5 Best things you should know before starting a Blog.
In this century we already know the power of blogs. Almost every single search on Google will land you on blog and it has also become main source of revenue for many people. If you are planning to start one then it's better to know the process and challenges that you will going to face in future.
It's definitely heartbreaking truth that starting a blog and generate a decent amount of revenue out of it is not piece of cake now. As the data says there are already 1.8 billion websites running on the internet and you have to fight the competition to bring enough traffic to your site so that you can earn money by adsense. These facts are not here to demotivate you , I just want you to be ready to work hard for your blog. Well, If you are ready now let's understand the prerequisites of starting a successful blogging career.
5 Things to know Before you start your blog.
1. Niche or Topic
I know you have already heard this term many times on internet and most of them have told you to do a thorough research to find a niche. Yeah. they are right. You definitely need a niche focused blog but how do find one? How do you know it's a successful niche to write on ? How will you market your blog in your niche community ? These all questions are very much necessary to be answered before you write your first post on blog.
How to find a successful blog niche ?
Most of bloggers initially get confused between category and niche. For e.g if you tech geek then your blog category will be "Technology" but your niche lies somewhere deep inside it. So keep digging in until you reach to a topic or niche that people are searching more and there are less search results available for that.
To start finding your niche think about your interest first because if you choose some off interest niche you can not continue writing for long time. While choosing your interest try to be as generic as possible. Think about what people need and how can my blog fulfil those needs. Just for the sake of this blog post lets take "Technology" as your interest. So now when you have your interest ready let's move further.
It's time to dig deeper and find your niche, for that I recommend free tools like Google Trends and Kewordtool.io . Start with keywordtool.io and put your interest in search box, this site will return some related search keyword about 100-200. Select atleast 10 search keywords that matches your interest and note them down. Now jump to Google Trends and compare those keywords side by side. Filter out those keywords which have lowest search frequency. Repeat the process until you have keywords with high to moderate search frequency. Now try googling those keywords and choose the one that shows less search results with the same keywords.
Repeat above process again and again until you reach one unique keyword that has enough search frequency and less search results. That's going to be your success niche for blog.
2. Blogging Platform and Tools
Choosing the right platform and tools for a successful blog is very necessary. If you make this step wrong you are going to suffer in your blogging career. So let's start by understanding which platforms are available and will be best for you ? Almost 80% of blogs on the internet are made on Reddit and Medium.com these platforms are great to start with if you want to start for free but there are limitations in terms of type of contents you can produce and monetization.
Next in the list we all know is WordPress. It has well designed dashboard, themes and plugins to extend your blog functionality but to create a WordPress blog you need to buy hosting and domain of yours which is going to cost a little but I recommend to go for this investment as this will ensure that your data will be safe and within your control. Even this will help you easily monetize your website with adsense later.
The last and widely used free blogging platform is Blogspot or Blogger by Google. Although it's a nice platform for beginners but there is no plugin support and you may need to know little bit of html , javascript to extend the functionality of your blog. Out all these platform it is recommended that you go with WordPress if you are planning for a long run and professional blogs.
Next comes the tools that you need while writing and optimizing your content. First and foremost you need social media tools like Facebook Pixel, Like and Share Buttons, youtube channel subscribe button that you can get from developers pages of respective platforms. Although social media integration is not mandatory for blogs but it certainly help build a community and reputation of your blog over time which is a good indicator for SEO. Moving further you need some kind of tracking and analytical tool that can help you track user behaviour on your blog. There are both paid and free tools available for this purpose in the market but the most trusted by any blogger is Google Analytics which provides enough insights about the content performance and user activity on your blog. To get started with Google Analytics you just have to verify your site on it and let Google collect site data. Once Google has enough to measure user activity you can track different stats about your site like CTR, Bounce Rate, Traffic source etc which will help you take decision about your future content strategy.
Now when you have all the tools mentioned about you need to think about content writing and optimization tools which includes mostly third party tools, Some famous one are Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, Canva Image editor, Qubex, Grammarly,. Get response, Sendinblue an many more. These all are made for different requirements of bloggers and it's better to have it. If you want to know purpose each of these tools I may create another post but now let's move to our next point...
3. Marketing Strategy
You may be thinking that you are not selling a product or service then why do you need marketing strategy but sorry to say, you are wrong. If money is involved in anything then there's something to sell and in case of blogs you sell placements of your site and your daily visitors' time. So if you want to sell your site placements at higher price value you need to have marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy will not just help you to bring more traffic to your site but also increase the bidding price of site placements. So how a good marketing strategy look like?
While think with respect to a blog, A good marketing strategy is something that will continuously grow your traffic as well as build a blog reputation among advertisers. The first part can be achieved by providing valuable content, daily engagement with visitors and building a like minded community of your blog user. You can do that by good research, daily writing, building a social media following and email list of subscribers. The second part of building reputation can be done by creating post that are not just valuable but also focused on certain type of audience for example if you plan to create a blog post titled "Best photo editor in Android" then try to focus designers or design studio this way there are more likely chances of getting high CPM ads from advertisers.
4. Earning Strategy :
Most of us think that the only way of earning from a blog is Adsense. There is no doubt that major part of your blog income will come from here but it takes time to reach that position till you have enough money in your pocket. So until you reach there you must have some other earning Strategy for your blog to keep you motivated. There are few other techniques that let you earn before adsense.
First way is to sell some valuable digital product like PDF guide, Quiz , Filters, icon packs, themes, wallpapers, etc. that belong to your niche and you think your subscriber need that. You can sell these digital product at low price and on regular basis so that your subscriber will stay connected to you and you keep earning from them.
Second way we all have heard before is becoming affiliates of any product or service that belong to your niche. An affiliate is a program where you refer a product to your audience and if they make a purchase you earn a commission. Although there is no guarantee of regular income in this method but you may earn if your audience trust you.
Next comes in the list is selling backlinks. In this method you create a post for other blogs that have lower traffic than yours and in that post you mention link to their website which will let people jump on their site from yours. You can charge other bloggers for this shoutout and earn decent amount of money.
Last but not the least is your other ad networks like Adsteraa, PopAds, Poplers etc. They have less conditions for blog approval and you don't have to wait too long to make their ad appear on your site. The amount you earn from these site is not much but if you want to start your earning even with small list of followers you can go with this option.
5. Patience :
This one is critical thing you need before starting a blog. No matter how hard you work you are not going to earn from the next day, week or even months. This happens because your blog will take some time to get discovered by search engines and by your followers. Although you can speed up this process by promoting your blog yet organic leads are the best to go with as they are long lasting and help you generate passive income for life. So till then you have enough traffic on your blog have patience and always remember "Good things Takes Time"
Hope you enjoyed reading this post and grabbed something useful things to remember before you start your blog. If you like the post kindly support me on Facebook or Youtube.