How to Start a Blog (And Earn Money from It) in 2022
Blogs are like opinions: Everyone has one. This is for a reason!
A well-designed blog full of useful content is among the most effective advertising instruments available. This shows prospective customers that they're experts in the field and also builds your reputation on the internet. Media Centric SaaS Companies like Hubspot who maintain active, useful blogs often have greater traffic than major media outlets in their respective industries. That's massive.
In this article, we'll break down why blogs are such an important strategy to build brand recognition prior to diving into the details of how to start your own blog. In the next article, we'll go through the core strategies bloggers use to make money from their blog, so you'll have an outline of how to turn your blog into a serious source of passive income. (Because there's no one who doesn't want to think about this!)
Let's get started, and help you go from a beginner to blogger superstar. These are some tips that will allow you to get to a specific section:
The advantages of blogging
from allowing your site to be more prominent on search engines to establishing your brand's connection with the public there are many reasons that every writer and company needs a blog.
Boosting your website traffic
It's not necessary to go through the lingo, but this method is known as inbound marketing. You blog about a subject consumers are searching for, and, along the way, they'll find your name. It also means that you don't need to spend money on ads to be seen. (That's outsidebound marketing!)
Conway later explains that by taking a stand on controversial issues within his field and defending his position, he saw the "huge uptick in traffic" and increased his audience to over 20,000 readers per month. He now collaborates with a network of freelancers who create amazing content. That's a model you can copy, regardless of the industry you're in.
Getting discovered via social media
Content from blogs isn't only useful for driving visitors to your site -it could also be used for use on social media. By doing this, you'll grow your audience for your business and reach leads you wouldn't get elsewhere. It's easier to illustrate rather than explained. We'll look at the details of an illustration.
Imagine you're selling lint-rollers that you use to write a blog post about strategies to get rid of cat hair off couches. In-depth you describe every way to take the feline from the place you lie. (Meow.) That post and the research you put into it are your foundation.
If you want to take things a step further, you could make an Twitter thread that breaks the hair removal techniques in less than 280 characters. It's shorter, more digestible and gives you access to an entirely new public. Additionally, you can make an Instagram-based carousel which shows your top five ways to get the hair of cats off your couches. If you're feeling adventurous then you can even create an instructional TikTok video on how to use a do lint rolling like a pro.
Suddenly, that blog post doesn't seem like simply a single piece of text. It's actually a mini marketing campaign, with elements you can spin off to promote your brand on different social channels. It's the blog post that's your best bet to devote the majority of your time. Once you've written it and published, you'll be missing the point if you didn't spend at least an hour creating it for your social media.
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Building your online reputation
Blogging is also an effective means to improve your online profile and make yourself known as an authority on a particular topic. A well-established online reputation is valuable for solo entrepreneurs and big companies alike Your blog posts and content that created today could be influential for many years to come.
Put simply: people prefer to buy from businesses which help them, rather than anonymous corporate behemoths. Businesses would prefer to hire consultants who offer a certain amount of value up-front rather than consultants who don't have any proof they'll deliver on their say they will.
High-quality, consistent blog content is how you give away that value and prove your value.
Long-term business creation
A major benefit of blogging is the ability to generate long-term business for your business. Once you've created a blog article, it's yours alone (and it exists forever). You are able to edit and publish important articles every year to keep them ranked highly as well as people continue finding your company through your blog on their own.
Best of all, your blog posts will form the first impressions of you. When a potential customer reaches out to you for the first time they'll already be able to form a picture of you formed by reading your blog's posts. You won't have to introduce yourself -- and you'll be able to be focused on solving the problems of your customers and establishing relations with them.
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How to create a profitable blog by 2022
So now that you know the reasons why blogs are popular, let's get into the nitty gritty details regarding how to create your own successful blog. Because blogging has changed a quite a bit since the days that were LiveJournal and TypePad and is expected to be successful in the year 2022, you must to have a solid program and plan for your blog, right from the get-go.
1. Pick your niche
Before you even begin your blog, you need to pick the core subject you'll be focusing the content you write about. That's your niche.
On the flipside, if you choose a narrow niche, nobody will ever be able to find the time to find. It's possible that you're the most powerful fish in a tiny water body, but if no one is fishing there, then you shouldn't expect to make a huge impact on the business.
Imagine that you're a tailor who enjoys making quilted copies of the album cover from the 1960s and 1970s. There's a chance that there's a small audience who wants to see your Trout Mask Replica quilt. If you're looking to attract new customers for your company, you may be interested in writing about making. Sewing is a wider field with more potential customers looking for it.
With luck, there are a handful of steps that you can follow to identify a lucrative niche -- one that's not overly crowded, and that people are searching for. How to find it:
Imagine your favorite hobbies as well as your skills and experience.
Searching for a blog topic should begin with some serious self-reflection. You can ask yourself these three questions. You can also write down some brief notes while you're at it:
- What are you passionate about? do? What could you talk about for hours?
- What skills or life experiences could you impart or offer to other people?
- Within the niche you're drawn to, what areas haven't yet been explored to death yet?
Most of the time the real world or your work hobbies will be the subject that your blog should be focusing on. This is a place where you're an expert in the field.
The importance of knowing your market is essential, since it'll take time to build your blog audience. If you're not interested in the niche you've chosen for your blog then you'll face an identity crisis and leave it before hitting the year-mark. (And it won't be a pleasant experience (I promise you that). )
Check Google Trends to see how popular your area of expertise is
Once you've identified your own niche, it's time to do some very basic study to find out what consumers are seeking in your field. This is a much simpler task, and won't take any soul-searching.
Go to Google Trends -- the most effective and free method to gauge traffic to search (a.k.a. the amount of time people spend searching for the phrase on Google each month). Think of key keywords that are relevant to the subject you're interested in. If you're in the field of photography, you could try terms like "learning photography," "best cameras for beginners" or even "photography." Enter these phrases in Google Trends, and you'll have a look at the search volumes as they change over the course of.
That's all there is to it. The thing that the Google Trends study process is doing is reveal the routes people are using to find your area of expertise. It will reveal trends within your niche too, and indicate whether your area of expertise expands or decreases.
This step can allow you to gut-check whether your niche is the best one for you. If you're afraid about your market being overcrowded for you to stand out, then stick around -- that's a problem you can solve.
Drill down to find a sub-niche you can have your own
The niche you choose for your blog could be something that's already really well-known, such as photographs, finance, or even healthy food. But if you ask yourself which niches aren't yet saturated, you can carve out something healthy which you could develop.
If, for instance, you're a photographer, you might want to narrow down the overcrowded niche of photography into the niche of studio photography. You can let someone else write about long-exposure landscape shots. You can concentrate on lighting, arranging indoor photo shoots, and the must-have studio equipment.
This way it will appear that you are a master of a specific trade. (Which is gonna help your business stand out, too. And isn't that the whole point?)
2. Pick a name for the blog
Once you've picked your niche (or sub-niche! ) then it's time to select the right name for your blog. This is the name that people search for and recall, so it's important to choose something simple, memorable, and true to the brand you've created.
If you're choosing your name, you'll want to think about your target audience, the subjects you'll be writing about, and also what your voice as a writer is like.
With this background in mind now you're ready to choose names. There are many different naming strategies you can use for your new blog:
You can use your own name
Creative director Nathan Allebach uses his last name for the title of his blog and his communications company. This has assisted people who've read about his work in Steak-Umm find his company and become new clients.
But, on the other hand the other hand, this strategy of naming may not be suitable for teams or for blogs with a focus on industries. And if you have a common name like John Smith, you may not be ranking well on Google. (But hey, that's what middle names are, right? )
Take a look at a thesaurus
If your blog is focused on an industry or field your title could lead to a pigeonhole of you. Instead, you might want to choose a more broad title which reflects the type of blog content that you're writing about.
It's not easy, though -- so get your closest tome (or Thesaurus.com). It's going to be taking the industry-related keywords you thought of earlier and plug them into your blog, then look up keywords that are similar to them to use as a starting point for your blog title.
For example: a name such as The Camera Blog feels generic So, take the word "camera" and enter that into your online thesaurus. You'll find related terms like "lens," "mirror" and "35mm" -It suddenly seems more intriguing.
You can easily flip these into a new title which is appropriate for your blogfor example, Lens Tracker 35mm Mayhem and Mirrorless Magic. People searching for photography can easily identify the blog's theme about and will not disappear into the sea of poorly-named blogs.
Use a blog name generator
Another good strategy to name your blog is by plugging certain words into a blog naming generator. Pick a few terms that are related to your field, then let a naming tool like BlogTyrant's do the hard work. (This name generator will even check what domain names are in use. )
There's no more convincing evidence of the effectiveness of name generators than the upcoming EGOT awardee Childish Gambino. The name he chose for his stage debut via an Wu-Tang Clan name generator in the 2000s, which is still doing the rounds with it a decade later. (It's active. Plug in "Donald Glover" here, if you're in the market for a new song. )
The point is: there's nothing wrong with letting a robot help you brainstorm. As long as you come up with an original, good name, it doesn't make a difference how you came up with the name.
3. Create your blog's hosting
When you start your website, you'll have to establish hosting. In layman's terms, this means buying your domain name or the URL your blog audience will search to read your articles.
Choose the most reliable hosting provider. If you go with a bottom-of-the-barrel, extra-cheap hosting provider, your blog may see performance issues, such as lag time while loading. It's possible that you don't notice in the first place, but Google's search engine definitely will -- which means you'll risk not showing up in the search results.
But hosting isn't that expensive. Indeed, many hosting services will charge you a couple coffees each month and ensure that your blog is up and operating 24/7.
Our Top five recommendations for hosting companies include (in the order that is not specific):
4. Create your blog using a CMS
When you've got the domain you want to use, you're ready to build your blog out in an Content Management System, also commonly referred to as CMS. CMS.
CMS platforms allow you to build your own web pages without having code. The CMS will be where you'll go to make new pages, publish articles, and update old material in the future. If you're a writer, choosing a CMS is similar to choosing your significant other therefore, you must choose wisely.
The most common CMS platform is WordPress, an open-source classic that is used by companies of every size. There are plenty of excellent CMS options on the market, however. These are our top choices for you to start:
5. Create and share material
After you've got your CMS installed, the next step is creating and publishing your content. Content creation is a topic on its own, and you could write us a whole book (or cry you a river) on the process which is used to choose the content to create.
always need to ask yourself these key concerns:
- Who are my ideal customers?
- What interests them -- and what problems do they have?
- What could I do to help them learn?
This strategy will keep from going outside of your field, creating off-brand material, or creating content on topics that someone previously written about. It will also help you discover fascinating, hidden stories that you can make real for your viewers. I wish you all the best in your writing!
6. Make sure to promote your blog
Once you've put your information that's out there Next step is to make it more visible.
One of the first strategies we'd suggest is to reuse blog posts for your social media platforms. Transform a long-form blog post into the form of a carousel-style post on Instagram, or a deep dive thread on Twitter. Start your iPhone and take a TikTok that breaks down the key points in the article. Then, send people to your site for more details.
This kills two birds with one stone. It solves the "what should I do on Instagram" problem, but it also brings users back to your blog post.
Apart from content reuse as well, we recommend that your website be searchable. It takes a amount of SEO research, but it's an interesting rabbit trail worth going down. All you need to do is conduct your own keyword research, locate high-ranking terms, and weave them into your article.
It tells Google that your article solves problems that people are searching for. It will also boost your organic traffic to the next level.
How to make money blogging using 4 strategies
By this point, you've set up your blog and up and. Congrats! People are finding your content and they seem to be really enjoying the articles you're putting up.
How do you make money from all this video content?
It is important to know how content creators make money:
- If you offer your content for sale You earn revenue directly from users. For instance, when content is locked behind paywalls, or structured in an online class, you're marketing your service.
- When you're selling the idea of awareness to the public and working with a third party to fulfill their marketing needs. Think of the "word that we get from sponsors" part of your favorite podcast or links to your recipe site that will lead directly to Amazon products. These are examples of selling your listeners.
1. Place ads on your blog
Enabling Google AdSense (Google's advertising toolkit) for your blog is a fantastic way to turn the clicks that your blog earns into cold, hard direct payments to your account at the bank.
How do you work it? You make your blog available to Google's advertisers' network and let ads be displayed on your site. Clicks and impressions from ads total to an annual AdSense pay-out.
AdSense is free to join. Eligibility criteria are minimal, and your advertising income will grow like your blog's also.
There are a variety of kinds of AdSense adsthat include:
- Image advertisements: Graphic ads available in a range of dimensions.
- Text ads: ads that only display text which can show several or one offer.
- Rich media ads include video, HTML, and flash ads.
- GIF advertisements: animated image ads.
This means that if you notice that an ad is distracting from your blog content It is possible to swap the ad type for one that is less obtrusive. Also, if you're hoping to rack up the massive sums of money by selling lots of advertising spaces There are advertisements that will allow you to do this too.
2. Sign up to an affiliate network
Affiliate marketing is an effective way to monetize your blog. The affiliate link you provide to products, and every time an individual who came to your site purchases, you get a tasty commission.
You'll want to advertise products that your audience is actually keen on. Your readers on your home cooking blog probably would not want to purchase a moisturizing products... But they'll surely be intrigued by Crockpot recommendations. Choose the best products and you'll turn affiliate ads to cookware made of cast iron into gold.
We know from experience that there's a ton of ambiguous information available about affiliate networks. Because we care, we've put together a brief list of 8 reputable affiliate networks which you can sign up for today:
- Instagram Affiliate
- FlexOffers
- AWIN (prev. Affiliate Window)
- Amazon Associates Program
- CJ Affiliate
- Affiliaxe
- Affiliate Program
- ShareASale
- Udemy Affiliates Program
3. Write sponsored posts
Sponsored content is another excellent way to turn blog traffic into passive income and this is especially true once you've got a dedicated readership. For a set charge, you'll integrate ads for products of the company into your blog posts.
It's a win-win. You get the benefits. is cash. For your sponsor, it's a trustworthy, third-party piece of content that promotes their products (without appearing to be an empty advertising).
Sponsored posts may take a variety of forms, including:
- Blogs that are created by sponsors that you publish
- Written by you about a sponsor's product
- Links to a sponsor's webpage or product pages
- A listing that contains positive coverage for a company's product
- A product announcement that offers a special discount for blog users
It's crucial to note that most of the time, you'll be approached to write sponsored content. You don't want to chase companies, but in the end this can make you look desperate. Concentrate on creating good material that's distinctive in your area In time, they'll come to you.
4. Sell online courses
The online course is the fastest and most effective way to earn money from your blog. Blog content is a fantastic method of introducing people to your company or personal brand, but assembling your expertise into user-friendly courses is better. (And you can make it very lucrative!)
Furthermore, after you've developed a course you're finished. You might need to update information on the course from time time, but it's still a finished asset that you are able to send your blog's viewers for a long time. And if your blog becomes an authority within your field, your bank account could skyrocket. (No, really--we've seen many instances of this. )
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So, what's next?
If you've learned how to create your own blog, you're likely to be looking for ways to turn your platform into a money-making machine. As we've said before: the fastest, most effective method of monetizing your blog and build the foundation for passive income is by developing tutorials.
Here's where the power comes to. We make it easy to drive revenue from your blog through repurposing your content into self-guided online classes and membership sites. Our easy-to-use course design platform aids educators, coaches and creators of digital content create engaging, custom eLearning experiences to help grow profitable online companies.
Try for free and get the course design along with marketing, sales, and marketing instruments you'll need to bring your company to the next level. (No tech skills required! )