27/09/2020
As a blogger, you can choose many niches for your blog that can be monetized in order to make money. You can write about health, politics, entertainment, science, etc. You should choose a niche you are comfortable writing about and have authority, command over that subject. For example, Tech Crunch is one of the world’s largest technology blog. It is huge because it has the resources and authority to cover the latest technology news from all over the world and people trust the news. While offering technology news from all over the world, the company makes good money with their blog.
Remember, If your audience is misled, you can be fined for wrong information as this Australian blogger found out 2 years back.
The traffic on the blog primarily comes from the search engines only if proper keywords in the post are used. When you write a lot on your blog about a particular subject, search engines, Google, in particular, begins to take you as an authority for that subject and begins to rank you for your business-related keywords. Without traffic, the blog has no value because the content on a blog is only meaningful if people are reading it.
Alongside search engines, the traffic also comes from social media. It includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Through social media, people begin to resonate a value with your blog and eventually build brand loyalty with your blog.
On social media, if you are able to provide a value proposition and engage your audience, they begin to visit your blog daily and eagerly wait for new content on the site. That engagement once materialized, helps you make money from your blog. The essence is to provide good content by writing good, create good engagement, and money will begin to follow automatically.
I have tested and tried all social media connections for my blog’s promotion. I have learned that pictures and video posts related to your blog niche followed by a post link do resonate well with your target audience and then they engage with the content.
If you own a page, you will instantly figure out from the above pictures that both posts engagement is organic and no money is spent on marketing and advertisement. You can only experience such engagement if your audience finds value in your content and they are compelled to share it with their network.
By now we have established 3 basic guidelines for starting a blog.
It needs to have great content for audience engagement in order to make money
It should be picked by search engines
it should have good social media engagement
I am in the business of telling you that blogging is not easy instead of making you believe that all you need are some tools to just start doing it. You can have all the tools you need but, if you are not aware of using them correctly, or are too stressed, too angry, or don’t have enough patience, success would be a far cry.
This is why most bloggers quit when they realize how difficult blogging is because they are unable to strike a perfect balance between the content and the audience. As a blogger, when you feel like giving up, stop complaining, and instead, work on finding the power in your words, it is the essential key to engage your audience, bring more traffic.
It isn’t hard if you do a bit of blogging each day, write, edit, read other blogs, and take part in conversations that will help feed your brain with information. Blogging is something that you can do from home and it does not put any limit on how much money you can make. But it is better if you understand first how to actually begin with the process:
Set up a blog.
Begin by creating useful content.
Search your audience.
Build engagement with the audience.
Start making money from your blog.
When you think of making money from blogging, of course, it requires you to actually have a blog. The process of starting a blog might be overwhelming but there are a number of steps that can get you started. Beginning with choosing your blogging platform and then configure your blog.
These two websites are the best way to start your blog
Blogger
WordPress
Once you do that then comes the step for designing it. With a blogging platform, you can get your content on the web as the blog is set up online and you need to signup, create your account, and write the blog post and publish it.
WordPress is by far the most popular blogging platform for many bloggers and I would give priority to WordPress too. My blog is created on WordPress. It gives you the freedom to have your blog user interface and design the way you want, it has built-in security features and more can be added with plugins. For a WordPress blog, you need web hosting to host it along with a domain name. You can buy the hosting and domain name from GoDaddy, BlueHost, Fatcow, or any other service provider you are referred to.
For setting up your WordPress blog on the hosting server, do not do it yourself if you do not know how to publish a blog on a live server. I would suggest going to a freelance marketplace and post your project, find a freelancer, and get this service done within 24 to 48 hours. This way, you do not have to worry about things that are not relevant to you and can focus on building content for your blog.
Create useful content:
Obviously, when you have a blog, it contains content. Content is what brings you money on the table.
But, this content should not be of poor quality. You need to focus your attention on creating useful content because a powerful content creates engagement. A good writer should use proper English. It is better to create content that changes people’s lives in one way or another or provides them with useful information about a topic. With quality content, the audience is engaged, they find value in it as they trust you as an authority over a particular subject. It is the only way to bring continuous traffic on your blog and make money.
If you want to find those keywords your potential reader is searching on Google, the best and a beginner’s resource is on a famous internet marketer Neil Patel’s website.
This website is a preliminary tool to search for keyword ideas for your blog. As you grow as a freelancer, you will come across many advanced tools such as Google Keyword Planner and a lot more but to begin with, Neil’s Uber Suggest would suffice. I find it a perfect resource to search for business-related keywords for my blog. The website also give you a fair idea about the volume, competition, and the money that is being offered for a particular keyword.
The suggestion tool has a near to perfect AI bot that suggests you the keywords used on Google. In the picture, I have used the keyword ‘how to make money’ and the website gives keyword suggestions based on the search volume, keyword difficulty (lower the number, higher the chances of ranking that keyword).
A blog without a good picture is a house without a roof. A picture is worth a thousand words. As a blogger, you need to use pictures that are royalty-free and do not need any credits given to the photographer. One such great resource is Pixels. It has hundreds of thousands of royalty-free images that you can use on your blog. Remember, a picture should reflect the blog post. A blog post about the importance of eating healthy food using a picture of deserted summer road would be a perfect mismatch.
Grow for your audience:
For making money from your blog, all you need to do is to be great with your content and start to promote it. Growing your blog’s audience can be done in a number of ways but you should not just be looking for “more traffic” but for actual readers who understand what the blog is about. You can create great value with your blogs, focus, podcasts, social media accounts, and webinars.
You have to build your presence, add value, and foster relationships that you build through your readership. Remember, the greater the content and powerful words used in your blog, the higher the chances of engagement, social media sharing, and building brand loyalty. The most effective way to search for your audience is the Google search engine, use keywords in your blog post people are looking for, do inbound linking with your other blog posts, and outbound linking with external authority websites who have also written a blog post about that particular subject.
Build engagement with your audience:
When you start creating a good quality blog, you begin to notice people who visit your blog and engage with the content you have created. This is when you need to engage with your audience by responding to comments, reach out to readers personally who show concern, and do everything that makes them your regular visitors. On social media, creating polls, asking your audience questions gives them a sense of ownership of the brand. Not only their engagement to the post increase but they also invite their friends to voice their opinion.
Another way of building engagement with your audience is by offering a newsletter on your blog. When people give you their email address it means, they trust you, want to hear more from you, and receive your email. If they like the content in the newsletter, they share it in their circles which increases your viewership. If you are using WordPress for your blog, you can easily install a Newsletter plugin or ask your web developer to do it for you.
How to Monetize your blog?
After creating good quality content, finding readers, and building an engagement with the readers, give yourself the chance to start making money with your blog.
It is because this is the foundation that you need to set for making money from your blogging business. You are required to work continuously for your blog and experiment with different strategies to keep your readers curious for more content.
Well, there are many websites that offer the best CPM advertising for bloggers but my pick is Google Adsense. It is Google’s partner program which you can signup on their website. The formula for earning is very simple. Advertisers are looking for an audience to watch their ads and if they can find good traffic on your blog, you get paid well.
When people click on ads that are displayed on your blog, you make money. Also, you can monetize your blog by getting in a lot of sponsored blog requests. These sponsorship offers are very lucrative. they pay in well and could be a great source of income.
This is about everything you would need to make money with blogging.
With the beginning of blogging, people considered it a comfortable means to earn money while sharing their thoughts with the world. There are numerous niches that are offered by blogging websites according to various interests. It is easy to find a suitable one but the downside is how much you can likely earn from them?.
As with any profession in life, you should have a realistic expectation of blogging. Couple of statistics in blogging will give a clear depiction of its right perspective.
According to the researches, the exact number of blogs on the blog-sphere is titled more towards 200 million away from 100 million. So it will be conservative to consider the number as 175 million blogs around the world.
And all these 175 million bloggers are longing for the attention of 3.5 billion internet users. 1.5 million Posts are made from WordPress on a daily basis which makes it 45 million posts each month. With the continuously changing marketing strategies, it is only possible for the fittest to survive.
Is blogging that bad?
It would be wrong to call blogging something really bad. Blogging is tough and challenging and a blogger must have the information that can keep the ship floating. Succeeding or failing comes down entirely in the hands of bloggers.
Blogging bad habits and damaging misconceptions:
Blogging is not for the faint of heart but because the outcomes can be sometimes a little dingy. But a blogger should also be aware of the misconceptions that are prevailing in the niche.
Short term views: As a blogger, one should know that it is not a gold mine. Landing a gold mine requires a lot of digging, expanded resources, and time. Same is the case with blogging; hard work pays off after a long time.
Expertise: You need expertise and passion for setting out in the blogging field. There is no use of just searching the internet for providing content to the audience. You need to build upon your expertise.
Blogging is fun: Until you set yourself on the track, blogging can be regarded as something really cool. A combination of expertise is needed to run the blogging business including discipline, timeliness, planned contents, financial commitments, and marketing strategies.
Passion: Nothing works without passion; passion is the only thing that keeps you going.
Wrong priorities: Making money should not be the priority when it comes to blogging.
Planned activities: Running a blog business is not such that you can post anything at any time you seem suitable. It is like running a lifetime campaign; actions taken must be planned for achieving particular goals.
Focus: This business will work better if the blogs are specific to a particular niche. This is because every niche has room for improvement and lot can be explored.
Response to criticism: Criticism does not mean that you have failed. Your response as a blogger is the actual thing when it comes to negative reactions. As a blogger, always be prepared for critics. Some may like your point of view, other’s may out-rightly refuse the perspective, resulting in lot of criticism.
Traffic and visitors: Managing traffic in blogging has unfortunately come down to the overuse of pop-ups.
Be Professional in your Marketing:
Quality of content: For running a blog business, the content quality is the foremost thing to focus on. Great quality content is the reason for driving large amount of traffic. Be creative, dynamic, and flexible about the type of content you provide to your audience.
Page optimization: For coming up to the market competition, you need to ensure your blog is optimized. Good quality content includes rich, relevant, and informative work for the digital users.
Target audience: Billions of people on the internet do not care about you or your blog; it’s your business and your responsibility to persuade them for reading your blog. Your job is to have a complete know how about the needs and tastes of your audience so that you can provide them with better solutions.Think big, think different and think out of box to engage the audience to your blog.
Your blog can be money making machine:
Following ways can help you earn a handsome amount of money with your blogging business,
Loyal and trusting follower-ship: Building a loyal follower-ship is the key to a successful blogging business.
Create a product or service related to our blog: It is wise to create a product or a service around your blog. You can offer courses, e-books, organize lectures according to your particular niche.
Advertise: For bringing money to your blogging, advertising can be really helpful. It includes pay-per click ads, text link ads, banner ads, sponsored reviews, video, and audio ads etc.
Social media services to other organizations: Once you get your hands on blogging, the multimedia companies will be intimidated with your experience and may like to benefit from it.
Digital consultation: After your own experience in the field of blogging, you can offer other companies to manage their social media platforms, their digital campaigns etc.
Affiliate marketing: Once you create a platform to generate profits, many companies will be willing to offer win-win partnerships.
Donation: Donations may be more effective for blogs that are directed towards social services. But you can integrate a donation function for your blog as well if you able to convince others about the benefits.
End result:
After managing your blog in an appropriate manner, you can gain the following results
Working with passion will give you self-satisfaction.
You will have great rewards in the form of good revenues.
A strong marketing platform that bigger brands will wait to get associated to.
Corporate relevance, you will not be ignored in the industry.
You will be able to achieve the goals for which you are blogging.
Products and services can be easily created around your blog.
You will earn a reputation, exposure and will have great traffic.
