In the past, I’ve sometimes wondered if someone can make a living out of blogging or is it just a myth? Is it really possible for a beginner to make money with a blog?
Anyone who knows how to write a blog and understand SEO and extensive ideas on how the internet works can start to make money out of blogging. Writing a blog is not really an abstract concept, but it’s a reality. There are a lot of blogging ideas to make money. But let’s take a deeper dive of what really blogging is all about.
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What Is The One Secret To Make Money
The Way to Make Money in Blogging: Get lots of traffic. Use this traffic for ad revenue, selling products, and selling services.
The Secret: Get Traffic.
Simple. . . you should be a good writer that can engage your readers. As we all know it, blogging needs to build an audience in order to make serious big bucks.
Read: Building Multiple Streams of Income
Blogging Methods to Make Money
Blogging has a lot of ways in making money but it only has one thing in common. . . . Web Traffic!
Web Traffic is the number one thing you should have in order for you to establish ad revenue. There are multiple ad options to utilize and increase your website’s earnings like the following:
Advertising
Advertising or Running ads are often through an advertising network like Google AdSense.
Sponsorship
Sponsorship or writing a paid for content from an advertiser. Sponsored blog posts can also include social media posts on several social media platforms and networks.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another classic strategy which is selling a product from the website and linking them to offer commission when someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase. This is a great way to monetize your blog content that explains why your products or services are great.
Selling Digital Products
Selling digital products like Ebooks, online courses, printables, apps, software, music, and more. Digital products generally have low overheads and can work for almost any niche.
Offering Services
Offering Services are great for writers, photographers, or coaches can be a great way to monetize a blog. All you have to do is to get started is a contact form for clients to reach out to you.
Blogging Articles You Can Write: Get Traffic For Your Blog
You don’t have to be famous or even have a huge traffic in order to make money out of blogging. This makes blogging for money isn’t particularly difficult any more. As long as you have valuable or entertaining content you can make money blogging.
Here are a few blogging ideas that make money:
News Content and Updates
Reading can sometimes be complicated for many audiences but the news content or news updates can captivate them. Providing news updates or simply reporting on what is happening and how you think it will affect the industry going forward is a great strategy to produce an endless amount of content. On top of delivering a stream of content ideas, it also makes you look well informed and an authority in the field.
Instructional Content
This Is also commonly called the create how-to content where you provided a step by step instruction on how to do something in a simpler form. This is one of the easiest business blogging ideas to take advantage of.
Product Reviews
Product Reviews are a great way to drive traffic which can definitely be used to boost affiliate sales. There could be thousands of reviews to write and this strategy creates content that drives traffic while increasing your chances of earning money from affiliate links.
Product Comparisons
Creating product comparison contents is simply highlighting the differences of each product or services leading people to the right direction. This will enlighten your customers in choosing which product or service is best suited for them.
Features and Benefits
This sounds relatively an approach for business marketers and that is one reason why blogging is a big part of a marketing strategy. Providing content about the features and benefits of a certain product or service is keeping your customers informed. This may sound a tedious job but it is one of the effective approaches in the business marketing world.
FAQ Content
Writing a “Frequently Asked Question” content is a great way to elaborate more about your product or services to your readers. Answering the questions may catch their attention can also drive traffic and make money. Do not ignore questions but answer them through dedicating a blog about this topic.
Seasonal Content
Seasonal content is a great idea to write about seasonal events or holidays. You can share stories depending on the kind of event you are talking about.
Video Content
Video content is preferably the best choice over text-based content and that is why video content is taking the internet by storm. Creating short videos can significantly help your products and blogs perform better.
One perfect example is bringing on extra income from YouTube. A lot of vlogger or video creators actually embed YouTube videos into their website content. Thus providing methods of imbibing content while advertising both through searches.
Podcasting
Podcasting is a great way to invite the audience most specially for people who don’t have the time to read a blog or watch a video but they do have the time to listen while traveling to work.
Podcasts can be created by hosting through your website or even create a blog and then summarizing each show who opts for reading. This is a great way to offer content to a busier audience.
Share Your Growth or Story
Inspiring stories and statistics magnetize the interest of many. You can always create a lot of content about your own. If you are becoming successful in what you are doing and you share it with the world, many people will be inspired and would love reading your content.
Why Do I Need A Website and Not Just Blog Using Social Media?
It is because a blog post has a much longer shelf life and can remain visible for months then social media posts are gone in a flash. It doesn’t remain in people’s feeds.
Now going back to my first two questions, is it possible for someone to make a living out of blogging or is it just a myth? Is it really possible for a beginner to make money with a blog? The answer to both questions is a BIG YES!
You also have to keep in mind that Blogging to make money is like starting any business that requires hard work, dedication, and patience.
While many of these business blogging ideas will guide you how to make money online, some may not work for you. . . and don’t be discouraged because it is absolutely normal. Every blog builds a different kind of audience. Blogging can be extremely profitable, but it is not a quick process to start.
How did Blogging Start and Where Is It Going?
A blog is simply an online diary or a personal web page or a web blog where people write their personal activities and experiences or opinions. It was first named as “weblog” that simply means “logging on the web.” This term was coined by Jorn Barger who wrote a persuasive blog “Robot Wisdom” in 1997.
Nonetheless,most experts agreed that this was not the first blog.The first blog was actually the written works of Justin Hall that was published in Links.net. Justin Hall, dubbed as the founding father of personal bloggers posted brief posts about his personal experiences and activities that shared a link and his thoughts on the content within. This compilation of links included links to websites he liked, as well as his own work and he named it as his “Personal Homepage.”
Many people liked what Hall was doing and quickly followed his footsteps. In 1998 Jonathan Dube became the first journalist to blog an event. Dube chronicled Hurricane Bonnie for The Charlotte Observer.
It was in this same year too that a blogging platform was born called the “Open diary.“ This platform allowed members of the community to comment on each other’s writing. Open diary was the first of many tools that made blogging accessible to people no matter what the programming experience was.
In 1999, Peter Merholz, a programmer dropped the term “weblog” and made it simple and called it “BLOG.” In this same year is the advent of three new blogging platforms namely Xanga, LiveJournal, and Blogger.
- Xanga which is similar to MySpace is a website that focused more on the social side that boasted 300,000 users at its peak but faded out of the blogging scene entirely.
- LiveJournal is the most recognizable of the early sites where Brad Fitzpatrick could keep in touch with his high school friends, and quickly grew into a place where all kinds of people could document their thoughts and develop communities. This blogging platform became popular into the mid of 2000s. Then it gradually shifted from a blogging site where all were welcome into one of Russia’s primary social media platforms.
- Blogger was created by Pyra Labs as a commercial blogging service until it was purchased by Google in 2003. The acquisition of Google made blogging freely available to the world and the entire concept of blogging was put into the mainstream.
The Growth of Blogging
The year 2000 is when the blog reached the mainstream. Many believed that a rumored first video blog created in January by Adam Kontras accompanied a written blog post with a video that updated friends and family on what he was doing. Then some time in November a professor Adrian Miles called his first video blog posts as a “VOG”
- 2002 – Technorati was launched and held the title of the first major blog search engine.
- 2003 – Audioblogger was founded as the first major podcasting service.
- AdSense was launched as the advertising platform. It is the first ad network to match ads to the content on a blog. This paved the way for bloggers to start making money without huge platforms.
- 2004, the first recognized video blogs made by a videographer Steve Garfield declared it to be the “year of the video blog.”
- 2005, YouTube was launched in February where the platform actually began as a short-lived dating site. Singles used videos to introduce themselves and state their romantic criteria.
- 2006, the co-founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey, sent out the world’s first tweet abiding with 140 characters or less. This is considered as the rise of microblogging which refers to sharing stories, news, and other types of content in the smallest format possible.
- 2007, a Blogger’s Code of Conduct was created in response to threatening comments that a friend had received on her blog.
The history of blogging also had its dark ages in 2008 to 2011. As for me, blogging is far from over since blogs are especially important to marketing where B2B and B2c companies use blogs or other forms of content marketing.
The Future Of Blogging And How You Win
Look at building up content that people can use. If you focus on quality content, the search engines will be more prone to promote your content.
Choose Quality Over Quantity.
I’ve found that it’s easier to impress someone with one really solid material than hit them over and over again with mediocre content.
Look at what other competitors are writing, and see if you can create content that is better than other people.
Always try to create a good experience for your readers. You want to make sure they are happy and can trust your content.
Frequently Asked Questions:
What platforms should I use for Blogging?
Check out WordPress.org and Medium. These platforms have different pros and cons.
How much does blogging cost to get started?
Some platforms it’s free. Out of the free options, Medium is the best. WordPress.org will cost around $100 to get started for web hosting. This will give you the most flexibility.
How many words should an article be?
It depends on the niche. It’s around 1200-1500 for a smaller post. Increasingly, competitive posts are 1500 words plus.
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