It is time for me to create a series where I will show you one of the best ways to gain passive income on the internet. I will be as honest as I can be. Trust me, blogging is no easy feat and there are a lot of things to cover, so this entire topic will be divided into several parts that will cover each topic in detail. Every part will have a link added in the previous articles as soon as its done, letting you skip to the part you need. In the end, you should get enough information to create a successful blog.
Articles in this series so far:
1. The Introduction
2. How to create your first blog
3. How to write your first post
4. How to design your blog
Other Blogging Tips:
1. Tying your domain name to your Bluehost hosting
2. How to never run out of blogging ideas
3. WordPress plugins for every blogger
4. How to make money blogging
5. The best and cheapest hosting for bloggers
Why make a blog in 2020?
Blogging is one of the best ways to gain passive income on the internet. There are still thousands of blogs being created each year and this year is not an exception. If you are one of the people that are passionate about a topic of any sort and can find a way to monetize it, you can gain amazing financial freedom. What else, your blog lives online. You just need to continually feed it. It doesn’t matter from where. This means you can live or travel anywhere you want and still have a stable income.
That is as long as you know what you’re doing. Don’t worry though. This series will go through everything needed for it to make it happen.
What will you need to start?
Tools of Trade
You need a few things. First, you need a device you can create your content from. This can be your computer or your mobile phone. You can always just buy a wireless Bluetooth keyboard. Here are two examples. One with a stand for your phone and one as cheap as I could find. Both links are sponsored, so if you don’t like that, any Bluetooth keyboard should be able to connect to your phone and work. Otherwise, you can just type your posts in with touch keyboard. I just personally don’t like using it as much.
Your own little online space
Next, you will need a domain, hosting and a WordPress website. This will need a little bit of an investment. Don’t worry, we are not talking about any astronomical numbers. You can even start for free, but I will tell you all about it in the next article.
A specific niche
Before you make your blog, you will also need to figure out what the blog will be about. A niche is an aim at a specific part of the market. You need to think hard about your niche. Nothing stops you from making a blog about everything, but don’t expect to make money out of it in some reasonable time, if ever. If you want to be successful, you need a niche. And you need to stick with it for a long time. So, make sure you will find something you enjoy or something you enjoy researching. The more specific you can get the better.
Examples of niches you can write your blog about are:
- Pet training
- Parenting
- Cooking
- Finances
- Fitness – focusing on niches like callisthenics, CrossFit, yoga and more are even better
- Travel
- Technology – try to make this one even more specific, like the newest gadgets, photography accessories, computer parts etc.
- Sports – again, having it just about a single sport is much better
- News
- Spirituality
- Home decoration
- DIY tips
- Art blog – sculpting, painting, music etc.
and much more…
When you have a niche selected, try to research if there are products you could sell or affiliate programs you could join. You can do so by writing your niche into Google and putting “affiliate” behind it or the word “products”. If those products are on Amazon, chances are you can link to them and get a 10% cut from each sale. I solely believe you can make money with every niche, but some are much easier than the others.
For example, if your niche will be a tech review blog, where every article will have an Amazon affiliate link to the product you reviewed, you will gain much higher income much faster than with a News niche, where you’ll gain most of your income from ads displayed on your website.
In any way, make sure you pick something you have some sort of relationship with. You will have to stick with it for quite some time.
The unbreakable will
The last and most important things you will need are patience, a strong passion and will to continue even when you don’t feel like it. As good as blogging can be, you can never become successful fast. There are people that write 3-5 articles and expect the world to suddenly know who they are. This is unrealistic. If you wish to have this sort of income, you need to be consistent with your efforts. You must understand this is not an overnight success thing.
Blogging takes time. This is why I said you will need passion. If you will end up with a niche you chose just for the vision of money, you will eventually dread writing every article. Your blog needs to be something you enjoy most of the time. There will be times when you will hate it, especially at the beginning. You will be writing articles to barely any readers. I promise though, those times will pass. You just need to stick to it. Blogging is a long journey and you need to keep walking to get closer to success. No matter how far it seems.
Some other important things you need to know before you start
Staying consistent
To be successful, you will need to be consistent. This means writing a blog post 2-3 times a week, every single week. You can write more often, but there is a risk of burning out. Weigh out the pros and cons. Faster writing means more content and faster discovery rate. If you create a review blog, it might be also directly tied to the growth of your income. Slower posts mean you can keep up much easier and have more time to research your ideas. Quality over quantity applies in blogging as well. You can also schedule your posts for the future. This means you can prepare posts for a month ahead and then have time to do other things.
Research is the key
Let’s be honest. No matter how much knowledge you have, you will never have enough information to keep up blogging without research. Research is the key to success. Yes, it turns out success has quite a few locks. You should be in a constant state of learning. Always strive to be better. If you become stagnant, your readers will notice and go elsewhere. Don’t worry though. Research is what you are doing right now. That’s why you are reading this article after all, so you are already going in the right direction.
Networking and marketing
To speed up your growth, it will be necessary to learn how to network or market your blog. Blogging is about sharing your knowledge, creations or stories with people. As much as this seems like something you will be doing alone, it doesn’t have to be. You can and should ask for help. And, to make money from your efforts, you will also need to learn some marketing strategies to do so. I will go over all these things, so don’t worry. We are in this together.
Summary
Hopefully, you are still decided to create a blog. I know I was when I found out about these things. It is a challenging way to make money, but it works. Remember to always give value to your readers. Make the world a better place. It’s worth it.
I hope, that months later, I will be able to go back to this article and see comments that will share their success stories. Anyway, let’s head out to this journey. Next article will be about creating a WordPress website and setting up your first blog!
