An Easy To Follow Blogging Guide For Beginners!
A blog needs to be monetized to generate revenue. It should be a
successful blog with a growing base of subscribers to keep generating
more revenue. Only then would you have a profitable blog. Any blog can
be monetized but there may be no revenue. Any blog can have some
revenue but only consistent and sustainable revenue over a period of
time will ensure profit. The fact that anyone can start a blog with little or
no capital, the availability of a plethora of free tools, the ease with which
one can get started, and equal access to the audience ensures only the
best would win. The competition has never been this stiff.
In this comprehensive guide for beginners we lay out the simple steps
one must take to start a blog for profit
Setting up the Blog
You can design a website from scratch, which should be easy if you are
a programmer. If you have no expertise in coding or website design,
then you should consider a content management system like
WordPress. WordPress is free and it is the most popular blogging
platform today. The open-source software which is used by more than a
hundred million people can be hosted for free using the WordPress
platform or you can host it on your own. You can opt for shared hosting
or dedicated hosting.
You may have your own server and configure it to host a site if you
know the technicalities. The best strategy is to go for a WordPress site
and shared hosting. You can move to dedicated hosting in the future
when you make more money as it is substantially more expensive than
shared hosting.
Getting started with WordPress is pretty simple. You can download
WordPress directly from the official site and start building your blog using the simple guidelines. Or, you can choose a WebHost and a
shared hosting plan that supports WordPress. The control panel of the
hosting account will get you WordPress. Thereon you can build your
blog from within the website builder offered by the WebHost. Even as you
pay for the shared hosting plan, WordPress would still be free. If you
don’t wish to pay for hosting, opt for WordPress directly and use its free
hosting platform. This will have its limitations in terms of bandwidth,
storage, and site features but you can keep your initial investment
contained.
The following steps will illustrate how you would start a WordPress blog
using a WebHost.
• Choose a web host and a shared hosting plan. Go to the website of
the WebHost and sign up for the plan. Provide all the details you are
asked for, get a domain name if you don’t have one already, and make
the payment to get access to your exclusive control panel. Most
web hosts will offer a free domain with a shared hosting plan.
• Set up your account, choose the password, the features you want, and check into the Site Builder section. You will get the WordPress icon.
There will be many options in the Script List such as Backups, Utilities, and Blogs. You would find WordPress in the Blogs section. Click it, get
redirected to the installation page, and install it.
• Use your domain name and set up your WordPress site, the blog
which will be blank at this stage. You would have to work on the layout,
design, features including plug-ins and everything from font to the
unique elements of your blog. Don’t worry as there are drag and drop
options from WordPress and from most web hosts that you can use to
create your blog. You don’t need to write a single line of code.
Monetization of the Blog
You could use your blog for paid blogging. There are companies and
individuals that want their products, services or entities to be promoted.
These would normally pay a price for every blog post. You could take
this route or you can write about what really interests you and think of
monetizing the blog using advertisements. You can consider affiliate
marketing, which is essentially blogging to promote and endorse certain
products or services. When the audience you are targeting or your
readers check out the post and click on links redirecting them to the
official pages of those products or services, you would get paid. There
are programs paying you for every user that clicks on the links and gets
redirected. Other programs pay you a handsome commission should the
users sign up for the service or purchase the product after being
redirected from your blog.
There are a few quintessential elements of starting a blog for profit.
• You need to attain popularity. You cannot make money when your
blog doesn’t have any dedicated readership. You need a loyal audience
that would keep returning to your blog and would keep checking out new
content that you upload. The audience cannot be limited to a few
dozen people and it cannot be sporadic. You cannot rely on rerouted
traffic. Your blog must be popular and obviously, it would have its target
audience. The target audience shouldn’t have to search for something
and then get to your blog. They would follow your blog. You don’t need
all those readers to become subscribers or commentators. As long as
they follow your blog and repeatedly visit it, the blog can be monetized.
An unpopular blog or one that doesn’t have a substantial readership can
have ads or affiliate links but the monetization will not generate any
revenue.
• You need consistent traffic as that will pave the way for
advertisements, paid content, and promotions which will help you to
make money with your blog. Without traffic, posting ads or optimizing
new content and sharing of the content will be futile. The nature of the
traffic, the target audience, and the kind of outreach a blog has along
with the focus or the niche will determine the type of ads, promotions, and paid content. A blog shouldn’t lose its value or core in the process
of monetization.
• There are many ways to make money with a blog. You could offer
free content to entice the audience and then offer exclusive or academic
content for those who want more information and would be willing to pay
a subscription fee. You could just use the readership and get paid
through ads, affiliate marketing links, sponsored banners, and all kinds of
product and service placements on every webpage of your blog.
You need a strategy that will allow you to target your niche readership
while monetizing the entire space available on every webpage of your
blog. From banner ads to sponsored posts, affiliate links to promote
contents pay per click ads to paid promotional posts; you should
consider every prospect of monetizing.
Targeting Readership/Subscribers
Every blogger can get their friends and family to become the first
subscribers. Sharing a few posts will get some lost social contacts to
start following the blog but not everyone may be reading all your posts.
No one can use their personal contacts and social connections to get the
thousands of readers that one needs to actually monetize a blog for
profit. You need to target a thousand subscribers or readers, then two
thousand and then five thousand till you can grow enough to become a
formidable blogger.
Let us first address how you should facilitate the signing up or follow
of new subscribers and readers.
• There should be social media plug-ins to facilitate immediate
following, liking, and sharing. There should be opt-in sections where
readers can provide their email address and sign up for the blog
updates, newsletters or emails, and other types of communications.
Aside from the RSS feed and other obvious plug-ins you should have a
simple popup asking if the reader or visitor will want to get notifications
from the blog. This may happen on a traditional browser, mobile browser, or via social network, media, and apps. A notification has become an
alternative to the conventional following.
• Don’t ask for more details than what you need. Social media plugins immediately connect visitors to the blog using their existing
credentials. Use email authentication or social media authentication
instead of asking for an email address, first name and last name, city, and
other unnecessary details. Your blog is not building a database of
readers. You simply need a following to get a substantial readership.
• Always have a call to action on every webpage. Many bloggers opt
for standard calls to action, suggesting they share the post or like,
comment, or check out more posts. While these are acceptable, you
should think of unique calls to action. Host polls, get people to agree or
disagree, encourage readers to write counterpoints so you can take the
discussion further. Every blog post can become an asset provided it has
enough stuff to trigger a conversation and subsequent engagement with
a larger audience. A blog post that doesn’t generate any traction is a
waste of space and effort.
• Incentivize your followers to entice more. Offer something to your
new readers so they would be inclined to follow you or become
subscribers. Give something precious, which could be rare tips or some insider knowledge, to your existing readers so they continue to follow
you and read what you post. Today, not many people are interested in
following for the sake of following unless they get rewarded in some
way.
You will use your social media profiles and presence on multiple social
networks to get more readers or subscribers. That would still limit your
outreach unless you take a few quintessential steps. These are to be
factored in at the time of starting a blog because otherwise, you would
need to rethink everything, right from your blog layout to the kind of
content you are penning down.
Here are some of the most important factors that will affect your
readership.
• Your blog must stand out. You need an impressive design. You
will need to have all the imperative features, from social media
integration to relevant plug-ins. At the crux of the design should be a
theme, one that impresses your target audience. Be unique in as many
ways as possible but not quaintly that would be off-putting for some.
Check out blogs like the one you are trying to create and find out what’s
working for them and what’s not.
• Nothing is more important than content. If you have the most
compelling content in your niche then it wouldn’t matter how popular you
are or how exquisite your blog layout is. People will read the piece. But
you cannot have such priceless and unmatched content all the time.
This is why you need to focus on the quality of content throughout the
year. Remember the reason why you are blogging and why someone
should read your blog. This alone should lead you to the type of content
you should be working on. Do not just replicate what is already out
there. If thousands of people have already read a blog that has
discussed what you are about to write then chances are you wouldn’t
get even one from that readership checking out your blog. Focus on originality. Use your own voice. The personality of a blogger is the best
weapon to make any content unique.
• After content and design comes marketing. No blogger can survive
today by solely being a writer, photographer, videographer or
cinematographer, painter, graphic designer, chef or cook, fashion
enthusiast, gadget lover, or even satirist. One must market the blog
and oneself. The blog and the blogger are inseparable. They are a
single entity unless there are other bloggers on the same site. Use
search engine optimization, target keywords, and have a specific target
audience. The target audience could be people of a certain age, gender,
socioeconomic background, and of a certain kind of intellect or a myriad
of interests. The target audience could be confined to a city, district,
suburb, or neighborhood.
• You need multichannel and cross-platform marketing strategies.
Use other and more popular blogs to publish guest posts. Make your
blog’s presence felt on all popular social networks and social media to
intertwine the activities to generate interest on all platforms
simultaneously. Get listed on every relevant directory of blogs. Use
email marketing if relevant, host live events, the podcast is applicable for the
kind of blog you are planning and produce videos to highlight inspiring
content.
Become an Influencer Blogger
No matter what you do, your traffic will fluctuate. No matter how hard
you work and how much you ransack your mind, you will come up with
content that will not reach a hundred thousand readers. Only some of
your blog posts will go viral, perhaps just a few in a year. That alone
would be enough to get you exposure but the outreach will waver from
time to time. The only way you can ensure sustained profit is when you
ensure a bottom line. Say a thousand hits on a particular blog post will trigger the commission of a pay-per-view ad that is placed at the top of
the post. You need the thousand hits for every blog post having that ad
for the page to be financially viable. Else, your effort is futile.
The only way you can always get the minimum traffic, which could be a
thousand or fifty thousand depending on the nature of your blog, is to
become an influencer. This is the era of influencers. You may have seen
them on social media. You are perhaps following some of them. These
influencers are experts in their niche, ranging from politics to food,
sports to music, architecture to history, pop culture to spirituality,
business, and investment to education among others. These influencers
are opinion makers. They have a few million followers in some cases
and in most cases hundreds of thousands fans. One tweet or post by
them and it reaches everyone following these personalities. You need to
become an influencer blogger.
Here is what you should be doing to become an influencer blogger.
• Be a great writer if you are not a photographer, videographer, or
designer. Anyone who can use images or videos and have a blog that is
all about the visual experience would not rely on words. All other
bloggers will only have words, from those writing about current affairs to
those reviewing restaurants in a city. The quality of writing has dwindled
in recent years. Grammar has jumped ship, literary skills have
succumbed and substance is a rare commodity. Blogging is not ranting.
It is not just writing whatever you want in whichever way you want. If you
wish to be a famous blogger, then you must be an expert writer. Writing
is as much a skill as it is an art. You need to be a master or at least
highly proficient in the language you are writing in. You don’t need to
have a degree in literature or journalism to become a great blogger. You
just have to be a great writer, regardless of your academic qualification.
• Write on issues that would get you some attention. You may pick
popular topics which you can source from current affairs or pop culture.
You can write on politics, movies, music, technology, or whatever that
will entice readers. Do not write on a topic that is unlikely to get you any
views. You may be interested in medieval art but not many would share
that interest. You may write a stunning piece on the Italian Renaissance
and yet get very few views. You can pursue any niche you want but
make sure you manage to entice your audience. You should have a
target audience for your blog but that should not be a small section of
people. That will not make you famous. You need to reach out to the
masses if you truly want to get famous or become an influencer. More
importantly, you need a large target audience if you wish to monetize
your blog and generate a consistent profit.
• Be originally argumentative. Have a view that may not comply with
the norms and present your opinion without being overly offensive to
anyone. The objective is to get people talking, to make the audience sit
up and notice, to get them clicking and reading. Engaging the audience,
inciting a discussion, interacting to fuel further conversation, and
generating activity is the best way to become an influencer.
• Develop a personality as a blogger. This may be the natural
extension of who you are in real life or you may create a certain style
and portrayal as a blogger. It is this personality that people will follow,
like, and talk about.
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