Madiha Yaqoob
How to make money from blogs is a question everybody is asking, especially during the COVID-19 lockdown time. After the Coronavirus Pandemic, the online world is changing quickly. Many people are included to create their own blogs so they can make money.
Skills that were in demand just over a couple of years ago are not wanted anymore so you can’t make money offering those. They have been replaced by new skills and services. Freelancing is a new growing phenomenon and people are choosing to work as a freelancer over their full-time employment. It is estimated that about 50.9% of the U.S. population will be freelancing in the next 10 years.
Freelance jobs online are preferred by people because they can work at their own pace and make unlimited money. It is believed, many freelance skills that are in high demand will be replaced by new skills soon. With such tough competition, there is one niche that will survive the future and that is data. Data is the new ‘OIL’. Those who have access to the data will always be in demand.
Freelancing does not necessarily mean offering services as a web developer, web designer, or video animator. It means you can work as a freelancer by running your blog too. All the content on your blog is no less valuable than the oil, the data has a huge price and demand. You can make good money doing blogging. All major search engines need data, people need information and awareness through content, therefore, the importance of blogging can never be undermined. It will only grow in the future and now is the best time to set up your blog, start writing, build traffic, and make money.
How to choose a niche for blogging?
As a blogger, you can choose many niches for your blog that can be monetized in order to make money. You can write about health, politics, entertainment, science, etc. You should choose a niche you are comfortable writing about and have authority, and command over that subject. For example, Tech Crunch is one of the world’s largest technology blogs. It is huge because it has the resources and authority to cover the latest technology news from all over the world and people trust the news. While offering technology news from all over the world, the company makes good money with its blog.
Remember, If your audience is misled, you can be fined for wrong information as this Australian blogger found out 2 years back.
The traffic on the blog primarily comes from the search engines only if proper keywords in the post are used. When you write a lot on your blog about a particular subject, search engines, Google, in particular, begin to take you as an authority for that subject and begin to rank you for your business-related keywords. Without traffic, the blog has no value because the content on a blog is only meaningful if people are reading it.
In this post, I am going to cover every nitty-gritty detail you ever needed to know to set up your blog, bring in the traffic, and start monetizing it. Here is a glimpse of weekly organic, search engine-driven traffic on the Being Guru blog.
Alongside search engines, the traffic also comes from social media. It includes Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Through social media, people begin to resonate a value with your blog and eventually build brand loyalty with your blog.
On social media, if you are able to provide a value proposition and engage your audience, they begin to visit your blog daily and eagerly wait for new content on the site. That engagement once materialized, helps you make money from your blog. The essence is to provide good content by writing well, creating good engagement, and money will begin to follow automatically.
I have tested and tried all social media connections for my blog’s promotion. I have learned that pictures and video posts related to your blog niche followed by a post link do resonate well with your target audience and then they engage with the content.
Here is a typical inspirational post on the Being Guru Facebook page, notice the engagement here.
After posting some pictures and videos related to the blog theme, I typically post a blog post with a link and it creates a great impact. There is one important thing every blogger needs to understand, you cannot use your social media to post blog links only, there has to be a balance.
A moderate approach to mixing content such as pictures, videos, and blog links suffices for better engagement. Take a look and one of the typical blog post links on my page, the balance is very important if you want to make money from your blog.
If you own a Facebook page, you will instantly figure out from the above pictures that both posts’ engagement is organic and no money is spent on marketing and advertisement. You can only experience such engagement if your audience finds value in your content and they are compelled to share it with their network.
By now we have established 3 basic guidelines for starting a blog.
- It needs to have great content for audience engagement in order to make money
- It should be picked by search engines
- it should have good social media engagement
I am in the business of telling you that blogging is not easy instead of making you believe that all you need are some tools to just start doing it. You can have all the tools you need but, if you are not aware of using them correctly, or are too stressed, too angry, or don’t have enough patience, success would be a far cry.
This is why most bloggers quit when they realize how difficult blogging is because they are unable to strike a perfect balance between the content and the audience. As a blogger, when you feel like giving up, stop complaining, and instead, work on finding the power in your words, it is the essential key to engaging your audience, and bringing more traffic.
As a blogger, you have to provide your audience with the content and value they are looking for rather then providing them with a content you want them to see.
It isn’t hard if you do a bit of blogging each day, write, edit, read other blogs, and take part in conversations that will help feed your brain with information. Blogging is something that you can do from home and it does not put any limit on how much money you can make. But it is better if you understand first how to actually begin with the process:
- Set up a blog.
- Begin by creating useful content.
- Search your audience.
- Build engagement with the audience.
- Start making money from your blog.
How to start a blog and make money?
When you think of making money from blogging, of course, it requires you to actually have a blog. The process of starting a blog might be overwhelming but there are a number of steps that can get you started. Beginning with choosing your blogging platform and then configuring your blog.
These two websites are the best way to start your blog
Once you do that then comes the step of designing it. With a blogging platform, you can get your content on the web as the blog is set up online and you need to signup, create your account, write the blog post, and publish it.
WordPress is by far the most popular blogging platform for many bloggers and I would give priority to WordPress too. My blog is created on WordPress. It gives you the freedom to have your blog user interface and design the way you want, it has built-in security features and more can be added with plugins. For a WordPress blog, you need web hosting to host it along with a domain name. You can buy the hosting and domain name from GoDaddy, Bluehost, Fatcow, or any other service provider you are referred to.
For setting up your WordPress blog on the hosting server, do not do it yourself if you do not know how to publish a blog on a live server. I would suggest going to a freelance marketplace and posting your project, finding a freelancer, and getting this service done within 24 to 48 hours. This way, you do not have to worry about things that are not relevant to you and can focus on building content for your blog.
If you do not want to start your own blog right now and want to offer your services as a writer, these websites can help you land a writing contract and make money.
You can monetize your blog with different partner programs. We will come to that in a while down in this post.
Hang in there, buddy!+
Create useful content:
Obviously, when you have a blog, it contains content. Content is what brings you money to the table.
But, this content should not be of poor quality. You need to focus your attention on creating useful content because powerful content creates engagement. A good writer should use proper English. It is better to create content that changes people’s lives in one way or another or provides them with useful information about a topic. With quality content, the audience is engaged, they find value in it as they trust you as an authority over a particular subject. It is the only way to bring continuous traffic to your blog and make money.
If you want to find those keywords your potential reader is searching on Google, the best beginner’s resource is on a famous internet marketer Neil Patel’s website.
This website is a preliminary tool to search for keyword ideas for your blog. As you grow as a freelancer, you will come across many advanced tools such as Google Keyword Planner and a lot more but to begin with, Neil’s Uber Suggest would suffice. I find it a perfect resource to search for business-related keywords for my blog. The website also gives you a fair idea about the volume, competition, and money that is being offered for a particular keyword.
The suggestion tool has a near to perfect AI bot that suggests the keywords used on Google. In the picture, I have used the keyword ‘how to make money and the website gives keyword suggestions based on the search volume, and keyword difficulty (the lower the number, the higher the chances of ranking that keyword).
A blog without a good picture is a house without a roof. A picture is worth a thousand words. As a blogger, you need to use pictures that are royalty-free and do not need any credits given to the photographer. One such great resource is Pixels. It has hundreds of thousands of royalty-free images that you can use on your blog. Remember, a picture should reflect the blog post. A blog post about the importance of eating healthy food using a picture of a deserted summer road would be a perfect match.
Grow for your audience:
For making money from your blog, all you need to do is to be great with your content and start to promote it. Growing your blog’s audience can be done in a number of ways but you should not just be looking for “more traffic” but for actual readers who understand what the blog is about. You can create great value with your blogs, focus, podcasts, social media accounts, and webinars.
You have to build your presence, add value, and foster relationships that you build through your readership. Remember, the greater the content and powerful words used in your blog, the higher the chances of engagement, social media sharing, and building brand loyalty. The most effective way to search for your audience is the Google search engine, use keywords in your blog post that people are looking for, do inbound linking with your other blog posts, and outbound linking with external authority websites that have also written a blog post about that particular subject.
Want to get FREE and unlimited traffic on your blog, try these 5 free and creative ways to get more traffic.
Build engagement with your audience:
When you start creating a good-quality blog, you begin to notice people who visit your blog and engage with the content you have created. This is when you need to engage with your audience by responding to comments, reaching out to readers personally who show concern, and doing everything that makes them your regular visitors. On social media, creating polls, and asking your audience questions gives them a sense of ownership of the brand. Not only does their engagement with the post increase but they also invite their friends to voice their opinion.
Another way of building engagement with your audience is by offering a newsletter on your blog. When people give you their email address it means, they trust you, want to hear more from you, and receive your email. If they like the content in the newsletter, they share it in their circles which increases your viewership. If you are using WordPress for your blog, you can easily install a Newsletter plugin or ask your web developer to do it for you.
How to Monetize your blog?
After creating good quality content, finding readers, and building an engagement with the readers, give yourself the chance to start making money with your blog.
It is because this is the foundation that you need to set for making money from your blogging business. You are required to work continuously on your blog and experiment with different strategies to keep your readers curious for more content.
The question is, how to monetize your blog?
Well, there are many websites that offer the best CPM advertising for bloggers but my pick is Google Adsense. It is Google’s partner program which you can signup for on their website. The formula for earning is very simple. Advertisers are looking for an audience to watch their ads and if they can find good traffic on your blog, you get paid well.
When people click on ads that are displayed on your blog, you make money. Also, you can monetize your blog by getting in a lot of sponsored blog requests. These sponsorship offers are very lucrative. they pay well and could be a great source of income.
Conclusion:
This is about everything you would need to make money with blogging. Follow all steps, draft your strategy, and start implementing it on the internet. Blogs are used for driving a narrative, voicing your opinion, and making affiliate money. Good luck.
