Why and how to create a blog?
That’s it, you have decided to embark on a great blogging adventure! Whether it is out of passion or to make money from a professional blog, do you know how to blog?
You will have to go through a few essential steps such as finding a host, a domain name, the right CMS ( content management system ), creating a site, taking care of the creation and management of content, and finally working on your natural referencing.
Don’t know How To Start A Blog And Earn Money?
Find out how to manage your blog creation in 7 steps, which blog platform to choose and how to monetize it successfully!
Why create a blog?
Give visibility to your website
The blog is a formidably effective tool to give you visibility. As soon as a new article is published there, Google’s algorithm understands that your site is active, which will work in favor of your SEO, and therefore your traffic. This is all the more true if the articles are written are of quality.
In addition, it gives you material to share on social networks (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).
Finally, an active site with recent content contributes to your credibility in the eyes of your blog visitors.
Show your expertise
Your expertise in your core business is one of your best-selling assets. Blog posts are a quick, inexpensive medium to express yourself on a topic that touches your prospects and position you as an expert in their minds.
Gain new customers through inbound marketing
The blog is at the heart of any inbound marketing strategy.
The idea? Using your blog content helps attract quality traffic, i.e. visitors who may potentially be interested in your solution. In other words, you bring them into the first stage of the conversion funnel with your quality content, specially written for your target.
Once the prospect is on your blog, you need to encourage them to take action, whether it’s by leaving their contact details, asking for contact, etc.
What is the best site to start a free blog?
Create a Jimdo Blog
Jimdo makes the creation of a website accessible to everyone, even the most seasoned of you. Thanks to its artificial intelligence, you just need to answer a few questions and Jimdo creates your entire website automatically from your existing content on Facebook and Google.
You will then just have to choose your theme from modern and ergonomic templates, configure a few details and decide to put it online.
💰 Free: ✅
⭐️ Its strong point: 3 minutes to create your blog
👎 It’s not for you if: you want to create everything from A to Z and modify it as you wish
Create a Wix Blog
Wix offers a variety of customizable features that are particularly suitable for blogging, such as comment management and post scheduling. Choose the design of your blog among more than 500 templates and start a blog that suits you.
💰 Free: ✅
⭐️ Its strong point: very intuitive
👎 It is not for you if: you want to sell products
Create a WordPress blog
WordPress is the undisputed leader of existing CMS on the market:
Around the world, one in three sites uses the WordPress platform.
Creating your blog on this platform is a safe bet, and allows you to find a whole bunch of resources (articles, tutorials, training courses, etc.) on the Net, to solve a problem for example, or to help you optimize your blog.
Must Watch: Best SEO-Friendly WordPress Blog Themes
If so many websites have chosen this CMS to create and excel in content management, it is because it is endowed with great adaptability, even for the most complex projects, whether in terms of development or choice of the plug-in of all kinds.
💰 Free: ✅
⭐️ Strong point: the possibilities are endless (or almost)
👎 It is not for you if: you are not autonomous to solve technical problems
Create a Drupal blog
Drupal is an open-source platform, which was initially aimed at the most technical profiles, who could consider absolutely everything in terms of functionality and design.
Thanks to the Internet users of the Drupal community, very active on the NET for years, you now have free access to the plug-ins they have developed for referencing, sharing on social networks, managing your articles, etc.
💰 Free: ✅
⭐️ Its strong point: flexible and powerful
👎 It is not for you if: you are a beginner and/or in a hurry
How to create a blog? 8 steps to remember nothing
Step 1: Choose your niche
It can be tempting to start a blog on a subject that you are passionate about and knowledgeable about: this is usually what motivates you when you start your personal blog.
But if your goal is to create a professional blog, we advise you not to choose a theme, but rather to choose a target that has a problem to solve.
Step 2: define your editorial line
Your editorial line is what will define the personality of your blog and allow the consistency of your future content, which is essential:
- to be credible in the eyes of your audience,
- to guide you in choosing the topics of your articles and in their writing,
- to help you in your choices (a type of partnership accepted).
Define your editorial line in 5 questions:
- What is the purpose of my blog? The why of its existence, its reason for being. Be specific in defining the vision. Examples: promoting 100% natural solutions for cleaning your interior, showing men how to take care of their beards, selling training courses on how to succeed as an e-merchant, increasing traffic to your e-commerce site, etc.
- Who am I talking to? As we saw in the previous part, defining your target, your marketing persona is essential. You normally have at this stage all the essential information to know your target.
- What do I want to talk about? The what. Try to detail a little more the different topics or sub-topics that cover the problem (s) your persona is facing.
- How do I address my target? The way you are going to address your target must be both HIM and YOU. The tone, the vocabulary, the images, the writing angle, the length of the articles: all this constitutes your editorial charter.
- When should I speak to my target? Consistency is highly valued by a community. We can see from the graph below that the more articles we publish, the more the number of visits increases. Be sure to maintain a certain level of quality in your articles.
Step 3: Choose your CMS
As we saw in the previous part, choose your CMS according to your objective, your skills, and your resources.
Step 4: Choose your domain name
Choosing your domain name is more important than it looks. Here are the elements to take into account for your choice:
- A name that’s easy to remember. It is sometimes useful to know a few notions in cognitive science to choose your domain name. How do you make it easy for people to remember your URL? Know that the human brain remembers more easily combinations of existing words and having a link between them than a name invented from scratch;
- A short name that’s easy to type on mobile. Don’t underestimate the mobile-friendly potential of your domain name. Type the name of your site on your mobile before choosing it to check the ease of execution (or better, take the test with your granny);
- Including keywords can boost your SEO and be a profitable strategy. 63% of the sites that appear on page 1 have keywords in their URL (source: HigherVisibility );
- Check that the domain name is not linked to a registered trademark. Be careful, you never know and you don’t want legal issues right? ;
- Choose the right extension. What to choose between .com, .eu, .fr, .co, .tech? There are more and more extensions available, we advise you to choose the timeless .com when it is not too expensive. Otherwise, choose according to the countries in which you want to be present, your budget, and your sector of activity.
Step 5: the choice of accommodation
Like any website, your blog must be hosted on a server in order to function. The best known are OVH and 1 & 1, but there are also many others, with their specificities, advantages, and disadvantages.
Step 6: create and install your site
Here is our selection of tutorials on the different platforms that we recommend, to guide you step by step in the creation and installation of your site:
- See the WordPress tutorial
- See the Wix tutorial
Step 7: SEO
SEO is a discipline that requires work, patience … and knowing the right tips, in order to reach page 1 of Google.
Step 8: Create Content
Write a good blog post
The different types of content
Varying the content on your blog allows you not to tire your readers and offer additional resources, especially at a time when image and video occupy a major place:
- infographics,
- podcasts,
- documents to download,
- online tests,
- videos,
- testimonials and interviews, etc.
Promote the content of his blog
How to Start a Blog And Earn Money: Monetization
Building an audience for your blog and successfully monetizing it is an activity that takes time, several months, or even years. It is essential to think about monetization as early as possible, in order to make it clear in your strategy and to maximize your chances of getting there.
Learn: How to Earn $5000 Per Hour
Whichever monetization strategy (s) you choose, take into consideration that you need to get the minimum, quality traffic first for them to work.
Also, do not hesitate to test several, combine them, and do many tests to see what suits you best.
Write An E-Book or Electronic Book
Writing an e-book or e-book is a relatively easy way to make money.
- Write about a specific problem for your target. Give interesting information, talk about your experience and give concrete solutions to solve it;
- Look after the design. If your customers print it, they should feel like they’re holding a real book in their hands. Colors, photos, diagrams: use all the tools you have to make reading enjoyable;
- Convert your book to PDF format ;
- After payment, payment, direct your customers to a page with the link of the PDF to download or send them by email.
How I Made Millions By Just Liking Facebook Page?
Offer Online Courses And Training
The business of online courses and training is a growing sector, expected to reach 325 billion dollars by 2025
As with the e-book, try to see how you can help your community on a specific issue, and give them the keys to solving their problems.
To find the subject that will hit the mark, pay attention to what your community is saying on forums, Facebook groups, comments on your articles, etc.
Do not hesitate to use specialized software, which allows you to manage your online training, from hosting to promotion by email without the download link, such as Podia or system.io.
Sell Consulting or Coaching Services
Your blog is the best showcase for your expertise, and it can be of interest to businesses. If reading a book or taking part in training is a good start, getting individualized advice allows you to move up a gear, and boost your results.
Write a few well-targeted articles for the part of your audience who will be interested in this type of service, at slightly higher prices.
Offer a Subscription Service
Deliver quality service to your community, with a monthly or annual subscription. The advantage of this business model is that each sale can earn you income for several months or years if the members find it useful. This service can be exclusive content (in the form of a podcast, emailing, video, etc.), access to a platform, a forum, or a group.
Exploit Advertising
Some tools allow you to display advertisements on your website, and to be paid per click. This is often an easy way to make money in its early stages, but don’t expect to live on it because one click only earns a few pennies. You will need a certain volume of traffic to start generating interesting income, this is nevertheless a good addition, and allows you to pay yourself without additional effort.
There are two ways to advertise your blog:
- via an Ad Sense-type advertising strategy (Google),
- or by offering private advertising without going through an advertiser. You can thus integrate your advertising inserts and negotiate directly with companies. In general, this means is much more profitable.
To entice your visitors to click:
- select relevant advertisements, related to the theme of your blog;
- do not overload your blog with advertisements, so as not to tire your visitors and optimize visibility;
- A / B tests your ads to see which are performing best in terms of clicks or conversions.
👉 Be aware that more and more Internet users are using software that blocks advertisements, which makes the task more difficult.
Make Affiliation
It is one of the most popular ways bloggers can make money.
Membership consists of promoting a product or service, and being paid via a commission on each sale generated.
How does it work?
Once you have chosen your niche, written interesting articles on the subject, and started to have a community, you become legitimate to talk about services and products that can be of use to them.
How do I find products to sell?
- Amazon offers an affiliate program. Its strength lies in the large choice of products and partners, thus maximizing your chances of finding the products most suited to your niche.
- Specialized affiliate platforms connect product creators and affiliates. Here is a non-exhaustive list: Affilinet, Affinity MarTech, Has offers, 1TPE, Selldorado, CJ Affiliate, etc.
- You can also canvass the seller of a product directly by contacting them or through their affiliate program if they have one. This can be a good alternative when looking through the tools you already use, the ones you could promote.
Tips for Affiliate Success
A good affiliate product is …
- a product that you have tested,
- a product that brings value to your community,
- a product with a high commission,
- a product with a high price.
Too…
- don’t write too many articles on affiliate products so as not to tire your readers ;
- do not hesitate to be transparent when you make the affiliation (no one is going to bite you);
- write a complete, researched, and worked article with as much evidence as possible on the usefulness of what you are promoting.
Adopt An Influencer Marketing Strategy
A business or entrepreneur may pay you to talk about a product or service if you write an article, or create a podcast or video. It is often necessary to have a certain audience to be able to interest companies, which need certain visibility.
Here are some figures on influencer marketing that may convince you:
- a market estimated at 20 billion dollars in 2020;
- 4 out of 5 consumers buy a product that has been recommended to them;
- 60% of consumers check out a blog post, social media, or video before making a purchase.
So if you feel like the soul of an influencer, don’t hesitate to go for it!
Sell products (E-Commerce)
It is not uncommon for a blogger to explore this avenue of e-commerce sales, either by creating a marketplace where to find his favorite products or by creating his own products to sell them.
You can either directly integrate an e-commerce store on your blog if the CMS you use offers this option (often in the form of a plug-in ), create a store on another platform such as Shopify or Etsy, and refer your visitors to your products from the blog.
Create a Blog And Make a living from it: is it really possible?
Starting a blog has never been easier, and is now accessible to everyone.
With a well-established SEO, content management, and monetization strategy, you have a good chance of generating income with your blog.
But in practice, is it really possible to make a living from your blog?
Few bloggers manage to do well because:
- it is a time-consuming activity, which is difficult to maintain at a sustained pace in addition to a job;
- it requires being good, even very good at creating content to stand out from the competition, appeal to both search engines and readers, and convert visits into clicks or sales;
- some niches generate less money than others. Note that health, personal development, and business issues are the most profitable.
The road will be long and will require perseverance, work, and ingenuity.
One day you will become the best blogger! Subscribe to Us On YouTube & Spread Your Love.
