Since I’ve begun blogging 8 years ago, I’ve always been asked the question: how do I start a blog? Instead of running down the information one by one to each person who inquires, I found it easy to place all of the information in this brief blog article. Starting a blog is easy. All it takes is passion and dedication to your passion and your new blog can be a beautiful masterpiece. Here are 5 easy steps to start and monetize a blog. By the way, this information works for any type of blog including lifestyle blogs.
Choose a Niche
A Niche is an area of expertise that you are most passionate about writing about. If you write about everyday life things; you’ll your niche will be what’s called a lifestyle blog. If there is an area of emphasis within the lifestyle blog niche that you wish to focus on the most such as relationships; make sure to use a descriptive adjective in either your blog name or tag line of your blog so when people visit they know exactly what your blog is about. If they are searching for information in that particular niche. Your blog title will keep them coming back.
Find an Affordable Hosting Site:
I use Fatcow for my hosting needs. I’ve been using them since May 2013. They have 24-hour technical support to make sure your site stays up at all times. Only through my special link can you receive a very low introductory discount. I am an affiliate with Fatcow and do receive compensation based on new sign-ups. Click here to take advantage of Fatcow’s very low introductory offer. Fatcow doesn’t only offer hosting, but they work directly with WordPress, Weebly, and other blogging software. I prefer WordPress however. We will discuss that later. Take a look at the specials that Fatcow has to offer to get started.
Choose an Eye-Catching Template Using a WordPress Website Builder
There are several builders out there that you can choose from such as Squarespace, Weebly, and others, but I currently use WordPress as they have easy-to-integrate plugins that assist with SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO determines what websites including blogs will pop up first in search engines when people enter keyword searches. If you have a high SEO ranking at the top of Google’s search pages you can get more traffic to your website. If your content is great these visitors may keep coming back and you’ll be able to make more money with your blog. You can access the WordPress builder through your Fatcow hosting account.
If you have a blog on another platform and would like to move it over to WordPress; you can hire an expert to provide this service for you at an affordable price by using Fiverr. I moved my website from the Weebly platform to WordPress by hiring someone at Fiverr to do it for me. The expert also converted my website into a professional looking blog format at an affordable price. You can view various WordPress themes here to get an idea of how you want your new website to look. Once you find the theme you like, you can either install it on your WordPress site or hire someone from Fiverr to customize the theme for you to your liking. Fiverr offers affordable freelancers to assist today’s entrepreneurs who may be on a budget. I am an affiliate with Fiverr and receive compensation based on referrals. Use this link to find a professional: Click here.
Learn About SEO
I briefly talked about what SEO is in the previous section. You can also take advantage of a free tool called Google Trends to see what is currently trending and suggestions on keywords being used around a topic you may wish to write about. Jumping on an upward trend can cause more traffic to your website and result in more income for you. There are experts on Fiverr as well who can assist you with optimizing your new WordPress website for SEO. Click here to look into SEO experts. I am an affiliate with Fiverr and receive compensation. A plug-in that WordPress provides called Yoast provides helpful SEO hints and tips for each article to ensure the ultimate traffic. I am not currently an affiliate with Yoast. I simply use their free basic plug-in.
Finally, an affordable SEO tool that allows you to research keywords and determine keyword difficulty is Mangools. It has many helpful tools that help you to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for. This gives you the opportunity to rank for the same keywords. Their yearly basic plan provides the best value. In November, they have sales up to 60% off. Grow your blog traffic now.
Find Great Royalty Free Pictures
Several free websites allow you to use royalty-free pictures. Royalty-free means you do not have to pay to use the pictures. These are the only pictures that should be used on your website unless you purchase pictures. Using royalty-free pictures will help you to avoid being sued by photographers. Pexels.com, Unsplash.com, and Pixabay.com are all great websites that offer royalty-free pictures. You’ll want to use your picture as the main picture for the article to draw people in and also add pictures and/or gifeys throughout the article with headers and subheaders to break up the text making it easier to read. Use gifey.com to find free gifeys to embed into your blog post.
Once you have your Niche, great content, hosting, website, and dope pictures you’ll need to begin posting consistently to begin building your audience. You can make money from blogging using Google Adsense, affiliate links from some of your favorite companies, and influencer marketing.
Fiverr has experts that can set up your Google Adsense properly on your new blogging website at very affordable prices. You’ll also want to set up Google Analytics on your website to be able to track your traffic, visitors, and the content that is doing the best on your site.
This will let you know if you are getting enough traffic to add ads to your site and affiliate links. You’ll want to know you have some traffic first before adding ads and affiliate links. Fiverr experts again can help you install Google Analytics. Learn further by researching affiliate programs with your favorite companies.
How Do I Start a Blog: Bonus Ways to Monetize Your New Blog
Make Money Through Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make passive income. Passive income is income that you make in your sleep. You do this by simply adding affiliate links into your articles. Affiliate links are links to products or services that you’d personally recommend because you’ve tried it before and you love it. When the products or services that you recommend begin to sale through your affiliate link; you get paid a percentage. If your SEO is good; you can consistently make income from one blog post written several years ago.
My blogging mentor does this and makes over $50,000/monthly in affiliate marketing alone. I’m definitely not there yet as I am just starting out, but I believe this can be a great way to fund your blog and make some extra income while using your talent of writing. Check out my mentor’s free e-book. She also offers a course that teaches you everything you need to know about affiliate marketing including not overwhelming your audience with seeming sales pitches, but helping them find things that actually want to purchase.
Sale Online Classes
Create a class centered around your niche or area of expertise. Sell the class on an affordable platform like Teachable. I have a few courses on my website using Teachable. The great thing about Teachable is it allows you to schedule a free coaching session as an event where you can add the Zoom link information on the page.
I use this tool to offer a free webinar that introduces new leads to my brand. They get the initial free group coaching session for free and feel more comfortable buying my paid courses and books later because they realize the value I provide to them. Teachable is useful for paid courses, subscription courses, coaching, and much more.
Finally, Teachable is a community that offers various training from more advanced experts such as Lisa Nichols and others. I partner with Teachable as an affiliate and earn compensation for sharing about their services.
I am an affiliate with Teachable and receive compensation based on signups.
Create a Product
Create a book or multiple books around your expertise. Offer coaching services as a product or anything else you can think of related to your brand. It could be T-shirts promoting your brand’s core values. If you advertise these things well you can make money from them and still do what you love.
Create a Lead Magnet
Creating a lead magnet helps you to grow your email list. This is something that you will give away for free. It can be an E-book, playlist, list of something incredible. It just has to be something you know people who follow your niche will value. You can advertise other products and services to this group of people on your email list.
Add Google Adsense to Your Website Upon Traffic Increase
It will take some time for you to bring a substantial amount of traffic to your new blogging website. Don’t be discouraged by this. Keep up writing great content that you are passionate about while following the SEO guidelines you’ll learn and eventually you’ll have enough traffic to add Google Adsense. This is a tool that any online influencer can apply for as long as you meet Google’s terms of agreement.
Remember that blogging is a journey, so enjoy the journey and success will come along the way.
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