One misconception about blogging is that people do it to primarily to share personal opinions. Blogs make money by selling info products, placing ads on pages, or using referral links. Many people with low to high writing skill levels are starting blogs as a side job or primary source of income.
Creating a blog is one excellent way to make extra money online. Whether you are looking to make a career change, or have already started your own business, then taking a serious look into having a blog could be the next lucrative step for you.
You can be a digital nomad who is looking for ways to earn income, a business person who wants to grow their clientele base or a stay-at-home mom wanting to create a career for herself.
Each of these reasons are great reasons to get started, and I’m here to give you the confidence that you can and will be able to start a blog.
You may have already dabbled in it creating one, or still do not have the nerve to get started.
I’m here to guide you through the entire process so that creating a blog becomes a reality. One that allows you to live your dreams.
Ready to get started?
Step 1: Decide what your blog will be about
We all have many ideas, and things we want to share, so how can we narrow down our blog topic?
We become overwhelmed with all the great ideas we have, that it can get us stuck in this first step.
One of the things that help you to decide what your blog should be about is asking yourself these questions:
- Why am I starting this blog?
- What do I usually talk about the most?
- What excites me?
- Do I know this subject well?
Answering these questions will start to steer you in the right direction, and you’ll feel the excitement when starting your blog.
I would try to come up with maybe three blog ideas for now.
Step 2: Choose a profitable niche
I know, you feel great after step 1, and now it sounds like I’m killing your buzz. I wouldn’t get too upset, and I would like to believe that the ideas you came up with, I’m sure people want to hear about them.
This step requires you to do a bit more work. That’s why I said for you to come up with three blog ideas at a minimum.
You’ll research the niches you came up with and determine if there is a demand for them.
Even if I did burst your bubble a little it, you would be glad you are doing this step, instead of putting time and effort into a blog which doesn’t have much interest from people.
If you are creating a blog, I’m guessing you are doing so that you can either have supplemental income or hopes that you can replace your current income completely.
You’ll want to run your niches through Google Adwords to see if there your audience base is large enough for you to make a profit off of writing your blog.
Step 3: Decide which platform you want to blog on
You have a couple of options here.
You can start a blog using wordpress.com which are hosted by WordPress, and you’ll have the words wordpres.com in the URL of your blog.
Your second option is to use wordpress.org, which are self-hosted WordPress blogs, meaning you can choose to host your website through a different host. I highly recommend the second option because your blog seems more serious and legit.
You’ll see the difference in what I mean here:
- Option 1: www.nojoblem.wordpress.com
- Option 2: www.nojoblem.com
See what I mean? The second option also works best if you already have your own business, where you are selling a product or a service, then not only do you have a blog, but also a company website.
Step 4: Choose your hosting provider
You will need a provider to host your website. In the previous step, you are deciding on your domain name, and if you choose to register a domain name, rather than only using the free WordPress one, then you can register your name at the same time as choosing your hosting provider.
Bluehost is a web hosting provider, and your domain is FREE if you purchase 12 months of Bluehost Web hosting.
With Bluehost, you have three options for your hosting type: Basic, Plus, and Prime.
As someone starting, you should be good with the Basic plan.
Fill in all the details to register and pay, create your user account and password.
Step 5: Link your domain name to your hosting provider
If you use Bluehost, you can easily link your domain name to this hosting provider; you choose your domain name after purchasing your one-year subscription.
If your domain name resides somewhere else, then you have a little more work to do.
Step 6: Install WordPress
With Bluehost, installing WordPress is easy and free to do.
Once you install WordPress, you should choose a template, and then you are ready to customize your site.
Don’t get too caught up here; you can always change your theme and design before launching. For now, focus on choosing a template that you can work with and navigate through easily.
Step 7: Create great content
After you complete the more manageable steps above, it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty. One of the most important thing about your blog is to have fantastic practical content people will find useful.
You want to have content that people (your niche) wants to read. Your content should be great to attract both your niche as well as affiliate marketers.
Make sure when starting you have some good things to write about and share.
I recommend having ten articles to start with, before launching ideally. Of course, you could have less than ten. It’s all up to you.
Blogging is all about writing, make sure that you do lots of research and share your thought and options which target your niche.
Step 8: Determine how you will drive traffic to your blog.
Unfortunately, if you build it, they will not come. You have to determine how you want to expose your blog to the world wide web. There are billions of people, and we mention your niche quite a bit here. You will have to research the best way to target your niche.
You can buy paid advertising on Facebook, Youtube, and google.
You can do some grunt work, such as building yourself a community. Join forums, check out other blogs, and leaving comments, optimize your keywords.
Step 9: Build your contact list.
As you are driving people to your site, make sure you start getting their emails. Offer something free on your website so that they can sign up to download your offer.
You want to grow your email list to keep your visitors up to date with your blog, and any new offers you may have.
Somehow you got their attention, and they came to visit your page, and now you have to keep them coming back for more.
Step 10: Start monetizing your blog
Your hard work is not quite complete. We are at the stage you’ve been waiting for, but, the work is far from over.
Once you complete the previous steps successfully, you are now ready to make some money from all the hard work you put into building your blog.
Once you are driving a good amount of traffic to your blog site, you can reach out to affiliate marketers to show them the traffic you are bringing in.
Now you can successfully monetize your blog, through affiliate marketing and advertising.
Make sure you work with affiliate marketers that make sense for your niche. You don’t want o be selling your niche something unrelated, as you will come off ungenuine and you will lose them as customers.
Only recommend products and services that you believe in and know to be good. Your blog is your business, and you want to have a good reputation, on it won’t last.
You can also reach out to some marketing companies, as well as add some google Ads to your site. But, you’ll make more money from marketing companies.
Step 11: Rinse and Repeat
Repeat steps 7-11 over and over again. Grow your blogging business. The one-step you should already repeat is step 7 and 8, great content and driving more people to your blog.
The other steps can be automated once you are getting a lot of people to visit your site and staying there for a while.
Step 12: Create courses and selling your product/service
Once your business is gaining momentum and can hold its own, you can grow your business by creating courses for you to sell. You can also start selling your products or services on your website.
You can create online courses, workshops, ebooks, offer consulting and coaching services, freelance services, and speaking engagements.
Step 13: Have fun making money
You’re putting in hard work, sweat, and tears in this baby. I hope along the way, you were having fun building and growing. Running a business never stops, so make sure you enjoy the journey along the way.
Conclusion:
It may seem like a lot of steps to do, and the order doesn’t necessarily have to the same as what I’ve written above. But, I know that they are manageable and clear steps.
I intend to provide you with a great guideline and more confidence in starting your blog after reading this.
When I started my blog, I was super excited, and I hope that you feel the same way too. Having clear steps to take helped me stick to my goal and stay on track. I wish the same for you.
Are you pumped to get started?
