Wondering how to start a blog that generates traffic and money for you? There is no hidden secret, write the interesting topic that pulls the readers in and keep them coming back for more. Unleash the ideas with a brainstorming headline and text with a couple of images that really have a superpower. From content to design, everything makes an impression on the readers, so make sure you’re on the road to success.
Let’s dive into the step-by-step process of starting a blog.
Step #1: First Choose the Profitable Niche
Selecting the profitable niche is a head daunting task as it determines your blog’s success. The niche alone will decide who is your targeted audience, which topics you should focus and what is the demand in the future. It is prominent to choose the topic that generates tons of traffic to your website.
If you’re road to blogging is blocked or struggling to choose the niche, follow the ideas listed below:
Start with something you love
Blogging is a great way to bring your passion out. Always choose the topic which you love to read, write, and feed your mind. Starting a blog is always a dedicated process because most people will give up after a couple of months due to a lack of interest and patience. So always choose the topic that engages your mind and tempt you to continue.
Analyze the scope of the niche
Make a list of niche ideas that are interesting to you. Here are the few tools to analyze the scope of your niche.
Google Trends
Google trends help you in finding the public interest on a particular topic over a specific time period. Choose the niche and keywords that are trending upward on Google Trends. Spot the interest of your audience and plan the blogging schedule to skyrocket your blog post searches and shares.
Keyword Planner
Once you have chosen the niche its prominent to analyze the competition, difficulty in keyword ranking, and average search volume. Choose the combination of keywords with moderate search volume and lower competition to achieve results in a short time.
Researching a right keyword and incorporating into the blog will bring traffic to your webiste and shot at ranking high in the Google SERPs.
Step #2: Name it with a Domain and Web Hosting
Choose a Domain Name
Name your brand or business with a stunning domain. Your domain name says everything about your brand, business, value, identity and what you promise to deliver them. So don’t choose your brand in haste!
Domain names are a great way to announce yourself to the world. It separates your business from millions of business websites available from the internet. Choose the domain name that is memorable, short, original, and catchy. It creates awareness among the audience and attracts towards your business.
Here are the few examples of top brands how they have chosen their domain names
- Udemy – It is an online learning course. It combines the word “YOU” and “Academy” to form a domain name.
- Zomato – It is offering food delivery service. The domain name is simply a rhyme of ‘Tomato”.
- Nivea – It is the cosmetic brand name. It is derived from the word Niveus means snow-white in Latin.
- Volkswagen – It’s a leading manufacturer of automobiles. Volkswagen means “people’s car” in German
- Dell – The brand got his name from the founder Michael Dell.
Including Keywords in a Domain
If it’s possible, include keyword in your domain name. Keywords in a domain name improve the ranking of your website in SERP. But the keyword should align with your business service. The brand names are more reactive when compare to the keyword-based domain. So in order to make it memorable start with the brand name and pair it with a relevant keyword. For example: Food Panda, Small SEO tools, Content Marketing Institute. Use the keyword if it makes your domain name more intuitive.
Note: Don’t stuff the keyword in your domain name, for example, BuyFurnituresOnline.com because it looks spammy even though it is keyword-rich.
Host it on Web
You can design your website on your computer, but unless you upload it on a hosting server, it cannot be accessed to anyone. To make your site visible and accessible on the web you need to host a website. Your website contains a bunch of different files such as image, HTML, CSS, and much more that need to be stored together. The web hosting service provider will store and manage your website files. It also reduces the overhead of maintenance and repair costs of the server. The hosting service providers are responsible for delivering the files to users.
Step #3: Make it live with a WordPress
Make your blogging dream more successful and easier with the WordPress platform. Nowadays, blogging becomes a profession for many people. In that case, choosing a reliable content management system is important, here WordPress plays a major role. It offers an n-number of free themes with robust functionalities. You can easily customize the site without the help of the developer. Publishing the post, changing the website layout, and adding the widgets are made simpler in WordPress without any technical knowledge. WordPress is not only famous for stunning themes, but the plugins also drive people to use WordPress for creating blogs and websites. WordPress helps you create the user-friendly content, optimize for SEO. It reduces the cost of hiring the developer and SEO Executives.
Step #4: Unleash your ideas through Blogging
Now it’s ready to go! Unleash the ideas within you. Open your editor, start typing, organize your thoughts, and fill up in a structure. Writing the first blog post takes more than a couple of hours or days due to perfection, but don’t worry because there’s lots of time to edit the content. Initially, cover everything that you have in mind and then do revisions. Seed all your ideas and finally hit “Publish”.
Put the word out, share it with your friends, audience, and acquaintances. Let them know that you will have published the blog.
Step #5: Tune your Website for Money
Now its time to Monetize your website and start earning from it. Here are the few ways to generate money from your website or blog:
Advertisements
You can easily set up Google Adsense and other ads on your website to make money from it. It’s a great way to earn money from your online content. In a direct deal, you will share your page space for advertising the product or services that appear along with your content. You can also use Google Adsense. It serves the ads that are relevant to your content hen the user views or click the ad you will get paid.
If your website has huge traffic, you will gain traction through Google Adsense. The key goal is to drive the traffic to your website then advertise will rush for your ad space.
Advertisements are arguably the fundamental, easiest, and effective way to start earning money through blogging.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular methods to leverage your blog’s revenue. With affiliate marketing, you will promote the products and services of other businesses and get paid for every purchase made by your website readers. Partner with the highly reputed concerns because it may ruin your brand image if the affiliate marketer goes wrong.
Sponsored Post
Sponsored posts are one of the most common ways used by bloggers to monetize the blog or website. But unless your website has massive amounts of traffic and brand recognition, it is not possible. Because the sponsored post is formulated to gain exposure among the audience and to get new customers.
The sponsored post contains a link that points to the specific product or service page of the sponsor website from which the blogger receives compensation in the form of money, products, services, or in other ways. They are also known as paid posts.
SEO Beginner Guide – In Simple Words
Follow these simple tips to help Google understand the content on your site. This information helps deliver great results to searchers (your future customers)!
Look Good in the Search Results (SERP)
- Your page title is used as a suggestion for the title in Google’s search results. Describe your business in a concise, informative phrase.
- Domain names are an important part of Google’s search results. Choose a descriptive and easy-to- read domain name for your website. Sub-pages should also be easy to read. For example, use www.stasiasbakery.com/custom-cakes instead of www.stasiasbakery.com/prodid?12345.
- Meta descriptions are page summaries often used by Google and other search engines on the search results page. Write unique descriptions for each page in 160 characters or less.
Help Google Understand Images
- Give your images short, descriptive file names.
- The “alt” attribute describes the image. This helps Google understand what’s in the image.
- Write a short caption on the page below each image. Put important information in text rather than images.
Provide Useful Content and Keep It up to Date
Your website is like a virtual storefront. You wouldn’t leave a store unattended for 6 months, right? Keep your site fresh by starting a blog, announcing new products, sales, and special offers. Always remember to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and make sure you provide them with the information they need.
What Is Web Hosting and Its Types? [Beginners Guide]
Web hosting is prominent to make your website accessible via the internet. You’ve probably heard of it, and everyone agrees it’s important – but what actually is it?
Let’s get started!
Web Hosting service providers like GoDaddy and the Blue host will sell or leases memory space on its servers. It allows the website owners to buy or lease the entire server from them. Some may share a server with 100s of other website owners.
Web hosting is the place where all the files of your website are stored. It’s a online storage center that comprise of information, images, video, and other content of your website.
Without hosting, registering domain names will serve no purpose. In order to publish your website online, you need to host a website.
When Internet users want to visit your website, all they need to do is type your website address or domain into their browser. Their computer will then connect to your server and your webpages will be delivered to them through the browser.
Different types of web hosting
The first step in getting hosted is to choose the type of hosting service you need.
Sounds easy enough, right? But It depends upon several factors like budget, website’s functionality, performance and reliability and the service offered by the web hoster.
Let’s jump in!
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is perfect for small and entry-level websites. Where the website data is stored on a shared server. Each and Every website will have a limited amount of space as per the hosting plan. It’s cost effective and most basic type of web hosting plan. Shared hosting plans are easy to setup and does not require any technical knowledge.
The most recommended shared hosting provider is Bluehost. Its is user-friendly and powerful platform to host. Bluehost shared hosting plan starts at 199.00/mo* with free SSL & domain for 1 Year.
Virtual private server (VPS) hosting
VPS hosting also shares the single physical server but act like a multiple and separate servers. VPS hosting provides the dedicated server space and allocate resources and memory. It allow you to customize the server configuration and improve website performance. With virtual private server, you can higher uptime rates and loading speed of the website with large files like videos and images.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting gives a complete control on technical server settings and option to choose the software, configurations, and anything else you need. Dedicated server is a best choice because it belongs to you, and you alone.
Larger enterprises and ecommerce websites should consider a dedicated hosting plan because it offers higher level of security and performance. It means it doesn’t share resources with any other websites.
Buy a dedicated sever space from HostGator it offers surprising packages and pricing. It provide maximum flexibility you need. You can get Hostgator dedicated hosting at $119.89 a month + Unmetered bandwidth.
Cloud Based Web Hosting
Cloud Based hosting is buzzword in the new hosting technology. Cloud hosting allows hundreds of individual servers to work together and it looks like one giant server in the market. It is suitable for the websites that grow over a time or website with huge traffic, Cloud hosting reduce the downtime of a website by provide adequate resources. It has unique pricing strategy such as you can pay for what you use.
Conclusion
Building a profitable blog is always a exciting journey that blends your passion with strategy. You now have all the fundamental steps such as from finding your niche to tuning your site for revenue. Every successful blogger started with a single post. Your ideas have power. Take these steps, stay consistent, and start sharing your voice with the world.
