Start A Blog
It’s very important to know the definition of Blog before going deep into the process of starting a Blog.
“Blog is a term that is derived from “weblog” which is a website that is updated or maintained regularly by individuals or groups. Blog also have options for commenting and its content often includes photos and videos.”
How To Start a Blog To Make Money Online?
The idea of making money online is very interesting. Almost everyone would like to work under their home comfort and make money. The idea of being your own boss is always been very attractive.
There are many ways to make money online but in this post I am going to tell you how to start a Blog and making money blogging.
Finding A Niche For Blogging
Choosing a right niche to start your Blog is very important. If you make a wrong decision at this point of time there are very less chances that you will make any money out of your Blog.
To start a Blog first you need to find a topic to blog on. Also, don’t forget that if you want to make money online your Blog topic should be mass appealing. Don’t start a personal Blog since no one apart from your friends and family going to read it unless you’re a celebrity.
Also, don’t start a Blog on any topic that you have no interest since you need to update your Blog regularly and without any interest it would be very hard for you to write content regularly on that topic. If you choose a wrong topic you will soon loose a interest and forget the idea of becoming a full time blogger.
After choosing your niche just gather a list of the top bloggers on that niche and do subscribe to their RSS feeds to follow their Blogs. You can also use Google alert services in order to keep your self updated about your niche.
Choose A domain Name For your Blog
After finding a niche you need to find a good domain name to start your blog. Domain name will going to be the identity of your blog, So choose it carefully. Following are some tips that you can use in order to find a good domain name.
- Don’t use hyphen in your domain it makes it hard for people to remember.
- Keep a domain name short and catchy.
- Always go for TLD (top level domain) extensions that are .com, .net.
You can use namecheap to book your domain name. Namecheap is one of the biggest domain name register and provide a good customer support.
Choose A Hosting Provider For your Blog
This is one of the most crucial parts of the online business. If you are really serious about making money from your Blog then you should use a professional web hosting company which provides a good support.
You need to look for some features in order to choose the hosting company to host your Blog. Following are some features that you should always look before getting a hosting account.
- Good customer support
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth
- One click installation of popular web based software etc
I highly recommend DreamHost for hosting your Blog as I am also using DreamHost and by far I have had no problem with them. To know more about its features you can check out my DreamHost review also in the end of that post there is a $50 discount coupon for you.
Blogging Platform
There are many blogging platforms available for you to choose from, but I am only going to discuss about wordpress blogging platform, as it is the best and most popular blogging platform available. That best part about wordpress platform is that it’s totally free.
DreamHost provides one click wordpress installation that means installing wordpress software on your domain name is very easy and it will only take less than 10 minutes of your time.
Check out this post in which I have mentioned how you can install a wordpress Blog using the DreamHost one click installation feature.
The best part of this installation is that when you login to your wordpress admin panel you will find that almost most all the necessary plugins and some of the best free themes are already installed there. This is a very time saving feature that I think only DreamHost is providing.
Blog Promotion To Get Traffic
Only writing quality content is not enough to make money from your Blog. You also need to market your Blog in order to build the readership of your Blog. There are several things you can do to market your Blog:
SEO:It is a short of search engine optimization In order to get the traffic from search engines you need to learn SEO. Search engine like Google are the best source for getting free and targeted traffic.
Social Media: You can leverage social media sites in order to get the traffic into your blog. You can use site like digg, twitter, stumbleupon to get traffic. In order to get the traffic from these sites you need to make your account stronger and make some good connections with the people who are active on social media.
Blog Commenting: It is also a good way of getting traffic and increasing your presence in blogosphere. Blog commenting will also get you backlinks which will also going to help in search engines.
There are several other ways to promote your Blog in order to generate traffic but they are beyond this post. But I will soon write detailed posts on all the methods that you can use to market your Blog.
Make Money Blogging
When your Blog starts getting traffic then you can start monetizing it to make from it. There are several ways that you can choose to make money from your Blog.
- You can choose Display Ads (banner ads) to make money.
- You can do affiliate marketing.
- You can sell the space of your ads directly to advertisers.
- You can show pay per click ads on your blog.
- You can sell your own services or products to make money etc
Final Words
Starting a Blog is not very difficult thing to do but the problem comes when people don’t able to maintain it. People start a Blog with the idea of making money online and expect that they will soon start making full time living from it.
But before starting a Blog you need to understand that blogging is not about any getting rich quick scheme. New bloggers expect to make too much in no time and when that thing not happened they loose interest from blogging and stop maintaining their Blog.
This is a reason why most of the people fail to make money blogging. So if you are really serious about making money from blogging then never let your Blog die…. promote it, update it regularly, don’t loose focus and I am sure you will soon able to make full time living from blogging.
Useful Resources
How To Find A profitable Niche
Best Permalinks Structure For Your Blog