Working from home and for yourself may sound like a distant dream. However, according to a FreshBooks self-employment study, the number of Americans working for themselves is on track to reach 42 million by 2020.
If you want to learn how to enhance your lifestyle and escape the rat race—you can start with blogging. In this article, I will explain how you can make money by blogging.
What is blogging?
A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries. Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page.
So how can you make money with a blog?
How to make money by blogging
Set blogging goals
Your first step in creating a blog is to set your blogging goals.
By setting attainable goals and estimating potential traffic you can bring to your blog, you can begin to estimate the amount of money you are likely to make in relation to the work you put in.
Common blogging goals include determining your blog’s focus (technology, dieting, traveling, etc.), how you plan to bring in traffic, and how you will earn a profit.
Do not shy away from topics that may seem crowded. For example, making a personal finance blog may seem difficult as it’s a very popular space with a lot of competition. However, through the right methods, you can still find success and garner sufficient traffic. For example, keep an eye out for long-tail keywords your competitors aren’t using. By implementing them onto your site, this differentiates your blog and helps to gain traffic from organic searches.
Once you’ve established your list of actionable goals, you can start setting up your blog using the many available free online guides.
Diversify your income
If possible, you shouldn’t rely on just one revenue source for your blog. An area you’ll want to focus on in the beginning stages is building out content. Ideally, you should aim for 30 unique blog posts within the first 6 months. These posts should be well researched, over 1,000 words in length, and target non-competitive keywords that yield traffic.
Throughout these 30 posts, you can start building your income by including affiliate marketing links or advertisements as well as experimenting with other profit-earning strategies to see what works best for you.
Optimize for SEO
The key to getting traffic to your blog is through SEO and social media. Social media best practices are pretty straight forward. Whenever you share a new post on your blog, share it on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest and other social platforms you utilize as well.
For those new to blogging, optimizing for SEO will likely be a bit of a learning curve. Once your blog is a few months old, your posts will begin earning traffic from search engines, like Google. Do your research on what’s attracting readers to your blog and build off of those insights through on and off-page SEO optimization strategies. Fortunately, there are a plethora of online resources to help you through this process and ensure your blog is fully optimized.
Share your blog
Once your blog is well established and you’re bringing in a profit, it’s time to double down on promotion. This means setting aside a portion of your income to promote your blog through advertising. Common options for this include Google Advertising and Facebook Advertising.
Take your time experimenting with different mediums to determine which ads are providing the greatest benefit. Once you’ve determined your most profitable ad platform, you can scale up your efforts to eventually bring in enough income to support your desired work-from-home lifestyle.
So there you have it, these are four key tips for starting and maintaining a profitable blog. Good luck!