Blogging is the smoke, which has covered the vast and versatile world of internet. Writing a blog becomes an art in itself.
But, how can you earn from blogging? This question stirs many minds nowadays. If you are a good blogger, you must be busy dealing with your never ending pending list of emails requiring your expert writings. But if you are a newbie looking for an opportunity to make it big, starting a blog on your own can be a good idea. Read on to get the basic idea about blogging and how can you earn from your blogs.
What is a Blog?
To start with, one has to understand the clear meaning of blog and the process of blogging. A blog or sometimes referred as the weblog is a platform to share your views and experiences with the widely available audience online. It’s more like a personal diary that you need to update regularly and let your followers know what are you up to these days! Sounds like being a celebrity in your niche, doesn’t it?
How Much can You Earn from Blogging?
There are lots of great stories out there of successful bloggers who make money blogging. People have reported that they make nearly up to $100k per month (that’s nearly ₹ 6452250!).
But on a practical note, attaining such a figure needs hard work, dedication and you’ll need to invest a great amount of time in building such a good blog.
How to Start a Blog?
Starting a blog becomes a cake’s walk if one understands the few basic things.
a. Finding the perfect niche
Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to share your personal secrets to the world to generate an income. I mean, of course, you can do it if you also have few interesting life stories to share with the world! But if you are an introvert like me who don’t like intruders in your personal space… there are numerous other options to start your blog upon.
Marketing, business, cooking, finance, craft, parenting, lifestyle, traveling, writing, Bollywood, songs, stories, English, Hindi, regional language and culture, jokes, sarcasm, teaching, makeup, health, household tips, huff… the options are endless! All you need to do is to invest some time researching for all the possible topics and selecting the one you are most passionate about. Blogs like
politics
how to do a thing,
recipes,
guides,
process related blogs
listing blogs
checklists and to-do lists blogs
controversial posts
interviews blogs
Vlogs- the blogs that contain mostly videos
guest blogs
fitness blogs
are currently in trend and are attracting a huge amount of traffic to the sites. Popular blogs mainly focus on current trends and hence catch the attention of the targeted audience.
Quick advice
Look around for the topic you are interested in reading and also search online for the available sources that provide such information. Many brainy people simply create a blog just because a particular topic is trending currently. But, is it a topic that interest you? Will you be able to write about it even after 5 years from now? Do you think you have new ideas to add to the already available resources? Think these through before selecting a topic.
Once you create your own blog start posting, you become passionate about sharing your ideas and it gives a sense of happiness and freedom.
b. Know Who are You Writing Your Blog For
Understand who you are writing your blogs for. Know your audience, what they like and what you have for them. This will decide your tone of writing, your style, the images you will use in your posts and most importantly, you will be able to effectively monetize your blog.
c. Write a Compelling Piece of Content
Chose an engaging topic and then choose interesting title and headings for the content. Make sure the blog is well-structured and written in a lucid language. Including credible facts and information is something which you should work on. The basic idea is to provide an information rich, helpful and easy to understand the content.
Where to Write a Blog?
There are various options available to post your blog. Popular blogging sites or platforms like WordPress, Blogger, Tumbler, Medium, Ghost are few top ranking sites where you can register and start blogging for free!
Among these, WordPress is most popular and user-friendly and this is why 25% of the websites in the world (including mine) is powered by WordPress.
Few sites like Spacesquare and Wix charge some minimum amount of from $0 to $24, which includes hosting and domain. I would suggest that you simply go ahead and create your own website and start blogging. It’s more like buying your own land in a city rather than taking it on a rent. You can design it according to your style, post things you find interesting and don’t have to depend on terms & conditions of other sites. You place your rule, you know!
How to Earn From Your Blog?
The major options to earn from your blog includes,
- Google Adsense
When you have created ample audience with the help of your content you can gear up to make money blogging. With sufficient amount of traffic on your site you can register your site for Google AdSense, which connect you with various websites and sellers who will run their ads on your website and in turn, you get the monetary profit whenever a visitor from your site clicks on the ad. It’s like renting a portion of your site where people can add their banners and attract buyers. Remember viewing an ad in between your favorite show on TV? Well, it’s more like that. I’ll further discuss in detail the steps to set up an ad-sense account in my next blog.
- Affiliate marketing
The other options to earn is through affiliation, where people will pay you for recommending their product or sites in your content. But that’s only possible when you have started generating a good amount of traffic on your site.
- By turning your viewers in your potential customers
An indirect yet excellent way to generate revenues from your blog is to turn your website visitors into your customers! The process is equally simple. Instead of asking your visitor to click on an affiliate link or purchase an advertised product, you can simply ask them to share their basic information like name and email id. You can use this information for your lead generation strategy later. Like creating and selling a product directly to them.
Do remember, maintaining their privacy should be your priority. Don’t even dream spamming their inbox with annoying offers and irrelevant emails or you might end up losing your loyal readers!
- Few other options
Direct Ad sales, job boards, eBooks, memberships, and events are the few other options to make money through the blog. Of course, you can turn into a speaker and a consultant for the field you blog in and this will generate a handsome amount of income for you, but then, you need to do the hard work to reach up to that level!
Few tips
Before you start your first blog, remember few things,
Care for you blogging site as a baby, it needs continues attention from you.
Take care of the ‘intend’ of the content, don’t keep promoting the brands for business. You should not be blogging for money solely as then you’ll try over-stuffing your content with ads and too many annoying links. This will ultimately lead to a bad user experience and your readers will start avoiding your site.
Make it user-friendly, don’t use huge space for ads as it could be dangerous and irritating for the readers.
Conclusion
All in all, the basic working tool in starting a business through blogging is to attract the audience convert them into full-time readers and then enjoy monetizing your blog. You can always start 2-3 separate blog posts on different topics (do that only if you can manage it simultaneously!).
I can only say that if you have a passion for writing and are looking forward to sharing your interests to people out there, get a blog now! As people say, follow your passion and money will come; all you need to do is look around for a unique topic that you are interested in and turn it slowly into an income generating blog. Your passion, patience, and persistence will surely pay off at some point in time!
Happy Blogging!
Note: this blog was originally published on my blogging site: http://crazydigitalmarketer.com/blog/make-money-blogging/