Starting a Successful Blog – It’s no secret that blogging is a very lucrative (and trendy) way to earn a living. For instance, Gina Trapani of the popular Lifehacker blog earns $110,00 per month from her website alone. Another great example is celebrity gossip blogger Mario Lavanderia, more popularly known as Perez Hilton, who makes a whopping $200,000 to 400,000 per month for writing gossip articles and news tidbits about actors, pop stars, and other celebrities.
There are hundreds of people all over the world who are earning big from their blogs right now. And one can’t help but wonder—how do they do it? If you want to know how to start your own blog and get paid for it, here are a few tips that will help you become a successful blogger:
1. Curate a consistent visual aesthetic that reflects your brand.
One way to ensure the success of your blog is to create an effective personal brand. After all, bloggers are public figures, and when you’re a public figure, you need to make sure that your personal brand is consistent across the board—especially when it comes to your visual aesthetic.
This is why it’s important to pick a design or theme for your website (as well as social media and other online pages) that reflects the kind of aesthetic that you want your readers to associate with you and your brand. Make sure the design is aligned with your persona, your writing voice, and your blog’s niche.
A consistent and cohesive visual aesthetic can help improve the user experience elements of your site and ensure that engagement within your blog is meaningful and relevant. You need to remember that no matter how good your content is, people won’t appreciate it if it’s not presented properly. Therefore, make sure to design your site with your personal brand and visual aesthetic in mind. The better your site looks, the more visitors it will attract.
And the more visitors you attract, the more money you will earn.
2. Create useful, high-quality content
Make sure to publish blog entries that are engaging and provide value to your readers. After all, if you want to grow your readership, it’s not enough to write attention-grabbing titles. You do it by writing blog posts that are relevant, interesting, and substantial.
When you’re creating content, always remember to consider what your readers need. If you run out of ideas, remember that the best articles should adhere to one or more of the following criteria:
- It solves a common problem.
- It teaches something new.
- It addresses a concern or fear.
- It explains how to reach a goal.
- It provides entertainment.
Another way to create relevant content is by doing a keyword search when ideating topics. You can use a tool like SEMrush to help you figure out the most searched for keywords about a certain topic you had in mind. This should help you plan out your topics more strategically, and give your blog entries more chances of turning up in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for the most relevant queries.
3. Learn basic SEO
According to influential author and blogger Jeff Goins, “SEO allows you to create content that essentially markets itself for free.”
Knowing the basics of SEO allows you to create optimized content, which can help boost your blog’s incoming traffic and improve your search engine rankings. How? There are a few factors. The first is that, by creating quality content that adheres to search engine requirements, you increase your chances of ranking high on SERPs. Also, by targeting the exact queries that people frequently type into search engines and incorporating these keywords into your blog posts, you have a higher chance of reaching a specific audience that’s already searching for the kind of content that you’re publishing.
Additionally, if you have affiliate programs running on your site, SEO can help bring in more visitors, which will increase the click-through rates of those ads and links, allowing you to make more money.
4. Build your Network
Acquiring backlinks from other reputable blogs and websites is essential for search engine rankings. Therefore, it’s important to make friends and build relationships with other bloggers to help you grow your own blog. Having relationships with other bloggers allows you to ask them for guest posting opportunities on their respective blogs, which would be highly beneficial for you because the blog post will likely contain a link back to your blog. This not only helps you with SEO but also with your readership. Guest posts will mean more exposure with other bloggers’ loyal readers, and if they like what you write, they’ll probably become your readers, too.
Speaking of readers, a successful blog is never without the community that follows it. Once you’ve built a following, don’t be afraid to reach out to your readers and interact with them. This will make your online presence more authentic and relatable and allows you to establish a good rapport with your readers.
Always reply to comments, interact with your readers on social media, and collaborate with your fellow bloggers in the same niche. Doing this may seem too troublesome to deal with on top of your regular blogging activities, but the efforts will be worth it in the end.
5. Select your income streams
There are many different ways to make money with your blog. Choose your income streams carefully to ensure that whatever you end up doing, whether it’s sponsored reviews, private ads, affiliate links, or some other method, your blog will still remain aligned with your niche, your overall message, and your personal brand.
Google AdSense and the Amazon Affiliate Program are only a few of the more popular schemes you can sign up for to make money with your blog. There are also other methods that you can take advantage of like direct ad sales, sponsored content, e-book creation, and charging for membership or content from your site. Learn more about your options so you can choose the method that best fits your brand and blogging philosophy.
One thing to remember is that it might take some time before you can make big money out of your chosen income streams—so you’ve got to be patient.
By following these tips, you can achieve not just monetary, but overall success for your blog. Still, there are some lessons about blogging that only experience can teach you, which is why you need to get started as soon as you can. Publish that first entry and you get one step closer to your goal of becoming a successful blogger.
