How do you start a blog for free and turn a profit?
This blog post outlines a step-by-step process of setting up a successful blog at a low cost and managing to turn a profit.
You first need to set out the ways in which your blog can go online.
To get started with blogging, you will need to look into the following:
- A domain name: what to search in order to find your blog.
- A hosting plan: the web server which stores blog data.
- A blogging platform: platforms such as WordPress.org, Squarespace, Wix, Medium, Tumblr and Gator offer great free blogging templates.
Choosing a domain name: what constitutes a good domain name?
- Your blog and website name need to be relevant to your specific niche, making your audience quickly understand the topics that are covered in your blog.
- Straightforward, brandable URLs can contribute to users remembering your blog name. It is helpful to avoid hyphens and numbers which are difficult for your audience to remember.
- Avoid special characters like numbers and hyphens as they make your domain name much less memorable.
Using services such as Instant Domain Search are useful in checking the availability of domains. You type in your desired domain name into the search bar, and the service lets you know whether it is available for you to use.
Name generator tools such as Lean Domain Search and Name Station can be very useful for starting a successful blog. All you need to do is search terms that are relevant to your blog’s niche, and these services work to generate names for you.
Generally, WordPress.org is the best place to start a blog, as it is an easy-to-use, free platform. Its themes and plugins make it easier to change the look and function of your blog without requiring any technical knowledge of coding.
The #1 recommended web host is Bluehost, as it is cheap ($2.79 per year) and has an array of features.
Generating content:
Before writing your first few blog posts, you should always craft your core pages accordingly.
Pages, unlike blog posts, aren’t published. They are core components of your website which are there from the start, and should at least include the following:
- About page: A short paragraph that gives visitors an overview and the overall vibe of what your blog is about.
- Contact page: A space to include links to your social media pages and email address where your audience can get in contact with you.
When choosing the niche of your blog, you should most importantly consider and assess your knowledge and expertise on the topics you wish to cover.
Think of your ideal audience and cater your content to them specifically. Tips and general help can make your blog more popular. Offer help, guidance and value to your specific niche, and always remember bringing a unique perspective to the field will help you build a successful blog. Create content that is original and stands out!
When it comes to making money through blogging, it proves to be a difficult task for most.
However, by following the right steps, your blog can become a very profitable business.
What are the most popular and profitable blog types in 2021?
Your niche is important as it helps to construct your own unique brand and your individual contribution to the industry. Picking a profitable niche category according to market factors is essential to drive up the popularity and success of your blog, and branding is essential to this!
Greater engagement with the content which you are releasing means you can go about blogging with much more of an ease. It means that you don’t need to delve into a lot of research beforehand, which can definitely work to your advantage when it comes to time management.
Your website should have a unique name which stands out and is relevant to your niche, and offer expertise on the domain.
What are some profitable niche categories for a blog?
Here are the types of blogs that make money in 2021:
Amongst the post popular niches for a blogging website that is successful and monetised nowadays include but aren’t limited to:
- Health and Fitness
- Lifestyle
- Food
- Business and Marketing
- Fashion
- Beauty
- Personal Finance
- Technology
- Gaming
- Travel
Why picking one niche is important for the success of your blog:
While some people have found success in blogging through a more scattered approach of covering several topics, choosing the correct niche for your blog is the most important step in the straightforward success of your blog in 2021.
In fact, it is the easiest way to build a loyal audience. Building trust with your audience through blogging makes it easier for you to then sell them products and services, whether they be your own, or ones that you recommend.
Sticking to one topic can bring success as users who are interested in a single blog post have a higher chance of being interested in the rest of your content.
You need to ask yourself: can I make money from this topic? Have other blogs with similar niches found monetisation opportunities?
Ways to make money from your blog can also come from companies who would be interested to pay for exposure to your audience.
It is generally best not to go with broad themes, so popular sub-niches are a great fit for successful blogs that make money. Remember: it is a lot easier for marketable niches to be monetised.
For example, if you want to devote your blog to the gaming niche, you should focus on specific types of gaming in order to narrow down your scope and gauge a clear understanding of your target audience. Instead of focusing on the entire gaming industry, try narrowing your scope down to specifics, such as MMORPGs, non-FPS shooters, first-person shooters, team sports simulators, platformers, real-time strategy.
- What type of content keeps a reader interested enough to stay on your blog?
Visit websites that your target audience tends to browse. Depending on your niche, these can include reviews, forums, and guides. See what these websites provide, and integrate their aspects in your blogging strategy.
How to Make Money Blogging in 2021:
Affiliate marketing
To successfully monetize your niche, you should follow a series of steps to move your audience down the sales funnel.
As one of the easiest and most effective ways to make money through blogging in 2021, affiliate marketing is a way in which products and services are provided to your blogging audience through tracking links. You are essentially being paid a commission every time a visitor purchases an advertiser’s product through the referral link on your blog.
Affiliate programmes are available through many services and products, across every industry and niche. A good way to get started with affiliate marketing is always by thinking about what products you already use that fit into your blog’s niche, and whether you would recommend them to your audience.
Platforms such as the following offer a wide variety of products for promotion:
- Commission Junction
- CAKE
- ShareASale
- Amazon
For bloggers who are just starting out and want to monetise their content, affiliate marketing is the best way to go about making money through blogging in 2021. While online ads oversaturate your website and allow you to make more money through more web traffic, affiliate marketing makes you money each time a user converts.
If you like a certain product, you can technically sell it on your blog with just a few clicks.
Generally, affiliate marketing can make you more money than online ads. Your blog’s unique niche comes into this. What matters most with affiliate marketing is the relevance of products advertised being matched to your audience’s engagement with your content.
Online ads
Online ads in the form of banners, buttons, text links and videos which are placed throughout your blog’s content and headings are easy to set up. However, they can sometimes interrupt a user’s experience and make your website look too busy.
A successful blog that makes money through online ads follows two main ways of turning a profit:
- Cost Per Click (CPC) and Pay Per Click (PPC), where revenue is ensured every time an ad is clicked on
- Cost per Mille (CPM) refers to setting up ads that pay blog owners a fixed amount based on the number of clicks
Implementing online ads on your blog can be made easier through ad networks. Ad networks analyse and offer the best ad suited to a visitor. These are beneficial to your blog, the network itself, as well as the merchants, as even larger numbers of blogs can be incorporated.
When setting up a blog and trying to make a profit, it is generally good practice to look for ad networks which specialise in niches. Possible ad networks that can be used in blogging are:
- Ezoic
- Google AdSense
- Carbon Ads
Most ad networks unfortunately require very large numbers of unique visitors per month, which does not bloggers who are just starting out. Ad networks also work in ways to drive up ad revenue, which can sometimes affect your blog’s ranking within search engines. Highly competitive keywords get lost within heavy ads, which leads to Google not ranking your blog very high.
Blogs also need to generate a significant amount of traffic before making money from online ads, as there needs to be approximately 50,000 or more monthly views within a page. This makes it harder for beginner bloggers to generate profit from online ads.
Online ads are less effective than affiliate marketing, as growing numbers of users have started using ad blocking software (approximately 30% of all website visitors), which limits the amount of people that can see the ads on your blog.
Your blog needs to not be cluttered and oversaturated by ads, as it makes the website less impactful, causing confusion to your audience. In short, everything that is on your blog needs to serve a purpose, like improving user experience.
The general rule of thumb you should remember is that less is more. If your search bar is underperforming, remove it. If any aspect of your blog does not benefit you, you should consider scrapping it.
Offering services
Even though it takes time and effort to make a business operate at full potential, it’s through experimentation that you test out which things work, until you get it right.
A lot of bloggers find money and success by offering services that are tied to their niche. Individual freelance bloggers manage to make a living by writing blog posts for other people, which is another creative way in which blogging can be successful and profitable.
Plugins
There are various cheap plugins that are used pretty broadly by bloggers, and there are also more specific ones that offer functions based on your niche.
Plugins such as PrettyLinks are helpful in managing your affiliate links, allowing you to create branded links and check how well they are performing on your site.
On top of advertising management plugins, there are heaps of cheap plugins related to page building, mailing lists, social media sharing, SEO, analytics, security and performance.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Techniques
Although getting good rankings on Google and other search engines is very hard, especially in 2021, it is definitely not impossible. Putting effort into optimisation will generate more traffic on your blog, and in turn, will help you make money.
You certainly do not need to be an expert in SEO, but learning the basics will get you far enough. It will be greatly beneficial for the success of your blog.
Make sure that your content is polished, of great quality and unique enough to stand out, while paying attention to your use of keywords – in the URL, in your meta description, H1 and title tags. Higher rankings means more traffic on your blog, which means that the ways you can make money through blogging become easier.
Free websites like KWFinder allow you to search for keywords (which are what users type into search engines) and assess their popularity rankings. Think of words that describe the topics you want to cover, then enter them into the box.
KWFinder then allows you to see how many people search for each keyword per month. A high ranking keyword, for example with thousands of monthly searches, will definitely work to your advantage.
To wrap up:
While the process of going through these steps is lengthy and takes time and effort, the result will be a profitable blog.
We hope this article has offered you plenty of ideas and helpful tips on how to make money from blogging in 2021.
