Can You Actually Make Money With a WordPress Blog?

💰 Results: 0/month for now
⏱ Time invested: 2 hours
🔥 Worth it? Still in testing phase
🛠 Tools used: Hostinger ( Please note this is an affiliate link, I will get bonus if you sign up with it)

That’s the question that started this whole website.

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One email per experiment. Full numbers, no fluff.

Not because I already know the answer.

I don’t.

Not because I’ve made thousands from blogging.

I definitely haven’t.

And not because I’m some internet business expert sitting here with a secret formula and a suspiciously expensive course.

Quite the opposite, actually.

I started this website because I wanted to test something very simple: can a normal person, with no real website experience, no design skills, and a small budget, build a WordPress blog and eventually turn it into a small income stream?

That’s it.

No big success story yet. No dramatic “I quit my job” headline. No screenshots of money flying in while I sleep.

Right now, this is just the beginning of an experiment.

And if you’ve ever looked at blogging, affiliate marketing, or “passive income” and wondered whether any of it is actually realistic, maybe following this test will be useful.

Or at least mildly entertaining.

Why I Started This Website

There is a lot of noise online about making money with blogs.

Some people make it sound ridiculously easy.

“Start a blog, write a few posts, add affiliate links, retire next Tuesday.”

Others make it sound impossible, like unless you started in 2012 and already have an audience, you might as well go stare at a wall.

The truth is probably somewhere in the messy middle.

But I got tired of only reading other people’s opinions.

So I decided to do the most basic thing possible:

build the website and see what happens.

That is how this site started.

My goal is not to pretend I’m already successful. I’m not. My goal is to document the process, track the costs, share the results, and find out whether this kind of side hustle can work in real life.

Not in theory.

Not in a YouTube thumbnail.

In actual numbers.

Right now, the site is brand new, so obviously I can’t answer the big question yet. It is not making money today.

But I can explain how I started, what it cost, what tools I used, and what the plan is from here.

Step 1: Buying a Domain and Hosting

The first thing I needed was obvious:

a domain and hosting.

Without those, there is no real website. Just an idea floating around in my head, which is where many ideas go to quietly die.

For hosting, I chose Hostinger.

Why?

Because they had a discount at the time, the price looked reasonable, and I didn’t want to spend three weeks comparing hosting companies like I was buying a house.

That’s the honest answer.

This was not some deep technical decision. I did not compare 20 hosting providers. I did not create a spreadsheet. I did not read every Reddit argument about uptime, support, server response, and whatever else people fight about in hosting discussions.

I saw an ad, checked the offer, thought, “Okay, that’s cheap enough for an experiment,” and bought it.

For 3 years, I paid €42, which is around $50.

That felt low enough to make the risk acceptable.

If the website completely fails, I lose €42 and learn something. Not ideal, but not a disaster either.

So that was the official start.

The blog existed.

Sort of.

Step 2: Building the WordPress Website With Zero Experience

Then came the part I expected to be annoying:

actually building the website.

And here’s the important detail.

I had basically zero WordPress experience.

None.

I’m not a web designer.
I’m not a developer.
I don’t code websites from scratch.
I didn’t want to spend months learning WordPress before launching.

I wanted the fastest path from idea to live website.

So I used AI.

More specifically, I used Claude with Opus 4.6.

I explained what kind of WordPress site I wanted, what style I liked, what pages I needed, how I wanted the posts to look, and what features would make sense for a side hustle experiment blog.

Then I asked for suggestions too, because honestly, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

And this part surprised me.

It was much easier than I expected.

Claude created the theme files for me and gave them in a ZIP format. I went into the WordPress dashboard, opened the Themes section, uploaded the ZIP file, and activated it.

That sounds almost too easy, but that is basically what happened.

Of course, it wasn’t perfect.

There were bugs. A few weird layout things. Some details that needed fixing.

But even that was easier than expected. I just copied what was wrong, explained it in a follow-up message, and Claude adjusted the files.

After a few corrections, the site looked close to what I wanted.

For someone with no real WordPress knowledge, that felt slightly unreal.

A few years ago, I probably would have either paid someone to build the site or given up before even launching. Now, with AI helping, the difficult part became much less intimidating.

Not effortless.

But possible.

That’s a big difference.

Step 3: Installing the Plugins

Once the basic site was working, I had another beginner question:

What plugins do I actually need?

I didn’t want to install 50 random plugins and turn the site into a slow, confused mess. So I asked for a simple starting setup.

The recommended plugins were:

Rank Math SEO
Google Site Kit
LiteSpeed Cache
ShortPixel
Really Simple SSL

So I installed them.

That’s it.

I’m not saying this is the perfect plugin stack. I’m not claiming every beginner should copy it exactly. This is just what I started with.

At this stage, I wasn’t trying to build the most advanced website on the internet.

I wanted a clean, working blog with basic SEO support, analytics, decent speed, image optimization, and SSL.

A proper starting point.

Once those were installed, the site finally felt real.

Still tiny. Still empty. Still basically invisible.

But live.

And there is something motivating about that.

Even if nobody is visiting yet, once the website is online, it stops being just “an idea.” It becomes a thing you can improve.

So… Can This Website Actually Make Money?

That is still the big question.

And the honest answer right now is:

I don’t know.

Not very exciting, but true.

I do have a plan, though.

The first monetization method I want to test is Google Ads.

A lot of websites use ads as their first step toward earning money. In simple terms, if your site gets approved and receives traffic, ads can generate revenue from views and clicks.

Sounds simple.

But obviously, it is not as simple as installing ads on an empty website and waiting for money to fall out of the sky.

First, the site needs to look real.

It needs content.
It needs useful posts.
It needs structure.
It needs some reason for visitors to stay.

That is the stage I am in now.

Not earning.

Building.

The Current Stage: Content First

Right now, I’m not focused on revenue.

There is no revenue to focus on anyway.

My main job is to create content.

From what I understand, getting approved for ads is not about one magic number. It is not like you publish exactly seven posts, wait 12 days, click a button, and suddenly everything works.

Sadly.

The site needs to have a purpose. It needs to provide value. It needs to look like an actual website, not a half-finished template with two posts and a dream.

So my current goal is to spend the next 2 to 3 months building up enough useful content before applying for ads.

That feels like a realistic first milestone.

Not because I expect ads to make real money immediately. With low traffic, they probably won’t. But getting approved would still be progress.

It would mean the site is moving from “new experiment” to “small monetizable content project.”

Maybe.

We’ll see.

What I’m Trying Not to Do

One thing I want to avoid is focusing on money too early.

I think that is where a lot of people go wrong with online side hustles.

They start with monetization before they have built anything worth monetizing.

I understand the temptation. I really do. Everyone wants to know how the money works. That’s the fun part.

But if nobody is reading the site, affiliate links do nothing. Ads do nothing. A newsletter does nothing.

Traffic and trust have to come first.

So I’m trying to take the slower route.

Create the site.
Publish useful posts.
Track the numbers.
Improve the structure.
Learn SEO.
Then try monetization.

Maybe it works.

Maybe it doesn’t.

But at least it will be a real test.

Am I Expecting Big Money?

No.

Definitely not soon.

I’m not building this website because I think it will replace a full-time income in six months.

Would that be nice? Of course. I’m not allergic to money.

But I’m trying to stay realistic.

For me, this is a long-term side hustle experiment.

If I keep publishing, improving the site, learning SEO, and documenting real experiments, maybe in 2 or 3 years it can become a small income stream.

Maybe it earns pocket money.

Maybe it covers hosting.

Maybe it grows into something more useful.

Or maybe it fails.

That is also possible.

But even modest income would be interesting to me because the starting cost was low and the whole site is based around learning in public.

If a beginner can build a small blog from scratch and eventually make even a little money from it, that is worth documenting.

Not in a flashy guru way.

In a real-life way.

What I’ve Learned So Far

Even though the website is still new, I’ve already learned a few things.

1. Starting is easier than it looks

Before I started, building a website felt more technical than it actually was.

Once I broke it down into domain, hosting, theme, plugins, and posts, it became less scary.

Still confusing in places, yes.

But not impossible.

2. AI removes a lot of friction

Without AI, I probably would have delayed this project for much longer.

Having help with the design, theme files, structure, bug fixing, and plugin suggestions made everything easier to approach.

AI did not magically build a business.

But it helped me get started.

That alone is useful.

3. A website does not need to be perfect to go live

This was a big one.

It is very easy to keep polishing forever.

The logo could be better.
The homepage could be cleaner.
The buttons could be nicer.
The spacing could be adjusted.
Then adjusted again.
Then adjusted one more time because why not ruin the whole evening.

At some point, you just need to publish.

A live imperfect website is better than a perfect idea sitting in your notes app.

4. Making money online is probably slower than people want

That is my expectation, at least.

I’m assuming this will take time.

Traffic takes time. SEO takes time. Trust takes time. Writing enough useful content takes time.

That is not very exciting, but it is probably closer to reality than most “easy passive income” posts.

The Current Profit Report

So let’s keep the numbers honest.

At the moment, the website has generated:

€0

Since I paid €42 to start it, the current result is:

-€42

Or roughly:

-$50

So yes, technically this business is in the red.

A beautiful financial masterpiece.

But that is fine.

This is day-one thinking, not year-three thinking.

Every project starts somewhere. Some people start with a big budget, fancy branding, and full confidence.

I started with cheap hosting, no WordPress experience, and curiosity.

We’ll see which one matters more over time.

What Happens Next?

The next step is simple:

I keep posting.

I keep improving the website.

I keep learning what works and what doesn’t.

Once the site has enough solid content, I’ll apply for Google Ads and see what happens.

Maybe it gets approved.
Maybe it gets rejected.
Maybe traffic stays tiny.
Maybe it slowly grows.

I genuinely do not know yet.

And that uncertainty is part of why I wanted to document it.

It is easy to tell a story after something works. Everyone loves a clean success story. The messy beginning is less glamorous.

But the beginning is where most people are.

So I would rather show this honestly as it happens.

No fake screenshots.
No exaggerated income claims.
No pretending the numbers are better than they are.

Just a real website, a real experiment, and real numbers.