How To Make A Living Blogging
Is it possible to make a living blogging? What stage do you have to attain before you can begin to earn income from your blog?
These are questions that a professional blogger or those still planning to start a blog usually ask themselves. To some people, making a living blogging is a myth or a thing of luck for those who have achieved it.
For such, this article is a guide on how to make a living blogging. Anyone with fundamental knowledge of blogging and how the internet space operates can begin to earn passive income as a blogger.
We’ll discuss the steps and procedures for setting up your blog to make a real income.
We will highlight common blogging mistakes you have probably been making.
In the end, you should have the necessary information needed to start making money from your blog.
What to do to make a living blogging?
Firstly, you have to start by viewing blogging more like a business than a hobby. Yeah, read that again.
You may have heard people encourage those who are starting a blog to follow their hearts and passion.
Yes, that’s important. Passion breeds interest and interest is required to stay focused and motivated as a professional blogger.
But, what’s the significance of interest and motivation if your initial startup is not well planned.
As you will not start a business without drafting a plan, creating a blog demands adequate planning and strategy.
So, what are the steps needed to start a blog that will make you money?
1 – Take time to set up your blog
Setting up a blog these days is relatively easy. You can go through our guide on how to create a website to get the basic idea.
Part of what the guide contains includes:
Selecting a platform for your websitePicking a domain nameChoosing web hosting Installing WordPressWriting and Publishing content on the website
As you will see from the guide, the domain name serves as both your website’s name and web address.
It’s sometimes called a web address because it’s what people will enter when searching for your site.
Therefore, it is recommended to select a domain name that has one clear pronunciation and spelling. When possible, you should use a “.com” extension.
This strategy avoids losing traffic to those who automatically assume that your site is a “.com” extension type.
Also, you want your website to be visible during online searches, so try using vital keywords in the domain name. It aids your google rankings in the long run.
The more visitors your page attracts, the more money you can make from it.
In addition, the web hosting service you decide to use affects the progress your blog makes.
You can choose from any of the best free web hosting services to make blogging relatively easier.
For example, Wix makes editing and publishing content to be as seamless as possible.
2 – Regularly publish excellent content
Writing a blog post with excellent content that captures the attention of your audience needs to be frequent.
There is a need for consistency if you aim to get constant visits to your blog pages. It could be daily or weekly but shouldn’t have very long intervals.
Let people have an idea of when to expect something new from you.
Remember that you plan to make money from the blog, so treat your page visitors as customers that expect from you. The first step to publishing such excellent content that attracts people is to pick a niche.
3 – Pick a niche
Okay! You want people to visit your blog for the content you post frequently.
How about thinking about focusing on more of a particular type of content that you become famous for? Yeah, that’s another way of saying you need to select a niche.
A business will only bloom if people know what they are going to get. You would need to create a profile of your ideal clients and the people you aim to reach. Then, tailor your content to suit their specific needs.
However, blogging to make a living rather than just as a hobby demands that you work on expanding your reach via the use of competitive keywords. That brings us to the need for proper keyword research.
4 – Do keyword research
Whether you are an online start-up blog or you’ve been blogging for a while, you have to seek ways of reaching out to new people continually.
Observe what other top blogs in your niche are doing and try to imitate them or even do better.
A good approach is to carry out proper keyword research before writing. Having quality keywords that relate to your niche will help you rank better in search engine results.
Nonetheless, picking the best keywords is not always easy. That’s why we have keyword research tools to hasten the process.
You can also try searching out your keyword idea on google and scroll down to see suggested keywords to give you more writing ideas for the top searched keywords.
For instance, searching for “best motorbikes” and scrolling down displays something like this:
4 – Build organic traffic to your blog
After following the guidelines above, the next step is understanding how to increase your blog’s organic traffic.
Organic traffic is the most valuable traffic source for a blog. That is because they are the traffic generated from search engine results like Google.
About 51% of the traffic your blog generates is from organic searches alone. That explains why you need to optimise your blog for SEO to enjoy improved web traffic.
Doing so requires the use of highly competitive keywords, building your on-page SEO and off-page SEO, and backlinking to more prominent blogs in the same niche.
5 – Make use of highly competitive keywords
We already spoke about using keyword research tools to create competitive keywords that rank high on google.
Such keywords should relate to your niche to increase organic traffic that directs to your blog.
Besides, getting the keywords is not enough; you have to make them appear in vital positions of your overall content writing.
Furthermore, make it a habit to check out the high-ranking pages for your niche and see the keywords they use.
As shown above, the number of times the keyword appears (keyword density) and positioning on the article also matters.
6 – Build your on-page SEO
The use of well-optimised meta descriptions, competitive keywords, and correct HTML codes that cross our minds when we talk about SEO is referred to as On-Page SEO.
They are essential SEO techniques that can boost your website’s traffic.
Other things to check out include the blog post’s length, a correct hierarchy of headings, and the number of internal links.
7 – Build your off-page SEO
To reach out to a larger audience, you need to promote your website with other page ranking criteria outside your website.
A good example is getting backlinks from other websites to increase your overall visibility on search engines.
8 – Build quality backlinks
Backlinks are external links from other pages that direct back to your page. The significance of these backlinks is that Google sees them as a form of endorsement of your page’s content quality.
The higher the number of backlinks to your site, the better Google sees your content as relevant. Even so, not all backlinks are quality. Its relevance determines the quality of a backlink to the content of the page it links to.
Altogether, getting backlinks through link building will significantly improve your site’s visibility on search engine results.
Higher website visibility implies higher engagements that relate to improved website traffic.
How to build quality backlinks?
Guest posting: Involves writing on more prominent websites in a related or complementary niche and linking them back to you.Contact websites with broken links: Kindly point out the broken links they have and suggest you help replace such with your content.Using infographics and visuals: When people copy infographics or visual content from your blog, they automatically cite your site as the source and link back to you. This method of increasing web traffic is the easiest and does not require extra effort.
9 – Develop an online community for your niche
Remember when we advised that blogging should be taken as a business where customers are required?
Yes, that’s what this section is all about. Rather than trying to start making money from your blog immediately, gradually build a community of people that trust your content and what you provide.
You can call it branding. It’s more of getting people that will follow and interact with your content.
So, how do you build an online community?
A – Reply to comments under your blog posts
When you respond to people’s comments under your posts, it builds their trust and interest in what you have to offer.
They tend to comment more because they know you’ll hear them. With time, such persons can be brought together to form a forum or group.
B – Utilise social media platforms
Not everyone is a fan of checking their emails regularly. However, many people use social media tools every day. It is like a source of information to such.
Here, reach out to as many people as possible on social media. Publicising your product and services is a gradual process that you have to continue for a while.
C – Email marketing
Before people use certain features on your site, you can place CTAs that require them to sign up for free with their email.
The below image illustrates this strategy.
Compilation of such email addresses using your email marketing software of choice will help you build a comprehensive email list that can help introduce a new product, online course, or digital service.
Ensure you regularly keep in touch with your email recipients by sending helpful and relevant emails from time to time.
10 – Affiliate marketing
Once you become confident that your site is frequently attracting loads of daily and weekly visitors, advertising and selling products for people on your platform is a way to bring more money from your blog.
That’s what affiliate marketing entails, and the idea is to get a commission on each product sold via your website.
The critical factor is having a large following or active users on your online platforms that agencies or sellers would be willing to pay for access to a potential customer.
Very simple, right?
The answer is a simple YES and NO.
Yes, because there is no extra effort required to convert visitors to buyers, the bulk of the work must have been done while trying to optimise the website.
Yet, the challenge starts with identifying the correct products that your set of readers would love to try.
The attached screenshot below is an example of affiliate marketing for the product “Demio.”
By purchasing the call-to-action tagged “Try Demio for Free,” a specific commission goes to the blog that includes the link between their content posted.
Nevertheless, we recommend that you have personally used the product you choose to advertise on your website, or you’re sure of the quality.
Some clients would likely make a purchase only because the link is from your site, so ensure you will not lose active audiences to a below-average product.
That being said, you should also avoid having too many affiliate products on a single page.
Even though affiliate marketing of other people’s products would fetch you extra money from blogging, too many links can bore your audience.
11 – Sell your digital products and online courses
Although making money from selling the expertise or products of other people is good, the presence of intermediaries cuts down the profit you make.
The same goes for selling on other platforms, such as selling on Amazon. That is why I often advise people to find a niche-related service that they can offer to their audience.
According to Earned Media founder Nick Brogden:
“While it’s not an easy thing to do, self-promoting a product you own would maximise the profit you make from your blog, public speaking and other such activities. It also aids in strengthening your overall authority in your industry.”
Examples of digital products you can sell are online courses and e-books. You can even set up a flexible shop now and a pay later option to attract more sales.
However, creating a product for sale requires that you do your homework in understanding what will sell best. Proper research would involve the following questions:
What type of product should I create?What class of persons would be needing the product?At what price should I sell?What is the probability that the product sales would be a success?
The first two questions help you create a product that will require a specific audience.
They should be people you identify with or who you already have a plan to reach out to.
If done perfectly, pricing would not be a problem as your targeted audience already values your product since it meets their needs.
Where issues might arise is in trying to verify if the sales would be successful or not. To do this, you can:
Survey your options. Send it by mail to your business email contact list.Do an A/B test by creating a banner and CTA that leads to a product checkout page where you explain that the product is not presently available.
Running either of the above options would help you decide the possibility of making sales when you choose to start selling.
12 – Sell ad space: Use Google AdSense
When it comes to selling ads space, Google AdSense is still one of the best alternatives to make money from ads.
However, the major challenge is that you need much traffic to earn with this method. But then, that’s not a big issue as long as your blog keeps growing every day.
How to start using Google AdSense?
The first thing to do is to sign up with AdSense and wait for their approval. Once approved, you are free to start putting the ads on your website to start getting paid.
In case you feel confused, putting the ads on your website is a straightforward process. All you have to do is copy the given code and paste it on your website. The AdSense code will look as displayed below.
On putting the displayed code into your blog’s header, the ads will begin to show automatically in your writing. From then on, you have to ensure you publish excellent content that generates lots of traffic.
By the way, Google AdSense is trustworthy and protects from spamming content while ensuring you get paid on time.
Besides, you have control over the type of ads that displays on your site. You can also determine how frequently each ad comes up and space it occupies on your page.
How much money does Google AdSense pay?
The amount of money you make from Google AdSense varies depending on certain factors. However, 32% of the advertiser’s total payment goes to Google, while the remaining 68% is for the blogger.
The factors that determine how much money you earn from the ads is based on:
Amount of website traffic your blog attracts.The placement of the ads on your webpage.The level of competition of related ads for your niche.
The more page visits, the more clicks the ads get, and the more money you make augments website traffic. It’s that simple.
But, the positioning of the ads would greatly influence how many clicks they get. That is where the placement of the ads in your writing becomes essential.
While the placement of ads in between the page’s main contents will convert, getting the best spot to place the ads is based on trial and error. You have to keep testing the different options to determine what works best for you.
Check out this sample of AdSense ad that’s placed between the main contents of the page.
Lastly, a very high competition of related ads would mean the advertiser has to pay you more to place their ads on your website.
When to not use AdSense?
AdSense is basically about advertising the products of an advertiser on your blog page.
Therefore, it is not recommended to use AdSense when you are writing about personal products or services for offer.
Conclusion
Although blogging is one way to make money fast, optimising your blog to start earning is a gradual process.
Many bloggers live off affiliate marketing, sell digital products or ad spaces, and follow the principles explained in this guide.
By carefully following this guide and making necessary adjustments based on your niche and targeted audience, you can start earning big as a professional blogger or freelance writer too.
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