The blog is an effective platform to make money online. You can earn money blogging without many of the problems involved in running a regular website. There are several content management systems (CMS) that you can use to design and create your own blog. Most people using Blogger or WordPress.
Blogger is a free blogging service owned by Google that enables you to set up simple blogs with limited customization and functionality. WordPress goes one step further. How to use them to earn money blogging.
How to Make a Blog: Blogger
Go to the Blogger website and set up an account, create a Profile, choose a template for your blog and you are ready. Blogger is free and useful for those using a blog to keep in touch with friends and family, or offering links to sales pages offering products or services that don’t need any customization.
When you make a blog using Blogger you have very little to set up and the blog is run from Google’s own platform – you do not need a separate web hosting service.
However, if you want to earn money blogging, Blogger offers you a limited opportunity to make your blog truly your own. It’s great for people wanting to run a personal blog, but not for a professional business.
How to Make a Blog: WordPress
WordPress offers a similar free service. You can register for a free account, set up your Profile and then select a template or theme from those available on the free WordPress platform.
The version of WordPress run from WordPress’s own site is similar to Blogger. It has insufficient customization available for you to compete commercially against competition if you want to earn money blogging.
How to Make a WordPress Blog:
You can have a more advanced and professional blog if you run WordPress from your own domain. You can download the WordPress software from their.org website, and then customization is almost unlimited. Here are some of the steps involved, and how a WordPress site can be used to earn money blogging:
1. Get a Domain – First, you should purchase a domain name from a site such as GoDaddy. You can use a website such as domainsbot.com to find available domain names relating to your niche or type of business.
You should pay under $10 for a minimum 1-year lease on domain names that have to be renewed after each leased period.
2. Get a Web Hosting Service – Now register for a web hosting service such as Hostgator – you can get a great hosting service for under $10/month. Don’t use free services- you will find there is always a catch, and Hostgator Baby service is all you should ever need.
The web host provides the web space so you can set up your blog using the domain you purchased. You will have to point your domain to the web hosting service you choose, but they will show you how to do that.
Make sure your web host uses cPanel – a website management panel that is invaluable – particularly for beginners.
3. Download WordPress – If you have chosen Hostgator or any other web host using cPanel, look for a link to Fantastico or Fantastico de Luxe, and then for ‘WordPress’ Click that and follow the simple instructions to download WordPress.
It’s basically a one-click installation, apart from entering your blog username and password.
4. Customize WordPress – You can start off with any of the preloaded templates to familiarize yourself with WordPress, but once you understand it you can design and use your own header graphics, and set up the plugin software available to your best advantage.
Play around with it and learn how to upload new templates or themes, new plugins and so on.
If you know HTML you will be able to change the various sections of your blog, such as the sidebars, headers, and footers, and you will be able to add a great deal of useful functionality using the masses of plugins available online that you cannot use with Blogger or the simple form of WordPress.
You may also create permanent pages, such as sales pages, and posts on your blog.
5 SEO Tips for bloggers you need to know
You have a blog because you want to drive traffic to your website and rank highly in the search engines results.
You already know about the basic SEO stuff to do with on-page factors and link building, but there are many other factors that get overlooked.
You have to spend some time on the easy ones to make sure your blog has a more significant impact and gain more traffic.
Here are five simple but effective tips you need to know.
1. Stunning and Effective Headlines
More click-throughs in the search results boost your rankings because the algorithm will attach more value to your blog.
So if you rank relatively low, but get a lot of clicks, your ranking will rise. However, if you rank highly and you don’t get click-throughs, your blog will be deemed irrelevant to that search term, and your rankings will fall.
Therefore, eye-catching headlines improve your rankings.
2. Use Images to Increase Your Rankings
Using images to link to your blog will increase your rankings and provide some diversity to your backlinks.
The Alt tag tells the search engines about the content of your image. When using an image to link to your blog post, the Alt tag serves as a keyword.
The best way to get these link-based backlinks is to create an infographic for others to use – ask for an image backlink to your original post.
3. Do-follow and No-follow
The do-follow links are important because they show your blog is of high quality and a trusted source of information.
The problem is a lot of blogs only provide no follow links. An excessive amount of these will make your blog appear untrusted – not good.
Attention! Buying links is the quickest way to ruin your rankings. Instead, concentrate on guest blogging for high-quality blogs.
4. Linking to Trusted Blogs
Outbound links are just as relevant as inbound ones.
As a trusted and high-quality blog, you’ll be expected to link to other high-quality blogs if you want to raise the value of your blog in the eyes of the search engines.
5. Short and Long blog Posts
You could probably write a useful and informative high-quality blog post that’s short, but the search engines love long content.
But not only should your content be lengthy (but still high quality, relevant and informative), you also need to work on getting comments. This will help boost the length of the unique content of each post.
5 Tips To Increase Traffic On Your Blogs
All the bloggers want to have more and more traffic on their blogs. There are plenty of ways by which you can do that. Here are a few tricks that will help you in achieving more than your targets.
1. Consistency
The most important factor that will increase traffic is the consistency of the readers on your blog. You can adopt for daily topic systems, daily tricks, and tips or any other useful thing that you know. After that, you will see a sudden increase in your traffic. Make sure that you post often on your blog so that your visitors keep returning back to your blog.
2. Reuse the old posts
Prompting your old posts will also lead to an increase in traffic. There are many people who write the post and entirely focus on that neglecting the old ones. Each post that bloggers write can generate traffic.
You can create a spreadsheet with all the post, titles and links. Make sure that you are giving equal attention to yours. This way you will be able to double your traffic.
3. Change the Design
There are many people who do consider redesigning their blogs as important because they are afraid of the change. You will need a new approach from time to time so don’t be afraid and face the change.
Your visitors might also be looking for something new and make your goals clearer. Changing the design of your pages like the home page and others will definitely bounce up your traffic and users will feel a fresh look.
4. Give Directions
Most of the user’s after reading might want to go further and if they will not find a way they will quit. You might be thinking that users will visit your home page and then will seek from there, but this is not the case.
It is your responsibility that you point them in the right direction. You can do this by linking your posts so that they can check out the other categories as well. This way they will know where they are heading the next.
5. Help Your Readers
A blogger must think and help the readers. Always or almost always the readers searching for valuable information or how to solve a problem. You need to help them. You need to give value, help, and solutions.
If they found what they need, they will advertise your blog for Free! Also, they will come back for more information, again and again.
Very simple and very effective!