“How can I work from home when my kids are little?” is a question I hear all the time from mothers. The drive to do something other than run the household and care for children is two fold, one you just want to use your brain again and second to make an income of your own.
There are plenty of work-from-home jobs selling for companies like Tupperware, Avon etc. But I will focus on the web for this article.
I recently setup a website blog for a family member in under a day and would like to share what I learned. After a quick lesson in WordPress and Elementor (both she had never seen before), she is now creating her own blog posts from home, inserting photos & galleries. So cool! So quick!
Step 1
Idea & Passion
Step 2
Setup Website
Step 3
Monitize site
What you need to make money online from a blog:
- A passion – Unique content is king, you need to pick a topic you can write endlessly about.
- A website domain (www)
- Website Hosting
- WordPress
- A clean website theme
- A way to make money
- Amazon Affiliates (% of sales made on amazon)
- Google Adsense ( Get paid for people clicking ads on your site)
- Referrals (Kick backs for recommending a service)
- Realistic expectations – your blog might be amazingly successful or you may earn enough for a movie ticket once a month. A good attitude to have is; be happy to have a project and any money is a bonus.
Below I detail how to Choose a blog topic and set up a WordPress site. If you already have a working blog site, skip ahead to Make Money From your Blog Part 2.
Topic
Choosing a topic you love and people want to read about is the most important step. You could have the best website in the world but if people aren’t searching for that topic you wont get visitors.
Think about what’s hot right now; homewares, health, family activities, and specific diet programs.


Now that you have a topic ideas do some searches in google, blogs etc and see what’s been done and how you can improve or offer a bigger and better idea.
Have a notebook handy to sketch ideas. On the flip side also look at what is missing and see if your new website could fill that gap.
Domain Name & Hosting
Select a Domain & Hosting company, look for WordPress hosting as this can be easier to setup for beginners.
Go Daddy has WordPress hosting for around $10 per month and it comes with a free domain name address. Shop around for specials and deals.
Domain Names you can buy one anywhere but Go Daddy has .com addresses for $0.99c for 1 year, pretty cheap!
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a website system that allows you to create Blog Posts (Articles) and have them organised easily. You can install themes (the look) quickly and you’re pretty much up and running. If you select WordPress hosting it will be all setup for you ready for you to pick the Theme for your website.

Choose a theme
A WordPress theme is the look of your website plus some special features. I recommend starting with something FREE clean and simple like WP Ocean, it is light weight and easy to customise, it’s the favourite choice of thousands of developers and hobby-users. They also have a bunch of free demos to choose from; creating different looks.
Just visit their website and download the free theme.
Install your Theme
- Log into your WordPress admin (yourwebsiteaddress.com/wp-admin)
- Go to Appearance > Themes
- Click ‘Add New’ at the top
- Click ‘Upload Theme’ and locate the theme .zip file on your computer
- Follow the steps on the screen.
Import a demo look
Each theme has a different way of doing this so check the documentation for specific instructions.
If you select the WP Ocean theme, they have a Ocean Demo Import plugin to load in a full site of demo content already styled.
- In the WordPress dashboard go to Plugins > Add New
- Search for “Ocean Demo Import“
- Install & activate
- Browse through all the demos here and note down the name of the one you like.
- Return to WordPress and using the plugin import the demo content.
Install useful plugins
Plugins are little helpful tools that can be used in WordPress for almost anything. The ones I suggest for a simple blog are:
PLUGINS USED:
- Insert headers and footers – to quickly add google code and scripts
- Ocean Demo Import – to import a demo site content
- Elementor Pro – Easy page editor and cool widgets
Customise your site
So far we have setup the technology that is going to support your website, now it’s time to add a logo, your menu, pages and content of the website.
- In the WordPress dashboard open the Customiser. Appearance > Customiser
- Go down the list on the left adjusting colours, adding your logo etc
- Now add some pages in your site Pages > Add new. Add any information pages you need plus a page called “blog”.
- Add your pages to the menu. Appearance > Menus. Tick the pages you want to appear and click ‘add to menu’. Rearrange them by dragging the order. Save the menu.

Edit your pages
Elementor is my page editor of choice, it’s a live visual editor with no coding knowledge needed. Open each of your pages and click the ‘Edit with Elementor’ button. Now you just drag on your tools from the left bar and start typing.
Set your blog page
Now it’s time to set where your blog posts will appear.
- In WordPress Dashboard go to Settings > Reading
- From the drop down select your home page and the Blog page.
- Save

Start Blogging
That’s it your WordPress site is setup and ready. Start writing your articles by:
To make a new Post (article)
- Click posts on left menu
- Click add new button up the top
- Give it a descriptive title using good search words
- On the right, tick which category it belongs in
- On the right at top click save draft (no one can see it yet)
- On right bottom click set featured image. (this is the main photo you see for each blog post)
- Click the upload files tab at the top
- Select files button
- Find your photo on the computer, click open
- Once uploaded and you can click the Set featured image button down the bottom.
- On the right at top click save draft (no one can see it yet)
- Click the blue ‘Edit with elementor’ button
- Now your page is all setup you can start working on the article
- Click Add new section red button.
- Choose the first wide box
- Now drag on a text editor box.
- You now have a box on the left hand side of the screen to type in, delete the demo text.
- This is where you type or copy & paste in your article.
- Once you’re done click the green save button at the bottom.
- Click the X down the bottom and go to dashboard (this takes us back to the beginning)
- Click View Post at the top to preview your article
- Click the blue Publish, button to make it live.
