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Start a Blog Today and Make Money
Even if you have no experience
Blogging has been around for quite a while now, and it is simply a version of the traditional website.
Some people and organizations incorporate blogs into their main websites as a way to drive traffic to what they offer.
Whichever way, you can start a blog today and make money even if you have no experience.
In this article, I am going to show you everything you need to know from scratch when it comes to owning your blog and making money from your blog.
I know as a beginner; you may be wondering if you can truly make money blogging.
Believe me, you can if you follow the steps you will read in this article.
We are working on the assumption that you have technical knowledge about blogging.
So I will keep this as simple as it should be, as long as you promise to start implementing what you learn here immediately.
So let us start.
Step 1. Choose and register a name for your new blog
To start a blog, you must first choose a name your blog must be identified with.
There are millions of blogs all over the internet with unique names and sometimes similar names too.
See this as a way to stand out from the rest of the blogs, so you must choose a name that resonates with the business or topic you want your blog to be about.
For instance, if you are a shoemaker, and need a blog to show the world what you have, you can select a name that easily reminds your audience that you are into the business of making shoes.
Let us take it this way: Collings has a shoe shop and is good at what he does, his location is somewhere in Acra, Ghana, and he can do one of three things depending on his target audience.
Assuming Collins is serving only people in Acra, Ghana, he can find a way to coin the location of his business with the name of the blog.
He can go something like “Acrashoes.com”, or he can incorporate his name into the blog name, like Collings shoes.com.
Taking this route will mean that it will be difficult for Colling to expand Globally in the future, or rather it would be a tough fight for him to do so.
If he has a specific show-making strength that distinguishes him from the rest, he can put that into the name too, like this: Snakeskinshoes.com, “Organicshoes. come”.
This highlights the strength of his business even without any marketing done.
Whoever sees the name, can easily relate it to a business that makes shoes from snake skins or some kind of organic materials.
Or he can go for a very generic name CandC.com. The advantage of this is that it gives Collings room for business expansion in the future.
Should he wish to add other related stuff to his business, he would not have limited himself too thin because he has a generic business name.
Here are a few resources to help you choose a good name for your blog and if you need our help with doing that, please reach out to us here:
Step 2: Register Your Domain name
After you come up with a name you are happy about, head over to a domain name registrar and register your desired name.
I promised not to go too technical with this tutorial, so I wouldn’t go into the details of what a Domain name registrar is but in very simple terms, it is a unique name given to your online presence, managed by registries, leased by you through registrars.
All of the above does not give you a blog.
So, you will need to take another step that will take you closer to actually starting your blog and subsequently making money from it.
After a successful domain name registration, you will have to connect it to your web host by pointing the name server (DN) to your host.
This is usually contained in the email sent to you after registration, sometimes it takes a bit of time for the email to show up.
So, if you have not seen it, just sit back and wait.
Coming up with the best blog name is just one step in the whole process. You need to host the name.
Step 3. Choose a host for your blog
As someone new to blogging, you may be confusing it all now.
But know that your domain name is simply a distinctive name assigned to you, you will need a space in the world wide web to sit that name.
See it as your real estate address where whatever physical property you own is situated, like your street address.
I sure hope that covers it there.
To get your domain name hosted is very simple these days as you do not need any special skill to do that.
Head over to any web host of your choice and subscribe to any of their plans that suits you.
I host some of my sites with Bluehost. but a simple Google search on the best Webhosting service will fetch you what you need.
PCmag has a top ten list of web hosting services. Feel free to check it out and make your choice since they did a thorough job of adding who each of the services is best for.
What to keep in mind before choosing your Webhosting service
Because I have your best interest at heart, here are a few things you must look out for when choosing a web host for your blog:
Read reviews before you settle for any web hosting service
Choose a web host with a money-back guarantee, you can never be so sure, especially if you end up with any of the obscure hosting services.
The cheapest service might not be the most efficient for you
Stay away from free web hosting platforms if you are serious about making money with blogging.
It is best not to use your domain name registrar as the web host. It will save you a lot of heartache if the platform goes down or suffers from some sort of breach or if you want to switch services, you will not be held to ransom.
Choose a domain with a reputable payment system
Verify that the IP of the hosting company is not flagged as this would have a very negative impact on your overall business performance.
To do this, ask the hosting company for their IP address, failure or reluctance to give you this information is a red sign
Run the address through a platform like SPAMHAUS to be sure your emails will not be blocked in the future.
Pay attention to how the customer support of the company you intend to use is. You cannot afford to be left on your own if you run into issues along the line.
Make sure the uptime and server speed are up to what you would like in comparison to the expected traffic.
Having done all of the above, you are steps closer to your blog being up and running.
But before that, you will have to do some designing on your newly acquired property, and here is what you will do next.
Step 4: Install and use WordPress.
This process is simple, but it depends to a large extent on your web host, as each web host has its own way of installation.
WordPress is my CMS (Content Management System) of choice due to its popularity and availability of technical support.
The basic way of installing WordPress is to
locate your cPanel. Access to the cPanel is provided after registration and hosting, and the information needed to sign in is contained in the email from your host provider.
look for the Softaculous button and click on it
Find and locate the WordPress icon and click on it, this will take you to the WordPress installation window.
Click install WordPress
Fill in the necessary details, like your domain name and its protocols
Fill in the site details, like your blog name, description, etc.
Create your admin account.
if you need an email, it is at this point that you will create that by using the Admin Email section.
Next, enter the email address that will be used to communicate with you. Make sure it is a valid and accessible email address.
Click install and you are done.
You are done with the basics of creating your WordPress site, but it is not looking as awesome as you anticipated.
Relax, give yourself a part on the back, you have done more than 99% of people who wish to own a blog.
Now is the time to get familiar with stuff around your dashboard.
Step 5. Design Your Blog with a WordPress Theme
Unless you are very good at coding, you will want to go for a website-building option that minimizes or removes the need for coding.
There are so many options in the market, both free and paid, that you will have to choose from. Below is a list of some of the good ones to choose from.
WordPress.org: Powers almost half of the world’s websites.
WordPress.com. Please do not confuse this with the above as this is the hosted platform.
Magento
Blogger.com
Joomla
WooCommerce
Drupal
Wix
Shopify
Squarespace
Some of the options above are free services, however, I do not advise you to go for those if you truly want to make money with your blog, as they are full of limitations.
The only time I will recommend you try them out is if you only want to test run your idea before going in full.
What is a CMS?
Simply put, CMS is an abbreviation for ‘Content Management System‘. A piece of software that gives you the ability to create and manage website content. Nowadays, almost all web hosting service comes with a click installation.
When it comes to CMS, WordPress is the way to go. So let us spend a bit of time on how to install and use WordPress.
Step 6. Get Familiar with WordPress, Your Blogging Software
Here are a few more things you will need to put in place for your site to look great.
You will need a theme for your blog. See the Theme as a piece of plugin that sets out the look and feel of your blog.
There are thousands of themes in the market, some free, others premium, but as a starter, a free theme will be all you need now.
When your blog grows, you may want to upgrade for more features.
I have used several themes for several sites.
At one point, ‘Twenty Seventeen’ was so good for me, I still use it though. But on my last site, I used ‘Blocksy’.
They have so many wonderful features even their free version.
You can choose what is good for you, it does not matter as you can change it at any time.
Then you will need to install some essential plugins for your blog.
Since it is your goal to start a blog and make money, you cannot do without certain plugins.
The subheading below will list some of the ones you need to install.
Step 7: Be Aware of the Essential Plugins for WordPress
WPForms: this will be used for collecting emails and for your contact page.
SEO Tools:
Yoast SEO
SEMrush
Google Analytics
XML Sitemap
All-in-one SEO
Mozlinkexplorer
Keywordtool.io
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
WP-Optimize: used to keep your site tidy, like removing post revisions, cleaning spam, and optimizing the database.
Metforms
Optinmonster
MemberPress: this is very useful if you are considering integrating online courses into your blog
UpdraftPlus for your backup needs. I strongly recommend this
Push Notification
LiveChat
SumoMe
Elementor
Step 8. Customize and Optimize Your WordPress Blog
In this section, all you have to do is play around with your dashboard, making sure things look exactly as you would like.
If you encounter what you do not understand it’s work, then reach out to your customer care as they are always willing to help. Or simply Google whatever challenge you have, and you will see Torns of articles and videos to help you out.
Step 9: Set Up Your Permalink
It is important that you set your permalinks up the right way as this in a large way contributes to better ranking on the search engines.
Permalinks, as the name suggests, are the permanent links to your sites, blogs, posts, articles, categories, and permanent link to any part of your blog or website.
Needless to say that if your blog is not found on Google, you truly cannot make money. Moreover, a good permalink is good for the visitors to your site as they are more likely to find your content easily.
So here are simple ways to get it right from the onset:
go to your blog’s Dashboard, then to your settings, and click on permalinks.
you will be faced with a few options to choose from.
But the bottom line is that you would want your posts and article names to show in the search results as well as the browser bar.
If you do not want the dates, time, and author name of each respective post to show, it is in this area that you can make that choice although there are plugins that can help with that as your site grows.
Step 10: Set Up Your XML Sitemaps Properly
The sitemap is another important thing to look at on your website. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized, since this alone determines how easy it will be for your site to be indexed by the bots.
Simply put, the excitement of an easier page that contains a list of all the important links on your site. It is better to be Seen as a road map for search engines and bots.
So if you use wordpress as I strongly you do as a beginner, your best bet is to install a plug in that does that for you.
If you reffer to ourlist of essential plugins, you will see Yoast, All inone SEO, they all come with the option to install and activate your XML site map.
You can equally Google it with the term XML site map and make a choice of what is good for you. It does not really matter as almost all one them will do the basic work on puting up an indexable page with all the links to important pages on your site.
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
— Maya Angelou, American poet, and civil rights activist
Step 11. Choose Your Blog's Niche Based on Market Factors, Not Your Passions.
This is the fun part. You will have to select an area of expertise since you practically cannot cover all the topics there are.
A niche refers to a given area of interest that your blog will focus on. Let us return to our illustration of Collins’ shoe-making business. That is a niche but somewhat broad.
In blogging, it is recommended that you narrow it down as much as you can unless you want to build a Wikipedia.
So, Collins will again have to determine if his shoe-making business will cater to children’s shoe, women shoes, women office shoes, men’s shoes, men’s sports shoes, or whatever segment of the shoe-wearing community that he wants to handle.
Choosing a good niche sets you off on a good start to making money from your blog, but it is not a straightforward thing to choose a niche. Lots of people fail with blogging only on this single factor so I am going to show you simple tips on how to lay your hand on the best money-making blog niche.
Tips on how to choose the best blogging niche
Start with what you are passionate about. Doing this will keep you going when the business becomes tough, and you will have your passion as a driving force. And you will sound more like authority because you probably know what you are talking about.
Take a look at your budget before choosing your niche. If you settle for a niche, you do not have the recourses to build, it will be a fight against the wall.
Consider the marketing needed to drive traffic,
Do you have the resources to beat your competition?
How do you get backlinks
what will the cost of traffic be if you choose to pay for it?
Confirm that the niche is monetizable. You surely do not want to start a blog that will not make you money in the long run. Unless you are doing it just to be heard or for the sake of passion. So, taking a bit of time to test out if the niche you are choosing has the potential for monetization is worth your while.
Take the future into account while choosing your blog niche
Validate your niche idea before going into it full time
Do keyword research to know what people are searching for.
Use affiliate marketing platforms to see what the top product are
There you have the basics tips to get you going, you do not have to know it all at this time, it is just as Maya Angelou said:
Do The best You Can Until You Know Better,
At this stage, you are almost done, you have succeeded in putting your blog together, you have a domain name, you have hosted it, and have customized it to the look and feel that will make you money.
So let us keep going, now you need to find out if your niche can be monetized. .
How to find out if your niche has monetization potential
Visit Amazon.com to see if there are products in that niche
Check out Click bank to see what is selling on the niche
Look for reviews on the niche and see what people are talking about it.
Join reputable forums on the topic to know what the gist is all about. For example, if you are going into internet and affiliate marketing, you can check out the Warrior forum. It is probably the world’s highest community of internet marketers with over 1, 714, 221 members, 8 980 770 posts and 778, 056 threads as at the time of writing this article
Use Google trends to find out what is trending both locally and globally that has the potential to make you money.
Search Google for keywords related to your Niche and find out the popularity of the topic. When you find a popular niche like this, determine a segment of it to attend to.
Use Google keyword planner to further find out about the niche you are researching
Your Niche Needs a Strong Market Demand
But how do you know and feed this market demand? You must start by identifying what exactly the users want and figure out a way to satisfy that with your blog content.
Creating a product or content that looks very much like what is already in the market will hurt your business and your blog if you want to call it that. So, you will need to stand out from the crowd and create a brand for yourself. Experts call it a Unique Selling Proposition.
Taking the above steps helps you create a strong demand for what you promote.
Step 12. Write Your First Masterpiece
Now is the time to put all that knowledge into practice by writing your first blog. This is simple to do but you will have to use different resources to make your blog post stand out.
Since you are reading this article in English, I assume you are going to be writing your blog in English, so below are a few things that will be very helpful.
Download Grammarly. This will keep you from making serious grammatical mistakes, it has a premium option, but the free version will not leave you stranded as a beginner.
Learn SEO basics as soon as possible
Use Canva for your media needs
Check out Pixabay, Pexel for your non-royalty images and if you need a paid solution, you will get those from places like Getty Image and iStock
Headline Analyzer: as the name implies, it analyzes your headline, making sure it is optimized for things like social shares, increased traffic, and even SEO. This is a free tool I strongly recommend.
Hire a pro writer to do your writing for you. Our writing team can do a good job for you at a very affordable price. But you can also get a decent deal in places like Fiverr, Upwork, or Peopleperhour, they are all places where good writers hang out.
If you are not used to writing, start learning. It is said that if you do not like writing, you can hire a writer for your blog. That is true but you are better off writing your own content or at least learn and know what a good content is. And if you hire me to write 3000 words of content like this one, it will not come cheap.
Create a content strategy for your blog. This will help you to keep things organized and to be sure you post your content when due.
Target evergreen articles and posts. This is the content that endures for a very long time. They are usually not affected by time and season, and they are the backbone of your blog.
Always remember the big picture of your blog site. It is very easy to drift as you come along promising topics that might not relate to your big picture, be careful not to derail.
Step 13: Utilize the power of social media in your new blog
You will need an engaging audience in your new blog to be able to make money blogging, therefore you must pay attention to how you reach out to your audience in the best way.
First, choose the appropriate social media for your blog, it is beneficial that you stick to two or three as you cannot possibly be active on all the social media channels there are.
Use social sharing plugins to connect your site with your social accounts and make sure you set it up on the settings page of the plugin you plan to use. Below, you will find helpful hints on keeping your social media active and interesting:
make prominent use of images, as social media is all about those fun and entertaining visuals.
use good and captivating headlines
Share your blog posts across your social media handles as this will give you more exposure to your follower,
encourage your audience to share your content
Be consistent with social media, and if you do not have a lot of time for it, you can consider hiring a social media manager to do the work for you.
Sometimes, you may have to share different sections or excerpts from your post on social media to spread the word.
Use hashtags as they are a good way to cross-link and be found on social media.
Join blogging forums on the social media of your choice and connect with other bloggers
In the above case, always be a good contributor to the forums and groups you belong to, not always asking that something be done for you but, be helpful to people too.
Consider advertising your blog on social media like Facebook for increased revenue.
if you implement all or some of the above, you will be on your way to making money with your blog in no time.
Step 14: Start Relationships with other bloggers & Pitch Guest Posts at the Same Time.
Truth be told, you cannot do all the work on your blog alone, so the earlier you start building relationships with other bloggers, the better it becomes.
The advantage of this is that it will help you build meaningful backlinks to your site.
Guest blogging is a wonderful way of getting a new audience to your website and exposing your expertise, so you may consider giving it the attention that it deserves.
The Importance of Guest Blogging.
Guest blogging helps you spread the word about your new blog
It is good for your search engine ranking
It costs less that the traditional way of sharing your content
A quality guest blogging exercise is good for your domain authority
Guest blogging allows you to create brand awareness beyond your immediate audience’s reach
guest blogging is a win-win for everybody involved
Step 15: Optimize for Search Engine Traffic
You cannot succeed and make money with your blog if you are not found in the top search engines. This makes it essential to pay attention to how your site is ranking in engines like Google.
To help you be organically found on search engines, there are proven methods you can employ. You can refer back to the essential plugins section of this article and take another look at the SEO tool listed there.
To make it seamless for you, here are some of the things that can be done both on-page and off-page to enhance your search engine ranking.
Sitemap
Create a site map as soon as you are done having a couple of pages. This makes it easy for search engines to see and index your web pages.
Internal link
Make sure you have your pages linking to one another as it is a requirement for the search engine bots. This makes the work of the bots easy as they can easily see the relationship between your pages and index them accordingly.
Avoid Opharned pages:
A web page that does not link to another page on the same site is referred to as an orphaned page, it will be difficult for the search engines to index such a page and it affects your overall ranking.
Keyword
conduct keyword research before you write your posts. A carefully selected keyword increases your chances of being found by Google. While writing without proper keyword research will be like striking after the wind, make sure you do not overstuff your copy with keywords as that will do you more harm than good.
A good tool to help you handle the problem of Engaging title is Coschedule’s Headline studio. It is packed with features that the job of coming up with an enticing headline will not be something you will ever have to worry about again.
Keyword insertion
Insert your keyword on your content as this tends to increase your ranking and content relevance to search intent.
Title
As much as your article body is important, the title is sometimes more important since it helps determine if your audience will go through the trouble of reading the first paragraph of your post or not.
Plagiarism
his is one big problem that faces new bloggers. Never give in to copying someone’s work as this will hurt your ranking and will diminish your authority and the authenticity of your blog.
Images
optimize your images with Alt text to enhance their search ranking. Pay special attention to your naming convention on images, use descriptive file names for your images.
Site speed
Make sure your site loads in no time as sites that take more than 5 seconds to load might be a sign of poor loading and user experience. images are important to your site but they can slow your site down to a noticeable degree. To counter this, use image compression solutions to keep your images optimized for site speed.
Quality content:
Everything about SEO is quality, when you publish quality original content, you demonstrate your authority in the field. Do not settle with just a few hundred words, go in-depth with your articles. An original article of about 2000 words, carefully crafted and optimized for SEO will impress both your audience and the search engines.
Build quality backlinks:
It may sound like nothing but Google still values backlinks and they are highly related to ranking high on the other major search engines.
The list above is not exhaustive as there are other things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, but the above will get you going and ranking pretty well.
Having gotten to this point in your new site, you may be thinking about how to make money from your blog. That is the focus of the next subheading.
Step 16: How to Monetize Your Blog the Right Way.
This is going to be fun. If you get everything right, by now your focus should be to make some cash from your efforts, congratulations because you are almost there. As you can see in the foregoing, you can make money from blogging if only you pay attention to 2 main factors
Build your blog or website
drive traffic to your site
monetize your blog
There are several ways to make money off your blog, and they all have their pros and cons, some are cheaper and more viable than others. So you will have to choose what is best for you.
I will list some of the best ways to start making money with your blog below and feel free to try them out, along the line, you will see what works best for your site and audience.
Affiliate marketing:
This is simply putting links to products and services you trust and recommend on your articles and web pages so that when your site’s visitors click on them, you get a commission. Of course, it is more complicated than just the above, you will need to promote, encourage and make the visitors of your site take the desired action which will result in a commission for your effort.
I have an article where I wrote everything about how I finally got it right with affiliate marketing after trying and failing for so long.
To start, you can join dedicated affiliate marketing programs for bloggers, The advantage of this is that you are faced with a variety of products and services to choose from.
AdSense
Google Adsense has been around for quite a while and is used by millions of webmasters around the globe. Using Google Adsense gives you the opportunity to feature ads tailored to target your given audience. Adsense operates by rewarding you for every click generated from your blog.
Sell space for adverts:
Companies and individuals can pay you to run ads on your blog if they see that it has a lot of relevant traffic that can be useful for them. This is a wonderful source of revenue for a blog owner.
Make money with sponsored posts on your blog
As your blog continues to grow in authority, you can put in sponsored posts like product reviews, posts from similar niches, complimentary niches, and services related to your niche are all potential kinds of posts that can be sponsored.
Create your own products and services like ebooks:
Because you have become an authority in your niche through your blog, people who visit your site will develop some trust for you, in that case, you can package a product in the form of an eBook and sell it to your blog visitors. With a digital product like an eBook, you can make money even while you sleep.
Even if you do not have the time to create eBooks for your blog, hire a freelancer to do the writing for you while you make money out of it by selling it on your website.
If you already have an eBook published and listed on another marketplace, you can link to it from your website. That is exactly what I did with one of my major eBooks on How to start making money with Amazon today. The book was originally listed in Amazon, but I link to it on my website here so that my visitors who are looking for ways to make money with kindle publishing can see it and check it out and if any sells happen, it is an added profit.
Since you are using WordPress, there are countless plugins that will make it easy for you to integrate digital products into your site. Two such plugins are WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads
Selling Freelance Services
If you have a thing for writing, Graphic design, web services, and things like that, you can use your blog as a portal to offer those services. Check out this article if you need more help on how to start a freelance writing service today.
This website you are reading this article from offers writing services and provides information on various other topics like affiliate marketing, importation, digital marketing, etc.
Consulting/Coaching
Depending on your niche, you can offer coaching and consultancy on your blog. If you know a thing or two, people would not mind paying you to get from your knowledge and this generates money for you.
Online Courses and Workshops
If you have or know a way of doing something in an extraordinary way and you know people are willing to learn it from you, then your blog is a good place to teach that.
Advertising
This is similar to selling ad space but a little different in some ways, for instance, you can add banners of products on your pages, and you can charge companies a one-time fee to promote their products or services.
Speaking Gigs
This may not be for everybody, but speaking in fields you are knowledgeable about is one good way to make money with your blog. But first, you will have to prove that you are an expert in what you do and do your pitches very well to land this speaking job.
Grow Your Email List with Pop Ups
You may have heard it said that money is on the list. Yes, an email list is still a viable way of making money with your blog. All you have to do is to create some kind of lead magnet and use that to get the email address of your potential followers. In doing this do not be overly desperate to sell as that will turn your audience off.
Rather be helpful and share relevant information, as time goes on, your audience will be more ready to trust your judgment and willing to buy should you offer something for them to buy
The above is not all there is to monetizing a blog but it will definitely get you going, you will have a hang of it when you get going. You still have some more ways like asking for a donation, starting a podcast
Time improve Your Content Skills
We are gradually wrapping up this great article, but we cannot call it complete if we do not spend some time in know how to improve your content skill to increase your chances of making money with your new blog.
As the saying goes ‘content’ is key. Good content cannot be supplemented for anything, put all needed effort into creating content that solves a problem, and let your readers know why they are at your site. Some points to keep in mind to help you come up with great content for your blogs are below:
Step 17: Choose a Traffic Source (Google Search or Facebook)
As you must have noticed, the success of your new blog depends among other things the traffic that comes to your site. So it is important that you master a couple of traffic sources and stick with them.
Google has proved to be a reliable source of traffic over the years as most web surfers use Google as their main search engine.
I will strongly recommend you start with Google and Facebook. Use Google to drive organic traffic and use Facebook as your major social media channel.
Starting with keyword research will help position your content with search intent. As time goes on Google will start to rank your content.
You can run a Facebook ad to drive more site visitors to your blog and augment it with shareable images too.
I just handed you the complete guide on how you start a blog and make money in no time, what you have to do now is to get started. Postponing it until tomorrow will not get you any money. I wish you all the fortune there is, in your new blog, if you feel there is a way I can be of help, please use the contact us page and I will be very willing to help you. Feel free to share your concerns in the comment section.
