Starting A Successful Blog

Starting a successful blog is a collection of hard work, the right market, good technology, and a positive mindset. Starting a successful blog has not been easy for many because of a few reasons I list here.

First, many bloggers are looking for a quick-rich way of making money. This attitude is incorrect. Blogging is a painstaking and hard work of months and years. All bloggers except the once who started years before, need to work for long before seeing a change.

The second reason is why many bloggers fail. It is quitting soon. They say ‘it gets darker before dawn. Many bloggers don’t see the celling of their effort because they quit immaturely or sell immaturely. This is crazy. Many studies say that more than 90 percent of blogs or any other businesses fail in three months.

This the the mind set of starting a successful blog: Blogging is not get rich quick, it takes time to be successful and blogging is about value.

Starting A Successful Blog: The Process

1. Starting A Successful Blog: Choose a Niche

Why would I write? That is a good question. Blogs are written for various reasons. But not definitely to teach. Blogs are not necessary for education. You may not be someone who wants to teach either.

Blogs have various purposes. The main purposes could be categorized into three.

The first purpose of blogging could be to entertain.

Entertainment is the life and blood of this world. Hollywood, Bolly Wood, Nolly Wood.evey continent has the hood. People pay hundreds for Netflix and other related tv and internet entertainment channels.

Companies also create, and hire, and work on projects that destruct people from the daily toil.

If you have the guts and the skill to entertain, you probably are in film, movie, or music or even fashion niche in blogging. The lifestyle market is also favorable for you.

Examples in this category: Hollywood life and TMZ

The second is to teach.

This fits many of the blogs out there. Everyone is a teacher nowadays. Look at every problem, and you at least will find more than 10 products that will teach you to solve your problem. How to lose weight in 3 months, how to repair your house, how to change fuel in your car…

These are education blogs. IF you have the knowledge you can blog in these markets that teach people to become better in something small.

The third is an inspiration.

These sites criticize and show us an alternative way to live. These don’t date to teach or to entertain. They exist. You need them, they don’t need you.

Starting A Successful Blog: Choose a Name

Choosing a name for your blog has been hard work. Because all of the one-word names are already taken. Even finding two or pair words are taken. But there are good places to find your name. Bustaname, lean-domain search, and expired domains are the top three places.

The main secrets are to choose .com domains,

Choose short and easy to remember domain names

See the past of the name on archive.org. make sure it has no bad past.

Starting A Successful Blog: Register

Once you find your Domain name, the rest is easy. The next process is to register that domain fast so that it won’t be taken by others. The best place to start is Bluehost. Enter your domain into the search on Bluehost and the rest is easy.

Starting A Successful Blog: WordPress is Good.

WordPress is the best place for starting A Successful Blog. It is the best place for Starting A Successful Blog. There are many other options as well such as Joomla and Wix. These lack things that WordPress has such as good support, good plugins, and the freedom to edit, change, and tweak your website.

WordPress is easy to install in your hosting account. Once you register your domain and bought a hosting service with it, then you go to install WordPress in your WebHost and click install. The process may take a maximum of 10 minutes for complete beginners.

First, go to yourwebsite.com/cPanel and sign in using the pass and user you received when you register on Bluehost. Then after sign in go to software then to softelicious apps installer. Then click WordPress. Fill the form.

Starting A Successful Blog: Accessing WordPress

After installing WordPress on your WebHost. Then, the next process is to access WordPress. In WordPress, you design your website or post your blog articles and more. Hosting only helps you put your data so that others see it.

Go to yourwebsite.com/wp-admin

Here you use the user and the pass you filled in the WordPress installation in your hosting. If you don’t remember it doesn’t worry. Go back to your Cpanel and change your user and pass.

In WordPress, you will find important settings that will assist you with your blog.

1. Post– here is where you see the list of your blog posts and create new blog posts and blog categories.
2. Media– here you can access your media files including PDF, images, and videos. This is not necessary to come to this link every time. You can directly upload images through the blog post. And every time you upload an image or other media, then the updated version will be listed in the media section.
3. Pages– pages are an important part of a blog. Pages are static information center for your blogs. About page or contact page is added here.
4. Appearance– is probably one of the basic parts of the WordPress setting.

First are themes- in themes, you will upload a purchased or free WordPress theme

You can customize your theme here or the purchased theme will provide you a special customize setting. In that case, you don’t need this link.

• Widgets are powerful. Widgets help you add functionality to your blogs, such as sidebar or footer. widgets are a tool for starting a successful blog.

Menus are like summarized categories that lead the visitor to a different place. In menus, you put links that you need the reader to visit. Menus are usually found at the top of blogs listed horizontally.

• Under settings you find general.
• General, you can change site name and tag. By no means, you need to change the URL. This will lock you out of your site and recovery is difficult.

Make sure to untick anyone can register.

And a new user is a subscriber.

Set your time zone so that wp knows when to send you an email.

Writing

The only thing you need to update is the ping service. This is how search engines are notified of updated content.

• Under reading– make sure discourage search engines from indexing this site is off. We need our website everywhere.
• Permalink is very necessary. Here, make sure that under common settings the URL type is changed to post name. With this, we tell the blog to use our blog tag line instead of numbers and date. This is a simple but big leap to starting a successful blog.

Starting a Successful Blog: WordPress theme

WordPress theme is the face of your website. It is the design. There are two types of themes: free and premium.

The free theme is everywhere. You can search free blog theme. Or even in the WordPress dashboard go to appearance > theme and here the themes are free. Go through them and install hat you like. You can change it at any time.

The premium one is more secured, has a better setting, and looks better.

Starting A Successful Blog: Use These Plugins

Different plugins help you add functionality to your site. Amazingly plugins are free, in most cases. Even the free versions of the paid plugins are really good.

• Contact form 7 helps you connect with others under contact me page
• Yoast SEO and rank math helps you rank better on search engine
• AMP is a Google project and it helps you load fast on mobile.
• Cookie notice is a must if your audience is in Europe. Their new law demands to show cookie notice for visitors. This is a small I agree with the type of bar or popup you probably saw on blogs.
• Image optimization plugins help you reduce image size and increase loading speed.
• Cache plugins also reduce loading by reducing the size and cutting background process.
• If you follow my practice, your website will load faster and you will get above 90 on your website speed.

Test your speed here

Starting a Successful Blog: Content Strategy

Content is the basics of starting a successful blog. Whatever we did until now, without content are nothing. Visitors come to your blog looking for what you have to say, now what your blog looks like.

Here are the principles for good content and content delivery.

1. Blog posts are about value- If the post does not solve a problem, then you better not post it.
2. Have a good header. Blog headline is the first thing your readers read. Make it good, and short.
3. Have H2 and h3 heading. This will divide long posts into a readable one. Headers are also guiding. They increase SEO.
4. Have images

Where to Bring Content Ideas

Content should be about problems that your audience has.

1. If you are in an acne niche, then ask your self, what would people with acne ask.
2. Look inside search engines: in Pinterest and Google.

Auto-suggest has been a great way of looking for what people are asking for. In google search ‘what * acne’ and you will get a list of what people are asking. You can write to them.

• Look in forums and group discussions.
• Ask people what they want to learn.

Known Content Types

1. Listicles– are lists of things that answer the question in the pst. For example 10 steps to start a blog. It can be a listicle post.
2. Interviews– These are a great way for traffic, especially when the interviewee is known. Hereafter interviewing, you can create more than one post with it. You can directly publish it on your blog or you can explain and rewrite it. You can also make audio, infographics, and more with it. A single interview could be used
3. A case study is a way of studying a certain success and teach your audience about it.
4. A common blog post answers a certain question, and without lists. A common essay is categorized here.
5. Review– are known this time. You probably have searched the best camera in the market or something else related. There are blog posts that review bast cameras and give you the best so that you don’t have to do the work yourself.
6. Questions and answers– these are the best way of writing a blog I discovered recently. These are questions that answer the overall blog post idea. Use these questions as subtitles and answer them with 200 or more words.
7. Infographics– Infographics bring traffic as these are interesting and sharable. Instead of writing, you can change it into a good infographic. And you can explain it with a short post.

How Long Is A Good Content?

It is amazing to see how search engines demand long posts. It has been easier a few years ago, and now there re many high-quality posts competing for ranking.

The best post size is above 3000 words. This is a number that the SEO plugins love and search engines consider as worth.

If you can write more than 3000 words of pure solution. Clutters are penalized by search engines.

The second is the 2000 word post. This is shorter posts that answer a simple question. The problem it solves is not answered with simple listicles or articles.

The third one is near 1000 words or more. These could be listed or answer very simple questions. The minimum blog post size is 600 words. The best one is above 3000.

Starting a successful blog demands long and useful posts.

How Often Should You Post?

The more, the better.

Some big blogs publish 10 times or more a day, others 5 or more a day, and most publish every 3 days ore more.
It is hard to publish every day if you write ling posts. But it is possible.  In the first 3 or 4 months, you need one article every day. With that, you can tell search engines that you are serious about what you do.

If you are also working with social media to promote your post, then you can minimize your publishing time.

Starting a Successful Blog: Where Should I promote my blog?

Promotion is a great way to get traffic. There are two ways of getting traffic: organically or Paid.

Organic traffic comes through hard work and through time. When you write SEO based posts, you will start to get a better rank. And if your site comes first for search query then you get traffic as well

The paid ones include google ads and social media promotions.

Starting a Successful Blog: SEO

Search engine optimization helps you set your posts for search engine ranking. Several plugins will help you do the work. These are Yoast SEO and Rank Math. Yoast is known and has been around for long. Rank math is also getting attention this day.

What these tools help you is write a new headline and description that are alternative to your blog headline and content. Here you include keywords you need to rank for.

The plugin will guide you on what to do. So install one of these plugins and after you write a post, go to the plugin on the sidebar and follow the process. I#100 percent score helps you to get a possibility for ranking.

Social Media for Traffic

This is also another free promotion. Choose one or two platforms and engage with the audience. Facebook and Pinterest are the best tools for traffic. Unfortunately, the Facebook audience is more interested in content on the platform and does not want to be mored out of the platform. That is how these platforms make money.

Pinterest is better in that case.  The search algorithm is better and it is can drive you traffic. Make sure to include a link with your images here.

Put a share plugin on your blog. And people can share your post with a single click.

Guest post for Traffic

Guest post is also a good way to get free traffic. If you have a good article that other websites would like, then you can ask to post your article on their site. If posted, and if people lose it, then they would flock to your site.

So, write well. And convenience other bloggers to exchange links of post your article.

Listicles that can be shared

The best way of getting reshare from known brands is to write a list blog that ranks the top 10 or top 50 companies or people in a certain niche. If the person listed decided to share, then you will get traffic from these people’s audiences.

Starting a Successful Blog: Build a List

Email is the best way of promotion. Once you get the email, you can send your audience every time you have new posts. Imagine sending a single email to your 50,000 readers. That is 50k page views. If you keep doing it often, then your traffic increase as well.

Solve problems

Use forums like Quora to answer questions. Include your email as a signature. SubReddit is also a great way of promoting a focused group.

How to Build an Email List?

Building a list is the secret to starting a successful blog that makes money. An email list is the best way to keep your reader’s contact. This is a good way to contact and to promote content and even sell to your audience.

There are several tools to build an email list. Mailchimp is free up to 2000 subscribers list. Then you need to pay a small amount of money every month. Mailchimp is easy to use and has autoresponders.

The second is Aweber. This is one of the best in the industry. It is 20 dollars per month. And it has autoresponders.

Convertikit and Getresponse are also good alternatives.

How do I get people on my email list

1. Ask people to sign up for newsletters.
2. Give free resource, and ask them to enter email to download.

You can include opt-in forms inside post content, or above or below the post. You can also include on the sidebar, on the header or above header. Make sure you don’t overdo it.

Use plugins like hello bar.

Pop-ups are also a great way to get emails. With popups, you can give away an ebook for an email.

What to send in your email list

1. The welcome email- Welcome your audience and show them what you do and how you can help them
2. Good content- send good content that could solve a problem
3. Sales content- well you can use your email list to sell. Include affiliate link or your product, and without overselling it
4. Freebies- people love free stuff. Give free ebooks any other printable materials

Starting a Successful Blog: How to Make Money?

• Affiliate marketing– this is a known way of making money.  Affiliate marketing is selling other’s products and making a commission out of it. Each product you sell will have a unique code in the URL that identifies how much you sold.

• Amazon Associates, Clickbank are examples to get your affiliate link

• Sell your products– create a good product and put it on your website.
• Membership sites are not much known. there are news sites and even blogs that use the membership for premium content. You make your readers pay some amount of money to read more.
• Consultation and coaching– Time is a limited asset. But it is also profitable if you think about it. Hou much is your time worth? You can estimate your one hour for money and you can consult and coach in your niche.
• Ads– these are the easiest way to making money once you start getting traffic. Some pay as much as 1 or more dollars for 1000 impressions. The impression is how often an ad on your blog is displayed for a single user, even if they don’t click on it. Therefore, if one person sees your 3 ads on your home page, then you will have 3 impressions. If you get 300 users that do the same on your website, then you will get 1000 impressions and 1 dollar or more equivalent.

The price differs depending on which country they are based on. US and UK traffic make more money. Use Google AdSense and media.net as a beginner. Mediavine is great for blogs with good traffic.

Starting a successful blog, summary

Starting a successful blog has many criteria. The basic is that you need to choose a good market that you have knowledge in or that you need to learn more. Then you need to register a good domain and host your site on a good hosting plan.

Not only the process but also the mindset contribute to starting a successful blog. You need to put in the work. You need to work hard, adapt, and change in the process. You need to continue working until you see a change.

And then, there is time that you will be paid off.