How to Start Making Money from Your Writing Blog
Looking back a few decades ago, it seemed impossible that someone could make thousands of dollars by writing and posting things on a website.
Today, people who do blogging earn money regularly, and some succeed so much that they skip the 9-to-5 work to dedicate all their time to it.
Why wouldn’t you want this? It offers you the chance to earn tons of money while working from any location and at any time.
It’s something that everyone can do, provided that everyone can create a website and get a domain. It can be a .blog domain or any TLD you think will conform to your idea.
While this sounds all easy-peasy, making money from a writing blog is more complex than just creating a website and posting on it. If you want this to work in your favor, you must learn how to do it right.
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In this article, we’ll teach you exactly that – how to blog and make money writing.
Tips on How to Start a Blog and Make Money Writing
Now without any further ado – here are the top tips for your writing blog:
1. Make Sure Your Content is Original
As a blogger, you’ll need to create content and publish it often. There’s nothing worse than a blogger that copies someone else’s work. It’s not just about people noticing this.
When you post content online, search engines crawl your pages and compare your content to that of other sites. If you simply copy and paste someone else’s work, they’ll rank you on the last pages, not to mention penalize you for your actions.
That being said, the first rule for a successful blog is no plagiarism. Whenever you’re done with a piece, check your text with a scanner. The plagiarism checker 10000 words gives you the chance to stay safe online. Plagiarism doesn’t only occur intentionally.
Unintentional plagiarism can be removed using paraphrasing technique, which is a skill itself that you can master and remove any sort of plagiarism in your text. Also, you can get help from an online paraphrasing tool that does the same job if you do not have much idea about how to remove plagiarism from the text.
Content originality should be your first priority. Make sure to check your content for plagiarism traces, make sure to remove it either manually or using a paraphrasing tool.
In many cases, you’ll want to insert some stats or common thoughts and ideas, and these will be flagged as stolen content. This is why it’s important to check every piece before publishing it. Considering that it takes seconds to a few minutes to do this, there’s no legit reason for skipping this step.
2. Stick to a Single Niche
For any idea you have, there’s a targeted audience that can benefit from your blog if you create quality content. You’ll probably often hear about ‘profitable niches’ that increase your chances of making money from blogger sites. This is not realistic since, after all, people have different interests.
Keep in mind that the success of a blog depends on the quality you offer. Choose a niche you are confident about – this is easily noticeable in your writing. Then, stick to that niche and do your best to appeal to the same targeted audience. The people that visit your blog should be able to find something useful now and in the future. Skipping between different niches will ruin the purpose of your previous posts.
3. Scale Your Content
Content is king for any website, but it is the centerpiece of a writing blog. This is what your entire marketing strategy should revolve around. When you set time aside for your blog, most of it belongs to the content creation, internal linking, editing, publishing, etc.
When you decide on a niche, it’s time to start writing. You’re probably eager to do this, but don’t rush into it! Writing content for blogs requires a lot of research and most importantly – a lot of planning.
Let’s discuss a few ways to scale your content.
- Plan for internal linking
For starters, internal linking is important for your site’s performance on search results, and it also gives you a chance to convince readers to visit other pages on your blog. Unless you plan different pieces of content and plan for the connection between them, you’ll find it hard to insert internal links that make sense.
According to Databox, 42% of SEO experts spend equal time on building external and internal links.
What does this mean?
It means that, before you sit down and write everything that comes to mind, you should choose strategic topics that address the needs of your audience and fit into your blog i.e. have connections with the other articles.
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- Do a lot of research
External links carry enormous importance in your blog’s ranking. Your links help engines like Google navigate through your pages, but the links to other sites help them find the connections – and bring your target audience to you.
Before you write your content, optimize it with quality links. Choose sites with high domain ranking and don’t go for websites that aren’t in your niche just to get some links back. It’s important to remain relevant in your blog, both for the purpose of keeping readers happy and boosting your SEO.
- Post consistently
The only way to make tons of money from blogging is to get people to your blog. Only then can you use affiliate marketing or sell your products and services to the audience. Without your target audience finding and being present on your pages, your blog cannot be a success.
To get more people to your site, you need regular, fresh, and quality content. Aim to publish at least 1 post every week. If you want to maximize organic traffic, create and post daily, or at least 3 or 4 times per week.
4. Build a Community for Your Brand
Your blog is your brand and the people that bring you cash are your community. Once you have a blog rich with great content and some traffic to your pages, you should work on that community and build relationships with your audience.
People don’t buy from websites they don’t trust. Your content can be brilliant but, if you want to make sales, you need to gain people’s trust. To do this, you must put some work on connecting with the community.
Here are some ways to do this:
- Email marketing. Entice people to subscribe to your newsletter by offering them some freebies such as free membership for a month, an eBook, a small gift, a discount, etc. Gather the information of your audience and use it to build a community. That email list can be very useful for making more sales by promoting your products, informing people of updates for your blog, or asking for their feedback.
- Social media networking. Social media is the most promising tool for building relationships with your audience. Most people in the world use some social networks, so this makes them the perfect spot to build relationships. Post on social media regularly to build a fan base, and use it to communicate with your audience, reply to their comments, or chat them up in Facebook groups.
5. Advertise within the blog
You know, there are ways to make money with your blog without actually selling things! The idea is to create a website with a lot of traffic and insert ads to your posts to generate income. For example, you can use Google AdSense to generate ads.
How does this work?
The program itself will place ads on your site relevant to your niche. These are most likely to appeal to your audience. Google will fill the spaces you assign with advertisements and if people click on them, you earn money – even if they don’t make a purchase!
Similar to this, you can become an affiliate and promote other brands and their products and services on your websites. Many companies have affiliate programs, including Amazon and eBay.
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6. Sell Subscriptions
Another way to make money without selling products is to offer paid subscriptions to your audience. If your blog already enjoys high popularity and has regulars, offer them to buy access to your exclusive content.
Surely, you want most of your content to be free to attract more people to your site as well as convince visitors to decide to buy the subscription. However, give your loyal readers access to articles only they can see, as well as first peek at content that you’ll later publish publicly.
You can give subscribers plenty of perks. For example, those who subscribe can get discounts on products and services, access to webinars, free e-books, etc.
No Breaks from blogging, please!
After working a lot on your blog, writing content like crazy, you might feel tempted to take a few weeks off. You have booked your vacation and now that you already have healthy traffic on your site, you’re thinking: “A few days or weeks without fresh content won’t hurt”.
You cannot be more wrong. Blogging is dependent on consistency.
No, we are not saying that you shouldn’t take a break or should focus your entire life on your blog. However, if you want to earn a lot from this, you’ll need to find a solution. Consider distributing the content to other writers and delegating some of the pieces for other people to write. You might want to publish some guest posts, too. This is a great free option to give publicity to the contributor – and give you fresh content to publish.
Not to mention, well-ranked blogs charge for guest posts so after a while, this might even turn into a source of income.
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Wrapping Up
There you have it – the main steps to follow for a profitable blog. There are plenty of things you can do with your blog, but these tips have the best prospect of bringing you a good income for your content.
Good luck!
Author’s Bio
John Marlow is an email content writer who helps businesses and influencers widen their reach. His job is to promote companies through content tailored for the email platforms. In addition to this, John Marlow is a consultant and blogger, writing on various marketing topics.