Linda Nil
Tired of your 9 am – 6 pm job? Tired to explaining yourself to interviewers and recruiting companies’ consultants to decide for your future and income? How come your dreams and family’s destiny can be someone else’s hands?
You studied hard, got your degree and diploma but still you have to prove yourself and handle all these *Byzantine games in the office to stay in the game and you really tired of this. Well, we are actually living in a lucky times, Internet invented, we have social media and we are globally connected closer now like never happened before. Yes, internet is here since mid 90’s and we don’t have to explain ourselves anymore to people less educated, less talented, less intelligent or intellectual than ourselves to make money and make a living!
Easy Steps to Start Making Money Online with Starting a Blog
But how? Where I can start, what I need to do first? I don’t want to make mistake to start wrong very at the beginning.
You are at the right place. I do create content for internet since mid 90’s professionally and make my living on internet since early 2000’s. As long as you are serious about your desire to start a blog and make money, if you can be consistent but smart and realistic for your goals, let’s get started…
10 Easy Steps to Start a Blog
1 – Find a Topic to Write About & Start with What You Know
2 – Pick Your Domain Name / Blog’s Name
3 – Find a Hosting Provider & Setup Your Host
4 – Decide for Your Blogging Platform
5 – Choose a Theme / Template & Design Your Blog
6 – Create Your Essential Pages (About, Contact, Shop, Etc.)
7 – Develop Your Content Strategy
8 – Commit to a Regular Publishing Schedule
9 – Photos, Images and Design Elements to Make Your Blog Stand Out
10 – Publish and Promote Your Blog & Posts
First of all, yes, if you just want to test the waters and you don’t want to spend anything or have no budget you can start to blogging with free of charge, with zero dollar! There are free blog platforms. But If you are serious about blogging and if you think you can be consistent on this, make a $75 to $200 budget, then you can start professionally. How? $10/15 for domain purchasing, around $60 for hosting services yearly and $100 for affordable web design fee (from fiverr.com you can find somebody to design with this kind of rates), you can start with all package. Migrating from free service to paid service will not be easy, and always if you want to be taken serious show your effort and look professional.
Okay if you feel better now, you can dive into the “how to start a blog” world.
Domain name registration prices on GoDaddy.com and NameCheap.com.
Hosting prices at the GoDaddy.com.
Hosting prices at the NameCheap.com.
1 – Find a Topic to Write About & Start with What You Know
If you know a lot about one subject or you really passionate about one subject then you should start with that subject. If you are into photography, knitting, gardening, raising a child, decoration? Start with that subject.
If you start a blog about travelling but you are not travelling or not enough time to travel then drop that idea.
Find a niche around those subject you know or you are passionate about.
If you pick a generic topic, it’s not that easy to differentiate yourself in thousands of other bloggers. But if you settle in a niche topic you can make a difference and can bring good amount of traffic and start to make money!
Exp 1: If you decide to write about ‘parenting’, this is a generic topic but choosing to write about ‘hyperactive child parenting’ is a niche topic.
Exp 2: If you decide to write about ‘plants’, this is a generic topic. But if you decide to write about ‘peony flower’ this is a niche subject.
A real life example, a blog about succulents (a simple green plants) is making 200k a year!
2 – Pick Your Domain Name / Blog’s Name
Domain name picking is important. You should pick something easy to pronounce, memorable and not too long, short, even you can pick something brandable. Your domain name can make you have a store on a best avenue or make you on the back streets. Of course content still is the king, but domain name is still important too. GoDaddy.com, NameCheap.com, NetworkSolutions.com, Register.com just a few domain name providers. You can pick one of them to purchase your domain name.
3 – Find a Hosting Provider & Setup Your Host
Choosing hosting company is important. What kind of products and service you are getting for your money is important and the technical support they are providing it. GoDaddy, NameCheap, Brinkster, BlueHost, HostGator, etc. find something you would like to work with.
4 – Decide for Your Blogging Platform
You can either can choose a free or paid platforms like Blogger.com, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Joomla.com, Tumblr.com, Medium.com, Ghost.org, Weebly.com, LiveJournal.com, Jekyllrb.com, Contentful.com, Hubpages.com, etc.
One of them will work for you. But just you need to remember that, if your goal is to make money from your blog, some of them not gives permission to post ads. So you need to be sure that the platform you are choosing is available to post, use advertisements like AdSense.
5 – Choose a Theme / Template & Design Your Blog
If you are not going to hire a professional web designer then start to design your blog, you can pick free template or premium ones and start to build something you can post content in it.
6 – Create Your Essential Pages (About, Contact, Shop, Etc.)
Every blog has to have some essential pages as every websites, like about, contact pages etc. Start to create your blog with these essential pages.
7 – Develop Your Content Strategy
This is a long road, a really long one. Blogging is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
Be realistic for your subject and niche. When you come to what you realistically can create time and time again throughout the time you are blogging, you need to understand that what it’s going to take. You need to be realistic with something to do that extended period of time.
If you go down the path of specific niche is this something that you actually want to do. Is this something you want to do 5 years from now? You need to enjoy the process of creating that content. You need to enjoy the fact that you’re creating content. Never walk away from your creativity and create awesome content.
And an important notice, don’t copy other bloggers, but get inspired from successful bloggers.
8 – Commit to a Regular Publishing Schedule
Make plans about your weekly posting. Better to post 1 to 3 times a week. That’s the rule and everyone knows now. Making money on your blog will take time. If you create a great content and committed to writing in a schedule, you will find the success somewhere on the road. Give yourself a 6 months to see small dollars in your ad account. And start to see how everything will be like a snowball in 1-2 years; sure if you still consistent to write good amount of good content.
9 – Photos, Images and Design Elements to Make Your Blog Stand Out
You can take your own photos which is the best way, you can buy photos from stock agencies or use from free stock agencies like Pexels or Pixabay, or paid ones like iStockPhoto, ShutterStock, AadobeStock.
10 – Publish and Promote Your Blog & Posts
Don’t get burned out and don’t be impatient! You want to see everything is happening over a night. No, It doesn’t works that way. For having a successful money making blog will take time.
When you start to see some good amount of organic traffic (let’s say 40-50 unique visitors daily after a few mounts being online) from search engines like Google (Google dominates 90 percent of internet traffic, it means we play within the rules of Google. Google is a landscape between Google, Google Images and YouTube.), Yahoo, MSN, Bing, Yandex. Then you can apply for AdSense to start using advertisement on your blog and start to make money finally. For every blog you own you have to start over in the new rules of AdSense. You can apply for the Amazon Affiliate program as well. There are some other advertisement companies out there like Commission Junction, but either they are not effective as AdSense or they are not easily accepting lower traffic websites.
If you keep continue to create valuable good content and can have good amount of daily organic traffic (depends on your subject/niche daily 100 unique visitors and up) can make for you some good regular monthly income.
*Byzantine by Merriam-Webster: A: Of, relating to, or characterized by a devious and usually surreptitious manner of operation a Byzantine power struggle. B: Intricately involved: Labyrinthine rules of Byzantine complexity.
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Linda Nil, was born and raised in Istanbul. She graduated from Istanbul University, studied Anthropology. In California State University studied English and communication.
She started to work as a correspondent, editor, producer and presenter for major media companies, was in the creator team for the biggest content provider company in Turkey in early 00’s.
She moved to New York City in mid 00’s, found New York Design Studio, started and continue to help hundreds of small and big companies and people for their needs being in the digital world.