How to start a successful blog that makes money?

How to start a successful blog

Everybody wants to learn blog and blogging nowadays because it is one of the best and easiest ways to establish a successful online business. The best way to make money online.

Don’t you wanna be a blogger and/or digital marketer?

Before deep-diving into the pool of blogging, do you know what the most common questions every blogger should know to start a successful and profitable blog? These are the questions:

a)What is the blogging definition?

b) What is a blog?

c) Who is the blogger?

d) How to start/create a blog?

e) How to write a blog?

f) How to avoid mistakes?

g) How to make popular blogs?

h) How to make money from your blog?  

The best thing you know what? You can get all the answers to those questions on the internet either on YouTube, Google, or on a blog like the one you are reading now.

So why do you need to continue reading this blog post when you can get the answers from other sources?

You see, knowing what a is blog and how to write a blog is not enough.

Blogging is a collection of skill sets. You need to have, learn, and develop different kinds of skills to be successful in the blogging career.

Writing a blog post and posting it on the Internet is not only your responsibility. You should be able to track it down, promote it properly, and most importantly get traffic to your blogging site so that you make money from it.

In this blog post, you will get a full course i.e., step by step guide from definitions to how-to and all the details which help you to make money from it as I mention in the heading of the post. 

You wouldn’t find detailedly explained points in any other source like this blog post to start a successful and profitable blog.

I want to make sure to you that after reading this post you will be crystal clear about the blog and blogging and you want to start your blogging site right away.    

Let’s start then.

But where should we start from?

Umm, what are you thinking of? It will be a great idea to start learning from definitions, won’t be?

definitions of blog, blogging and blogger

Here they are and you got the definitions of what you need to know in the beginning.

Let’s dive in deep step by step.

# How to start a blog?

This is the main difficult part of your blogging career. You want to start a blog but you will be stuck here in this part on how to start and what to do.

First of all, you should have the right mindset, and here is BOLD STATEMENT “It’s all about your mindset – You become what you think about” If you think positive, you become positive, and if you think negative, you become negative.

The same statement also follows in every business you want to pursue as well as in your blogging business.

As you have seen many on the Internet there is nothing like making money overnight. You should be dedicated, persistent, hard-working, patient, and ready to devote yourself to your career with the right and positive mindset.

With that saying, Here is the first step you should take in the process of starting a blog.

Find your Niche

Niche is an online language. It’s nothing but the Topic of your Blog.

Finding your niche and then sub-niche is an important part of starting a blog. It will decide your blog, your website –

What’s it about?

Whom you are going to serve?

Who will be your audience?

What problem solution do you have?

You can call it the soul of your body.

It will be a wise step if you spend some time finding your niche. There is a process and ways to find nice for your blogging site which you will learn in coming blog posts.

For now, here you have a simple and easy way of describing of niche.

Process of finding your blog niche

By the way, here are the most common and popular blogs and blogging niches among the bloggers:

  1. Travel blogs
  2. Food blogs
  3. Fashion blogs
  4. Gaming guruji blogs
  5. Health and wellness blogs
  6. Lifestyle blogs
  7. Personal blogs
  8. Affiliate blogs

Choose your blogging platforms

Which will you choose?

There are two blogging platforms – free and paid.

Most digital marketers suggest that if you are serious about your blogging business and blogging career. You should go for the paid ones. It’s not much investment, you can start your blogging website with your pocket money.

Now you may be thinking if you can make your blogging website free why should I choose the paid one?

Here is the answer to your doubting question.

There are many platforms like WordPress, Blogger, Medium, Tumblr you name it that allow you to start a blog for free. But what happens to free platforms is that it won’t be your asset ( they can remove your site whenever they want), you have limitations on linking and uploading your content like images and videos.

Besides that, the number one fall down of the free platform is you won’t have your custom URL. There will be a tail of the platform with your URL (domain). Like – www.yourdomain.blogger.com.

Platforms of blog

Create a blog/website

It is the one(paid) where you will learn the details.

This is the way of blogging and starting your blogging site to make money.

Here are no limitations. It will be your digital asset which is owned by solely you with your wish to customize, link, and promote.

To create a blog, first, you need your domain name. simply understanding domain name is your website identification like the name of the book in a library.

Second, you need hosting. Hosting is the space to store your contents like a library where books are stored.

These two your domain name and hosting you need to invest to start a blog. There are lots of companies out there where you can register your domain name as well as lots of hosting companies that provide hosting services.

In today’s time, most hosting companies provide a free domain name registration service with a hosting package to make it easy for people like you, a blogger. so there is no need to buy a domain name separately. Good news, isn’t it?

The main point you should check when buying a hosting package is the WordPress installation.

Does the Webhosting Company have a set hosted WordPress installation or not?

This is the CRM (Customer Relationship Management), you gonna use for your blogging business.

It is one of the most popular platforms among bloggers and website creators. You can create a webpage in a minute with its system and also it doesn’t need any coding skills.

# How to write a blog?

You don’t have any hard rules for writing a blog.

The success of the blog also doesn’t depend on how you write your blog. There is no such formula.

You just need to be:

  1. Love and be passionate about what you do.
  2. Persistence and consistency in your work.
  3. Ready to help your audiences always?

Find your keywords

You have got your Blog Niche.

You have now your domain name.

Your WordPress CRM is installed in your hosting company.

It’s time to start writing. You don’t want to write randomly anything on your post. do you?

It’s not a good idea. Your readers/audiences won’t value it, entertain it. You won’t get any ranking on the search engines thus you won’t get any traffic on your blogging website. If you don’t get any traffic then how will you make money from your blogging?

Hence, here comes the terms SEO (Search Engine Optimization ) and Keyword Research.

Although SEO is a big topic and you should know about it in the blogging business. But don’t worry, you will learn it from the coming blog posts. For now, You should just know that you have to write an SEO-optimized blog post to get the traffic on your site.

To write an SEO-optimized blog post, you should do Keyword Research.

Keyword research is the process of finding keywords that are searched by your audiences on the internet.

Keywords are the common way of communication between your website, the search engine, and the searcher (your organic traffic). You should find the keywords that are searched by your audiences so that they can find your blogging site easily. This also helps you rank in the search engines. This is the way you write your SEO-optimized blog post.

Write and publish your blog post

Before writing a blog post, you should take into account what topic are you going to write about. As you have got your niche and keyword search, you know what are you going to write in your blog post. You can also find bloggers’ templates on the internet somebody gave their value to you (their audiences). You are also doing the same giving value to your audiences providing as much information as possible on your topic.

Don’t think too much, about how will be your blog post and how will be your writing. You just start to write. It is an ongoing process to learn step by step. The biggest achievement of starting a blogging site is you will become the best writer at the time of your blogging business success.

You should include in your writing the keywords which you have researched. Images and if possible it is better to include video in your content. You should optimize your blog post and how much you can take into consideration headings, sub-headings, meta description, alt text, interlinking, backlinking, and many other elements when writing a blog. There are many factor and elements which affects on SEO of your blog post. You have to learn step by step those factors so that you can rank on the search engines and get more organic traffic.

Study shows, that it’s today’s trend to write a long blog post describing everything as possible as you can on the topic you are writing about. Although there is no hard rule on how long should be your blog post. detail explained and long posts rank better than the short ones. According to HubSpot, their most-ranked blog post is about 2500 words.

After writing your blog post, the next step is to click on the publish button on the WordPress where you are writing your blog. Unless and until you click on that Publish button, nobody will see your blog post except you.

When you click on that publish button, your blog post goes on the web.

Get indexed. Submit your website to search engines.

blog showing process on search engines

The next duty of the blogger after publishing the blog post is to submit the blogging site to the search engines.

Google is the most used and famous search engine in the world. It is the best way of getting organic traffic. Although there are other search engines out there like Yahoo, Bing, and more. Here you are going to learn how to submit your blogging site on Google.

To submit your website, you have to use the Google search console.

Have you heard about sitemap before?

The sitemap is an XML file that contains a list of all pages on your website.

In the Google Search Console, to submit your website, you have to submit your webpage sitemap. Here you can see my website’s sitemap as an example.

To find your website’s sitemap is very easy and it is easier to submit your sitemap. When you installed your WordPress together you should have installed the Plugin called “Yoast SEO” for search engine optimization.

Here is the process to find your sitemap in the Yoast plugin in your WordPress.

> Click on the Yoast SEO plugin and click on General.

>Click on Features.

>Scroll down to the XML sitemaps and click on the question mark icon.

>Then click to see the XML sitemap.

>Copy your sitemap URL.

If you don’t want to use the Yoast SEO plugin. Here is the website to find your sitemap. Sitemap Generator Tool.

To submit your sitemap, go to Google Search Console >Select Property >Sitemaps >Paste the sitemap URL which you copied >Hit Enter.

That’s it. If you see success on the Search Console. Your website is on Google.

Tracking Time!!

It’s time to track your website now. You have published your blog. Already informed Google too by submitting your sitemap. Google will show your blog post when someone searches your blog topic and/or the keywords that you have used in your blog post doing keyword research.

Will it be enough for you? Of course not.

You have to track your website to see how your blogging site is performing. You have to analyze what is working and what is not. how much traffic visited your website? how long have they stayed on your site? which one is your popular blog post? etc., etc.

For that, you have to go to Google Analytics.

Google Analytics allows you to access anonymous data about how your site is being used, how many visitors are coming to your site, what they are doing on it, and a lot more.

You will need to add your website by going to Google Analytics and signing up with your website.

Then you will need to copy and paste the analytics code on your blog to connect Analytics with your blog. Google Analytics provides you with the code needed at the end of the setup process. You have to copy that code and paste it into your website.

In case you didn’t copy the code, here’s how to find it…..

To find your analytics code, you click on ‘admin’ after getting your site set up…

>Then click on ‘Tracking Info’

>Then ‘Tracking Code’

>And copy the script code here

Some WordPress themes have provided the space or have put on the Menu to paste the analytics code. If you installed those themes, then it is easy to paste just going Theme.

Otherwise, you will need a plugin in your theme to paste the analytics code.

GA Google Analytics is the name of the plugin. It has a free level perfect for the job.

# How to avoid mistakes in blogging?

avoid mistake in blogging

We are all human beings and humans make mistakes.

Failure is life’s greatest teacher. Nobody is perfect.

You should master your failure, instead of being mastered by it. Failure is a stepping stone on the way to success. It is the quickest road to success by possessing an attitude toward failure of “no fear”.

You should use mistakes as lessons that point you toward the right path. You should analyze your mistakes and learn from them to succeed. Instead of dwelling on your mistakes you should learn from them and fix them to become better.

Blogging is a constant learning process and you are always improving your craft. Blogging is not just installing WordPress, writing a few blog posts, and hoping for the best.

There are so much more.

You can check all the steps from the top to now, you are learning from this blog post. You shouldn’t make the mistake in any of them for example – finding your niche, conducting your keyword research. writing properly optimized posts for SEO, submitting your website’s sitemap to Google, copying and pasting Google Analytics to your blogging site for tracking, etc.

Although nobody can write perfectly and everybody makes mistakes, you should minimize your mistakes from start to end with every step you have learned in the process of creating a successful blog post.

Bullets wise or points wise you can gather many bullets and points of mistakes that you should avoid while writing a blog post. But everything is important. This is not that you should only avoid listed points and bullets.

Each and everything you should check. Even your word grammar, spelling, sentence, and paragraph. Similarly, from writing to publishing, linking to promoting, content materials, content length, SEO, and everything you can remember and check to be number one.

Main points you should avoid while writing a blog post.

1. Not Choosing easy to remember, easy to write Domain Name.

2. Not choosing the right niche and blogging about something you are not passionate about, blogging about something you don’t have experience with, choosing a niche too few people are interested in.

3. Being inconsistency

4. Negleticting to network early

5. Getting discouraged easily and giving up early

6. Not monetizing your blog early

7. Covering too many topics

8. Not focusing on quantity instead of quality

9. Not engaging with audiences and not replying to comments on time

10. Not joining and collaborating with the blogging community and other bloggers.

You saw like this you can make and there are many points you should avoid while writing a blog post. The main point to remember is “you should not make any mistake as small as possible” to rank well in Google and to get loads of organic traffic from it.

Like a superhero, you should and can make your blog popular which is loved by everybody from child to adult to old.

You just need to take care and avoid mistakes in certain areas. You can start your blog post easily but keep it going and getting it popular will be your real challenge.

As you already know blogging is not a short-term thing, you need to be in it for the long haul if you want to build a large base of audiences. It takes time to get noticed, establish authority, and build a readership.

You should continuously publish fresh, expertly written, shareable content. With that, you can get popular eventually.

Now here comes a question. When do you say your blog post has become popular? How do you measure it?

From the beginning of this post, you will learn you should get noticed in Google and get loads of organic traffic. Your traffic and/or readers are the main metrics for the popularity of your blog post. The more you get traffic in your blog post per day/month, the more your blog becomes popular.

Google processes around 70,000 search queries per second. Nearly, 93% of all web traffic comes from search engines. Among these, Google accounts for 76% and 86% of desktop and mobile traffic respectively.

Therefore you should focus more on Google than other search engines. To get noticed and become popular in Google, many factors play a very important role. Without these factors, you will lose audiences and visibility in the search results.

Google aims to be the best search engine as it is, which means it wants to deliver the most helpful results. For that, it takes into account expertise, authority, and trust when ranking pages. Google also considers total traffic to your website, how many other websites link to your site (backlinks), and whether your site is connected to active social media profiles.

Did you get the foremost important factor for your blog post’s popularity?

It’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for a blog.

Under SEO, there are lots of things:

  1. Find the specific niche that you should focus on.
  2. Keyword Research
  3. On page SEO: Keywords in Title, Heading, URL. The meta description for the post should be added. Optimization of images you use in your post with alt Text. Interlinking in between your posts which are related to each other and many more.
  4. Off-page SEO: Backlinking, connection with active social media. Sharing your blog post on different platforms: social, same niche industry, same niche community, etc.

Only focusing on SEO is not enough. You should also take into consideration other factors to make a popular blog.

More Factors of consideration make a blog popular

1. Valuable Post: Writing a blog post is easy. What difficulty is it? when you write a blog, you should write remembering your topic, niche, your headline. you should not write nonrelated writing to make blog posts long. It is also not good to stuff your keywords a lot in your blog post. Like that blog post, your readers will not enjoy reading. It should provide some value, and enjoyment to your readers. So you have to be yourself, write conversationally, be easy to understand, and always try to write evergreen valuable blog posts.

2. Consistency: It has been mentioned already that writing a blog post is easy, but keeping it going and making it popular is a real challenge. Developing good habits of posting your blog regularly is a good sign of consistency. You should create that much content on your niche so that when your audience searches for their problems based on your niche, they find all answers in your blog i.e., lots of content. You should try to become an expert in your niche and be trustworthy.

3. Mobile friendly: This is your first step and a very necessary one. In today’s time, your audience uses mobile more than desktop. If your blogging site is not mobile-friendly and not mobile-responsive, you will lose a huge amount of traffic from search engines. Therefore your site should be mobile-responsive and/or friendly. Here is one website to check your blogging site for mobile friendliness.

Make a blog site mobile friendly

4. Engage with your audience/Have a conversation: You should take care of your audience. After all, you are writing your blog post for them. Thus when they leave comments after reading your blog post, it’s your responsibility to provide feedback and answers on time. You should encourage your readers to comment. You should write friendly with them, easy to understand, you can add a little sense of humor for entertainment while reading and many more.

5. Blog promotion: It is said that you should follow the 20/80 rule in the blogging business. That means out of 100, you should spend 20% on your writing effort and 80% on your blog post promotion. Promotion is very important because no matter how much SEO optimized you write, how many valuable posts you write. Unless and until you promote your blog into another medium. Your blog post will not become popular. Smart bloggers like you and me, just kidding, don’t rely on only one source of traffic because they know what will happen when you put all the eggs in one basket.

# How to make money from Blog?

Blog monetization process

At last, you are here now where everyone wants to be and learn to earn money. You are going to learn how to make money from your blog.

There are many ways to make money from your blog. I will provide you with a Mindmap from other sources (this is not mine). From this, you can see lots of ways to make money from your blog. It depends on you, how many you can learn and implement. But there are lots of opportunities out there as you can see on the internet, there are lots of examples of making money from blogs like 1 million in a year, 10,000k in a month, etc.

Before making money from your blog, as you can see above picture, there is a process for it. You are learning until now that this blog post is the same one. Your solid and popular blogging site should have valuable, shareable, evergreen content on it. You should have traffic on your site with lots of engagements. Then only you can go through the monetization process and make money from it.

Your services (Freelancing, consulting, coaching, etc.), your products (Ebook, Courses, podcasts, digital and physical products, etc), your Events (Workshops, Webinars, etc), Affiliate marketing, Advertising, membership programs are a few ways you can name to make money from your blog

Aren’t you get excited? There are many ways to make money from your blog.

Ways to Make money from a blog

Most bloggers, in the beginning, start to monetize their blogs from advertising. The best and most popular one is Google Adsense. Besides that, some of the bloggers provide space on their site for private advertisers though it is not good practice.

Affiliate marketing is one every blogger talks about in the beginning. It is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to make money from blogs. Every blogger applies this marketing technique in their blog to make money. You will learn separate and detailed blog posts on Affiliate marketing later. For now, just understand affiliate marketing is a way of making money by promoting third-party products and services.

You should have to learn first these two techniques Advertising and Affiliate marketing in the beginning. As you start to make money, develop experiences, and build your trust and popularity, then you can apply other ways of monetization on the way of your blogging career.

Here is a detailed mindmap on how to make money from your blog. Source

ways to make money from blog

Final Words

Who doesn’t want to be a boss of his own?

A blogging business is one where you can earn from the comfort of your home without commanding and questioning by others. But ……

…. Is blogging business for everyone?

In today’s time, it’s not.

Blogging is not rocket science.

It is never for lazy people.

It is not a short-term game.

You need lots of discipline and sacrifices. You need to be in this game for the long term with hard/smart work, consistency, and strong willpower to succeed in it. Just like every other good thing in life, you must be willing to lay down so many things before you can become a popular blogger.

You should have the right mindset. You should provide your readers with what they want, help them to solve their problems, show them some support in what they are trying to do, and mentor them. Thus, you will find blogging to be easier for you and when it is easier to write with deep detail on the topic, nobody can stop you from succeeding.

Good luck and HAPPY BLOGGING.

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