What if you’re sick of sharing your personal information online and wanna start a blog with full anonymity?
Is that possible?
Yes of course, but you do need to approach it in the right way because since you don’t want to share your personal identity with anyone. Thus it does require some additional steps and measures which you need to take into count.
Therefore in this article on how to blog anonymously and make money I will talk about everything related to blogging anonymously.
Firstly, why do you want to blog anonymously?
The decision to blog anonymously is a personal choice, and the reasons to do so could be anything.
Usually, bloggers don’t keep their identity hidden and since the primary connection between bloggers and readers is built around how authentic, transparent, and unique they are and therefore to do so people need to know you as a person and you can’t be anonymous about it.
Although if someone is looking to do so, then he/she should have a really good reason to it, like:-
- Having to share too much personal information: If a writer/blogger wants to share his deep personal stories through a blog but at the same, he doesn’t want his friends and family to know about it. Then in such a case, a blogger would wanna hide his identity and publish stories in full anonymity.
- Writing about sensible topics: In general, few issues are too sensitive to touch, like religion, politics, and sex. More often than not, people are not open enough to listen to your opinions, and in such scenarios, bloggers choose to go private to share their beliefs and opinions on precise topics.
- Not wanting to coincide professional life with personal life: Today, having an online presence can highly impact an individual’s professional life too, and having a blog exposes yourself to the world. Here the problem only arrives when you share something disturbing (or) harsh truths about your professional career and if someone at your work who is the part of your story reads it, then you might get into trouble.
- Avoiding hatred from people: Bloggers on the internet are always vulnerable to verbal hostility from their readers. It happens when a blogger’s content doesn’t align with someone’s personal opinion and often when a mass of people don’t like what you write, you’re bound to get hate and if you choose to be open with your identity, then you’re bound to receive hatred more in person. Therefore being private helps you avoid being directly hated.
- Happy to stay out of the limelight: There are people in the world who just don’t like attention, and that attention could be from anything. I have personally seen professionals who stay quiet about their work and will never ever wanna associate themselves with either failure (or) success. If similarly you do also like staying away from attention and not wanna soak any limelight, then you have a reason.
Apart from the above reasons, safety and privacy are the most common reasons why people choose to write blogs anonymously.
In this case, I think everyone has their right to do things in their own way which they like, and if someone wants to stay private with their blogs, then it’s their wish, and however we should be happy about that by being anonymous, bloggers tend to share more down to their core information.
Therefore, if you have similar reasons to the above-mentioned ones, then learning how to start an anonymous blog is the right thing to do. Meanwhile, before looking into the technicalities of starting a blog, we do need to measure some more things into account as well.
Disadvantages of blogging anonymously
It’s tough to stay anonymous for longer periods. Still, if you make it then you can enjoy the upsides of it, like freely expressing yourself with no second thoughts, avoiding getting direct hate towards you, and many more.
But along with the advantages to blogging anonymously, there are also disadvantages associated with it, and since you prefer to stay private with your identity, then you should also be aware of these facts:-
You won’t be credited for your success
Now since people who support your anonymous blog don’t know you in person. They will never find out who you are, and everything which you share in the blog will always be credited to the person who wrote it, and in this case, it won’t be you.
Although you can feel positive towards the appreciation for your blogs, honestly you have to live with the fact that you will never be able to associate any of your blog success as your personal achievement publicly.
You won’t become an authoritative figure in your niche
Eventually, when readership on a blog grows, people will consider the person behind the blog as an expert (or) an authoritative figure in their space. Every opinion (or) suggestion which he/she shares is considered valuable.
However in this case of anonymous blogs, people are only aware of the blog’s name, and they don’t know who is responsible for the content. Thus you lose an opportunity to become an authoritative figure in your blogging space.
You can never share talk about your blog with your friends and family
Assuming that you would share a lot of personal stories and you would never want your people to know about those stories and also it might be that you don’t want them to read it in the first place because they are a part of your stories.
Therefore in such cases, you can’t talk about your blog with the people whom you know personally, and keeping it a secret from your friends and family is not that easy.
Does anonymous blogging have a career?
Till now I have shared the reasons behind starting an anonymous blog and the disadvantages attached to it.
But the real question here is, does anonymity blogging have a career?
As I assume you’re at the stage of just starting a blog and keeping it private. But what if furthur down the line you want to make money with it?
This article on how to blog anonymously and make money is all about turning your privacy writing into currency notes.
Therefore by now, you should know that starting a blog anonymously in many ways is similar to starting any other common blog. It’s just that you have different perks and disadvantages attached to it.
In reality, there are actually multiple blogs that I have seen grow while being completely anonymous to date. Some of them are:-
- DiseaseCalledDebt: It is one of the most famous anonymous blogs in the personal finance space, and if you constantly read finance content. Then I am pretty sure that you may have already heard about this blog.
- BudgetsAreSexy: This is another personal finance blog written by an author under the pseudonym ‘J Money.’ He has been featured in multiple major publications for his blogging advice and contributions.
- RecodingNow: This blog is all about music courses and reviews on the products in the industry. Even though this blogger hasn’t kept his identity completely secret, you can sense that he is not sharing a lot about his personal life and indeed this blog makes a lot of money.
I can go on and on with the list; in fact, some of the amazon review affiliate sites which you find daily on Google are mostly anonymous, and such blogs generate good revenue. You can rest assured that you can in fact learn how to start an anonymous blog and make a promising career out of it.
Once you’ve decided to go with anonymous blogging after factoring out everything from advantages to disadvantages and what’s its long-term scope, therefore it’s time to talk about the steps which you need to take to start anonymous blogging.
Step 1: Start with a pen name
For bloggers, the most important asset is their identity, and since you want to keep it anonymous. Therefore you should be ready to use a pen name for your blog (or) for yourself.
Choosing a pen name is vital because from now on, every reader that comes to your blog and checks who has written the article will look at your ‘pen name’ and might embed it in his head.
Thus this step is essential to how to blog anonymously and make money because once you start writing and get recognition under the pen name,
You will be remembered as this name for most of your blogging life.
However you can prefer to choose whatever pen name you want, and basically, I have seen people write pen names derived from their first name/last name, nicknames, domain expertise, and probably any name they wished for.
However, if you’re finding it hard to come up with one good pen name, then you can use tools like Pen Name Generator and Name Generator to come up with a good pen name that suits you the best.
Either way, you shouldn’t waste too much time deciding on one fake name. At the end of the day, the only thing which matters will be that your pen name shouldn’t sound familiar to your original name as people would easily figure it out.
Note: As you finalize your pen name, make sure to create an email account against your pen name so that you could widely use it across the web.
Step 2: Create your blog and launch it
Although this step alone consists of multiple steps, trust me starting a blog in today’s scenario is a lot easier.
Before starting an anonymous blog, you need to have some technical parts in place similar to any other regular blog, which would be:-
- Choosing a domain name and hosting
- Creating a website from scratch
- Sorting out the topics to write about
However, if you’ve read my detailed guide on how to start a successful blog, then you could skip this step. But before cutting it out completely, make sure to read the domain privacy tip (mentioned below) which I want you to keep a note of when you buy a domain name.
Choose a domain name and hosting
I assume if you’ve decided to blog anonymously, then by now, you should know what you’re going to be writing about and precisely which topics you want to publish most within your blog.
Well, with the help of your pen name and topic selection, you would decide your domain name. I suppose your pen name was Samson Rose, and you choose to share your personal health stories in your blog.
Then some good domain names would be:-
- SamsonRose.com (Pen name)
- Samsonhealthstories.com (Pen name + Topic)
- Myhealthstoies.com (Topic related)
Once you have decided what you want to have as your domain name, it’s time to check the availability of your domain name, and the best place to buy both domain names and hosting services would be BlueHost.com.
Domain privacy tip: When you decide to buy a domain name, make sure to purchase the additional data protection and privacy add-on for your domain name. So that people on the internet can’t find you when they dig your domain data.
It’s important to purchase the domain privacy add-ons as it helps you with all this concept of how to start an anonymous blog and keeping it anonymous.
Meanwhile, the best part about buying a domain name and hosting from Bluehost is that it offers a free domain name for one year if you purchase its hosting plan for one year.
Create a WordPress website from scratch
Today, WordPress websites are widespread and it’s even more amongst bloggers as they are easy to create, edit, and customize.
By the way, if you don’t know what WordPress is? It is usually a content management platform that allows you to manage your website’s content and, in most cases, even the website design.
WordPress management requires no coding, and in fact, you can install WordPress with Bluehost’s hosting dashboard and create your own blog outlook within 15-20 mins.
Although even your efforts to create a website are made easier, it doesn’t mean that you can always do it with a few clicks. To make your anonymous blog look like a professional blog and to make it more anonymous.
You have to install a theme and later have to customize your blog accordingly to represent it in the way that you wanted. It’s also important to input the right settings in your blog.
Start writing content for your blog
Well before you start creating your blog, you should have a list of content ideas to write about, and since I assume most of the stories on your anonymous blogs would be personal stories, therefore it is better to save all your ideas in a spreadsheet.
The best practice for creating content ideas and improving your writing is to follow some journaling tips. It is said that by constant journaling, you will become better at writing and managing your blog.
Also, constant journaling does help you with how to write anonymously and manage your whole process of writing, ideation, and productivity.
However since your purpose is to start an anonymous blog and make money, then it is essential to keep in mind that you should be good at doing keyword research too.
For those who don’t know, keyword research is a process of finding search terms for Google and other search engines.
Doing proper keyword research is critical as it helps you to write about search terms that can help you rank on Google and in the end will generate traffic on your site.
I personally use Ahrefs as my tool for keyword research, and if you want a detailed process on keyword research, then you should check my complete guide on how to start a successful blog.
Step 3: How to promote an anonymous blog in 4 different ways
Since our aim with an anonymous blog is to maintain its anonymity. Therefore it becomes even more challenging to promote such a blog using conventional marketing techniques.
Anyways as a blogger, you will have to find ways around to promote your blog thoroughly and keep getting traffic also at the same time never leave a clue of who you are.
Big tip: Try to stay away from social media platforms. Even though they are a good traffic source to promote, once you start using a platform, you would become more vulnerable to being exposed publicly.
Hence to promote an anonymous blog in the right way, I have found four ways in which you can do it effectively:-
1) Use self-publishing and other content creation platforms
For any blogger, their blog will be the first place where they would publish the content and once the job of publishing is done it’s all about promoting.
In the beginning, there won’t be any organic traffic on your site; thus, it is better to parallelly and anonymously write on websites that have good existing traffic.
On the internet, there are tons of websites and platforms where you can create and start your sub-blog for free, and some of these sites have millions of monthly active readers and, at the same time, these sites have the potential to rank on Google.
Therefore such content creation platforms are the best bet for promoting your blog, and the best part here is that these websites will help you secure your anonymity too.
Re-publishing outside of your blog and generating traffic to your blogs through different sites will initially help you gain traction. For starters, these are some of the sites:-
- Medium
- Vocal Media
- WordPress.com
- Blogger
- Write. as
- Quora
- Hubpages
- Google sites
Note: While signing up for any of these platforms, make sure to use an email ID with your pen name so that you could use it everywhere without having to reveal your own name.
Also while writing and creating content on these sites make sure to use your pen name and never share your personal details in them.
2) Publish a guest post on authoritative sites
From the SEO POV to rank in Google, guest posts are a great way to build backlinks and increase your blog’s authority. Despite whatever niche you choose to write about, there will always be tons of websites accepting guest posts.
Hence all your part will be to pitch websites with unique content ideas and finally get your guest posts published under your pen name.
J.money from BudgetsAreSexy has published multiple guest posts and grew his anonymous blog just by getting huge exposure through guest posts.
Usually, guest posting is done in three stages:-
Stage 1 (Prospecting): You will need to find websites that could be your potential prospects for guest posts in this stage.
The easiest way to start looking for a guest post blog opportunity is by typing ‘your keyword’ + ‘guest post’ (OR) ‘your keyword’ + ‘write for us’ in Google search, and once done, you will be shown a list of websites that are open for guest posts.
Stage 2 (Vetting): In this stage, you will filter out the best blogs and websites to pitch your guest posts ideas.
Usually, in this stage, I would personally save my guest post prospecting list in a Google Spreadsheet and visit each site individually to validate whether I have a chance to get published on their site.
Once I know to websites do I have a possibility of publishing guest posts, I would usually grab either the website owner’s email ID (or) editor’s email ID.
Stage 3 (Pitching): In this stage, you will pitch multiple websites where you have a chance to publish your content and get a backlink.
Remember, you must pitch the right person for guest posts, and also, you should have at least 3-4 guest posts/content ideas in hand to share with your prospects. Later if they like your idea, you would have a great chance to get an article published under your pen name.
3) Run PPC ads for traffic
Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to learn how to promote an anonymous blog, generate traffic, and hopefully convert them into your long-time readers.
Although to run ads you need a good budget, therefore I won’t recommend PPC ads for people with tighter pockets. Also, I would only recommend text and display campaigns in Google ads as they are easy to create, and also you can entirely run those ads with complete anonymity.
However, you may not see any immediate results with your Google ad campaigns as these promotion tactics are only used to give exposure to your blog.
Although once you generate consistent traffic with Google ads, you will see more than a handful of readers turning into your long-term readers. Therefore your blog would eventually grow into good numbers with potential PPC ads.
4) Use email marketing to bring back your existing readers
In online marketing, you cannot write off email marketing as it has been generating results for marketers for decades. Even to this date, most marketers and companies around the world still consider email marketing to be the best marketing channel.
Moreover, the best part of email marketing is that it is easy to set up, and all you ever need is an autoresponder which will make this process simple and sassy.
In my quest, I found GetResponse, Mailerlite, and Convertkit to be the best autoresponders for email marketing especially for new bloggers out there. Remember all these tools offer a free trial period, so I think that you should leverage that offer and include emails as your major promotion strategy for your blog.
How to make money with an anonymous blog in 4 different ways
Many people assume that making money with an anonymous blog is similar to making money like with any other average blog but it’s not.
Since here you’re restricting ourselves to limit our identity, it becomes crucial not to give away any of your details when you make money with your blog.
The best example would be that you’re not going to make money selling any video courses (or) any coaching calls. Since both these methods require you to show your face and that would reveal your identity. Therefore the ways to earn money with anonymous blogs are limited.
However, this article on how to blog anonymously and make money is incomplete without this section. Therefore I am here to share with you the only ways on how you would make more money by keeping your anonymity.
Make money from ad revenue
The most convenient way to make money with any blog would be through ad revenue. In this money model, you would sign up with an ad network that will be responsible for placing ads on your blogs, and since advertisers are paying to place ads on your blog. In the end, you’re getting paid for running ads on your blog.
Currently, there are a lot of ad networks that can help you monetize your blog with ads, and the most commonly used platforms by bloggers would be :-
- Google Adsense
- Ezoic
- adThrive
- Mediavine
Make money with affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is undoubtedly a big-money-making opportunity for bloggers who frequently share (or) talk about products in their blogs and if somehow you have written an article mentioning any product (or) tool in your anonymous blog.
Then I would highly recommend you to start affiliate marketing and monetize your blog through it.
To start making money with affiliate marketing, you’ll need to place affiliate links in your blog so that people could click and purchase those products, and in the end, you get commissioned for the sales.
To find products to become an affiliate to, you need to sign up to any of these marketplaces:-
- Amazon associates
- ClickBank
- Digistore24
- Commission Junction
- ShareASale
Remember, while signing up for any of these accounts, create your username and affiliate links as your pen name so that when people try to track your affiliate link (or) your username, they end up with your pen name.
Make money through sponsored posts
As your blog viewership starts growing and you know that there is a community of people who trust your content and will always read whatever you post.
In such a case, you have an excellent opportunity to land some promotional and sponsorship deals where you can agree with brands to write/promote their products through your articles.
Primarily sponsored posts work in only one way, eventually, brands would pitch you asking to promote their products, and in reply, you share your charges per post. Hence there is no other way around this, which means you can’t be pitching brands to ask them to pay you for writing about them. It doesn’t work that way.
Unless you have a massive following in your niche, then you can land a potential sponsorship deal, but once you start landing one deal at a time, it becomes a very lucrative income stream hence helping you with how to blog anonymously and make money.
Make money by selling your ebooks
Ebooks online are always in demand, and people who tend to read blogs online will not hesitate to buy an ebook but only if it’s adding some value to their life.
Hence as you learn how to promote an anonymous blog and figure out a way to write anonymously, you can share anything about your blogging experience (or) something within your domain expertise where you think you can add value to people.
Today, ebooks are certainly one of the best ways to make money because with an ebook selling. You actually can write, publish, and sell those books under your pen name and thus your full anonymity is maintained.
Conclusion
I hope this article helped your query on how to blog anonymously and make money.
Even though blogging anonymously is pretty much similar to everyday blogging. But here the only difference is that you would have to maintain certain privacy with your readers and have to keep your identity as secret as possible.
