Nowadays, when the number of blogs reaches 600 million, there’s evidence that this type of business brings good profits. People start their blogs for personal use, business, brand visibility, or high ranks on Google. Let’s now discuss all the advantages of having a blog in more detail.
The pros of blogging are as follows:
- Ranking optimization. Creating useful and informative blog posts allows you to get a higher ranking. With evergreen articles, your website will rank better on Google and ultimately drive organic traffic. To ensure improvements in terms of your site’s performance, don’t forget to update your content regularly.
- Good relationships and communication with your audience. Customer engagement is crucial when it comes to your brand promotion and sales. That’s why it’s imperative to connect with your audience. Starting a blog is the best way to do it since you can let your readers explore your relevant content, leave feedback, and rate your material. It also enables you to update customers on your company’s latest products, launches, and news.
- Additional revenue. Successful blogs make significant profits. You can generate more income not only from selling products but also from blogging itself. If you have a reliable and popular website, your revenue can come from traffic, affiliate links, sponsored content, ebooks, webinars, courses, training, etc.
- Extra exposure. If you aim to create buzz around your company and product, making content related to your industry is the best decision. Leads can come from different sources to find info about certain industries. This way, your website will obtain more visitors and drive traffic.
- Online visibility. As of 2021, 4.72 billion people use online networks. In one way or another, all these users use the internet to find answers to their questions, learn something new, or just fill in their free time. By creating interesting blog posts, you can draw users’ attention to your brand and establish brand recognition. A visible website enables you to generate new customers faster.
- Higher traffic. Additional pages on your website increase your opportunity to emerge on a search engine results page and obtain more website readers and prospects. Hence, every time you write an article for your website, you increase your chances of ranking high on Google and attaining new readers and customers.
However, like any other business strategy, it has drawbacks as well:
- requires a relatively long time to bring positive results;
- always needs fresh and unique ideas relevant to your target audience;
- brings only a little payoff in the beginning;
- needs additional ways of promotion like email, social media, influencer marketing, PPC, and pre-roll ads.
Now that we’ve figured out the pros and cons of blogging, we also need to discuss the way this kind of business strategy works.
How does blogging work?
People who begin their startups buy a domain name and design their websites by themselves, while established businesses create new landing pages for a blog on their existing websites to fill them with good content. With simple websites, blogs enable visitors to use them easily and find the necessary information.
Different bloggers choose different blog themes. Some prefer to talk about marketing and product reviews, and others discuss fashion, healthy life, cooking, or any other topic. Bloggers create a series of posts and make them available for reading on their websites. Articles usually appear in a certain order, starting from the most recent ones. They are also divided into categories to enable people to navigate them easily. Besides, blog posts have another unique feature, such as interlinking. This way, bloggers link to other blogs and promote each other to expand their audiences.
If you are interested in starting your own blog from the very beginning, let’s explore some steps you need to take to get started.
6 Steps to Start a Blog
- Choose a niche
- Pick a catchy and easy name for your blog
- Select a unique design
- Write your first blog post
- Promote your blog through different platforms
- Optimize and update your content
With basic computer knowledge and an understanding of what your heart desires, you can easily create a blog by sticking to our guide.
- Choose a niche. Firstly, you need to select a niche in which you have a high level of expertise. Your passion and interest in the chosen industry are essential. Secondly, once you choose your key topic, make sure that it has a wide audience so that you have some space to grow your blog. If you don’t have any idea what to blog about, consider sharing your life experiences. You can start a personal blog and tell about your daily routine: makeup and cosmetics, style and clothes, traveling, or anything else. The key is to create quality content that will attract the public.
- Pick a catchy and easy name for your blog. To make readers recognize your blog, you need to select an easy-to-remember domain name. It’s your address on the internet, so it should be unique. Your domain name will enable people to find your website or social media account easily. Your title should be descriptive so that new users can catch the main idea of your blog.
- Select a unique design. You need to have some understanding of your blog and its design since it needs a face. As an option, you can consider leveraging WordPress since it has special layouts for blogs. The platform enables you to obtain a layout and its design just in a few clicks.
- Write your first blog post. Once you decide on your design, it’s time to create your first piece of content. Bear in mind that to blog successfully, you need to create unique, engaging, informative, interesting, and relatively long posts. It’s not an easy task to always come up with fresh and interesting ideas, but they help attract people, engage them, and make them loyal to your brand. Besides, don’t forget to add some photos to create visually appealing blog posts and simplify the way visitors perceive your content.
- Promote your blog through different platforms. Now when companies and bloggers promote products with the help of digital and traditional marketing, you can’t remain inactive. Use various forms of ads like PPC, native advertising, pre-roll ads, create email campaigns, and leverage social media channels to popularize your blog. More and more bloggers use paid ads that appear on users’ Instagram Stories and feed. Consider collaborating with other bloggers in your niche, commenting on other famous pages, communicating with your audience, and posting regularly to build a follower base and gain your readers’ love and trust.
- Optimize and update your content. Once your blog post is published, remember to update it frequently. If you want your blog to rank higher on Google, utilize relevant keywords, write quality content, add SEO meta tags, optimize images, and reduce your bounce rate.
Now that you’ve already explored our guide on developing a blog, let’s jump into the next section to figure out the ways to gain revenue from your blog.
How to Make Money Blogging
- Conduct courses and workshops
- Create sponsored posts
- Host a paid webinar or training
- Consider affiliate marketing
- Write books
The popularity of your blog provides you with new opportunities to make money. You can see several effective ways to earn some extra costs below.
Conduct courses and workshops
One of the greatest ways to make money online is to create courses. Modern people look for new skills and knowledge that help their personal and career growth. However, due to their often heavy workload, they don’t have a lot of time. That’s why it’s always a problem to go somewhere to directly participate in different events.
Online courses and workshops come to the rescue and help both participants and bloggers. As a blogger, you can connect with your audience through different video platforms and share a topic you specialize in, and your participants can obtain the necessary knowledge.
Let’s take Gabrielle Bernstein, for example. The spiritual leader offers readers to buy her courses on relationships, business, and meditation. She earns money by sharing her experience and valuable hands-on tips.