Since the dawn of the blogosphere, businesses have been harnessing the power of blogging to build audiences for their products and services. But did you know that, today, the reverse is true? That’s right: tons of bloggers are now turning their blogs into bona fide businesses themselves. In this article, we’re teaching you how to start a blog that will garner you traffic and earn you an income.
We’re also providing you with a handy Blogger Templates Bundle. It has everything you need to build your blog and streamline your blogging efforts, from brainstorming content ideas to honing your SEO strategy. Each template includes step-by-step instructions, helpful writing prompts, and fillable tables that make the process quick and easy, so you can start earning money from your blog sooner. Get it for free!
How to start a blog
Want to learn how to start a blog? Read on as we walk you through the process of launching your own blog in seven easy steps:
- Choose your blogging niche
- Choose your blog’s name
- Choose your blogging platform
- Develop your monetization strategy
- Plan your content strategy
- Write your first blog post
- Optimize your blog for search engines
Step 1: Choose your blogging niche
The first step to starting a blog is choosing your content niche. Why is this step numero uno? Well, because blogging niche is the content category you’ll focus on with your blog. In other words, your niche of choice will determine every step of the blog creation process (and beyond), from your blog’s name to the type of content you’ll create.
Identify your interests and expertise
From family planning to personal finance, there’s a seemingly infinite number of blogging niches out there to tap into. And for that reason, it can be a little overwhelming to narrow down the choices to just one. So, how does an aspiring blogger niche down?
Ultimately, the blogging niche you choose will depend on your interests and area of expertise (as well as the demands of the blogging market — but we’ll get to that in a minute). When brainstorming potential niches, think about the topics you’re passionate and knowledgeable about.
Do you save most of your money (and all of your vacation days) to spend traveling the world? That’s a prospective blogging niche. Are you your friend group’s unofficial personal finance planner? There’s another one!
Conduct keyword research
Identifying your passion and expertise is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to choosing your blogging niche. Once you’ve figured those out and compiled a list of prospective niches, you’ll need to do some market research. This step is crucial to figuring out which of those potential niches are the most profitable (because you want your blog to earn an income, right?).
For this step, you’ll be conducting keyword research to figure out how large and how competitive your potential niches’ markets are. Using tools like Google Keyword Planner, you’ll be looking into your potential niche’s search volume (i.e. how many people are searching for your niche) and its search results (i.e. how many results come up when searching for your niche).
Following the basic principles of economics (and a little common sense), a profitable niche will be one with high search volumes (i.e. high demand) and low search results (i.e. low competitiveness). This indicates that there are lots of people out there hungry for information pertaining to your niche, but few sources providing them with the knowledge they’re looking for. In other words, it indicates a gap in the market that’s ready to be filled by fresh blogging content.
Step 2: Choose your blog’s name
Now that you know your niche, it’s time to choose your blog’s name.
Your blog’s name appears in your blog’s title and domain name. It’s the first thing readers see when they land on your homepage or find your blog on Google, so it’s crucial that your blog name accurately represents your blog and its content.
There are a number of ways to go about naming your blog — some much simpler and more straight-forward than others. Your blog’s name could be your own name, your business’s name, a clever combination of words, or otherwise. Each of these naming methods has its own unique benefits.
For example, using your own name, like business maven Melyssa Griffin, is a great way to garner name recognition and position yourself as an expert within your niche. On the other hand, a unique combination of words, like fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni’s “The Blonde Salad”, makes a memorable impression on readers, which can help you stand out within your niche. Finally, using a combination of the two, like travel blogger Nomadic Matt, allows you to disclose your blog’s content topic, while differentiating you from the competition.
No matter which naming technique you go with, it’s important that your blog’s name is representative of who you are or what you’re blogging about (or a combination of the two). On top of that, you’ll also want to ensure that your blog and domain name are:
- Unique
- Memorable
- Easy to spell
Naming your blog can be a long and arduous process. However, don’t try to rush it or settle on a name you’re so-so about. In the long run, choosing a great blog title helps strengthen your personal brand and allows readers to know what to expect from your blogging business.
Step 3: Choose your blogging platform
Before you can start writing your first blog post, you’ll need to set up your blog hosting and content management system. In other words, you’ll need to choose your blogging platform. Because there are so many platforms out there, this step is where many aspiring bloggers get bogged down in research and stuck if they’re unsure of which platform to go with.
Ultimately, this decision boils down to two options: self-hosted and hosted blogging platforms.
Self-hosted blogging platforms
If you go the self-hosted route, you’ll need to host your blog’s website yourself by paying a hosting company a monthly fee for a private web server. On top of the cost, a web hosting plan requires some initial setup, which takes more time and effort.
The tradeoff, however, is that self-hosted platforms provide you with ownership over your blog and your content, and offer you more customization options than hosted blogging platforms.
If you’re interested in going the self-hosted route, you’ll want to check out popular platforms like WordPress and Bluehost.
Hosted blogging platforms
Choosing a hosted website allows you to set up your blog faster. The tradeoff here, however, is that hosted sites give you less ownership over your blog. In other words, when you start a free blog on a platform like Blogger or Wix, you’re essentially “renting” your blog space, which means you’re beholden to services outside of your control.
On top of that, free blogging platforms typically offer you fewer customization options than self-hosted platforms. To get the most out of a hosted blogging platform, look for one that:
- Is easy-to-use
- Doesn’t require coding skills
- Can grow with you
As your business grows, there will come a time when you might want to change the look or functionality of your blog to accommodate increased traffic and blog posts. So, you’ll want to ensure that your free blogging platform offers you a breadth of plug-ins and apps that can help you streamline your workflow, optimize your site’s performance, and promote your blog.
Step 4: Develop your monetization strategy
- Selling subscriptions
- Selling digital products
- Writing a book (or an ebook!)
- Offering coaching services
If you want to make money blogging, you’ll want to develop your blog’s monetization strategy before you start thinking about the kind of content you want to create. This might sound counterintuitive, but hold up and let us finish! A solid monetization strategy comes first because it will determine the type of content you’ll publish on your blog.
Depending on your blogging niche, there are tons of different ways to earn an income as a blogger. While many people still think that ad revenue sharing (i.e. Google AdSense) is the only way to earn money from your blog, the truth is that this monetization method requires massive amounts of traffic before they become financially viable. Luckily, there are lots of other ways to monetize your blog quickly, without a large audience.
Selling subscriptions
Creating subscribers-only content is bloggers’ bread and butter when it comes to earning an income.
A blog subscription works just like any other subscription service (take Netflix or Amazon Prime, for example). How it works is that your subscribers pay a monthly fee for access to exclusive, paywalled blog content and additional perks.
There are actually quite a few approaches you can take to your blog subscription strategy. One of the most popular strategies is placing entire blog posts behind a paywall. This tactic typically entails offering select blog posts for free, while offering the rest only to paid subscribers. This strategy is effective because it provides potential subscribers with a taste of your blog’s value, which gives them incentive to subscribe (i.e. pay up) to gain access to more.
Additional subscription strategies might include placing the second half of each blog post (i.e. the juiciest or most informative part) behind a paywall or providing subscribers with early access to your blogging content.
Selling digital products
Selling digital products is one of the most lucrative and low-effort ways to earn money as a blogger. As a would-be blogger, you already have knowledge and expertise to share — all you need to do is transform it into a product, like a mini-course, tutorial, or guide, to start earning an income.
The best part is that digital products are an excellent source of passive income. This is because you only need to create and produce a digital product once. Once you’ve put it up for sale, copies of it can be purchased and downloaded endlessly, which means you can literally sit back as your cash piles up. Or you can allocate all that free time towards other, more enjoyable endeavors, like writing blog posts.
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Powered by AI, The Leap helps you create profitable digital products in just minutes, while its link-in-bio storefront tool lets you sell them without ever leaving the platform. Once you’ve put your digital product up for sale, simply promote it on your blog to boost sales and max out your earnings.
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Writing a book (or an ebook!)
As an aspiring blogger, you’ve already got the knowledge and writing chops, so why not flex them to their fullest extent and write a book (or an ebook)?
A great example of this is food blogger Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen. Back in 2012, Deb leveraged her recipe blog to publish her cookbook, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, which became a New York Times bestseller and made her blog economically viable. The cookbook remains an Amazon bestseller to this day, which means it’s still earning Deb an income a decade later!
The best thing is that this monetization method suits virtually any niche. From cooking to career planning to social media marketing, you can write an book on just about any topic imaginable.
Want to skip the traditional publishing route? Ebooks are popular among creators (and especially creator educators) of all niches because they allow you to monetize your expertise on your own terms. Selling an ebook allows you to share your knowledge (and earn an income) without having to invest much money or go through third parties like literary agents and publishers.
Offering coaching services
If you’re an aspirational blogger, then it’s more than likely that you’re an expert in some area and want to share your knowledge with others. So, why not leverage that expertise into a coaching business?
To earn money as a blogger-turned-coach, you’ll need to create an offering of coaching programs and set up an online practice, so you can start hopping on video calls with clients.
Need help creating your coaching programs? Our Life Coaching Templates Bundle helps you create a variety of different coaching programs quickly, so you can start earning money coaching sooner.
Step 5: Plan your content strategy
- Brainstorm content ideas
- Develop your content pillars
- Types of blog posts to create
- Set a publishing schedule
Now, it’s time to dig into the fun stuff. That means planning out your blog’s content!
All bloggers need to keep a store of content ideas. Creating a content calendar helps you strategically plan your content so that you’re posting consistently — and so that you never run out of ideas. A solid content calendar also helps you keep track of your content ideas and manage your creation process. How’s that for an all-in-one solution?
A blogging content calendar should always include:
- What content you’re creating
- Which audience you’re targeting
- When you’re publishing your content
- Which distribution channel you’re using
You can create your own content calendar using a spreadsheet tool like Google Sheets or Excel. You can also download and use a pre-made content calendar template, like the one included in our Blogger Templates Bundle.
Brainstorm content ideas
In order to start writing your blog content, you’ll need to brainstorm some content ideas. During the ideation process, you’ll want to consult your blogging niche and your target audience. Ask yourself: what topics are popular within your niche? What topics are your competitors writing about?
Reflect on your audience’s needs, pain points, and preferences. What topics do they find entertaining, interesting or educational? What problems do they need solving? These questions will all lead to content ideas that bring value to your audience.
Develop your content pillars
Want to set a strong foundation for your content strategy? Then you’ll need to create a set of solid content pillars.
Content pillars are the main themes that your blog will focus on. To keep your blogging content diverse and engaging, you’ll want to create a number of different pillars in your content strategy.
Planning out your pillars helps you get a sense of the scope of your blog. Your pillars can also help you organize your content ideas and can be used as “tags” within your blog. On top of all that, a set of well-defined content pillars helps you build a strong and recognizable personal brand, as they’re the topics you’ll become best known for within the blogosphere.
To create your blog’s pillars, revisit the content topics from your brainstorm. Note any similarities between them and then group them into broader content categories (i.e. your pillars).
Types of blog posts to create
There are a number of different types of content that you can create as a blogger. Here are some types of blog posts to include in your content strategy:
Evergreen content
As its name suggests, evergreen remains relevant to your niche and audience over time. Typically, these blog posts take the shape of educational articles about niche-relevant topics not tied to trends or the news cycle.
These articles are the cornerstone and bring you consistent traffic across time, so it’s important to create quite a few of them and keep them well-maintained.
Topical content
Topical content is timely, relevant, and posted regularly. This kind of content leverages current trending topics and news items. Because they capitalize on public interest topics, these posts can gain you tons of new traffic and followers, and are more likely to go viral.
While topical content stands to bring your blog lots of attention, your content strategy shouldn’t lean on it too heavily, as these articles can become outdated quite quickly.
Interviews
Interviews (also known as feature stories) tell the story of exceptional people by giving readers a glance into their lives and minds. People love “people stories.” And because of this, interviews can be a great way to create engaging content for your blog.
Creating feature stories about noteworthy experts within your niche can be a great way to build authority because it gives you some credibility by association.
Set a publishing schedule
Next, you’ll need to determine how frequently you’ll publish new posts to your blog.
Consistency is key when it comes to publishing content on your blog. A consistent posting schedule helps keep your content strategy on track and your audience engaged. Moreover, posting consistently gives readers an idea of how often to expect blog posts, which helps generate excitement for new content.
This means that you’ll want to set a posting cadence that you can reasonably and reliably stick to. We suggest planning out your blog posts a month in advance. From there, you can tweak your content calendar in order to prioritize publishing topical content or feature stories as they come up.
Step 6: Write your first blog post
Now that you’ve done all that strategizing, it’s finally time to put that proverbial pen to paper and write your very first blog post.
Need some pointers? Here are our tips and tricks to writing a must-read blog post:
Create an outline
Before writing your first blog post, we suggest creating an outline. Some bloggers might consider skipping this step, however, writing an outline allows you to organize and hit all of your article’s main talking points.
Identify your keywords
Before writing, you’ll also want to identify your blog post’s main keywords. Keep a list of them in front of you while you’re writing so you ensure you’re hitting all the right notes — err, keywords.
Edit your blog post
Before clicking the “Publish” button, you’ll want to double check your work. We suggest stepping away from your blog post once you’ve finished writing it and returning to edit it with fresh eyes.
In addition to fixing spelling, grammar, and syntax errors, you’ll want to ensure your blog post is structurally sound. That’s to say that it’s easy to follow and tells a cohesive story, from start to finish.
Add headings (and subheadings)
Subheadings do so much more than just organize your post. They also make your content more scannable for readers, and are essential to boosting a post’s SEO (search engine optimization) rating.
Step 7: Optimize your blog for search engines
Finally, it’s time for some good old SEO (that’s “search engine optimization”). A solid SEO strategy will drive relevant traffic to your blog from search engines like Google, making it a powerful audience-building (and money-making) tool to harness.
Conduct keyword research
The first step in creating your SEO strategy is figuring out which keywords to target. Brainstorm keywords relevant to your blogging niche and use a tool like Google Keyword Planner to determine which have the highest search volume. These are the keywords that will drive the most readers to your site. Thus, they’re the ones you’ll want to target on your homepage and throughout your blog.
It’s also important to conduct keyword research for each new blog post you write. No two blog posts are the same, right? So, you’ll want to ensure that you’re targeting keywords that are relevant to each post’s unique content topic.
Optimize your blog posts
After you’ve identified your primary keywords, you’ll need to optimize your blog post with descriptive titles and informative descriptions containing your target keywords. And that’s just the beginning!
Want to create a traffic-boosting SEO strategy for your blog? Our Blogger Templates Bundle helps you create, manage, and implement a comprehensive blogging SEO strategy. Helpful writing prompts walk you through each step of the SEO process, while a fillable template helps you organize your keyword research.
Why should I start a blog?
A blog is a regularly updated website, typically run by an individual content creator (also known as a blogger), made up of text posts written in an informal or conversational style. Bloggers and businesses start blogging for a number of reasons. These include:
- Sharing their knowledge, expertise, and passions
- Developing their personal brand as an expert
- Building an email list
- Improving their website’s SEO
- Making money
For all of these reasons, starting a blog can be incredibly beneficial to an existing business — and also incredibly profitable as its own source of income. That being said, running a successful blog requires creating high-quality, long-form content consistently? In other words, a blog is a commitment, but it’s one that can earn you lots of money if you’re willing to put in the time and effort.
Tips to earn the most from your blog
So, you’ve finally started your blog. Congratulations! You’re well on your way to earning a great income from your blogging business.
Want to know how to max out your blog earnings? Then you’ll want to start promoting your blog online. Here are our tips and tricks to marketing your blog so you can earn the most you can from your blogging business.
Create a social media marketing strategy
If you’re a content creator (and, yes, being a blogger totally counts), then the easiest and most intuitive way to market your blog is with, well, content. If you want to go this route, you’ll need to develop a stellar social media marketing strategy.
Already have a following on social media? That’s great because that means you already have a built-in audience to drive to your blog and to market your digital products to. Don’t have a following just yet? Then you’ll want to choose a social media platform (or two!) so you can start growing one.
Choose your platform
Choosing a social media platform depends entirely on your target audience’s preferences and digital habits. In other words, you’ll want to choose the platform(s) where they hang out and consume content.
The best social media strategies typically involve a combination of social platforms, which allows you to reach a larger audience and engage them through different types of content.
Create authentic marketing content
When creating promotional content for your blog (or products), keep in mind that authenticity is key. Your audience follows you for, well, you! And that includes all the expertise, opinions, and quirks that make up your unique value. Online audiences are also quick to sniff out inauthenticity — and when they do, it can be hard to win back their trust. All this is to say that it’s crucial that your promotional content doesn’t feel like an advertisement and, instead, feels as compelling and educational as the rest of your content.
So, how do you create authentic-feeling marketing content? We suggest creating content that’s thematically similar to the blog post (or digital product) you’re trying to promote. From there, you can easily insert a subtle CTA telling your audience that they can access more of your expertise on the topic by subscribing to your blog (or purchasing your new digital product). This method is effective because it gives prospective subscribers and customers a taste of your expertise, which provides them with more incentive to smash that “Subscribe” (or “Buy Now”) button.
Build an email list
While social media marketing is totally effective, did you know that the humble e-newsletter remains one of the most lucrative digital marketing strategies out there? That’s right: on average, email marketing generates a ROI of $36 for every dollar spent. That’s a lot of cash!
Email marketing is a powerful way to convert your blog’s audience into paying subscribers and customers. Additionally, email marketing gives you more control over your blogging business. While your social media following is held at the mercy of third-party platforms’ fickle algorithms and terms of service, your email list is an audience that you own — and that no one can take away from you.
Before you can start writing and deploying email blasts, you’ll need to build your email list. This is the list of subscribers who will receive your marketing emails.
To grow your email list, you’ll need to find a way to capture your followers’ email addresses. That might seem like a tall order, but luckily, there are tons of tools that bloggers can use to do this. These include opt-in forms, which can be added to your blog’s homepage or link-in-bio landing page, and lead magnets, which you can give away in exchange for your followers’ contact info.
Want to create your own lead magnet today? You can with The Leap.
The Leap is an all-in-one creator store with features like an AI-powered digital product builder, link-in-bio storefront, and email marketing suite. In addition to helping you run your email marketing strategy, The Leap empowers you to transform your digital products into lead magnets, easily, so you can start growing your email list today. Try The Leap for free now.
Click here to start building your email list with The Leap today, for free.Try paid advertising
If you’re down to invest a bit of money into your blogging business, then you might want to try paid advertising to promote your blog. As a blogger, there are a couple of different ways to approach paid advertising.
Advertise on social media
From Instagram to YouTube, almost every social media platform allows you to purchase sponsored ads to market your blog or your products. And a single sponsored post can go a long way in terms of ROI.
We suggest taking an experimental approach to sponsored ads. Begin with a small budget, commission only one or two ads, and see where they take you.
Try Google Ads
Google Ads get displayed on Google search results pages, on websites and blogs, and in a ton of other places around the web. This means that a Google Ads campaign has the potential to give your blog (and your products) a ton of visibility.
Google also has some of the best targeted advertising and pixel tracking tech on the market, which means your ads have a better chance of reaching potential subscribers and customers.
Start your blog today
And that’s it: now you know how to start a blog in 2024 and have a handy template bundle to help you launch it, like, right now.
Now, it’s up to you to put this guide (and those templates) to good use so you can start earning money as a blogger ASAP.
FAQ
Can I make money blogging?
Yes, you can absolutely make money blogging. If you put in the work, blogging can be a lucrative side hustle and a source of part-time or even full-time income.
The amount of money you earn, however, is dependent on a few factors, including your audience engagement, your streams of revenue, and your marketing efforts. You stand to earn the most as a blogger if you have a large and engaged audience, strong and diverse streams of income, and a solid marketing strategy.
According to a survey by ProBlogger, 20% of bloggers earn more than $1,000 a month.
Can I start a blog even if I’m not a professional writer?
Yes, you can absolutely start a blog even if you’re not a professional writer.
You don’t need to be a published author or have any professional writing experience in order to start a blog. All you really need in order to start a blog is an area of expertise and an interest in writing.
In fact, one of the best things about the blogging industry is that it allows creators of all kinds to create and publish content without having to go through gate-keeping third-parties like the media or publishing industries.
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