How to Create a Book Review Blog That Actually Makes Money in 5 Simple Steps

You’re here because you want to know how to create a book review blog.

You’re in the right place because we help people create blogs that are businesses that make money. Blogging as a business if you will.

That’s important to understand. If you’re here because you want to create a hobby then you really don’t need this post at all.

Just go find a web host, install WordPress, and start writing.

However, if you want to start a book review blog that makes money then pay attention because we are going to take you on a journey.

But first things first we need to understand how blogs make money.

How Does a Book Review Blog Make Money?

When it comes to book review blogs, there are two main ways to make money.

1. Ads
2. Affiliate marketing
3. Paid reviews

Ads are pretty self-explanatory. You write content and try to get a ton of traffic so that you can make a lot of money with ads. That’s how most people view blogging.

How much traffic do you need? If you’re hoping to make $1,000 a month then you’re looking to get AT LEAST 70,000 pageviews a month.

120,000 to be safe.

Yes, that’s a lot of pageviews and it can be discouraging, but we’ll show you other ways to make money later.

The second most popular way is through affiliate marketing which makes perfect sense because if you’re going to review a book then you’ll also want to get credit when people buy it from your review.

The downside to this is that you’re going to make very little money from someone buying a book because books don’t cost a lot of money.

For Amazon, you get 4.5% for physical books. That means you have to hope someone actually buys the physical version instead of the Kindle version.

So if someone buys a $15 book you’ll make $0.68.

You’d have to sell a lot of one book to do any damage to your bank account.

However, don’t just see it as one book. With each new book review that gives you an opportunity to make more income.

If you have a site with 100 reviews, that’s 100 books that could be purchased on any particular day.

Small things add up.

Other Ways to Make Money with a Book Review Blog

So what are the other ways you can make money with a book review blog?

It comes down to creating your own offers.

We love offers here at Odd Noodle because you get most of the revenue. For example, if you buy one of our courses we get all of that money minus the credit card processing fees.

For example, if you purchased a $100 course then we’d get $97.50 (about).

Now you might be thinking that you can’t create a course for a book review site, but I think you could.

But I won’t go into that at the moment.

Let’s actually look at other ways to make money with a book review blog.

Membership Book Club

This one seems the most obvious. An online book club where people can discuss books.

But they have to pay a monthly or annual fee.

Why would they do that? Because people like community and great discussion.

I’m not saying this would be easy to put together, but I don’t see why it isn’t doable.

Especially following all of the principles that you can find throughout this site.

Book Summaries

Book summaries are nothing new, but what if you were to offer your version of a book summary?

Your interpretation of a book can be entertaining and fun. It can also save people a lot of time from having to read the book.

Book Notes

This is my favorite idea because I’m now getting into note-taking.

Instead of just a summary of a book, you provide your chapter-by-chapter notes of the book.

In essence, you act as the teacher of the book.

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So those are just some of the ways you could monetize a book review blog.

But how do you put all of this together? Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as you think.

How to Create a Book Review Blog

The goal here is to set you up for success with your Book Review Blog. If we just wanted to show you how to install WordPress then that isn’t really setting you up for success.

Ready?

1. Choose a Niche

Wait a minute?! Don’t you already have a niche?

Yes, but I’d advise you to niche down even further. Are you going to review all genres of books or one specific genre?

Are you going to stick to one author or a certain type of author?

These are decisions you should make upfront. I know that might worry you but the plan isn’t to just stick with these narrow niches unless you find the success you want with them.

The idea is to make an impact on a narrow niche first and then expand if you want.

If you can’t make a name for yourself as a book reviewer then you aren’t going to get far. You need to stand out in some way and the best way to do that is to target a niche specifically so you get to be seen as the authority of it.

What this will also do is show your audience that you’re speaking to them.

For example, what if I decided that I was only going to review books by Black, Gay Females?

I haven’t done any research on this, but my gut tells me that I would stand out and my audience would be excited to see what I review next.

The idea of choosing your niche is that you want to attract people with the same worldview. If we are sticking with the Black Gay Female niche, then I might attract a dedicated following of black gay female readers who see the world like I do which draws them in even closer and more willing to tell their friends.

What about the authors? Do you think they’d be more willing to talk to me because I focus on them? I’m the one who is actually paying attention to them instead of throwing them into a pot with everyone else.

There is a huge opportunity to start narrow.

It’s always going to be your best bet.

2. Choose a Name

Choosing a domain name doesn’t have to be hard.

However, here is my one piece of advice.

Remember in the first step how I said you could expand your niche over time?

This becomes a lot harder when you use a specific name for example onlyreview1954horror.com.

We like to use Hover to host all of our domains and Namevine to search for ideas.

3. Get Some Web Hosting

I won’t go into all of the details of web hosting. We recommend Siteground because they have excellent customer support and that’s what you need.

You’ll want to go with one of their WordPress plans, you can start with the cheapest one, and that will get your site actually up and running quickly.

4. Write 5 Reviews

Before telling the world about your new blog I suggest you write 5 reviews.

Now, this is where sticking to a narrow niche will pay off because it will make sense to link all of those reviews together.

When someone comes to read one review there is a good chance they will be interested in the other ones as well because they are in the same niche.

See how all of this is working out?

5. Promote Your Reviews Constantly

Now comes the hard part. The thing that you need to do consistently.

When you start your blog it is living on an island.

Nobody knows about it.

So what you need to do is get out there and promote your review. However, I don’t want you to mistake this for spamming.

Don’t just show up on sites and tell people about your review. Instead, join other online discussions that are happening with the book or the author.

Give people time to get to know you and if you can insert a link to one of your reviews in a natural way then do so.

Pinterest is also another opportunity to freely promote your work.

Going Beyond

I know starting off this can be a lot to take in however, let’s start thinking beyond a Book Review Blog.

Because this is a business that you’re creating (yes, even if you try to pretend it’s just a blog, if it’s going to make money it’s a business) you need to view it as a brand.

That means you could consider expanding to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or other platforms.

The question you should always be asking is why people would come to you for reviews versus someone else.

The more you put yourself out there the more people will grow to love you.

While they may initially come for the book reviews, they will stay for you.

And that’s how you grow your brand.