How do you start a blog and make money

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. What you choose to create will depend a little on the topic that you choose to write about on that note, most successful bloggers have some focus to their blogging whether that be a niche or a demographic that they write for. Or can i sign up right away? Hello Mac, I suggest you focus on Pinterest initially. If you have some time, it is well worth the effort. Then you will come to the web page below, where you have three options for hosting namely Basic, Plus and Prime.

Why Start a Blog?

Wondering how to start a blog? Plus, no technical experience required. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Shortcut 1: Already know you want a self-hosted WordPress blog? Click here to jump to Step 4 and setup your blog in minutes.

How to start a blog and make money

S o, you’ve decided to start a blog, but you have no idea how to go about it? We’ve been teaching people how to start successful blogs and make money on the side for years. If you want to skip the intro, then click here to get started with the first step. Whatever your reasons for starting a blog, there are plenty of benefits you might not even realize! However, as tempting as it may sound, choosing the free option is full of risks and limitations. Our advice would be to steer clear off the free blogging platforms. If you intend to start a business, build your brand reputation, or add more advanced features to your blog, then the free option is not going to do well for you because of its many limitations.

Do people really make money blogging?

Starting a blog is hard work. And it gets worse:. So I invite you to continue reading and join me on my journey to learn how to start a blog and make money over my shoulder. Table Of Contents. Last year I had a eureka moment. What popped up in their place were a bunch of sites that just posted guest posts in the great guest post link building gold rush.

All that was getting published were regurgitated rehashed low quality no meat on the bone posts over and over and. Even market leading blogs like ProBlogger and John Chow fell into this trap!

My own personal internet marketing knowledge and experience. And so the idea of my blog was born, my own digital playground where I could share my passion with the world. If the only reason you are reading this to learn how to start a blog and make money… I guarantee you are going to fail. I see it time and time again, people learn how to start a blog and make money and after a couple of months when there is no money — they quit.

So whatever you do, forget about the money and focus on helping other people that share your passion. Try harder at. So I did. For anyone that has followed the blogs growth it is very easy to be dazzled with the illusion of the blogging lifestyle. On the surface it appears that I make a bunch of money, travelling the world having a jolly ole time! Just seem to get locked in and forget about the real world! While I have managed to travel a lot this year and hit a different country each month, let me tell you — they are the most stressful times for me.

On top of the existing work load. Before launching the blog I put thought into the execution. That is a much more developed purpose over and above just publishing stuff. Achieving that would be pretty tough; I would have to become highly visible in what is considered a competitive niche.

To spice things up a little and introduce a bit of a challenge, I decided I would attack this goal by not using one of my strongest areas of knowledge. But I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and see if I could achieve my goal without link building. So the SEO without link building challenge was born. Not only would that develop my skills in other areas I also knew that had the potential to be a great post in the future if I pulled it off.

To make sure people remember me I put a strong emphasis on branding. I spent a bunch of time playing with colour combinations to see what worked best. With the colours in mind I then started to create a logo. At this stage it is important to note that I suck at design and have since hired a pro!

Especially given my overall goal and the fact I had forced myself down the zero link building avenue. In this video he explains what great content is. With my notes in hand I created possible tutorial titles and then bullet pointed the areas each tutorial should include. I also had the mind-set that each piece of content I produced would be the best piece of content on that topic period.

The content strategy was born! Quite often you will see bloggers say you need to set a tone of voice with your writing. But what does that actually mean? I have had a lot of great feedback about my style of writing and straight to the point approach and that is because I set a tone of voice. All of that creates a great opportunity not just with the content I create but also to set a tone of voice that cuts through the bullshit.

If you want to get a better idea of how that looks in the real world take a look at this post about Amys Baking Company or this one! When I was planning how to drive traffic to the blog and promote it things started getting a bit complicated. I made a list of popular internet marketing forums and my plan was to just help people out, linking to my tutorials where relevant. I also setup some Google Alerts for a how do you start a blog and make money of terms that would alert me to other conversations online where people needed help.

That was it — nothing. That plan probably took you 10 minutes to read. But let me be clear, that was the culmination of months of passive thinking and mulling things. I eventually put it all on paper in less than a day but I had spent months thinking about the best way to skin the cat so to speak.

This planning was critical to the success of the blog. It is amazing how many people do not plan out how they are going to attack. What are you waiting for? Start your blog today! Setting up the blog itself though was a whole different kettle of fish! I spent a lot of time working out the best way to setup the blog to not only deliver the most value, but extract the most value from visitors as.

Not everyone is going to agree with. There is method to the madness though and it relies on the basics of human relationships rather than the constant quest to separate people from their money. Relationships make it easier to separate more people from more of their money and be happy about it. Having a great design can make or break a blog. If it is too busy and cluttered it will turn users off and convert badly.

I found a free theme and I spent the next week tinkering with it and customising it to meet the goals. You can also download a copy of my blogs theme. They are explicitly stating I want to hear more of what you have to say. I give you permission to invade my personal life with an email or status update.

I came across a sweet plugin that would hide content until the user shared the page on a social network. So with each tutorial I created I tried to put together an exclusive pack of resources or make the video downloadable in exchange for a social share which used to look like this. I have since upgraded to the OnePress Social Locker which is much more robust and compatible with caching systems. So when someone submits a comment for the first time, they get taken to a page like this asking them to subscribe and follow me on Twitter.

It offers multiple opportunities to extract value from users over and above affiliate clicks and sales. User generated content is a great way to keep the blog fresh and people engaged.

When the blog first launched the only form of user generated content on the site came in the form of comments.

I encouraged comments by just telling people to post if they had any questions or problems that I could help. Later on I used BBPress which was a huge success and helped drive the blog forward in a number of ways, but more on that later :. When I started out I was just focused on blog comments themselves which I knew would help me not only create relationships with people but also please the search engines with new and fresh content with natural long tail keywords.

I found the most effective way to make that happen is by asking people. Looking back this was particularly effective because of the huge amount of value my content provided upfront — people were more than happy to share it with others! This also aligned with my overall goal and purpose of the blog to get people sharing and talking about the tutorials in forums. One of the best examples is with the controversial Ahrefs vs Majestic post which says. Next time you see this topic in a forum — feel free to use this post to instantly win the argument.

How was I going to drive affiliate clicks and sales? With everything else put in place this area takes care of itself for the most. Keeping my problem solving high quality content strategy in mind, affiliate sales just happen naturally without any sneaky tricks. I eventually came across Inspyder Backlink Monitor and after trialling it for a few weeks it became an essential tool in my arsenal. That gave me the opportunity to create a tutorial that teaches people how to organise and manage their backlinks properly.

It showed people how I was doing it and the problems that created. You could break it down like this. Not only do people click the affiliate links and buy the product, they also thank me for helping them resolve a major problem that was taking up huge amounts of time. It takes a bit more effort and sometimes you take a hit on commission but then again you get emails like this.

Learn how to start your own blog with my step by step tutorial. So I had a solid plan, I spent time setting up the blog and put some thought into the overall user experience. I decided that my first few posts needed to make the biggest bang possible that would hopefully set off how do you start a blog and make money avalanche. I looked though my content strategy and quickly decided that link building and more specifically tiered link building was an area that had a lot of misinformation.

And just so happened to be an area I excelled in. The tiered link building series took a total of hours to produce. Then I gave away all of the hard work free of charge to anyone that would watch it! I have had so many people tell me I was stupid to give them away and if I launched the videos as a product I would of made a lot more money. As people watched and learnt, they formed a relationship with me — you cannot put a monetary value on.

When I was younger I edited gaming videos and created animations in Adobe After Effects so I was pretty comfortable with that side of things. So with a cheap Sennheisser headset in hand I started to plan out the videos and how I would give them a bang! I also wanted to ensure the videos were branded, memorable and gave people a reason to stick around quickly.

7 steps to start a blog

Eventually, you’ll probably need a dedicated-hosting solution with a CDN below once you break through a few thousand visitors per day. Not only by linking up with other like-minded bloggers interested in online marketinghpw also by sharing and engaging with others on social networks like Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms. On an average I would suggest having at least up to words. As people visit and seek your advice, xo will make money through your various income streams. Without a deep-seated passion for your craft, you’ll face a tide of frustration and upset.