So, after deliberation, you finally decided to start a blog? Cheers! You are now officially a beginner blogger! I bet you're destined for something great!
To be completely honest, blogging isn't just as simple as… shooting fish in a barrel as most people have always thought it is. Likewise, it's nothing like herding cats.
Yes! There is some work involved…But with the proper guidance, you can reduce that workload by working smart. In fact, anything that’s worth having requires hard work from whoever desires to benefit from it, right?
Consider my case. Personally, I started several blogs, most of which couldn't completely failed. However, some of my blogs were quite successful and this is the reason why I want to help you guys get results too.
Below, I share with you precious blogging tips on how to kick off your initial 30 blogging days with a bang. This information will help you get the ball rolling.
However, as you probably know, it is hard to put all your tips in one articles without turning it into a novel. For that reason, I have created a FREE 5-day Blogging course where I will cover everything in more details and show you exactly how I build my blogs.
Related content:
FREE 5-Day Blogging Course: Make Money Blogging
This article isn’t only for Beginner Bloggers who haven’t started their blog yet. Indeed, it is also very useful for those who are in the early stages of blogging (maybe their… first 90 days), and really want to start profiting from their blog. Before I get into the nitty-gritty, please note that some of the links in this blog are referral links where I can be compensated without costing you anything.
1. Identify Your Niche.
Before you start a blog, you need to understand that you can’t serve everybody. If your message is too broad and general, it’s not going to get anybody’s attention. This is why you have to pick a sub-segment of the market, also known as a “niche”.
You want to create a blog for two reasons; to help people solve a problem, and to make money. You may be blogging to narrate your life story, tell people about some life experiences you had, blah blah blah… If this is what you'd want to do, then it means that you'll fall into the hobby blog category. Don't get me wrong. This doesn't now mean that you aren't solving people's snags, neither does it mean that you won't be making the money. You certainly will be, but bear in mind that more people prefer blogs that solve their problems and help them improve their personal life.
So if you really want to get a blog that will be read by most people, you need to target the most common problems that people experience, select the ones that you will enjoy writing about, and simply write about it. That is what defines a successful blog.
Here are the best blogging niches to specialize in. These have been known to be very profitable and will stay profitable for decades. Of course, nothing is set in stone, so it could very well be that this list could change over time… However, the list below has been booming for a while and there is a high probability that they will keep working really well for many years.
- A blog on How To Make Good Money.
- Lifestyle Blogs (Including Survival, Travel, Homesteading, Home Decor, Gardening, and many more).
- Food (Healthy Diet, Food for Weight Loss,…).
- Health and Fitness.
- Beauty and Fashion.
- Finance (Personal Finance).
- Personal Development.
These niches also have sub-niches. Some can also fall under more than one of the categories listed above.
For example, weight loss can fall under Health and Fitness, as well as under Food. Regardless which nice you pick, you have to remember something: Your content needs to solve people's problems. If you solve people’s most pressing problems, they will open their wallets to thank you and they will come back for more.
2. Just Be Smart about Blogging ~ Have an end-goal in mind.
Having a plan is needed before executing a project. Becoming a successful blogger is our project in this regard. Before starting to write, you have to lay down a very clear plan for your future activities. This plan will always help you keep track of your schedule. Some of the questions you can ask yourself before laying down the plan are:
- What are the problems you're solving? (Write them down).
- What are you writing for? (Money, hobby,…).
- Who are you writing for?
- How will you turn your blog into money?
- How often will you be writing? (twice a week, the whole week, once a week, and so on).
Again, your focus should exclusively be on solving problems for your audience. If you can anticipate questions that they will have down the road it’s even better. You have been there already and you can already help them face and solve a problem they haven’t encountered yet. Do this and they will follow you until the end of times because YOU solve all their problems for them!
Who are you writing for?
Who is your audience? This is an important question you need to answer. Understanding who your audience is and having a clear picture of them in your mind will greatly help you create content. How? Well, it will allow you to visualize a friendly face and write as if you were writing to a friend. A warm friendly tone brings you closer to your audience in ways that no advertising or big budget ever could.
How often are you planning on writing?
This is a factor that will be determined by so many things and the main one being your commitment to the job. frequency coupled with the quality of your writing, will also determine how much money you'll make blogging.
How will you Monetize your blog?
First of all, you are the only person to decide whether you want to monetize your blog or not. If you, indeed, want to monetize your blog, here are some of the most common ways to do that.
Affiliate Marketing.
Something interesting about affiliate marketing is that some of the products and services you currently use have an affiliate program. You can easily sign up to their program and get your affiliate link.
Alright, you can be forgiven for not knowing exactly what an affiliate link is, so let me break it down for you. It is a UNIQUE link that's given to you after signing up to a company’s affiliate program. Nobody has the same link as you have to put this differently.
When someone clicks on your unique link, the owner of the program knows that you referred that person. If they buy or perform any action defined by the owner of the program (fill a form, start a trial, sign up to a newsletter, etc…) you earn a commission.
There are several affiliate platforms you can start with very easily.
Sites like:
This is one of my favorite networks. I make $265 per click on some programs.. It’s absolutely insane. You can register for FREE as an affiliate here: Create A FREE affiliate account at Shareasale
Related content:
How I Make $265 Per Click On Shareasale (detailed case study)
Maxbounty is a very cool affiliate marketing platform for a few reasons. First, not many people know about it which means that there is far less competition. Second (and most important) they pay you HUGE commissions (hence the name). There are a lot of offers where you can earn between $300 to $600 per sale.
I highly suggest you register there. It’s FREE and it can mean big bucks for you. Click here to create you FREE Maxbounty account
Awin is a huge international network that allows you to partner with some of the largest brands in the world. You can leverage the popularity of these brands which means that you don’t even have to convince anybody to buy. They are already sold on the brand thanks to the millions of dollars they invest in marketing every year!
Click here to create your FREE Awin account
These three have a wide range of products and companies to choose from.
Ads.
Another way of monetizing your blog is by including ads in your blog post. There are relevant ad companies with different policies. One is Google AdSense. They don’t have minimum required page views nor monthly sessions to join.
Another one is the Mediavine company that requires a minimum of 25k monthly sessions. The principle of ads is very simple. You just put ads on your site and that’s it. A golden tip with ads is to ensure that you don’t add more than 3 ads per post. One at the top before the headline, one in the middle of the post and one in the sidebar. Don’t go too crazy with ads. Nobody likes to be sold and you may end up scaring your readers away.
Your own products and/or services.
You can decide to create and showcase you own product in your posts. The upside is that you get 100% of the money AND you have full control over the strategy.
The downside, however, is that creating a product is time consuming… In addition, you will need to worry about stuff like copywriting, conversions, support etc… My point is that, if you are just starting out, I would stick with affiliate marketing. It’s easy to start and allows you to get experience without the hassle. Once you have gained more experience, you NEED to create your own product. It’s a must.
My income started booming after I created my #1 best-selling product.
There are 2 reasons for this:
- This product is designed to send an avalanche of traffic on autopilot to any offer of your choice. So, I have been using this strategy for years to make several thousand dollars a week
- Since it’s my own product, I get to keep 100% of the sale
?If you haven’t seen my secret weapon you really need to check it out.
How To Create A fully-automated passive income machine for beginners
Sponsored posts.
As you can just easily guess from the name itself, sponsored posts are also blog posts that promote a company's products. They are paid for by the company they talk about, just like the affiliate links.
You just need to write a review of the product and get paid in return. Another tip here is selecting a product that you have already used (and liked) yourself.
Why? Because you always want to be very sincere with your audience. Make sure that whatever you recommend to them is something that will actually help them. That's when they'll consider coming back to your site for more in the long run.
Something to remember as well is to disclose to your audience that this is a sponsored post. First, it helps you maintain a high level of trust and transparency with your audience, and secondly, you do this to comply with certain ad regulations.
3. Purchase a Domain And Hosting.
You must be thinking about starting with a free WordPress blog, or maybe use services like those provided by Weebly or Wix. And I know you're doing this because you need to minimize costs. You're right, BUT… Let me explain why I think this is not a good idea. Are you familiar with the expression “cheap is expensive”?
This is what you'll learn the hard way if you go with the cheapest option around (just like I did when I first started). This is what happened: I once decided to use Wix and… it never worked for me! Yes I was able to create free blogs and all that stuff. But you know what? I made zero money out of them too!
Remember that you always need to start with the end-goal in mind. If your end-goal is to generate revenue from your blog, you need to put yourself in a position to do so. These platforms don’t allow you to customize your blog as you want it and the options are very limited. As a result, lots of your income stream opportunities fly out the window.
As if making zero money wasn’t enough, the amount of time and money I spent, without me realizing, was far much far greater than I would have had I invested in a hosting provider. I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did.
I have tested different hosting providers over the years and wanted to give you my honest opinion.
BlueHost is a very reliable and trustworthy hosting company. I have been using them for years and I have never been disappointed. Why do I like bluehost?
- You get a free domain when signing up
- It costs you less than $4 a month to host your money making blog
While Wix's customer service is awful, BlueHost‘s is just amazing. Working with them is really easy.
If you are more advanced, you already have a wordpress blog that you want to take to the next level, then I have something for you:
WP Engine what I would call the next level for all WordPress users. This platform is solely devoted & optimized for WordPress and the result is simply amazing.
My websites load in a blink of an eye, my website is replicated in 18 different locations around the globe to reduce loading time.
All the latest security updates are installed daily without me having to do anything and, more importantly, the support I get from their staff is second to none.
If you are running WordPress and want to up your game, WP Engine is the service to go for.
Related content:
Click here for a detailed tutorial on how to start a blog for less than $5
4. Go For Google Analytics.
Make sure to add google analytics to your blog from day 1. Analytics helps you understand everything about your audience and how they interact with your content.
Using analytics, you can see:
- how many people visit your page
- how frequently
- where they come from (google, facebook, Instagram, pinterest)
- What their gender / age is
This information is crucial because you can ANALYZE the type of content that your audience responds to. You can see which one of your social channels is giving you the best results so that you can focus your efforts and attention on it. These are just examples…
Setting up analytics is a piece of cake. You just have to get a line of code that you get in your account and paste it on your blog. They provide you with an easy to use tutorial on how to do it. Quite frankly, even my grandma could do it hehe.
The second option is to add a plugin that will free you from the burden of messing with HTML.
Here’s a bried tutorial of how to add the plugin into your blog:
How To Add The Plugin.
- In your wordpress dashboard hover over “plugins”
- Select on “add new”
- Type ” Google Analytics Webkinder”
- Next, select on Install
- then Activate.
- Now go to Settings.
- Insert the Google Analytics tracking code.
In order to get an analytics code, you need to have a Google Analytics Account.
Here is how you get you code:
- Login and go straight to your Google Analytics profile.
- You'll see some gear-like icon at the bottom left.
- Click it and you'll see “Property Settings”.
- Click on Property Settings, and get your tracking ID.
Google Analytics will need a few days to gather data from your blog and then you will have all the info you need to make sound decisions.
5. Set Up Email Marketing.
Having an email opt in form on your blog is a MUST if you want to make big money. You want to be able to capture people’s email so that you can contact them anytime you want instead of hoping that they will come back (which they hardly ever do). Getting people to join your mail list isn't a walk in the park. You'll need a few things to make that happen.
- A bribe or free gift to motivate them to join your list
- A reliable email provider to ensure that they actually receive your emails.
Don't you worry about that. I explain them right below.
An email provider that I can recommend to you is Convertkit. ConvertKit is a very powerful ESP (email service provider) with amazing automation capabilities at the best price. You can easily collect leads, send out automated emails or broadcasts. This is an ideal tool to grow your business in full automation without having to worry about the technical aspects.
I have created a full video review of Convertkit to explain: Why I use it, How I use it and what it can do for you. You can check it out below
Review: How & Why I Use Convertkit To Automate My Business
One way of motivating your audience to join your email list is by creating incentives for them.
These incentives can be:
- An eBook
- A PDF
- A cheat sheet
- A short video
- An email course
The main purpose of these incentives is providing your audience with value packed content that’s easy to consume.
For example, if your niche is health and fitness, you can give your audience a checklist on what to purchase when doing their groceries.
I suggest that you use Canva, (free site) to create the graphics of your free gift.
Alternatively, if you are like me and can’t be bothered to create graphics, you can have it done for 5 bucks on fiverr.
Fiverr.com is a godsend. You can get pretty much anything done there for 5$ which helps you save your time and attention for what you are really good at.
6. Write Only Quality Content.
Here’s the deal: You can have the best looking site in the world with the best plugins installed…But if you content sucks, then you are doomed my friend! You need quality content, period! this is a mistake that many Beginner Bloggers make
Alright, now: What do I mean by “quality content”? I mean content that solves the reader's problem, contains keywords, and answers the questions that your readers are asking themselves.
Each of your blog posts should have all these characteristics. Use analytics to understand the type of content that your readers want. If you don’t have enough data in analytics yet, spend a little bit of time on forums and you will soon enough uncover what audience wants.
Additionally, your blog posts should be simple. Very easy to read and understand. Don't write very huge paragraphs and put some spacing in your posts. There is nothing scarier than a huge block of text…Nobody wants to read that, trust me.
Your sentences should also be brief and to the point. The number of words per sentence depends on the point you're trying to make. Don’t drag sentences unnecessarily just to look smart.
If you made your point in 500 words then end the post there. There is no point in trying to write a 2000-word blog post when you actually needed 500… People don’t care about the length of the post, they just care about getting their problems solved.
7. Have a Marketing Schedule.
You also have to create a marketing plan now that you have everything in place. The final step is to find your audience where they hang out.
I’ve struggled with this part for years guys. Here’s the truth. What you have seen so far might seem hard but it’s not. Why? Because it depends on you. Building the blog, installing the plugins and all that can be learned easily.
The tricky part is now to get OTHER PEOPLE to do something you want them to do. You don’t control these people and this is what makes it difficult.
Technology can be mastered, but people cannot be easily controlled. It took me years of trials and errors (along with tens of thousands of dollars) to create a fully automated blueprint to get people to my website or offers.
It’s so effective that it works in any market and runs 24/7 without my intervention. If you want to see how I bring avalanches of hungry buyers to my offers you can check this resource:
Related resource:
A Solution For Beginners To Drive 1000’s Of Hungry Vistitors To My Blog Without Ever Paying For Ads!
I also recommend you join Pinterest if you are planning on starting a blog in the niches we discussed at the beginning. Pinterest is a fantastic network for the following reasons:
- Pinterest users spend more money than any other social network
- Most users make 50k+ a year and have lots of disposable income
- Pinterest users are shoppers! There are on Pinterest to buy stuff
The bottom line is that you can make far more money on pinterest than on any other social network, provided that you know what you are doing.
One resource that absolutely made the difference for me is called Tailwind. Tailwind is awesome because it allows you to plan all your content in advance and deliver it when your users are more likely to engage and buy.
In addition, it Tailwind comes with powerful analytics that helps you 10x the efficiency of your pins. If you are doing ANY sort of marketing on pinterest then you absolutely need to use Tailwind
Of course, there are other platforms like Facebook but my experience with Facebook hasn’t been the best. Therefore, I cannot recommend it to you because I don’t have any useful tips to give you.
Wah! That was a long and exhaustive educative session, right? Okay, I know it wasn't 100% exhaustive and there are some other little things you need to do in between.
As explained earlier, I created a 5-Day Free blogging course to go over everything you need to do in greater details. You can get immediate access to this free course by clicking on the link below:
FREE 5-Day Blogging Course: Make Money Blogging
With that said, this article contains the 7 most basic pillars of what you need to do when starting a blog.
I really hope this blog was very helpful to you. Otherwise, feel free to let me know if you need me to clarify something and I'll do it in another blog.
If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, please share it with your friends and whoever can benefit from it.
Click below to get immediate access to my step-by-step blogging course ABSOLUTELY FREE.
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Martin Ebongue
Online Entrepreneur & free spirit:
Proud Co-Founder Of The Ninja leads Mastermind
Here are some recommended resources:
Money-Making Hacks For Beginners: How Yo Make $250 In ONLY 30 Minutes As Complete Beginner
How To Build Income Streams: Check Out The System That Allowed Me To Build 27 Income Streams
Passive Income: Best System For Beginners To Earn Passive Income Without A List, Social Media Or Ads.
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