Starting a blog has become one of the most trusted and reliable ways to make a passive reliable income in the recent past. People from all walks of life including people with 9-5 jobs, stay-at-home moms, and even college students just to mention but a few are turning to blogging as a means to make a passive reliable income. Many have even taken to making blogging their full-time job or rather, their part-time job that provides a full-time income stream.
WHY SHOULD YOU START A BLOG?
The beauty in blogging is that for one, it is very cheap to start compared to other business models.
2. many people who start blogs enjoy writing and hence it is a means of earning from their hobbies.
3. Even if writing is not your first choice hobby you can still enjoy blogging since you can choose a topic that you are passionate about and writing about it will merely be a form of self-expression.
4. It is quite flexible. Blogging has seen many people who crave freedom in their lives quit their 9-5 jobs and fully dedicate themselves to their blog and their families. Or just actually get a life.
5. Also, starting a blog is very easy and fast compared to starting a physical business.
6. You really only require your laptop, an internet connection, and a little bit of time to get your blog running.
Also, it is so convenient in that as you grow your blog you can actually automate most of the tasks and let softwares do the work for you as you focus on more important tasks.
The point is that blogging is not monotonous and you can perish the thought that you will ever get bored of blogging.
7. Blogging is not limited to specific topics. You can blog about absolutely anything and be sure that you will get a reading. The niches to explore are endless!
8. You don't require technical expertise in website building. Anyone can start, you just have to be willing of course to learn new things along the way. Which is one of the things that make blogging a thrilling experience.
9. Most of the time even when writing your own blogs you come across new things almost every day and passing on this information and getting people to actually read your work is the best part about blogging.
10. blogging is also a way of bringing positive change to the community
HOW TO START A BLOG IN 2021 PART 1: GETTING SET UP.
Before you can start blogging, there are a few things you're going to want to take into consideration, including which platform to use. Once you have a platform, you should spend a bit of time thinking about design and adding a few key pages to your site before moving on to the fun stuff.
Creating a blog has become extremely easy thanks to a variety of services that will host it and help you set it up. You don't need to be a coder to create a fine blog.
Trust me, if you can send an email, you can start a blog, it's as easy as that.
Getting started. Start with one of the many available services that make building your blog kind of like a paint by numbers exercise.
Some free blogging sites
Blogger
WordPress
Wix
Traffic to your website is especially important if you are promoting something that can earn you revenue, whether you are selling subscriptions, or tangible goods (running an online store), dropshipping, selling virtual goods, or even promoting affiliate links, it all comes down to traffic that gets sent to your website by search engines which use SEO as a way to determine how this traffic will be distributed, hence making SEO a priority that cannot be overlooked.
Well, of course, you should also have considered earlier issues like web hosting and the likes because we need a working site first before we can start driving any traffic to it.
So, What is web hosting?
Web hosts, simply put, are companies that rent out their services and technologies to host websites on the internet. ( this is the house where your website lives on the internet )
Once the hosting company hosts your website, users can access it by typing in your web address (domain name) in their browser. When they do this, their computer connects to the server your website is hosted on (well, what do you know, Morty was actually right, they do have something to do with servers!)
So, in short, without web hosting your site cannot exist.
Luckily, there are a ton of web hosting companies out there, that you could choose from to host your website.
While this is a topic on its own that I could write a whole blog about ( comparing web hosting companies ) I will leave you with a few takeaways today and you can find more here.
For the sake of staying on course, I will give you a few quick ones.
And of course, my list will start with Bluehost "the best web hosting in 2021" according to their own words,(someone thinks highly of themselves)
But you know who else thinks highly of them, WordPress. Yes, WordPress themselves recommend them and what's more, Bluehost has been in the industry since 1995, making them older than Google. Talk about experience.
Bluehost sells its services at 3.59USD/mo. for their lowest tier.
12.59USD/mo. for their middle tier.
And their highest tier goes for 14.59USD/mo.
(I'm not sure what their deal is with the 59 cents but that's their deal.)
*What's more is that, when you subscribe to their web hosting service, they provide you with a free domain name, which you would have otherwise bought for a significant amount ( bear in mind that it is paid yearly ).
If support is what you're looking for however, I'd say you go with ITNut hosting.
ITNut hosting is very recommendable to beginners because they offer very high-quality support and they are accessible 24hours a day, 365 days a year.
They are very good at listening and offering help at whichever time you contact them and you wouldn't have any problem working with them even if you're just starting. This is the one that I would REALLY RECCOMMEND for a startup blogger, their stats even compared with the more popular Bluehost I would say, are staggering! Here is why I think they are the best for a new blogger.
Another friendly and recommendable web hosting company is Hostwinds, they only have one package (a one size fits all) offering at 5.24USD/mo.
The last one for today is WPX hosting which is the most expensive of the three with their lowest tier starting at 20.83USD/mo. and their highest offering at 83.25USD/mo.
I was a bit critical of their pricing at first when I was comparing, but when I checked them out I found their pricing to be worth it because if there's one thing these guys know how to do is to deliver. They are eally worth every cent!
Most of these web hosting companies also sell domain names, which I have mentioned earlier, a domain name is actually the name of your website, the one ending with .com, .net, the lot.
If you are struggling to find a domain name, this tool, called Bust a name can help you speed things up.
Now, on to the big prize, SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A process of optimizing your website to get organic/unpaid traffic from a search engine result page.
And, in case you're wondering, yes, there are ways to get paid traffic to your site, a good example being simpletraffic.co which drives real human traffic to your site with a paid subscription after a 5 days free trial.
The other ones I know of use bot traffic, which is not real human traffic, and therefore, they can't really help you if you are looking to get real human traffic to your site.
Although they can be helpful if you are running ads on your site since google pays you according to the number of clicks on the ads that they place on your website and so you can automate these bots to click on those ads as many times as possible so as to generate revenue.
You can run ads on your website using Google AdSense.
The difference between Google Ads and Google AdSense is that Google Ads is used by advertisers and AdSense is used by publishers.
Advertisers pay Google a certain amount per ad click while AdSense lets publishers monetize their websites or blogs by earning money from relevant Google Ads ads displayed next to their content.
Publishers get 68% of the click amount (or 51% when it comes to AdSense for search). The commission you get depends heavily on the competition and CPC in the niche. In practice, the commission per click can range from $0.20 to $15.
In case you're asking yourself where you can get these bot traffic softwares, here are 11 of the best according to ezee traffic. The first 4 in this list are free.
That only is enough to make you earn a substantial passive income from your blog.
So 3 powerful SEO tips to rank in google?
1. Focus on Content (be super thorough)- Narrow down on a niche and give high-quality, off-the-charts content, I'm talking about overdelivering!! The reason why your content should be narrowed down to a specific niche is because Google has this update called hummingbird which works in such a way that websites that have content on everything don't do as well as websites that focus on one single niche and are super thorough.
2. Optimize your title tag and your meta description - When you do a google search, a title tag is that link (the one that you click on) that appears on top of a short description sentence, and the meta description is the description sentence under that link. The goal is to include your keyword(s) in your title and your description and to do it in a way that is appealing to make sure people will want to click on it when they read it. Remember you have just split seconds to make an impression here.
3. Google search console - This is a free tool from Google that teaches you how to rank on google.
With this tool which can help you see how many impressions and CTR (click-through rate) you get per keyword, you can use the first tip together with tip number three to get an even stronger SEO strategy.
Because you already know which keywords deliver, you'll want to take them and make them flow into one another, don't just scatter keywords everywhere, your blog will be unappealing and people (traffic) will bounce off it.
Be smart with how you do it.
Now, you have your website, you have hosting, but what to write...
You are not sure where to start. You're not sure what topic to write about. Well, that's exactly where we'll start!
1. Picking a topic.
With a plethora of topics to choose from, selecting one to start with basically comes down to these 2 pretty logical factors:
1. Pick a topic that you are passionate about.
Finding a topic that you are passionate about can really bring out the writer in you, as they say, "genius happens in the moment".
Also, it is true that whichever topic you are most passionate about is the one that you are most likely to deliver better content on.
That brings us to;
2. Pick a topic that people are looking to read on.
You can know whether a topic is popular by its search volume. You should ask yourself if that topic has any other popular blogs, is it a frequently asked question on Quora, are there books on the topic?
Another way is to use Google Trends to check the overall trend of your topic.
Pick a snatching topic*
Make sure you pick a topic that will get you readers, that's the whole point of it.
It should be something people want to hear! Give them what they want. They are asking for it. You can also use the following free headline analyzer tools to help create better headlines:
*the trick here is to tease, not to satisfy.
*and remember to keep the niche narrow in order to explore it thoroughly.
2. The Body ( Indulge your audience )
Now that you have a topic, it's time to deliver on those promises. You have the audience hungry for information. Information that is already at your fingertips. Now it's time to let them have it.
They may already know about the topic (or have an idea) but then this is your blog. Give your side of the story, make it original, make it authentic!
*make it your blog.
Give them a taste that will make them want to come back for more. Make your audience identify with you.
3.Conclude
Now that your work is done (the hard part is over), you wouldn't want to leave your readers wondering, what next?
Just as you got them to buy whatever idea or information you were selling them, now let them go home with it.
Packaging matters, pack your ideas orderly in your conclusion, and let them have it to go.
So, having given you this comprehensive blogging guide of 2021 (For Beginners) it is now your chance to take up these points and work on them.
I'll make sure to leave clickable links on the important sites that I have mentioned (where I have mentioned them) so that this blog can be as comprehensive as possible.
I want to build a community of like-minded people and I would like to start with you, if this blog has given you insight, implement my ideas and if they work for you don't be shy to come and leave a comment on this post.
And if you liked this content, subscribe to my free newsletters and I'll inform you when next I post some useful content.
(Remember I said SEO is not an overnight thing and it could take years but also it isn't impossible, and with this guide, you'll surely make it in a lot less)
But, alternatively, if you don't have the stomach for the painstaking process of mastering SEO, you can opt to hire a professional, to do it for you starting from 5 USD.