Blogging is a passion for me, and it’s something I enjoy doing. It’s not a work for me, because it’s something that makes me feel complete. This is one of the main reasons I have taken blogging as a full-time professional career for me, and even after 2 years of professional blogging, I never found it boring or felt like work.
With every passing day, I’m diving deeper into the world of blogging, and I keep sharing my experiences and learnings here at my official website kadirulisla.com and now, for many others blogging is not the same as me. Because to live regular life money plays a major role, and without money, blogging is just part-time work, and can never be a top-most priority. This is a kind of sacrifice many of you are making, to ensure you don’t miss out on your present for your future life. In this guide, I will share a complete guide on how to start blogging for making money online. I will be referring to many selected articles from the past, which will ensure that you don’t miss out on anything of it.
How to start a blog which will the money for you:
To be honest, for blogging you don’t need to have any technical skills apart from writing. If you know how to express yourself with writings, which adds values for the peoples, and you can become a blogger. Though, there are some technical requirements which you can always achieve by hiring people. There might be a primary investment, but it will be worth it for making a great future with the help of blogging.
Niche/Topic of your blog:
The very first thing you need to do is find the niche of your blogging. By niche, I meant finding the topic for your blog site. You might be a jack of all professions, and want to start a blog on multiple topics, but it will not be profitable, as people like to subscribe to a blog, which is an authority in a particular topic.
Even from a search engine point of view, a blog/website dedicated to a single topic ranks higher. Now, the question is how you can find the topic of your blog? Here are a few tips that will help you to get started:
- Find a topic that you know better than anyone else. It doesn’t have to be the job you are doing, and it could be anyone. Try to think about the topic that you most like to talk about, and you can comfortably talk about it for hours.
- A good idea is to pick a topic that you usually interested read about. The topic which you read about all the time, is something that interests you most of the others.
- Also, make sure you have a keen interest in a particular topic, and you can add values with your insight.
- For newbies, I always recommend to take the help of the pen-paper and write down the topics in different columns that you like. For example Photography, Scientific research, Baby care, health care and so on. Now, try to write 20-25 post ideas for those different columns. When you are writing the post titles, think about what you can write without taking reference to others. By the end of the 25th article, it will help you to find the topic that you like the most of others.
- This is one of the most important steps before starting a blog, as it will help you to pick a topic that you are most passionate about. This will ensure that you will not burn out when your blog goes live. Most of the newbie bloggers dies in a short span because of a lack of passion and persistence. If you are picking a topic that you like to talk about and write about, it will ensure that your burn out period will nevermore come. So, I assume you have selected the niche for your blog which can make some cash for you.
Blogging platform:
There are many blogging platforms out there, and people have different opinions about it. Most of the top bloggers I know of have started blogging on BlogSpot.com.
If you are ready to do something more meaningful, Get a WordPress blog, and don’t confuse yourself with WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blog.
- For More details read this Blog : DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WORDPRESS.COM AND WORDPRESS.ORG
Domain Name:
The name of your blog is the most important and most crucial part of the success. A domain name is the URL of a blog that a visitor will use to open a blog. For example www.kadirulislam.com
When you start a blog on BlogSpot or WordPress.com platform, you get an address like name.blogspot.com and name.WordPress.com. A custom domain name is like www.kadirulislam.com, for which we need to pay around 10-15$. If you are following this blogging for money guide, you should start a blog on BlogSpot without any custom domain name. When you learn the basic role of blogging, you are ready to invest a little on the domain name, which I will cover in the next topic “Web Hosting”.
Now, there are few rules which will help you to pick the best name for your new blog, and here are some of the tips from my experience:
- Use only .com domain extension. Use .in or country-based domain extension when you are targeting traffic from a particular country.
- Your domain name should be easy to say and easy to type.
- Make sure your domain name should not confuse the listeners.
I usually follow two rules when selecting a domain name for myself and my clients. Here are two rules which I follow:
For long term venture:
If you are planning to create a blog for long term stuff, a good idea is to go for a branded domain name, which doesn’t have any meaning, but it’s easy to recall and easy to type. For example: Shout Me Loud, Labnol and so on.
For SEO advantage:
Now, if you are planning to create a blog whose sole purpose is to make money and you are unsure about long-term goals, you can pick a keyword-rich domain name. a good idea is to have your main topic (Keyword) as the first name and followed by a suffix like Guide, resource and so on. Ex: Cydiaguide, Techguides and so on.
You can use tools like Bustaname to get suggestions for your domain name. My suggestion is to use your creativity and pick a name that makes more sense, and easy to brand. Here are a few things you should not do when selecting the domain name for your new blog:
- Don’t use your name as a blog name. Because, it will not look professional when your blog will grow, and when you target audience shift from local to global.
- Don’t use them too long domain names. Try to keep it lower down 12 characters.
- Don’t use domain extension like .info, .net and so on, because they tend to rank bad in Search engines. I always prefer and suggest to use a domain name extension like .com or .org.
Webhosting:
Now, I assume you have crossed the infant stage of blogging on a free blogging platform like BlogSpot or WordPress.com, and you should move to a self-hosted platform. By the self-hosted platform, I generally meant to install your blog on your server. This way you will have more control over your blog, and you are responsible for all your actions.
Set up your blog:
Setting up a perfect blog might be a little tricky, because with the time you will learn about the many basic things, and you will learn it over time.
Plan your content:
Before you start writing your first blog post, you should make a content strategy. For example, if you are picking a niche like “WordPress”, think of the most basic questions a user will have, and you can create a content title based on that. I will be talking about Keyword research and other stuff later in this article, but for now, let’s concentrate on content planning from a user point of view. So, let’s assume your niche topic is “WordPress blog” and here are basic questions a newbie user will have:
- What is WordPress
- Why WordPress is a better blogging platform
- Difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org blog
- How to create a WordPress blog.
- Must-have plugins for your WordPress blogs and so on…..
A good idea is to create a spreadsheet and note down all your idea. The above titles are an example, and you should note down ideas based on the topic of your interest. Content planning will help you to stay focused on time, and you know what you have to write next. Planning is the most crucial part of creating a perfect blog.
Design of your blog:
Blog design is the most important aspect of your blog because a good design will ensure that your visitors will love your blog. For WordPress, there are many free and premium WordPress themes out there, and I always recommend to go for a premium theme, because you will get all the support and starter guide, and moreover, you will have a quality design for your blog. Here are three premium theme clubs which I would recommend you to start with.
WordPress plugins:
There are thousands of WordPress plugins out there, and here I will mention a few of those plugins which are must-have for any new WordPress blog. If you have never installed a plugin before, here is my guide on installing the WordPress plugin. Here are plugins which you should have on your newly created WordPress blog:
- WordPress SEO by Yoast
- Akismet
- Smush.it
- W3 total cache
- Jetpack by WordPress.com
- Google XML sitemap
There are many more plugins, but the above plugins will ensure that you have all the basics plugin installed on your blog.
Add important pages on your blog:
Here are some of the important pages, which you should have on your blog from day one.
- About page: Contains detail about your blog, and you.
- Contact page: A page with a contact form. You can use Contact Form 7 to create a contact form on WordPress.
- Privacy policy: Add privacy details for your blog.
- Comment Policy: Add a comment policy for your blog.
Branding of your blog:
Any blogger needs to brand their blog from day one, as people like to associate themselves with a brand. Branding a blog is quite easy, and you have already done 50% of branding by picking up a good looking design. Here are a few additional steps to help you:
- Create a logo for your blog. If you are not a designer, you can always find logo makers on Fiverr which will cost you not more than $5. Make sure you ask the designer to give you the .psd file, which you will be needing for future use.
- Create a favicon for your blog, which will again not take a lot of time.
- Create a Facebook page, Google plus page, and Twitter page for your blog.
Writing your first content:
Now, this is where the real challenge begins, as you need to write content which is not only useful but written in the best quality. I will share some of the articles link below to get you started, but here are few tips which will ensure you don’t make mistakes a newbie normally makes:
- When you are writing your content, imagine a person is sitting next to you, and he doesn’t have any knowledge about the topic you are writing. Now, your content should cover all the aspects of basics to advanced to explain your topic to the guy. You don’t have to go crazy with details, but it should have enough details.
- The above tip will ensure that your content length is the up-to-the-mark.
- Write in the first-person tone, because there is only a single person who is reading your blog. For example, you are reading this blog post alone. So, use you instead of us.
- Try to take your screenshots using software’s like Snagit (that’s what I use). Don’t use images from Google image search directly. If you still need images for your post without taking screenshots, here are two guides to help you. Find images for your blog using Google advanced image search, and find free to use images using Flickr.
Here are a few articles that will ensure when you write your first blog post, you will end up creating great content.
Now, Make money from blogging in easy steps:
The best and easiest way to make money from blogging is AdSense, and I will not get into details, as below guide will ensure that you end up making money from your blog.
When you starting a new blog, ensure that you use minimum ads. Too many ads on a new blog are a big turn-off, and you will fail to turn your first-time visitors into loyal readers. Here are some additional tips that you should keep in mind to make money from your blog:
Here are some advanced topics to learn the basics of money making via affiliate marketing:
Search engine optimization of your blog and learning basics of SEO:
SEO is an advanced topic and it’s hard to complete it in a single article. Many newbies try now to concentrate on search engine optimization, and it’s a big mistake. Search engine optimization helps you to drive targeted traffic from organic search, which in turn makes more money for you. There is three core part of SEO:
- On-page SEO: Your content quality, Keyword placement, and other factors.
- On-Site SEO: Crawling, indexing of your website.
- Off-Site SEO: Backlinks from other sites.
With the evolution of SEO, I would also like to add two more here:
- Social signals: Social media plays a great role in improving your blog ranking. Specially, Google plus is proven to be the best social networking site to improve ranking.
- User experience: New Search engine optimization is all about giving a great user experience. Some of the key aspects of good user experience: Navigation, site loading, website design, readability and so on.
Getting traffic to your blog:
If you have done everything as mentioned above, you will start getting organic and traffic from social media sites. Now, here I’m sharing some of the selected posts to help you drive more traffic to your website. Do remember, targeted traffic makes more money.
Readership and improving your blog:
One major difference between a normal blog and an A-list blog is the detailing. An A-list blogger usually takes care of every tiny detail to ensure users subscribe to the blog and love to become a part of it. This is what we call turning one time visitors into readers.
This article is long, but if you have read the article seriously along with all hyperlinked posts, you are already 3 steps ahead of creating a successful blog to make money for you. Do remember, it will take time to earn money from your blog, but once you start doing that, there is no end to it.
If you have additional questions related to blogging or making money from a blog, feel free to ask me via comments. If you find this guide resourceful, do consider sharing it on social networking sites.
