How to Make Money Blogging in 2022

If you’re reading this, you probably want to start a blog and make money blogging in 2022. More importantly, you want to start a blog that actually brings you an income. You’re probably hoping to supplement, replace or exceed your current income. 

Have you ever felt stuck, thinking “Can’t there be more than just a working 9-5?” Of course, you have! Who hasn’t? 

Have you ever had that feeling of craving freedom for yourself? Imagine yourself spending more time with your friends, and family, or just doing what you love. Again…who hasn’t?

Do you want to have a more flexible work schedule? Getting to work whenever you want, wherever you want? Yes, please!  

I truly believe there’s nothing more important or desirable than having your own freedom. That is something blogging can help you achieve. 

I believe that one of the biggest mistakes bloggers make; however, is that they trade the grind of their jobs with the grind of their blog. This guide is all about how to set up a blog so that it can free you to do what you WANT to do. If your passion happens to be blogging then that’s a different story. Usually what you write about is your passion. All the other tedious tasks of blogging – are not so fun to do. 

In order to achieve freedom through blogging, you need to build every part of your blog from the ground up with income generation in mind. That does not mean your blog is any less authentic, genuine or helpful. It just means that you’re building it from the get-go as a business. 

From now on, think of your future blog as a business asset that you’re building so that it eventually stands on its own two feet and pays you passive income while you do whatever it is that you want to do with your life!

[Note: Some of the links below are affiliate links, so we may get a commission if you choose to use these companies. They are all companies we use and love. Thanks for supporting Don’t Want A Boss!]

Blogging is hard

If you want to make money with your blog, it’s going to be hard work; however, keep the following two statements in mind. 

When you start a blog correctly, it gets easier and easier with time. 

When you start a blog incorrectly, it gets harder and harder with time. 

Knowing how to make money blogging in 2022 isn’t something that can be done in minutes, days, or even weeks. When you don’t know how to start, things can be tricky and overwhelming as a beginner. Some bloggers might tell you that you can successfully earn money from blogging in just 2 weeks, or they might tell you that you can get an audience in less than a month!

 Of course, none of that is true.

I want you to acknowledge these situations that you might face when building your own blog: you’ll get discouraged from having low traffic, and you’ll get frustrated from having to do the tedious and lonely work of managing your website (yikes, technical stuff!), you’ll lose patience and motivation when you aren’t able to reach your goals.

 After reading that, I want you to know that all bloggers have been in that situation. Probably, you’re gonna ask me, “Well, am I gonna overcome that too?”

 Of course, you can! There is no value without facing challenges, right? The only difference is, you know what you’re gonna do with our help. In that way, you can lessen ALL the stress in blogging!

That is why, in this major blog post, we’re going to cover EVERYTHING there is to know about starting a blog AND making money with it the right way. Trust me, once you’re all settled, then it will be up to your creative juices to create valuable content for your audience!

What is a blog?

I keep on blabbering about blog stuff without even explaining what a blog is. My apologies! 

Blogging is essentially sharing your ideas with the world. Simple as that! Whatever passion you have in life, you get to help other people with that online. It’s like talking to a friend. That’s the beauty of it.

Should you start a blog?

I can’t answer this question for you. Only you know if you should start a blog. It’s going to be a fairly big commitment upfront. If you follow this guide, it will get easier as the months go on. 

Once you start generating a full-time passive income, you’ll definitely know that it was worth the struggle to get there but it has to be realistic for you to put in the time now. If you’ve got a full-time job or you’ve got young kids around, you have to seriously ask yourself if it’s going to be realistic. 

There is no set amount of hours you should spend on your new blog a day. It’s 100% your business. The more time you spend, the faster you’ll make it to your income goal, it’s as simple as that. Each blog is different. Some blogs take 6 months, some take 6 years. It depends on whether you’re working 8 hours a day or 30 minutes a day. 

70% of blogs make no money

This doesn’t mean to scare you, but, as statistics go, 70% of blogs don’t make any income. But you have to come to a realization that some blogs are just not so fortunate. Blogging is not for everyone who treats this as a hobby. You need to have patience and determination if you want to earn more income from blogging. From building your website to creating valuable content, to having buyable offers, having affiliate links, and paid advertisement. These are something you’ll have to aim for as long as you’re in the blogging world.

Work hard for at least 12-18 months

I understand, you get all giddy thinking about starting a blog. I know, I’ve been there, too! Blogging is like gardening, you get to plan your seedlings (building your site), water them (make good content), use fertilizers or insecticides (using different strategies to get more audience), and wait for them to ripen. 

So, while you’re at it, don’t let negativities flounder your website. Keep a good mindset, maintain that motivation, and strive for the better!

Step 1: Choosing the right niche so you can make money as quickly as possible.   

Step 2: How to build your website and set everything up for success in one day. 

Step 3: Writing Content That People Want to Read, Save and Share

Step 4: Start Getting Traffic Immediately From Social Media

Step 5:  Start Building Traffic Slowly From Google 

Step 6:  How to Make money

Resources You’ll Need For Your Blog

Chapter 1:
Choosing the Right Niche

How to choose the right niche the first time so you can make money as quickly as possible!

What is a Niche? Your niche is what your blog is about. 

Choosing a profitable niche initially saves a lot of trial and error and will ensure that you make money quickly from your blog. 

When I started my first blog in 2015, I wanted to write about things that I loved but I also wanted to make money quickly. Back then, I didn’t realize that there are certain rules to follow when choosing a niche. 

I remember reading an article online that said any niche can be profitable so write about what you love. So, I sat down and brainstormed all of the things that I loved that I also thought I could write about: painting, sketching, digital art, photography, creativity, crafts, DIY. 

Then I started my very first blog about all of these things. My niche was probably “art” or “for artists” but with the number of things I was talking about, even that might have been too narrow. 

Can you spot my mistakes?

I tell you this story to illustrate clearly what not to do. Going too broad and focusing on yourself are common mistakes and are very easy to make. 

Starting a blog is exciting and it’s easy to get carried away. 

You have to remember that a blog is not about you, it’s about your reader. Blogging becomes an easy task when you are always aiming to help solve your readers’ daily life problems. When you have this passion, this might be the key to having a successful blog.

Therefore, a niche is not about choosing a topic to talk about. It’s all about your audience.

Choosing your niche is NOT the time to be creative or original. It’s time to choose what works.  Choose a niche that’s tried and true. There is more competition but that’s because there’s money to be made. 

Understanding the whole meaning of niche changed the way I view things when it comes to blogging. Wealthy Affiliate’s Training on choosing the right niche helped me get in-depth with this, so make sure to check ‘em out!

Profitable tried and true niches that will make you money quickly: 

1. Parenting

Parents run into all sorts of problems with their kids and the fastest way to solve problems is to Google them. 

Are you a parent? Have you learned some tips and tricks over the years? 

Your article could be the one that pops up to help! 

I’m not a parent myself but I have friends that are. I know that they want to be the best parents, but they also always want more sleep and more quiet time. They’re always looking for ways to do things faster and more efficiently. 

Another great, more targeted niche is how to be a new parent. A lot of new parents are anxious about their first baby and want to make sure they’re doing things right, from feeding to sleep schedules. 

This is where you could come in! 

Here are some blogs under this niche:

• Mommy on Purpose
• What Mums Love
• Rookie Mums
• Swaddles n’ Bottles

2. Health and Fitness

Who doesn’t want to be healthier and fitter? Virtually no one, which is why there is an incredible amount of money to be made in this space.

I’m always looking for a great running program that fits with my schedule and a guide that works for improving my mobility and flexibility. I have very stiff ankles and I’m a horseback rider so it’s a problem. 

From weight loss to strength to endurance to immune-boosting strategies, the topics are endless.

I would say the one danger is this niche is going too broad. If you think this is the niche for you, narrow down your focus to a few very clear messages that you want to get across. 

Do you have a workout routine that helps you get the abs of your dreams? Do you follow a specific diet that’s changed your life? Are you an athlete in a specific sport? 

Let me be clear: 

You don’t need to be the world’s best tennis player to have a tennis blog. All you need is to have the answers to problems that your readers have. If you’re an intermediate-level player, then focus on beginners and help them overcome the struggles of just starting. 

Remember, your blog is not about you. It’s all about your reader and solving their problems. If you have answers to your reader’s problems, then you’ve got a successful blog! 

Inspiring blogs under this niche:

• Fit Mum Journey
• Root And Revel
• Organize Yourself Skinny
• Easy Living Today

3. Beauty and Fashion

Beauty and fashion are excellent ways to make money online, and it’s a super fun niche to be in. 

To create a successful blog in this space, you need to be comfortable sharing who you are and flaunting your strong personality. You need to put yourself out there. 

If you research successful bloggers in this niche, they are typically influencers on YouTube or Instagram. 

Once you’ve reached influencer status, it’s easy to make money by just linking to products and brands you use. You can also get sponsorships and work with brands who want to get in front of your audience. That means free stuff!  

Examples of blogs under this niche:  

• We Wore That
• The Blond Salad
• Song of Style

4. Travel

If you are passionate about traveling and you love discovering and sharing new places in the world, then this niche is extremely profitable. One of the best things about the travel niche is that you can take amazing pictures that perform really well on platforms like Pinterest, Instagram. 

It’s easy to get carried away in this niche. Like we talked about before, you want to have a few clear messages to get across. You don’t want to get too excited and try and cover everything. 

A good way to do this is to try and think about what you want your brand to convey. Pick a theme, a feeling, or a lifestyle that you feel resonates with you. 

For instance, a popular theme is frugal traveling or backpacking. It’s all about how to travel on a low budget Ann not spend very much money. Another popular theme is culture. As you travel to different places, you focus on cultural differences and the diversity that different places have. 

The important thing is that you pick something that’s going to define you and stick with that message. That’ll make content creation and thinking of new ideas much easier for your blog. 

Even if you just focus on one place, you can become an expert on that place and teach others everything there is to know about that one place. Live close to New York? Or Melbourne? Or a popular provincial park? You could become the go-to person online when anyone wants to take a vacation to those places. 

Some blogs under this niche:

• Adventure In You
• Practical Wanderlust
• The Broke Backpacker

5. Food

Some blogs about food make a crazy amount of money. We’re talking up into the seven-figure range. Crazy, right? 

It’s difficult to make money in this particular niche using affiliate marketing or selling other people’s products. The reason for this is because although you can talk about the kitchen appliances that you use when someone is Googling a food recipe they’re not usually in the market for a blender. They just want the recipe to make dinner. 

Generally, food bloggers rely on a large amount of traffic coming to their blog and monetizing it using advertisements. That being said, you could also create your own products such as a specialty recipe book.

Similar to travel bloggers, food bloggers have a huge advantage online because of the beautiful photographs that they can share. Pictures of food, drinks, and desserts get shared like crazy on Pinterest and Instagram. That’s why it’s possible for food bloggers to get such a high amount of traffic back to their blogs. 

Some inspiring blogs under this niche:

• Pinch of Yum
• Recipe Tin Eats
• Budget Bytes

6. Personal finance

If you are an expert at budgeting, organizing your banking, and saving money then this niche is for you. There are a lot of things to write about in this niche. As we’ve discussed in other nitches, this one also has the trap of potentially going too broad. Make sure to focus on a few specific themes that your blog is going to be about. 

A popular topic is budgeting. This could include monthly budgets, how to cut down on spending, and specific things that are easy to cut down on. 

Another popular topic is saving. This could be saving for a toy such as a fancy car, saving for the Holidays, or saving for a child’s college fund. 

• Dollar Sprout
• Making Sense of Cents
• Millennial Money

7. Make Money Online

I’m sure you’ve heard it before. A way to make money online is by teaching others how to make money online. In fact, after my first blog didn’t turn out too well, I thought it was because the only real way of making money online was to blog about blogging. Of course, this couldn’t be further from the truth. 

That being said, the making money online niche is profitable but you want to put your own spin on what you’re going to teach. 

For instance, Don’t Want A Boss is all about not wanting to work for somebody else. The two main topics that I cover are blogging and stocks. This is how I separate myself from other websites out there. Another popular way to do this is to focus on a particular demographic such as millennials. millennials are all the rage these days. Lol.

• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• Smart Passive Income
• Side Hustle Nation
• Pro Blogger

8. DIY and Craft

Are you an artist? Do you always make little crafts around the house? Can you build things? 

If you can, this is an extremely profitable niche to be in. Followers of these bloggers become super passionate about the stuff they’re learning. This means they are ready to spend their money on anything from needlepoint or wood-crafting to DIY home décor.

• The Harper House
• A Beautiful Mess

9. “Irrational” Passions (E.g. Pets, Football, Comics)

Irrational passions is what my art blog fell into. Remember the one that failed miserably? The one where I was trying to cover every single topic all at once? 

It turns out that topics like this can be insanely profitable. We’re talking 6 figures profitable. This is because people will spend money on their passions. The trick is to focus on a specific theme or message. 

A few years after starting my art blog for the first time, I restructured it into a watercolor blog. Within a few months, it was bringing in money. 

“Dogs” is better than “pets” but is still broad. Can you think of something better?

“Dog beds” or “dog outfits” would be even better! 

“Football” is better than “sports” but is still broad. Can you think of something better?

You’ve got it! Something like “football fan essentials” or “football strategy” would be even better!  

10. Lifestyle

Lifestyle blogs are tough in my opinion. It’s super tempting to cover multiple, fairly unrelated subjects. Don’t get me wrong. They are super fun and really fulfilling to write but they’re getting harder and harder to make money from. 

One of the traps of lifestyle blogs is that it’s tempting to focus a lot on yourself and as we know, your blog is actually not about you. Your blog is all about your reader and their problems. No one online cares about you, at least not until you’re an influencer. 

Lifestyle blogs work well when you’re an already famous personality online. If no one knows who you are though, it’s tough to gather a readership. 

It’s not impossible though. What you have to do in this niche is focus on solving other people’s problems rather than your own. You also want to make sure that you have a very clear message that’s going to distinguish you from other lifestyle blogs. 

The reason people still gravitate to lifestyle blogs and why it might end up being the right choice for you is that it’s super easy to create content. You just start sharing what you would do on a day-to-day basis on your blog in a way that’s useful and helpful to others. Popular topics include organization, finances, travel, fashion, home decor, pets, music, etc. As you can see the list is endless and you can customize your blog to fit your life. I would cap your topics to a maximum of 3 to avoid getting overwhelmed. 

• Gathering Dreams
• The Everygirl
• MyDomaine

Limit Your Blog to 3 Main Topics/Ideas/Messages

I’m going to repeat myself because it’s really important that you remember this. No matter what niche you end up choosing, you always want to make sure that your blog’s message is simple and clear. If you’re struggling to narrow it down, keep working on it until you can put the message into a maximum of three bullet points. 

This becomes important when you are going to create categories for your blog posts. It’s very tempting to create tons of categories. This just leads to overwhelm for both you and your readers. Your maximum number of categories should be 3 and should reflect the main messages or topics that you want to convey with your blog. 

For example, Don’t Want A Boss has 2 main topics: blogging and trading/investing. My blogging category is how to start a blog and make money with it. My trading/investing category is how to make money trading crypto and stocks (as well as some other assets). If I started writing about the vacation I took last week, my readers would get super confused and it would throw them off. They come to my blog to learn how to make money for themselves, not to read about my vacation. Once you choose your topics, you have to stay consistent. 

Your Blog is Not About You!

Another thing I’m going to repeat a lot is that you want to focus on solving your readers’ problems. Think about what their problem is and then tell them how to fix it. It’s OK to share some stuff about yourself as long as it’s relevant to them and their problem. A trick that I’ve used to do this is by writing for myself seven years ago – the me who was just learning to blog. I try to remember what my problems were when I was trying to start my first blog. This way I have a really clear idea of who my reader is and what their problems are. 

Having multiple niches is good if you want to make money through ads and affiliate marketing when you’re a beginner. But if you want to target a specific audience that would also help you in the long run, then you might want to choose a specific niche.

Homework: 

Step one. First, I want you to write down a long list of everything that you’re passionate about or interested in. Try not to get bogged down initially by thoughts about making money or profitable niches. Just write down everything that comes to mind. What I like to do when I’m brainstorming like this is have a nice cup of tea or coffee (or wine!) and just let the ideas flow. 

Step 2. Once you’ve written everything down, I want you to go back through and edit your list a little bit. Get a highlighter and your pen. Your blog is something that you’re going to be working on for at least one year consistently. I want you to cross out all the ideas that you don’t think you’d be able to talk about for the next year. The reason is that you want to look for a niche that won’t leave you hanging in the future. Can you see yourself creating content for this niche over a long period of time? Be consistent in providing value for your readers that will keep them coming back for you. 

I also want you to cross out all the ideas that don’t fit into the categories above. Don’t make the mistake here of crossing out ideas because you’re scared that you’re not enough of an expert. There are plenty of people online who know more about making money than I do. But my content isn’t for them. My content is for the people that are before me in my journey. And the same goes for you. You just need to know more about the topic than your reader and be passionate enough about it to keep learning.

Step 3. This is the exciting part! I want you to go through all of your highlighted ideas. This might be two or three or it might be a dozen. What you’re going to do now is try and think about your message. You’re going to think about what your categories would be. You want to have one to three topics within your idea that you can talk about. 

Step 4. This part is a little tedious but it’s the most important. Research. Go through the websites I posted above and look for other websites that are related to your topic. Google Trends is a good way to analyze if the niche you have in mind is the right one. Pinterest, YouTube, Reddit, and Quora are great websites where you can observe how your niches are doing and see what they are talking about.

While researching, see how other bloggers make money and try to find out how much money they’re making. You want to be sure that someone else out there is making money with your niche. Seeing them make money from the same niche might feel intimidating at first. “What if they do it better than mine?” But, instead of seeing it as a competition, think from a different perspective. If they make a profit from it, then it means your niche has good traffic and potential to grow. You’re on the right track! Like we talked about before, choosing a niche is not the time to be creative. You want to be sure that you are choosing something that’s gonna work.  

As much as I talk about not getting too excited and trying to cover too many topics, you still have to be passionate about your blog. Blogging is hard work. It’s going to take some time before you see results. This can be lonely and discouraging. Having a topic that you’re passionate about keeps you going because it’s fulfilling in and of itself to be learning more about something you love. it doesn’t matter how much money a niche can bring you if you give up before the money starts coming in.

Chapter 2:
Setting Up Your Blog in 3 Easy Steps

How to build your website and set everything up for success in one day

The three parts you need for your blog:

1. Domain 
2. Hosting 
3. Website Builder

Every single website in the entire world has these three aspects to make it work. 

Let’s go through them 1 by 1 and I’ll explain what each means. Then I’ll make some suggestions for how you can get all of these things in this price range:

1. Domain: $10-15/year
2. Hosting: $10-60$/month
3. Website builder: Free

As far as start-up costs for businesses go, this is nothing. By following this guide, you can break even within the first 6 months! Remember, you are working from home from your laptop. You’ve got no other business expenses. Just put in the time and effort. 

Picking Your Blog Name

Your blog name is going to be your website’s name and it’s going to be the name of all your social media channels.  This is what’s going to define your business and your brand. 

When you’re picking a name there are a few rules that you need to follow. 

It’s easy, just like when you’re picking your topics, to get excited and carried away. But think about all the memorable brand names that come to your head. What do they all have in common? 

Simplicity. 

You want something that’s easy to spell, and easy to remember. You also want something that makes sense as a website name. A domain name is just a fancy name for a website name. For example, the domain name for this blog is dontwantaboss.com

I suggest writing down all the names that you can think of that makes sense with your topic. Write them down as if it was the title of your blog and write them down as a .com version.

For example: 

Don’t Want A Boss 

dontwantaboss.com 

This name is easy to spell and easy to remember. It has the added bonus of being self-explanatory so that it’s very obvious what the website is about. This last part is nice to have but it’s not necessary. The tagline/front page of your website should do all the explaining. 

Another added bonus is having a name that’s meaningful to you. You don’t need this to have a profitable blog but having something that’s meaningful helps with motivation and will become a source of pride for you. 

Some tips that I can give you for choosing a name are: 

• think of emotions and the emotions you want your readers to have when reading your blog 
• look up synonyms and antonyms to see if you can put together something catchy 

When I decided on Don’t Want A Boss, it was because it fulfilled the criteria of a successful blog name (simple, easy to spell, easy to remember, makes sense as a website name) but it also evokes emotion. People that don’t want a boss generally feel strongly about their boss and their position as an employee. 

List of What Makes a Great Name: 

1. Simple. Simple. Simple. 
2. Easy to spell
3. Easy to remember 
4. Makes sense as a domain name

It’s pretty much impossible to make money from a blog that’s free. The explanation for this is a little bit convoluted and there are a lot of factors that make this true. 

• Very briefly it’s because you’re not actually going to own the blogs or the content that you create. 
• You’re not going to be able to access support if anything breaks or malfunctions on your website.
• You’re not going to be able to customize anything on the site to increase traffic, conversions, and engagement. 
• A lot of free services will be monetizing using their own ads put on your content. 
• Last but not least, if you are planning on monetizing your blog through affiliate commissions, most affiliate networks will not approve you if you do not own your own website. 

All you need to know is that you will have to pay some money in order to get a website name and to host your information on the Internet. 

I’ll explain how to do both shortly. For now, just think about your domain name. 

Once you’ve picked a shortlist of names, you are ready to build your blog! I promise there is going to be no coding involved and it’s going to be super simple with this guide.  

If you haven’t registered for a domain name yet, Wealthy Affiliate is an all-in-one package that helps you build your website from getting a domain, to hosting your website. Join for free and you’ll get as many as 50 domain names.

Select a Blog Host

Every single website on the Internet needs a hosting provider in order to store and manage the information on the site. 

Other than buying a domain name, the other thing that you have to buy for your blog is hosting. Both of these expenses are usually charged yearly. 

Hosting is a service that’s provided by a company that manages and stores all of the data on your website. It’s how all of that data is available on the Internet for people to see. A good way to think about it is kind of like iCloud or a hard drive. 

Choose a Website Builder

Every single blog needs a website builder (also known as a blogging platform). 

What is a Website Builder? 

A website builder is software that you use to structure your blog and write content. 

There are a lot of builders out there. Some of these are specifically designed for building a blog-based business whereas others are more of a sharing platform and others are for things like E-Commerce. 

Here’s a list of some common platforms: 

• WordPress
• Squarespace 
• Medium 
• Wix 
• Weebly 

There is no need to complicate this step or overthink it. 

What you want to do is use WordPress. All of the successful websites that I talked about earlier use WordPress. 40% of ALL the websites on the internet worldwide currently use WordPress. 

I use WordPress for all of my blogs. 

The only downside of WordPress is that there is a little bit of a learning curve compared to some of the other platforms such as Wix, which is very simple due to its drag and drop design. This ends up being an advantage once you learn your way around the dashboard because you can customize your blog significantly and make it epically beautiful. 

Don’t worry about this right now because, through this free guide, I’ll help you set up everything essential that you need in WordPress. 

If you are interested to know more about websites other than WordPress which are totally free, click here.

What Host should You Use?

Personally, I use a company based in BC, Canada called Wealthy Affiliate. They’re a bit of a smaller company but I love them because their customer service is impeccable (maybe people are just nicer in Canada?) and they make everything so easy. 

Wealthy Affiliate is specifically tailored to people who want to make money from promoting affiliate products on their website. 

For instance, if you have a fashion blog and you want to promote the clothes that you’re talking about. Or if you have a fitness blog and you want to promote the workout equipment that you use. 

You can become an affiliate for those products and then when people click through your special affiliate link on your website, you get a commission of the sale.

One of the most popular affiliate programs is Amazon Associates. Once you have some visitors coming to your site, you can apply to Amazon’s affiliate program and then you have access to ALL of Amazon’s stuff. 

The best part? You get the commission for everything that someone buys if they arrive at Amazon through your link, not just the product that you were promoting.

Sorry! I’m getting far too excited for you and veering a little bit off-topic. 

Back to Wealthy Affiliate. 

Buying a domain through Wealthy Affiliate is typically around 15$. Hosting is included in their membership costs which is $49 per month for the membership fee. 

If you’d like more advanced videos and training as well as an advanced keyword research tool, you can also get the “Premium Plus” membership for $99 per month. 

As a beginner, I would suggest you go with the base $49 plan. That’s all you need for now and then when you start profiting (which is possible within 6 months if you work hard and follow this guide) then you can upgrade if you feel like you need the extra features. 

Another thing that’s covered in the membership cost in addition to the hosting is their website builder. They work with WordPress so you end up with a beautiful WordPress site that you can seamlessly set up in minutes. 

Want to know the best part? 

You can create a free account and build a free blog. 

Your domain will look like this (the hosting service is called SiteRubix): 

Dontwantaboss.siterubix.com

You’re probably thinking “But you just said we can’t make money with a free site?” That’s true! 

But with Wealthy Affiliate, you can build out your entire site for free with a free account and once you’re ready to go live, you can upgrade your account, buy your $15 domain and transfer the whole thing over with 1 click. 

Just make sure that the domain you want is available so that you don’t have to rename your business after you’ve already built your site out. 

There are a bunch of other really cool things that are included in your Wealthy Affiliate membership. A lot of these things might not mean very much to you right now and that’s totally OK.

As you build out your business, you’ll learn about this stuff. I just wanted to mention it quickly because with most other hosting platforms, it’s sold separately and you have to pay extra. 

• A personalized email with your domain name (i.e. martina@dontwantaboss.com)
• SiteSecurity for hacking, malware, and bot-net attack protection
• SiteSSL for over 256-bit Encrypted Connections for increased website security
• SiteProtect spam blocker that prevents all automated comment spam
• SiteSpeed for automatically fast loading times and PageSpeed Insights
• 24/7 SiteSupport if you run into any problems 
• SiteHealth to let you know whether you’re indexed in Google and how healthy your website is  
• SiteFeedback from other members to learn what others think about your site design, your content, and your overall direction (optional) 
• Daily Website Backups so you never have to worry about losing your data

If you’re interested, here are all the details of the hosting that you get:

Let’s go through it step by step together!

Step #1: Choose What Type of Website You Want to Build

If you’re not ready to take the plunge, create a free account and a free website. You can upgrade and switch over to your own domain when you’re ready. 

My current for every new website I build is the following: 

• I set up a free domain with the name I want 
• I’ll build out the site in terms of the design I like, plugins I need, my main categories I want to talk about along with 1-2 posts in each 
• When I think it’s ready to launch, I’ll buy the domain and transfer it

It’s never happened to me yet, but the one downside of this strategy is if someone buys the domain before you transfer your site over. 

It’s a risk I accept, and I also like the little bit of pressure to get my site up and running as soon as possible. I think of it kind of as a motivator in my head. 

So, choose one of the domain names that you brainstormed above!

If you decide to go with the Free Domain first, this is what it will look like: 

Step 2: Choose a WordPress Design for your New Website

Now comes the super fun part! WordPress has a huge library of “themes” to choose from…

As you can see, you can access almost 4000 different themes. These are all free but there are also paid themes to choose from. 

My advice would be to start with a free theme. You really don’t need the functionality of a paid theme when you’re starting out. 

What is a theme? 

A theme is how your website is organized and what design features are easily available and customizable. If you know how to code, you can basically personalize anything in any theme but who wants to bother with that? 

Pre-built WordPress themes all have a ready-made framework. This will dictate the style, look and functionality of your site. 

Themes include: 

• Navigation menu(s)
• Widget locations
• Fonts and styling 
• Default colours 
• Page layout

How to choose a theme? 

The wonderful thing about WordPress themes is that you can change them whenever you like. You’re not stuck with the first one that you choose. That’s why it’s important not to get bogged down by which theme to pick. 

My only tips: 

• Black text on white background 
• Simple layout 
• Responsive (all of them pretty much are nowadays) i.e., works with all types of devices and works on all browser versions
• Optimized for SEO 
• Theme support 

How do you find out if a theme has certain features? 

The easiest way is to Google the theme and typically they’ll have a website. Read through the features and make sure they have the basics. 

The best way to check if it has a simple layout and it’s responsive is simply to pick it up and then try it out for yourself on different devices. 

If you don’t like the way it looks, you can ALWAYS switch it easily.  Click here to find out how to change themes in WordPress. 

Personally, I am very partial to GeneratePress. That’s the theme I use for all my blogs. 

GeneratePress Free is mobile-friendly, doesn’t eat up a lot of space, good typography and font editing. They also have a Premium and the only difference between the two is that it adds more features to the free theme. 

I like it because it’s extremely simple and lightweight. It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, so it keeps your website as fast and efficient as possible. 

Having built 6 blogs so far in my life, I have learned that simplicity is so important. Anything that you can simplify, you should. 

White background with black text is essential. First and foremost, you want a site that is clear and easy to read for everyone on any device. Don’t chase complex menus, fancy moving images, complicated home pages, etc. 

None of that is going to bring you traffic or make you money. It will just be a distraction that will eat up your time. 

There’s plenty of time to experiment with themes and different looks once your website is bringing in money. For now, the goal is to build it out and start turning a profit as soon as possible.

Let’s be honest, we’re doing this to make money. This isn’t supposed to just be for fun!

Step 3: Build the Website

Building a website with Wealthy Affiliate takes less than 30 seconds. I know, it’s super easy. After that, you’ll be able to log in and start working on your website!

Once you’ve built your website, you’ll need to set up some basics and then you can start publishing content. 

Content brings in traffic (i.e. visitors) to your website and that’s what makes you money either via ads, affiliate marketing, or selling your very own products. 

Want to follow along in a video with me while I build a website?

Step 4: Getting Started with WordPress & Setting Your Blog Up for Success

Once your website is built and ready to go, you’ll want to log in:

The WordPress platform is going to be your new best friend. It might look a little bit overwhelming at first but after a few days, you’ll quickly get used to how it works. 

It will get easier and easier the more you use it and I promise the effort will be worth it once you have your epic site up and running. 

This is (sort of) what your Dashboard is going to look like. This is the first screen that will be seen when you log into the administration area of your blog which will display the overview of your website. I’ve already simplified my Dashboard a little as shown in the video above so yours might look a little bit different. 

This is just my personal preference as I like to keep things as simple as possible. 

The first thing you need to do is go through all of the items on the menu on the left and get familiar with them. A lot of these you won’t use that often but it’s good to know what’s in there and how to set things up. 

Once they’re set up, you’ll never have to touch them again. 

You can follow along with me in this video as I go through a WordPress tour and what you’ll need to do for a basic setup:

Let’s start from the bottom: 

• WordPress Settings

This is one of the things that you need to set up right once at the beginning and then you pretty much don’t need to touch it again.  There are a set of tools that will allow you to set your site title, customize how your site displays, add your tagline, configure your timezone, and many more.

There are 2 tabs that we need to cover: General and Permalinks. 

General Settings

The Site Title is going to be the name at the front of your website. Depending on the theme you might be able to see it on every page up in a corner or you might only see it on the front page. For this blog, it’s Don’t Want A Boss. I’ve changed my theme so that you can’t actually see the title but it’s still in my general settings. 

The Tagline is something you should 100% customize. It doesn’t look good if someone visits your site and sees “Just another WordPress site”. For Don’t Want A Boss, I use “Helping you make money”. Even though I don’t display my tagline on my site, it might come up in the search results on Google. 

Your Administration E-mail Address is the e-mail address affiliated with your website. If you search that email address in Google after a few weeks/months, your website will come up and vice versa. That’s why I like to edit this to my business address. 

If you’re using a free domain, for now, you’ll have to use one of your personal addresses. As soon as you switch to your own domain, you’ll be able to make a business email for yourself and then you can edit this.  

Everything else in General Settings is pretty self-explanatory I think. As with anything, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below in the comments section.

Checklist: 

• Make sure your site title is correct 
• Change your tagline to the main purpose of your site
• Remember to update the administration e-mail when you have your own domain 
• It’s not super crucial that your time zone is correct, but I personally like to edit this to my own time zone 

Permalinks 

Okay, so what is a permalink anyway? 

Permalinks are links on your website to pages or posts that shouldn’t be changed very often. Every single time that you publish a new page or a new post, a specific link is created for them called a permalink. 

The best practice is to not change those links unless there is a very good reason. If you do, then links to your website that point to the changed link might go to a 404 Page Not Found which Google doesn’t like and gives the visitor a bad impression. 

There is a way to set up a redirect and I’ve known WordPress to even do this automatically at times. So if you do need to change the links, it’s not the end of the world but if you can avoid it then it’s best to avoid it. 

 The structure of your permalinks is going to impact SEO. If you’re 100% sure of your categories on your website (your main topics and what you’re going to call them) then there might be some added SEO benefit for changing the structure of your permalinks to Custom Structure and then putting .com/category/postname

Permalinks are very important in your site because both search engines and your readers use these URLs to guide and visit your site. The kind of permalink you choose can affect the way they see your site. A URL with unreadable or unnecessary words at the end is not recommended because it’s not as enticing as it looks.

For beginners and even for myself, I don’t bother with this. 

My default is always to go with Post Name. 

Typically Post name is set by default. 

If it’s not checked off, just make sure that you check it off. Then never return to this tab again. 

Messing with permalinks is just a bad thing if you don’t understand WordPress and SEO very well.  It’s like messing with the code on your website without knowing how to code. 

I cover the rest of the tabs in my video above just so that you have an idea of what’s in them. For now, however, that’s all you really need to worry about. 

• WordPress Tools

I never touch this tab. It contains tools to do some non-routine tasks. There’s nothing in here that you’ll need so feel free to skip right over it!

• WordPress Users

Users can add, edit, publish, and delete any posts on the site, including the ones written by other users. This is what your user page will look like in WordPress: 

Click on the “admin” link to take you to the following page: 

In this example, I’ve changed the Admin Color Scheme to Midnight, and I’ve unchecked the Toolbar (I find it a little bit distracting when I’m customizing my website). To be honest these things don’t really matter. 

The important thing is that you add the following: Nickname. 

I’ve also added my First Name, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Basically, the only thing that’s needed is what you want your name to be displayed as. Personally, I like my first name to be displayed publicly so I chose that under the Display name publicly as a section. 

Furthermore, I’ve added my business email (again, you’ll have to wait to do this if your site is free). 

Lastly, once you have your business email, you can go to Gravatar through the link on the page and add a profile picture for yourself associated with that email. For instance, my profile picture is the same as my logo for Don’t Want A Boss. It’s the two champagne glasses with a bow. 

That’s it for this section! You don’t have to come back and edit anything in this section again other than your e-mail if that hasn’t been updated yet.  

Checklist: 

• Add your nickname
• Set your nickname to your display name 
• Add your business e-mail or remember to come back and add it if you’re using a free domain 

• WordPress Plugins

This section is very important. It’s also one of the sections where you will return a lot.  Plugins are one of the joys of using WordPress. They can make your life very easy if you know which ones to use. 

What are plugins? 

Plugins are essentially little programs that act as “add-ons” to your website code. They introduce easy-to-use functionality to your website.  There are plugins for literally everything. There are some types of plugins that you absolutely need, some that are nice to have, and some that are not really necessary. 

It’s important to not get carried away with plugins. It can be tempting to add every single plugin to your website. 

Too many plugins will bog down your site’s loading time, which we absolutely do not want. 

To improve your site speed, you can install the SuperCache plugin on WordPress for free. You’ll always want to optimize your images, and keep your site and plugins updated. 

Also, make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. This means that any reader who uses their phone to access your blog won’t have a hard time reading the fonts, and watching some of your videos and it doesn’t have excessive pop-up advertisements.

Let’s take a look at Dontwantaboss.com from a mobile device, versus a computer/laptop:

On a mobile device, the fonts are accurate and easy to read. It also doesn’t have unnecessary pop-up ads that could hinder your readers’ first impression of visiting your website.

This is what it looks like on a computer. The headline is big and an eye-catcher, and the font sizes are easy to read, as well.

These are the plugins that are automatically installed when you build your site with Wealthy Affiliate.

Personally, I prefer Yoast SEO to All in One SEO Pack. That’s just personal preference. 

I find Yoast SEO simpler, more intuitive, and easier to work with. 

I want the minimal number of plugins possible and I only want to have what I’ll actually use so I always delete the Classic Editor because I have no problems with the new WordPress editor. 

I think keeping the Kraken Image Optimizer is okay to do because eventually you’ll have a lot of images and it’s good to have something that can manage all of that data. 

How to add a new plugin? The easiest way to install is to use the plugin search. Go to Plugins, then Add New page inside your admin area. You will see a screen like the one below. Find the plugin by typing the plugin name or the features you are looking for. After that, you will see lots of results like the photo below:

These are the plugins I use: 

• Yoast SEO
• GA Analytics
• SumoMe
• WP AutoTerms
• Elementor 
• Elementor Pro (Optional)
• GP Premium (Optional) 

Checklist:

• Install and setup plugins

• WordPress Appearance

This section is really important as it controls how your website will look to your visitors. It’s also a section that you’ll come back to over and over again as you refine how you want to set up your site as you add more and more content. 

The first tab is your themes. This is where you manage your theme (delete or install). For now, it will be set to whatever you chose when you built your website using the SiteRubix site builder. 

At any time, you can return here and change your theme. Follow along in this video to learn how to change your theme whenever you want: 

As I’ve mentioned before, I love GeneratePress. It’s simple, it’s versatile and it’s lightweight so it doesn’t slow down your site very much with fluff that’s unnecessary.  From here, you can “Customize” the look of your website. 

The tabs on the left are all the things that you can customize in your theme.

The best way to learn these different tabs is to take some time and explore them.  

• Site Identity. Just like you can edit your blog’s name and tagline in the WordPress Settings tab, you can also edit them here through the customizing view of your site. 

For example, you can decide whether you want your main menu on the left or the right of your blog. 

• Colours. Remember that when you’re tinkering with the colours on your site, you want to keep it simple and easy to read. Black text on a white background is a must. Also, make sure that your links are a colour that’s obvious and stands out. Typically, dark blue will be the default, but it depends on your theme. 

• Typography. This tab allows you to change fonts around. My advice would be (you guessed it!) to pick something simple and easy to read. Very elaborate cursive, for instance, is a definite no on a blog. 

• General. On GeneratePress, this allows you to change the structure of the site. I typically don’t touch this and to be honest, I don’t know what it does. 

• Menus. You can create your menus within WordPress or within this customized view. It’s the same thing. Depending on your theme, you may have one location for menus, or you may have multiple. 

GeneratePress has one location and that’s plenty enough for me. 

As you know by now, I love simplicity. Websites with 20 menus confuse me and I find them overwhelming. I like having one menu and typically keep it in the upper right corner of my website. 

• Widgets. Widgets sound funny but they’re pretty simple to understand. Essentially, they’re features that you can add to different places on your website. 

Your theme typically dictates where you can have widgets. Widgets can be almost anything like a link, an image, a video, a calendar of your posts, your recent posts, audio, etc. 

• Additional CSS. Like the “General” tab, this tab I typically don’t touch when I’m first starting a website. 

It’s for additional code to customize the look of your website.  

Follow along with me in this video as I show you the basics of theme customization. 

Next, you’ll be able to find your widgets and menus back in the WordPress main menu. This is just a different way to get to the same thing as we just covered through the customization window.

These sections are super important because how you set up your menus and what you include in your widgets are what will shape your visitor’s experience. 

My advice would be the simpler the better. It’s so tempting to get carried away but the simpler and more intuitive you can make your website, the better. 

The last two tabs under WordPress Appearance that you can see on my page are my theme’s specific tab and the Theme Editor. 

Unless you go for the Pro version of GeneratePress, you don’t need to worry about the GeneratePress tab as it allows you to set up all the Premium Modules. 

I personally never touch the Theme Editor. That tab holds the code for your specific theme. I wouldn’t advise touching this area unless you are an expert at code. If you are, then you can go in there and modify the code as you like to modify your theme. 

There’s not much of a difference between the standard GeneratePress and the Premium one. All the features from the free version are upgraded on the Premium version. You’ll have a complete set of 14 modules which gives you the ultimate experience in making your website look even more beautiful.

Overall, I would strongly recommend avoiding getting bogged down in details about color, font, etc. It’s not worth your time in the beginning. The most important thing initially is to build a clear, easy-to-read website. There will be plenty of time once your site starts getting traffic and once your main content is published to tinker with the exact look and feel that you want. 

• WordPress Comments 

The comments section is where you’ll see comments appear if you’d like your blog to receive comments. Personally, I like to include comments on my blog as I find it allows for visitor engagement. This lets you have a good discussion with your readers.

As comments come in, you’ll be able to approve them, disprove them and reply to them in this section. 

• WordPress Pages

One of the most common questions beginners to WordPress have is what is the difference between pages and posts? 

To be honest, there really isn’t much of a difference. 

The way I like to think about it is that pages should only be used for specialized, stand-alone content whereas everything else should be posted.  Page is an area in your site where you can display your content.

This isn’t a hard and fast rule by any means. It’s just the way I like to organize my own sites. 

For example, I use pages for the following: 

• Sales pages
• Front pages
• Legal pages 
• Email opt-in pages 
• Contact pages 
• About Us pages 

Everything else is a post. 

How to Set Up Your Legal Pages?

When you build your website with SiteRubix, it will automatically generate a “Privacy Policy” page for you. Or, you can simply download a free plugin called WP Autoterms and activate it.

You can either keep this as if you like and it’s probably all you need. 

The 3 legal pages that you’ll hear about for blogs are: 

1. Privacy Policy 
2. Disclaimer 
3. Terms and Conditions 

I would 100% recommend having a privacy policy and a page for terms and conditions. These two are very easy to set up and I’ll tell you how in less than 1 minute below. A disclaimer is a little bit more tricky

What is a Disclaimer? A disclaimer says that people can’t rely on your blog for information legally. Essentially it protects you from lawsuits.  For instance, if you’re writing a blog about food and someone gets food poisoning following your recipe then you’re free from liability. 

Or if you’re a blog about stock trading and someone loses money trading based on your strategy, they can’t sue you. This means you’ve got to tailor it to your own niche depending on what you’re writing about.

Disclaimers on how your blog makes money really aren’t necessary until your blog starts making money. Even then, I like to keep it simple and include disclaimers on the page where you are making money. 

Most affiliate programs will require you to put a short disclaimer before an affiliate link on your blog. This is also just good practice in general. A lot of blogs will link from there to a page where they go in-depth about how they make money. You can definitely do this if you like. 

Here’s a lawyer’s opinion on disclaimers: https://raelyntan.com/write-blog-disclaimer/

Please note: I am most certainly not a lawyer so in terms of legalities, take what I’m saying with a grain of salt. My philosophy is that I should do what I can to make sure I’m upfront and open with my blog and I like to think that will be enough. For most bloggers it absolutely is but there’s always the odd horror story. If you want to be super safe, then you can always speak with a professional to make sure you are dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s. 

In terms of setting up my legal pages, I always use WP AutoTerms. It’s a plugin that generates your privacy policy and terms and conditions legal pages for you. 

To install the WP Auto Terms plugin, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your WordPress site with an administrator account.
2. On the Dashboard in the left sidebar, click Plugins, and then click Add New.
3. Search for “WP AutoTerms ”, click Install, and then click Activate the plugin.
4. After activating, start adding legal pages. Click on WP Autoterms settings to make changes on the shortcode of the website name, website URL, company name, country, and state.
5. To create a legal page, click on the All Legal Pages option, then click on Add Legal Page.
6. There are three options, Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, and Custom in which you review and publish easily.

I like WP Autorems because even when you get templates for these pages, you have to go through and replace your website name, URL, and contact information. I just don’t want to make a mistake anywhere so I figure this is the best solution. 

Follow along in this video to see how I set up my pages: 

The other 2 pages that you can set up now are your About page and your Contact page. Your contact page is pretty simple. You just want to include how people can get in touch with you. Your About page on the other hand is another matter. Most people do their About pages all wrong… 

How to write an About page? It turns out that your About page is actually not about you at all. I know, crazy right? It’s actually all about your reader. 

A big mistake that bloggers make is that they want to write all about themselves. I did exactly this when I started my first art blog. Remember the one I told you about earlier? I wrote about how long I’d been drawing and painting, how much I loved it and how I also have a dog and sometimes I like drawing my dog…

Yawwwwnnn….

The thing is that people don’t actually care that much about you. They care about what you can do for them. 

How are you going to help your reader? You can definitely lace in some inspiring stories about you that back up your claims. Remember though that the stories are just that: backing up points. 

I asked you earlier on in this guide to try and think about who your reader is. I told you that my ideal reader was simply myself five years ago. Write your About page directed at your ideal reader. 

What do they want to know? Why should they listen to you? You want to paint them a picture. 

Let’s take Don’t Want A Boss as an example. 

I could just say “My name is Glorie and I started writing for Don’t Want A Boss to help people make money so they could be their own boss. I used to have a job, but I was able to quit that job and now I can work from home.” 

Or…thinking of myself 5 (or maybe almost 10 now) years ago I could say “Isn’t is the most frustrating thing waking up day after day to go work for someone else? I know when I used to get up at the crack of dawn to do the commute to my job, I would hate it. I hated answering to someone else. When I was at work or on the weekends with some wine, I would daydream about owning my own business. I would dream about the day that I could stay home to have coffee on my couch and work from my laptop and take my dog out on a long walk…” 

Which one is more captivating? 

I think the second one. 

The idea is to show your understanding of exactly how your reader feels. Show them that you know what it’s like to be in their shoes. That’s empathy. This is why I like writing to my past self. I know exactly how that person feels. How frustrated and restless they are. 

Last but not least, your About page should have the next step for your reader to take. You don’t need to set this up right away but keep it at the back of your head. 

Personally, I like having them join my mailing list. Any reader who joins a mailing list after reading your About page is definitely someone you want to stay in contact with. 

Likely, your blog really resonated with them. 

Here are some tips for writing your About page: 

• https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-write-the-perfect-about-page-that-drives-leads/
• https://www.enchantingmarketing.com/how-to-write-an-about-page/
• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/remarkable-about-us-page-examples
• https://www.melyssagriffin.com/about-me-page-blog/

• WordPress Media 

Media is really important on your blog. This library is where your pictures, audio, and videos will be stored. You’ll be able to add them to your posts and pages as you need. The second screen is Add New, which allows the users to upload files to the library. Remember, other users can also upload media (images, videos, etc) while writing a post or page. 

It’s important to use really high-quality media for your website to make the whole reading experience for your audiences worthwhile!

To get high-quality media, here are some steps that will help you solve it:

1. You can increase WordPress’ default JPEG image compression limit. WordPress usually shrinks your images at around 82% quality to improve site performance for mobile users.
2. Don’t use blurry or pixelated images 
3. Resize your images according to the dimensions required before uploading it to WordPress

• WordPress Posts 

Last but certainly not least is your post section. This is likely where you will be spending 99.9% of your time. Posts are what you’ll be creating on a regular basis. Creating posts is what blogging is really all about after all! 

Wondering what to write about? I’ll take you through exactly how to find stuff to write about and how to write it so your content goes viral in Step 3! 

First, I want to cover how you’re going to organize your posts. 

Under WordPress Posts, you’ll find the Categories tab. Categories are like folders for your posts. I always recommend limiting yourself to 2-4 parent categories. I find if you go beyond this, it gets too broad and confusing. 

How do I set up my categories?

Decide on a name, convert that name into a “slug” by putting dashes between the words and add a short, simple description if you want to.

I’m not convinced category descriptions actually do any good. 

You can also head back to my WordPress tour video to follow along while I demonstrate how to make categories. 

What should my categories be? Let’s look at some examples. 

1. How To Make Money

Don’t Want A Boss has 2 categories right now: blogging and investing. 

That’s it! It’s pretty simple to see how these are both about how to make money all while being your own boss. In that way, they’re very coherent with my blog’s overall message. 

2. Fitness/Weight Loss

Potential categories: 

• Nutrition 
• Training 
• Recovery 

3. Backpacking on a Budget

Potential categories: 

• Packing
• Budgeting/Saving
• Destinations/Accommodations 

These are just some ideas. The point is that you should think of 2-3 main topics that your blog is going to cover. All of your posts should be able to go into one of the main categories. 

If a post you want to write can’t be “filed” into one of your categories, then you should either think about making your blog more specific or making your category broader. 

Remember that it’s really important to have a clear message with your blog.  You don’t want to overcomplicate things. It can get overwhelming for your audience to see a lot of categories that they just might end up leaving.

I totally understand it’s easy to get excited, but I want you to really force yourself to get specific and clear with your message and your 2-4 categories. 

Pro Tip: I would strongly recommend making your categories your main menu items. You can then have drop-down menus to post popular content or sub-categories. You can also link directly to your blog role or you can link to some sort of funnel or opt-in. I find that doing this makes your website very easy to navigate and understand. 

Homework:

Chapter 3:
Writing Content That People Want to Read, Save and Share

How to write blog posts that people will keep coming back for

Okay! Whew. 

I know that was a lot but hopefully, my guide helped you along and you got through it pretty quickly. Now, we get to the good stuff. This is the bread and butter of blogging: the content. 

This is where you’re going to create mouth-watering posts that everyone is going to want to read, save and share with their friends! 

I hope you don’t mind if I share a little story with you. I promise I have a point to make and it has to do with making money with your blog. After all, that’s what the goal is. We’re not doing all this work just for fun (although it can actually be quite a bit of fun!)

Did you know I actually quit blogging after I first started? I tried so hard for 3 months and I gave up. 

Want to know why? No one was coming to my site. Okay, maybe not no one but it might as well have been no one. I had less than 100 viewers per month. 

And I had worked SO hard. I read about all these people online getting hundreds of viewers a day. 

To get on any sort of decent ad network, the minimum was 10k pageviews a month. And it didn’t seem like I was going to get there anytime soon. If you remember, my first site was not exactly well thought out. I didn’t have a clear message, I wanted to cover way too many topics and I didn’t have the luxury of knowing what plugins to install and how to easily set up and build my site. 

What now takes me 10 minutes with Wealthy Affiliate and SiteRubix took me weeks when I first started with GoDaddy and…I actually don’t remember the name of my first hosting service. 

Anyways! 

Even with all of those mistakes, it turns out that’s not what prevented me from getting viewers. Some utterly ugly and very confusing sites get tons of visitors. I’m sure you can guess what ruined it for my first site. Yep, you got it! My content was not good. 

How do you write good content?

Writing content is the heart of your blogging journey. Knowledge and experience in it are what will keep you going and get better at blogging, so always keep in mind to take things at your own pace.

It’s the art of showing value and helping the reader understand how that value will help them live a better life. So, it is always important to make your audiences/readers feel connected to you. Incorporate your personality into your copywriting. If they like you, they’ll love your content and eventually keep coming back for you. 

The secret to writing content that gets readers is finding out what people want to read.  That means (unfortunately) research, research, and more research. 

You start by researching popular trends, topics, and already well-received pieces of existing content across the topic areas your business typically covers. Then, you look for new and unique ways to create content that communicates a similar message — with a twist.

I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear but I honestly think that’s what separates the blogs that succeed and the ones that fail. 

Who is your reader? We’ve talked about this multiple times now in Step 1 and Step 2. 

I like to think of my reader as a former version of myself. That way I can really understand exactly what that person is thinking, experiencing, and feeling at the time. 

Your blog can look fabulous, be super easy to navigate, and have the best name on the Internet. None of that is going to make your readers come back. What’s going to make them come back to refer to your site month after month is how well they think you understand them. 

Does your content really resonate with them? Do they feel like you can solve their problems? Can you help them achieve their goals? 

If you can, then you can bet that they’ll be back again and again. Once you’ve got your reader very clear in your mind, then you’ll know how to write your content. The next thing you have to worry about is what to write.

What to write about?

Do you know the saying that 95%+ of bloggers make no money? The content is what it comes down to. 

Like what I was talking about before…

You can talk about your passions until you are blue in the face. If no one cares about those passions, then it really doesn’t matter. You need to write your content in a way that it’s tailored to HELP other people. 

Again, we’re doing this to make money. 

If you’re starting your blog 100% for fun then feel free to skip this section. 

If you want to actually make a profit, then you need to write the RIGHT kind of content. 

The right kind of content is better than other blog content AND is content that people are looking for. It’s the simple rule of supply and demand. 

It’s also important to write in the RIGHT way. 

When you are writing your blog, you’ve got to write to them in an informal, conversational way as if you were talking to a good friend. So when do you use first, second, or third person in your writing? The good thing about using the first person is that you help the reader become close with you, and trust you. 

In establishing intimacy with your readers, you can include your photo to make them comfortable. You can also talk about how your life is the same as theirs, to be relatable. The more you reveal about yourself, the more the reader will trust you. Include them in your special group.

Now, do you know what people are looking for? 

1. Spy on other blogs

When we were brainstorming for your niche and topic ideas back in Step 1, we looked at other successful blogs to make sure that your niche would be profitable. Looking at those same blogs is a great way to see what posts are doing well. 

How many inspiration blogs do you need? 

There’s no limit to how much research you can do. Honestly the more, the better probably.  I’ve heard people say you need a list of at least 20 blogs to scope out the competition on. 

Personally, I don’t think it is true. I think you can get by fine with even just a handful. It’s good to know that there are 20+ blogs that are similar to yours because that’s proof that there is plenty of money to be made. 

It comes down to how much time you have. I like to divide my time as follows: 

• 25% research (mostly in chunks every once in a while) 
• 75% writing & promoting (consistently) 

How do you find the best articles on a blog? 

Some blogs will have their “Most Popular” section where they list the most popular posts. Referring to these posts will give you a good idea of what kind of content does well. Pay attention to the titles, the structure, and aesthetics as well as what points the posts make. 

Even if the blog doesn’t have a specific section with their most popular posts, typically the content that they highlight is content that brings them the most money. Things like “Trending” or “Start Here” are good places to look for content that performs really well. 

A lot of blogs will have the number of shares public using a plugin. 

This is a good reference as to how popular the content is. 

Some examples: 

The best thing about the Internet is that there is plenty of traffic for everyone. Unless you’re literally selling exactly the same type of product, there’s no need to worry about competition. 

When I “spy”, I absolutely do not mean “copy”. 

We’re only getting IDEAS here.

For example, I got the idea for this guide because all of my favorite websites I follow about making money have some sort of epic guide to starting a blog. 

Of course, I made this guide specific to how I build my websites, the software that I use, and (most importantly) it’s full of my own personal tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years. 

The quickest way to boycott your blog from being recognized by Google and getting traffic is to copy other people’s stuff. Google’s algorithms can tell right away. So, it’s always best to create your own blog posts because it lets Google trust you. And if Google trusts you, they’ll bring you more traffic.

Pro Tip: Inside Wealthy Affiliate, there is a place where you can create content and publish it directly to your website. I don’t always write the first draft of my post here although it depends, but I typically will stylize my posts and get them ready to publish there because there are 2 incredible features. First, there is a repository of stock images free and legal to use available as easily as searching for one you want and adding it in. Second, the software automatically checks if there’s any duplicate content detected in your post compared to all the other content on the Internet. So, you never have to worry! Pretty cool, eh?

2. Browse Popular Forums

Big forums like Reddit and Quora are great places for research and promotion. 

If you look for popular questions people have related to your niche, you can build post ideas around them. 

A good tip is to keep track of the links to the conversations where you found these questions. Then, once your post is written, you can go back and contribute to the conversation and leave a link back to the post! 

This way you’re promoting your blog in a very natural, unassuming way that will likely be very helpful to anyone looking for information on whatever the subject is about. 

Reddit works using an algorithm called karma(voting scenario). Every post on Reddit is shown based on its vote value. When the vote value is high, chances are, there’s a good amount of traffic. This will give you an idea of how many people talk about the content you’re planning to create. 

As for Quora, it works the same as Reddit. You can find people’s problems related to the content you plan to create. Since that is exactly what you want to do – help solve their problem- Quora can be very helpful! When searching for topics, you’ll also find related topics in it. Join as many relevant ones as you can so you can get used to common questions and answers for all of them.

Also, people typically venture into Quora and Reddit when they can’t find the answer easily on Google. Once you write about that specific topic, it will be that much easier to rank on Google if you’re the only one writing about it! 

Here’s an example for traveling topics from Quora: 

Here’s an example for traveling topics on Reddit: 

3. Using social media to find popular topics

There are 3 ways to use social media to find popular topics to write about: Pinterest, Youtube, and BuzzSumo. 

How to find topics using Pinterest? 

To get a feel for how popular a topic is on Pinterest all you simply have to do is research! This can be a little time-consuming at first but can save you a ton of time in the long term. Simply search for a topic and click on the pins that come up. Each pin will give you plenty of insight into whether or not something is worth pursuing.

You can see if Pinterest has a topics page for your particular topic and then you can see how many people follow it. Topics pages always have a URL like this: https://www.pinterest.com/topics/bedroom-cabinets/

Reasons why Pinterest is useful:

1. Pinterest is a search engine and this means, your pins have a chance of being shown to people that are actively looking for content.
2. It’s free!
3. Even if you’re starting from scratch, you have a chance of your pins being shown to new people.
4. Once you have your Pinterest set up and running efficiently then you’ll find you aren’t spending much time at all on it.
5. the quickest way to start free traffic.

To see if the topic you’ve chosen from Pinterest is going to be valuable by bringing more people to your website, here are a few points to remember:

For example, you’ve chosen the topic Yoga. It is a great sign if the profile has a lot of followers on the first arrow right there. It means that a lot of people have been sharing the same interests.

As far as I can tell, this pin was created over a year ago. This is important because the repin count at the bottom (45K) shows how popular the actual topic is in a span of 2 years.

If the post/pin was published 5 years ago and it took that long to get that many page views, that means the topic wasn’t that attractive nor helpful enough to get quick traffic and it is not a good sign to choose a topic from Pinterest that you feel like it could slow you down in making your website growing.

To get in-depth about how Pinterest works, from setting up your account to creating Pins that will help you bring more traffic with the help of pinning strategies, make sure to check out my highly recommended Pinterest Traffic Tips.

Another thing to look for is how well the topics on Pinterest look,  SharedCount is a great FREE tool that gives you an indication of how popular the topic is. 

For instance, you’ve chosen “Banana Recipes” as the topic you want to write for making content on your website.

Click on their main website and copy the URL. Then just simply type in the blog post URL and click Analyze URL. This will give you the data on how popular that post is to Facebook & Pinterest.

SharedCount will tell you how many times that particular post has been shared. This isn’t always accurate, but it’s useful for determining whether or not a topic is popular. It also tells you how many times a post has been shared on Facebook, which can be extremely useful in determining whether your target audience hangs out there as well.

As you can see from the image above, the blog post garnered 5.2k repins from Pinterest and had a total of 25 reactions (likes, comments, and shares)  from Facebook.

It’s up to your judgment whether or not having banana recipes as your topic will be valuable enough to bring traffic to your website!

Here’s an example of keywords that fill in with Pinterest when I search for travel destinations: 

Another way to see popular keywords is right underneath the search bar. There will be a ton of words that you can click on that will complete your search phrase to match the content that people search for a lot. 

Finding content through Pinterest is awesome because you know that it’s popular content since people are actively searching for it and sharing it. But it’s even more awesome because one of the first places that you’ll start getting traffic from is Pinterest so you’ll have a head start getting a lot of views from there as well. if you’re interested in learning about my daily strategy on Pinterest, make sure to check out this link!

I like spending a bit of time just looking through Pinterest to see what kinds of keywords come up. 

Based on the ones I’m interested in, I like to look through the posts that are ranking in top positions (aka are on the first page). 

For example, let’s say I want to write content about “Winter Travel Destinations Canada”: 

 

All of these posts are ranking well for those keywords since they’re on the 1^st page of the results when I look it up. 

So, I’d look through these to get an idea of what people are writing about. 

Pro Tip: Whenever I’m doing research on Pinterest, I like to keep an eye out for ads. Ads are tough to spot on Pinterest because they blend with the organic content very well. If there are ads, it means someone is making enough on the article to make it worthwhile paying for an ad. When I see the same ad pop up for weeks or months then I definitely know the topic in question is a good one. I’ll also click on those ads and see how they’re making money to see if I can implement any of their strategies because who doesn’t want to make more money? 

You might have noticed there are no ads for the “Winter Travel Destinations Canada” topic.

Here’s an example of what an ad looks like on Pinterest: 

Note: There are plenty of ads on Pinterest for big companies (i.e. Squarespace, Grey Goose, Questrade). We don’t care about these. We care about the ads that independent blogging sites are displaying and making money from. 

So, Elise Darma’s ad for the Instagram caption template doesn’t lead to an article (although it could!). It leads to an opt-in page where you get these free templates in exchange for your email address. 

Likely she’ll put you into an email series where she sells stuff to you later!

How to find topics using Youtube? 

When you’re searching for something on YouTube, it will start to suggest keywords that are related to what you’re searching for. This is a great way to turn your list of topics into a well-structured keyword list.

Youtube is the 2nd largest platform where you can get your traffic from and for your audience to get to know you more. Your ways in writing your blog The way you are going to build trust with your audience is completely different when you’re on YouTube (obviously!). If you want to give people a deeper connection with you by seeing you and hearing you instead of reading your words, YouTube is the best platform for that.

Now, if your chosen niche is all about cars, you can try to create a bunch of content for your website using the YouTube search bar! Just like in the image below, you’ll have ideas on what topics to cover based on those dropped-down search results!

 

You could also find inspirations for your content on Google, other than on Pinterest or Youtube, or other search engines. In fact, Google Search is the MOST popular search engine! Hence, this is where most people are looking to solve their problems.

You know what this means, more people means more traffic!

Don’t worry if you’re unfamiliar with Google search and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It’s not as difficult as it appears. And I’ll go into more detail about it.

All you need to know right now is that knowing how many people search for a specific topic in Google can give you a huge advantage because you can write about something people are interested in.

When searching for a topic on Google, you must first look for a keyword. What is a keyword?

A keyword is simply the search term that people enter into Google when they want to find something. A keyword is a word that describes your post’s content.

One of the easiest ways to topics for our blog via Google is to use this simple method called the Alphabet Soup Method.

How does this work?

In the Google search bar, enter a word or phrase followed by an alphabet letter. Collect all of the autocomplete answers. Continue with the next letter until you have a spreadsheet full of keywords directly from Google’s search engine.

It’s a free and simple way to generate keyword ideas. Let’s say for example you want to start with searching for book topic ideas.

You can proceed to type “b”. 

By appending a letter before the word or phrase, you can get more longtail search results.

See, it’s hassle-free and you’ll have plenty of topics to choose from. Now it’s up to which topics suit your niche the best. Want to know a more in-depth guide on the Alphabet soup method? I highly recommend watching this course that I got from Wealthy Affiliate which will help you guide on how to use the free and convenient method.

Also, if you want to look for topics that give you more detailed data on how they rank on Google, how much traffic a topic can get, you can use the following tools:

• Buzzsumo

How to find topics using BuzzSumo? 

Don’t worry! Using BuzzSumo and finding topics in there is as easy as one, two, three! 

First, you sign up on their website for a 30-day free trial if you don’t have an account yet. Next, you can simply enter the topic you want to search into the search bar and click, “Search.” 

It will then display a “ball” of words and a bunch of related topics, grouped based on relevance. Each related topic provides sample content, like trendy articles related to the topic that was written before or related keywords people are searching for in Google. 

BuzzSumo is the easiest way to see what the most popular posts are on a blog based on how many times they’ve been shared on social media. By typing in the domain name of the website, you’ll get a list of their posts that have been shared the most on social media: 

Overall, I think it’s a great strategy to have a list of other blogs/websites that you love in your niche. 

These are great for inspiration and then eventually, you might be able to collaborate! 

• Ubersuggest

Another great way to find popular topics under your niche is using a free tool called Ubersuggest. It’s also a keyword suggestion tool that allows you to see hundreds of long-tail keywords and other phrase suggestions at the tap of a button – all from a single keyword or phrase that you typed! 

This is a helpful tool if you want to know the topics you’re gonna create are going to bring audiences to your website. Sign up for free here to see a lot of topic ideas under your chosen niche.

• Jaaxy

Jaaxy is also an awesome tool that I personally use to find great topics for my website. It also enables me to find keywords that people are typing into Google and other search engines and then analyze their popularity.

You can simply type the topics you have in mind, then it will show a lot of results related to that topic. 

In addition, Jaaxy also gives you an idea of how well the topic is in terms of Google keyword rankings. That’s what makes Jaaxy an all-in-one tool when it comes to topic searching and analyzing its relevance on Google Search rankings!

As you can see in the photo above, The higher “Traffic” is, the more popular the keyword is (i.e. more people are searching for it).

There are a lot of terms on Jaaxy such as “QSR”, “KQI” and “SEO”. Don’t be alarmed if all of this seems overwhelming to you (I felt it too, at first)! They’re not as difficult as they appear. 

So, to get into more details about what Jaaxy is all about, click here to read our full review of the Jaaxy tool.

How awesome would it be to actually know what questions people were typing into Google related to your topic? That way you could create content specifically around those questions. 

Not only that, but you could make sure that YOUR content was better than the articles already ranking for that term. 

How do you make sure your content is better? 

1. Covers the same content and more.

You want to make sure that you cover all of the content that the other articles on page 1 of Google are talking about. This is how your articles are going to be more in-depth than all of those. You want to make sure that your article is THE most complete article on the subject. 

What I like to do is a quick skim of the other articles on page 1 and make sure that mine covers all of the main points. There’s nothing major that I want to miss. After I’ve done that, I’ll make sure that I add even more value. 

I’ll include something that’s just my own. My own opinion or my own secret way of doing things. That way I always make sure to add more value than all the top articles on Google.

2. Make sure it’s longer.

We all know that quality is better than quantity. When it comes to Google, you need quality AND quantity. The reason why is because, the longer a reader stays on your website, the better it is for you to let Google give you more traffic, and finally, there’s a high chance you’ll get on the first page on the Google Search engine. People are not patient. If they don’t find your content valuable, then, you’ll need to find ways to let them stay.

That doesn’t mean that you have to write a 3000-word article for every single topic. Far from it. Rather, it’s relative to the topic. If all the other articles on page 1 are around 1000 words then you want to make sure yours is 1500-2000. 

If all the articles are 5000 words, then you know that you’ve got your work cut out for you for that particular topic. 

This article for instance is A LOT of words. It increases all the time because I constantly update it but I think it’s somewhere around 30k right now. This particular guide took me over a month to publish initially. 

Crazy, right? But if you think about it, it makes sense. All the articles about how to start blogging are SUPER LONG. 

Other topics such as “Top 10 Netflix chick-flicks to watch tonight” are probably not going to be nearly as long. 

3. Make sure it looks better.

This is pretty simple. You just have to make sure that your media looks fantastic. 

Better photos

You want to add beautiful images to keep your blog as visually entertaining s possible. I know this task is very exciting to do.

But… I don’t think it’ll be a good idea to add images whenever you want to. There are downsides to that:

1. Your site will have a tendency to lag. What does it mean? It means, when your visitor reads your blog post full of pictures, it will take them a while to read what you post because it’s still loading.
2. Google doesn’t like it when you post images that are unrelated to your blog post. You can’t just upload a cute sunset image when you’re talking about kitchen organization. The chances of ranking higher will be lower for you, and you don’t want that to happen.

I’m not saying to stop uploading images at all! It will look boring and your readers won’t be staying in your blog and just end up leaving you because they cannot imagine what you are talking about. Adding a few visual elements can double your views and significantly impacts the sharability of your content.

Remember to upload high-quality images that are related to the blog post. If you’re up for creativity, you can always design your own images through Canva. Personally, I use Canva because it has all the designs I need for blogging, and it doesn’t take you a while compared to when you’re using Photoshop!

You might be thinking: “How am I going to make my own visual presentation for my blogs besides Canva?” No worries! Here are 4 ways to do it:

1. Take your own photos/videos using a Quicktime player, a screen capture, or a smartphone.
2. Stock photos. Free stock photos are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under the creative commons public domain. You can copy, modify, and distribute them without asking permission (even for commercial purposes like using them to make phone cases for instance!)

Here are the websites that you can download free stock photos:

• Pixabay
• Stocksnap.io
• Unsplash 
• Burst (Shopify) 
• Reshot 
• FoodiesFeed
• MMT Stock
• Gratisography 
• Freestocks.org 
• Picography 
• Picjumbo
• Kaboom Pics 
• SkitterPhoto
• Wealthy Affiliate 

3. Using other bloggers’ photos. Remember to always ask for their permission, unless there’s an explicit legal page on their website explaining how to use their images. Eg. The Minimalist Baker
4. Pay for licensed photos. You can use Adobe Stock or Shuttershock. You can also try DepositPhotos (100 for 49$)

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and there is still some risk to using these photos. There have been instances where a photographer’s image was shared illegally. This is rare, however, and typically you will just be asked to take it down but better safe than sorry.

This is why my favorite resource is Wealthy Affiliate, it’s because they provide you with high-quality and accessible images. In fact, you have 3 ways you can add images to your content.

• Search over a million images
• Upload your own images
• You can add your recently used images

As you can see from the photo below, Wealthy affiliate is an all-in-one package that helps you save time in writing your content. You won’t have to download free photos from other websites. Or, if you’re still improving your creativity with Canva, you can always use great stock photos from Wealthy Affiliate instead to make your whole blogging process quicker.

Better videos

When you include videos in your blog posts, they become more vibrant and engaging. Videos are important for your viewers to see if they’ll like you, in the sense that you share the same thoughts with them, or you show compassion by speaking your heart out to them to whatever problem they’re facing.

Plus, it increases the time your viewers spend on your website which will then help you bring in more traffic, possibly increasing your page views (which we will discuss in chapter 6).

Now that we understand the purpose of incorporating videos on our blog, what kind of videos are we going to make?

1. Video Tutorials

Research has found that 65 percent of the general population are visual learners, meaning they need to see information in order to retain it.

Therefore, creating video tutorials is a great way to help your audience in whatever problems they are facing and a way that they’ll see your content as something valuable and it will keep them coming back to your site.

For example, if you’re making content that is all about “Planting strawberries in a tropical country”, you could create a video tutorial of how you actually do it, with a step-by-step procedure.

2. Vlogs or video summaries

Make a video summarizing the main points of your blog post, then expand on those points in writing.

This method is particularly effective because short videos receive the most engagement, and you can post your summary on YouTube and link to the expanded version. For instance, you create a short 2-minute or 3-minute video summary, post it at the beginning of your post, then provide more information below the video.

This is a screenshot of a photo I took from Skepchick. It’s about a viral video from TikTok about a unique way how pets communicate with their owners using a set of voiced-over buttons. This website includes a 3-minute video explaining a summary of a whole article it further explains the content of the video and gives more details on how these pets are able to talk with their furowners.

Having video summaries included in your blog can pique the interest of your readers. It’s like giving them a catchy introduction that will keep them stay on your website. 

1. About Me (Us) Video

 Making a short video about who you are and what you do is a great way to let your viewers know you more. This is where they will see your personality. 

Building a good relationship with them is what you should aim for, especially if you want to maintain your website in the long run. They have to know the story behind your website and your purpose to help them.

Now we are up to the next question: how to record your videos?

1. Record a video using your smartphone, laptop camera, or screen capture software.

Recording a video is another excellent way to connect with your audience. People will be able to get to know you and see the expressions on your face this way. Perhaps you could explain a process to your audience while standing in front of a whiteboard or behind a green screen or wherever there’s good lighting.

As for the screen capture software, Loom is a cool software that enables you to record a video of yourself using your smartphone or laptop camera. This is a good way especially if you are doing a video tutorial.

To prepare for screen recording, make sure to close unnecessary windows, reposition icons and documents as needed, change the desktop background as needed, and make sure you look presentable. 

With Loom, you can also download your screen recorded video and upload it to your website.

And, for the last question: What video hosting platform should you use and how to embed videos to your blog posts?

There are plenty of video hosting platforms that you can use for your websites, such as Vimeo, Dailymotion, and YouTube.

These are all free but they have their own features, specifications for uploading, and so on. 

1. Vimeo is the best free option for bloggers that want to embed professional videos on their site. No ads are allowed on this platform. But, the main disadvantage of Vimeo is the low upload limits on their free account, as well as the relatively small audience. 

You can upload a maximum of 500MB per week. You also have the option of uploading from your Dropbox or Google Drive. 

2. Dailymotion, which aims to be another video-sharing platform, is perhaps the most obvious YouTube competitor on this list.

It has free unlimited video hosting, and there is less competition. So it may be easier to build an audience from scratch, but it takes a while to get your website known to become of the fewer viewers who use Dailymotion compared to Youtube. 

However, the downside of this platform is that you can’t download your videos unless you use a third-party service. 

3. YouTube appears to be the best option. The reason why is that, YouTube has the most traffic compared to any other video platform, with billions of active users. This increases the likelihood of your videos being seen and going viral.

The only downside of hosting your videos on YouTube is, there’s a ton of competition so you will need to take a dive on what strategies to use to keep growing your channel. 

If you are able to manage your YouTube Channel wisely, embedding YouTube videos on your website is likely to be better for your rankings than embedding videos from other platforms.

Embedding your videos from Youtube can be done in 3 simple steps:

• Click on the chosen video you want to embed. Then click the Share button. 

• Click embed.

• Copy the code in the Embed Section.

Once you’ve copied the embed code, edit your website or blog, paste in the code and then save the page.

Pro tip: Did you know you can embed almost any Youtube video into your blog. Even videos that aren’t yours are up for grabs. Obviously, it’s ideal if they are your own.

Infographics

Another thing to make your content look visually pleasing is to use Infographics. But to make your content really stand out, make sure that the infographics are just as useful as they are pretty.

What are infographics?

Based on Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition, an infographic is “a chart, diagram, or illustration (as in a book or magazine, or on a website) that uses graphic elements to present information in a visually striking way.”

It’s easier to understand if I show you an example of infographics. Let’s take a look:

This is an infographic combined with text and imagery (even numbers) to make your content much more notable in the sense that your viewers could easily understand the point in your topic.

How do we create a good infographic?

• Your infographic should include well-written informative text
• It should have a clean and modern design
• You can include statistics or sources

Let’s say, for example, you wanna create an infographic about the benefits of Dragon Fruit.

[image from: marylanddragonfruitgardens.blogspot.com]

The photo has a clean design and it clearly shows what the text is all about by using accurate clipart. It also has a lot of good information about the benefits of dragon fruit.

Should you be a good graphic designer to create an infographic?

The answer is no. Even if you’re not that skilled enough to design your own infographics, there are plenty of FREE graphic design platforms online such as Canva to help you create a great and striking infographic. 

Using Canva saves your time by a loooot compared to when you are making your own design from scratch. That is because Canva provides a wide variety of templates to choose from. Educational infographics, Timeline infographics, Business infographics, and more! So, head on over to Canva and start creating your own! 

If you want to know more about media tips for your website, such as using the right photos on your blog, more tips on recording your video, and more infographic guides, I wrote a separate blog post all about SEO Media Tips so make sure to check it out!

How To Create Your First Post

Once you’ve decided on the first blog post you want to write, you’ll navigate to the Add New Post section from your WordPress Dashboard. Go to Posts > Add New, which will look like this:

You’ll then see a blank page and this is where you create a title and begin typing. As soon as you begin with your first post in WordPress, make sure to save a draft. I remember the time when I was writing a college paper before and I felt the world have fallen apart when I didn’t save my work because I ran out of battery.

This is just a friendly reminder! You don’t want your work to be put all to waste so make sure to click this “ Save Draft”.

The next thing you have to keep in mind when writing a blog post is the Permalinks.

What are Permalinks?

Technically speaking, Permalinks work by adding an entry into a .htaccess file, which lies at the root public html directory of your server (this might be a folder named httpdocs, www, public_html, etc).

These are fixed and unique URL addresses of particular posts, pages, categories or tags on your WordPress blog site. It looks like this:

Permalink is also called a slug. 

Google considers the URLs that you use on your website to be an indicator if you’re worth ranking on the 1st page. 

So, it’s crucial that you pay attention to these little details when it comes to getting your blog to get more traffic and potentially rank high. Choose a slug that’s simple, easy to remember, and either exactly or as close as possible to your keyword.

As you can see in the photo below, the title of my blog post is the same as the slug. 

Only after saving a draft and pressing the Publish button can you modify the permalink. It’s much more difficult to edit your post once it’s published.

Also, before you publish your blog article, double-check that you’ve chosen the proper category for it (although this is much easier to update at any stage).

The importance of headlines in your blog:

Headlines help readers find your posts and entice them to click through to read more. Learning how to create headlines that capture visitors’ attention and pique their interest will encourage them to stay longer and return for more.

Back then when I was writing some blog posts, I usually spend a handful amount of time thinking what’s the best title for my blog. I want it to sound meaningful, but I also don’t want it to sound boring.

With the growing competition in blogging, I have to make sure that my blog posts are catching my readers’ attention. If no one clicks on my headline, you can write the most epic post in the world and no one will read it.

Thankfully, after using these tricks, creating headlines has never been easier and I’m happily sharing it with you:

1. Start with a number (odd numbers get 20% more clicks, read more about here)

Here are some examples:

“3 Things You Should Know About Viral TikTok Videos”

“5 Fun Ways to Keep Your Pets Busy While Working-From-Home”

2. To make the headline flow nicely, use a combination of emotional, common, uncommon, and powerful words, but avoid cheesy click-bait headlines that detract from the value of your content.
3. Use questions to keep your readers’ curious.
4. Add parentheses to make it stand out more.

Or, if that’s not enough, use a headline analyzer tool from CoSchedule. 

CoSchedule Headline Studio will help you to:

1. Use the most popular headline types to increase social shares, traffic, and search engine ranking by making suggestions for you:

2. Find the right word balance. Say for example we wrote “How to Grow Strawberries in a Tropical Country”:

Check out the best word and character lengths for search engines like Google and email subject lines, as well as how your readers will scan your headlines.

These are some useful blog posts that will surely help you with writing a headline:

• https://buzzsumo.com/blog/most-shared-headlines-study/
• https://coschedule.com/blog/catchy-blog-titles/
• https://www.enchantingmarketing.com/headline-formulas/

How To Structure Your Post?

When structuring your post, always remember to write as if you’re talking to your best friend, and let your personality stand out. As much as you can, you want to build a good relationship with your readers and let them know that they can trust you!

A good tip on attracting readers is to have a catchy introduction that will spark their curiosity. Include anecdotes and stories in your content to make points.

Use H2, H3, and H4 headlines to break up your content.

Make sure that it’s easy to read! Long paragraphs are a big no-no, so try to stay away from them! You don’t want your blog post to look like a college paper, right?  Use lists and bullet points to make it easier for your readers to remember the key points of your content. 

Always include a conclusion at the end of your content to share your final thoughts. It’s always up to them if they find your blog helpful, but, when you summarize everything, it helps them make a decision. The reason why you write is that you want to help solve their problems and come up with a decision. 

Another tip to help you write valuable and worthy content is to use a Skyscraper technique.

This works by researching popular trends, topics, blog posts, or articles that are ranking on the first page of Google Search results. Then you look for new and interesting ways to create content that communicates a similar message – but with a twist. 

This technique works efficiently because of the reasons:

1. You get to examine how high-ranking blog posts are able to solve a problem for their readers which gives you an idea of what kind of solution does a reader look for.
2. In creating content that’s even better, there’s a potential to outrank them, and bring you more traffic.
3. Using this technique will surely help you get backlinks. [which we will discuss in Chapter 5]

This blog post will go into greater detail about writing a blog post on WordPress using the proper headings, more tips on writing engaging posts, and the importance of interlinking (linking your blog post to another one of your blog posts). So, make sure to check it out!

How Many Posts Should Your Blog Have When It First Goes Live?

In an ideal world, people would have a lot of ready-to-publish content as well as additional blog post ideas to come up with in the future. Because they’re so thrilled about the new venture, most people write a lot at first and then cut back.

I don’t recommend starting your blog with nothing to write about. You don’t, however, need to have 20 blog posts ready to start.

To start a blog, how many articles do you need?

I recommend writing 3-5 posts before you launch so that people have something to read right away. This will also give you time to come up with new ideas and gauge how long it takes you to write each post.

Keep in mind that your first posts don’t have to be anything out of the ordinary. They don’t have to be perfect in every way. Write content that is relevant to your blog’s topic and overarching theme, as well as your target audience.

If you have a few categories on your blog, make sure to compose at least one post per one before you go live. This will give folks a taste of what you’ll be writing about on a regular basis. 

Making around 3-5 drafts also saves up your time! 

Beyond simply writing and posting blog entries, there’s a lot more to being a blogger than just that! There’s the technical aspect, social media marketing, and involvement with your audience, as you’ve seen from putting up your blog.

Before you launch, it’s important to have a few posts ready to go as drafts. As you become used to everything, the first few days and weeks will be hectic. During the busy launch period, these drafts make it easier to post new content.

When it’s time to launch your blog, check how many posts are there on your website, make a checklist on your notebook or computer to make sure everything is organized and no post is left behind. Remember, the faster you launch, the faster you learn! *wink*

What Is the Ideal Length for a Blog Post?

It really depends on the problem you are trying to solve. So make sure to provide complete details for your readers to understand and make your site valuable for them. 

Do you know the phrase “quality over quantity”? That’s what you want to aim for. 1 post that’s 3,000 is better than 6,500-word posts that aren’t saying anything.

Let’s say you have only 800 words to write about. A lot of useful information would be lost in such a short post.

Longer blog posts also show that you are an expert in your field. Your readers can believe that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to blogging. Longer blog posts appear to perform better because it’s providing more value to readers and demonstrating your expertise.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages of writing big blog posts:

• The longer your blog posts are, the longer users will stay on your website.
• Writing long-form blog posts will boost your SEO ranking so that more users can find your awesome content online.

Now that you’ve understood the importance of having a good length of posts and publishing on a regular basis, I have written an in-depth guide about tips on creating efficient blog posts that won’t consume your whole week (or month!). Click on this post.

Over time, writing blog content will come naturally for you, and by then, you could expand your goals by aiming to rank in Google Search or SEO. This video talks about the tips you need to do in order to help you create content that ranks.

It’s also important to continuously update your blog posts rather than always creating new content. It’s important that you convey up-to-date, relevant information for your readers in all your posts.

And, if you ask me, is it possible to rank on Google even if my posts are old?

Rather than simply updating the content to better align with the message that your website is attempting to send, or adding images or videos – all of which are excellent things to do – you should also look at the keywords that your old blog post is already ranking for. If you click on this post, you’ll have a more precise explanation of what you can do to rank older websites.

Writing epic content, making your website look beautiful with the help of photos, infographics and/or videos, and basically all about optimizing your website is what we have covered so far. All of these are called On-Page SEO which we will further discuss in Chapter 5. 

Homework:

Chapter 4:
Start Getting Traffic Immediately From Social Media

How to get traffic effectively from Social Media like Pinterest

No one is going to come to a brand new blog magically. You have to understand that this doesn’t happen overnight as you might hope it to be. However, don’t let this stop you from getting traffic as early as you can.

You have to set up links on the internet that people are going to see and click on because you want them to stay on your site to bring in more traffic.  

You want to spend 20% of the time writing and 80% of the time promoting your content. Remember, Traffic = Money.

Google is an excellent source of traffic but it takes time to rank in Google. There is a lot of competition in there. There are probably going to be hundreds of content that are fairly similar to your niche.

You want to spend 20% of the time writing and 80% of the time promoting your content. Remember, Traffic = Money.

Whatever method of monetization you choose, whether you plan to make money through ads or affiliate links [which we will discuss in chapter 6], you will still need a large number of people to be interested in what you have to say or be dedicated to following your website.

That is what we call TRUE followers.

There isn’t any threshold on how many true followers should you have. You can get 5,000 followers or a hundred thousand followers. 

Let’s assume that your blog has 3,000 visitors in a month. Now, these people like your content and they find your blog very informative, hence they become your true followers. You make a product that solves one of their problems, and you’re able to persuade 1% of them to buy a $50 product every month.

You can actually make $1,500 a month, just by persuading only 1% of your followers.

The point here is, although it puts you at a huge advantage if you have thousands of true followers. Yes, that is what you have to continuously work for in managing your blog.

However, I want you to have hope and a positive outlook in your life that even if you’re just starting out as a blogger, there are a lot of opportunities to earn income coming your way.

And now that we come to a conclusion that you can be able to start with little things, let’s start talking about how you can get traffic from social media.

There are 2 platforms that we’re going to cover in-depth: Pinterest and Google (we’ll discuss Google in chapter 5). 

In Chapter 3, we’ve talked about how to use Pinterest to look for ideas for our content. Now, let’s talk about how we can gain traffic from Pinterest.

Let’s go to the first question: What is Pinterest? 

Based on their own definition, “Pinterest is a visual discovery engine for finding ideas like recipes, home and style inspiration, and more.”

Pinterest works like a sort of a bookmarking tool where you can save inspirations or ideas. It brings you fresh content so you’ll have an idea of what recent topics people talk about. 

However, Pinterest can be unpredictable. It can easily decide to not show some of your content to people it was showing it to before. So, If you’re willing to invest the time and put in the right kind of work, Pinterest can be a great tool.

Before I go in-depth explaining all about Pinterest, I feel the need to mention this awesome course on how to get all the traffic you’ll need from Pinterest without scheduling software and giving a solid, full-detailed tour in helping me understand all about Pinterest. I may not cover everything there is to know about Pinterest compared to what Carly teaches, but her course can give you a full guide of Pinterest from A-Z, so make sure to check it out!

The first thing you need to do is to create an account.

With setting up your profile on Pinterest, you have two accounts you can own: personal or business.

Setting up an account, make sure your personal account is logged out of Pinterest:

• Visit the Pinterest business account creation page. Or, select “Create a business account” from the standard Pinterest login page via web or mobile. 
• Enter your email address, age, and create a password.
• Click “Create an account.” 
• Enter your business name, website, country, and language on the next screen.

What if I have a personal Pinterest account already? The process is easy! Your pins and followers will remain the same, so you don’t need to worry about it. You can always change back to your personal account anytime you want.

Without further adieu, let’s get right into it:

1. Log into your personal Pinterest account.
2. From the top-right of your screen, click the down arrow icon, then click on Settings.
3. From the left-side of the navigation, click Account settings then go scroll further down to Account changes.
4. Under Account changes, click Convert to a business account
5. Fill out the necessary information to Build your profile, then click Next.
6. Fill out the empty fields to Describe your business, then click Next.
7. Select if you want to run ads, then click Next.
8. Select where you’d like to start or click the X icon to direct you to Pinterest business account.

Before we move on to the next question, let’s take a little tour of Pinterest and define terms that you’ll encounter in the next paragraphs.

• Pins – A pin is an image that resembles a poster or a flyer that captures people’s attention on Pinterest and entices them to click to read your post. It looks like this:

• Boards – Boards are where you save, collect, and organize your Pins. You can create new boards from your profile or when you create a new Pin.

The Boards that you create should be based on a theme, not random, in order for your audience to have easier navigation when they visit your Pinterest site. For example, you can have boards for blogging tips, business ideas, vegetarian recipes, and more.

First, sign in to your account and then click the Add+ button in the upper right corner of the page. 

Second, A pop-up box will appear, giving you the option of adding a pin, uploading content, or creating a board.

Third, select Create a Board and give your Pinterest board a name and decide who should have access to the board. 

How many boards should you make?

Each of your blog categories should have its own Pinterest board. For example, I write about blogging, investing & trading, and reviews on my blog. This means I have a blogging board, an investing & trading board, and a review board. These are most likely going to be your most important boards. They should only include your original content.

Next, you’ll need “sub-categories”. Add as many sub-categories you want related to your main categories. 20-30 boards would be fine. For example, under the blogging category, you can have sub-categories like Blogging tools, Ad income, Getting traffic.

This will assist Pinterest in understanding what the boards are about and will help your profile become more relevant on these topics before you begin creating your own content.

• Rich Pins –  are Pins that are saved on Pinterest that have more information attached to the pin.

Rich pins show the Pin title, the pin description, and the date when it was published. Rich pins are amazing because it helps improve your reader’s experience with your pins. It lets them know what your blog post, ideas, tips, recipes or product is all about!

 Let’s look at what a normal pin looks like compared to rich pins:

If you blog with WordPress, it’s easier to set up Rich Pins and it will only take you less than 5 minutes.

1. Add metadata to your site. Rank Math or Yoast SEO is the metadata you’ll need. These are also plugins that you can easily install on your WordPress site.
2. Validate and apply for Rich Pins. In order for you to do that, head to the Rich Pin Validator. It looks like this:

3. Add the URL to one of your blog posts in the validator box and click on validate. Then you’ll be able to see this image which successfully validated your URL.

There are times that your rich pin will be approved right away, or sometimes, you’ll get this message from Pinterest saying “We’ll review it and email you with any questions or next steps.”

Either way, try to wait and be patient if they haven’t validated your Rich Pins yet. You can contact their Support Team for that concern. it can take a couple of days for your pins to start showing up as Rich Pins.

If you want to learn more about Rich Pins, make sure to check out the Pinterest developer site.

How to create Pins?

When it comes to the heart of Pinterest, which is the content. as much as possible you should always try to bring in fresh and new content. There are a lot of people having beautiful pins catchy headlines and useful content.

But, all I can tell you is, there’s no need to worry about that. Yes, Pinterest needs your pins to be visually pleasing and it’s hard to create one if you’re starting from scratch. Let me tell you my secret: there are Pinterest templates that you can use to save your time!

I use these templates, and let me tell you, it’s completely worth it because you’ll save so much time designing pins, and every month, new templates are added, so you’ll never run out of ideas!

But, there’s no stopping you if you decide to try creating designs from Canva! If you improving your skills in designing, or you just have a more creative mind, then using Canva or Photoshop is also a great way. 

Just make sure that when you’re creating beautiful pins:

• Take note that the Font needs to be big and easy to read. 
• Write informative descriptions that tell people what your pin is all about
• 600×900 pixels 2:3 aspect ratio is the standard size for a Pin. 
• Select an image relevant to the topic. 

When making relevant images, use:

• Big bold fonts 
• Bright colors 
• Clickable title 
• Website logo 
• Descriptions
• Hashtags or not 

Let’s take a look at examples of a great Pin and a not-so-great pin:

I’m not saying you should use colorful images and big bold fonts all the way in. There is a fine line between creating a clean and pleasing design to creating ultra-bright, unnecessary layouts and extra big colored designs just to attract your readers’ attention.

Remember that you are introducing your website to them, so it’s important to get a good impression with them, otherwise, they will just find your pins irrelevant and you do not want that to happen.

How do we set up a schedule with posting on Pinterest?

You can set up a schedule whenever you’d like to post new content on Pinterest. Tailwind and Pinterest Native Schedule are the platforms that I found really helpful to make my life so much when posting on Pinterest.

With Tailwind, it works by creating awesome Pins. It lets you share on Pinterest on time, and you get to have high engagements from your audiences there! You can even use the Tailwind App to manage all your posts and get real results quickly. If you want to join their free trial, click this link to sign up using your Pinterest account or your Instagram account!

If you want to stick with everything that’s going around with Pinterest, you can definitely try these simple steps to schedule your post: 

Step 1: Log into your Pinterest account. Remember, you need to stay logged in via your business account.

Step 2: Click Create from the dropdown menu on the top left-hand side.

Step 3: Add all the details for your Pin

Step 4: Choose when to publish

Step 5: Select the day and time for the Pin to publish.

Step 5: Time to Publish by clicking the Publish button.

Since Tailwind has been so useful for Pinterest, I figured I’d learn about the features and see if it was worthwhile to implement it for my Instagram accounts as well. I thought this would be a good time to write a review for you! I hope you find this helpful. 

How to get traffic from Pinterest?

After learning how to create beautiful pins that will attract people to your website, creating relevant boards, and applying for rich pins, you will need strategies in order to help you not only in gaining traffic but to rank on the Pinterest search.

Having the right strategies could really step up your game in getting your pins known to people and ultimately get them to your website. After all, you are not creating a blog for fun or just a hobby, you’re creating a blog to make money. 

Therefore, having tactics can get you a long way. You might start slow, but once you get to understand strategies on how to drive traffic from Pinterest, then you’re on the right track to having a successful blog.

Homework:

Chapter 5:
Start Building Traffic Slowly From Google

How to Get Free Google Organic Traffic

Why Google?

Google is the best search engine to focus on because it’s the largest, most popular and almost everyone uses it. It even has its own verb: ”Just Google it!”. 

This first page is the best place for bloggers like us to get traffic. We want to aim for the top 10 ranking spots. I know it’s easier said than done. Don’t worry. We are going to cover strategies that actually work and will get you into that spot. However, you must understand that getting into the first page doesn’t happen overnight. 

Google accounts for almost 80% of all organic traffic on the internet based on this article, so trying to promote and get in more traffic there is sooo effective but it doesn’t go easy as it sounds. That’s why there are plenty of strategies that marketers come up with to get their websites rank high.

 Pinterest, on the other hand, can get you ranking super fast and bring you traffic quickly. 

Google vs. Pinterest 

To begin with, Google organic traffic is not the same as Pinterest traffic. 

Organic traffic is those visitors that land on your website from unpaid sources, aka essentially free traffic.

It takes time to build organic traffic with Google. It must trust your website, which means, you should be able to provide valuable content, giving informative articles that are reliable and can be a good source for the people to keep coming back tofff your website. It is a bit time-consuming and it could take anywhere from 6 months to a year for you to see a significant increase. 

Traffic from Google is crucial because:

• People search on Google with intent, so they get to stay longer on your website because they want to find what they’re looking for. This is when you offer up products on your website because they know exactly what they’re looking for, compared to those people who randomly browse Google with no intent.

• You don’t need to do much work once you’ve gotten a good Google ranking to keep that traffic coming in unlike with Pinterest, where you need to keep creating new pins or boards. You just need to review your content from time to time to keep your website updated.

• The traffic on Google is significantly more steady. Yes, Google’s algorithm is always changing, but unlike Pinterest, it doesn’t change every few minutes. You just have to keep up your content-making more frequently.

Pinterest, on the other hand, is also a search engine for finding ideas or inspiration, like, home organization ideas, recipes, or clothing styles. 

On Pinterest, users usually look for random topics or ideas that come to their minds. It gives its users various pins that they might find interesting. Unlike with Google, users from Pinterest don’t search with intent.

If you’re willing to invest the time and put in the right kind of work, Pinterest can be a great tool to get traffic but don’t let it be the only tool that you rely on because Pinterest is unpredictable.  It can easily decide to not show some of your content to people it was showing it to before.

As you can see, there really is a stark difference between the two. I’ll discuss it briefly:

First, you can rank on Pinterest much faster than Google. Second, you can get lots of traffic on Pinterest quickly. Even if you’re just starting out as a blogger, the pins that you make have a good chance of showing up to users. But the problem is, Pinterest traffic isn’t that reliable for the long term. You have to keep making fresh and new pins to keep traffic coming in. On the other hand, with Google, traffic is more stable even if you don’t regularly post new content, thus, making rankings much more reliable.

A great way to jump-start your blog’s traffic is using Pinterest. BUT, in order to build a blog that actually produces passive income reliably, the end game needs to be Google rankings. Next, we’re going to talk all about SEO, which is how you’re going to work your way up to Page 1 of Google. 

What is SEO?

The scope of SEO is so wide that it can be confusing to absorb some of the information when you’re still learning. So, to make things easier, let’s divide the scope of SEO into 2 parts: On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.

• On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. In easier terms, this one talks about making your entire website relevant in order for you to rank.

Creating epic content, using media, basically everything there is to know in managing your website from the inside and continuously creating value for your audience.

Let’s go over into details for On-page SEO!

Use keyword research wisely 

In Chapter 3, we talked about the importance of using keywords to look for topics to write in our content. Now, we’re going to talk about using keywords to boost your traffic.

So, using the right keywords are a huge help when it comes to boosting your website traffic. So, when you start blogging, you should think about what Google wants to know about your blog. 

Therefore, it’s important to keep your blog in place and organized as much as possible. You don’t want to create a bunch of content that would seem irrelevant to your niche. The reason why is that, the more Google sees you as an authority on that particular niche, the more likely you are to rank for it.

Wealthy Affiliate’s Online Entrepreneur Course helped me realize this. That if you want Google to trust you, you should be able to provide your audience with clear intent about how you’re going to help them. You want to make your website known to many people that you are blogging about Mexican food recipes, for example.

Niche down, build your own brand, so you want to build your authority and trustworthiness to the people visiting your blog.

The first step is to decide what your main keywords will be and then create content around them.

If your blog is about Mexican food recipes, for example, you can use these keywords that you want to rank for:

• easy and quick Mexican recipes
• Mexican breakfast recipes
• Mexican Fiesta menus

After that, you can begin to create your content based on these keywords. It won’t make sense to make content around Italian recipes if it’s not what you want your blog to be about. 

Simply focus on your area of expertise.

What happens if I have 3 or 4 niches? Does that mean I won’t rank?

Don’t Want a Boss has 3 main categories. I blog about Blogging, Trading & Investing, and Reviews. As you can see, I haven’t niched down into one particular topic. But, for each of my categories, I know exactly what I want to rank for.

In the review category, I won’t write about make-up reviews or hair care essentials reviews. I’m creating content around Reviews that are relevant to what my niche is all about, so I’ll write Jaaxy Keyword Tool review or Tailwind Review.

You can rank in Google as a multi-topic blog as long as your content strategy and vision are clear. You simply need to ensure that each niche is highly relevant on its own. Consider it as having a blog for each category in which you write.

Short-tail keywords are those that contain one or two words only. But, Long-tail keywords are those that contain four or more words. This is an example of a short-tail and long-tail keyword:

Having long-tail keywords such as “running shoes for women” in a well-organized website provides better rankings rather than using short-tail words such as “running shoes”. It helps you rank faster because it’s more specific, more precise, and less competition.

What do you mean about competition?

If you focus on ranking for short-tail keywords, there are thousands of bloggers who use that kind of keyword too. Worse, you’ll be competing with famous brands such as Nike which always rank the highest.

If you’re just starting out, you wanna rank for keywords that have less competition. Yes, the traffic won’t be as much as if you were ranking for short-tail keywords, but it’s much better going for long-tail keywords and ranking higher than going for short-tail keywords and ending up at the 1000th rank.

To help you get a clearer view, let’s use Jaaxy to compare “running shoes for women” and running shoes”:

As you can see on this screenshot image, “running shoes” receives an average of 216,937 searches in a month. 

As for SEO, this is a score based on traffic and competition. The higher the score is, the more likely you’ll rank for this keyword on the first page. So, on a scale of 1-100, higher=better. Unfortunately for “running shoes”, the score is only 79.

Now let’s look at Jaaxy’s result for “running shoes for women”:

As you can see, this is much better.

“Running shoes for women receive an average of 4,036 searches a month. Now that might seem a little compared to the former, but I want you to focus on SEO.

Remember when I told you, the higher the better?

The score of 90 is awesome. As a new blogger, this is what my goal should be. Even if there’s less traffic, aiming for low-difficulty keywords can help you rank faster.

Aside from Jaaxy and Ubersuggest (which I already introduced before), here are other tools with which you can do some keyword research.

• Ahrefs is a free keyword-generated tool that is mainly used to analyze a website’s link profile, keyword rankings, and SEO health. You can also use Ahrefs to conduct keyword research for Google, YouTube, and Amazon.  

Ahrefs never run out of keyword suggestions. Their Keywords Explorer is powered by a massive database of over 7 billion keywords, which is updated monthly with new data. They also have KD (keyword difficulty) score that calculates how hard it will be to rank for your keyword based on the current top-ranking pages. 

Start a free trial and try it out for yourself.

• SEMrush makes it more manageable for those without SEO knowledge. 

With SEMrush, you can identify trends that occur within your niche, access over 20 billion keywords for 130 countries, get recommendations to improve your content to increase search rankings and you could even draft, post, or schedule your blog. If you’d like to learn more about this, click this link to get started.

My personal opinion is that it can get SUPER overwhelming having all these tools. I think it’s much easier to just have 1 that you can rely on. Personally, I like Jaaxy, …. You can also always use the alphabet soup technique on Google which is super easy and it’s free.

Become an expert on 1 topic

Becoming an expert on the niche that you decided doesn’t mean that you’ll have to be a college graduate in, for example, Economics or Stock Market, for you to create a niche that is all about investing.

Sure, you won’t get a top rank if you’re up against those marketers who specialize in the same field as yours, especially if they’ve been in the industry for years and you’re just starting up.

When I wrote this blog, I was writing with my feelings, particularly on this one. What if I can’t provide valuable content for my audience? What if I provide the wrong information instead? What if other websites looked more chic and professional than mine?

Is this the end of the world for me?

Let me tell you, you’re not up against nobody!

You can create a blog post about the keto diet without being a nutritionist, and still have a high chance of ranking high!

By doing that, you’ll have to think of not-so-technical topics if you’re up against true experts!

For example, if your niche is all about the keto diet, you can create “3 easy keto diet food recipes” instead of going technical and creating “How Does Keto Diet Lose Your Fats?”

See what I mean? You can definitely help your audience with their problem with whatever you can provide to them! May it be a small piece of information or a detailed one. As long as you continuously provide valuable content, sure does worth a good ranking and Google will love you for that.

Understanding what people search for

Now that you’ve understood the importance of having the right keyword for your blog, you must ensure that what you write is precisely what people are looking for. This means we must understand the people’s intention when they search on Google.

So, how do we figure out what the people’s intentions are? It’s simple, let’s look at the top 10 first page results for the topic we choose.

Let’s look for the search results of “running shoes for women” on the 1st page:

As you’ve noticed, all of the search results are about LISTS of running shoes for women. That gives you an idea of what the people are looking for when they search for that particular topic. 

Now, you can ace up your game by creating a top 10 list of trendy running shoes for women, or top 5 affordable running shoes for women or you can write a review about your top 3 running shoes. 

But, before you begin to do that, you need to know about Domain Authority. 

Domain Authority is a sort of score that helps a blog rank on the first page results. The higher the Domain Authority is, the higher the chance of ranking fast.

The score ranges from 1-100, and as a beginner, you’ll have a score of 1. I hope you won’t lose your cool here, but all things start from learning, right? The good thing about being a beginner is that you’ll have plenty of ways and strategies that help you ease your problem. And here’s what you need to do:

1st: After identifying the keyword that you want, look for those websites’ Domain Authority with a score of 50 or less. Because you are starting out, you want to beat or create more valuable content from those websites which are on the same progress as you. You don’t want to jump right ahead and compete with those sites with a DA score of 60.

Remember to start things slowly as you progress.

Now, with the help of  Mozbar Link Explorer, you can find the Domain Authority score of those websites. You can sign up for free to find out and just copy the URL of that site and you’ll see the score result.

Creating Silos and Sub-silos

Creating the right Silos (WordPress Categories)  is one of the best strategies for SEO. If you want to rank for a set of keywords, the best way to do that is to keep them within that silo and interlinking between each other.

1. Figure out 2-4 main categories. Pick one of those categories.
2. Outline an ultimate guide for that category and see what smaller topics can be addressed
3. Research the competition and do other keyword research to begin mapping out the content for that category.
4. Choose the number of posts you want to knock out in that category before even thinking of moving to the next one.
5. Repeat 3-5.

Now that you’ve figured out what to do when it comes to On-page SEO, don’t get overwhelmed by a lot of these tasks. It might seem like this is a lot of work when you’re just starting out, but this kind of work can be make-or-break when it comes to managing your website.

Remember that you are doing this to make money and if you want to pursue blogging, you have to know that SEO is your number 1 priority. In the next few months, you want to build a strong foundation for your website. You can’t keep creating awesome, beautiful, and informative blog posts if no one’s able to read it, and that happens if you can’t keep track of optimizing your page.

Another thing that you should focus on is your posts that bring more traffic.

I’ve made an On-Page SEO checklist that would help you find ways to rank each of your articles. Always have this list with you (or, write them down and paste it near your working area!)

Now that we’re done discussing On-page SEO, let’s talk about Off-page SEO.

Off-Page SEO

In general, off-page SEO refers to tactics of promotion that go beyond website design in order to improve a website’s search engine rating. Off-page SEO, unlike On-page SEO, refers to activities that can be done outside of your website’s borders. Basically, this means BACKLINKS!

A backlink is where one page on the internet references a page on your website and includes a link to access that page. For example, if a website that writes content about solo traveling (website A) links up another blog post that talks about traveling gear (website B), the traveling gear website gains a backlink from the solo traveling site.

If you have more backlinks, this will help you rank higher in Google because your backlinks are considered an indicator of how popular your website is with users. As a website gains more backlinks, search engines like Google conclude that it has valuable content that earns a high ranking and eventually receives more traffic.

Now, getting backlinks is tricky and you’ll need to undergo a tedious process. But, I want you to sit back and relax and learn everything there is to know first. As they say, “patience is a virtue.”

Here’s how to get backlinks:

• Conversation with a blogger

After publishing a blog post, find 3-4 phrases that describe your blog post. Search Google for those phrases and start a conversation with the authors of the top articles or blog posts that appear in search results. Comment down your thoughts, compliment them on their posts, and you can offer suggestions for things to add. During the conversation, share your blog post with them and encourage them to include your article in one of their blog posts as a sort of reference.

• Interviews

When you interview someone, you are giving them exposure to your audience. That means their brand gets to reach new people and they love that kind of stuff.

Because you’ve done something for them they are more likely to reciprocate by giving you a link back to your site. They want people to see their interview with you. They want to show that to their audience. For this reason, interviews can be a great way to build links for your site.

• Round Up posts

A round-up post is an excellent way to collaborate with other bloggers. These are posts that essentially just aggregate content or opinions from experts in your niche. It provides your readers with a broader set of solutions. Roundup posts are great because you can connect with other bloggers and authors. The people you reference are eager to share your article with their followers. 

A roundup can contain as few as five links or as many as 100+ links. It’s entirely up to you and how much effort you’re willing to put into your post. More links mean more time spent gathering information and writing posts.

If this sounds good, let’s clarify the two main approaches to writing your first roundup post:

1. Use existing content and start collecting tips, tricks and insights already published on other blogs.
2. Interview experts. This second approach takes a bit more work, but will result in new content that you “own.” For example, you could interview authors about their advice on publishing your first book, or financial experts to get their best advice about saving for retirement.

• Using HARO

HARO (Help A Reporter) is a good way to generate links. This platform helps give journalists access to a large database of sources for prospective stories, as well as daily possibilities for sources to gain media attention.

Despite the fact that HARO was created for journalists, it is also used by bloggers, influencers, and a variety of other people looking for reliable sources.

Well, how does it connect to having backlinks? If you sign up for HARO and have your website as a source, you might get possible collaborations. If a journalist or another blogger decides to collaborate or use your blog content as their source, you’ll have a backlink on your blog.

Sign up for free here to get started with HARO.

Google is not only the place you can build relationships with other websites that will help you get backlinks. Facebook groups, Youtube, Reddit/Quora communities are great places. Click here to learn about all the other ways you can create more backlinks for your blog.

Similar to On-Page SEO, I also created a checklist for your Off-Page SEO. This is a detailed guide on how to get backlinks from other social media, link building, and social media management that will truly help you manage your blog outside effectively.

There are plenty of strategies other than the ones I mentioned above! Check out this link to learn more about SEO strategies that work for targeted keywords.

Chapter 6:
How To Make Money

Now we’re down to the real game!

There are so many opportunities to make money online and that is why it’s a great way to find the freedom that you deserve. Sitting back on your warm couch, all while earning income!

These are the ways you can earn while blogging:

• Display ads 
• Affiliate marketing 
• Sponsored content 
• Services 
• Physical products 
• Digital products 
• Membership Site 
• Flipping websites 

Display Ads and Affiliate marketing are by far the best ways for me to earn money. Especially when you are just starting on this kind of business, you don’t have to do much work on these. Once everything has been set up, you’ll have less time to monitor it because they are the most passive. 

You create a blog post with a good conversion rate, then you’re good to go!

But, what are conversions and conversion rates?

Conversion is when your visitor has taken the final action and clicked the product that you offer or the “Buy” Button. So, if in the future, you plan to offer products or services, or courses, your main focus should be how you can have your audience take that kind of action, aside from ads or affiliate marketing.

If you want to earn income from ads, it’s totally fine! But, if you plan to grow your business by creating your own, organic brand,  then getting a good conversion rate is something you should focus on if you plan to stay in the blogging world for a long period. 

Now let’s get into details about the ways you can earn income from blogging. Let’s start with Ads.

How do we make money from ads?

It is so much easier to make income from display ads. As I’ve mentioned a while ago, this won’t take you a lot of work because the money inflows are continuously going in as long as you have ads displaying on your website.

The way it works is like this: Companies pay you to advertise their offers on your website, then you get paid every time someone SEES them or CLICKS on them.

This is called Pay-Per-Click Advertising. The more people visit your site, the more money you’ll be able to make.

The amount of income from ads depends on your niche and on the time of year. This is also why having Ad Income as your source of earning can be tricky. It can quite vary a lot. When it’s a peak season, such as Christmas, or when advertisers have a lot of products or services to promote, then, your Ad Income can boost from that time of the year alone. 

And before I introduce to you some Advertising Platforms you’ll want for your website, let’s get to know some terms:

• Pageviews – these are the number of times a user visits a page
• Ad Impression – It refers to the number of times your messages have been displayed to your visitors. This is from an Advertising Company’s point of view.
• RPM (Revenue per thousand impressions) – RPM is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of impressions or page views, and the result is then multiplied by 1000.

For example, a website that gets 40,000 page views a day and generates $600 in daily ad revenue has an RPM of $15.

$3,600 revenue / 4,000 pageviews x 1,000 = $15.00 page RPM

Advertisers set up these kinds of thresholds in how much money you can make based on the number of people who visits your site.

• $10-20 per day for every 1,000 people 
• $300-600 per month with 30,000 page views 
• $450-900 per month with 45,000 page views 
• $1000-2000 per month with 100,000 page views 

Based on the numbers above, if you want to make money with ads, you need to get a significant amount of traffic to make a good income. But of course, it’s definitely possible! 

Now that you have now an idea how to get traffic from Google and Pinterest based on what we talked about in Chapter 4 and 5, I want you to know that you are getting on the right path. It might seem slow and you’ll feel like there’s a sort of barrier going around that keeps you from moving forward, I want you to fully trust yourself and the website you are growing.

If the number of page views that you see on the threshold seem unreachable, then you’re undermining your potential.

Remember that you are doing this because you want to help your audience in solving their problem by providing informative and valuable content!

Once you’ve established this kind of mindset, then, good things come in quick because you let your positivity spread out on your website.

I just feel the need to give you a pep talk before we start talking about earning income because this is where the true game starts.

Here is a list of some of the ad platforms which you can use to display ads on your blog:

Google Adsense

This is the simplest Ad Network to join. It does not specify a minimum number of page views or sessions required to apply. 

To be approved, you simply need to have your blog up and running with a few posts. However, keep in mind that it is also the least profitable Ad Network available. On average, you can get $5-8 RPM.

Signing up here is free, the requirements are pretty easy especially for beginner bloggers and there is a lot of Ad types you can choose from (text ads, graphic ads, or video ads).

However, they can terminate your account instantly, and it’s not very forgiving if you break the rules: 

1. Your content must be valuable, unique, and interesting.
2. Your content must comply with Google Content Policies. 
3. If your site is inside a host partner, like YouTube, you can apply for Google AdSense, but there are other requirements you need to meet.
4. Your site should be at least six months old and have enough organic traffic (not fake).

Media.net

Media.net is a leading global advertising company with one of the most diverse advertising technology portfolios in the industry, spanning search, native, display, mobile, local, products, and video.

The requirements from Media.net are almost similar to other Advertising platforms:

1. You’ll need to have unique, high-quality, and regularly updated content
2. The majority of your traffic comes from the US, Canada or UK
3. Does not contain excessive advertising or spam/bots

Media.net usually pays about $5 RPM, which is among the best in the industry. 

You can run 3 ads per page, meaning if you have 334 views, that’s about 1,002 impressions. At $5 RPM you can make $5/day or roughly $150/mo off only 334 visits/day.

Although they don’t have a specific number on how many page views you should have a month if you’re able to meet their requirements, you should consider applying for their Ad Program here.

Monumetric

With this platform, they use a pay-per-view (PPV) model, where each ad impression earns you some income. With PPV, you earn money even if nobody clicks on the ads. All you need to do is attract enough traffic to your blog to maximize your ad impressions.

To sign up for Monumetric, you’ll need to have:

1. A WordPress site.
2. A sidebar on most of the pages on your website. If you install a plugin in WordPress called Elementor, you can easily customize your website by having a sidebar that has at least 300px wide to allow ads to be displayed on it.
3. Your website receives 50% of its traffic from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and/or Australia.
4. Have a monthly page view count of 10,000. 
5. You must also be approved by their major advertisers and agree to display a minimum of 6 ads on the pages and posts where you choose to display ads.

If you meet those requirements, go ahead and sign up for the Monumetric propel program to get started!

SheMedia ($20-30 RPM)

SHE Media is primarily a digital media company created for and by women. They help you in your site speed and make this one of their top priorities if you’re accepted into their blog advertising platform. 

If you’re a female blogger with an audience that is primarily focused on women, SHE Media can be a really good fit that allows for better target blog advertisements.

Though SHE Media doesn’t have the highest traffic threshold, it does prohibit new bloggers from applying. Their requirements include:

1. SHEMedia needs your site to have regularly updated content that is at least 3 months old.
2. Ideally, they need you to have at least 20k page views or more in a month
3. Your website must have 80%+ of traffic from the US.
4. Your website should have 5% or less fake traffic (such as spam/bots)
5. Your site must be able to support their ad products

Learn more about who they are and what your partnership entails by clicking here! They take their application process, and it can take 3-4 weeks for you to get a response.

Mediavine

If your website hits over 50,000 sessions per month then it’s definitely worth signing up to Mediavine if you want to make passive income from your blog. 

While there are other ways to make money blogging, such as inserting affiliate links and selling products, Mediavine allows you to make money while you sleep. 

Mediavine offers some of the best RPMs in the industry. If you are in a travel niche and you have a travel blog with 100,000 sessions per month that would be around $1,500 per month passive income. 

Aside from having 50,000 pageviews a month, you’ll need to have:

1. Unique and high-quality content in any niche as a lifestyle blogger or publisher
2. Your traffic to come from the U.S., Canada, or the U.K.
3. Good standing with Google Adsense

Mediavine will review your application and forward it to their advertising partners for review. The approval process typically takes 2–4 weeks. To apply for the Mediavine blog advertising network, you simply have to fill out their application here.

AdThrive

AdThrive basically has a similar feature to Mediavine. Overall it really depends on your niche, and the typical RPM (revenue per 1,000 pageviews) for publishers with AdThrive is $15. So, if you have 50,000 page views per month that would be $750.

Their requirements are:

1. You’ll need to have at least 100,000 page views a month
2. The majority of your traffic is from the US, Canada, UK, New Zealand, and/or Australia.
3. Original, one-of-a-kind content that engages the audience and is a good fit for advertisers.

Their approval process usually takes weeks because are reviewed manually by AdThrive, 

Once you’ve been accepted into AdThrive, they’ll take care of everything. They offer a boutique ad management service. They will handle the technology, ad placement on your site, bidding (via the tech), and payment of your ad income once per month.

Once you’ve grown your website with tons of traffics and page views, AdThrive is the way to go. You can visit their site here to learn more.

Next is, let’s talk about another great way to earn an income…

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is where you promote another company’s product or service in return for a commission on the sales you generate and it is also one of the coolest ways to earn money aside from Ads!

Commissions are typically a percentage of the sale price, but can occasionally be a fixed amount. The risk is low here, all you need is a valuable website with good traffic.

How does this work? The merchant gives each affiliate a unique link so they can track who was responsible for a sale like this:

Do you think this is a lot to take in? I’ll explain in a different context:

Imagine that a reader visits your post about the “Affordable Denim Jackets”. They click on one of your affiliate links, leading them to a product on Amazon.

But they realized they have to go to work. So they leave their house, go to their office and then finally go back to Amazon where they find the product again.

Since they’re already shopping on Amazon, they decide to purchase some cotton jackets too.

Here’s the good news. Earlier, they clicked on your affiliate link and a cookie was stored on their device. Because Amazon has a 24-hour cookie duration, you get compensated for both the denim jacket and the cotton jacket—even though you didn’t promote the latter.

Speaking of Amazon, they have this called Amazon Associates.

With Amazon’s meteoric rise, many people are wondering how they can capitalize on the platform’s ability to generate so many sales for products in almost every industry.

They enable you to earn a commission fee for the affiliate link that your visitors click on. For bloggers and other publishers looking to increase the revenue generated by their website, this can be a profitable agreement.

If you are interested in getting to know more about Amazon Affiliate, click here.

Now, the world of Affiliate Marketing is vast and there are tons of opportunities out the for you. I have learned everything about Carly’s course and she made me realize that it takes patience, work, and dedication. If you want to know everything about Affiliate Marketing, you may click on this link. 

I have my own affiliate links all thanks to Wealthy Affiliate. If you plan to grow your website using affiliate links, check these Ready-made affiliate websites to get started.

There are also other ways you can make money online

1. Freelancing 

Offering your skills (by blogging jobs, or freelance writing projects) is by far the easiest way to start generating money from your blog as quickly.

All you need to get a freelancing client is a compelling pitch, which is where starting a blog may be really beneficial. Build out your essential information ( such as About page, Contact, or Hire Me) and include at least a couple of examples of the type of work you’ve done that you’ll be pitching freelancing clients on.

If you don’t have work samples yet,  you can create sample articles, designs, or other deliverables and publish them on your own blog as if they were a paid project!

Then, if you’re already prepared to pitch potential clients if you have a skill that you can market as a service. That ability may be anything along the lines of…

• Writing & Proofreading
• Virtual assistance
• Design
• Photography
• Video creation
• Marketing
• Social media management
• SEO

2. Joining Facebook
   
   In today’s world, everything is possible, and it’s totally up to your creative mind and determination to come up with various ways to make money! Reaching out to local businesses in our area or joining other social media communities such as Facebook is a great way too.
   
   Speaking of Facebook, this social media platform is by far, the most famous of all. Around 2.910 billion users are on Facebook.
   
   This means it is an awesome opportunity for your website to get known, and possibly bring traffic in. Creating your Facebook page allows you to grow your business by having a community such as Facebook Group.
   
   So, if you are planning to expand your blog and maintain it for the future, having a good community could help you create a strong foundation. If you want to know how to everything about building a Facebook page and tricks to increase your followers, make sure to check this post.

3. Sponsored content

Sponsored Content is when a company pays a blogger to publish a very specific piece of content, which usually promotes or reviews the company’s product. This is what it looks like:

For you to have sponsored content,  you’ll need to find an audience first. 

Since more bloggers are offering sponsored content, having few followers or audiences compared to big websites can put you at an advantage because some brands seek out those micro-influencers, such as bloggers with small but devoted followers who are interested in a specific topic. 

So, as long as you keep on providing valuable content even if you have few people visiting your site, you can promote other brands by putting all the effort you have in making content to the right people using your confidence and skills, 

Remember, your website is a growing platform. Don’t let it stop you from striving!

If you are interested in sponsored content, check out this website from Rachel of Joyful Derivatives to learn more about sponsorship opportunities.

4. Selling Products

Selling products online may appear to be simple—and it is, once you’re up and running. But first, you’ll need to do some research: you’ll need to find products to sell, figure out who your potential buyers are, and figure out how you’ll get those products into your customers’ hands as smoothly as possible. 

But, what are some things you can sell?

• Digital: printables, ebooks, online courses
• Physical: t-shirts, mugs, prints, iPhone case

This preparation will help you build a successful e-commerce strategy. After all, when you think about how to start an online business, knowing how to sell your product is crucial.

Here are the 10 steps on how to sell a product online:

#1. Find your products

Most online sellers source their products in one of three ways: do it yourself (DIY), wholesale, or drop-shipping. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. When thinking how to sell a product online, whatever method you choose, look for products that you are passionate about and that meet a market need.

DIY Products is used to describe any work that can be completed without the direct help of a professional. DIY items are typically the most costly to make, but they can also be the most rewarding if you have a creative ability. These include: 

• Bath bombs and soaps
• T-shirts and printed merchandise
• Jewelry
• Curated gift and subscription boxes
• Candles
• Sweets
• Art and prints
• Digital products
• Traditional handcrafted products
• Lip balm and cosmetics
• Pottery and clay objects
• Pet supplies

 You can charge a premium for handcrafted or unique items, just remember to make up for the time it takes to make the item. Prepare to rethink your process and strategy if you are unable to charge enough to sustain the business.

Wholesale products are buying products in bulk from a manufacturer or wholesaler. The great thing about wholesale products is that you’re able to buy products at a lower price because of bulk orders. And then, you can sell your products individually at a reasonable price that you fix, hence, you can get a desired profit without worrying about manufacturing costs. 

 Alibaba and Etsy Wholesale are two sites where you may find wholesale merchandise. On eBay, you can also look for wholesale products to discover suppliers.

Just make sure you double-check your sources when buying wholesale products. Before you place your first order, read reviews and ask questions. You want to be sure that the things you buy are of good quality and meet the standards that they claim to have on their website.

Dropshipped Products is a method of selling goods without having to keep a stock of them on hand. The term “dropshipping” refers to an online store that operates as a middle man between the factory and the customer. Because you’re selling from the factory to the consumer on a drop shipping website, you don’t want to have any of your goods on hand. 

You can avoid paying for pricey warehouse space by employing dropshipping. Dropshipping is frequently accomplished by using Alibaba or AliExpress to find low-cost products. After that, they are profitably sold on Amazon, eBay, or your own website.

Also, make sure to check out this link where I’ll be talking about an in-depth guide on how to find a product that is IN-DEMAND and branded well.

#2. Identify your target buyers

The market for an online seller is vast, but it is also competitive. Identifying who your target buyers are can really help you get the job done easier rather than just selling everything out in the open but you have no idea what those people are looking for. 

Remember to narrow it down. If you wanted to sell yoga mats, you’d be competing with well-known brands in the market. However, if you decide to sell yoga mats designed for travel, with hand-painted designs that may increase the price, you could target a more specific audience.

You can find your target buyers by:

• Join social media groups and online communities related to your market to see what people are talking about.
• Use the Jaaxy tool to see how big the market is for your chosen product. By typing the kind of product that you want to sell, you’ll have a clear view on how many people talk about this product.

#3. Do some market research

Once you’ve determined who you want to sell to, it’s time to figure out whether or not those people will buy what you’re offering and, if so, how much they’re willing to pay. This means that you must assess the value you can provide in your market. Here are some questions to keep in mind when you conduct a market research:

• Is the market for your products expanding or not?
• How satisfied are the people buying those kind of products?
• What are the factors that are hindering them to buy?
• What is the average price of your competitors’ products?

Studying your competitors is one of the key ways to know if your product is worth selling. Because, if there’s a continuous demand for the products that they are selling, you’ll surely do great in promoting your own products too. You can learn from their strategies on how to sell, how well are they managing their own products, or how they handle customer queries.

Conducting surveys is also a great way to do some market research. This is where you’ll see how people react to your product ideas. 

Once your idea develops, you can conduct online surveys that provide a quick and easy way to learn about what people in your target market want and need. Also, you can use this opportunity to collect their contact information, expand your audience, and then follow up when your product is available for selling.

When comparing prices, don’t assume that a lower price is always better. There are people who are willing to pay a higher price for high-quality items. On the other hand, if your target buyers believe that your competitors’ products are overpriced, you could step in to provide them with less expensive alternatives.

#4. Create a buyer persona

What is a buyer persona? A buyer persona is like a representation of your ideal customer, what are the challenges they face whenever they plan to buy a product, what their typical days are like and how they make decisions.

Building a buyer persona is very important because you’ll know how to tailor it to each of your customers’ needs. Remember, there are different buyers with different points of view, so having a buyer persona can help you decide how you’re going to provide solutions to them, and that will definitely work on them.

Then, if you’re able to understand their need, and then gain their trust, only then, will they be open to exploring what you have to offer.

To create a persona, you must first ask yourself detailed questions about what your ideal customers are. You can then compare your responses to those of your friends, which will reveal any inconsistencies in your viewpoints and encourage discussions to resolve them.

A great thing about creating a buyer persona is that it allows you to gain customer insights. This ensures that your product development, and customer support are all on the same page when it comes to your ideal customer.

You can then use your personas to direct the course of your work.\

#5. Create a brand

Your logo, website, marketing materials, and how you build your relationship with your buyers are all part of your brand identity. 

The simplest way to start this process is to write a few sentences that sum up the attributes you want your brand to represent. Is it casual, pleasant, and fun? What about something solid, high-quality, and dependable? Possibly youthful, bright, and entertaining? 

Every brand also has a distinct, unique appearance that is tied together by color, a logo, and product image.

Your logo should be straightforward and expressive. Complex designs do not work well when printed in small spaces or in black and white. Because your logo will appear on everything you create, it should be carefully designed to convey the identity of your brand. 

You can make one yourself by using Canva!

#6. Choose a website in which you can sell your products

You can choose an e-commerce website to sell your products or you can use your own website. 

The term “e-commerce” simply refers to the online sale of goods or services.

It’s difficult to imagine a world without e-commerce. We buy food, clothes, and furniture online; we sign up for classes and other online services; we download books, music, and movies; and so much more. Examples of e-commerce stores are Amazon and Shopify.

Personally, if I were to start a business selling a few products and wanted it to be very simple, I would definitely use Shopify or Amazon. The reason for that, is that Shopify has a lot more traffic than I get on my own website, especially if I’m starting out as an online seller.

Over time, if you are able to get a good amount of traffic and build a strong relationship with your audience, then you can start selling products on your own website using a landing page. 

A landing page is a separate web page that is designed specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” after clicking on a link in an email or an ad from Google, Bing, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or another similar website.

Unlike web pages, which normally have multiple links to click and encourage you to explore other pages on a website, landing pages have a single focus or goal, known as a call to action (or CTA, for short).

This is an example of a landing page:

#7. Setup Payment processes, shipping, and communication with your buyers

Before you start selling online, you’ll need to set up systems for collecting payments and shipping your products out.

When creating a payment form or an e-commerce store, one of the most important aspects to consider is how you will accept payments. Customers anticipate that online payments will be quick, secure, and convenient. To ensure that the process runs as smoothly as possible, you must set up the appropriate payment gateway for your business. There are many payment gateways to choose from, but some of the most common include PayPal, Stripe, Square, and Authorize.Net.

• PayPal

PayPal is one of the most popular payment gateways. It allows small businesses and e-commerce platforms to securely accept payments in person, online, or over the phone. PayPal, Venmo, and PayPal Credit are all accepted payment methods. It also includes advanced fraud protection technology as an added layer of security.

Their transaction fees start at 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per transaction.

• Stripe

Stripe is also a popular complete payment platform. It can bill customers and accept payments both online and in person. Another advantage of using Stripe as your website’s backend payment processor is data security.

With their integrated plan, their processing fees start at 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per transaction. They also provide you with a customized plan that can be tailored to your specific business needs.

If you’re going to handle your own shipping, be sure to carefully set up your shipping options on the site. If your company is based in the United States, compare pricing and services from USPS, UPS, and FedEx—or look into other options in your home country.

Customers appreciate free shipping, but if you intend to provide it, the costs should be factored into your product pricing. When creating your pricing and shipping rate structure, don’t forget to include the cost of boxes and packaging materials.

When it’s time for the buyer to make a purchase, make sure that their information is saved using customer relationship management (CRM) software. This lets you send order notifications, follow up after their purchase, and stay in touch with them in order to build customer loyalty.

#8. Produce top-tier product content

For big businesses, managing their own products and creating high-quality content for their products include hiring professionals, such as copywriters, graphic designers, or marketing professionals.

But that’s not the case when you’re starting as a small business owner. Here are some tips to keep in mind in creating product content:

• Use beautiful and relevant images

Your images should make the product appear attractive and they should be consistent with your brand’s image.

If your product supplier provides you with professional product photos, find out what rules you must follow when using them. If you’re allowed to change them, think about cropping them and adding your own logo to make them unique to your site.

You can use your own photos, too! You don’t need to be a professional photographer, nor have expensive equipment to capture photos. Having the right setup, accurate angle, and good lighting is enough to produce a high-quality image.

• Draft a product description

When it comes to creating a product description, it should be detailed, but simple enough for a busy person to take notice at a brief look. 

In order to do that, use headings wisely. Some people will only skim the headings and not read the text beneath them, so use short, compelling, and descriptive words for your headings and include keywords whenever possible.

#9. Promote your products

When it comes to promoting your new product or service, it can seem like there endless options. Knowing where to start and which kinds of promotion will work best for you might be challenging. The truth is, there are a variety of ways to promote your company, and what works best for you will depend on your industry, products, and target market. 

• Using social media

You can promote your products on a variety of platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and a slew of others. 

For example, make sure build a good a social media presence on all of the major social media platforms in order to link back to your website. Each platform has its own set of users and target audiences. Instagram and Pinterest are visual platforms, so it’s important to incorporate high-quality photos whenever you’re promoting your products there.

Make sure that your social media accounts are used to spread the news about your special offers and new products. This is a simple approach to reach out to your target buyers, and your followers will be able to simply share your products on their own social media accounts. 

Consider hiring a social media manager to keep track of your product across all of the different channels so that you can both see who is tagging, commenting about, or asking questions about your product on all of the sites. You’ll be able to communicate directly with your audience, which will help you build brand loyalty.

• Use of emails

Email is an excellent way to spread the word about your new product or service. It’s also a terrific way to attract people to sign up for your newsletter in the first place. This is an example of a newsletter:

You can send out an email campaign promoting your new product, or even a series of emails leading up to the launch date. This email might be sent to a broad audience or, in line with technique, it could be a one-time offer for subscribers or customers only.

Just a few tips for email marketing:

1. Prioritize the new product’s benefits and value rather than its features.
2. In your subject line, emphasize the offer.

• Host an event

Aside from getting customers enthusiastic about your new product or service, events are a terrific way to encourage new prospects to interact with you in person, which is a great approach to convert them into customers.

Hosting an event doesn’t have to be super fancy and super organized, it can even be held virtually! You can host a Facebook live session to promote your products. 

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Well, that’s it! That is how you can sell a product online!

If you want to know a lot more about selling products online, specifically scaling your new online business(Scaling means setting the stage to enable and support growth in your business), make sure to check out this post!

5. Online Courses

Making and selling online courses is another way to make money blogging. If you want to make money by creating content but you’re not a fan of writing, this could be an excellent option for you.

You have the option of selling your online course on your own website or through a company like Udemy. You can get potential buyers by hosting it on Udemy, but you are limited by their Terms of Service. If you host your own course, though, you’ll need to promote it actively or have a large audience to generate money.

You can also look at other free or paid courses in your niche to see what your competitors offer. Keep an eye out for their course reviews to discover what kind of information customers want. 

Conclusion

Now, I have to say that I am not a Marketing Graduate and I don’t have much idea when it comes to customer behaviors and strategies when it comes to selling.

Selling something online requires you to have patience. Having your customer satisfied with your products can leave a good impression on you. You should also be ready for whatever problems your customer might face regarding your offer.

If you can build a great relationship with your people interested in your product and if you can employ a pleasing personality, you can definitely sell a product! 

Work at your own pace and always remember to put your heart out in helping the right people in whatever problems they face. Until then, you can expand your opportunities and start selling bigger products.

Homework: 

• Mix and match the different ways above to put together your own monetization strategy, There are just so many ways you can make money through online. By focusing on what works for you, you can take advantage the right type of content to increase your income as quickly as possible. 

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Useful Resources You Need For Your Blog

Investing in courses is going to be an important part of your blogging journey. If you want to fast-track your success and improve your blog, you need to invest some money on courses.

Affiliate Products/Courses and tools I recommend:

• Carly’s Pinteresting Strategies

When you’re first starting out, Carly’s course on how to pin is quite beneficial. It helps you grasp what Pinterest is all about, and her technique is very helpful when learning how to utilize Pinterest.

• HumanProof Designs 

It’s basically an affiliate marketing assistance website that provides training, OnPage and OffPage SEO services, content writing services, keyword research services, and, last but not least, pre-built affiliate websites.

The pre-built affiliate websites are without a doubt the site’s biggest draw. You can purchase them at various phases of development, ranging from pre-revenue generation (the cheapest) to authority websites that provide a steady monthly income (these are the most expensive).

• Wealthy Affiliate 

Wealthy Affiliate is a web-based platform that assists people in starting and growing online businesses. There are numerous moving elements that make something operate, just as there are numerous moving pieces that must be included in order for a business to function.

Without a question, these are the courses that have improved my blogging career. Please keep in mind that the above links are affiliate links. So, if you choose to purchase these courses, I get a commission. These are the courses that really helped me!

• Jaaxy Keyword Tool 

Jaaxy is a keyword research platform that provides tools for keyword research as well as competitive keyword analysis.

Jaaxy has all the things you need to find the perfect keywords – great search tools, lots of data to check competition and some other cool tools to help you rank in Google.

Essential WordPress Plugins 

A plugin is software that may be installed on any WordPress website. It might improve the functionality of your blog or add new features. They can assist you with everything from SEO to backups to picture optimization.

The only problem with plugins is that there are many of them, and installing too many can cause your website to slow down. Furthermore, a slow website equals a poor user experience. Do you recall what we said? The user experience is always prioritized.

Fortunately, I’ve compiled a list of the top free necessary plugins you’ll need when you’re just getting started:

• Yoast 

Yoast is without a doubt the best SEO plugin available! It’s a site must-have, and it’s entirely free. Yoast assists you in optimizing your blog article names, descriptions, content length, and other factors across your entire site so that search engines may find you simply.

And, before you ask, the premium version is not required. Forever, the free version is just as good as the premium version.

• Akismet Anti-Spam 

Akismet, which is used by millions of people around the world, is one of the finest ways to defend your site from spam. To protect your site from publishing dangerous content, Askimet scans your comments and contact form entries for spam content.

• GeneratePress Free/Pro 

If you’re seeking for a fresh new appearance for your WordPress site, GeneratePress is exactly what you’re looking for. GeneratePress is a multi-purpose theme that can be used for any type of website, including business, entertainment, eCommerce, and sports.

The GP theme is a free one that gives bloggers complete control over the appearance of their website. You can change anything from the header and footer to the navigation tab and sidebar. Aside from that, GeneratePress gives you complete control over each piece of text, including format and color.

• Social Plugin 

Social Plugin (currently named as Grow Social) is one of the most user-friendly social sharing plugins available. It allows you to add highly customizable social share buttons that blend in seamlessly with the look of your website. The social sharing buttons can be placed before and after the content of the post, or they can follow your visitors as they scroll up and down the page in the shape of a floating social media sidebar.

The plugin’s free edition includes five of the most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

• Google Analytics 

This plugin allows you to track your site using the most up-to-date Google Analytics tracking code and view important Google Analytics information in your WordPress dashboard.

Connect Google Analytics Dashboard to your Google Analytics account or you can sign up here for a free Google Analytics account to see who’s visiting your site and which blog entries are the most popular

• Insert Headers and Footers

You may need to add some sort of code snippets to your header or footer to make changes to your theme. However, doing so in your theme’s code may cause issues. Good news! This plugin allows you to simply place code or text into the header or footer of your WordPress site without breaking it.

Chrome Extensions 

• Mozbar

MozBar allows you to check the Domain Authority of any website on the fly. This is useful for keyword research and determining whether or not you can outrank another blogger for a given keyword.

• SimilarWeb

The SimilarWeb plugin allows you to look up statistics for any website. You can get detailed traffic statistics and sources for any website with a single click. Keep in mind that this is only a guess. 

According to my research, SimilarWeb numbers are half as good as they appear. For example, if a website claims to receive 100,000 page views, the true figure is likely to be closer to 180,000-200,000. However, it still provides you a good idea of a blog’s popularity.

Facebook Groups 

Blogging may be a sad experience at times. Many of your friends and family members will either not understand or be uninterested in what you’re doing. Facebook Groups are a fantastic way to make relationships and a safe place to ask simple questions when no one else could.

However, not every Facebook group is made equal. There are a few that stick out as really outstanding.

• Blogging like we mean it 

This is Carly’s (Pinteresting Strategies) Facebook group and gives a lot of her advice, particularly on Pinterest, on her page. There are also a bunch of other knowledgeable bloggers happy to offer their expertise and answer any questions you may have.

• Pinterest Mastermind 

This is also a FB group owned by Carly. It’s main focus is to give members with tips and advice and creating Pinterest templates and also strategies on how to gain traffic from posting on Pinterest.

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My Final Thoughts

Let’s say it’s a year from now. You take a long relaxing shower. Then the aroma of your coffee fills the house as you start your day… without leaving for work then getting stuck in a traffic. You get to stay inside the house, open your laptop, and see all the money you earned while being in the comfort of your home.

Imagine this scenario. This is YOU in the future!

What are you waiting for? Start a blog now and your life will change completely.

You would assume I have it all together based on my blog, but the reality is a little different. I am not a professional in any field. I’m not a writer by any stretch of the imagination! I am simply a person who is willing to take a chance, work hard, and learn something new every day.

Your dream can be a reality if you take action today. What evidence do I have? Because I’ve done it before, and you can too.

It wasn’t always simple, but it was well worth the effort.

Join e-mail List here: https://dontwantaboss.ck.page/updates

If you have any questions, leave a comment or drop me an e-mail. 

So you know, I take the time to reply to every single e-mail but sometimes it takes me a little bit longer than others. 

If you have a friend or family member who might also want to start a blog, I would be so grateful if you would share it with them! Maybe you could take this journey together? If not, remember that I’m always here to help you along the ride.