Blogging is a good way to make money online in this digital time. These days we see a lot of articles on how to make money online. I want to let you know that it is not just a story but a proven reality that one can make a living out of blogging. Even as a beginner you also can make money from your blog.
Anyone with a general knowledge of how the internet works, primary knowledge of SEO and blogging can start a blogging business and make money. In this article I will show you how to monetize your blog.
AN INTRODUCTION TO BEGINNERS ON HOW TO MONETIZE A BLOG
This article is writing in view to help bloggers especially beginners avoid mistakes or lose valuable time on tasks that won’t contribute to the main goal of making money from blogging. As a beginner, you may find it difficult to understand how money can be made from blogging. Without guides like this, it may take you several years to realize the whole picture and what you may probably be doing wrong, and finally how to turn things around.
Many of the blogs if not all you read posts from daily, are all money making blogs. So your own blog can as well fetch you real cash to earn a living from. This step-by-step detailed facts and information will hopefully keep you on the right track from the very beginning and offer you a solid plan to follow that will generate results in the fastest possible way.
At this point, it would be good to note that blogging is not an easy job. It is time-consuming and filled with tricky processes that require a lot of effort and hard work. It is also one of the most rewarding jobs in the world.
With the money reward included, building a successful blogging business gives you a feeling of achievement and the satisfaction of creating a business without relying on anyone else but your own talent and strength.
Have you ever thought of the reason why there are so many articles on how to make money with a blog and why do they share it with the world and not keep it for themselves and generate more money if they really know the magic formula?
Although not all those bloggers are earning a living from blogging but there are those who are. It is the dream of every blogger to get to the point where they are making money online and then share tips on how to select a niche for successful blogging to the readers.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH A BLOG
For the purpose of this article, I will be dropping a beginner’s guide on how to monetize your blog from any niche of choice.
Actually, some of the steps are pretty straightforward but others are tricky and you will need to be equipped with the proper knowledge, the right tools, and a lot of patience to get it right.
4 STEPS TO FOLLOW TO MONETIZE YOUR BLOG.
- Set up your own self-hosted blog
- Start publishing great content
- Build organic traffic to your website
- Build a community around your brand
SETUP YOUR OWN SELF HOSTED BLOG
This is the first step and could be said to be the easiest step. Here all you need is a little help and pointers in the right direction. These days it’s very easy to register a domain name and set up a blog.
Setting up your own blog involves registering your domain name, signing up for hosting, setting up WordPress, and finally publishing your own blog posts.
MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN SETTING UP YOUR OWN BLOG
- It’s very normal as a beginner in blogging to make mistakes just like in every other business of life. Provided you learn from these mistakes and not repeat them it’s not bad.
- You should have these tips in mind when it comes to starting a blog.
- Focus on your main goal
- Making money from your blog is your main goal of blogging so you don’t have to forget that. To make money from your blog your content should always meet the need of the searchers which will thereby make Google rank you because they always want the best for their customers.
- Don’t spend too much time, effort, and even money designing a perfect blog, because at this early stage, when you do not have any traffic coming in, nobody including Google cares about your website design.
- This does not mean that designing your blog is not important. It is but should come later. At this stage, you should focus on having your blog running and then creating content that will fetch the blog traffic.
- From the very beginning, you have to put in your best doing the works involved in getting traffic and potential customers.
- Own a domain and self-hosted blog
- A self-hosted blog is the best choice you can make. So from the beginning make the right decision and choose the right platform.
- Have it at the back of your mind that there is a big difference between hosting your website on a free platform and having your own domain and your own self-hosted website.
- Keep it simple
- Try as much as possible to keep everything simple, if you are starting now. You may get lost in the process if you complicate things so don’t.
- Save your time and energy for the more complicated tasks because as you go along you will have a lot to learn and will change your mind about many things.
Start Publishing Great Content
This is the second step and one of the most difficult and challenging steps. At this point, you already have a website that is up and running. Now you are faced with the task of creating the actual content for your blog.
What Is A Great Content?
By definition, great content is original, unique, actionable, concise, free from grammatical error, and is well-formatted.
You can combine text with images, infographics, videos, or even audio for the best results and make your content more engaging.
The importance of content for the success of your blog can never be overemphasized. So publishing great content will earn you credibility, traffic, and money in different ways.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GREAT BLOG CONTENT
- It is original
- It is actionable
- It answers the title question
- It is properly sourced
- It is unique
- It is concise
- It is grammatically correct
- It is well-formatted
- To practically create good content for your blog, you have to
- Choose a topic that you enjoy researching on
- Choose a topic with a decent audience
- Don’t go too broad, make it specific
BUILD YOUR BLOG ORGANIC TRAFFIC
This is the third step on how to monetize your blog. Having set up your own self-hosted blog and published great content you now have to build organic traffic to your blog.
WHAT IS ORGANIC TRAFFIC?
Organic traffic means the visit that a website has which is from a search engine’s search results and not a paid advertisement. You need organic traffic to make money from your blog, not just any traffic.
It’s the user intent that makes organic traffic more valuable than other sources of traffic because anyone that types a query in Google’s search box either wants to learn something, or is looking for an answer to a question, or wants to find information or to buy a product.
The user’s intent is expressed through the actual search terms he/she uses in the search query. In order to be eligible to rank for that term or related term, you need to provide Google with a thorough answer to the visitors’ search.
HOW TO GET MORE SEARCH ENGINE TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG
Get your technical SEO correct: this is the process of ensuring that a website meets the technical requirements of modern search engines with the goal of improving organic ranking.
Get your on-page SEO correct: this is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines.
Work on your off-page SEO: this refers to actions taken outside of your website to impact your rankings within the search engine result pages.
BUILD A COMMUNITY AROUND YOUR BRAND
This is the fourth step in this guide. At this point, you have your blog set with great content and the traffic flowing in. it is very important to gain the users’ trust before making any sales and this is achieved through building a community around your brand.
Branding is a very important aspect of the success of any business and your blog is not an exception. Now you need to change your mindset towards your blog. You have to now take it as a business, not just a hobby.
Building a blog community simply means to create a community of people that will follow your blog, interact with your content, and buy your products or services.
WAYS TO BUILD A COMMUNITY AROUND YOUR BRAND INCLUDE
- Email marketing
- Social Media networking
- Sending Web push notifications
- Replying to comments on you blog
Now it is time for you to offer any service of your choice by blogging and make money. Blogging for money is a practical concept. Services to offer in other to make money through blogging include the following:
- Sell your own products
- Advertising
- Sponsorship
- Paid Membership
- Affiliate marketing
- Online courses
- Consulting
Finally, I will like to inform you that to monetize your blog as a beginner, you need to allocate a lot of time and hard work to the blogging business because it goes a long way to determine the amount of money you will make.
