A blog can be about anything, there are news blogs, sports blogs, gaming blogs, fashion blogs, lifestyle blogs, cuisine blogs, and a whole lot of other kinds of blogs. You can blog about anything you are interested in and others who have similar interests will find you.
Blogging started out as a hobby for a lot of people, they get a web page and record their daily activities and life events there, an online diary more or less, but that was ages ago. Blogging is now much more than that. A blog now could be described as an interface to publish content (text, video, audio, etc.) on the web.
Over the years blogging has grown to become a popular business with some blogs earning hundreds of thousands monthly. Most first time bloggers uses free blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress, and this is fine for hobby bloggers who run their blog for fun, but if you plan to build a business around your blog then you would want to host it with a proper hosting service. Using Blogger or WordPress for free hosting limits the themes and plugins you have access to, and it also minimizes your monetization options.
Free hosting platforms also add an extension to your selected domain name, making it seem unprofessional. So if you want to take blogging seriously, it would be best to build a self-hosted blog. A self-hosted blog is one built to run on your own server. However, if you do not have one, you can pay a third party to host it for you while you enjoy the benefits of a self-hosted blog.
Reasons to Start a Blog
A blog can become profitable business: Blogs when planned and managed properly, can grow to become a good source of revenue. When your blog gains good followers, you can monetize it properly and make good money. Ways to monetize your blog include:
You can write about your interests: Blogs can be about anything you can think of, whatever your interests may be there are people who share them. This gives you a good opportunity to write about what interests you and make money doing it.
You can grow your blog into something bigger: Blogging is one of the biggest things to come out due to the emergence of the internet, and many small blogs have since grown to become more than just blogs, but popular online destinations for millions of internet users. Websites like Techcrunch, Mashable, Perez Hilton, The Huffington Post, and Lifehacker started as small blogs back in the days. With dedication, proper planning and execution, you can also grow your blog into something much more.
Setting Up your Blog
To start off you need to select your platform, host and domain. A platform is the program you use to run and maintain your blog, from uploading a new post to changing styles and designs. All of these are done with your platform. The most popular platform used on the web is WordPress. There are others including Joomla and Drupal check them out and choose the one that works best for you.
Next you have your domain. Your domain is your website's URL (universal resource locator) or web address. For instance, the domain name Facebook is Facebook.com, and for Twitter, the domain name is Twitter.com. Your domain name is how your audience will find you on the net, and that is why your domain name should reflect your brand. You register your domain name with a good domain registrar and you pay yearly for your domain. Domain names are registered in the millions every year so you have to be creative when coming up with a domain name.
Now you have to pick a hosting service. A hosting service sells you digital space and bandwidth to run your website. You pay a monthly fee to keep your website hosted with a hosting service, and there is a range of hosting options depending on your website traffic. This digital storage space is where your site will be uploaded to be part of a network of thousands of computers or servers owned by the hosting company and maintained in their data centre. Top companies like Free Parking offer both domain name registration and website hoisting. Get started here: www.freeparking.co.nz/web-hosting
How to Make your Blog Profitable
Find a niche and stick with it: First you have to decide what content you want on your blog, what you are writing about and who you are writing for. Then within whatever niche you choose, carve out a spot for yourself. Nowadays, there are big websites producing content about almost every broad topic you can think of, and trying to compete with big established sites in their playing field is a very tall task.
What you do after picking your niche, is to choose somewhere within that niche to specify in- something you can be specifically known for and after you pick that, you can make sure that you stick with it. For example, you might choose to be interested in hair styling, but then you can get more specific by focusing on natural hair treatment and styles.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): If you are well versed in the workings of SEO from the very beginning, it would make your journey down the marketing and online awareness tunnel a lot smoother. You need to understand how to choose your keywords and how to use them. You also need to understand the importance of Meta description tags and how to use them. Knowing how to work with SEO can greatly increase your blog's potential of success as it influences the visibility of your blog on the internet.
Post Quality Content Regularly: Your content is the life of your blog, and the quality is what helps your business grow. Always maintain a high standard of quality for your content and also make sure you post regularly- preferably with a schedule so your audience knows when to come to get more of what you're selling.
Blogging requires dedication and planning, and once these two are in place you can grow your blog into a cool money making venture.
Source: Start a blog that makes you money
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