If you've been searching for opportunities to make money online for a while, you probably have read about starting your blog.
The reasons are many – You can get up and running quickly, write from anywhere and at any time, have the flexibility to ditch a day job, and the list goes on and on.
The beauty of starting a blog is that you can work on it as much, or as little as you want, and all while doing so from whatever location you choose.
Why choose Blogging?
Reading is one of the most preferred ways of consuming information in the world.
People like to read stuff even on the internet, and Blogging is one of the best ways to provide them the information they seek.
With ample free tutorials and tools available on the internet, starting a blog is relatively straightforward.
The investment required to start a blog and maintain it is very economical.
Search engines rank blogs higher in search results, which provides a great source of free traffic to blogs.
Today's social media is a big thing and provides an excellent platform for speeding up blog growth and reaching a wider audience.
All these things provide a conducive environment for starting a profitable blog.
Who is this ideal for:
If you have good knowledge in any particular area and would like to share that information with a global audience, then this may be the gig for you.
Next, you must enjoy writing.
Writing must be your thing. If it is, then this will be one of the best business models for you.
If you don't enjoy writing or it doesn't come to you naturally, then Blogging won't be the right fit for you.
What skills will you need:
The core skill you'll need is conveying any information in an easy to read, understandable, and engaging written format.
Next, the skill to grow your blog using SEO, social media, and other digital marketing practices.
How much money will you need to invest:
Starting a blog is very economical.
To start, you'll just need a domain name and a web host account, which shouldn't cost you more than $80.
But growing a blog will require a significant investment from your side.
The amount of investment will depend upon the marketing strategies you implement.
How much time is required to get started:
Time will be dependent on two things: Your level of expertise and writing skill.
The best way to quantify the time required is this – It will get more comfortable and faster with time.
If you know your topic well and have written in the past, then starting a blog and creating a post can be done in a single day.
If you are entirely new to this, then you may be looking at a few days time.
Some helpful tips:
1) Pick a profitable niche
The first and the foremost step in achieving Blogging success is finding a profitable niche.
In the marketing terms, a niche is considered a group of people with common interests in any particular topic.
For example, a group of people interested in Yoga can be termed as a Yoga niche.
Choosing a profitable niche is a must for making money via Blogging.
If you choose an unprofitable niche, you'll never make money out of Blogging, no matter how harder you try.
But how to decide whether any niche is profitable for Blogging or not?
Here are the few steps you must follow in discerning profitable Blogging niches from the unprofitable ones.
- Do a Google search for "profitable blogging niches" and shortlist a few which you find most exciting or aligned with your expertise, interests, or passion.
- Look for the blogs that are into those niches, see if there's competition.
More the competition, the better.
Don't worry about the competition. Competition is always good in this case.
It proves that certain niches are popular, and you must build your blog in one of them.
Building a blog in an unpopular niche is a sure recipe for failure.
- Once you've shortlisted popular niches, the next thing is to determine whether they are profitable.
Not every popular niche will be profitable. Hence you need to conduct research and verify its profitability.
To determine if any particular niche is profitable or not, start studying the blogs operating in those niches and see if they are making money and are profitable.
Look for things such as:
- How much traffic does the blog get?
- Are they getting higher rankings in the search engines?
- How many followers do they have on social media?
- How many shares do their posts get on social media?
- How are they monetizing their blog?
You can consider any niche profitable if you can find a bunch of profitable blogs operating within it.
Select any such profitable niche according to your preference.
2) Narrow down your target audience inside the niche
Every profitable niche on the internet is so big that no single blog can cover all its aspects.
It would help if you discovered the subgroup of people within your niche you want to write for.
The specific audience for whom your blog posts will be created, i.e., your tribe.
For instance, you decide to get into the Yoga niche, and you're an expert in Bikram yoga.
So instead of covering everything on Yoga, you should create content for the subgroup of people interested in Bikram yoga.
The idea here is to narrow down your audience enough to target a sizeable group of people (your tribe), making your blog specific as well as profitable.
3) Uncover the proven interests in your niche
Once you've picked your profitable niche and identified a specific tribe to target, the next step will be to discover your tribe's proven interests.
Proven interests are the topics that grab your tribe's attention now and will likely still grab their attention years from now.
They help you break through the noise and know about which topics you should write.
You can discover proven interests in any niche by following the below steps.
- Signup for Buzzsumo, a research tool that helps you find the most popular blogs and their popular posts in any niche.
- Enter your niche's name in Buzzsumo, and it will return you a list of popular blogs.
- Select any particular blog and study their popular posts. List down topics on which they have written their popular posts.
- Look at multiple such blogs and find common topics across the niche where most of the blogs have written articles and are popular.
- Find patterns that reveal the readers' proven interests. Make sure you not only note down the post topics that show up several times on any particular blog, but also those that crop up across multiple blogs.
For example, in the Investing niche, the proven interests would include stocks, real estate, gold, etc.
- Compile a list of 3-5 proven interests to get started.
4) Write remarkable posts
Writing great posts is more of an art than a science.
Here are a few tips to start writing remarkable posts.
Come up with a blog post headline that grabs the readers' attention and encourages them to click.
Write irresistible openings that keep your readers glued from the very first sentence.
Write seductive subheads that keep readers stuck to your post, so they don't drop off in the middle.
Give your post a compelling close by inspiring your readers to take action.
5) Promote your blog
The last piece of the puzzle for achieving success in Blogging is promotion.
Here are a few best ways to bring your blog in front of your tribe.
- SEO
- Social Media
- Guest Blogging
- Forums
- Podcasting
- Email Newsletter
Before selecting any promotional way, find a way that is working best for others in your niche and then start with it first.
Suppose you're in the Bikram yoga niche and observe that most bloggers in your niche are promoting their blog posts by posting yoga images on Pinterest and Instagram.
In that case, you should adopt the same strategy in the beginning, then diversify.
How to make money:
Before we share different blog monetization options, you need to understand that Blogging is like a long-term investment that can generate massive dividends over a period of time.
It's like a small plant that you need to nurture until it grows big enough to provide you continuous fruits with less effort.
Let's look into some popular blog monetization methods.
1) Blog advertisements
It's by far the easiest blog monetization method.
Sign up for any suitable ad networks available in the market, such as Google's Adsense, Media.net, Propeller Ads, etc.
Once approved, paste its ads on your blog.
The more people visit your blog, the more ads will be shown to them, thus generating more revenue for you.
2) Affiliate promotions
Earn money by promoting other people's products on your blog.
While promoting affiliate products, ensure that products you're promoting are relevant to your blog's audience and are of high quality.
3) Freelancing
If you've built a successful blog on your own, you've already learned the necessary Blogging skills.
Why not use them to help others built their blogs for a specific fee?
Leverage your Blogging skills to make extra income by offering your services to others.
4) Email marketing
Ask your blog's readers to subscribe to your email newsletter.
Once they're on your email list, start promoting them with different relevant products and services and earn commissions once they purchase.
5) Sponsored posts
An excellent method to implement when your blog has become an authority in your niche and gets thousands of daily visitors.
Get paid for writing a sponsored post that introduces your readers to any particular company, its products, services, or any other related topic.
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