How do you create a blog and make a living from it?
Why and how to start a blog?
So, you've decided to embark on the great adventure of blogging! Whether you're doing it for passion or to earn money with a professional blog, do you know how to make a blog?
You'll need to go through a few essential steps, such as finding a web host, a domain name, the right CMS (content management system), creating a site, taking care of content creation and management, and finally working on your natural SEO.
Don't know where to start creating a blog?
Find out how to manage the creation of your blog in 7 steps, which blog platform to choose and how to monetize it successfully!
Why create a blog?
Give your website visibility
A blog is a highly effective tool for increasing your visibility. As soon as a new article is published, Google's algorithm understands that your site is active, which will boost your ranking, and therefore your traffic. This is all the more true if the articles are of high quality.
What's more, it gives you something to share on social networks (instagram, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn).
Last but not least, an active site with recent content contributes to your credibility in the eyes of your blog's visitors.
Show your expertise
Your expertise in your core business is one of your best selling points. Blog posts are a quick and inexpensive way to express yourself on a subject that touches your prospects, and position yourself as an expert in their minds.
Win new customers with inbound marketing
Blogging is at the heart of any inbound marketing strategy.
The idea? Using your blog content to attract quality traffic, i.e. visitors who could potentially be interested in your solution. In other words, you bring them into the first stage of the conversion funnel with your quality content, specially written for your target audience.
Once the prospect is on your blog, you need to encourage them to take action, whether by leaving their contact details, requesting a contact, etc.
What is the best site to create a free blog?
Create a Jimdo blog
Jimdo makes creating a website accessible to everyone, even the most seasoned bloggers. Thanks to its artificial intelligence, all you have to do is answer a few questions and Jimdo will automatically create your entire website from your existing content on Facebook and Google.
© Jimdo
Then all you have to do is choose your theme from a range of modern, ergonomic templates, set a few details and decide to go live.
💰 F ree : ✅
⭐️ Its strong point: 3 minutes to create your blog
👎 Not for you if: you want to create everything from A to Z and modify it as you wish
Create a Wix blog
Wix offers a wide range of customizable features, particularly suited to blogs, such as comment management and post scheduling. Choose your blog design from over 500 templates and launch a blog that reflects your personality.
© Wix
💰 F ree : ✅
⭐️ Its strong point: very intuitive
👎 Not for you if: you want to sell products
Create a WordPress blog
Wordpress is the undisputed CMS leader on the market:
One in three websites worldwide uses the WordPress platform.
source: W3Techs, January 2019 report
Creating your blog on this platform is a sure bet, and allows you to find a whole host of resources (articles, tutorials, training, etc.) on the Net, to solve a problem for example, or help you optimize your blog.
If so many websites have chosen this CMS to create and excel in content management, it's because it's highly adaptable, even for the most complex projects, whether in terms of development or choice of plug-ins of all kinds.
💰 F ree : ✅
⭐️ Highlight: the possibilities are endless (or almost)
👎 Not for you if: you're not self-sufficient in solving technical problems
Creating a Drupal blog
Drupal is an open source platform, initially aimed at the most technical profiles, who could envisage absolutely anything in terms of functionality and design.
Thanks to the Drupal community, which has been very active on the Net for years, you now have free access to the plug-ins they've developed for SEO, social network sharing, article management and more.
💰 F ree : ✅
⭐️ Its strong point: flexible and powerful
👎 Not for you if: you're a beginner and/or in a hurry
How do you create your blog? 8 steps to make sure you don't forget anything
Step 1: choose your niche
It can be tempting to launch a blog on a subject you're passionate about and have mastered: that's usually what motivates you when you launch your personal blog.
But if your aim is to set up a professional blog, we advise you not to choose a theme, but rather to choose a target audience with a problem to solve.
Step 2: Define your editorial line
Your editorial line is what will define the personality of your blog and ensure the coherence of your future content:
- to be credible in the eyes of your audience,
- to guide you in the choice of topics for your articles and in their writing,
- to help you in your choices (type of partnerships accepted).
Define your editorial line in 5 questions:
- What is the purpose of my blog? The reason for its existence, its raison d'être. Be precise in defining your vision. Examples: promote 100% natural solutions for cleaning your home, show men how to care for their beards, sell training courses on how to succeed as an e-merchant, increase traffic to your e-commerce site, etc.
- Who am I targeting? As we saw in the previous section, defining your target, your marketing persona, is essential. At this stage, you should have all the information you need to know about your target.
- What do I want to talk about? The what. Try to go into a little more detail on the different topics or sub-topics covered by the issues your persona is facing
- How do I address my target? The way you address your target audience must be both like THEM and like YOU. The tone, the vocabulary, the images, the writing angle, the length of the articles: all this constitutes your editorial charter.
- When should I address my target audience? Regularity is very much appreciated by a community. As you can see from the graph below, the more articles you publish, the more visits you receive. However, it's important to maintain a certain level of quality in your articles.
Hubspot
Step 3: Choose your CMS
As we saw in the previous section, choose your CMS according to your objectives, skills and resources.
Step 4: Choose your domain name
Choosing your domain name is more important than it seems. Here's what you need to bear in mind when making your choice:
- A name that's easy to remember. It's sometimes useful to know a little about cognitive science when choosing a domain name. How can you make it easy for people to remember your URL? The human brain remembers existing, related word combinations more easily than a made-up name;
- A short name that's easy to type on a cell phone. Don't underestimate the mobile-friendly potential of your domain name. Type the name of your site on your cell phone before choosing it to check how easy it is to use (or better still, test it out with your grandma);
- Including keywords can boost your SEO and pay off. 63% of sites that appear on page 1 have keywords in their URL (source: HigherVisibility);
- Check that the domain name is not linked to a registered trademark. Be careful, you never know and you don't want any legal problems, do you?
- Choose the right extension. What to choose between .com, .eu, .fr, .co, .tech? There are more and more extensions available, so we recommend you choose the timeless .com, when it's not too expensive. Otherwise, choose according to the countries in which you wish to be present, your budget and your business sector.
Step 5: Choosing a hosting solution
Like any website, your blog needs to be hosted on a server in order to function. The best-known are OVH and 1&1, but there are plenty of others, with their own specific features, advantages and disadvantages.
Step 6: Create and install your site
Here's our selection of tutorials on the different platforms we recommend, to guide you step by step through the creation and installation of your site:
- View the WordPress tutorial
- View Drupal tutorial
- See the Jimdo tutorial
- See the Wix tutorial
Step 7: SEO
SEO is a discipline that requires hard work, patience... and knowing the right tricks, in order to reach page 1 of Google.
Step 8: Create content
Write a good blog post
Smart Entrepreneur
Different types of content
Varying the content on your blog ensures that your readers don't get bored, and offers complementary resources, especially at a time when images and video play a major role:
- infographics,
- podcasts
- downloadable documents,
- online tests,
- videos,
- testimonials and interviews, etc.
Promote blog content
© Plezi
Creating a blog and earning money: monetization
Building an audience for your blog and succeeding in monetizing it is an activity that takes time, months or even years. It's essential to think about monetization as early as possible, so that you can make it a clear part of your strategy and maximize your chances of success.
Whatever monetization strategy (ies) you opt for, bear in mind that you first need to obtain a minimum amount of quality traffic for them to work.
So don't hesitate to try out several of them, combine them and run numerous tests to see what works best for you.
Writing an e-book or electronic book
Writing an e-book or electronic book is a relatively easy way to earn money.
- Write about a specific problem facing your target audience. Give interesting information, talk about your experience and give concrete solutions to solve it;
- Look after the design. If your customers print it, they should feel as if they're holding a real book in their hands. Colors, photos, diagrams: use all the tools at your disposal to make it a pleasant read;
- Convert your book to PDF format;
- After payment, direct your customers to a page with a link to the PDF for download, or send it to them by email.
Offer online courses and training
The online courses and training business is a fast-growing sector, set to reach $325 billion by 2025.
Research and Markets).
As with the e-book, try to see how you can help your community on a specific issue, and give them the keys to solving their problems.
To find the subject that will hit the nail on the head, pay close attention to what your community is saying on forums, Facebook groups, in comments to your articles, etc.
Don't hesitate to use specialized software, such as Podia or system.io, which enable you to manage your online training courses, from hosting to email promotion and download links.
Sell consulting or coaching services
Your blog is the best showcase for your expertise, and it can be of interest to companies. If reading a book or taking part in a training course is a good start, getting one-to-one advice can take your business to the next level, and boost your results.
Write a few well-targeted articles for the part of your audience that will be interested in this type of service, at slightly higher rates.
Offer a subscription service
Deliver a quality service to your community for a monthly or annual subscription fee. The advantage of this business model is that each sale can bring in income for several months or years, if the members are satisfied. This service can be exclusive content (in the form of a podcast, emailing, video, etc.), access to a platform, forum or group.
Exploit advertising
Some tools allow you to display advertisements on your website, and be paid per click. This is often an easy way to earn money in the early stages, but don't expect to make a living from it, as a click only pays a few cents. You'll need a certain volume of traffic to start generating a decent income, but it's a good way of supplementing your income without any extra effort.
There are two ways to advertise on your blog:
- via an advertising network such as Ad Sense (Google),
- or by offering private advertising without going through an advertiser. In this way, you can integrate your advertising inserts and negotiate directly with the companies. In general, this method is much more profitable.
To encourage your visitors to click :
- select ads that are relevant to your blog's theme;
- don't overload your blog with ads, to avoid visitor fatigue and optimize visibility;
- run A/B tests on your ads to see which perform best in terms of clicks or conversions.
👉 Be aware, however, that more and more Internet users are using ad-blocking software, which makes this task more difficult.
Affiliate marketing
This is one of the most widespread ways for bloggers to generate money.
Affiliation consists of promoting a product or service, and being remunerated via a commission on each sale generated.
How does it work?
Once you've chosen your niche, written some interesting articles on the subject and started building a community, you become a legitimate voice for talking about services and products that might be useful to them.
How do I find products to sell?
- Amazon offers an affiliate program. Its strength lies in its wide choice of products and partners, maximizing your chances of finding the products best suited to your niche.
- Specialized affiliation platforms bring product creators and affiliates together. Here's a non-exhaustive list: Affilinet, Effinity MarTech, Hasoffers, 1TPE, Selldorado, CJ Affiliate, etc.
- You can also approach the seller of a product directly by contacting them, or via their affiliate program if they have one. This can be a good alternative when you're looking for tools you're already using that you can promote.
Tips for successful affiliation
A good affiliate product is...
- a product you've tested,
- a product that brings value to your community,
- a product with a high commission,
- a product with a high price tag.
Also...
- don't write too many articles on affiliate products, so as not to bore your readers;
- don't be afraid to be transparent when it comes to affiliates (no one's going to bite you);
- write a complete, well researched article with as much evidence as possible of the usefulness of what you're promoting.
Adopt an influencer marketing strategy
A company or entrepreneur can pay you to talk about a product or service if you write an article, or create a podcast or video. It's often necessary to have a certain audience in order to interest companies, which need a certain visibility.
Here are a few figures on influencer marketing to convince you:
- an estimated $20 billion market by 2020;
- 4 out of 5 consumers buy a product that has been recommended to them;
- 60% of consumers consult a blog article, social network or video before making a purchase.
source: Influencer Marketing Benchmark 2019 report
So if you're feeling like an influencer, don't hesitate to take the plunge!
Selling products (e-commerce)
It's not unusual for a blogger to explore this e-commerce sales avenue, either by creating a marketplace where they can find their favorite products, or by creating their own products to sell.
You can either integrate an e-commerce store directly into your blog if the CMS you're using offers this option (often in the form of a plug-in), or create a store on another platform like Shopify or Etsy, and send your visitors to your products from the blog.
Creating a blog and making a living from it: is it really possible?
Creating a blog has never been easier, and is now within everyone's reach.
With a well-honed SEO, content management and monetization strategy, you stand a good chance of generating income from your blog.
But in practice, is it really possible to make a living from your blog?
Few bloggers manage to make a living from it, because :
- it's a time-consuming activity that's hard to maintain at a steady pace on top of a job ;
- you need to be good, even very good, at creating content to stand out from the competition, appeal to both search engines and readers, and convert visits into clicks or sales;
- some niches generate less money than others. Note that health, personal development and business are the most profitable.
It's a long road, requiring perseverance, hard work and ingenuity.
One day, you'll be the best blogger around!
Article translated from French