You’ve probably heard of many people that are making decent money only by running their blogs. If you’re someone who’s into personal growth, you’re probably reading a lot of these blogs as well. They have amazing content and their design is out of this world. You may even think about starting your own blog. Many people do. But most of them never start working on it. For some of them, it seems too complicated. But the reality is, it’s very simple to do it. You may not understand how to monetize your blog yet, but that’s ok. You’ll understand everything as you go. The truth is that anyone can start a successful blog. All it takes is a good strategy, hard work, and consistency.
Set Measurable Goals
This is a crucial thing, to begin with. It’s the same as if you’re going on a road trip. You need to know where you’re going and make a plan for how to get there. But take your time as you’re doing it. You don’t want to hit some random number or some random goal. That won’t keep you going. You want to know what your actual goal is so you know what you’re giving to people. You shouldn’t overcomplicate it as well, and you should always strive to keep it simple. But you should always understand what you’re looking to accomplish.
Make a Plan
Now that you have a goal, the first thing you should do is make a plan. Let’s say you wanted to make a blog for parents with babies. Your goal is to reach as many people as you can. But you need to be specific here. If you want to make money out of it, you need to know what the number is. If your goal is to make $30k a year with your blog and quit your job, that’s a starting point. Now you need to plan what kind of products you’re about to have. If you have three $10 eBooks, you only need 1000 parents to be able to make $30k a year. Not to mention you can also make money with AdSense and Sponsorships. But that can take some time.
Choose a Good Name
To make a good blog, you need a catchy name. But the name shouldn’t be too generic. Especially if the topic is not too narrow because all the domains will be taken. You want to think of something creative that is related to the theme of your blog. Names like “Mom and Baby” are too generic and are probably not available. So try something else that will also be in your niche. You want it to remind people of what your blog is about. Something like “Baby Planet” or “Mindful Mother”. You get the idea.
Find an Available Domain
Now let’s look for a domain. The best place to buy a domain is Google G-Suite. This is because everything will be much more simple later on. And your blog will look more professional. You’ll have a professional email address like [email protected] for example. If your email looks like [email protected], no one will take your work seriously. So this is something to have in mind. Now, what to do if our domain name is not available? If there is no website and no one is using it, you can always buy it. But that can be very expensive sometimes. So you should look for alternatives first. If the name of your blog is Baby Planet, and .com is not available, get .co as your domain. It sounds even more professional. And you want people to take you seriously.
Make Content
Start making content as soon as possible. Content is the most important thing on the blog. You can have the most beautiful website on the internet. It means nothing if your content is bad. And you want to be able to monetize your blog, so you need to have content. Not to mention that your content needs to be good. This is the only way to have readers that are here to stay. You don’t want them to forget about your blog as soon as they open something else. You want to be so unique they can’t forget about you. So if you want to have this, don’t copy other people’s content as well. Give your best to be original and to be consistent. If you want to have better results faster, you need to show up every day.
Give Value
To make your content stand out, you need to give value. It may sound obvious, but many people are not doing it. They might think that they are, but they’re not. You want to be focused on giving as much value as you can. Forget about the money and everything else. Focus on giving value to people and let that be your main task every day. And this is how you grow faster as well. You’ll get better at solving their problems day by day. Make a list of every possible problem that they might have. Or make a list of specific information that you think they might find valuable. Now, make a blog post on every single one of these. Give your best to make these blog posts as valuable as you can. This is the best way to build your tribe of people that will follow your work daily.
Make Yourself Visible on Social Media
One of the best ways to get to people is to be active on social media. And that won’t be hard if you’re already making content. All you have to do is to create content using the one you’ve already created on your blog. You can do simple short videos on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Or you can make simple graphics in the form of a picture for Facebook and Instagram. Another great way is to make carousel posts for Instagram. You don’t have to be good at graphic design to do it. You can use simple free online tools like Canva and create professional-looking posts. The idea is completely the same. You want to be able to give as much value as you can. And it’s much easier this way because you don’t need to write a lot of words. A short text with a beautiful design is enough to make your post go viral. But the same rules apply as they do on your blog. If you want that to happen, you need to show up every day.
Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines
Search engine optimization is one of the most important things. You want to rank as higher as you possibly can. And to be able to do that, you need to optimize your blog. And not only your blog, but your social media as well. You want all your content pieces to work together as a team. To be able to do that, you need to research keywords before you make any piece of content. This way, you’ll know exactly what you need to do and what to include more. You want to do that for your blog, and your social media. When you have keywords in your bio and your posts, they also come up on Google. So it doesn’t matter whether your blog or your social media comes up first. When the readers come in and find value, they will stay. And once they realize they are exactly where they want to be, they will follow you all over the place.
Consider Running Some Ads
If you don’t have any followers, you may want to run a few ads. Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about it. Even simply boosting a post can be enough sometimes. You want your voice to be heard. And these social media ads can make miracles very fast. Even if you don’t have a big budget. You can do it for as little as $5 a day. It can still make a big difference. You can try out different kinds of ads and see which ones are getting you better results. And then double down on those.
Be Mindful of Your Affiliate Links
Be careful with your affiliate links. Yes, you can use them on your blog, and your social media. But it’s a good idea to start making some progress first. Try to get to at least a few hundred visits a day before you start posting these links. Don’t even make a profile on these websites before that. This is because many of these websites will ban you if you don’t make a sale in six months. And it’s very easy to fail if you don’t know what you’re doing. Especially if you’ve never worked online before.
Start Selling
Start selling from day zero. Yes, you may need to wait a little while before you start selling affiliate products. And you need to wait until you get monetized to earn money through AdSense. But that doesn’t stop you from selling your products. You can always make a good-looking eBook using Canva. Make it look as good as you can and give as much value as possible. Always focus on giving value first and it will keep growing as long as you’re doing so.