5 Simple Steps to Create a Blog that Actually Makes Money
A Simple Path to Blogging Success that Even a Newbie Can Follow
Your blog is 1 of only 2 assets that you actually own online. So, what is blogging, and how can you start? Here are 5 simple steps even absolute newbies can follow. You can make your blog a powerful, profitable asset that actually makes you money.
As a freelancer, solopreneur, coach, or consultant, your blog can be a powerful tool to:
- Establish yourself as an authority,
- Create content that generates revenue, and
- Generate leads and email subscribers.
But many freelancers and solopreneurs don’t know where to start.
So, What Is Blogging, Anyway?
When you ask, “What is blogging?” you can answer in several ways. In its simplest terms, blogging is creating valuable content. On a regular basis–usually once or twice a week–you produce and publish a blog post. Each blog post will educate, and also, where reasonable, entertain.
But most importantly, you can monetize your blog, so that it makes you money.
In the bigger picture, I mentioned earlier that your blog is one of only two assets that you own online. The other asset is your email list. (See also: Email List Building For Absolute Newbies.)
Your blog and your email list work together and support each other in helping you make money online.
Online Assets
First, let’s talk about online assets.
Kim Garst has said, “Your email list is your most valuable asset online.”
Your email list is an online asset because, once someone subscribes to your email list, you now own that subscriber as long as that person stays subscribed to your list.
Although your email list will be hosted with an autoresponder platform, at any time that you want to, you can export your email list data and import it into an entirely different autoresponder platform.
And, it’s your most valuable asset because it is the only way that you can reach out and place a message into the hands (or inbox) of thousands of people with very predictable deliverability.
On the other hand, your social media accounts, Facebook groups, and Messenger subscriber lists are NOT assets. They are services that you rent online. And, at any time, the landlord can evict you and shut down your account.
You do not own your social media followers, group members, or messenger subscribers. You cannot export them and automatically import them into another social media platform.
These services play a valuable role, but they are NOT assets that you own.
What Is Blogging ‘s Benefit As An Asset?
Your blog is an asset since, like your email list, once you create the content you own it. At any time that you want to, you can export your blog post content from your current hosting provider and move it to an altogether different hosting provider. You even own a legal copyright to it.
Your blog, however, has different characteristics than your email list.
With an email message to your list, you reach out to your subscribers and place information in their hands. But, that information is time-sensitive, and goes away when the subscriber moves it out of their inbox. So, it isn’t very durable.
Your blog posts, on the other hand, don’t come to your subscribers by themselves. Your subscribers have to go to your blog posts. But blog posts are very durable. You can create a blog post, and still have it generate profits years down the road.
This is POWERFUL leverage.
What is blogging ‘s key strategy, then?
Your social media platforms drive subscribers to your email list and viewers to your blog posts.
Your email list sometimes drives direct sales, and sometimes drives traffic to your blog posts. And, your blog posts sometimes drive subscribers to your email list, and sometimes drive direct sales.
Together, your social media accounts, your email list, and your blog form a 3-legged stool.
How To Start Blogging
So, now that you understand the pure power of blogging, what is blogging ‘s perfect pattern for getting started as a newbie?
These 5 steps will help you get started the right way.
1. Define Your Target Market
The first step is to define your target market.
This should really start from inside you. Who are you? What do you enjoy? How much can you enrich the lives of people who are just like you?
Now, you create a description that describes your perfect customer. Ideally, create a separate description for both male and female customers.
See also:
2. Set Up Your Blog
Next, you need to physically set up and configure your blog. Doing so involves several steps.
A. Select a Hosting Provider
Several options exist for selecting a hosting provider. Which one you choose depends on what you want to accomplish with your blog.
- Wix — Best for beginners building a professional blog.
- WordPress with Bluehost — Best for highly scalable and customizable blogs.
- Squarepace — Best for photographers, artists, and designers.
- LinkedIn — Best for networking with thought leaders and influencers
- Medium — Best for writing to a built-in audience.
B. Select Your Domain Name
Your domain name is critical. It’s your address on the web. And, it should be congruent with your other identities across the interwebs.
Where possible, your domain name should be similar to your handles for your various social media platforms. Should you use your own name as your domain name?
That depends… First, is your own name available as a domain? If not, then that option isn’t available, so you’ll need to think of an alternative.
One of the blogs that I follow is DishItOutSocial.com. Kyla, who owns the blog, is a social media marketing coach, so her domain name matches her services. And, her user handle on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram is @dishitoutsocial.
C. Customize Your Design
You have several steps to complete in order to customize your design. The specific steps you follow from the ones below will depend on the blogging framework you chose.
- Select a theme and design your layout.
- Choose any plugins and widgets. (More so of WordPress than others.)
- Publish your main static pages. These may include pages such as: Start Here, About Me, Disclaimers, and Work With Me.
3. What Is Blogging ‘s Perfect Monetization Strategy?
As a beginning blogger, chances are good that you don’t have your own products or services yet.
So, what is the best monetization strategy? One of the best ways to monetize your blog is to sell other people’s products, and get paid a commission for doing so. This is called affiliate marketing.
And, one of the best ways to find affiliate products to sell is to join an affiliate network. Different affiliate networks have different advantages and disadvantages.
A powerful way to recommend an affiliate product is to identify a problem that the affiliate product solves. Then write a blog post about “7 Ways to Solve XX Problem”. Provide several different approaches, and list the affiliate product as one of the approaches.
4. Write Your First Post
In order to write your blog posts, I recommend that you follow what Ray Higdon calls the Authority Formula. Here’s the Authority Formula in summary:
- Your Target Market (Readers)
- Questions/Problems
- Headlines
- Content
- CTA
- Monetize
You may wonder what is the optimal frequency for how often you should create and publish new blog posts. For most bloggers, once or twice a week is best. In some frameworks, publishing daily helps to build your following.
The important thing is to be consistent, and publish your posts on the same day each week.
And, you may also wonder how long each blog post should be. There are two patterns that you can follow.
Pattern One
The first pattern is to create your blog posts as text-only blog posts.
As of this writing, it appears that the search engines prefer longer, more in-depth and meaty blog posts. So, your posts should have a minimum of 1,500 words and a maximum of 3,000 words. This lets you really explore a topic in detail, and gives search engines what they are looking for.
Pattern Two
The second pattern is to create a video that you embed in your blog post.
In this case, you create a 10-minute (or so) video that you host on YouTube and embed on your blog post. You then write 300 or more words of text that convey a synopsis of your video, which is rich in keywords for text search engines.
The combination of video and text helps to rank higher in search engine results.
In both cases, your blog can follow a listicle pattern, which I talk about more in this post.
For ultimate cross-pollination, each blog post should link to as many other relevant posts in your blog as possible. This gives search engines a big step up in indexing your blog. It also helps keep people on your blog longer.
5. Get Massive Traffic To Your Blog Post
Now, what is blogging ‘s key step that many people forget? Well, once your blog post is all written, proofread, monetized, and published, you still have one key thing to do.
You need to drive traffic to your blog post. Here are several key ways that you can drive this traffic.
Your Email List
Your email list is one of the first traffic sources that you should leverage. You see, your email list is your one audience that will be most likely to pay attention to your message. And, if you’ve nurtured your email list the right way, your subscribers will know you, like you, and trust you, and want to read EVERY blog post you publish.
Your Social Media Accounts
Your social media accounts are the second traffic source to leverage. Using the social sharing buttons on your published blog post, share your blog to Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook (your personal page, your fan page, and your groups), and other platforms, like Reddit and Flipboard.
You use your blog post’s own sharing buttons in order to start the share counters counting. Once a blog post has been shared at least once, other visitors are much more likely to share your blog post themselves.
In addition, if you have an Instagram business profile with more than 10,000 followers, you can post an Instagram story with a URL link to your blog post. You create and share this story manually.
Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups managed by other people can be another place to drive traffic.
In Facebook, search for groups that align well with your subject matter and target audience. Check to see if these groups allow you to post notices of your own blog posts. If so, request to join each group.
You should be able to identify 10 to 20 Facebook groups that are friendly to you posting your blog updates. Every time that you publish a blog post, post a notice in each of these Facebook groups.
An important key here is to make sure that your description text for the Facebook group post is different for each Facebook group. This helps you stay in Facebook’s good graces, and not get flagged as spam.
What Is Blogging ‘s Ultimate Payoff?
In the end, creating 1 to 2 blog posts every week has a powerful, cumulative effect. Every blog post is a discrete asset. And, every blog post helps promote every other post in your blog that it links to.
To be fair, your first blog post probably won’t bring you much in the way of results. Your second, or fifth, or tenth may not, either.
But somewhere along the line, maybe at 30 posts, or 50 posts, or 90 posts, you will suddenly hit a critical mass. And, your blog will start to become self-sustaining and incredibly profitable.
When that happens, you’ll find that all the work that you did in the beginning quickly starts to pay off. And, the more blog posts that you create, the more leverage you’ll have in making your blog meet your goals.
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