Do you want to know how to start a blog and get paid? If yes is the answer to this question, then keep reading this article. It is one thing to start a blog and it is another thing to make money from it. A lot of people start blogs but end up not generating money from them.
Most times, it is not because they did not start their blogs well or because they do not put out good content.
Most people fail because they make mistakes along the way and spend their time doing tasks that won’t contribute to their earnings as a blogger.
Or because they don’t know the steps to take to earn money from their blogs.
Luckily, this article has been written to serve as a guide for those new to blogging.
The steps shared in this article will help you avoid the many mistakes and challenges that beginners often face with blogging.
However, you should know that blogging isn’t a get-rich-fast scheme.
You would have to spend a lot of time and effort to become a successful blogger.
But it gets easier with time.
With that being said, here are 5 steps to start a blog and get paid.
1. Set Up Your Blog – How to Start a Blog and Get Paid
The very first thing you need to do is to set up the blog.
Setting up a blog and registering a domain name is among the easiest thing to do in today’s world.
To set up your blog, you first need to pick and register your domain name, then look for a web hosting company and sign up on it, and finally set up WordPress (or any other blogging platform of your choice).
While these are easy to do, you need to be careful and make sure you avoid some common mistakes when creating your blog.
Tips to Have in Mind When Creating a Blog
People new to blogging often make some mistakes when setting up their blogs.
But the essence of this article is to make your blogging experience as smooth as possible.
Therefore, this article won’t be complete if it doesn’t help you avoid these mistakes when setting up your blog.
The following are some tips to help you avoid certain blogging rookie mistakes.
Make Sure You Have a Self-hosted Blog
It is easier and of course free to host your site on free platforms.
But since you want to make money from blogging, doing this might be a mistake.
So, make sure you have your domain and that your site is self-hosted.
Look for a great web hosting company and sign up with them.
Do Not Overcomplicate Things
As someone new to blogging, you have to keep things simple.
Do not make the mistake of overcomplicating things; doing this may leave you confused and lost.
There’s still a lot ahead of you and you’d still face complicated and more challenging tasks.
Therefore, do not exert yourself by making simple things complicated.
Rather, save your energy and time for the challenging tasks ahead.
Always Remember the Goal of Your Blog – Making Money
The main goal of your blog is to generate money.
You should never forget that when setting up your blog.
Do not get carried away and start spending money on things that are not relevant to your goals.
At this point, your blog design does not have to be perfect.
At this budding stage, your blog most likely won’t have any traffic.
So, why waste time, money, and effort on your website design.
This does not mean website design isn’t important, but it isn’t important at this stage.
Your priority now should be getting your blog running and publishing content that would get traffic.
2. Publish High-Quality Content – How to Start a Blog Post and Get Paid
The next step to take once you’ve set up your blog is to start publishing high-quality content.
If your blog doesn’t have content, it’s nothing, and if its content isn’t great, then it just becomes one more blog in the big sea of blogs.
High-quality content is what will make your blog stand out.
It would help you get traffic, build your blog’s credibility, and help you make money in several ways.
But publishing content that would get traffic and appeal to a wide range of audiences can be quite challenging.
However, it should become simpler once you grasp the basic concept.
One of the basic things you need to know is what qualifies as high-quality content.
What Is High-quality Content
So, what qualifies as high-quality content?
High-quality content does not necessarily need to be text.
It could be videos, infographics, images, and even audio.
However, to keep things simple and rank on Google, make your content primarily text.
Later on, when you are generating traffic, you can add other forms like images and videos to enrich your content.
Aside from the form, high-quality content often has certain characteristics.
Great content is usually meaningful, insightful, unbiased, not difficult to read, doesn’t contain grammar or spelling mistakes, and is unique.
Tips on How to Create High-Quality Content
When creating content for your website, you need to make sure that it has all the characteristics mentioned above.
To do this, simply follow these tips.
Ensure Your Topic is Something You Are Passionate About
If you want to create high-quality content, then you need to write about something you are passionate about.
You most likely won’t get frustrated or run out of things to write if you are passionate about your topic.
But when you are writing about something you know nothing about or you don’t like, you’d have a difficult time creating quality content out of it.
Also, as a blogger, you should have a niche.
Your niche should also be something you are passionate about.
Know that, you may be publishing content weekly or daily if you want to make good money from blogging.
So, when choosing a niche, select a niche you can always draw up several topics and ideas from.
Publish Content That Has Enough Audience
You shouldn’t be the only one passionate about your topic.
For you to earn money by blogging, people need to visit your blog.
Therefore, you need to make sure you write content that people would be interested in.
Before you write on any topic, search for it on Google.
You’d know if the topic has enough audience by the websites and how many results you see on the result pages.
Make Your Content Specific
Yes, you want to write on a topic that has enough audience, but at the same time, you should not be too broad.
When you are too broad with your topic, you may end up writing on something that thousands of other websites have written about.
While common topics usually have a big audience, they’re also quite competitive.
And as someone just starting in this industry, your competition should be fellow bloggers and not online businesses with a team of SEO experts and writers.
Therefore, make sure your topic is specific and not broad.
3. Get Organic Traffic – How to Start a Blog and Get Paid
Your site needs to get organic traffic for you to start making money from it.
Search engines (especially Google) are what generate organic traffic.
The reason organic traffic has a lot of value particularly especially as it is derived from “user intent”.
What does this mean? An illustration would explain it better.
So, let’s say a user searches Google for “how to replace my refrigerator gasket”; the person’s intention is clear, they just need an article or video to show them how to replace their refrigerator gasket.
For a blog to rank for this keyphrase, it must give Google an in-depth article that would teach the user how to replace a refrigerator gasket.
Any website that can do this well will have a high ranking on Google.
Tips To Help You Get Organic Traffic
The big question then is how do you get organic traffic.
There are several ways to do this.
Below are some of the most common ways.
Publish High-quality Content
You should be able to see by now the importance of publishing high-quality content.
Google has standards and only great content can meet these standards.
If you only publish mediocre content, there is no way you would rank on Google.
Make Sure Your Your On-Page, Off-page, and Technical SEO is Done Right
On-page SEO is all about making your web pages and content visible to Google.
Some important things you need to consider when working on your on-page SEO include:
- Internal links
- Proper post formatting and Headings
- Putting videos and images in your content
- The length of your post
- Optimized description and titles
Off-page SEO involves making your website known to other websites.
Getting your off-page SEO right will help you get established as an authority in that niche and eventually help you get traffic.
The best method used for off-page SEO is link building.
Common link-building techniques are writing guest posts on bigger and well-known websites, adding links to other sites in your posts, and letting them know; they may do the same too.
Technical SEO is about the setup of your blog.
Most blogging platforms are SEO-friendly by default; however, you may still need to work on some things to make it better.
Some things you may need to work on include website speed, URL structure, blog structure, canonical URLs, mobile-friendliness, and so on.
4. Create a Community – How to Start a Blog and Get Paid
You now have to create a community for your blog.
Most people new to blogging often skip this and move on straight to trying to make money but this often doesn’t work out well.
Why is it important to create a community?
It is important because that is how you earn your reader’s trust and then make sales.
At this point, your blog should no longer be a hobby (that’s if you ever took it as one).
You should now see it as a source of income; this is why you need to now work on your branding.
You can improve your branding in several other ways including having a unique slogan or logo; however, building a community is one of the best ways to improve your blog business brand.
Visit here to learn the importance of branding in business.
How to Make a Community for your Blog
There are several ways to build a community for your blog.
However, some common methods are networking on social media, email marketing, and giving replies to comments.
To build a community by networking on social media, you have to build your social media presence on specific social media platforms.
There are several platforms to pick from, but since you’re new to this, it would be best to use the most effective platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Use your social media platforms to reach as many people as possible and turn them into followers and eventually your blog customers.
You shouldn’t spend your time interacting with just anyone; rather, your focus should be on potential customers.
For your email marketing efforts, you need to have a newsletter that people can subscribe to.
Use this newsletter to build your community by sending emails when you have new content on the blog.
Also, use the newsletter to get feedback from your audience.
Your emails should be valuable enough to win the trust of your audience.
Lastly, when you get comments on your posts, do not just leave them there.
Make sure you reply to them and help your readers by answering whatever questions they have.
Appreciate contributions as well.
This would encourage people to leave comments more often.
5. Start Getting Paid – How to Start a Blog and Get Paid
Now that you have everything in place, it’s about time your blog starts paying you some cool money.
There are several ways to earn money off your blog.
The most common and effective ones will be discussed below.
Sell Your Services or/and Products
You can market and sell your product or services on your blog once you have a lot of readers.
Write content about the service or products you offer and then put a link to your business website so that people can patronize your business from there.
If you do not have a business page, you can create a sales page.
Add CTA (call to action) to your articles that would redirect people to your sales page.
Sell Ads
Once you have established your presence on the web, you can start selling ads to make money.
AdSense is a common platform among bloggers.
AdSense is a great way to earn money from your blog as someone who is just starting.
To earn money from this, people need to click on the ads.
So, figure out the best placement for your ads by trying out different placements and seeing which one generated the most result.
Affiliate Marketing
You can sell the products of other people and then earn a commission from the sale.
This is how most bloggers earn money.
First, you get a product to promote and then you join their program for affiliate marketers.
Then, you would get unique banners and links.
These are what you would add to the content on your blog.
So, whenever someone visits your blog and clicks on the banner or link, they would be taken to the provider’s website.
Once they buy the product, you’d get your commission.
To earn good money from affiliate marketing, you need to promote products that your readers will pay for.
Also, before you promote anything, make sure you test it out and be sure that it’s a good product.
The last thing you want to do is promote a fake or unreliable product; doing this may make your readers lose the trust they have for you.
Make sure you do not just use your blog to promote products.
Your blog should still have useful and valuable content that users can benefit from.
If you make your blog too promotional, you may end up losing organic traffic.
Subscription and Memberships
Finally, another way bloggers earn money through their blogs is through subscriptions and memberships.
When you have interesting, informative, and relatable content on your blog, you can start charging a subscription fee.
Most people won’t mind paying to become members on your “members only” sites if your content is good enough.
However, when you make your site a “members only” site, it becomes inaccessible to the general public.
In the long run, this may not be great for your blog.
Therefore, it may be more profitable to create a “members only” section rather than making the entire website accessible to just members.
For this method to work, your content has to be very unique and exclusive.
No one will release even a little amount of money for something they can read for free elsewhere.
Conclusion on How to Start a Blog and Get Paid
Blogging is one of the many ways to make money in today’s internet-driven world.
But before you start getting paid, you have to go through several steps to set up the blog and put everything in place for you to start earning from it.
You need to have a self-hosted blog and get organic traffic on it.
Then you have to build your brand and establish your blog by creating a community.
Once you have optimized your blog to a certain level, you can now start earning money from it through any method of your choice.
Some of the ways you can get paid include selling your services and products, affiliate marketing, subscription and memberships, and selling ads.
Finally, keep in mind that blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
You have to put in the time and effort before you can start reaping the benefits.
