BLOGGING – BECOME A Professional Blogger
Meenakshi R.
?? Author to 2 books. ?? Mindfulness Coach ?? Wealth Manifestation Coach ?? Dream life Manifestation coach ?? EFT Coach
“To People Who Want to Publish a Blog But Don’t know where to Get Started!”
?Here’s everything you need to know to become a professional blogger
?If you like writing and you think you know something other people ought to, you are already one step ahead.
Now, what are the tools that can help you be a professional blogger?
Are you good at something? Are you passionate about something? Do you think there is a market for people wanting to become good at what you are doing?
If your answer is yes to all the above questions, you will be able to make a career out of blogging.
With today's tools and technology, anyone can make blogging a full-time career.
There are a lot of steps in setting up a blog, building traffic, and eventually monetising it.
This might not give you all the information that you need to become a professional blogger, but should be more than enough to get you started.
What we have here is a roadmap for becoming a professional blogger through my 5 years of blogging experience.
In case you wish to gain more knowledge/information, then join my 100 days Blogging course. Where I will teach you all the ins and outs of blogging. The tools required, Content creation and everything else that you need to know to become a professional blogger.
?Just write to me @ [email protected]
Let's get started!
Step no.1. Choose your niche
If you are just going to blog on the site without considering a full-time blogging career, there are no restrictions. You can have a personal blog, and you can blog about anything. I also have a personal blog, and I don't worry too much about how it will be known in the market. I don't make any revenue from this blog.
If you want to be a professional blogger to earn a full-time living,?you should choose a niche and stick to it. For your blog's brand to grow, you need to be known for one thing. You might have expertise in three different subjects but you, as an expert and a blogger, should be remembered for one thing.
Be a master of one trade, and with time, you will be known for it.
You should choose a niche that is neither too narrow nor too broad - where the marketplace is already not crowded with "experts" in a specific category.
To help you understand, let me give you another example. If you want to blog about fitness, you will never be able to get traction by being a fitness expert because there are so many fitness experts in the world. However, if you create a blog in a specific category, say, ‘Fitness for busy professionals’, ‘Fitness for pregnant women', ‘Fitness for 50+ men’, then you have a chance to dominate in that niche.
?Your niche should be a combination of your talent, passion, and marketing opportunity.
Find your passion, strengthen your talent, and write about a topic, which has a demand in the market. If you get all three right, you will be able to become a financially successful professional blogger.
Step no. 2. Choose a domain name
You have to choose your domain name that will also become the name of your brand. Sometimes people register their name and start blogging. Sometimes it's a generic brand name, and sometimes it is a combination of both.
For example,?James Clear, the author of?Atomic Habits, blogs at JamesClear.com.
ShoutMeLoud.com is run by Harsh Agarwal, where he blogs about online marketing and blogging.
It doesn't matter what the name is as long as it is brandable and memorable. Don't register domain names with a hyphen and try to get the dot com version as much as possible.
Step no. 3. Install a self-hosted Word Press blog
Now that you have chosen your niche, and your domain name, it is time to get started with blogging. There are many blogging platforms on the web, some are free, and some are premium. I will not recommend blogging at an open platform like?Blogger.com?or?Word Press.com. Most of the free platforms do not allow commercial use, and you will not own your web property.
Word Press also has an open-source content management system which you can download and install it on your web server. As soon as I say this, many people get uncomfortable. You might have a question in your mind right now, "Do I need to learn coding or programming to become a blogger?". The answer is no. I am an HR professional, and I don't know how to write code, yet.
Many web hosting companies now come with a 1-click install option for Word Press, and you can get a self-hosted Word Press up and running without needing to touch a single line of code. Many hosting companies offer cheap Word Press hosting. One I highly recommend is ResellerClub.com for Beginners, and if you have a blog that gets more than 1,000 users a day, I would recommend WPXHosting.com, which starts at $25/month.
Step no. 4. Get a custom logo and theme design
A self-hosted Word Press blog right out of the box is not going to look great. The standard design template that comes with the installation is not going to help you get love from your readers.
If you have a budget, get a logo and a custom theme designed for your blog. You can head to places like?99designs.com?and get a fantastic logo and theme designed for your blog.
If you don't want to invest upfront, head to Fiverr.com to get a logo designed for as low as $10. There are plenty of free themes available in the Word Press repository as well that you can choose.
Do not worry about the design and logo so much as it can be changed later on. Just focus on choosing the right niche and the right domain name because that is more difficult to change later.
Sometimes, worrying about design can become an obsession, and repeated revisions are not going to satisfy you either. Remember that there is no such thing as a perfect design. A design that looks colourful and appealing to the eye might not be the best for readability and might increase the page load speed, affecting your SEO.
?A design that looks plain without fancy colours and zing might be a better option for readability. At the end of the day, it is the content that matters, how it connects with the user, and what kind of value it adds to the user's life. If it adds value, it will spread among others, and your users will come back to your blog for more.
Step no. 5.Install essential plugins
One of the benefits of running your blog on Word Press is that you get plenty of plugins that can add functionality to your website. Even huge sites like?TechCrunch are powered by Word Press.
As soon as you install your blog, I recommend adding a few great plugins, as mentioned in this list.
Step no. 6. Publish your first post
For a non-tech person, reaching this point can be quite an anxiety-inducing thing. However, if you have reached this point, don't stop.
Blogging is a marathon and not a sprint. And you have to keep the motivation going. According to the law of diminishing marginal motivation, the longer you take to get your blog up and running, the less likely you are to succeed as a professional blogger.
It is time to publish your first few posts and pages. Let's get started with the ‘About Me’ page.
One of the most visited pages on my blog is the ‘About Me’ page. People want to learn from people, and when they visit a blog, they want to see who the author is. Make sure the blog is connected to your brand rather than making it look like a publication.
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While writing your ‘About Me’ page, put yourself in the shoes of your readers, and write accordingly. You might have accomplished a lot in your life, but no one is interested in your resume. Write about yourself but talk about how you are going to help your readers.
Think about what you would expect when you read the ‘About Me’ page of a fellow blogger. You can also read the ‘About Me’ page of a few bloggers you follow. There are no strict rules, but keep it personal, unique, and make sure to put yourself in the shoes of your reader.
This page shouldn't be a post. It should be published as a page inside Word Press with a link on the navigation bar of your blog.?People should be able to reach your ‘About Me’ page from any page of your blog, and it is essential to build a strong personal brand.
After you publish your ‘About Me’ page, publish your first post. There are no rules or guidelines on it should be. It could be a welcome post for new users, or you can dive right into some value creation.
Step no. 7. Install Google Analytics and configure search console
Web analytics tools were not easy to purchase and implement before the release of Google Analytics. When Google Analytics launched, it gave the power of enterprise web analytics to every blogger and website owner.
Sign up for a free account at Google Analytics. You need a Google account to sign up, and it only takes a few minutes. Once you have signed up, you will get a javascript code, which you have to deploy on all the pages of your website.
In a previous section, I listed out a bunch of free plugins for your blog. You can either add your analytics account code to the ‘All in One SEO Pack’ plugin and let it do the job of deploying the javascript code for you, or you can take the code and add it on the CSS & Javascript toolbox so that all the pages of your blog are tracked.
Once you install Google Analytics,?you will be able to track the daily number of users, sessions, and page views of your blog. You will also be able to track the source of this traffic. The primary sources of traffic will be direct, social media, and search engines. Search engine traffic can be from paid search or organic search.
The next thing you might have to do before you start building traffic is to configure the search console. The search console gives you essential data and insights about how your website is performing in Google Search. You will be able to see the keywords that people search for when they come to your site.
Once you have all the above in place, the next step is to start building your traffic sources.
Step no. 8. Build your social media presence
?The initial set of visitors to your blog will mostly come from social media. If you have a few years of work experience, I'm sure that you have hundreds of Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections, if not thousands.
Start sharing your articles on these channels and the initial trickle of traffic will start to flow. You will be able to see the traffic in your Google Analytics dashboard, and you will have your initial motivation.
Apart from optimising and frequently posting on your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can also start maintaining a Facebook group. Every time I publish a new post, I share it on my group, and I get thousands of visitors. I also get ideas for new posts by running polls and asking open-ended questions on my group.
?Step no. 9. Have a good SEO strategy
?When you are getting started as a blogger, it is essential to have a good SEO strategy. Search engines send you free and high-quality targeted traffic, which you shouldn't miss. But don't worry, you don't need anything too technical to have a good SEO strategy.
What you should be focussing on is researching the demand for various keywords related to your niche. After keyword research, you should publish articles to fulfil the request of those keywords that people are searching for.
You need not worry about your SEO and keyword strategy for the first ten articles that you publish on your blog. After ten articles, as long as you have posted something that people want to learn about, you will start getting some search traffic, even if you haven't had an SEO strategy for your blog.
You will be able to see keywords that people are searching for and arrive at your blog from the?Google Search Console.
?You will also be able to see on your Google Analytics dashboard that you are getting some visitors, which are tagged with the source as search engines. This can be seen under the ‘Acquisition’ tab.
These keywords will give you an idea about what people are searching for, and you can write more articles based on the findings.
The most important thing with blogging is to get started and get that momentum going. Once you have that flow of regular writing and a habit of publishing posts, you will be motivated to learn more.
?Step no. 10. Build your email list
Email marketing?is an essential part of digital marketing and blogging. It is one of the most reliable ways to reach out to an audience without having to go through a middle-man.
You see, when you have a huge Facebook fan page with millions of "Likes," it might look like you are building an excellent distribution asset. But the reality is that you do not control the distribution. Facebook does. Its users are not your users. They signed up with their email on Facebook. Your "Likes" just hit the ‘Like’ button - they did not give you their email.
Earlier, Facebook used to give brands and pages a lot of organic reach who were able to reach out to a significant portion of their audience by posting an
update on their Facebook Wall. But lately, the company has changed its algorithm, to show more ads on the news feed and fewer posts from brands that have pages and followers.
Since brands did not own the email list of their audience, they were not able to break through Facebook's barrier to reach their users. Building a massive following on social networks is nice, but they can never be a replacement for an email list.
With emails, there is no one between you and your audience. Even though a small percentage of your emails might end up in the spam folder, and some go to the ‘Promotions’ tab on Gmail, you will still be able to reach almost all your audience through an email broadcast.
I have mostly grown my blog using email marketing, and investment in email list building has given me the most returns.
The first step to getting started with email marketing is to have a lead magnet. What is a lead magnet? You see, people like to read content on your blog for free. But they will leave your blog and never come back. To encourage your audience to share their email ID, you need to give them something of value - an ethical bribe.
A lead magnet is a content upgrade for your blog's audience — something of value that motivates them to give you their email ID.
Lead magnets can be videos, eBooks, an email course, access to a report or a tool, a free worksheet or a calculator. You have to learn what your audience would want and value in your niche and develop a lead magnet. Once you have your lead magnet, get a premium Word Press plugin like?OptinChat.com?or?OptinMonster.com?to start collecting email IDs.
OptinChat uses an AI chat module to talk to your visitors, get their email IDs, and deliver the lead magnet. OptinMonster uses exit popups that interrupt the user when they are exiting the website. Both these plugins help you collect emails from your visitors.
You will be able to convert two to five per cent of your visitors into email subscribers. If you get?1,000 visitors a day, you will be able to convert 20 visitors into email subscribers at the least. This will help you grow an email list of?600 people within a month and 7,200 people within a year.
Whenever you publish a new post, email all your subscribers - they will visit the website, and they might link back to it or share it with others on social media. This will help you bring a new set of audiences into your blog, and some of them might become your email subscribers.
?Step no. 11. Create multiple revenue channels for your blog
This is the most important step in your blogging journey. And making revenue and profits could be the only reason we started blogging in the first place.
Many bloggers think that they can make money from their blog using display ads (Google AdSense). Unfortunately, display ads are no longer a viable way to monetise the traffic that you get.
Internet users have developed ad-blindness, and many popup blockers block ads, meaning most people never see them. Display ads pay the lowest revenue per visitor to your blog, and it is not going to be worth your time in creating content for your blog in the first place.
It is crucial to have a revenue strategy for your blog because even if you are not investing money into your blog, you are investing time in creating content, and that needs to be monetised. If you cannot monetise your blog, you will not be able to fund your content creation, and you will not be able to grow your blog.
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