How To Make $5,000 Blogging with Social Media

Most bloggers treat social media like a second job. They spend three hours crafting captions, another hour scheduling posts, and by the end of the week they have published zero new content on their actual website. That is backwards. Social media is not your business. Your blog is your business. Social media is the billboard pointing people toward it, nothing more.

Alston lays this out plainly in the video above. The message is uncomfortable for people who have been told that posting daily on Instagram is the path to income. The truth is simpler: every minute you spend on someone else’s platform is a minute you are not building something you control. Here is the system that actually works for bloggers who want to earn from their sites.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The one rule for social media that protects your time and focuses your effort
Why Pinterest is the single best social platform for blog traffic and how to use it
How to enter Facebook Groups without getting flagged or wasting hours on low-return activity
The exact hashtag categories Alston uses on Twitter to get discovered every week
An honest assessment of Instagram and why it underdelivers for most bloggers
How the Blog to Social plugin automates your entire social push from a single WordPress publish
The oversaturation trap that kills blogs even when the content is good
How to find the online income model that fits your current skills at finder.platformproof.com

The One Rule That Changes Everything

Alston’s framework for social media comes down to one sentence: use it only to send people back to your website. That is it. That is the whole strategy. Not to build a following on the platform, not to go viral, not to engage for engagement’s sake. The sole purpose of every post, pin, tweet, and reel is to get someone off that platform and onto yours.

The reason this rule matters is economic. Social media platforms are designed to keep users on-site as long as possible. The longer someone stays on Facebook, the more ad revenue Facebook earns. When you spend your afternoon creating content for Instagram, you are directly contributing to Instagram’s business model, not your own. Every like, comment, and share you collect on someone else’s platform is value you cannot monetize. The only place you can run your own ads, promote your own affiliate offers, and sell your own digital products is your website.

This is not anti-social-media thinking. It is a clear-eyed view of where the money actually comes from. Traffic on your website converts to income. Traffic on Twitter converts to more Twitter traffic. Once you accept that distinction, every social media decision becomes obvious.

How Blog to Social Automates the Entire Push

Alston uses a WordPress plugin called Blog to Social. The way it works is straightforward: when he clicks publish on a new blog post, the plugin automatically distributes that post to Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms simultaneously. He is not an affiliate for the tool, he just uses it and it works.

The premium version of Blog to Social goes further. It lets you schedule tweets and Pinterest pins to go out at future intervals, not just at publish time. That means a single blog post can generate weeks of social media activity without any additional manual effort. The content is written once on your website. The plugin handles the distribution. You get back to writing the next post.

The math behind this approach is simple. The problem with manual social media management is that it requires your active attention every time. A plugin-based system requires your attention once. The difference in time reclaimed across a year of blogging is enormous. If you write two posts per week and each post would have taken you two hours to manually distribute across five platforms, you are saving roughly 400 hours per year by automating it. That is ten full working weeks.

Pinterest: The Search Engine That Actually Sends Traffic

Alston ranks Pinterest first among social platforms for blog traffic, and the reason is structural. Pinterest is not like other social networks. It is a visual search engine. Users go to Pinterest the same way they go to Google, to find specific information. They type in a topic or a question, and they browse image results that link out to external content. That external content is your blog post.

When you create a Pinterest pin, you embed a link that takes the reader directly to your blog or YouTube video. Someone searches for “how to start a blog” or “passive income ideas,” they find your pin, they click it, and they land on your site. The traffic is warm because they were already searching for exactly what you cover. That is fundamentally different from someone scrolling a Facebook feed and accidentally encountering your post between family photos and news stories.

The key on Pinterest is the image quality and the keyword. The platform rewards beautiful, clear visuals that match the search intent of the user. If your blog is in a visual niche like cooking, home decor, travel, or personal finance with infographic-style content, Pinterest can drive a significant volume of recurring traffic from a single well-made pin. Even in less visual niches, text-overlay pins on a clean background outperform zero presence on the platform.

You do not need to spend hours on Pinterest each week. Pin your blog posts as you publish them, use keyword-rich descriptions, link back to your site, and let the platform’s search algorithm do the work over time. Pinterest traffic builds slowly but compounds in a way that most social platforms do not.

Facebook Groups: The Slow-Burn Play With Real Rules

Facebook Groups are the second platform Alston recommends, with a caveat. Done right, they work. Done carelessly, you get banned from the group and waste the time you invested building credibility there.

The approach is to search Facebook for groups in your specific niche. If you blog about personal finance, find personal finance groups. If you blog about productivity, find productivity groups. Then join them and spend time providing genuinely helpful content before you ever drop a link. Alston recommends writing about 100 to 200 words of useful information, something that stands on its own as a useful answer or tip, and then linking back to your blog post or video for the full breakdown.

The step most people skip is contacting the moderator first. Before you start posting links in a group, reach out to the owner or moderator and ask what the rules are. Most moderators are fine with members sharing relevant external links as long as the content is genuinely helpful and not spam. Getting that confirmation before you post protects your standing in the group and shows good faith. Alston has done this with groups in his niche and reports it works when you approach it respectfully.

The limitation of Facebook Groups is that the content feed moves fast. Facebook’s algorithm is designed to keep users refreshing constantly, which means that any post you make can disappear from active view within hours. A large portion of the group may never see what you shared. The solution is posting consistently, not once a week but every few days, so that the members who do happen to be active at different times encounter your content regularly. Combine that with providing value consistently enough that people start to recognize your name and seek out your posts specifically.

Twitter (X): Hashtags and Daily Volume

Twitter operates differently from Facebook Groups in one important way: discoverability through hashtags. On Twitter, someone searching the hashtag #affiliatemarketing or #passiveincome can find your tweet even if they have never heard of you before. This makes Twitter’s discovery mechanism more aligned with what bloggers actually need, which is reaching new audiences who are already interested in the topic.

Alston uses hashtags including affiliate marketing, internet marketing, online marketing, passive income, and WordPress. When he posts his YouTube videos to Twitter with those hashtags, people who are actively searching those topics can find and follow him. In one week of consistent posting, he picked up around ten new followers using this approach. That is not viral growth, but it is genuine interest from real people in the target audience.

His Twitter handle at the time of this video was godbold5234. The account links people back to his YouTube videos, which then link back to his website. The chain matters: Twitter pulls in someone new, YouTube builds trust with video content, the website converts that trust into revenue through ads or affiliate offers. Social media is the top of that funnel. Your website is where the money is.

Like Facebook, Twitter’s feed moves at a pace that makes any single tweet easy to miss. Posting once per day is a minimum. Posting two or three times per day, with different angles on the same core content, significantly increases the odds that your target audience sees something from you on any given day. The key is keeping each tweet focused on value rather than promotion, so that people associate your account with useful content rather than spam.

Instagram: An Honest Assessment

Instagram is where most bloggers spend the most time and get the least traffic in return. Alston is direct about this. For his niche and experience, Instagram has been the hardest platform to convert into actual website visitors. The core structural problem is that images in the main feed are not clickable. Someone can see your post, appreciate your visual, but they cannot click through to your blog post from that image. They have to manually type your URL into their browser, which almost no one does.

The workaround, a single link in bio, means that your Instagram traffic is bottlenecked through one URL regardless of how many posts you create. If you are running fifty different blog posts and want to send different Instagram visitors to different content, the link-in-bio system creates real friction.

That said, Alston still uses Instagram because Blog to Social pushes his content there automatically. The plugin sends out the first paragraph of each blog post with an accompanying image, which means his Instagram account is active without him spending any manual time on it. He has picked up followers through this passive activity. Whether those followers ever visit his blog is less certain, but the cost is zero additional time, so the investment makes sense.

If you blog in a highly visual niche, Instagram becomes more defensible. A food blogger, a travel writer, or a home design site can use Instagram’s format in a way that a personal finance or marketing blogger cannot. If your niche is not inherently visual, automate Instagram through a plugin and do not spend manual time there.

Not sure which online income model fits your background?

Answer five questions and get a specific recommendation matched to your skills at finder.platformproof.com.

The Oversaturation Trap

There is a point in every blogger’s social media journey where the strategy inverts. You start using social media to promote your blog, which is the right move. But over time, you start spending more time on social media engagement and less time writing blog content. The ratio flips. Now you are a social media creator who occasionally blogs rather than a blogger who uses social media strategically.

Alston calls this oversaturation. It is when you are spending so much time engaging on social platforms, responding to comments, chasing trending topics, trying to crack the algorithm, that your core content production on your website slows down or stops entirely. This is fatal for a blog-based income model.

The blog post count on your site is the primary driver of organic search traffic. Each post is a long-term asset that can rank on Google for years and send you traffic without you doing anything additional. A tweet has a lifespan of minutes. A Pinterest pin can last months. A blog post optimized for search can send traffic for years. The compounding value is entirely on the side of your website, not your social accounts.

The way to avoid oversaturation is to set a hard time budget for social media before you open any app. Decide that you will spend twenty minutes per day on social media total, and hold to it. Use that time to respond to direct questions, post one new item, and close the app. The remaining hours go toward writing, editing, and publishing blog content. That ratio is what builds a sustainable income over time.

Honest Drawbacks

The social media strategy Alston describes is real and it works, but it is worth being clear about what it does not promise.

First, the timeline is slow. Ten followers in a week from Twitter hashtags is progress, but it is not explosive growth. Building a meaningful social media presence that consistently drives traffic back to your blog takes months, not days. Anyone promising quick wins through social media for bloggers is probably selling a course.

Second, Facebook Group access is gated by moderator approval and community norms. In some niches, groups are very protective of their members and restrict self-promotion heavily. You may need to participate for several weeks before you have enough credibility to share links. Factor that time into your expectations.

Third, automation tools like Blog to Social have a cost. The free version has limitations. The premium version, which schedules posts and pins over time, comes with a subscription fee. That is a real expense for someone who is just starting out and has not yet earned income from their blog. Weigh that cost against your current revenue before committing.

Fourth, Instagram traffic for most bloggers will remain marginal. Do not build your traffic strategy around Instagram unless you are in a highly visual niche and willing to invest in high-quality photography or design.

None of these drawbacks make the strategy wrong. They make it realistic. Realistic expectations are what keep you in the game long enough for the strategy to actually pay off.

Find Your X

Blogging with social media is one valid path to building an online income. Whether it is the right path for you depends on your skills, your niche, your current commitments, and what kind of work you are actually willing to do consistently over months and years. A five-question quiz at finder.platformproof.com matches your background to the income model most likely to work for you. It takes two minutes and the recommendation is free.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much time should I spend on social media each day as a blogger?

Alston recommends treating social media as a minimal time investment. The goal is to push your content out and get back to writing. Twenty to thirty minutes per day is a workable ceiling for most bloggers. If you are spending more than that, you are likely engaging at the expense of content creation, which is the more valuable activity.

Is Blog to Social the only plugin for automating social media publishing?

No. Blog to Social is the tool Alston uses and recommends in this video, but there are other options including Jetpack’s Publicize feature and Buffer’s WordPress integration. The right choice depends on which platforms you want to post to and your budget. The core principle, automating your distribution from a single publish action, applies regardless of which tool you use.

Why is Pinterest better for blog traffic than Instagram?

Pinterest is a search engine first and a social network second. Users arrive with intent, searching for specific topics, and the pins link directly to external websites. Instagram is a content feed where images are not clickable in the main grid, which makes driving traffic to your blog structurally harder. For most bloggers, Pinterest converts to site visits at a meaningfully higher rate than Instagram.

What should I write in a Facebook Group post to avoid looking like spam?

Write a genuine answer to a common question in your niche, or share a specific tip that has a concrete takeaway on its own. Keep it to 100 to 200 words. At the end, note that you have covered the topic in more depth on your blog and include a link. The content should be worth reading even if the person never clicks the link. That is the difference between providing value and spamming.

Do I need to be active on every social platform?

No, and trying to be is one of the fastest ways to burn out and underinvest in your actual blog. Pick the one or two platforms that best match your niche and your content style, automate the rest if possible, and put your manual attention only where it generates the most traffic. For most bloggers in non-visual niches, that means Pinterest and one of either Facebook Groups or Twitter.

How do hashtags work on Twitter for blog promotion?

Hashtags on Twitter function like search filters. When you include #affiliatemarketing or #passiveincome in a tweet, that tweet becomes discoverable to anyone searching or following those hashtags. Alston uses hashtags in categories like affiliate marketing, internet marketing, online marketing, passive income, and WordPress to reach people already interested in those topics. The key is relevance. Stuffing unrelated hashtags into a post reduces credibility and rarely produces results.

What is Project 24 and is it worth it for bloggers?

Alston mentions Project 24 by Income School at the end of this video. It is a 24-month structured course designed to take a blogger from zero to replacing a full-time income through their site. The course covers niche selection, how often to write, how to train writers once your volume needs to scale, and a realistic timeline for progress. Alston links to it as an affiliate. Whether it is worth the cost depends on whether you learn better through structured programs or by building independently.

Can I make money from my blog without using social media at all?

Yes. Search engine optimization is the foundation of most successful blogs, and it operates entirely independently of social media. A blog with strong SEO, consistent publishing, and well-placed affiliate links can generate meaningful income without any social presence. Social media accelerates early traffic in the period before your SEO rankings build, but it is not a requirement. If you genuinely find social media to be a time sink, focus on SEO first and add social later.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “How To Make $5,000 Blogging with Social Media,” YouTube, https://youtu.be/NcvglPfvWBA
Blog to Social WordPress plugin, mentioned as the automation tool Alston uses for multi-platform distribution
Project 24 by Income School, referenced as a 24-month blogger training program
Pinterest as a visual search engine for blog traffic, discussed in video and consistent with platform documentation