1. Find Your Passion
This seems like common sense, doesn’t it? You might be a little bit surprised.
Some bloggers think that they have to write about trending, viral news or pop culture. That’s not true! When you write about what you know and about what you are passionate about, it turns the content into a more personal, genuine read which attracts readers.
If you’re passionate about something, it will show in your content. Readers will be able to see your genuineness and will be attracted to that. This is probably the most important thing you will learn about blogging. You can try everything in the world and use every tool known to man to be successful, but if you’re not genuine, people will see right through it.
The content you write for your blog will give you credibility, especially if you are writing about something you are passionate about. So always remember to be true to yourself and true to the people who are reading your blog.
Invest your time in something you are truly passionate about and something you truly care about — it will reflect in your content.
Do you like sports? Books? Health? Nature? Figure out your passion and write about it. Make your content useful, interesting and engaging so that readers find value in your blog. And most importantly, do what comes naturally to you.
Make your blog stand out, and reap the rewards.
2. Choose a Niche
Once you figure out what your main focus will be, you can start to develop your market niche and who you will be directing your content to.
Niche blogging is blogging that targets a specific market audience, whether it is photography, art, fashion and more. To start earning money, you’ll need to target your content to a profitable niche. Think about what type of niche your blog may fall into. What do you like? What do you love? Is it photography, fitness, graphic design, art, poetry?
You know what you like . . . no one will choose it for you. So decide on what you want to write about and make sure that you’re 100% honest about it. You’ll soon realize that finding a niche makes writing your blog a lot easier. It narrows down your focus and brings in a very specific audience who you can promote your services to.
Write content on your blog that is helpful and informative to people who are reading your page. By focusing on one niche, you will be able to focus your content on just one particular market and draw in an audience that is interested and devoted to that niche. You will soon learn that targeting a specific niche has a whole load of benefits that can help you out.
3. Quality, Quality, Quality
The content on your blog needs to be interesting, intriguing and helpful to readers. The quality of your blog will determine who it attracts and how many people it attracts.
Quality content is content that people can engage with and find useful. Your content should help readers and bring them value. Your blog needs to have interesting, helpful content that people would be willing to recommend or share with their friends. The format, structure, layout (and, of course, the writing itself) will all determine the quality of your blog.
Remember: the better the quality, the more engagement and likelihood to recommend you will get from your readers.
4. Write Often
You’ll want to keep up to date with your audience’s interests, concerns, and questions. Posting often will bring a continuous stream of new and current readers and will grow as well as engage your audience.
If you are constantly churning out new material, your readers will continuously come to your page for new information.
The more you write, the more your audience will view your blog and engage with you. Posting often will also open up new opportunities to sponsorships, traffic growth and even product placement — which is a big part of blogging that we’ll touch upon further down this list.
5. Promote Yourself . . . In Every Way Possible
You’ll find it extremely difficult to grow an audience by just word of mouth. This is why you have to put in the work and promote your blog through every form of social media you can think of.
We are living in an age where social media and digital advertising are now being used more than print advertising and other forms of traditional advertising.
Did you know that 70% of newspapers’ online reading audience is under 50 years old?
This means that there is a shift happening in how younger generations are reading their media. This is a huge number and reflects how advertising will change in the future. It also shows us how most people are now viewing their news and information: online and through social media.
The best social media platforms that typically send the most traffic to blogs are:
Create a group on Facebook, post to Facebook groups with like-minded interests and individuals, have friends and family members share your information and promote your page. If you have a cool product or story that you can link, do it in an Instagram post. This is a great way to create growth on your page.
Use clever hashtags, fun photos, and engaging captions. Take advantage of what social media can do for your blog!
Lastly, always make sure that you stay true to yourself. Build relationships with possible readers and engage with them. Look into the websites, blogs or forums your readers frequent. Leave comments, answer questions, be helpful, and start building value which will garner interest in your page.
6. Go Mobile
Experts predict that by 2020, 59% of Americans using Facebook will be accessing the platform through their mobile devices. Right now, 51% of people who use digital media are accessing it through mobile, while 42% are using a desktop.
More and more social media platforms are optimizing their websites for mobile, which means you will need to optimize your blog for the majority of the market that is using mobile. If your page is not mobile-friendly, your readers will instead go to your competitors who have mobile-friendly pages.
Do not overlook this! Trust us when we tell you that you’ll be thanking us later. Check out these other stats regarding mobile usage that should really set your sights on optimizing for mobile.
- 58% of online revenue comes from mobile websites
- In 2018, more than 50% of overall internet browsing will be on mobile
Don’t ignore these numbers. By making your blog user-friendly to mobile users, you will maintain your users who are browsing only through mobile and will drive in even more readers who are using mobile.
7. Build Engagement
Once you’ve got the content down, have narrowed down your market niche, have optimized your website for mobile users and have used every form of social media imaginable to promote your blog, it’s time to build engagement and value with your readers.
Bring your blog to life and see the traffic grow. Do everything you can to:
- Respond to comments,
- Offer contests or giveaways, and
- Include your readers in discussions.
Write good headlines that are catchy and will draw a reader in, and don’t forget to write about what is important or trending in your niche.
Implement a commenting system
Don’t forget to choose a comment system that works for you. Look into the comment systems other blogs have and what the more popular ones are using. Taking your time in researching and choosing a great comment system will create conversation in your posts, drive engagement, and allow you to talk directly with your readers.
Use plenty of good graphics and visuals
You should also be adding graphics and visuals to your blog. They enhance the appearance of your website and will make it look sleek, professional and engaging.
Use Social Media to Attract Visitors to Your Blog
Never underestimate social media engagement. Social media is a huge game player in the online market. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to drive engagement through social media.
Blog engagement is also a game player in SEO, which we’ll touch upon later.
Practical How-Tos for Building Blog Engagement
Here are some more helpful links on building engagement and its importance in the success of your blog:
- 5 Engagement-Driven Elements You Should Add to Every Blog Post(Source: Content Marketing Institute)
- The Simple Guide to Blogger Engagement (Source: Zazzle Media)
- 7 Tips to Increase Blog Engagement (Source: Yoast SEO blog)
8. Look at What Other Blogs Are Doing
See what successful blogs are doing. How are they driving engagement?
It doesn’t hurt to learn from the best. If you notice that your blog seems to be falling behind in a few things, do your research. Seeing what works for other blogs can help you learn from your mistakes and optimize your page for the best engagement possible.
9. Network With Other Bloggers
Building relationships with other bloggers in your niche is an important part of any blogger’s strategy. Networking with and reaching out to other bloggers helps you:
- Create more awareness about your blog
- Grow your readership and build your brand
- Make connections that will increase credibility
- Link to other blog posts (we’ll talk more about this later)
- Draw in readers and build an audience
10. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a strategy which focuses on delivering valuable, interestingand relevant content to a target audience to eventually lead them into performing some sort of profitable action.
Rather than selling your services or products, you use the content on your website to provide useful and relevant information to help people solve their issues, spurring them to make a purchase on your website with the helpful information they have been given.
What makes for “valuable” and “interesting” content is determined by your audience.
Content marketing helps:
- Create more loyal customers
- Save you costs on other paid marketing forms
- Increase sales
- Increase traffic
Some examples of major brands that have made worldwide success through content marketing include:
- Toshiba
- American Express
- IBM
- Coca-Cola
- Expedia
Content marketing is often much cheaper than traditional advertising.
11. SEO, SEO, and More SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will help you bring organic traffic to your blog, resulting in more growth, engagement and, hopefully, money through that traffic. If you’re not sure what SEO is or how it works, here are a few helpful links to get you started:
What is SEO?
- SEO Basics: What is SEO? (Source: Yoast SEO for everyone)
- A Complete Guide to SEO (Source: Search Engine Journal)
- SEO is Not Hard — A step-by-step SEO Tutorial for beginners that will get you ranked every single time (Source: Medium and Lambda School)
Search Engine Optimization increases the amount of traffic that is going to your website through search engine results.
How you use SEO and how much you know about it will determine how you rank in Google searches. This will determine how many people are visiting your website.
SEO helps improve your website’s visibility in unpaid search engine rankings (also called organic results). If your website is placed higher in search engine results, you are more likely to receive increased traffic to your website. Knowledge of SEO will increase your traffic, thus bringing in readers and the potential to earn money through those readers.
Google receives over 2 trillion searches every year. This number is staggering and simply cannot be overlooked, especially if you are trying to make a name for yourself in the digital world.
Use SEO to your advantage and increase traffic to your website. Increased traffic will result in more people reading your content, helping you earn money. SEO is cost effective and will increase your brand awareness. Your competitors are using it, and you should be too.
Final Thoughts: Find Success with the Right Strategy
Now that you know what to do to start monetizing your blog, you have to put everything to action.
You need to use the right strategy to grow and increase traffic to your blog, and get to know the people who are reading it. Establish trust, credibility, and see what your competitors are doing. What works for them may not work for you, but you will learn that with time.
Every blogger has a different strategy. By getting to know the different tools you can use on your blog, you will start learning the best ways to make money through it.
Remember, always be upfront and honest with your readers. If you are writing a sponsored ad or promoting a service or product, be upfront about it. Your readers will appreciate it. Your readers don’t want to be sold to, they want you to help them. However you help them, it has to be genuine and real. That should be the first goal of your blog.
Never sacrifice integrity and quality to make a dollar.
It’s just not worth it.
It’s just not worth it.
Take what you’ve learned and applied anything that works for you to your blog. You will soon learn that some methods may work, while others do not. You’ll grow as you learn, and soon enough you’ll be making money off your blog.
A few final words of encouragement:
- How much money you make depends on the traffic you are getting to your blog. The more traffic you get to your blog, the more potential money you can make.
- Never underestimate the power of passive income.
- If you have the will, motivation, and determination to start making money from your blog, you will be able to. You just have to devote the time and the energy to do so.
Set yourself apart from other bloggers out there who are just sitting and waiting for the money to flow in. Use these tools and resources to your advantage, and reap the rewards.
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