Anyone can be a blogger these days, blogging leads to an explosion of expression and creativity that bring out hidden expertise in writer. Best part of being blogger is you are boss of your own so feel free to write as you like. Isn’t it awesome? Starting a blog can be one of the easiest processes for setting up a website. Let’s try to understand how to make money blogging and as a beginner how do we start a profitable blog. Creating a blog is actually not so difficult at all! Anyone can do it once they know some basic information which I will be sharing here.
The main point of this guide is to make it easier for you to get started and make money blogging. What I want from you before starting the guide is to think long term. Even if you have zero knowledge on blogging no worries, learn how to start a blog online and make money from scratch. Still thinking on the steps to follow? Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Choose A Niche
Choosing a niche will lay the foundation for your website to build-up quality of contents. This guide is for beginners, so considering that you should choose a niche market that you have knowledge about. You definitely do not want to spend money to outsource articles with no clue. The plan is to choose a niche where you can expand your content to write and go in-depth with useful information for a specific topic.
Some of the highly recommended niche market to start a blog and make money are in sector of Health, Fitness, Finance, Security, Pets, College and Technology. There are other niche like food, fashion, beauty, lifestyle and many more to choose niche. Make a list of topics to see what interests you then research on them to see if people are enthusiastic about it. You better have a plan for what you want to write cause as a blogger you want to brings your readers back to your blog.
Keyword Research
Keyword is the most important part of blogging process, it is better to spend some time in keyword research so your efforts generate you income. I recommend you not to buy any keyword research tool as a starter. Our goal is to create a website and operate it like a business, and we want to provide value in the content which people are searching in search-engine like Google and Bing. Keyword helps us achieve that goal.
You can use the sites like Ubersuggest and keyword planner from Google Ads to know how many people are searching for keywords you have chosen plus get more keyword suggestion. In order to use keyword planner, sign-up and click on tools & settings>Keyword planner>Discover new keyword. Type the keyword, choose the location and click on get result. Another way to find the keyword is through Keywords Everywhere (chrome extension). Now you have niche for your website and know how to find keywords for your contents, lets set up a website.
Hosting & Domain Name For Your Blog
In order to start a blog and make money you need to buy a hosting and domain name for your blog. Domain name is simply a web address just like youtube.com to visit your blog. Whereas domain name is face of your blog, you will need place to store all the files and folders for everything that you put in online for viewers. Web host server is the place where everything is stored.
There are lots of online service that provides hosting and domain but I recommend you to choose Bluehost, the best blog hosting sites for making money where as Namecheap is the best place to buy domain name for your blog. You can buy both domain and hosting from same service provider, if you buy from Bluehost you get one years domain for free. Let’s start with the best in the business plus wanna let you know that even my blog is hosted on Bluehost.
If you buy domain name separately from different service provider, you need to transfer DNS to webhost. While getting the web host, choose the plan that fits your budget and necessity. There are other web hosting/domain provider like Godaddy, Hostinger, Hostgator and many more you might wanna know about. I wanna let you know that many service company provide discount and coupon code at beginning that will charge very less amount to buy domain and hosting but at time of renewal you might have to pay big amount which is not worth it. If you go with my suggestion to host with Bluehost then choose WordPress Hosting plans to get Automatic WordPress Installation and Updates. If you have hosting and domain, now you are one step ahead to make money blogging. Once you buy hosting and domain, do not back off else you lose your time and money. Be patient, work smart!
Control Blog With WordPress
If you want to make money with WordPress blog, you need to make some changes in your blog, keeping it clean and simple. Remove all the sample post and pages, change the permalinks from settings as your choices. WordPress gives you complete freedom to fully customize themes, install plugins that allow you to control the appearance and functionality of your blog. Do not install plugins that are not necessary at the beginning phase like ad inserter, its better to keep less plugins as much as possible. Some of the plugins that are essential for your blog:
- Yoast SEO
- Jetpack
- Akismet Anti-Spam
- Easy Table of Contents
- WordPress Popular Posts
- WP Cerber Security
- Ad Inserter
- Shortcodes Ultimate
Let’s move on to WordPress theme! In order to make blogging website appealing, you need responsive WordPress theme that can adjust to any screen size and give viewers a great user friendly experience. There are large number of free WP themes available for you to choose but if you take a look at premium WP themes, its more attractive than free version. Premium WP themes has more features to provide in customization. If you have enough budget to get premium WordPress themes that you find captivating toward the viewers, here is the marketplace I recommend – themeforest which is a part of Envato Market.
Create Content That Help Your Blog To Grow
The content you publish has to be awesome and should add value to the viewers, don’t just copy paste from other sources. Be authentic, do not paste from other website else you will face issue later while applying for AdSense. Along with the post content you should focus on pages as well. You must create Privacy Policy and About page, plus you can add Contact and Disclosure page if you want in your blog. Mostly privacy policy page is similar to any other website but try to make it original. If it is difficult then try freeprivacypolicy which will generate policy page for you. In about page, you have to tell about your blog and author(yourself). When you start doing affiliate marketing, you better add disclosure page to let people know.
You have Keywords and Yoast SEO (WP Plugins) which will help you grow your blog post. You need to have keyword in your title and article but make it appropriately. You don’t want your content to be packed full of your keywords. You can maintain the articles with the Yoast SEO regarding SEO Analysis. Write at least 10 to 20 post with 1000+ word or 30-40 post with 500+ word to make money blogging with advertisements. Make sure your content brings traffic to your blog. Before publishing check your post if it is duplicated with other website, to check the Plagiarism you can use duplichecker or smallseotools.
How To Get Paid For Blogging
If you really want to start a profitable blog, then don’t be in hurry, it takes time to establish a stable flow that can help you earn. You may choose to run advertisements and affiliate links to get paid for blogging. Once you have enough articles you can apply for Google AdSense, when your blog is approved to show ads you can make money blogging. You won’t need visitors to get approved by Google AdSense but to get paid for blogging, you’re gonna need viewers. There are other advertising networks like Media.net, Infolinks and Monumetric which are alternative to Google AdSense.
Unlike Ad Network, Affiliate Marketing works bit differently when viewers click on affiliate ads or link from your blog to buy a product, you earn certain commission from the sale. Isn’t it cool? If you want to grow your affiliate sales, you need to publish quality contents being honest with your viewers.
Extra Reading – Sell Internet Bandwidth – Make Money Online By Sharing Your Internet
Can I Earn From Google Blogger
Blogger.com is a part of Google company where you can publish your blog for free with the templates of choice and free domain (example – yourdomainname.blogspot.com). Can I earn money from free blogspot? The answer is ‘YES’ you can earn money with Google AdSense. Is it worth it? No, I do not recommend google blogger for business or earning purpose. Yeah! If it is to just try out then its ok. Blogger has no plugins like WordPress and it can not rank above paid domain like .com and .org website. It’s not easy to get AdSense approval from google blogger in compare with paid domain.
Aim For Profitable Blog
At the end I just want to tell you guys, treat your blog as your business and set your own boundaries. I just think that blogging is an easy profession with high competition. Make sure you take full advantage of keywords and social networking sites to gain traffic to your blog. TAKE ONE STEP TO YOUR SUCCESS!