This post will teach you everything you need to know about starting a blog from scratch and start making money from it.
Starting a blog may seem scary, difficult, and overwhelming at first and that's why I
put up this easy-to-follow guide to make starting a blog easier and less stressful.
Before we begin you will need Domain and Website Hosting ready
Let's dive in...
Before you start your blog you need to know WHY you’re starting your blog.
Do you want to make money with your blog and turn it into a business or do you just want to blog for fun?
I'm sure you’ve read one of those “I make $10k in one-month blogging” posts.
If you think you are gonna start a blog and make $10k in your first month, unfortunately, it's not that easy.
You won’t make $10k in your first month, maybe not even in your first year of blogging.
But, It’s not impossible and it will take some time. A lot of work and effort.
This is not a get-rich-quick scheme kind of arrangement. It takes hard work and persistence.
Enough said on what to and not expect, lets get to it
1. Decide On A Niche
First things first, you need to pick a niche for your blog. What is a niche? …you might be asking.
A niche is a portion within a particular market that targets a specific group of people.
Which means that, instead of writing a blog about everything and for everyone, you need to find one thing to write about for a specific audience.
If you write for everyone ,you write for now one.
You need to figure out for who and what you will be writing about.
You first have to find out who your ideal reader is (the person you want to write for)
And then find out what their interests are, what their biggest problems and struggles are.
And then write about those things providing suggestions and solutions that will help them deal with those things.
If you re not sure what niche you re in or you re not yet decided,
Here are a few examples of different blog niches:
- Beauty/Hair/Makeup/Skincare
- Fitness
- Healthy Eating/Nutrition
- Home Decor
- Home Improvement
- Mental Health/Chronic Illness
- Relationships/Marriage/Dating
Related Article: Top 10 most profitable - specific blog niches 2021
Quickly, Here Is Why You Need To Niche Down...
There are lots of different reasons why you should niche down, these are a few that are most important.
Firstly, niching down is incredibly important for SEO (search engine optimization).
You see, when you write about one topic on your blog Google sees you as an “expert” in that field,
Therefore, it will show your posts higher in search results.
Secondly, its about your readers.
If someone comes to your blog to read a how to lose weight guide and sees that you also have posts about pets or relationships and personal development
or whatever, they will just look at that weight loss guide and leave.
They will probably never come back or think about your blog again as they aren’t interested in the other topics that you have put up.
Why would they come back to a blog where 1 out of 10 articles is something they are not interested in?
On the other hand, if they see that you also have a weight loss guide or keto recipe they will look around your blog to see what other weight loss tips and information you have.
They might even follow you or subscribe to your email list.
That’s the importance of niching down, you also serve your readers time!
When you are writing for a specific group of people they are more likely to come back to your blog and follow you as they know your posts are relevant to them.
Niching down is also helpful for YOU as it makes creating content easier.
When you’re writing about many different topics and don’t have limitations you can feel a bit overwhelmed.
When you have lots of different options it’s hard to decide on which topics you are going to write on next.
Again when choosing your niche it’s important not to go too narrow as you could end up with not having enough things to write about.
That’s why, when you’re choosing your niche, You should ask yourself if it’s
something you won’t run out of ideas to write about.
2. Pick A Blog Name
After you have decided the niche for your blog , you will need a creative name for your blog. Your domain name is your website site address.
For example, mine is acksonmwape.blogspot.com
You want your blog name to be unique and memorable.
It may be a good idea to have your niche somewhere in your website name, though it’s not totally necessary.
As time goes by, you will become an authority in your niche and you will want to
brand your blog name to your name, so i suggest you either use it now or reserve it
for the future by registering it so that no one else registers your name.
Remember the Top 10 profitable niches i asked you read about, write the topics you’ll read about, some info about yourself like your name, age, a word that best describes you, etc.
After you’ve written some keywords start playing with words to see what you can come up with.
After you’ve come up with a blog name lets go to the next step.
Step 3. Choose a Blogging Platform
The next step is to pick web hosting for your blog. If you are not familiar with what a web hosting service does, here is how it works.
A web host or web hosting service provider is a business that provides the
technologies and services needed for your website to be viewed on the internet.
Websites are hosted or stored on special computers called servers.
You will register your domain name and purchase your web hosting plan at the same time with the same service provider.
Even though that is not necessary it is the easiest thing to do.
There is a huge variety of web hosts available, but since you are starting out
I would highly recommend Bluehost. They are very popular among bloggers and you can get a FREE domain name!
Free Vs Self-Hosted Blog
The only time a free blogging platform is good is when you want to raise some funds with an intention of upgrading to a paid one later,
Don't make your free hosting a permanent one.
Disadvantages of a free blog:
You will not have your own domain name – Instead of having a domain name like http://www.acksonmwape.com
you will have the blogging website name on the end of it. For example http://www.acksonmwape.blogspot.com
You will have less control of your blog – Functions and themes are extremely limited.
Free platforms don’t allow you to monetize your blog to it’s fullest capabilities and
some may not allow advertising at all. With all that being said self-hosted is the best option.
Advantages of a self-hosted blog:
- Professional
- Best for business
- Full control over your blog
- Install custom themes
- Choosing Your Blogging Site
There are several websites that have blogging platforms that you can blog on such as:
- WordPress
- Squarespace
- Wix
- Blogger
- Etc….
It’s important to do your research to find the best platform that works for you.
The platform must be easy to use and flexible.
I personally use two platforms on different sites, WordPress and Blogger and I love them.
WordPress is by far the most popular platform out there and for good reason.
It’s free, easy to use, has hundreds of plugins, and it is also search engine friendly.
And, one of the greatest things about using WordPress as your blog platform is that
many popular web hosting sites such as (Bluehost) have partnered with them to
make it very simple to install.
Step 4. Choosing Your Domain Name And Hosting Plan
The next step is to pick web hosting for your blog.
What is a webhosting Service ?
A web host or web hosting service provider is a business that provides the software and services needed for your blog to be viewed on the internet,
As stated when we where choosing the blogging platform.
Websites or blogs are hosted or stored on special computers called servers.
You register your domain name and purchase your web hosting plan at the same time with the same service provider.
Most webhosting will provide the domain name for free for the first 1year.
Step 5. Write Some Content
Now that your blog is all done, you have chosen and setup your theme and you have your legal pages in place, it’s time to write some posts.
Plan out and write at least 6 different posts that will be up when you you publish your website and it goes in the public domain.
The 6 posts that you write must best represent you, your niche and website to show people what they can expect from you.
Take your time writing these articles and make them the best they can possibly be.
When you Leaving a good first impression people will want to come back to your blog for some more good quality content.
And the only way to do that is by posting great content.
Because CONTENT IS KING!
How Do You Drive Traffic To The New Blog?
There are only two real ways to get traffic to your blog, they are
- Free Traffic ( SEO)
- Paid Traffic ( PPC)
How To Make Money With A Blog
Now that you’ve started your blog you must be wondering when you should start monetizing it , how many followers you need and page views.
And the answer is NOW!
You should start monetizing your blog from the beginning!
It is possible to make money in the beginning with a small blog with out even an audience by using ppc.
The Best Way To Make Money Blogging As A Beginner .
There are many different ways you can make money with a blog.
The easiest one to get started with is affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning money by promoting products and services from companies or individuals.
You find products and services you want to talk about and apply to promote them from the affiliate programs.
When you get accepted into an affiliate program you get a unique tracking link.
You can then share that link on your blog and social media.
Whenever someone clicks on that link and buys something you get a commission.
Watch out for my next article on the top affiliate networks.
What I love the most about affiliate marketing is the fact that you don’t need 1000s of pageviews or followers to be able to earn money.
You can make a lot of money with low traffic if you do it right.
Other Ways To Make Money Blogging In 2021
Affiliate marketing is the best way but it isn’t only.
You can also make money blogging through sponsored posts.
A sponsored post is a post that is created in collaboration with a company.
A company pays you to write about them or their products/services.
Another way to earn money blogging is by selling your own products.
You can create a digital product such an eBook and sell them on your blog.
You can also earn some extra cash by offering services like coaching, writing, virtual assistant services, etc.
Having a blog can help you show off your work and book clients.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, this is how you can start a Money making blog in 2021! It’s not as hard as it seams, right?
Hopefully, the post above was able to help get things going for you. If
You have suggestions, questions, or opinions about what you’ve read,
Don’t hesitate to reach me out.
Thank you, and good luck!
Follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn. Check out my website for some of my other work here.
Thank you so much for this blog.My only question is: what makes a blog to appear on top of the list when one searches on search engine such as google?
ReplyDeleteHello Blaston, what you re asking is how do you rank on the first pages of google, Bing, or yahoo or simple search engine.
ReplyDeleteFirstly what you need to understand is that there thousands of blogs and pages on the internet talking about different things, including whats on your blog/website
Search engines have what you call bots and algorithms which determines the rakings of a particular article or information on the first page.
Keep in mind that rakings are are not determined by people, but bots or intelligent robots, you can as well say google is a bot.
To rank on the first of google, your website, content on the website, and a lot other things should be in order according to the search engines requirements.
Remember there a lot of other people talking about what's on your blog therefore the bots will choose what it deems the best content, etc for the reader.
If for example you write an article about the best affiliate marketing course in Zambia in 2021, your article is going to be competing with other article which are talking about the similar /same title.
Google will rank number one the article which most likely answers the searchers question.
That's what i can explain in simple terms, otherwise to learn more you can read about search engine optimization(SEO),keywords and keyword research.
I hope i have answered your question, let me know if there is something else you need clarification on.
Talk soon
Ackson