Hello! Today I have an excellent article to share from R.J. Weiss. He purchased my course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing in 2017 and has since built a remarkable site. The Ways To Wealth now receives around 500,000 monthly visitors and has become a six-figure blog. Enjoy!
Before launching The Ways To Wealth in 2016, I studied the complete archives of many blogs’ income reports. For some sites, like Making Sense of Cents—which began publishing income reports in 2013—that meant reading years of old posts. It was time well spent.
I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t when building a profitable blog. With that knowledge I set a goal: build a blog that could replace my full-time job. Fourteen months later I reached that goal and felt comfortable leaving a position I’d held for ten years. At the time the blog was earning about $3,000 per month. With a healthy emergency fund, I took the leap to become a full-time blogger.
Fast-forward again: The Ways To Wealth is thriving. It now reaches roughly 500,000 visitors each month and has exceeded the next goal I set—turning it into a six-figure business.
Over the years I’ve connected with hundreds of bloggers who had similar goals. Some wanted to leave their jobs, travel the world, be their own boss, or work from home. They wanted a blog that would provide freedom and financial independence.
Goal setting is valuable: it clarifies what we want. But it’s consistent action—what we do every day—that actually delivers results. Looking back, the habits I formed around repeatable actions are what produced steady progress. Below I share those daily, weekly and monthly practices that helped me consistently reach my targets.
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The Daily Habits For Building A Six-Figure Blog
#1. Track Daily Revenue And Expenses
The first task I do every day is record the previous day’s income and expenses. I keep all affiliate dashboards in a bookmarked folder so I can open them with one click, logging in automatically via LastPass.
Tracking net income daily came from observing others who run successful sites. Seeing the numbers motivates me and helps me identify what’s working and what’s not, enabling faster strategic decisions.
What’s Changed: As the site grew, the number of partners increased, making cash flow management more complex. Some affiliates pay long after a sale is made, so I monitor both actual and expected income to maintain healthy cash flow.
#2. Create Content
During my first major block of the day, I write for 90 minutes with all distractions closed. For a site that doesn’t sell its own products, content is the product: improving it increases the value of the site.
Most often I produce new content, but creation also includes updating old posts, drafting email newsletters, or preparing guest posts. Whatever the format—blog articles, videos, or course material—doing valuable work consistently compounds over time: each published piece becomes another indexed asset that can attract readers.
What’s Changed: When I was blogging while working full-time, I used early morning hours for uninterrupted writing. Now that I work on the site full-time, I spend more time optimizing and updating existing posts rather than producing as much new content personally.
#3. Outreach
The Ways To Wealth gets substantial search traffic, and my basic SEO approach is straightforward: create content people search for and build links. Link building has such impact that I schedule it into my daily routine. My primary method is connecting with mainstream media through Help A Reporter Out (HARO). My daily goal is to respond to three HARO queries.
Tip: Reporters can also be found in industry-specific Facebook groups. HARO success rates are low—especially in competitive niches—so expect it may take dozens of responses to secure a mention. Even so, those backlinks are valuable.
What’s Changed: The habit of responding to HARO has remained consistent since the blog’s early days.
Weekly Blogging Habits
#1. Track Weekly Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
While I track profit daily, each Monday I review additional KPIs to stay on top of trends. In a Google Sheet I monitor:
- 7-day organic search traffic
- 30-day organic search traffic
- 90-day organic search traffic
- 365-day organic search traffic
- 30-day Pinterest traffic
- 90-day Pinterest traffic
If traffic drops significantly week over week, I investigate the cause. Reviewing the 365-day organic search data is especially helpful: it prevents overreacting to short-term dips and keeps me focused on long-term progress.
#2. Update And Fill The Content Calendar
Each Monday I hold a weekly call with my editor to discuss content strategy and the upcoming week’s calendar. We manage all tasks on a Trello board, where posts move through columns—from Outline to Published—as they progress.
Our Trello stacks include:
- Copyedit + Publish: content scheduled for publication that week.
- In the Cooker: pieces due from writers this week.
- New Outlines: outlines to draft and assign to writers.
- Content Upgrades: older posts to update for relevancy and revenue.
- Other Tasks: miscellaneous content work, such as updates required when an affiliate changes a product.
What’s Changed: I began using Trello about a year ago and it was a game-changer—centralizing tasks makes scaling much easier. After creating an outline, we assign it to a writer who drafts in Google Docs, which simplifies collaboration. When ready, we use Wordable to export Google Docs to WordPress.
#3. Batch Create Pins And Other Graphics
I work with a freelance designer who creates Pinterest images and other graphics for the week. We share a Google Drive folder where these assets are automatically added. Best practices on Pinterest change often, so I now create more images per post—sometimes up to six—depending on how suitable content is for the platform.
#4. Test And Review
I prioritize testing regularly and run multiple experiments each week. Examples of high-impact, relatively simple tests include:
- SEO titles: try alternative organic titles and measure click-through rates and traffic via Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
- Landing pages and email capture forms: test different versions to improve conversion.
- Subject lines: test subject lines in email sequences to increase open rates.
- Affiliate landing pages: test different affiliate landing pages to see which converts best.
I track all tests in a Google Sheet and keep copies of previous versions so I can compare results. Small changes—like tweaking a post title—can sometimes produce outsized gains.
What’s Changed: I wish I had done more testing earlier. Improvements to email capture rates or sending traffic to better-converting landing pages compound over time and can greatly boost long-term results.
Monthly Habits For Running A Blog
#1. Track Monthly KPIs + Revenue And Earnings Of Each Affiliate
Our personal finance site covers many topics and includes dozens of affiliate relationships—over one hundred in total. At the start of each month I record revenue and clicks for each affiliate from the prior month to calculate earnings per click (EPC). This data helps me make informed strategic decisions to improve revenue.
I also track:
- Revenue per visitor: the average revenue earned per site visitor.
- Average daily revenue for the year: multiply this by 365 to estimate whether we’re on track for the annual income goal.
What’s Changed: I’ve been spending more time with detailed data lately because small tweaks informed by solid analytics often yield significant results.
#2. Set Monthly Objectives
With an accurate read on performance, I set monthly objectives designed to move the needle. I try to identify what truly matters using a question from Gary Keller’s The One Thing: “What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
Answering that helps me focus. Once I choose a monthly objective, it guides weekly and daily planning.
#3. Bulk Keyword Research
Once a month I spend a few hours on keyword research and content planning, deciding which articles to create, upgrade, or remove. I use AHREFs combined with Google Trends to identify keywords with growing demand.
On average we publish eight to twelve new pieces monthly, so we typically select two or three keyword ideas in our main verticals and add them to Trello.
What’s Changed: Not every post targets a keyword: sometimes we publish content to guide readers through a topic. For example, rather than sending readers directly to Upwork, we created a guide on getting your first Upwork job to retain and monetize that traffic.
#4. Guest Post
Guest posting is a favorite way to attract new readers. I aim to publish two guest posts each month. This requires outreach, which becomes easier with relationships built through Facebook groups, email, and industry events.
#5. Learn Something New
I prioritize learning by completing one course each month to sharpen my skills. As the team has grown, my role is more about deciding what to do rather than doing every task myself. Courses help me evaluate opportunities and choose what to pursue.
If you don’t have a budget, you can learn for free: read income report archives in your niche, study reputable SEO blogs, or read one article a day on a topic you want to improve, such as Pinterest traffic.
Final Thoughts
These habits and routines have driven growth at The Ways To Wealth. Identify the regular actions your site needs and turn them into consistent habits. For some, that may be guest posting; for others, appearing on podcasts. Strategies will vary by goals, but the constant is the same: the right habits, repeated consistently, produce meaningful results.
Author Bio: R.J. Weiss is the founder and editor of The Ways To Wealth, a Certified Financial Planner™, husband and father of three. He has spent more than a decade writing about personal finance and has been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg, MSN Money, and other publications.
What are your blogging habits?