How to Make Money by Blogging
How I make my living online by blogging: a beginner's guide to building a profitable blog based on your existing hobbies and expertise.
April 22nd, 2011 by Becky Turner
For a 20-something, I'm actually quite resistant to new technology. The most advanced feature on my mobile phone is that is has a color screen. I don't own anything made by Apple (that I know of) and it took me months to make the effort to use our idiot-proof Kindle
ebook.
Despite this irrational fear of technology, I have - for the past three years - been earning my entire living online by blogging on the internet.
For me, that's not unlike a caveman discovering time travel, coming to the future, and inventing the iPhone. (Not that I'm saying Steve Jobs was some kind of advanced prehistoric timelord or anything.)
My point is: if I can do it, most people can. With the right tools, there is no technological barrier to make money by blogging. As long as you have an internet connection, you can easily pick up the rest.
And what is "the rest"? We'll, it's your lucky day my friend.
The rest is distilled below; my three years of professional site building condensed into a short homemade recipe for success.
Stay true to this formula and you will save yourself a heck of a lot of mistakes along the way...
Ingredients
To start a blog or website, you'll need the following ingredients:
- A blogging platform / HTML Editor
- A domain name
- A web host
- A keyword research tool
- A site plan
- A monetization plan
- A link building plan
- A PayPal account
You can source these ingredients separately or get them all in one place with a tool like Site Build It. SBI is a unique site building tool and the ONLY blogging resource I recommend for beginners, so do check it out.
Of course there are dozens more extras you will discover as you expand your business (mailout providers, reader comment boxes, forums tools) but today I want to focus on the all-important essential ingredients.
Preparation
Here's my secret recipe for creating a successful homemade website...
Step 1. Know Your Niche
Almost always, profitable blogs are based on one specific niche, such as your favorite hobby (fossil hunting?) or career experience (private investigation?) or maybe a disease that has affected your life (diabetes?). Even the highest-traffic blogs in the world focus on target niches: personal development, web technology, humor, weird science...
A niche blog means you can dominate a small market and gain good search engine ranks for many keywords in your genre. It's much harder, in contrast, to create a catch-all website, compete with everyone, and still win every sector. Wikipedia has done that - but remember Wikipedia is written by thousands of people.
What's more, you can't possibly know everything about everything. Focus on one particular subject you know well, and use your expertise to create value for your readers. The entire value of your website is derived from your personal experiences, knowledge and passion.
So... what specialist knowledge can YOU share with the world?
Action Point: See SBI's Brainstorm It tool.
Step 2. Keyword Research
Amateur bloggers start writing up tales of their travels abroad or collection of Russian dolls without even doing one jot of keyword research.
The fools!
This critical keyword research will determine your blog's:
- Demand (the number of Google searches in your niche)
- Supply (the number of websites competing sites that exist)
- Profitability (whether the demand:supply ratio is good enough)
- Site plan (how to structure and label your content)
- Monetization (what products or ads best suit your niche)
So keyword research is an important number-crunching part of the process (or word-crunching if you will). Without it, you could spend the next six months creating a site that either no-one cares about, or no-one finds.
If Step 1 was all about you and your interests, Step 2 is all about your audience and what they want. Remember that you are creating a business, and the key to making money is by giving people what they need.
Action Point: See SBI's Master Keyword List tool.
Step 3. Plan Your Monetization
Exactly how are you going to make money by blogging?
It's important to plan your monetization model before you start creating your website - even before you buy the domain name.
Some niches (such as making money online or working from home) are very hot and can generate more cash per click in your AdSense ads. Other niches (such as sheep care) may generate very little via AdSense.
Another way of making money on your blog is writing an ebook or online course. So plan your monetization of such a product - how much do competing ebooks sell for and how successful are they?
Perhaps most crucially, identify the best products in your niche and check out their affiliate programs. Do they offer generous commissions? Generally, digital products like online courses, ebooks and MP3s offer higher commissions (perhaps 50-75%) than hard goods like books or DVDs (more like 5-10%). Work these affiliate products into your monetization plan.
Action Point: See Day 4 of SBI's Video Action Guide.
4. Launch Your Blog
Now you've had enough of planning and strategizing... it's time to actually start writing your content with a basic blogging platform.
My number one tip here is to write like you're talking to a friend.
Use correct SPaG of course, but just keep the information direct and simple. Tell stories. Distill advice. Keep things interesting and informal and you'll soon start to develop your own "pre-sell" style.
Pre-selling is the act of building trust with your visitor. You don't need to hard sell anything (in fact, I think it's quite unethical to play on people's emotions like that). Keep it genuine and the world is yours.
Writing for the web takes practice and as a blogger that's exactly what you're going to get. Aim to build your blog in your spare time, producing at least 1,000 words per week (that's less than this article).
You'll soon get the ball rolling and before you know it, your blog will have 30 pages of content, a few dozen daily visitors, and you'll be ready to start implementing your monetization plan.
Action Point: See SBI's free ebook Make Your Content PreSell.
5. Link Like Hell
This is one big secret that few amateur bloggers know about. In order to show Google how great your website is (and deserving of high rankings) you have to build lots of inbound links from other quality websites.
You could waste your time paying for directory submissions, or creating hundreds of fake blogs and linking them to your site. But that would be stupid. They're called Black Hat techniques and they're designed to trick Google - but Google will always catch up to such trickery.
Your time is better spent networking with all the other sites and blogs in your niche and asking if they'll link to you. Many times, they'll want a link in exchange. But a one-way link is always more valuable; you can achieve this by offering to write a guest article which contains your link.
Quality links create better rankings and more web traffic. Over time, aim to build the number of inbound links into the thousands.
Action Points: See SBI's free tool Value Exchange as well as the article 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity by SEO Book.
Final Thoughts
If you take my advice and start your first money-making blog with Site Build It, you'll find that all the processes are laid out for you.
You'll never miss an important step of the site building process (like creating an RSS feed, or submitting your site to DMOZ). And you wont have to worry about technical aspects like learning HTML or CSS.
The tools and lessons in Site Build It become the driving force of your blog. They'll ensure you stay motivated to keep blogging, and keep focused on what's important so that your website becomes profitable.
As for me, I spent $25/month on all of SBI's services and during my first year of blogging I made more than $10,000 online. It was that point that I gave up my regular job and focused on blogging full time. My income has roughly doubled every year since then. (To see exactly what blogs contribute to my bottom line today, check out my author bio.)
If you want to replicate my success with your own hobby-based blog, then I urge you to look at Site Build It as well. You'll learn everything I learned and follow the exact same process, without spending a dime on advertising your site (with search engine traffic, advertising comes free!)
PS - Blog or Website?
By the way, in this article I have used the terms blog and website interchangeably. However this isn't entirely accurate. There are some key differences between the two concepts; although few beginners are remotely aware of them. Check out this SBI article called Blog or Build to decide which is best suited for your online business venture.
Latest Articles
How to Deal with Content Thieves
How to Write Killer AdWords Ads
How to Make Money by Blogging
What Are The Benefits of Contracting?
>> Career Blog Archives
 |
