How To Make Money From Blogging
Blogging can be a rewarding hobby, but it is also a fantastic way of earning money. Although there are over 600 million blogs online, there is always an appetite for more. Getting started with a blog can be a learning curve, but it is something that does not require too much technical knowledge and experience.
Picking Your Niche
The first thing that you need to decide on the niche that you would like to post in. You may want to create a lifestyle blog that covers things like fashion, diet and nutrition, parenting, or homes. If you have an in-depth knowledge of tech or business, then these might be a good angle for you.
Some blogs will cover multiple areas and will attract a wide variety of different readers. But, when you are starting out, you should consider a few related topics that you enjoy, know a lot about, and will enjoy posting about for a very long time to come.
Setting Up Your Website
There are lots of different options out there for you when it comes to setting up a website, and the option you go for will depend on what you would like to gain from the blog. If you want to start a blog that is not necessarily aimed at earning you money and is simple to set up, wordpress.com offers a range of hosted options, including a basic free option.
If you are considering earning money from the site at a later stage, then you will want to look at hosting your own websites. By using a self-hosted site, you will have greater control over a number of key aspects of the site. More of which we will discuss soon.
Getting Your Site Ready To Launch
There is a lot of work that needs doing before you can launch your site. If you have gone for a basic site, this will be quite straightforward and will be a matter of selecting a theme, and then starting to create posts and pages to fill the site. You can start to grow functionality into the site as you progress by installing widgets on the page that allow your readers to follow your site, visit your social media pages, as well as a number of other functions.
Self-hosted sites will allow you to install plugins. These will give you the ability to manage your search engine optimization to increase traffic to your site, insert adverts onto your site, protect your site from hackers, and much more. Installing plugins such as Yoast SEO will help you to grow your audience in an organic way.
Creating Content
Writing content is the important bit. You need to be creating content on a regular basis. Ideally, you should aim for your blog posts to be at least 300 words. Relevant images are helpful in attracting the attention of the reader. You can use your own photos or free stock images.
Think about how easy your content is to read. Break topics up with subheadings and try and keep a logical flow across the article. You will need to think about keywords for your articles. Use these focus keywords a few times across an article. These will be used by search engines to find your content. Be careful you do not make them feel unnatural. Make sure you run a spell check before you post your article.
You can use tags and categories to help sort your content within your site and make it easier for visitors to navigate and find related content.
Once you have posted the article, be sure and share your posts on your social media profiles. Try and encourage other people to share it too so that you find a wider audience than just people that you know.
Monetizing Your Site
There are many ways that you can monetize your site. In order to generate an income that you can live off though, you will need to be regularly getting very heavy traffic to your site.
Affiliate marketing is the most popular way of monetizing a blog. This is where you provide links to items that you recommend. If your visitors go and buy these items, you will earn a commission.
There are a number of paid blogging opportunities where brands put the money up for a post that will promote their business, or drive traffic their way. On-site adverts can also earn you small amounts of money too.
Another way of generating an income from your blog is by selling goods or services. These might include writing content or selling e-books or printables.
Image by free stock photos from www.picjumbo.com from Pixabay
Contributed posts are written by third parties and contain affiliate links. Woman Around Town receives payment for sales through the links.