Blogging is an income generating activity and many people have successfully established their online businesses in the industry.
I have been a full-time blogger for the past couple of years and to be quite frank with you, it’s not just about the income. The freedom and time to spend with family or travel the world and connect with awesome people are just some of the attractions of becoming a successful blogger.
But it isn’t that easy to create a profitable blogging business. Blogging is as hard as any other business. Don’t let someone talk you into deception. However, there are simple steps to take to build the business up to a point where you can rely on it for life. Let’s examine some of these tips:
1 – Invest in yourself
The first thing you must know here is that blogging is about what you know. You can’t blog better than the value in you.
It’s not just about the blogging scripts and tools you use. Everyone can buy the best items and put up an attractive blog. But what’s the point if that blog doesn’t get read?
Investing in yourself means acquiring the knowledge needed to make you a better blogger. While it’s obvious the Internet has a lot of free training resources, this is just going to make you an average blogger in my humble opinion.
But if you want to see exceptional results as you grow a sustainable business, you have to invest in premium training programs and courses, join mastermind groups, attend offline events, connect with other successful bloggers, etc.
2 – Get professional tools
You must understand that in this business, if you get the wrong tools, you get the wrong results. While many free tools like WordPress.org are good enough just to lay the foundation, you cannot depend on freebies your entire blogging life. You must upgrade for better results.
WordPress default installation for instance comes with a host of free themes and plugins. But a conscious blogger who wants to see progressive growth will quit the free world.
Fortunately, write on this blog, you don’t have to browse away. InkHive has an incredible collection of Free and Premium themes.
What I found amazing with InkHive is that they have free versions for all their premium themes. This allows you to test out their collections before coming to a premium decision. If you don’t find what you want from their collection, contact them for custom design.
It’s not just about the theme and plugins. One aspect of your online business is web hosting. This is where a lot of people go wrong and completely kill their online businesses with some cheap and crappy web hosting services.
If you want to be successful in blogging, you must be ready to invest in it and treat it as a business. I switched from low-life web hosting some years back to a first class managed WordPress Hosting and my business has since then been given a luxurious lift.
3 – Be consistent in blogging
When you see bloggers who are successful, you will find out that they ain’t people who are motivated, but have consistency in their motivation.
In blogging, building a responsive marketplace is hard. Sustaining the marketplace is hard. It demands a consistency of purpose and of action over a long period of time.
Consistency is a major key point for creating a memorable blog. Have a content marketing strategy and stick to it. Pay considerable attention to the quality of your content, knowing that mediocrity has been relegated. Be consistent in delivering relevant, quality content in a timely manner.
It may take time to start seeing those excitement triggers from blogging. Many people give up so quickly if results delay. But assigning passive time to blogging also produces passive results. Full time blogging induces full time income.
4 – Don’t neglect SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is simply all you do to get traffic from search engines. This is a complex area in online marketing and it should not in anyway be treated with levity.
The reason is that search engine traffic converts the most. There are three main areas of SEO I want you to understand:
1 – Your content
If you want to drive traffic from Google, one of the most important factors is your content. Google is about quality content and its algorithm is developed to interpret signals from user engagement and understand whether or not you are publishing value.
You cannot manipulate your search ranking in anyway for long term results. That’s why I insist on the place in-depth content should occupy in your overall SEO strategies.
If your readers get satisfaction from your content, their action on your blog will send positive ranking alerts to Google for improved ranking.
Here is an article I’d recommend you read: 10 Reasons Why Content is Key for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
2 – Keyword Research
It is strongly advised you write for your readers. Optimizing for keyword doesn’t only increase search traffic. It also helps create content that identifies and answers search intent.
Keyword optimization has greatly evolved recent times. Gone are the days of spreading them all over in an effort to rank on SERP. Rather than stuffing, use related keywords and semantic phrases. See this article for more on LSI
I have an article on Semantic SEO. This will greatly help you understand what it is and how it can boost your search rankings.
3 – Relevant backlinks
Keyword research and creating SEO friendly content fall within On Page SEO. Building backlinks to your blog is the main Off Page SEO activity and there are different ways to carry that out.
While this post isn’t about how to create backlinks for seo, I’m going to briefly list some of the things you should do to create or earn these inbound links:
- Submit guest posts on relevant blogs
- Comment on relevant articles
- Create and publish link-worthy articles
- Buy backlinks from SEO agencies (At your own peril)
- Create and maintain healthy relationships with other bloggers, etc.
Wrapping up
Creating a profitable blogging business isn’t an activity for the lazy folks. You’ve got to work hard and smart. But the result is worth putting in the required amount of energy.