Things to consider before starting a blogging career. The pros and cons of becoming a professional blogger and everything that implies to make a living with your website.
So, you are a writer! That’s amazing. You have a particular skill in expressing your thoughts with some creative words. But starting a blog may not be that easier.
Whether you are interested in starting a blog to make money online or is just a way to express your thoughts and share your knowledge, launching a blog may be a difficult task for beginners. When you are eager to lead a successful blog, is important to learn a few key concepts before you commit to changing your career.
However, before we discuss those important factors, let’s see why you should start a blog.
Why a blogging career is a great choice?
Well, every writer has his/her own reason to launch a blog online. Maybe you are a busy mom who wants to share many humorous stories about kids. Some people consider blogging an essential element of their business promotion strategy. And a few others want to make money by writing.
Depending upon why you wish to start blogging, there can be many types of blogs. A few help in providing a creative outlet on a certain theme, contribute to expanding your online reach and many others help to build a brand reputation online.
Those who are interested in making money blogging have various options to monetize a blog, which converts a writing hobby into an online business with great potential returns.
One of the most common methods to make money with a blogging career is the income from displaying advertising networks such as AdSense, Mediavine, Ezoic, and others.
Before we move ahead, is important to mention that not all blogs can generate considerable income online. There are millions of blogs, out of which only a few hundred are generating revenue.
To become a professional blogger and make a career out of blogging, you need to learn the basics of SEO, and marketing tactics and anticipate trending topics.
Arm yourself with patience and self-motivation, be one step ahead of your competition, and most importantly, share quality content, give the people complete information, or at least a fraction of it, and pack the rest in a paid product ( no matter how you want to sell your knowledge, give the people value for what they pay or for their time spend on your blog).
Bellow, I listed a few pros and cons of blogging, things that you might want to consider before you decide to become a full-time blogger:
Pros:
- Blogging can help you connect with like-minded people
- Once set up professionally, you can make a few thousand a month with your blog from the comfort of your home.
- A blog career gives you the freedom to work whenever you want and as much as you want from anywhere in the world
- Blogging opens multiple opportunities to make a living doing what you love
- Blogging allows you to expand your creativity in many ways
- The ability to earn more than a regular job
- Build a large audience that will trust you and will buy your products
- Blogging is a form to share information, which can impact lives
- Once established, you can develop a physical or digital product with the potential to sell millions. You need to network with key people to reach astronomical sales
Cons:
- A good blog needs regular updates, more time, and more effort.
- You have to prepare for unexpected technical issues.
- You got to take care of your own taxes if you choose to become self-employed
- Blogging takes lots of time and more hours than a regular job.
- A blogging career means you won’t have a steady income.
- You need to invest money to promote your blog to make it successful.
- A blogging career requires continuous training; you have to keep up with the technology and learn new techniques.
- When you become a blogger, you tend to isolate your workspace to create excellent content, and often family and the people close to you might not understand what a blog involves. Loneliness and sleepless nights can have a major impact on a blogger’s mental health
- You need to manage your finances wisely, pension scheme, holiday savings, personal health insurance, everything has to be considered when becoming self-employed
How to start a blog business?
Whether you’re a newbie or you know already everything about blogging, you have two options to begin your blog business.
The first one is to buy an established blog from Flippa, a website that already has a good reputation and decent traffic, and the second option is to start a blog from scratch.
Those who are going to launch a blog for the first time might be a little confused about how to proceed with this. Well, the process is quite easier; anyone can follow it with ease. Below I have listed a few simple steps that you should consider:
Step 1: Find your niche
The very first step for designing a blog is to identify your niche. Make sure you have enough knowledge about the selected topic and that it connects to the interests of your target audience as well. You can define the name and domain of your blog, depending on the target niche.
Before you decide to start a blog, you have to figure out how you will monetize it, what will be the main source of income, AdSense, Mediavine, affiliate marketing, banner advertising, sponsored posts, or reviews.
Of course, you can use a combination of all the tools listed above, but still, you have to write down a few companies that you already use their products or you have a passion for being an ambassador and representing that brand.
In short, you can buy a few domain names easy to remember and have them locked at your domain provider, this will give you plenty of time to make your blogging business plan and choose the domain that’s most suitable for your brand.
Once your blog goes live, you can redirect the other domains to your actual website( by doing so, you will gain new visitors and keep the domains for future projects).
My favorite domain provider is Namecheap, where you can buy domains for relatively a few quid, is reliable and has excellent customer service.
Step 2: Find your host
To launch your blog, you need to host it somewhere. A newbie blogger will start their blogging career with a third-party platform such as Wix, WordPress.com, or Weebly, which does not require web design or coding skills.
The downside of these platforms is that you haven’t got 100% control over your website. You can be locked out of your dashboard at any time if you breach the T&C without even knowing what you did wrong. Even worse is that your entire website can be deleted, and all your hard work will vanish.
If you want to turn your blog into a full-time income, you need to self-host it, which means you buy your domain name and choose a hosting plan. Usually, some hosting providers will offer a free domain if you purchase a hosting plan.
The basic WordPress hosting starts at $4.95 a month on DreamHost, which gives you plenty of storage space and unlimited visitors and comes with free SSL certificate and pre-installed WordPress, the perfect tools to get your website live in a matter of minutes.
If you are not keen to host your blog at DreamHost, there are many other top hosting providers, such as:
- BlueHost
- HostGator
- iPage
- Liquid Web
- SiteGround
Before you choose your hosting provider, research and compare prices and what they offer. A trustworthy and affordable hosting provider should have top-notch customer service and be ready to deal with any problems you might have set up your blog.
Step 3: Create your blog
Once you have your domain and hosting, you need to give an attractive look to your website. Is time to choose a responsive WordPress theme with features that allows you to maximize the potential earnings of your blog.
Depends on what services you want to offer on your blog. Perhaps you want to integrate membership and sell online courses but want your blog theme to look attractive and load fast.
My advice is to buy a WordPress theme that has great reviews, is up-to-date, and has prompt customer service.
Step 4: Start writing
It is time to write your first blog post and publish it online. The first articles of your blog might not get many views, and it is acceptable if the content is not one of the best. You will improve and learn along the way.
If you want to start writing like a pro, make a list with 50 blog topics and post at least twice a week. Some bloggers hire people to write SEO articles for their blogs, and you can do the same to speed up the path to your blogging career. Hire writers and freelancers from Fiverr while you focus on marketing and networking with other professional bloggers.
Step5. Display a newsletter
As soon as you post on your blog, you have to display a newsletter to build your email list from day one. An email list is a powerful tool that every blogger should make a priority. Subscribers are the first to read your blogs and support your blogging business. Make sure to offer a reward, some kind freebie to motivate them to subscribe to your newsletter.
Once your email list exceeds 1000, you can include promotional products in every newsletter.
MailMunch is the easiest tool to build an attractive newsletter that motivates people to subscribe.
Step6. Monetize your blog
There are endless methods to monetize your blog. One of the most popular ways to earn a little income is by displaying ads on your sidebar and in the content of your articles.
Google AdSense is the first choice to make money blogging. Once your blog reaches 25K monthly visitors, you can apply for Mediavine, where you will get paid for CPM.
Mediavine pays eight times more than AdSense per thousand visitors, and you can include videos, a cool feature that will boost your monthly income.
Apart from displaying ads on your blog, you can join affiliate networks such as Commission Junction, ShareASale, Awin, and many others (check here the highest-paying affiliate programs). Write eBooks and sell on your blog with SendOwl (with SendOwl you can sell digital products directly on your blog and social media) Â Amazon Kindle, Payhip, Apple store, eBay, and Fiverr.
Create a course to teach people something. Monetize your knowledge by selling online courses with a landing page on social media, Pinterest, and YouTube, or publish directly on Udemy, Teachable.
Create digital products, such as printable photos and sketches, by using Canva, the most reliable software to come up with incredible designs for social media also and brilliant Pinterest Pins( I’m currently using the Cava Pro, and honestly, it gives you access to life-changing tool to create fantastic designs that will boost your blog in so many ways.
Templates for Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest
Lightroom presets for social media
Music (upload your music on Spotify, SoundCloud, or YouTube)
Offer your services to take over social media for brands – become a virtual assistant
Join blogger networks to get paid sponsored posts for your website. Here is a list of the best platforms to get paid sponsored posts for your blog:
Intellifluence
BloggersRequired
GetBlogged
Fiver
Blog Dash
Things to consider before starting a blogging career:
Here we are going to talk about important things that you need to consider while starting a career as a blogger:
- Blogging demands continuous efforts
You are misguided if you think a blog will provide returns in just one day. Blogging requires time, energy, and effort to write, edit, rewrite, research, and source relevant images for the blog. Moreover, your work does not end with publishing your article online; you must work hard to capture the audience’s attention.
Be prepared to follow the latest marketing strategies to divert traffic toward your niche.
- Be careful while choosing your niche
There are millions of blogs online, and all of them are making efforts to rise higher. In this scenario, you have to work hard, be motivated, and connect with other bloggers. Studies reveal that to succeed, bloggers need to pick the most effective niche.
First of all, you must have the desired level of knowledge about your niche so that you can write quality content.
Self-motivation is a must, as well as creativity to diversify and find a gap in the market.
Social network is important
Wise people say not to put all the eggs in one basket, and rightly, social media should merge together with your blog. Don’t rely entirely on your blog; you have to post regularly on social media and grow your channels to become an authority among bloggers.
Pinterest is the number one platform for bloggers to drive traffic to their websites and convert affiliate links into sales. I know bloggers who receive 80% of their blog traffic from Pinterest. You see, a gold mine is waiting for you to be explored, and take advantage of this opportunity to build your blogging career.
To achieve great results on Pinterest, you can hire a VA, Pin manually, and also use a powerful tool like Tailwind. Tailwind is an official partner with Pinterest and Instagram, offering options to schedule Pins and Instagram posts anytime.
The beautiful part of Tailwind is that it enables you to schedule multiple Pins, and the marketing tool does the job for you while you sleep, which gives you more freedom to focus on creating excellent content.
Conclusion
A blog career has been misunderstood by many people and is usually associated with influencers, while not many people can become professional blogger since you need to be creative and have Tech, SEO, and marketing knowledge, while an influencer uses primarily social media to share photos and videos.
Like any other business, if you take it seriously, have a business plan, invest time, and network with the right people, you will most likely be successful before you know it.
I’d love to know about your blogging career and how long it took you to become a full-time blogger. Keep it professional and stay motivated toward your blogging career!
