Day 3 - Create a Blog and grow a following

Create a blog to make money
Some of the most popular public figures that we have come to know started off with blogging. Jack Monroe started off blogging as a Mom with a difficult budget for healthy food. Soon she gained a following that has led to her writing books, becoming a television celebrity and a cause celebre for those that wanted to see Katie Hopkins put in her place.

Blogging has become an income tool for many. While many bloggers are hidden behind their topic others become visible because of it. DadblogUK is an exceptionally well developed blog. John Adams, a stay at home dad and a journalist has grown a really good following as he highlights everyday life and earns a living from it. This kind of blogging is quite difficult and people like John and Jack Monroe are an exception to the rule when making lifestyle blogging work for them successfully.

Most other successful bloggers build and manage specialist blogs in their field of knowledge. Some will blog about fashion, Others tech and others motorcycles, or hobbies like knotting or fishing. These blogs are successful because they are monetised.

Choose a Blog Niche

Choosing a niche ( a topic or subject matter) for your blog will be the first step you take, it is the niche that is likely to have an influence on whether you use a particular blogging platform or template. Once you have chosen your niche, it will influence how your monetise your content and grow your business.

When looking for the niche that is right for you, think about things that you are familiar with. Don't blog about boat building if you have never been on a boat or know about the needs of those who sail. If you love knitting, blog about it, the same applies if your love is for cooking, running or arts and craft. Maybe you love reading - bloggers that produce content about what they love and know are very successful.

Choose a blogging platform

For those that have no funding and need to bootstrap to start up, free blog platforms are perfect. It is often better to start on a free platform rather than pay a low cost server fee. There are lots of good technical reasons for this and why you should wait until you are generating some income before moving up to a paid server. Both Blogger and WordPress are the first two that come to mind, They are regularly crawled by the search engines and there are some really good templates available out there. Blogger is even more versatile since you can develop your own templates.

Designing your blog

Having a blog with all the right links to earn you a living is futile unless you are going to build a following that will engage with your content. The design has to encourage people to read, view and engage. From that you will want people to click and spend money whether its to sell your own products or to sell someone else's as part of your monetisation strategy. Everything within your design influences whether your visitors will click through and spend and also whether they are likely to return. The colours and layout are the first impression. The ease of navigation is the second impression. Finally the visitors to your site must believe that you have something for them that is more difficult to get elsewhere.

Marketing your blog

Marketing your blog is a lot more than simply adding a Facebook page or a Twitter account. Online interaction is a two way street. You will need to develop online listening methods. Listen to your followers and monitor where the best interaction comes from. Feed the sources that drive traffic to your blog. Create engaging content - every day. Do what the successful bloggers do - but do it better. Explore competition analysis and learn how to do it yourself.

Bootstrapping

If you have started blogging and you have no budget to pay for pay per click advertising or to get someone to create content for you, then learn to do it yourself. There are 365 days in a year, take one hour to create a piece of content every day. Provided you have learned about SEO and how to use it to appear on the first page of Google, You will have more content than 90 percent of your competitors within a year. Only one year. Perseverance is the key. Just keep blogging.

Allocate two hours every day to developing your other skills.  develop your video creation and editing skills, works with images to create awesome Memes and learn some code. One lesson every day will have you coding in HTML and CSS within a year.

Use the other methods in this series to keep your rent paid and food on the table while you develop your blog. all said and done, your blog can start producing an income within 30 days as long as you are providing the exposure and developing the niche.

30 ways in 30 days

By signing up for 30 ways in 30 days you will learn about blogging, how to make sure your copywriting is effective apply sound basic SEO techniques. You will also learn how to expose your blog to as many people as possible. All for £1. Discovering 30 different avenues to earn online means that you can use several to make an income at the same time, even in your preferred earning activity.

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