Many people when they ask how to start a profitable blog, they usually want to learn about the technical parts of a blog. But if you want to earn money by blogging, first you need to figure out how this business model works. While it is not the only way to make money online, it is a great business opportunity.
Profitable Niches
Before starting a blog, you need to decide the niche of your blog. There are thousands of niches and sub-niches on the internet and many of them are profitable.
A niche is usually worth your time when you can find relevant products that make many sales. You can take a look at Amazon bestsellers, the high gravity products of Clickbank, and any other online marketplace.
When you are ready to decide your niche, make sure that you like the chosen topic because you will write many relevant blog posts in the future.
The Business of Blogging
Most online businesses and expert marketers in every niche blog regularly. However, blogging is not the same for someone who is just getting started. Experts have already a following, an authority website and they can afford to outsource some tasks of their business.
It is great to set big long term goals if your goal is to be like those guys but at the beginning, you need a different approach. First of all, take a look at your finances and decide your starting budget. You can start for free if you cannot afford to spend any money but it will take longer to see results.
If you can spend some money, below you can see some ways to invest them:
- Domain name $10
- Web hosting $10-$50/months
- Training 0-$50/month
- Keyword Tool 0-$100/month
- Autoresponder 0-$20/month
Now you need to make some decisions. Take a moment and answer this question. What is the best investment for you?
If you know what to do and how to get traffic later, buy a domain name and pay for a hosting provider. For complete beginners, training is the best option to invest your money because you need to learn how exactly you will get traffic.
It is important to have a budget only for your new blogging business. Spending on every available resource you find on the internet will not work. Set a specific budget, decide how you will invest it, and stick to it.
Your next goal as a new blogger should be to stop losing money on the necessary resources. It will take a few months to break even but before earning money, you need traffic.
How To Get Traffic
While there are many ways to get traffic online, most bloggers focus on SEO. I agree with them, most people look for information on the search engines and this is the best way to get visitors that are interested in your articles.
Many people have too many different ideas about SEO. But what works best for a new blog? In my opinion, you need to follow the two steps below and do not let anything else distract you in the beginning.
1. Write Articles: Your business is blogging, so start writing posts. The most content you have, the more visitors you will get from search engines. Everyone agrees that unique and informative content is the most important SEO factor.
Take a look at the best bloggers of your niche, they usually have hundreds of blog posts. It makes sense that if you want to become a successful blogger, you must focus on blogging.
2. Target Low Competition Keywords: You will not get ranked for keywords that you do not include in your posts. So, you need to find relevant keywords to your niche and create articles to target them.
For this reason, it is important a good keyword tool if you want to get organic traffic.
You may say here, “What?? That’s all?”
Well, they are not the only important factors but it is the best you can do at the beginning. If you use low competition keywords properly, you will get ranked on many of them after 3-4 months without any off-page SEO strategy.
Also, you have not many chances to outrank authority websites on high-volume keywords in the first year even if you follow a great off-page SEO strategy.
For this reason, creating quality content is the best way to start with blogging.
Monetize your Blog
If you create quality content and target low competition keywords, you will able to get traffic soon. How much traffic and how soon depends on the keywords and your content. But when you have traffic, you can make money. There are many ways to monetize a website.
Two common ideas that many online marketers use are Google Adsense and affiliate marketing. Both of them are really simple to get started.
For Google Adsense, you just need a Google account. There is an approval process but it takes only a few days to get approved. You just add the ads on your blog and you make money when someone clicks on them.
Affiliate marketing is for people who feel that their visitors will buy a relevant product. Here is the process:
- Join a relevant affiliate program
- Get your affiliate links
- Add the links on your blog
- When a visitor buys a product through your affiliate links, you earn a commission
These ways are so popular because you just add your links or ads to get started. There is no more effort from you which is great because you can focus on creating content for your blog. But below you can read more ideas to monetize your blog:
- Build an email list
- Create and sell your own product
- Give extra content for money
- Sponsored posts
- Donations
You can be creative when you want to monetize your traffic but respect your visitors. If you sell and promote worthless products, they will not trust you anymore and they will not come back. Your blog is your business and your reputation is important as offline business.
The Next Steps
When you have traffic and a monetization method, you are not a beginner anymore. Now, you need to manage your blogging business. There are three possible scenarios when you have traffic:
- You still lose money
- You are break-even
- Or you finally have some profit
If you are in scenario 1, keep working. You are really close to your first goal. You just need to get ranked on more keywords. Do not give up!
In scenario 2, even if you do not make money yet, you do not lose anymore. You have achieved an important goal. Now, there is no reason to give up anymore and you are a step away from the first profitable month. When you have a profit, celebrate it and set your next goal. Now you know that you can earn money, there are no excuses to avoid the hard work.
Create more articles, target new keywords, expand your audience to social media, etc. Manage your business properly is a great skill that you will develop over time.
The last advice, reinvest your profit again and again (if you can afford it) until reaching your goals. You may give some money for an autoresponder, a better keyword tool, you can outsource some tasks for better productivity, you can buy a tool for social media, and much more.
Keep in mind that blogging has huge potential. Many people earn a full-time income even from one blog but it takes some time. You can set high goals but you need to be patient and take one step at a time.
How To Get Started
The beginning is the most difficult part of any online business. More people who get into online marketing give up after a while. The most commons reasons are the lack of patient and commitment. To avoid the lack of those two things you need support and encouragement when you lose your patient and great training to learn how to work and what you can expect.
You can find many nice articles on the internet from experts and “gurus” but they usually give you general information that cannot apply for everyone. Also, they will not be there to help you when you will need it.
So, I recommend to any new blogger to join an active community of online marketers and bloggers It has a great training program, access to a keyword tool, and a web hosting service. This community will teach you how to build a profitable blog or website and monetize it with affiliate marketing. You can start for free!