Have you started a blog in hopes of changing your life with both time freedom and money freedom? If so, you’re in the right place. Today, we’re going to be looking at some of the blogging best practices that will help you get started on the right foot.
Is Blogging A Business?
More and more people are setting up their own blog to earn a second income or replace their full-time income. Thousands of people have realized how life-changing blogging can be.
Blogging can be profitable and you can literally blog about something you love while earning residual income from home. However, that being said, it isn’t going to happen overnight.
If you’re serious about the best practices for turning your blog from a hobby into a business, I’ve laid out some tips to help you out.
Hopefully, you will find these tips helpful and they will help you cut down on your learning curve to building a profitable blog business.
Before we jump into some of the newest best practices for business blogging, let’s recap some of the tried and true ones that everyone should be familiar with.
Don’t forget to sign up for this blogging course that will teach you everything you need to know about creating a profitable blog. This free training will teach you how to monetize with affiliate marketing.
Blogging Best Practices to Help You With Your New Blog
- Investing a self-hosted WordPress blog (35 things to do after installing WordPress)
- Start with a goal
- Write for your audience and buyer persona
- Stay organized
- Keep your blog updated with fresh content on a regular basis
- Research your topics before you sit down to write
- Experiment with different types of content
- Write to your readers where they are in their buyer’s journey – awareness, decision making, buying
- Learn about SEO (search engine optimization)
- Include calls to action
- Don’t be scared to monetize (this free training will help you learn affiliate marketing)
- Work on your blog titles
- Analyze your blog results with Google Analytics (Tutorial to help you install Google Analytics)
I am sure there are more tips that I have left out, but these will help you get started. I’m also going to be sharing the 3 tips below that I think are the most important for new bloggers.
These tips will help you go from the blank blog canvas to the promised land that everyone wants to achieve. I won’t be spending any time talking about plugins or design, you can check out the 7 free plugins I recommend for new bloggers.
Instead, we’re going to focus on the things that matter to turn your blog from a hobby into a successful business that actually pays for itself and more.
Article Writing Best Practices
When it comes to building a successful blog, you first need to learn how to crawl before you can walk. Most of us have never had a blog and all this is new to us. When we hear about people talk about the importance of writing content, most of us have no clue what it entails.
That’s why I wanted to share some tips to help you understand the type of content you need for your blog. After all, without the right content, you will NEVER be able to grow your blog.
It took me forever to realize that the keywords you target will be the difference between traffic or no traffic. You don’t need a lot of traffic to make money, but you do need targeted traffic if you want to make sales.
Keyword Research
One of the biggest mistakes I made when I started this blog was NOT spending enough time finding the right keywords. Instead, I would sit down and write a blog post based on a topic that I wanted to write about.
I ended up writing over 100 blog posts that are targeting keywords that are too competitive. This means that I ended up wasting over a year writing blog posts that will never rank on the first page of Google.
You don’t want to do that, instead, you need to take the time to learn how to find low competition keywords you can actually rank for. This is especially important for new bloggers who have not built any authority in the eyes of Google.
If you’re targeting competitive keywords, you’ll never get traffic. I highly suggest investing in a keyword tool like SEMRush, Jaaxy, KWFinder or LongTailPro to help you find those low hanging keywords.
You may not want to pay for a keyword analysis tool, but it will save you tons of time and will help your blog grow faster. You’ll be more likely to stick with blogging if you start seeing traffic right away instead of waiting years for results.
Focus On Long Form Content
Once you’ve found the keywords you want to focus on, it’s time to sit down and start writing. You’ll want to target one keyword per blog post while making sure you add LSI keywords.
In the past, it was so easy to rank a blog post on the first page of Google if it was 500-1000 words long. However, things have changed and you’ll want to make sure that you’re writing blog posts that are 2250-2500 words long.
Google tends to favor longer blog posts and a research study by HubSpot shows that blog posts that are at least 2250 words long tend to do better in with Google, and tend to get more shares and likes from readers.
Not every blog post has to be over 2250 words, but a majority of your blog posts should be. Most of the blog posts on my site are around 2000 words or more.
Don’t worry, if you get it wrong the first time around. You can always go back in and update some of your older blog posts later on.
Make Your Blog Easy to Read
No one wants to read extremely long blog posts, I know that I don’t. It’s important to make sure that you’re breaking up your paragraphs in easy to read chunks.
Here are some guidelines I use whenever I write a blog post:
- Use H2, H3 and H4 title headings
- No more than 3 sentences in a paragraph
- Use images and make your content visual
- Make sure you cover an entire topic and answer all the questions you can
- Use Grammarly to help you proofread and fix grammar errors
These are the steps I use whenever I publish a new blog post. It may sound like a lot, but once you get into the habit of writing content on a regular basis, it will come naturally.
The most important thing is to publish new content on a frequent basis. The more content you have on your blog, the more likely people will find it and sign up for your email or click on your affiliate links.
Promote Your Content
Every blogger dreams of the day when Google trusts their blog and sends them free organic traffic. If you’re doing things correctly and just focusing on providing excellent content without tricking Google, you will eventually start seeing some free organic traffic.
The downside is that it takes a while to see results from your hard work. You’ll have to put in tons of hard work on the front end before you start seeing the traffic.
This is what discourages so many new bloggers. After a few months of writing and publishing content, they become discouraged because they are not seeing any results.
Blogging is a long-term strategy and the work you put in today, will not pay off right away. You’re going to have to wait around 6 months or longer to start seeing organic traffic.
This Doesn’t Mean
You have to keep pumping out content without seeing any traffic. It just means that you’ll have to focus on some other strategies for quicker results.
Most new bloggers tend to focus on Pinterest because it brings faster results than Google. Yes, it still comes with a learning curve, but if you learn how to do create amazing pins and focus on popular blog topics, you should be able to start seeing results.
Many people have been able to build a successful blog just by focusing on Pinterest traffic. As their blog continues to grow and age, they start seeing Google traffic.
Of course, you’ll need to make sure that you’re optimizing your blog posts for both Google and Pinterest.
Related: How to Use Yoast SEO Everything You Need to Know
Don’t Be Scared to Monetize
If you’re trying to build a profitable blog and turn it into a business, you can’t be scared to monetize it. It costs money to run a blog and there’s no shame in making money with it.
I personally started monetizing this blog from day one. If you do monetize right out the gate, you don’t want to focus on making money.
Your main focus should be to provide helpful content that helps your audience. If you’re providing helpful content that helps your targeted audience, you will eventually start to make money.
How to Monetize A Brand New Blog?
Okay, so how do you make money with a brand new blog? It’s not as easy as everyone says it is, especially, if you’re not getting any traffic.
Most new bloggers tend to start with Adsense, I know because I started with it as well. Unfortunately, Adsense is not the best way to start monetizing your blog.
If you have a ton of traffic, you might be able to make some decent money. But most people don’t click on ads and that’s the only way you’ll make money with Adsense.
I found an Adsense alternative that is called Fomo Ads. They are a pay per impression ad network and they claim that you’ll be able to make 2x more than you would with Adsense.
It’s easy to get started and I wrote a Fomo Ads review to walk you through the entire signup process. At the time of this writing, I am still waiting for the approval process, which takes around 2 weeks.
So I can’t tell you how profitable it has been for me. However, I am sure that it will be more profitable than Adsense was for me. I earned around $17 in 3 months with Adsense.
Affiliate Marketing for New Bloggers
While ads can be great for earning residual income, I am a huge fan of affiliate marketing. If you have implemented a great strategy, you have the opportunity to earn great commissions.
The best part is that unlike monetizing with ads, you don’t need a lot of traffic. This free affiliate training program will show you exactly what you need to start earning commissions.
Just like blogging, it takes time to implement the best practices. You can’t expect to start your affiliate marketing journey and make money right out of the gate.
However, with time and persistence, you will eventually start to see your hard work pay off.
Final Take Away
Turning a blog from hobby to a business is extremely possible as long as you realize it doesn’t happen overnight. If you’re serious about building a business, you can’t be scared to invest in your blog.
Most bloggers refuse to invest in their blogs right out of the gate. They think that they can do everything for free.
Yes, there is a ton of information out there that will help you get started for free. However, there will come a point and time when you’ll need to invest in your blog.
You can’t always do everything for free and this blogging course will help you understand what it takes to write amazing blog posts that make sales.
It takes time to build something that you’re proud of and actually pays the bills. As long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, and don’t quit when times get tough, I have no doubt you’ll see the results you want.
Hand Picked Articles for You
- 5 Easy Steps to Become A Smart Blogger and Get Results
- Amazing Blogging Resources for Motivated New Bloggers
- 7 Blog Etiquette That Can Skyrocket Your Growth
While there are no outspoken rules for blogging, these guidelines will help you understand the basics you need to create a profitable blog.
If you have any tips that I’ve left out, feel free to add them below.
