What is a blog?
A successful blog is an online recourse where publishers (you) are able to publish information that will resolve problems for their readers. Having the answer to someone’s questions and being able to resolve their issues tend to be the most profitable blogs. Examples include but not limited to, quick and delicious recipes, how to organize a busy household, DIY crafts or free/paid patterns and children hacks. Blogs often include pictures, videos and other media sources that will help engage the reader and further inform them of the information.
Before starting your new blog:
If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read my other post about setting your goals and doing some planning to prepare for your new blog. If you have struggled with setting goals or planning any blog posts, DONT STRESS. Goals are forever changing and something that we should reflect on often. Try and allocate just a couple of hours to making some dot points. Working towards any kind of goal is easier than working towards nothing at all. Hopefully now, you have been able spend some time setting your goals of creating a new blog. With all that work complete; its time to create your new blog!
Starting your Blog with these steps: (A very basic overview)
1. Choose your Niche
When you start your new blog you will want a common theme. To keep it short and sweet here, choose a topic you want to focus on. Some of the most common and profitable niches at the moment are:
- Personal finance and making money online
- Health and fitness
- Foodie reviews and Recipes
- Travel
- Fashion and Beauty
- Parenting
- DIY arts and crafts
- Lifestyle
In no particular order – these niches are making money at the moment. They are very broad and can be channeled in to focus on a more specific niche. For example you may choose to focus on a Travel niche but your blog is about reviewing fancy hotels only.
You don’t need to spend too much time worrying about your niche. As you start to write and create content you will find your niche. Just make sure it is something you have an interest in. Remember, it can take up to 12 – 18 months before your blog may become profitable. You don’t want to spend the next 12 months writing about something you hate.
Deciding on a niche will also help if you want to do affiliate marketing and you will find that companies are more likely to work with blogs that suit their target market.
Ask yourself these questions to help define your niche:
- Do you do something simple every day that seems amazing to some of your friends / family? (How you manage to wake up at 5am each day without complaining? How your house is so clean with 2 kids?)
- What are your interests?
- What do you talk about most with friends / family?
- Do you find yourself good at something? (Art and Craft, Saving money, Booking amazing holidays)
- If you could quit your job tomorrow, what would you love to go do?
Once you come up with a niche its time to choose your hosting platform.
2. Domain, Blogging platform and Hosting
Domain:
A domain name is ultimately going to be the name your site. Once again, don’t spend too much time trying to figure out your domain name.
Having a name that suits your blog is going to be better than something totally unrelated, but if you still haven’t mastered your niche you can always change your domain name later on. Some tips for choosing a domain name include:
- Something that will be EASY to remember
- Easy and normal spelling
- All lowercase letters
- No numbers
- Short and sweet
- Relatable to your site.
I still haven’t mastered my domain name so I decided to use my name with the same spelling as my Instagram handle. Its not exactly perfect or easy to spell, but I have my following on Instagram and Pinterest and have a plan to change my domain in the near future.
Blogging Platform:
A blogging platform is the service that you will create your blog on. I am using WordPress.org which yes, is very different to WordPress.com. Please don’t get these mixed up.
WordPress comes with heaps of free themes and Plugins to make creating your site super easy. There are also hundreds of videos on YouTube showing how to maximize your site.
Hosting:
IMPORTANT NOTE: You will want to start your blog on a SELF HOSTED blogging platform. I know it can be convincing to start your blog on a free site until you get the hang of things and feel more confident. But for the little amount of money you will pay for the first 12 months you are best off starting with a self hosted platform.
The two biggest points of starting with a self hosted platform is:
- You own and control your blog
- You cannot make money with a free blog.
The largest community of bloggers work through Bluehost. Bluehost is affordable, it signs you up with WordPress for free and also provides you with a domain name for free for the first 12 months. So far, I have spent around $75.00 AUS for an annual subscription. This is a small expense for the opportunity to make a lot more money through ads and affiliation.
3. Important Pages for your Blog
Before we get into the exciting part of generating and starting your new blog, it is important to make sure your new Blog site is up to scratch. If you are wanting to make money off your blog or collect data with google Analytics, you must disclose how you are collecting peoples data and what is done with it.
Some people say it is not necessary to have these pages from the beginning but if you take the time to set it up now you know its done and you wont be distracted from writing and creating in the future.
Three legal points you should have on your Blog include:
- Privacy Policy
- This will describe how you collect, disclose, manage and use any readers data. You may not think you are collecting data but if you are using plugins like Google Analytics, you are collecting data.
- Disclaimer
- This is to protect you from any lawsuits and explain that any information you have handed out should not be relied on. This will need to be tailored to your blog. You need to outline that you cannot be legally responsible for anything you post. For example: If your blog is about food, you should not be taking responsibility for some ones nutritional needs.
- Terms and conditions
- Terms and conditions let people know what they should expect from your site. You can outline your copyright information here and your commenting and community standards.
There are many sites that can help you write these pages so they are legally bound. I would highly recommend spending some time on getting these pages right from the beginning.
4. Content
The most important part when you start your blog! The traffic driving success pages that actually make your blog a BLOG!
When writing a blog post, it is important to keep a few points in mind so that you can encourage readers to come back for more! A pretty page and one hundred blog posts wont encourage a reader to come back or to sign up to your newsletter. A helpful, inspiring or problem solving post will make someone want to come back and read about how to fix their next problem. This is where your target market comes in. Narrowing down your target market will help you lay out your blog posts.
For example: Your blog may be about Travel. Is your audience:
- International travelers looking for unique activities
- National travelers looking for the best Pub feed
- People who have never left their home country
- People who have never caught a plane before
- How to travel on a budget
It can be easy to say you have a travel blog but defining who you are writing for will help structure your posts and your future inspiration for your blog. Just remember, whoever it is your writing for, solve their problems and they will want to come back for more.
It is always a good practice to do some research before writing your blog posts. You want to find what people are searching for to ensure people make it to your site. If you just start writing about random topics that come to your mind, you could potentially be wasting a lot of time.
Creating a content calendar is so helpful and ensuring that you dedicate some time each week to forward planning of your posts will benefit you and your blog in the future.
5. Creating your first blog post
Now that you have chosen your niche, set up your platform, created the necessary pages and planned some content it is time to start your first blog post! If you have followed my previous blog posts about setting goals and planning your posts remember to go back and narrow in on these points and spend some time PLANNING. Planning is the key to a successful blog.
As we have touched on earlier, successful blogs tend to resolve peoples problems. Before you start writing a blog, ask yourself what you can give your reader to help them. Whether it be a tutorial, a quick recipe or a life hack. The more you can help someone the more likely they are to sign up to your newsletter or come back to your blog.
Your first blog post does not need to be an “about you” post. You will have an “About Me” page on your site where you can introduce yourself. Jump right into producing quality content! Feel confident in yourself.
Again, don’t feel discouraged by how many blogs are already out there and what they have spoken about. Being true to yourself and telling a story in your words is not the same as anyone else. There are people out there waiting to hear from YOU!
Conclusion:
It is possible to set up a blogging platform and put some pretty stuff on their and get your site live within a week. But to be successful and attract your readers back and generate good affiliate contracts you will want to spend some time making your site look legit. Depending on how much time you have this could well only take a week but don’t feel pressured or letdown if it takes you up to a month before publishing your site.
It is very well possible to go Live with just one blog post and promote that post and start generating traffic. But if a reader decides to look further into your site and sees nothing else there they may see your site as a new site and that you are newbie to the blogging world.
I would recommend having minimum 5 blog posts on your site when going Live. If you are choosing to have more than one niche e.g. Travel and Food or Fashion and Beauty I would aim for up to 10 blog posts.
