We often start blogging to express ourselves on the internet. We share our views, knowledge, day-to-day activities, opinions through our blogs. You are sharing your wisdom with your friends and family through your personal blog. That’s fine, but what if that same blog can start generating revenues for you? Wouldn’t it be great? You do what you are loving and you can make some money out of it. Today I’m going to share some tips on making money through blogging. Follow this article step by step.
10 Steps of Successful Blogging
Step 1: Identify your Target Audience
There are tons of blogs on the internet. Few of them gets heard, most of them remains unheard. Main reason behind this is that the blogger has failed to identify the right audience!
One of the most popular blogs, Scoopwhoop shares content which is worth reading only once, that too specifically for youth! But still the blog gets tons of hits everyday. The reason is because they have identified their target audience, and they just cater to them! They don’t focus on content outside of the target audience.
Whatever you are going to write on, make sure you chose a topic for specific audience. This is also called as identifying your niche. Technology, entertainment, lifestyle, health are some of the niches you can select. BuddyBits is a multi-niche website. Our target audience is mostly youth. We write articles for young generation. Same way, you need to identify your niche before starting your blog.
Step 2: Do Basic Research on your Niche
Before jumping into blogging, you need to do good research of the topic you have chosen. Let say if you are opting for technology. Now who will read your articles on technology? Developers? Or those who are gadget freak but don’t know how it works? Or those who don’t know how stuff works but are keen to know it? You need to identify right topics which come under your niche.
For research, you can find blogs similar to your domain through Google and can start following them. You can study how your competitors are operating and then can select a path to function your blog. Selecting proper path and categories for your blog is one of the most important things.
Step 3: Select Topics and Categories
Enough with the research. Now time for some action. Now you need to finalize categories for your website. For example, BuddyBits has different categories such as India, Business, Lifestyle, Scoops, etc. You too need to establish categories before starting your blog.
Once categories are finalized, you need to list down topics. On which topics, are you going to blog? Which topics are still unlisted on the internet? Which topics will interest maximum people to your target audience? List down number of topics under each category.
Step 4: Selecting Platform to Blog
You do not need to set up your own domain name yet! You can use blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger to get started. I would suggest you to try both platforms before starting to know which platform will be more suitable for you.
If you are planning to launch your blog with custom domain, I would prefer WordPress. And if you don’t want to start with custom domain yet, you can go for Blogger as it will be more beneficial in terms of search engine ranking.
Once you have selected your platform, you can select your favourite theme, can add categories and get started.
Step 5: Writing your first Post
Once you have set up your blog, you can pick one of your listed topic and can start blogging. While writing your first post, these are the things you should remember.
- Title of the post should not be too long. 50 characters are the best!
- Word count of your article should be 400 to 1000. 500 is a decent word count for your blog.
- Add relevant images to your post to keep your readers interested.
Once you have posted your first article, you are good to promote it now.
Step 6: Promoting your Blog
After posting the article, now it is time to promote your article. Firstly, share your articles on your different social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Sharing content on social media will drive traffic to your blog. You can also promote your blog through emails. You can email link of your new article to your dear ones asking for their opinions! This way, you’ll get hits and a good feedback.
Step 7: Engaging with the Audience
Traffic on your website has started coming in. Great. Now it’s time to retain those users. I would recommend you to enable following options on your website.
- Comment Box under articles
- Article Sharing plugin
Once you start getting hits, you should ask your friends to share their feedback through comments. Start engagement on your blog. Reply to the comments, ask people to share article if they like it. This way, you will convert your one time reader to your retaining reader. Getting returning users is more important that getting more hits. Make sure your blog is engaging.
Step 8: Using website Analytics
If you are opting for Blogger, you will get Analytics inbuilt. If you are going for WordPress, you will have to install Analytics to monitor traffic on your website.
Install Google Analytics on your website to track every activities on your blog. By installing Analytics, you will be able to track following things.
- Realtime Users
- Which city is visiting your site the most?
- Which post is being visited the most?
- How much average time one user is spending on your blog?
- Where is your traffic coming from?
- Which search engine keyword lead them to your website?
- And much more!
Installing Analytics and keeping track of activities on your site is one of the key factors of a successful blog. Analytics will show you where you need to work more? What your users are liking more?
Step 9: Time to Monetize your Blog
Now comes the most important part. Once you have set up the blog and have posted enough articles (around 25 to 30), you are ready to apply for Adsense. Adsense is a program of Google which connects advertisers with publishers. Sign up for Adsense as a publisher to get money through advertising. Once signed up, you will receive notification from Google stating if your website is approved or not. If your website layout and content is good, your website will get approved for Adsense.
Once you are approved for Adsense, you can get different ad codes from Adsense and place them on your website to display ads from Google advertisers. Google will pay you for impressions and clicks on its ads.
Don’t worry, if your site gets rejected from Adsense. If you are not selected for Adsense first time, you can opt for it again after sometime. And meanwhile, you can create your own Ad packages and sell ads to your readers. Here are several ways to offer advertising through your site.
- Display Ads
- Sponsored Articles
- Running a Contest
Once you have good amount of readers following you, you need not worry about money! Advertisers will start approaching you directly! Focus on making your site better day by day.
Step 10: Keeping your Readers Happy
This is the most important part of blogging. You need to connect with your users. You need to frequently ask your readers about their wishes. Provide them what they want.
Arrange contests, giveaways by partnering with advertisers. That will give benefit to all. Users will get a chance to win something, advertisers will get exposure and you will get hits and happy users.
After all, your users happy, you happy!
So these are the 10 steps of successful blogging. If you have any query related blogging or this article, feel free to write them down in comments below. Also don’t forget to give your feedback and share the article if you liked it. Stay tuned to BuddyBits for more.