There a couple of reasons why people start blogs though I think it is one of the best side businesses you can have or good work from job especially for stay home moms.
This is no coincidence to the high number of parenting blogs run by mother sharing their experiences of parenthood as their children grow up right from pregnancy to adulthood for those who manage to keep up
This is a step by step to guide for a beginner who wants to earn money from blogging that helps one set up his blog for earning from the first step of the blogging idea until monetization
Well let’s run through a process on how to start a blog on your own
1. Why are you blogging
Are you blogging because a friend of a friend said so and he is earning a lot from blogging? Well that’s a good reason to blog as a number of people do it for money than fun
This should take up a very good aspect of your time before you venture into blogging. If you are blogging for fun, then well you should enjoy every bit of it
If you are blogging for a company then keep in line with worth ethics in relation to the clients you are blogging for and why you are blogging for them
If it’s for money then keep on track with useful relevant content least you lose your source of income.
For whatever reason you should always remember why you started as that will motivate you to keep blogging at all times
2. What are you blogging about
Are you going to just type random things all of a sudden, tell people about your life?
You should set what line of content you are going to blog about; it’s not necessarily picking a niche as some blogs are multi niche but it is more like knowing what you want.
You can find what to blog about from current trends, your own interests, and passions. Use google to find what people are searching about and forums to see what people are talking about
I would recommend you to choose to blog about what you are an expert in or what you are already knowledgable about,.
If you are a doctor then run the medical blog, if you are a gamer then run a gaming site, if you are a first-time mom then blog about your experience with first-hand information
When you set what you are going to blog then consider the following;
- How is it beneficial to people reading? Does it add any value to them in any way as long as they feel something of value in their perspective has been gained? Anything of value could be emotional, mental, psychological or they have gained new knowledge and not necessarily money-oriented benefits
- It should be new content or at least unique. It will be very hard for anyone to read your content when it appears everywhere. If everyone is talking about blogging then you should bring something new to the table.
- Check for the competition. What are you basing on that your content will beat the competition? Google what you want to blog about and you will realize there high chances someone is already blogging about it
- Remember if a niche is not competitive then definitely the chances are high it has no market. So before you go on looking for less competitive niches think of that
- Check how informed you are on what you are going to write about. Why start writing about health because you think it has less competition when you are actually good with computers. Write about something you are experiencing or you know will make your work easier let alone having to always research because you are writing about something you are not knowledgable about
That’s why a mother would blog about parenting, in this case, she would be providing, useful and factual or even proven information on a niche she knows very well
Or if you are a travel agent why write a technology blog which you will need to research anyway for accurate information when you can be a travel blogger because you are skilled in that field and you could also earn from it by monetizing your blog
You will be earning twice from your skills which is a win-win
3. How are you going to blog?
Now that we are done with what we are blogging about why then how are we doing it
There are mainly three types of blogging. The most common being written followed by a video where most people use youtube and the audio which is extremely very rare
The best recommendation would be writing and adding videos to your content where necessary as that would be a good way to provide information to your readers
But this is big to consider as you would have to choose the best medium of communicating to your audience. Remember in what we are blogging about we did research about our competitors thus you may find none of your competitors uses youtube.
In that case, you can monopolize your niche on youtube which will make your blogging easier as a beginner
4. When and where are you blogging from?
The final part of the logic is when you will do your blogs for the best results. You may pick a niche that will require you to blog daily like entertainment. These celebs are doing all sorts of things every day and once something is done today tomorrow it will be stale news and no one would care to read it
That’s why I think writing timeless content would be the best and you may only keep updating it.
Where or whom are you blogging for? This can be answered on why you are blogging but it is brought back here in a different context.
Some blogger from Nigeria asked me why he never gets any traffic for his entertainment blog from the USA. As it turns out you can earn more from the traffic coming from Europe and America.
Well it’s because he did not consider that all his posts were about news in Nigeria, why would anyone care about blog news or entertainment from Nigeria when they are from another part of the world anyway unless there are living there and originally from Nigeria
Google also considers relevancy when showing search results and it’s taken that a blogger from Nigeria has relevant content for Nigeria and not England where they do not live.
Well as some content can be generalized and is relevant to all everyone in all aspects irrespective of their geographical location gender or race name it
5. Get website hosting for your blog domain
There are a couple of free blogging platforms like blogger by Google, WordPress, and medium too.
But I would recommend getting a blog that has a .com or .net. The reason being is it would be very good to target organic traffic. Hardly do you ever see a free Blogspot subdomain or a for free word press subdomain ranking for a search query on Google
Having a domain with dot(.)country, ie lesoned.ug, lesoned.uk, lesoned.us or lesoned.in will mostly limit your traffic to that country
So you will need to cash out some money for this to buy a domain and get it’s hosting too. But if you do not have money then I think it’s good to use blogger as you can also monetize it with Adsense something you cannot do with a free word press subdomain
When choosing a domain you can consider a name people will easily remember, well that’s why lesoned was chosen
You can also choose a domain from a keyword (a keyword is a commonly searched term or phrase on search engines), so every time people Google that word your site will show but of course search engines know about this so you will not rank number one just like that
You can also buy an expired domain as these tend to have already made backlinks which will make it easier for you to rank as they are important in ranking of a website in search engine results
But make sure you do enough research on the domain you are buying as some are have been banned due to inappropriate usage
6. Sign up for Google search console and Google analytics
Search console will help you monitor how your website is doing in the search results and what keywords you are ranking for
Google Analytics will also help you track your users’ behaviors on your site which will also help know if you have any people visiting your site or not and which other sites are bringing in traffic and also where it is coming from
Create a site map for your site and submit it in search console( you can do this using yoast plugin from word press)
You can also sign up for Bing webmasters as another webmasters tool to track your traffic
7. Start writing blog content
Do you know how to write engaging content? You might as well need to get better at writing
Well to start writing you have to choose how you will get your content on the internet. I would recommend getting a self-hosted word press theme and learning how to use it or even better buy one
You can install Yoast plugin on word press as it will help with writing good readable user-friendly SEO content
Making a website from scratch is a lot of work unless you are skilled at coding or even blogger theme is okay if you like
The good thing I know about word press is it comes with out of the box on-page search engine optimization which will make your blogging easier
You have to get yourself familiar with WordPress features if you are using it for the first time and there are a lot of online tutorials specialized for that
Remember when we talked of finding out what people are searching for and assessing competition, well that is even more relevant here because I would recommend you write about what people are intrested in knowing about first
When your blog picks up, then you can start writing about that which you think people need to know or may want to know
If people want to know why the sky is blue, them answer that, not why the ground is brown when no one literary cares to know about
In simple words do what they call keyword research
8. Market your blog content
The truth is you will not get organic traffic early or easily unless you are using some black hat methods; I started to get regular organic traffic after 3 months since the domain was bought and the number just kept on increasing slowly every month as I moved up the rankings for different keywords
Tell your friends and family to visit your site, besides if your own family or friends have no interest in visiting your own site then why would a stranger visit it
Social media is the best place to create awareness of the existence of your blogging to potential traffic. You can share your content to relevant groups on social media and also create social media pages for your blog. Don’t overshare your URL on Facebook as it will get blocked
You can also connect with other potential bloggers this can be through guest posting or joining blog promotional groups on Facebook
Keep an engagement with your users through replying to their comments on your site
The breakthrough marketing strategy would be through making viral content. So even a very good article can run viral and make your site stand out making people visit it to see what more it can offer
9. Monetizing the blog
Well, this is the final piece of why we started the blog in the first place, to make money.
You can monetize your blog through affiliate marketing. This literally means talking about items or reviewing them and persuading readers to buy them for which you receive a commission on the purchase
The most popular for this is the Amazon affiliate program and eBay.
Ad banners by signing up for Google Adsense or media net would be a good option as this is what most people use and it is what we would recommend for a newbie or affiliated marketing amongst all other ways to monetize your site.
You earn from these ads when someone clicks on them or also called cost per click or when the user views them also called cost per impression. Your earnings depend on how much an advertiser pays after bidding with other advertisers to show ads on your site the higher the bidding war the more you earn
Selling ad space on your site. The truth is the only way someone would buy ad space on your site is when it has large traffic. In that case, you can even set the price for which they can advertise on your site.
In fact, if you are getting tons of traffic you need to move to other better-paying programs out there
Make sure you read everything in the terms and conditions before you sign up for blog monetization as you can easily get banned from the program due to violation of terms and policies
If you break any of the terms and conditions you may not be paid the money you are earning from running advertisements
Also to be accepted in these advertising programs your site traffic and content is put into consideration
Conclusion
Content is king as most people say and great content will automatically market itself and that’s what Google puts first as I have seen a site with even bad on-page and off-page search engine optimization sites ranking highly due to good content that meets a user’s query
And you can only make money from blogging when you are getting traffic to your website which traffic can only be attracted with good, useful, unique and relevant content and you can beat the competition by bringing something new to the table and not recycling content
