscellaneous categories on his website Savemoremoney.in. He also conducts Financial Freedom training and has experience in entrepreneurship. Feel free to drop by, explore and give your valuable feedback :)