The Best Way to Make Money Blogging

“Want to learn the quickest way to make money blogging?” Regardless of whether you are a blogger, entrepreneur, or using a blog to market and grow a business online, the process for driving traffic and generating an income from blogging is the same.

To make money blogging you need to be able to create great content on a particular topic. That’s pretty much it. So why do so many businesses and entrepreneurs struggle?

The problem is that blogging takes skill and practice, with a good understanding of the target audience and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). In other words, a blogger needs to be a good writer, a good marketer, and a good SEO.

This article will provide you with all the resources you need to learn how to blog effectively, select a niche topic that you are passionate about and that will bring in money, and give a step-by-step guide to making decent money in the shortest possible time.

Are you up to the challenge?

Important blogging skills

Before you can start making decent money from blogging, you will need to learn a few things. By learning, practicing and honing your skills now, you will save plenty of time and effort going forward.

Blogging is a competitive industry and no-one can afford to waste precious man-hours creating content that isn’t highly relevant, highly engaging, and primed to dominate Google search.

After reading this article you should be able to structure a blog post perfectly to maximize your chances of ranking highly in search. You should know how to craft content to boost organic search traffic – SEO. You should know a couple of neat blog marketing techniques, and understand how social media can help to drive traffic.

How to start a blog

Starting a blog can be divided into two separate categories:

    Choosing a niche

    Getting online

Choosing a niche

There’s as much science to starting a blog as there is creativity. Never choose a blog topic because you feel will make more money, if it is not a subject you are personally interested in.

Blogging is time consuming, and you simply won’t stick to it for long enough, if the subject matter is of no interest to you.

With that said, not all blog topics are equal, and some have greater potential to make money. Read the following articles that talk about how to choose the perfect money making niche for you or your business:

    Which blog topics make the most money?

    How to come up with ideas for a home based business startup

    “Google insights for Search” as the best free SEO tool for small business SEO

Getting a blog online

In order to get your blog up and running you will need:

    A domain name

    Blog software or platform

    Hosting

There are plenty of great options available to you, and the following articles will help you make the right choice:

    How to build a website

    How to start a blog with WordPress

    Top 10 things you need to start a blog and make money

    Top 10 priorities for starting a blog or small business website

How to make money blogging

In the online world, it is far more important to dominate a single niche (even if it is a small one) than it is to be “pretty good” over a broader niches, or a range of niches.

The reason is because focusing on a specific niche makes your content very relevant to people searching for that information. The more relevant, engaging and useful your content is, the more likely you are to build trust, authority, reach and social influence.

Once you have captured one niche, it is then easier to go for the next one. In this way, you can build up your traffic one niche at a time.

The benefit of capturing one niche at a time is that you will be able to make money as you go. If you don’t dominate any niche, traffic will be less relevant and less likely to convert.

Step by step guide to making money blogging

If all goes to plan, you should find that you start earning a bit of money within a few months. This revenue should grow in proportion to the amount of traffic your blog generates.

As time goes by, more content and social influence will lead to more and more traffic and at some point, you will be able to earn a full-time living from your blog.

Here’s how:

1.      Pick a focused niche (use Google AdWords Keyword Tool to help choose the perfect niche phrases)

2.      Choose a good blog platform – one that has excellent SEO features and proven reliability

3.      Follow other successful bloggers via social media and learn from them

4.      Become skilled at SEO

5.      Promote and market yourself and your blog via social networks and guest posts

6.      Contribute to other discussions, groups and forums in your niche

7.      Network and make meaningful connections

8.      4Write at least four to five high quality articles per week

9.      Learn how to use Google AdSense and other advertising networks to make money (learn about affiliate marketing)

10.  Explore affiliate advertising (learn about affiliate marketing)

11.  Sell direct advertising once you have sufficient traffic

12.  Learn how to use Google analytics to help refine and improve your SEO, marketing and blogging (learn about analytics)

13.  Be consistent

14.  Be persistent

It might sound like a lot, but remember that you have plenty of time to master the skills you need. So long as you are always prepared to learn and adapt, you will be able to make money blogging.

Don’t Sell – Help!

 

There are another three components that are critical to website success—besides avoiding the pitfall of focusing on product before knowing who your target market is and where they hang out.

The first is help, don’t sell. By helping you will sell. The second is build credibility and rapport through educating.
You’ll go to a sloppily put-together webpage and get these annoying boxes that come up asking if you want something you weren’t thinking about before but are certainly too annoyed by now to entertain considering.
When you’re marketing online, remember that people don’t shop online. People research online.

Most people go online for research on how to buy a new car, or increase their business, or to learn about raw foods, or whatever it may be. So your website has to be designed around helping, not selling. Informing, revealing, educating.

If you sell, you will fail. By helping you build credibility and rapport. People will believe in you, and because of that, you can show them the value in your product or service. And they will buy from you. It’s absolutely critical to what you do online.

Everything on your website—every button, every graphic, every word you put on the page has got to be built around helping, not selling. Make it most appealing to
researchers, not to shoppers. Save the two-page sales letters and the paper. Whatever it is you’re the expert in, whatever you do, they want more information. They’ll call you,
email you, or order right off the website.

The mindset of the online researcher-pre-shopper is, “What’s in it for me?” That’s the first question you want to answer on your website. If you can’t answer that question at the top of your webpage, change it or you’re going to fail. Why should anybody stay there? They’ve got hundreds of websites to go look.

Don’t have a mission statement at the top of your page talking about who you are, what you do, how great and fantastic you are, and how you have a Ph.D. Nobody cares about that.

They care about what you’re going to do for them. That doesn’t mean not making available credentials and testimonials, but it all goes back to writing headlines—something that will make them stay. Suck them in. Make them feel like they’re going to be learning something they didn’t know before.

Nearly the same marketing rules still apply. Walk a mile in your prospects’ shoes. Empathize with them in plain language. Pharmaceutical ads are written and spoken so that children understand them. Use simple and/or precise language (depending on the uniqueness of your market) as your keywords—the words prospects would be typing into Google or Bing to find you.

If you’re selling cow juice but everyone calls it milk, you better call it milk too because people don’t search for cow juice, they search for “milk.” If you get stuck, there are writers at reasonable prices who can do it for you.

It’s not how well you know your product that is going to determine the level of your sales and your success; it’s how well you know your customer, so that you’re ready for them when they visit your web page.

Regards Henk Matthee

Five Ways to Avoid Content-Writing Burn-Out

Have you ever sat down at your computer to write a blog post – and ended up staring blankly at the screen? Do you have days when the last thing you want to do is blog?

It’s hard to keep on coming up with great blog content – and you might end up writing nothing for days, even weeks. Your readers won’t be too impressed by yet another sudden silence, followed by “Sorry I haven’t posted for so long…”

Luckily, there are a few great steps you can take to avoid burn-out, or to recover from it:

#1: Write Fewer Posts

If you’re struggling to post on a daily basis, then don’t – post once or twice a week instead. Most readers would much rather have two great posts a week than seven mediocre ones.

If you’re really determined to keep posting on a daily basis, then you could shorten your posts, splitting any long ones into two parts. Bonus: this is a great way to keep readers coming back for more!

#2: Use Standard Structures

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you write a blog post. Standard structures or templates can make life much easier, because they give you a framework.

A few tried-and-tested structures include “how-to” posts (a series of steps teaching the reader how to carry out a task), list posts (numbered items), and round-up posts, where you link to great, recent information in your niche.

#3: Spend Time Coming Up With Ideas

Unless you find a blank page inherently inspiring, it’s good blogging practice to come up with ideas before you need them. Sure, you’ll have days when you wake up with a new idea in mind – but when you’re feeling less inspired, you can turn to your list of ideas.

Try setting aside half an hour this week to brainstorm ideas for your blog. Once you get going, you might be surprised how many you can come up with.

#4: Write Guest Posts

This might seem like an odd tip for avoiding content burn-out – but writing guest posts can be a refreshing change of pace. They’re also a great way to grow your readership and boost your SEO efforts.

By guest posting for different blogs in your niche, you’ll be able to try shifting your writing voice, and you can tackle topics that might fall slightly outside your own blog’s scope. Plus, seeing your work published on a big blog can be a huge confidence boost.

#5: Build Up a Stock of Posts

Once you get into a steady blogging rhythm, try to build up a stock of posts. That might mean that you publish two posts a week, for instance, but you write a third and keep it for a future date.

Once you have four or five posts in hand, you’re covered for any emergencies – and you can take some time away from your blog, if you want. A week’s break from writing can often be a great way to recover any lost motivation or enthusiasm.

So – those are my five tips, but I’m hoping you have some ideas to share too! What do you do to avoid (or recover from) content-writing burn-out? Let us know in the comments…

Ali Luke writes a weekly column on content creation for DailyBlogTips. She has several free blogging/writing ebooks (and other goodies!) available for download from her site, including Ten Powerful Ways to Make Your Blog Posts Stronger.