Pretty much everyone has a blog these days. They are a great outlet for publishing the thoughts and feelings that you experience on a daily basis, much like an online diary. For those out there who don’t want their blog to be so personal, they tend to stick to writing about their favorite hobby, whether that’s food and cooking, running and fitness, or reading. No matter what you are into, I’m sure you’ll find it easy to set up a blog that you can keep updated in your spare time as a hobby.
While lots of people are running their blog as a hobby, there is now a fast-growing percentage of these individuals who are turning their blog into a business. At first, it can be easy enough to generate an extra side income as soon as you start to achieve a sizeable readership. Going from that point to creating a full-time business from your blog isn’t so difficult.
Do you think that you are ready to see if you can make a business from your blog? Here are the steps you need to take.
Get Your Finances Sorted
First of all, you need to make sure that you have enough money to save up to live off while you are in the very early stages of running your business from home. You might find that you don’t get a regular income in the first few months and that the figure you take home could go up and down. This should become more regular once you start to settle into freelance life and get more comfortable with the various ways you can monetize your blog. So, as you can see, you might need plenty of savings behind you so that you can remain financially stable during this rocky patch.
Focus On Increasing Your Audience
While you are still working full-time alongside your blog, you must be focused on increasing the size of its readership. The more readers you have, the more money you will be able to generate from the site. One way to do this is using an email marketing tool and creating pop-ups to capture data. Generating an email list is a great way to get new readers because where people may be inclined to leave your blog and not return, if you can send them emails tailored to their taste, you can re-spark their interest and bring them back as a regular reader. It’s worth investing in a Sendgrid WordPress Plugin for this, as WordPress is the most popular platform to run blogs on. Another good idea is to team up with a fellow blogger and invite them to write some guest posts on your blog. You might even want to see if you can write a couple of guest posts to go on their site. This will then open your blog up to the other blogger’s audience, so more people find out about you. Generally speaking, this is a great way to win over more loyal followers. You should also post links to your newly published articles on Twitter and Facebook, in the hope that they get shared far and wide.
Branch Out To Social Media
These days, most professional bloggers have built up a strong social media following and have found this to be an effective way to add another branch to their income. So, if you don’t already have a few social media accounts for your blog, then you will definitely want to educate yourself through a growth marketing expert like Entrepreneur Adam Guild and get them set up right away. At the very least, you need to have an Instagram account. Lots of bloggers find that posting on a regular basis and using the Instagram story too will help you increase your followers in no time at all. You will find that, once you have a large number of followers on Instagram, many brands will approach you with offers of sponsored posts. Doing these alongside your full-time blog will help to give your income a boost.
Brush Up On Some Basic Business Skills
Now that you are going to be running your blog like a business, it’s a good idea to learn a few basic business skills. This will help you with all the daily admin that comes with running your own business. One way to pick up these skills and brush up on some of your existing knowledge is to take part in an online BBA course. These kinds of courses are great for beginners as they will tell you everything that you need to know about setting up and running your very own company. They will also cover important topics like sorting out your corporate taxes and the legal side of running a business.
Think About Working With Brands
Once you do take your blog full-time, you will find that some brands and companies will reach out to you with the offer to do some advertising or other paid work for them. However, you might have to reach out to brands as well, as not all of them will have discovered you just yet. In order to do this, you need to be able to pitch your blog to them and explain why you are the best blog for them to work with. Some of the things they will be considered include your monthly audience numbers and your niche. So, one thing to remember is to only ever approach companies who sell products or services that your readers would be interested in. For instance, if you are a mommy blogger, then you should look for companies that offer products that moms with young children would be interested in buying.
Don’t Ever Neglect Your Blog’s SEO
It might be one aspect of running a blog that most bloggers aren’t that keen on, but it still needs to be done. You need to keep a constant eye on your website’s SEO! If you don’t, then you will find that the website starts to quickly fall through Google’s search rankings. Eventually, if you leave it for long enough, you won’t gain any organic web traffic to your blog from search results. This shouldn’t happen if you keep on working to improve your website’s SEO over time. If you are completely new to SEO, there are plenty of online guides that will provide you with all the help you need. It’s basically just about good website maintenance – ensure there are no broken links on your pages and that your website navigation is very orderly!
Good luck!
Comments 3