Chelsea Whitman is a successful blogger with almost a decade-long experience. While she’s been blogging full time and earning through her blog, her journey hasn’t been a bed of roses. She started her blog on the side and managed her day job. It was her consistent efforts that began showing results after a few years struggle.
Now, there’s no sugarcoating that having a career as a blogger and finding success and revenue while doing it is not going to be easy. But the efforts made in the right direction always pay off well. So, if you’re keen on becoming a successful blogger, there are ideas and steps that you need to remember. Let’s mull over some of these ideas to run a successful blog and make a mark as a blogger.
- Come up with a proper niche for your blog
This is the first crucial steps to run a successful blog – you have to pick the right niche for your blog.
Make sure to pick a niche that you’re intrigued about. That way, you’ll be making a career out of something you love doing. Also, remember to choose a niche that the general people are interested in.
Once you zero in on a specific niche, you need to justify it too. Presented below is a 3-step formula to affirm your niche.
- Check the size of your niche.
- Find out about competitors.
- Analyse monetisation potential.
This process will assist you to develop a clear idea of the size, competition, and the potential for monetisation of your proposed niche.
- Select an appropriate platform for blogging
At this stage, you should check the best blogging platforms out there and think about the type of content management software you’re going to use.
Now, many new bloggers may be tempted to use free hosted platforms like Tumblr.com or Blogger.com. You need to understand that “free” always comes with its set of limitations. First, your blog name will be set as a subdomain. Second, you’ll have to abide by their rules and restrictions.
You’ll get multiple choices when it comes to self-hosted systems (also known as a Content Management System or CMS). The most popular one has to be the free and open-source system WordPress.org.
- Pick a domain name
The domain name will be the one by which you’ll be identified online, no matter which niche you pick. You’ll have the domain as long as you pay the annual fee (which may range between $10-15 per year for a .com domain).
“The users who are familiar with your domain URL can type it into their browser’s address bar’, state April Evans, an academic expert from online writing services. Others will be able to find you through search engines, so you definitely need to decide on a unique name.
Your domain name can be a “dot com”, or it can be country or niche-specific. The basic rule is to opt for a “dot com” domain, but some of the other extensions may work as well.
- Pick a simple theme to personalise your blog
You can select a unique theme for your blog without design knowledge or coding expertise. Basically, a good theme allows you to design your blog exactly how you want it to come across. If you aren’t familiar with coding, then a theme makes the design work a million times appealing.
If you’re using a platform like WordPress, you need to install and set up a new WordPress theme. You’ll find the “Themes” option inside the WordPress dashboard, under the “Appearance” tab. You can click on the WordPress Themes button and search for free themes.
- Write content and promote your blog
Once you’re done setting up your blog, now comes the main challenge – writing the blog content. Your content must be offer something valuable that the consumers will want to interact with and come back for more.
Here are some ideas for writing content that your target audience would want to read.
- Think of your target consumers and engage in a conversation through your blog post.
- Your posts must be helpful and should add value. If your content is genuinely helpful, you’ll reap the rewards soon enough.
- Present a unique perspective and voice. Make sure you’re always bringing something new to the table.
- Promote the content on social media
Social media help in engaging with your target audience on a deeper level so that they can get to know you better. This improves your blog traffic and helps you grow your audience and more.
So, create social media profiles for your blog on different platforms. You may want to use Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, or something else. Social media can help you make money in various ways. However, you need to understand that it’s time-consuming to establish yourself as a blogger in a social media platform.
The process of promoting your blog on social media will be easier once you do it consistently. Plus, you can automate the process, like scheduling posts in advance.
- Use SEO wisely
At this point, you should have all the basics covered pretty well. Your blog is set up, and you’ve started creating content. As you start promoting, some people might come. But it’s probably going to take a lot more effort than that to actually get sizeable traffic.
So how do you get traffic to your blog and ensure your blog is reaching to the right set of audience? That’s when you need SEO.
You must learn the basics of SEO and apply them to your blog content. While it’s not necessary for you to become an expert, knowing these basics will make it convenient for your blog to get found in search engines like Google.
- Maintain your email list
In order to be successful bloggers should invest time building their email list. In fact, maintaining an email list is crucial for anyone who wants to make money online, whether that’s a blog or any other online business.
Unlike the social platforms, your newsletter and email subscribers are all yours, and you’ll have their undivided attention. You don’t have to bother about social media algorithm not showing your content to your audience. Having a set of email subscribers means you don’t have to fight with anyone else to see your content.
Also, if someone is allowing you to appear in their email inbox, then they probably trust what you have to convey and enjoy hearing from you. Hence, it’s a great way to grow a loyal audience.
- Make money blogging
Monetisation is the process of turning the activities of the blog into earnings. You should understand that blogging isn’t only about making money. Blogging is about presenting meaningful content that will attract an audience and hold their attention.
After creating engaging content for some time and attracting your specific niche audience, you’ll become an expert. You’ll be able to develop a significant list of followers and visitors to your blog. And slowly, you could consider adding content that will generate income.
Wrapping it up,
A career as a blogger will be challenging from the word go. You’ll probably have bad days and some worst days too. But you need to be consistent through it all. And for further assistance, remember to use the steps mentioned below to your advantage.
