How To Start A Blog/ how to earn with blog / blog earning methods / blog top tips

How To Start A Blog

How To Start A Blog/ how to earn with blog/blog earning methods/blog top tips 

Okay, so if that doesn't dissuade you one bit, or you've already made the decision to start a blog, here's what you need to do in a step-by-step format. First, I need to premise this by saying that this post is largely based on the WordPress blogging platform. It is not a step-by-step configuration guide to WordPress, but it does reference the system often

Why? While there are other platforms for blogging, WordPress is that the most mainstream, with nearly 100 million installations so far. Yes, that's a lot of blogs out there. The fact is that there are approximately 1000 websites being created every minute of each day, with an outsized majority of these being blogs. So if you're starting a blog, you're likely starting a WordPress blog.

Step #1 -- Decide On A Niche

You're first step in starting a blog is deciding on a niche. Maybe you've already selected a niche. Maybe you haven't. Your niche will essentially be your content angle. What will you write about? What information will you convey? Will it be about a specific industry? Maybe it'll be a few certain areas of skills or personal development? Whatever it is, decide on it now.

Some people will argue that you simply shouldn't start a blog during a niche that may not too popular. For example, if you would like to write down about something like crocheting or playing a specialized instrument, understand that the appeal of the blog can only be as large as the total global audience in your prospective language. Some things simply don't have a large audience.

Mass appeal to an outsized audience is the goal of any blogger that starts a blog. While saturation into the marketplace is difficult any way that you simply slice it, starting with a smaller audience won't assist you. If you want to write about resume writing skills, for example, you might want to take a broader approach of larger business or employment skills and information.

Step #2 -- Find A Good Domain Name

The next step in starting a blog and eventually earning a healthy income is to seek out an honest name. Domain names are in high demand these days, and there are all sorts of new extensions available. However, I would recommend that you stick with the dot-com domain extension. If you can't find it through a regular search, try GoDaddy Auctions or another domain auctioneer.

If you absolutely cannot find a dot-com domain, then you'll choose a special extension, but take care to not make that extension country-specific. For example, don't use.US or.CA or maybe top-level domains like .info or .cc or .name because you merely won't get an equivalent global awareness and appeal that you would with a dot-com domain name.

You also want to ensure the domain name is short. Don't go beyond three words. Two words is right, but three words is your absolute maximum. In short, you ought to avoid any name that's greater than 15 characters. Simply put, Google doesn't like domain names over 15 characters.

You should also, avoid hyphens in your domain name as these are usually indicators of spam. Search for a domain name with two words that do not use hyphens and try to opt for a dot-com domain. You should also try to use a keyword in your niche within the domain name if you can. It's not mandatory, but it is a bonus for SEO down the road.

Step #3 -- Select A Hosting Account Provider

Your next step in setting up your blog is to select a hosting provider. There are loads of great hosting companies out there and the choice is entirely up to you. Use Google to conduct a few searches on "best hosting providers" or "best WordPress hosting accounts" and so on.

What you'll come to find are lots of articles filled with affiliate links so be careful of the hosting account you eventually sign up to because it might not actually be the best. This is an important step to do your due diligence because your the hosting provider will essentially be your partner in your blogging venture, so choose wisely.

One of the important aspects that you should look for is the uptime of the provider. Search around and see if there have been any major problems associated with that hosting provider. Search for reviews and decide on the price point you're willing to spend. You should also ensure that the hosting provider has a WordPress plugin if you're not all too familiar with setting up software such as WordPress on a hosting account.

Most hosting providers will provide you with a WordPress plugin and make it relatively easy to install WordPress on your hosting account. But it is your duty to locate the proper provider and obtain the proper hosting account. In the beginning, you will not need a high capacity account. But as you grow, you'll need to ensure you have the right amount of space and bandwidth to support your traffic. Those are good problems to have, but you won't have them in the beginning.

Step #4 -- Install WordPress

Okay, you've located the hosting account. Now, you need to install WordPress. There are some best-use practices when setting things over here. For example, you would like to pick an honest blog title for your blog. Ensure that it's not too long and it's relevant to your niche or intended topics.

You also need to do things like select a theme. What will your design look like? Will you use a standard theme that's free or will you splurge on a premium theme? There are actually many thousands of WordPress themes that will be chosen to help you with the planning and layout of your blog. Two of my favorite options for sourcing premium WordPress themes are Envato's Theme Forest and Template Monster.

A few things that you simply got to concentrate on those days is to make sure that whatever theme you put in, that it's responsive. That means it needs to be optimized for mobile and tablet layouts and whatever might come next. Mobile searches have now far surpassed desktop searches, and desktop is slowly dwindling.

If you don't feel comfortable doing all of this, then find some hired help on a site like Upwork or Fiverr, where you'll find no shortage of individuals willing to assist you for a very nominal fee when not only starting your blog but also setting it up, installing a theme or even customizing it as well.

Step #5 -- Configure Accelerated Mobile Projects (AMP) Pages

The AMP the specification is vital thanks to globally slow internet speeds in most countries. While this especially applies to develop countries, most places, including North America, don't offer lightning fast internet speeds on mobile devices. To add to that, many websites and blog owners don't understand the mechanics in site speed and how to ensure the framework of a site loads quickly so as not to frustrate visitors.

Google knows that most people will abandon a site that's slow-loading. To combat that, it's created the AMP specification to assist make sure that pages load very quickly. AMP is successful at doing this by thinning down the page and removing extraneous bloated elements that take up a lot of front-loading resources. Specifically, you can learn more about the AMP specifications here. In short, here's a summary of what AMP does:

Replaces every image referenced with its respective sizes according to the viewport of the viewer.

Ensures that inline images are visible above the webpage's fold (i.e. where it gets cutoff before scrolling).

It converts CSS variables to inline code that don't require it to parse out to a separate document.

Takes extended components and preloads them into memory.

Conducts an exhaustive minification of all CSS and HTML code to ensure ultra-fast loading speeds.

In order to setup your WordPress blog to support AMP, all you need to do is install the proper plugin, which you can find here. This plugin will assist you with ensuring that your pages are AMP-specification ready.

Step #6 -- Setup Google Analytics

The next step in starting your blog is to make sure you put in an analytics system. Google Analytics is a great choice and very simple to set up on your WordPress blog. Once you've created an Analytics account, install an Analytics plugin or use Google's Tag Manager plugin to configure and link everything together.

Once that's completely, you should also install an AMP analytics plugin to ensure that you can track AMP pages, which will not be trackable with a standard Analytics install since it's a minified page and it'll require a special file to its current iteration so as to trace AMP page visits.

You can't analyze and track your work and therefore the effectiveness of your blogging without good analytics. Ensure that you set this up properly at the outset so that you can gauge how well your marketing efforts are panning out.

Step #7 -- Write Keyword-Focused Content

Starting a a blog that really makes money involves an excellent deal of writing. But not just any writing. You need to write keyword-focused content and do it repeatedly. When it comes to writing your content, there are a ton of rules that you should follow if you want it to be effective when it comes to SEO (in fact over 200+ which you can learn about here), but try not to allow that to overwhelm you.

In the first year, you won't get much traction from your efforts. Even if you write a tremendous amount of great content, unless you get incredibly important domain names to link to you through other great content, it will be slow-going at best. But you should stay the course.

The goal? Create a schedule and stick to it. In the beginning, write the maximum amount of content as you'll and share it everywhere. However, don't sacrifice quantity over quality. Ensure that all the posts are great, top quality posts that are both relevant to your audience and niche while also being keyword-centric. Don't veer off-topic or go on one tangent after another.

If you can keep your readers engaged and actively reading your content and digesting it thoroughly, Google will take notice. Engagement, calculated through things just like the average time spent reading your content, average session time, exit rate, bounce rate, and so on, is one among the first components when ranking on Google's competitive Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Step #8 -- Decide On An Income Stream

Your blog won't make money right away. It just won't. No matter what anyone promises you, without the right audience and saturation on search engines, you simply won't have the traffic. However, you ought to still choose how you are going to form your money. Pick an income stream.

Will you sell ebooks? Will you become an affiliate? Will you run ads (I don't suggest this unless you've got many visitors per month) or will you sell another product maybe? Sometimes, people start blogs to assist bolster their websites and sell some particular professional services. Whatever it is, you have to decide on what it will be.

The truth? Making money from blogging won't be easy. People will sell you a dream, but those hopes will be dashed 6 months or a year into your endeavor. However, the a most important difference between the blogs that make outlandish income and people that fail are the straightforward incontrovertible fact that the people that don't stop ultimately reach their goals.

That's the point. But before you get there, choose a revenue stream. Most people opt for affiliate sales. You won't make any money with Google ads or any other types of ads unless you sell private ads on your blog for a fixed monthly cost. You might make a few dollars then. But affiliate sales are going to be your best hope at the outset.

Once you've selected a revenue stream, integrate that into your content and your posts. Ensure that it's highlighted on your blog. Don't inundate people with ads everywhere or plenty of links that cause sales pages. People won't like that. You have to have some tact and decorum as you do this otherwise you're going to upset a lot of people.

Step #9 -- Build A Value Ladder And Sales Funnel

Okay? A what? Sorry if I lost you. However, if you're serious about ensuring the blog that you started will make some serious coin over time, you need what's called a value ladder and a sales funnel. If you've never heard of these two concepts, let me explain. First of all, you need a system for email marketing. There are plenty of great plugins and programs to send out emails.

If you scour the web, you'll find companies like Aweber, Get Response, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact and loads of others when it comes to email marketing. The first thing you need to do is to pick one of those companies and integrate it into your blog. Second, you need to develop a free offer. What will you give away in exchange for that lucrative email address?

Keep in mind that email marketing is where the gold is. But it doesn't happen without a large volume of subscribers. You need tens of thousands of active subscribers to form a really significant income through email marketing efforts. And that doesn't happen quickly no matter what anyone tries to tell you.

Once you've built your free offer, you would like to make a worth ladder. What will you sell on the next step up? Create your own digital products if you're serious about earning a true income from your blog. Decide on the next sale or dollar amount such as $99 on the next step, $499 on the second, $1,999 on the third, $9,999 on the fourth, and $24,999 on the fifth.

Yes. People will pay $25,000 to join some mastermind program if you have enough authority and your sales funnel is convincing enough. Your sales funnel is going to actively market all of this for you on autopilot, giving you passive income and the freedom to travel the world or do whatever you want while earning serious income from your blog.

Step #10 -- Rinse. Repeat. Keep Going

Give it time. Everything good comes in time. If you're starting a blog to earn an income today, you can prepare to be disappointed. However, as long as you ultimately realize that your income will come eventually, and you're blogging because you're keen on it, then you'll succeed over time.

All you have to do is keep going. Rinse. Repeat. Again and again. Keep churning out great content and people will eventually take notice. Get social on social media and share your content everywhere that you simply possibly can. It's going to feel frustrating at first. I still remember the early days and just how painful it was to see a small trickle