What is Blogging?
Now a day, Blogging is very much popular to earn money online. From my article, you will get to know, how to start blogging. Can you imagine the power of blogging? Basically, Origin of the word Blog is “Web log”. Blog can be defined as a frequently updated online journal or diary. This is the place where you can share or write your own thoughts. The person who blogs or writes content for a blog is called a blogger and the act of writing a post in a blog is called blogging. Besides sharing thoughts, now-a-days blog has been used for many purpose like marketing purpose, business purpose etc. A blog is normally managed by CMS (Content Management System). Lots of features can be created and populated automatically by CMS. Readers or visitors can subscribe to the blog. They can comment and discuss about the content. Now-a-days, some new forms of blogging can be seen like microblogging, vblogging (video blogging), and more.
Basic Steps to start blogging:
If you’re thinking of start blogging, you must have to know that how to start it. Knowing the process in advance will help you to take further step very intelligently. From my favorite neilpatel.com blog are getting over 4.5 million visitors a year! From the following basic steps have been described here:
- Decide the topic for the content of blog site
Blogging is like sharing your knowledge and thoughts with other people of the world. In the starting of blogging, you must choose a topic that you are passionate about. This process also makes the way easier to your successful blogging. Other hand, if you want to open a blog because of your business or marketing then you should choose the topics which are related to your products or services you provide. You can choose the topic with your company or individually. If you choose individually, you will have more flexibility with topic choice.
This is the list of broad topics to get you thinking:
Recipes
Politics
Global warming
Parenthood
Beginner’s guides to anything!
Overcoming adversity or illness
Life experiences
Products or service reviews
Family
Gaming
Travel experiences
Educational
Charity
Activism
Music
Celebrities
Personal Stories
Jokes and Humor
Myths
History
Sports
- Choose a blogging platform
When it comes to choose your blogging platform, you have the three options like free, freemium and self-hosted or CMS platforms. Free and freemium platform is not the best choice in blogging. Sometimes it expresses the sign of inexperience. Again, these platforms provide some limited services. But for the self-hosted or CMS platform allows you to run a blog of your own domain. You will be in charge of your blog and its contents. There are lots of lots choices when it comes to a CMS platform. The most popular CMS platform is WordPress.org. However, there are other alternatives like Blogger, Tumbler etc. After WordPress, Blogger is the best choice. WordPress is appreciable because of its flexibility and functionality. As it is used by large community of people, you will get a broader area to share your tools and ideas.
- Find a hosting company
If you want to put your site in the internet, you must need a server space for your site. Web hosting companies provides this space for your site. So, for safe and successful blogging you must choose the best hosting company. Among huge number of hosting companies Bluehost is the mostly recommended hosting company.
To buy server space, you have to go to the website of hosting company. Who want to choose the Bluehost as their hosting company, they have to go to www.bluehost.com or www.a2hosting.com . Browsing on that page you have to click on ‘Get started now’ button. There will come a page which will ask you to select a plan. There are three types of plans such as Basic, Plus and Pro. Basic is comparatively cheaper and it misses some features. Pro is the most expensive among three plans and it includes some extra features. Lastly, Plus is the most economical plan. It provides some extra service within reasonable price. Most of the people choose the Plus plan. You may select a plan according to your ability by clicking ‘select’ button. You can change your plan at any time.
- Pick a domain name
After selecting a plan for your site buy your domain name from namecheap or Godaddy. If you do not have an account with them they will ask you to to fill up some basic information of you like your name, business name, city, country, address, zip code, phone number, email address etc. After filling these up, you have to choose an account plan. This account plan asks you how would you like to pay the bill that means 12 months basis, 24 months basis or 36 months basis? There also have some extra packages like Domain Privacy Protection, Search Engine Jumpstart, Site Lock Security-Find, Comodo Positive SSL bundle. If you include any of these packages, you have to pay extra for this. After that, fill your billing information correctly and confirm that you have read and agreed the terms of service, Cancellation Policy, Privacy statement and other rights and responsibilities. Then submit this information clicking on “Submit” button. A confirmation mail will come after your purchase. So, check the email.
After checking confirmation mail, now go back to Namecheap.com and click on Login button from the right corner of the top of the website. From the login page, you have to update hosting name server.
Some important tips to buy a domain name:
Buy your domain name from Namecheap or Godaddy
If you open a new account into Godaddy you will get $0.99 your 1st domain
Pick a Brand name of your domain ( Use these types of word for your domain like Gears, tech, hacks, shout, notes, etc )
Note: It is not necessary to buy keyword based domain. For example, crazyegg.com does not contain any keyword but that is brand online marketing website. Neilpatel.com that is another example.
Keep your domain short and memorable
Note: It might be popular place name or Famous Character Like Alibaba or amazon.
Do not use negative word into your domain
Do not copy others people bard Name
Do not use number in to the domain
Do not use hyphens into the domain
- Install WordPress
After logging into your cpanel, click the Install WordPress icon of Website Builders section. Then a window will be shown. Click the Install button to start the WordPress installation process. There will come another window asking you that where to install WordPress. In this window, you have to choose your domain from the drop-down menu. If you have a good reason to create a sub folder, you may fill up the directory field blank. But the beginners are suggested to keep it blank. After providing all information you have to click on “Check Domain”. After this step, you will reach the last step to the installation process of WordPress. A box will be shown asking your site name or title, user name, password and email address. After filling these up, you have to confirm that you read the terms and conditions. Then click on the “Install Now” button and complete the installation of WordPress.
- Design & use your blog
At this point, you are totally able to do anything you want with your blog site. You have to choose a design or theme for your site. You may take help of other websites which provide WordPress themes. You also can design your blog site from these without any cost. There are lots of websites like Genesis Theme, Thrive Theme, ThemeForest.net etc which provides WordPress theme. You may choose one which is the best for you.
- Create useful content
Content is the most important part of a blog site. If you want to make money, you will need more and more visitors. To get more visitors you must post something worthy which will grab attention of readers. That’s why you should consider some factors which may attract readers. For this, you have to realize the mind of readers. You have to understand Reader’s problem, reader’s fear, what the reader’s want to learn, their goal and their interest. If your content answer all of these questions, then it must attract readers. You have to make the content excellent by writing informative contents and articles on any topic.
- Build relationships with others
While you are making content, you have to be aware of building good and genuine relationships. You have to notice that at what place you have the best possibilities to reach great number of readers. In that case, social medias can play an important role. Now-a-days there are lots of social medias. Some popular social medias are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc. If your blog is household chores related then you can share it in Facebook. Other hand, if your blog is business related you can share your content in LinkedIn.
- Establish a strong platform
Most important thing on blogging is to establish a strong platform. To establish it you must have every knowledge about this blogging. You should be updated with new things. You also have to be knowledgeable of your contents. If you have a blog which is in the purpose of business then you have to know all details including advantages and disadvantages of your products or service. The more informative your blog site will be, the stronger your platform will be.
- Choose your income streams
When you will finish all the steps successfully which are described above, you should think about generating your blogging income. It’s the perfect time to give attention to your blogging income.
5 Steps to Creating a Productive Blogging to Do List:
- Create a weekly master list
There come lots of thoughts in our mind. Because of all of these thoughts sometimes we forget to do important work. Or it also can happen, you are too busy to your work that you can pay heed on some important things. To avoid this problem, you must create a list of your jobs what you want to do. If it be the whole week plan, your work has been more comfortable. So, try do a weekly master list according to your whole week plan.
- Write down your goal
In every step of our life, we must have a goal or a destination. In case of blogging, setting a goal makes your work easy. If you write down your goal regularly and think yourself for 5 minutes about your goal, it will help you to stir up your mind. You will be motivated to do your job. It also helps you to remind which important steps should be taken or which not.
- Write down your key project
A number of jobs you have to complete to acquire your goal for the year. Suppose your goal is to enhance revenue by creating your own products and your job can be creating an online course. So, you should write name of your job at the top of the to-do-list. If you spend some times on your project every work day, you will notice that you will get inspired by it.
- List three tasks for your day
After writing goal for the year and name of your job at the top of your page, you may then go back to your master list and select three tasks. Choosing less number of task makes your blogging journey more comfortable and stress free. Plan of these three tasks will help you acquire your goal and project.
- Visualize your day
Visualization of your day is a great idea to judge your day whether it was useful or not, whether you took the wrong decision or right decision. It also reinforces your priorities. If you try to visualize your day and after visualization you noticed that you have taken a wrong decision or you did something wrong, you will be eager to repair your mistakes. So, visualization is the process of your realization about your daily activities.
Streams of income used by bloggers:
Following is a list of income streams bloggers adopt, broken down into five main categories:
- Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very important income stream. By affiliate you can sell your products by sharing link on website/blog where readers buy the products through that link. In exchange, you will receive a commission when the sale happens. It includes passive income. Passive income means earning revenue of a product from a post which you wrote about the product long time ago. Even if you post about the product more than one year ago, if it is sold you will get your revenue. If you want to join the affiliate programs, start searching the products related to your niche or the products that you love. Finally start to promote them. There are lots of affiliate programs like Amazon affiliation, Panthera Network, Maxbounty, iGain etc.
- Display advertising
In blogging, passive income is very popular matter. If you want to make passive income from your blog, display advertising is a great way to start. In display advertising, some Ads are shown which are images or videos displayed on your site. These ads are normally displayed either in the header or on the side bar. Passive income by display advertising mainly depends on traffic of your site. There are numbers of ad networks by which publishers are connected to advertisers. Google adsense, Media.net, BlogHer, Sovrn, Mediavine and AdThrive are the popular ad networks.
- Sponsorship’s
You can earn money through sponsorship. You may get paid for sponsor Influence Central, Massivesway, TapInfluence, Clever Girls Collective, Linqia, Social Fabric, Tomoson and more. If new bloggers want to know how much they will be paid for a sponsored post, they can check it out from Social Bluebook. You also can a rough estimate of your payment.
- Products
Now-a-days it has been seen that many bloggers create their own products like ebook, pdf form of books, tutorials, courses etc. They can earn money by posting it on their blog. Earning from these products is also a great way to make money by blogging. As it is an easy and available way to make money, many bloggers feel comfortable in earning money through this way.
- Services
A great way to make money from blogging is offering services. This is an easy process. You just have to advertise your services through your blog. At a time, you will get your clients who will buy you services. It is more profitable than finding clients in free-lancing market. There may have many kinds of services like website management, virtual assistant services, WordPress assistance, Study assistance, providing job related information etc.
