Starting a blog today is one of the most easiest way to generate passive income.
With a dedicated period of just three hours a day for the period of three months, you would be able to build an online business which would generate some revenue for you even in your absence.
One of the beauty of building an internet business such as a blog is that it does not require you to be online twenty four hours a day to make you money.
In fact, after publishing the contents, you could just leave it and never go back. If you built it the right way, it will keep on generating revenue for you month after month without you moving a muscle.
Today I am going to guide you through some of the major milestones of opening and growing a profitable blog.
This is not going to be an intensive guide post but it’s aim is to give you a kind of structural idea on how to get started.
So let us get started with the steps.
Pick a Software
There are a lot of software available online both free and paid which you can use to run a blog. However, we advise that you use a software that properly fits your needs.
In all, just three of the software stand out and they are
- WordPress.com : this is a software owned and controlled by WordPress. It has a free plan with subsequently paid plan. If you intend to start a BLOGGING business, I would not advise you to go with WordPress.com. The free version is much more limited than any other software on the internet as you would not be able to monetize your content. WordPress.com is only suitable for personal website and photo gallery, but for going professional, I strongly do not recommend it.
- Blogger : this software is often referred to as blogspot. It was purchased and is stilled owned by Google. It is a completely free software that helps bloggers get started easily without paying a dime. I advise you use this is you are just getting started. With bloggers you can monetize your blog either using Google AdSense or any other monetization model you like. In fact, bloggers gives you complete control of your blog. The only disadvantages of blogger is that you will need to purchase a premium template to improve your blog look.
- WordPress.org : this is the best and most popular blogging software available on the planet today. In fact, over 60% of websites on the internet are built using WordPress. WordPress has a ton of functionality (called plugins), appearance (called theme) and customization options. In fact, a standard blog is a blog built with WordPress. To use WordPress you will have to purchase a domain name and a web hosting plan, you can do this by patronizing bluehost.
Pick a niche
A niche is what you want your blog to revolve around, in order words, it is what you are going to be blogging about.
Be very careful to pick a niche that you have in-depth knowledge in and that you are passionate about.
Example of some really nice blogging niches are food, education, gossips, celebrity, personal finance, sports and a whole lot more.
Design your blog.
If you have chosen WordPress or bloggers, the next step would be to customize your blog to fit your brand. You can do this by purchasing a custom theme or template and tweaking the appearance.
If you don’t want to get dirty in the process, you can hire a website development from Fiverr to help you set things up.
Write and publish useful contents
I know you may have heard of the saying which says on the internet, content is king. This should be the direct replication on your website. Write not just contents but quality contents. This will help you gain loyal followers as well as boosting your ability to rank search engines like Google and Bing.
Also ensure you use a lot of multimedia such as pictures and videos to make it more user friendly and interactive.
Promote your contents
There are a host of ways of promoting your content but the best and cheapest way is to share them on various social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
If you are using WordPress, there are plugins that make the sharing process extremely easy such as jetpack.
Finally, monetize your blog.
Monetizing your blog is the process of placing in processes in place that helps you earn from your blog.
There are a whole lot of ways of earning or monetizing your blog ranging from ads to affiliate program and even selling your own digital products such as ebooks or online courses.