A Step-By-Step Guide To Starting A Profitable Blog
Today there are so many new bloggers just getting started. According to Technorati, 7.4 million new blogs were made in the past 120 days. That’s 2 new blogs every 3 seconds. That’s a lot. All bloggers want to generate traffic and followings, and most bloggers want to make money from their blogs. So, below I’ve created a guide to help new people start a new blog that I would go by if I had to start a new blog again.
1. Decide What You’re Going To Blog About
This is the most important part of starting a blog. Without it, you couldn’t start a blog. You need to think of a passion you have. Something you really enjoy doing. This will make it easier for you in the long run because creating content for this topic should come easy. Once you pick a market, you need to do some research. Find out if it’s profitable; if there’s enough people interested.
2. Get Web Hosting And A Domain
Next of course, you need some way to get your blog online. You need to buy web hosting. I recommend CreativHost where you can get web hosting for your blog for only $4.50 a month which is very cheap. That’s $45/year. Then you’ll need a domain name. If you order your hosting from CreativHost, you can get a domain with your hosting for only $10 so it all adds up to $55/year.
3. Install WordPress On Your Site
Now that you’ve got your web hosting and domain name, you need to install WordPress. If you don’t know how, look up on Google how to install WordPress or something. It’s really simple. Also, with CreativHost, you get Fantastico which is software that can automatically install WordPress for you with a click of a button. Once you’ve installed WordPress, I suggest you install a few WordPress plugins to make things easier. Check out some of my older posts 10 Great WordPress Plugins, and WordPress Plugins to Increase RSS Subscribers.
4. Get A Blog Design
Now that your blog is up and running with some nice plugins installed, you need a nice design for your blog. If you know XHTML/CSS I suggest you code your own WordPress theme; it’s very easy. If not, I suggest either going to Unique Blog Designs or something like WooThemes. They both have very nice WordPress themes that I recommend. If you don’t like any of those just browse around Google. You’ll find something.
5. Start Writing Great Content To Launch With
Now that your blog is up and running with a good looking theme, you need to start writing QUALITY content to launch your blog with. You need the best quality content you can write so when people visit your site, you make a good impression. Don’t copy others writing, it will get you nowhere. If people enjoy your content, they’ll most likely subscribe to your blog which is always good!
6. Write Great Content For Later
After you’ve creating that quality content to launch your blog with, I suggest you write a few articles to make the following days, or weeks, easier. I suggest you write about 5 – 20 articles and save them as a draft in WordPress. This way, you don’t have to write an article every day. You can just write articles and set them to post at a certain time using WordPress (WordPress is awesome, huh?). This makes everything easier. I always suggest having articles saved as drafts that you can publish at any time.
Blogging can be overwhelming and sometimes you just decide to not post. With blogging, you have to be consistent if you want to succeed. It’s that simple. So by having drafts saved, it makes everything easier and saves time.
7. Create A Mailing List
This is very, very important to your success if you wish to make money online from your blog. As soon as you set up your blog, you need to sign up for a mailing list account. I suggest using Aweber. It’s what I, and majority of the bloggers out there use. There’s a simple equation for mailing lists. Here it is:
Mailing List = Money
It’s true. If you have a mailing list, you can make good money from it. Obviously, you have to have targetted traffic that will sign up for your mailing list. You don’t want people signing up for your mailing list that could give a crap about your market, you won’t make money. Once your mailing list is set up, put the form to sign up somewhere visible on your blog so others will see it and join!
8. Launch Your Blog
Now that you’ve gotten WordPress installed, some plugins, a theme and some quality cdontent, it’s time to “launch” your blog. Publish an article and make sure everything is ready to go. Then once your blog is online it’s ready. Tell people about it. I’ll mention some traffic techniques below.
9. Sign Up For Twitter
If you haven’t already, sign up for Twitter. This is very important. My number one source of traffic is Twitter. This is probably the fastest way to get traffic when starting your blog. It’s great because you can send people to your blog very quickly and easily. Using Twitter, you can use updates that are 140 characters or less telling people about your blog or whatever. We refer to this as “micro blogging”. Once you’ve published a post, make an update on Twitter telling people about it!
10. Start Generating Traffic Other Ways
Now that everything is ready to go for people to see, you need to let others know about your site. A good way to spread your link around so people can visit your site is by finding other blogs in your niche and commenting on them. When commenting, you can leave a link to your site in one of the fields. This links your name to your website so when somebody sees it, there’s a chance they’ll click your link and visit your site. This can also be good because some blogs have a ‘Top Commentators’ section for everybody to see. If you’re active on different blogs and are a top commentator, you can get some easy traffic from that. It can also get you quality links to boost your PageRank.
Hope you find these tips useful and if you plan on starting a blog anytime soon I suggest you follow these steps.
Posted in Blogging
I think the most important thing is quality articles. It’s what profitable websites are based on and it’s what keeps them going.
Personally I’ve never really stored articles up, I usually just write them and post them
Yes, quality content is definitely the most important thing.
And yeah you don’t have to. But looking at your blog I notice you don’t post every day so there’s not really a need to do so.
I think if you own a blog where you blog daily, you should have some back up articles written. Makes things easier
Yeah, but then in my opinion posting every day is excessive unless you’re getting a very good amount of revenue.
Not at all. I think you’re looking at it wrong.
By posting every day theres a reason for your readers to return so you get more traffic.
You also get more traffic because the search engines love updated content. It’s part of search engine optimization. If I didn’t post as often as I did I wouldn’t get any of the search engine hits that I do.
Look at most of the big blogs, they post everyday. Sure it’s possible to be successful without posting everyday but it definitely helps.
Good post Caden! I believe this article helps beginner to start their blog and make money with it. Btw, are you using CreativHost right now? Do you face any problem such as downtime and slow loading speed?
Simon, I have to agree with Caden. Posting everyday and you’ll get more traffic from search engine if you optimize your keyword well.
Regards,
Lee
mailing list Isnt feedburner beeter than aweber
No they’re two completely different things.
You kind of just proved my point about having to be a big/earning/high traffic blog to be able to pull off posting everyday in my opinion.
With the smaller blogs I think you have to look at it from a different angle. For example, you’re practically halving the amount of comments you get by posting everyday because your latest post gets less exposure.
Still, maybe we can agree to disagree on this one?!
Sure we can agree to disagree because I think that if you have a smaller blog to make it succeed it’s only better if you post every day.
Honestly, you’re losing valuable readers if you don’t post every day because there are other blogs out there covering what you aren’t… Why not go to them?
If you look at John Chow when he first started, he very rarely missed a day. Same with ProBlogger, and they are very successful now.
Those 10 steps really important steps but the #10 is the most important. Traffic will determine if the blog is profitable or not =)
@Lee, thank you!
Yes I am using CreativHost right now and I’ve had no problems. No downtime or slow loading.
Haha, it’s me here.
Great information. Well, I think #2 is what many bloggers do not follow. Still using blogspot, free wordpress? Erm, time to change if you wanna be a serious blogger. =D
Yep that’s true. Although for beginners I think it’s fine to use at first. But yes, if you do wanna get more serious, you need to move away from that free hosted stuff.
Content is king but hell with the king content if your blog generates few clicks per day. Investing some money into marketing may be a good solution. Beside, invested money will always get back to you in case you have a content King.
@Feeleep, no it’s not to hell with king content whether you get a little traffic or not. If you want a successful blog and readers and that traffic that you do from that marketing, you need quality content.
It’s never to hell with quality content.
Where are you man ! I hope you will be all right. I am waiting for your new post. How long will you take to publish that?
If your writing is not crash hot, or you are very busy, you can hire writers to do your content for you.