Who is this post for?
- Tired of your 9-5 corporate life and you are feeling trapped
- Create a second stream of income besides your regular job
- Want to live life on your own terms
- Want the flexibility to work from anywhere in the world
- and many more..
WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THIS GUIDE
Why is this lengthy Post?
Some Common Myths about Blogging (FAQ)
Blogging is Expensive
Blogging Requires a lot of Technical Knowledge
Strong English Writing Knowledge is required
Growing a Blog Takes a Lifetime
Once you see the initial results, the growth will be exponential.
Benefits of Starting a Blog
- Unlimited income potential
- Beginner Friendly
- Gaining your online presence
- Sharing your knowledge with the world in a meaningful way
- Building a network with likeminded people
Who am I and why am I writing this Guide?
How? That's what this article is all about.
How to start a Successful Blog and Make Money
Step 1: What is a Niche? How to find a Profitable Niche?
What should you write about in your Blog?
The short and one line answer for this is that Niche is the topic or subject of your blog.
How do you find a Profitable Niche for your blog?
You don't need to be an expert on a topic to start writing helpful topics. There is plenty of information available. All you have to do it read them, get an idea and write it in your own way. Any article which is well researched, which values the readers, will be liked by them in the long run.
Let me explain the example of 10 Best Dog Dry Foods, which I shared earlier.
You will read about it online from the different sources; let's say 5 or 10 top websites who have written about it and get the idea on how to select the best dog food, how to identify best dog foods, what makes them best, and so on. Collect as much information as possible and write about it in your language.
Niche Size;How broad the Niche Should be?
Let's say you want to create a website where you want to write about shoes. Now shoe itself is a vast topic where you will face a fierce competition as there are so many famous and established websites out there who are hard to compete with.
Instead of building your website on such broad topic, narrow it down...ask yourself...what type of shoe? Sports, Casual or Office?
If you have selected sports shoes...ask yourself "What type of sports shoes"...This process should go on until you find a very micro niche to write about.
In this particular example, running shoes can be a perfect micro-niche.
Action Plan for Step 1
- Come up with your own Micro Niche Ideas: Come up with a list of micro-niche ideas. Keep in mind that the focus of your blog should be on solving other's problems.
- Finalize Your Niche: Finalize your ultimate niche. Now you have to start building your website based on this niche.
- Start Researching more on your selected Niche: Do your content plan. Think about what you are going to write on your blog. Check what the problems people are facing in your niche and start addressing those through your article. I have explained more about it in Step 3.
Step 2: Setting Up a Blog
What is Blog? What is WordPress? How to Set up a blog on a Hosting Platform?
What is a Blog?
Is creating a Blog Necessary?
How Long will it take before you earn Money?
Select the Right domain
Sometimes you might also not get the domain name available that you want to register because it is no longer available or someone else has already booked it.
What is a blogging platform? How to select a Blogging Platform?
How to Set Up a Blog with WordPress?
Select a Hosting Service
Hosting services comes at a price, but it is a necessary price that you have to invest if you are serious about making money.
More Reasons to Select Bluehost
Select Your Hosting Plan
Already own a Domain Name outside Bluehost?
If you are not going ahead with 36 months plan, you will not get a free domain. You have to buy it separately within Bluehost or from another Domain registrar like Godaddy.
If you already have a domain purchased, you can use the option "Already Own a Domain" and move to the next step.
Domain Privacy
No matter wherever you are buying the domain form, make sure to opt for the "Domain Privacy". Whenever you are purchasing a domain, you have to give your complete address and contact information. This information is publicly available, and anyone can see that using websites like Whois info
Domain Privacy option will hide your address and contact information so that it doesn't become public, and you can maintain your privacy.
In the next screen, you have to complete your Account Details and Payments. Once this is done, your account is ready.
Setting up WordPress on Your Bluehost Account
Now that your Bluehost Account is ready, you can install WordPress and get started.
Once you install the WordPress, you will be given a username and password to access your WordPress Dashboard.
Inside WordPress: What You need to Know?
WordPress Dashboard is the area from where you will control your entire blog and website. So you must make yourself familiar with all the sections and menus of WordPress.
This section will give you a complete overview of all the menus of WordPress.
Post: Whenever you write a new article, you will have to come to this section. Using this section, you can create new posts, view, and make changes to your existing posts. As a blog owner and writer, you will be using this section more often than any other section.
Media: In this section, you will upload all the images and videos that you will use in articles. You can also upload documents, PDFs here.
Pages: As the name suggests, here you will create different pages that will give your visitors more information about your website. This includes About You, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, Contact Information, Terms and Condition Pages, etc.
Many of these pages are mandatory, and you must have it on your website for legal obligations. I will share more about this later in this guide.
Comments: Your readers will leave a lot of comments on your articles and share their opinions or thoughts. Using the comments section, you can review and moderate these comments.
The comments can be just compliments from the users or questions that they want to ask you. As a blogger, it should be your responsibility to respond to those comments and increase engagements.
Another reason why comments sections are essential is that people leave a lot of irrelevant spam comments. The comment section gives you the option to moderate and get rid of those comments.
Appearance: You will control your blog look and layout using the appearance section. How your blog looks like will depend on what changes you are making in the appearance section. The Appearance section will give you the option to select themes, create menus and widgets, and do a lot of other customization.
Keep reading as I will share more about this later.
Plugins: Plugins are software or tools that can add many new features and functionality to your website. For example, if you are looking for a simple feature like translating your article into multiple languages, plugins can do it for you.
Some of these plugins are essential, and it must be added to your blog. I will share a list of those plugins later in this guide.
Users: If multiple people are working for your blog then you can manage them using the user section.
You can create and add multiple users by creating user profiles. A user profile contains a user name, email address, title, and password. You can also assign a role to the users such as Editor, Administrator, Writer, etc.
Each of these roles will have their own access restrictions. For example, if your role is an administrator, you will see all the options that I have just explained above, such as Comments, Plugins, Appearance, etc. As a Writer, you might not see all those options or can not make any such changes.
By default, WordPress creates a user id by the name "admin" and give you an unrestricted role. This is the most common user id in WordPress, so I suggest you change it immediately to something else (create a new profile/user with administrator role) to prevent it from the hackers.
Tools: Tools section will allow you to export or import your blog data from other sources and vice versa. This will be required if you want to take your WordPress blog content to another platform and import your old or free blog data to WordPress.
If you are new to this whole blogging thing, you will not need to worry about this section.
Settings: WordPress Settings in another critical section in which you should familiarize yourself before anything. This section has a huge impact on many things of your blog. So I recommend you spend some time in understanding this.
There are two subsections within settings, which are super important. I will explain them one by one.
General Settings: General Settings will have all the basic data of your websites such as website Name, Description and others.
Site Title: This will be the name of your website. For example, for my website, this is Smart Affiliate Strategies. Anyone coming to my website will see this name.
Tagline: A brief description or blurb which describes your website. This is optional and it's completely fine if you don't want to do it.
WordPress URL and Site Address URL: You don't need to make any changes here.
Email Address: This is the Primary Email address of your website through which you registered your blog. If you want, you can add additional users just by going to the users section I mentioned above.
The next important section is the Permalink.
Permalink: A permalink is a permanent URL of each blog post.As a blog owner, your objective should be to make it as user-friendly as possible for two reasons:
What is the best Permalink Structure?
As you can see above, WordPress gives many permalink structure options such as Plan, Day and Name, Month and Name, and so on. But the best option which you should select is the "post name." This gives your URL a better look, search engines like Google, Bing can also easily understand what your article is all about. This is one of the key ranking factors in Google.
Why should you Change Your Permalink before posting your First Article?
First of all, this is a one-time activity. So once this set, you don't have come back to Permalink Section and change it every time.
Make sure you set your permalink by the "post name" before post your first article. This is a crucial step because once you post the article with a different permalink (e.g date and time) and later come back to change the permalink, all your article permalinks will be changed.
So if those articles were already indexed and ranked by Google, Google would no longer find them by their URL. This will harm your blog from the SEO perspective.
Choose a Theme for Your Blog
There are so many themes, both paid and free available in the market. When you are staring, it is entirely ok to start with a free theme. However, free themes give you limited customization options and support. But as a beginner, you don't need to worry about it much.
There are so many themes, both paid and free available in the market. When you are staring, it is entirely ok to start with a free theme. However, free themes give you limited customization options and support. But as a beginner, you don't need to worry about it much.
Once your blog gains some popularity, you can pick a premium theme and customize it further.
Click on the Appearance Section from the left panel and come to the Themes Section. You will see the button "New". Click this and you see hundreds of beautiful free themes. Just pick one as per your choice and you are good to go.
Things to Remember when Buying a Paid Theme
When I started blogging, I spent so much time on selecting a theme and I know you will probably do this same. But as a beginner, it won't matter much. No one will care about how your blog looks, what colour you are using etc...all that matters is the content.
However, being that said, there are a few things you should keep in mind when you are selecting a theme, especially if you are buying a paid theme.
- User Friendliness: As a blow owner, you should always focus on buying a theme which simple, easy to use, and clean i,e without so much flashy and unnecessary features. Your blog readers should be able to navigate between posts, categories, and, most importantly, engage with the contents. The social sharing icons and comments section are the best options for doing this. Social Sharing Option is a must so that the readers can share it further in social media sites.
- SEO Friendly: This is a very critical factor. Your Theme must be properly customized for search engines. Things should not be unnecessarily complex, so that search engines find it difficult to crawl your website.
- Responsive: People nowadays are using mobiles and tablets more than they are using computers. Search Engines know this well, and that is they are giving more values to mobile-friendly themes. Make sure that the theme you are using a responsive. A responsive theme works well for any kind of device mobile, laptops or tablets. The best thing about the responsive theme is you don't have to do anything on your own, the theme itself will take care of the necessary settings.
- Support: A theme runs on complex codes. If something goes wrong, you will be in a problem if you don't know how to resolve it yourself. This is where a support team comes to your rescue.
I am using Thrive Theme Builder for my blog. The theme has many built-in features like multiple layouts, mobile responsive pages, custom page templates, and lots of other features.
Customizing Your Theme
Once you install your theme, you can customize it further and set the color, font, layouts etc.
Click on the Customize button below the theme you have installed. You can also find the Customize tab on the left, under Appearance.
Different themes have different custom settings, but more or less this is the place where you can make all the design changes.
Post, Pages and Categories
There are a couple of more things that you need to know before you start writing an article. These are posts, pages, tags and categories.
Posts: Posts are nothing but the article or content you will be writing on your blog. The article will be posted immediately with the author's name , date, and other info whenever you write and hit the publish icon.
Categories: Categories are how you like to divide your articles into multiple sections. For example, in this blog, I have set my categories as Blogging, Reviews, Affiliate Marketing Resources etc.You can create categories as per your own need. If you don't create or select any category, the default category will be uncategorized.
Tags: Tags describe your blog post. For example, if you consider this particular post I have written, the tags I could use are Make money online, blogging, WordPress etc. The use of tag is optional and you can leave it if you want.
Pages: I have already mentioned about pages earlier. Now let's know in details what are some of the basic pages you must have on your blog and why?
To create a new page just head into the section called "pages" and select "add new" . Give a name to your page and start writing.
Once you finish writing, review it and hit the publish button. It will be live immediately for the world to read. You can always come back and make changes as well whenever required.
Okay...let's start with the most important pages that you must have.
About You Page
The About page will give your readers an idea about your blog and what benefit they will get by reading your blog.
You should tell your readers how you can help them and what they should do to get the most out of your blog.
How to write an Engaging About page for your blog:
An ideal about you page should have the following points:
- Who are you and what is your blog for?
It would help if you mentioned about you and what you write in this blog in a way, so people are convinced that they are in the right place. People love stories they can relate to. So you can start by sharing your blogging journey, your success, and failures.
- Why should they read your blog?
You need to make sure you tell your readers how you are going to help
Offer them your help. Tell them that they are not alone, and they are going to help to get started. The journey of blogging has its challenges. Guide them on how to overcome them and move ahead.
- What should they do Next?
Build a connection with your readers. Once they finish reading you "about you" page, ask them for their participation. Invite them to join your newsletter subscription, request them to join your Facebook Group etc. You can also tell them how and where they should start. Assure them that you will be there to help.
Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy is your official communication to your blog readers and visitors how you will collect, use, disclose, and manage your readers' data.
As a blog owner, it is your responsibility to respect your readers' privacy and make sure you are not doing anything without reader's consent.
A privacy policy is a legal requirement and you must have it declared on your website if you collect personal information (such as name, email) from your website visitors.
How to Create a Privacy Policy for your Blog
Setting up a Privacy Policy Page is easy. WordPress has a dedicated section where you can set up a Privacy Policy page. Got to section Settings > Privacy and click on Create A New Page mentioning your privacy policy.
If you don't know what to write in the Privacy Policy, don't worry. There is a helpful guide within the section which will explain what you need to write your Privacy Policy page.
Terms and Conditions
In Terms and Condition Page, you need to explain in details what you and your readers should expect from each other, and by reading your blog, they are accepting your terms and conditions.
This is another must-have page you should be having on your blog. This will safeguard you against any responsibility or liability against any misuse or misinterpretation.
It's also a good place to inform people how to monetize your blog (advertising, affiliate commission, etc.) so that they know that whenever they are clicking any link, you might earn some money. Sites like Amazon made it mandatory to declare affiliate disclosure at the end of each article if you are promoting Amazon affiliate links.
You can also mention clearly that your own copyright protects all your works and no one should copy them without your consent.
Disclaimer
A blog disclaimer is a declaration from your website that all the articles that you have posted is based on your research and personal opinion.
Your reader should keep this in mind and should not take any decision based on your sole recommendation.
A blog disclaimer clearly mentions that you should not be held responsible in any way for publishing your opinion.
Blog Disclaimer is very important, and it keeps you away from legal trouble. As a blogger, you must customize the disclaimer information according to your niche.
How to create Menu and Navigation
The menu is one of the easiest ways to let your readers navigate through your content.
Every blog must have at least two menus: one at the header and one at the footer section of your blog.
Keep the menu as simple as possible, and make sure people find it easy to navigate. Creating a Menu is easy. Once you post a few pages and articles, you can create a menu using them.
To create a menu, go to Appearance > Menus and you can create it by adding posts, pages or categories categories
Action Plan for Step 2
- Select Your Domain Name: Come up with a domain name which is simple, easy to remember and relates to your niche.
- Choose Your Hosting Plan: Get your blog hosted on self-hosting blogging platform. Bluehost is a great hosting service provider and officially recognized by WordPress.
- Get Yourself Familiar with WordPress: Login to your WordPress dashboard and explore all the options inside it.
- Customize your WordPress : Start with selecting a theme. As a beginner, you can always start with a free theme. Make sure your theme is responsive so that it can be accessed from any device.
- Set up Your Mandatory Pages: Make sure that all your legal pages like About, Terms and conditions, Affiliate closure is set up. This should be the first thing you should before writing any post.
Step 3: Writing Articles for Your Blog
How to write engaging articles that people will love reading?
Good Job!.... Now your blog is ready and waiting for you to write your first article!
So far, things have been fun. You have learned so many new things, customized your blog, gave it the design you want.
Now it's time to get more serious; you are doing this for money after all.
So what do you need for that? Content...a lot of meaningful and helpful articles and get more and more visitors to your blog.
What are You writing in Your Blog?
Writing any random article is not going to help you anyway if you are in it for money. When I say writing meaningful and helpful items, It means you will need to know your audience and understand what they love to read and share. Be it any niche, your audience would always want to read in-depth articles that are worth their time.
But how will you write such article? Keep reading to know about it!
How to Find Topics for Your Blog?
Once you know who your audience is, the next question would be what to write for them.How will you get the idea of the perfect article topic?
You can do this in two ways:
- Grab a pen and paper and do a little brainstorming. Think of all the possible article topics and write them down. This is a continuous process that you have to do at a regular interval. Over time, you will master this and easily figure out which of these ideas will make your final list.
- Try to find out what is the current hot topic that people are reading like crazy and start writing on those topics.
But how are you going to do that? There are many resources which can help you do that...Let's check them out.
#Quora
Let's start with Quora first. Quora is one of my favourite online communities which I use for idea generation.
Search with any topic and you will find a lot of questions people are asking. People generally ask a lot of questions on Quora, which they do not find an answer on Google, or they are looking for more opinion public.
You can use these questions for idea generation and write articles. Read what other people have answered and use them as a reference to write your own articles.
Another such website that you can use is Reddit. Reddit is one of the most popular social bookmarking sites around the world, with billions of active community members.
Reddit has many subsections (called Subreddits) dedicated to a specific topics. You can try searching the Subreddit related to your niche and look for content ideas.
#Answer the Public
Answer The Public is a fantastic website that gathers search queries from search engines like Google and Bing on any topic and visualizes these questions in an image known as a search cloud.
You can type in any topic or keyword in it, and it will generate a list of all the questions people are asking for that keyword. You can download the results in a .csv file as well.
#Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a free keyword research (they have a premium version as well) tool by Neil Patel, which you can use to get keyword ideas. This is an excellent tool to start with when you are starting as a beginner.
In Ubersuggest, you have to type the keywords you want to search for, and it will show various metrics associated with the keyword such as Keyword Volume, Keyword Difficulties, etc.
Let me explain a bit more about what they mean and how you can use this information.I would suggest you to focus only on two things at this moment.
When you are just starting, always go for low difficulty keyword.
Ubersuggest also gives you a list of other alternate keywords that you might be worth considering. It also shows you which blog post and website got the most shares in the social networking websites for that keyword.
#Buzzsumo
BuzzSumo is another amazing website that shows you which topics have received the most social shares.
Create a free account in BuzzSumo and you can do a few free searches per month.
This will help you to brainstorm some topic ideas for your niche. For example, if you type "best running shoes" You will get results like this:
In free account, you can only see the top 10 pages with most social shares. This will show you which particular topic and websites do well for a particular topic.
Pinterest is a visual search engine that is my most favourite tool for content ideas. Pinterest gives you the idea of which contents are more popular.
For example, if I type "running shoes" it will show a lot of pins related to those keywords.
Pinterest also helps you to bring a lot of visitors to your website. This is very helpful, especially when you are just starting with your blog and don't have much organic traffic.
#Google and Bing
Last but not the least is the search engines like Google and Bing.
Use Google and Bing to find out a keyword and what are the top websites for that keyword. Study these websites carefully, read what they have written.
No one is perfect when it comes to content. For example, if Website A has written a section of an article well, Website B has completely messed up that section, instead, they did better in some other section.
Got the idea?
Try this approach. Analyze all the websites on the first page of Google. They are showing on the first page for a reason- i.e they are the best. Create your own epic version of the same topic by combining all the articles from different websites.
You will find more about Google and Bing in Step 5 where I have explained about SEO
Organize Your Article Ideas
Once you have enough ideas on how to find out blog topics, it's time to write down these ideas and organize it further. I use Google Sheet, which is similar to Microsoft Excel, but it is on the cloud version
