Believe blogging is only a pastime? Think again- it has the potential to generate a substantial income. Learn how to begin, identify your specialization, and transform your blog into a profitable source of income.
To be straightforward, blogging is not the most effortless method of earning an income. However, the wonderful aspect is that it is accessible to everybody, and it is an impressive addition to your resume.
To generate income as a blogger, you require captivating content and a sufficient amount of persistence and commitment to increase your audience and followers. However, what is the strategy that prosperous bloggers employ to earn money? We’ve conducted interviews with a few of them to unveil their methods of monetization.
The guide we provide presents a practical strategy to launch your blog and transform it into a financially successful small enterprise that can be run from your home.
How to start a blog
There are two primary ways to establish a blog: utilize a no-cost blogging portal or build your own website. We will guide you through each and highlight their advantages and drawbacks.
Free blogging platforms
Ideal for: Casual bloggers who have no desire to monetize their blog.
Advantages: Extremely simple to install and doesn’t cost anything.
Drawbacks include restrictions on personalization and uploading videos or images, inability to add advertisements or utilize affiliate links, no option to personalize the URL, and the provider retains the right to remove your blog.
Setting up a blog for free on many platforms is readily possible, and they are exceptionally user-friendly. This option could be suitable if you’re seeking to blog nonchalantly in the beginning.
However, using free blogging platforms may impose significant restrictions. Your ability to personalise the appearance of your blog will be restricted and the amount of storage available will be limited, thereby causing difficulties when uploading big videos and images.
A further disadvantage is that the platform branding will result in your blog’s URL being ‘www.yourblog.wordpress.com’.
For most bloggers, banner ads and affiliate links are important sources of income, but on most free blogging platforms, they are not allowed.
If these things are not a concern to you, here are some of the top free blogging platforms available online.
Best blogging sites
- WordPress.com – This is a free basic blog hosting service that’s easy to use. You’ll have to put up with WordPress ads and branding unless you pay a monthly fee. It’s also not possible to earn ad revenue unless you pay for the Premium, Business or eCommerce package. There are also limited options for customisation and expansion.
- Blogger – Google’s free blog hosting service, Blogger, is really simple to use. But, the customisation and design options are very limited, and there aren’t a lot of options if you want to add new features.
- Medium – With Medium, the emphasis is on the writing rather than design. It’s used by lots of journalists, writers and experts and is a great way to share your work with a particular community. You can’t run any ads and it’s difficult to create your own personal branding.
Create your own website
Ideal for: Bloggers who are committed and seeking to earn income through their blog.
Advantages: Possessing full authority over design and customization, owning a personalized URL, and the ability to utilize advertisements and affiliate links according to your preferences.
Drawbacks: You’ll need to shell out money for both your domain name (URL) and hosting. However, we can offer advice on affordable web hosting solutions.
The prospect of building a website can be frightening if you don’t possess much technological savvy. However, in actuality, the process is quite simple and can be accomplished in a mere 20 minutes.
Owen, the creator of Save the Student, has crafted a guide that provides simple, progressive instructions for initiating a website.
By having your own website, you’ll have the ability to establish exclusive identity branding (using your own URL) and there’s no possibility of your platform erasing your blog – as you possess and maintain full control over the site.
There is an extensive selection of templates or ‘themes’ available on WordPress for you to choose from. It is recommended that you take your time in selecting one that aligns with both your personality and the subject matter of your blog.
Choose something that is uncomplicated and has ample room for sizable pictures and legible fonts (avoid using Comic Sans and Courier fonts).
How to choose a blog topic
The beginning phase of your blog can be either effortless or extremely challenging.
Selecting a specific area where you can establish yourself as an expert is crucial at this point. In a saturated blogosphere, the primary error made by novice bloggers is beginning a blog without attempting to innovate or distinguish themselves.
Suppose you are fond of fashion, you can integrate your passion for clothing with your caring attitude towards the environment. For instance, instead of creating run-of-the-mill fashion content, you can write a blog about designers who are committed to environmentally-friendly fashion.
Discovering a suitable subject for your brand new blog can be achieved through the following effective methods:
- Look at other blogs – This should be your first port of call. What’s already successful? And more importantly, what’s missing? Find the gaps in the market.
- Use Google – What are people searching for? Use Google suggested searches and autocomplete to discover what people are looking for. If they’re searching for it, that shows there’s a demand.
- Search forums for common FAQs – When people can’t find answers to their questions, they go to forums. What are they asking? What do they need advice on? This will show what people are interested in and what there’s a lack of available information on.
- Track current trends – What topics are in the media right now? It’s good to pick a topic with longevity, but if you can piggyback on a trend early on, you can quickly establish yourself as an expert on it before anyone else. Searching #journorequest on Twitter shows what kind of themes journalists are currently reporting on.
- Think about different types of content – Could you do tutorials/how-to guides? Reviews? Interviews? Lists? It might not be what you write about, but how you write which sets you apart.
- Identify your own interests and passions – While all of the above are important, there’s no point in blogging about something you have zero interest in. You’ll quickly get bored and people will spot your lack of enthusiasm. Write about something you really, truly care about.
Create helpful, valuable content that people are searching for
Remember this lesson every day from now on.
Getting visitors to your website is the only means of earning money through blogging.
If no one is interested in reading your content, how will you monetize it?
There are only a few reasons why people will visit your blog:
- You can solve their problems
- You can answer their questions
Be sure to provide your audience with valuable, beneficial, and practical information.
Sharing your solutions and how you overcame personal problems is the only way to make people interested in reading about them.
It is important to ensure that you are not only keeping a personal journal, but also writing with your audience in mind. Keep in mind that you should always write for your readers.
By sharing your own story of overcoming personal struggles, you can help your readers relate to you and discover effective solutions for their own challenges.
How can you know what your readers want?
Conducting some research is required of you!
You can find numerous popular blogs on any topic you can conceive of.
Simply figure out the reason for their high level of popularity.
- What are they doing that attracts all those readers?
- What type of content do they publish?
Begin by creating a brief inventory of the top 5-10 blogs that are widely read within your preferred subject area.
After that, navigate to Buzzsumo.com. It is the fastest means of ascertaining the most popular and shared articles for every blog on your roster.
Enter each blog URL separately into the search bar.
Afterwards, examine the blog posts that garner the highest number of shares on social media. The figures can be easily observed in the list of outcomes.
Without delay, record all your discoveries. These are actual instances of possible blog topics and articles that have been demonstrated to succeed!
By observing that an article has been shared by thousands of readers, one can ascertain that they have an immense liking for it. Utilize this knowledge to comprehend the preferences of your intended audience.
Monetize your blog the right way
Once you have established your blog and gained expertise in generating popular content, it is crucial to contemplate ways of monetizing it.
- How will you make money blogging exactly?
- What monetization methods should you use?
There are bloggers who earn a large amount of money, some who earn very little, and others who earn nothing.
It is impossible to predict the amount of income one’s blog will generate as there are numerous factors that influence it.
Essential factors include:
- What you blog about
- How you drive traffic to your blog
How do bloggers make money?
To sum it up, constructing a profitable blog can be uncomplicated as long as you select the suitable means of monetization that suit your blog most effectively.
It felt incredible to earn money through blogging for the first time. Despite the small amount of only $2, I was filled with immense joy and happiness.
Working mostly from home, I produced content with an unprecedented level of drive and enthusiasm.
It was empowering to realize that I could increase my modest income through my own hard work.
Believe me, you will start witnessing your initial earnings coming in sooner than you anticipate.
To assist you in commencing, allow me to guide you through some well-known methods of earning money through blogging. After you become acquainted with them, I will propose some options to help you launch your earnings within a few days.
As a blogger, there are three primary avenues to explore when it comes to generating revenue:
1: Display ads
Placing advertisements on your blog is an uncomplicated concept: you vend space for advertising, your audience views an advertisement on your blog, and you receive a commission.
I enjoy the fact that ad revenue is completely passive. After setting up your ads, you can earn money through display ads even while you’re asleep.
It is simple to place ads on your blog as there are numerous leading ad networks available for bloggers to select from.
Initially, you will earn a small amount of income, thus requiring patience. However, the potential for income will increase proportionally with the amount of traffic you generate.
I also utilize display ads on Blogging Explorer. I have partnered with Monumetric, an advertising network that manages nearly all aspects on my behalf.
What’s even better is?
Their team of experts has been invaluable in guiding me through the process of optimizing my ad placement strategy. It can be a time-consuming task, but their unwavering support and assistance have made the journey much easier.
2: Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing involves promoting and selling products or services that belong to another person or company, earning a commission for each sale made.
When executed properly, it has the potential to generate a great passive income stream that continues to pay over the course of several months or even years!
Earning my initial income on my debut blog and currently generating a full-time revenue from blogging is made possible through affiliate marketing. Around 85% of my overall blog earnings come from affiliate sales.
Achieving success in affiliate marketing can be done through straightforward steps.
- Choose a product you use and love
- Join the affiliate program for that product
- Share your success story with the product (create top-notch blog articles)
- Convince your reader why they need the product, too
- Drive traffic to your website
Use Pinterest to grow your blog traffic
It doesn’t matter how long you have been blogging – whether it’s been 10 years or less.
Your content may be excellent, but…
Without generating blog traffic, earning any money is impossible.
How can you attract visitors to your blog?
There are numerous effective techniques available to increase your blog traffic and generate a higher income.
If you’re new to blogging, you may not possess a large social media following on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which most triumphant bloggers employ to enhance traffic to their blogs.
The optimal method to obtain organic, unpaid traffic from Google is through search engine optimization (SEO).
It can take several months for your blog posts to rank well on Google. However, you probably don’t want to wait that long to start seeing an increase in website traffic, do you?
What is the fastest method to generate free traffic for your blog?
Do you use Pinterest?
Indeed, Pinterest serves as a vast search engine that relies on visuals, facilitating people’s search for helpful insights and answers to their predicaments.
