Saima Ikram
Blogging has long been tipped as a source of making money online.
In order to make money from your blog, I’ve come up with the five fundamentals of blogging that you need to learn about before starting a blog.
Let’s begin!
The Five Fundamentals of Blogging
First things first, people start blogging without having enough perspective and usually end up feeling the frustration of getting nowhere.
I have experienced this personally, so I’m writing this article for you to know in advance and save yourself from unwanted trouble.
Here’s a quick glance at what you’re going to get from this article.
- History of Blogs
- Uses of Blogging
- Blog Monetization Methods
- Importance of Valuable Content
- The Two Models of Blogging
As you can guess from the list, I’m going to take you through these five fundamentals of blogging to enhance your perspective about blogs. I’m sure that by the end of this article, you will be able to make a wise decision regarding your blogging career.
The article contains valuable and rare advice for beginners, as well as those who have become frustrated in their initial blogging efforts. Keep reading to find out what goes wrong with most of the bloggers.
The History of Blogs
When the internet started, only geeks could make websites. Some people started writing stories based on their personal routine and life events (just like the diary). These online journals quickly got their name; weblogs.
Weblogs later became popular as blogs. But still, only a few people could write blogs because of the technicalities involved. Gradually, businesses saw the opportunity and started promoting their products/services through blogs as well.
Due to the less population of the internet (less content and websites), web searches brought massive traffic to earlier blogs without much effort.
How & Why Blogs Became Common?
With the advancement in technology and software development, user-friendly content management systems (CMS) came into being. These platforms helped ordinary people (like you and me) start their blogs without coding expertise.
Blogs became popular and no more remained strictly personal or business-focused anymore. Bloggers started writing just about everything. Domain & hosting business also flourished because of blogs’ massive popularity.
You can imagine the popularity of blogs by the fact that today, 4.5 million blog posts were written and thousands more are being added every minute.
How Can Blogs Be Used?
Blogging is a powerful online tool. Your blog is a valuable online property. Blogs provide great opportunities that can earn you respect, influence, and money.
Let me list some of the things blogs are known for.
- A blog is an outlet for creativity.
- It gives you the power to influence others by solving their problems.
- You can use blogs to educate others (that’s what I did by writing this article, for example).
- A blog is a fantastic two-way communication tool that you can use to develop great relationships.
- Blogs can earn you money.
I mentioned money at the end because you can not make money from a blog if you don’t solve others’ problems, educate them, or build healthy relationships.
How Are Blogs Monetized?
To earn money, a blog needs what a real business needs; trust and distribution channel. Nobody buys from a shop that is not trusted. Trust on the blog comes with posting great content and engaging more and more people.
The distribution channel is the blog itself, the email list, and the newsletter. Both trust and distribution channels need to be built by you with effort and hard work.
Here’s a simple outline of the step-by-step process of making money from a blog. (It’s just an overview for understanding the purpose.)
- Create a blog focused on solving a problem for your audience. The more specific, the better.
- Attract the attention of engaged visitors who trust you by (a) writing valuable content which solves that problem and (b) marketing that content.
- Monetize your blog by:-
- Displaying Ads (Advertisement)
- Selling others’ products relevant to your audience (Affiliate Marketing)
- Selling your e-book, online course, service, and physical product, etc. (Own Product)
It seems easy to read but beware that earning money from your blog is not an easy process. You have to work hard to make it happen.
Why Content Matters?
Let me get this straight. Without producing content, you’re guaranteed to fail in blogging. Creating a blog is not enough.
You cannot build a successful, and profitable, blog unless you take these two aspects of content into consideration.
The number one is…
Produce Valuable Content
Most experts say that content is the king. Valuable content is and will remain the top factor in determining the success of a blog.
To make your blog profitable, produce useful content. It must be the content that your readers want to consume and share.
The second consideration is…
Produce It Consistently
If you write two great articles in one year and do nothing else, your blog is not going to be successful. It is not going to gain any traction because Google does not like blogs that don’t contain valuable content or are not consistent.
Without being consistent, you can not build authority on your subject, and it’s impossible to become trustworthy as well. So though writing valuable content is the heart of blogging, writing it consistently is more important.
Otherwise, there’s no traffic or money for you in blogging.
Which Blogging Model Suits You?
Do not start a blog if you don’t understand the models of blogging. You probably don’t know about them because they’re not discussed much.
Knowing about types of blogging will help you choose your way forward and have more purpose right from the start. Let me explain the two models of blogging briefly.
Magazine Model of Blogging
You know a lot of blogs that work on this model. Mashable, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, ProPaksistani, TechJuice, and BeingGuru are some of the most famous international and local blogs based on the magazine models of blogging.
The magazine model requires a lot of content and hence a lot of time. To be successful, you have to post a huge number of articles, break the news of your industry before others do, and cover a variety of topics within your broad topic.
Consider the following points:-
- Monetarily, the magazine model requires thousands and millions of visitors regularly to earn money from advertising (the most common method of earning through magazine model blogs). Another option is to write sponsored posts (I see them on ProPakistani all the time).
- Management-wise, the magazine model doesn’t suit individuals. The popular magazine blogs have an entire team of writers, content managers, and contributors to keep the blog active. It’s not just possible for an individual to live up to the expectations of the magazine model of blogging.
Expert Model of Blogging
As the name suggests, the expert model of blogging requires you to be (or gradually become) an expert in the topic that your blog covers.
When we talk about a niche, focused, authority, or expert blog, it means the expert model blog. Hassaan Khan calls it finding your place.
Some important features of the expert model of blogging are:-
- The foundation of the expert model of blogging is high-quality content. The expert model doesn’t require a lot of content (quantity), but quality is a priority.
- It is suited to individuals with other responsibilities (like a job or studies) because it doesn’t require posting a bulk quantity of content.
- You can manage it easily by giving only 1-3 hours a day to it.
- Once you’re considered an authority in your niche, you can survive by posting just 3-4 articles per month.
- Expert model blogging offers more (and better) monetization options. Affiliate marketing can be a good start but the ultimate way to earn real money is by creating and selling your digital product.
Most successful individual bloggers have built their blogs on the expert model of blogging. All blogs of Neil Patel (QuickSprout for example) are expert model blogs.
Here’s a video explaining these models of blogging. I love Yaro because he’s the reason I got my fundamentals right.
Conclusion
Starting a blog requires a clear perspective about what it means to start a blog. There’s too much information available online, but the beginners are becoming more and more confused about what to do and where to start.
I wrote this article to remove some of the widespread confusion. Here’s a quick recap of what this article covered.
- How blogs started and became popular.
- What can blogs be used for?
- How exactly does a blogger earn money?
- How much content matters?
- What are the two blogging models and which one suits the individuals?
I hope you loved reading the article. More importantly, I hope it made a positive difference for you. That’s my mission; making a positive difference.
Follow these fundamental guidelines before you start a blog and you’ll find yourself better equipped than most of the people interested in starting a blog.
The more you give, the more you get.
That’s the rule of knowledge too. Do share this article on your social media profiles to spread the knowledge. If you have any questions or feedback regarding this article, do share it in the comments below.
The Author
Ilyas Tarar is on a mission to make a positive difference. He is a blogger by passion and works on solving beginners’ problems that they face in blogging.
