HOW TO START A BLOG & BUILD A CAREER OUT OF IT

Oh! Hi here you’re….Do you really wanna know ‘how to start a blog’?

Well, I completely understand if you’re new to this whole blogging scenario and as of now you may have your own doubts about blogging, and I get it, it’s totally normal I was there too.

To clear all the doubts and misconceptions about starting and growing a successful blog online, I have compiled this guide on how to start a blog and become a professional blogger with a well-planned and strategic approach.

Therefore you can be rest assured that I covered all the actionable and salient parts of blogging in this article, I really hope it helps.

Firstly, let’s talk about what blogging actually means?

A blog usually refers to a website that shares information on individual subjects either written by one writer (or) by a group of writers. There is no limit to what you can share via blogs, it could your thoughts, experiences, or any knowledge of your interest topics.

In other words, the process of writing and handling content is known as blogging.

The best about blogging is that there is no limit to who can blog? & what you can blog?

Literally, you can choose any topic under the sky and start a blog about it. Today there are doctors who have their own blogs and at the same time, there are individuals with a passion for astrophysics writing their own blogs, sharing their ideas, experiences, and making blogging limitless.

Thus a blog could be anything about your profession, passion or any of your interests.

A professional doctor’s blog

An aspiring astronaut’s blog

However blogging has been around for more than decades now but back then in the 2000’s people never saw it as a career and today the whole blogging scene has completely changed, as people are building promising careers out of it.

In the beginning, it was only those enthusiastic writers who wanted to write content about their thoughts and publish blogs like their dairy were into blogging.

Either way, blogging is still a channel of sharing content via text, photos, and videos self-published by a creator online.

And this is where blogging stands right now, people are into blogging to help others online and also at the same time to make money with blogging.

Even though blogging is not done only for business sake, there are still many bloggers who just blog because they love it, and to be honest, there is nothing to complain about if you can monetize and make money while doing something that you love.

How To Start a Successful Blog: Simplified in 7 Simple Steps

Well, blogging is a very vast topic, and at the same time, it is a very straightforward concept to explain.

But as with everything, blogging also does seem easy when someone explains it in a simplified manner but actually, there is a lot more to blogging than what you see and hear.

Don’t get me wrong, there is no doubt that blogging is for everyone and literally anyone could do it. No matter what you want to write about, there is a sea full of topics and endless opportunities today.

To earn money with blogging, you’ll need to take a different path and approach. In this guide on how to start a blog, I will expose that strategic approach, which will be simplified into seven steps.

• Step 1: Choose a niche to make money
• Step 2: Find potential keywords to write about
• Step 3: Pick a domain name and web hosting
• Step 4: Install WordPress and create an actual blog
• Step 5: Start writing your blogs
• Step 6: Build Backlinks and Promote Your Blog
• Step 7: Start making money with blogging

(Note: If your monetary aim is to not earn money with blogging. Then you can directly jump towards Step3 to start a blog and start writing on it)

However blogging has been around for more than decades now but back then in the 2000’s people never saw it as a career and today the whole blogging scene has completely changed, as people are building promising careers out of it.

In the beginning, it was only those enthusiastic writers who wanted to write content about their thoughts and publish blogs like their dairy were into blogging.

Either way, blogging is still a channel of sharing content via text, photos, and videos self-published by a creator online.

And this is where blogging stands right now, people are into blogging to help others online and also at the same time to make money with blogging.

Even though blogging is not done only for business sake, there are still many bloggers who just blog because they love it, and to be honest, there is nothing to complain about if you can monetize and make money while doing something that you love.

Step 1: Choose a niche to make money

Well, blogging is a very vast topic, and at the same time, it is a very straightforward concept to explain.

But as with everything, blogging also does seem easy when someone explains it in a simplified manner but actually, there is a lot more to blogging than what you see and hear.

Don’t get me wrong, there is no doubt that blogging is for everyone and literally anyone could do it. No matter what you want to write about, there is a sea full of topics and endless opportunities today.

To earn money with blogging, you’ll need to take a different path and approach. In this guide on how to start a blog, I will expose that strategic approach, which will be simplified into seven steps.

• Step 1: Choose a niche to make money
• Step 2: Find potential keywords to write about
• Step 3: Pick a domain name and web hosting
• Step 4: Install WordPress and create an actual blog
• Step 5: Start writing your blogs
• Step 6: Build Backlinks and Promote Your Blog
• Step 7: Start making money with blogging

(Note: If your monetary aim is to not earn money with blogging. Then you can directly jump towards Step3 to start a blog and start writing on it)

I always felt niche is a term which most bloggers have complicated it. In simple language, a niche is a topic around which you write content and at the same time make money with it. The biggest reason to go after specific niches is due to the presence of an existing audience base for it and eliminating maximum competition.

Clearly choosing a niche depends upon an individual likes, preferences, and choices. To find your own niche you need to ask yourself these questions

What do I like talking about?

What do I like writing about?

The secret sauce to blogging is to find a profitable and promising niche within your interests because right now there are over 600 million blogs on the internet and if you’re starting a blog right now in one particular niche, then you’re bound to face fierce competition.

Thus it is safe to assume that you will be competing against hundreds if not thousands of existing websites, no matter what niche you choose.

It’s the holy truth, in some niches it will take you dozens of weeks if not months to start get some traction.

So attest in your mind that niche is everything in blogging and once you realize this, the next step is to go around the internet and hunt for the best possible and profitable niches.

There are two best and secret places online where you can stumble upon multiple profitable niche ideas for your blog, which will be:-

1. Flippa
2. Google Trends

How to use Flippa to find profitable niche ideas?

Flippa.com is a marketplace where people buy and sell domains.

I will tell you why because Flippa is the platform where most established bloggers and business owners buy and sell domains/websites.

Just think yourself, if people are investing money into domain names and websites, then there is a high possibility that most of those domains and sites are already either making money (or) can make money in the future.

On that exact point, you need to know that there is a concept in blogging called ‘blog flipping’. Where bloggers would either create their own blogs from scratch (or) would buy blogs at lower prices and sell them at higher costs. Why?

Because those blogs will have the potential to make you money and the niches in which they operate are highly profitable.

On Flippa, there is a golden opportunity for you to stumble upon something promising if you do research in the right way, and trust me Flippa is the right place to start your journey of how to start a blog and make money.

Hence to start your niche research on Flippa, the first thing you will need to do is land on the site and browse the ‘blog section’ where blogs are being sold.

Once you’ve landed on a page similar to the above one, you’ll need to use some filters to sort out the results, and further via analyzing those results you would come up with a profitable niche idea.

Please follow these steps to set filters in a particular order on Flippa:-

1. First, fill the keyword tab with the topics which you would love to write and talk about
2. Keep the assets filter as ‘Websites and Online Businesses’
3. In the website type section, tick the box for blogs. (All << Content << Blog)
4. Set monthly pages views to be min 2-3k views (optional)
5. After that, set the domain age to be less than two years (This is important: Because if a blog/domain can sell itself within two years on Flippa, then the niche in which it is operating must be less competitive and profitable at the same time)
6. Further, you can play around with other filters to experiment with the results/listings.

For example purposes, I have typed in my keyword to be ‘love,’ and the remaining filters are set as I explained above.

Here are the results which I got

Note: You won’t stumble upon a profitable niche with your first search or in your first attempt. You need to toggle around with multiple keywords and filters until you find one good niche.

As I clear that up, let’s go back to my list of results, initally I opened a few sites that captured my interest, and I ended on this listing.

Expertplantman.com is a website on gardening and it is a decent blog that is generating traffic close to 6000 views per month and was recently bided for $1900. However, this should tell you that if someone is able to blog about gardening and has been able to sell that blog for $2k in less than two years, then there is definitely money to be made in that niche with comparatively less competition.

Use Google Trends to validate your niche ideas

Google Trends is an amazing tool that provides data on search engine trends based on countries and time periods.

It is very a fundamental tool that most of the bloggers recommend to carry any sort of topic/niche research.

Here we’re gonna use this tool to validate our niche idea. To validate our research on the gardening niche, I will input keywords related to gardenining in Google Trends.

Once I had put the relevant target keywords in Google Trends these are the results which I got,

We can clearly see that terms like ‘pot’ and ‘flower’ have a consistent trend in the USA for over 12 months.

This certainly indicates that they’re excellent topic ideas to write about, and thus, that’s how you land a profitable niche idea and validate it for your blog.

(Note: Instead of Google Trends, you can use social media platforms like Facebook to analyze the popularity of your niche by checking the active groups (or) connecting with other relevant communities.)

Those who are new to this should not step back by looking at such research and the inclusion of terms like ‘keywords’, ‘WordPress blog’, and ‘backlinks’. Trust me I am here to simplify things for you and make blogging easy for beginners.

Step 2: Find potential keywords to write about

Okay, as I made it clear that everything is simple. I want to tell you about a concept called keyword research which is extremely useful if you want to rank your blog on Google and generate traffic.

Keyword research is the process of finding keywords/search terms to rank on search engines, especially on Google.

This process helps you find precise topics and search terms to blog about, and it is beneficial as you would be writing content around only particular terms while explicitly aiming to rank on Google.

To start your keyword research, you can choose any popular tool in the market. I prefer Ahrefs because their data is trustable, and in the past, I had success using that particular tool.

Ahrefs is one of the best keyword research tools out there in the market, and if you want to try it. You can sign for a trial of 7 days at $7. I am sure that those 7 days are good enough for your keyword research strategy before you start your own blog.

But before starting your keyword hunt, let me notify you that I do keyword research differently, and I find it helpful compared to jargon other strategies recommend usual bloggers.

What’s my keyword research strategy?

In the beginning of my keyword research, I usually go after keywords which are easy to rank and can help my blogs generate a couple of hundreds of views every month.

It’s for ‘Google’! Because when your site is relatively new and barely has 10-20 articles, it becomes harder for Google to understand which niche your blog is about.

Assume that if you have initially started writing content around competitive keywords, then I am absolutely certain that you would barely show up in search results which also de-incentivizes Google to push you up.

Thus lower the search volume the lesser will the competition and you must know that this doesn’t stand for every low search volume keyword/phrase which you would come across.

I have to agree that doing keyword research to find low-competition keywords can be a time-consuming task but in the end, it would all be worth it, especially when your only focus, is on how to start a blog and make money.

Another reason why it’s important because writing on the low search and low competition terms will help you get that initial push from Google. As Google doesn’t have a lot of results to show for lesser competition keywords, it will be enticed to show your blog, only if your content meets certain quality standards.

Thereafter as you start showing up in the Top 10 search results, Google will understand your content, and it will push the remaining relevant articles on your site and this is when you start writing and publishing content around the highly competitive keywords with over 20k, 50k, or even 100k search volumes.

To come up with all the low, medium, and high volume keywords using Ahrefs. You need to follow two of my strategies to do this.

Steal competitors keywords using Ahrefs

This is an effective technique to come up with keyword ideas around which your competitors might already be ranking.

To carry out this strategy with ease, Ahrefs provides appropriate data which can help you do so like:-

• Keyword difficulty (A metric that indicates how tough it would be to rank on a particular keyword on a scale of 1 to100)
• SERP results for any keyword (SERP -Search Engine Results Page)

Once you login to your Ahref’s account, all you need is to insert your competitor’s URL and skim through their organic keywords, and later apply some filters to find the low volume and low competition keywords.

Since I have decided my niche to be gardening and start a blog around it; our first competitor would be https://expertplantman.com/. As we insert the URL in Ahrefs keyword tool and set some filters, we will be shown a promising list of keywords like these:-

As you can see, we have a list of 12 keywords with a search volume of a minimum of 500 each with a keyword difficulty (KD) of less than 5. Hence these keywords are relatively easier to rank on Google, and they have a decent search volume too.

So as I clicked for the SERP results on the term ‘best splitting maul.’

By looking at the Top 10 results for this keyword, we can quickly assess our possibility to rank on that term. In our case, we can see that four sites with DR (Domain Rating) less than 10 are ranking in the Top 10 search results which should tell you that there is a possibility to rank new blogs on that search term.

Note: DR is a metric that indicates how much a website is established, trustful, and authoritative in the eyes of Google from the scale of 1 to 100 ( where 1 is the lowest established and 100 being a highly established website)

Most of the time, sites with high DR are preferred for top rankings, but in our keyword search, we found four websites with low DR/DA (Domain Authority). This means Google is allowing lower authoritative sites with quality content to rank on that term.

These are the golden geese keywords that you need to go after in your niche. No matter in which niche you’re in, as a beginner blogger, you’ll have to find at least 30-40 such niche-specific keywords which are pretty easy to rank on.

Note: You should repeat the exact process for multiple competitors until you have complied a list of low search volume and low competition keywords.

Once you have that list of low competition keywords, thereafter all you need is to get your back behind finding the main buck/high search volume keywords to generate actual website revenue.

Find medium to high volume keywords using generic terms

Keywords with high competition will obviously have a good no. of searches, and this is why you need to go after such keywords once you start to rank on low competition terms and have gained some Google’s trust.

To find keywords with over 10k, 20k, and 50k search volume. You can follow the same concept of stealing keywords from your competitors.

However there is actually a pretty straightforward way to find our keywords…

To start, all you have to do is to go to the section called ‘Keyword Explorer’ in Ahrefs and insert generic terms which are super relevant to your niche and run a keyword search.

Earlier, we took terms like Pot, Flower, and Gardening as our main niche terms while validating out niche ideas on Google Trends. This time we will use the same terms to dig deeper and research thoroughly on Ahrefs for high volume keywords.

Here as I entered the term ‘gardening,’ I filtered for phrase matches on Ahrefs, and clearly ‘gardening tools‘ with 8k search volume was a big buck keyword.

There you go, that’s how you find high-volume keywords, and as you rinse and repeat the whole above process with different niche-specific terms. You should be able to make a list of 20-30 keywords, and this list will also help you come up with content ideas to start writing on your blog.

Step 3: Pick a domain name and web hosting

Consider your blog/website to be a physical shop in the real world. To open a shop, you will need a name which will be the domain name in blogging (example: xyz.com, ABC.in…), and once you get the name, you will need certain space/areas to build your shop, and this will be our web hosting, which will help you store your domain data in the virtual world.

Domain name and web hosting are the tow vital ingredients to start a blog from scratch.

And please don’t ask me whether it is okay to go with a free hosting (or) a free sub-domain name?

No, It’s absolutely not okay, just like you can’t run any physical store by renting it at someone else’s/unauthroized space (or) by renting somewhere else for free. Similarly, you can’t expect to start and grow a blogging site with free hosting and free domain.

This step of purchasing a domain name and web hosting is essential and will help you move forward with how to start a blog:-

• A domain name will define what your blog would be, and the domain name will be the name registered in users mind as your brand
• Web hosting is something that you purchase to stay in for the long term game and without hosting, there isn’t gonna be a website in the first place

How to choose a domain name for your blog?

As I said before, a domain name is a name that defines your brand and whenever people want to land on your blog. They will have to enter that name in between www. and .com to connect with your blogs.

Thus one golden rule of thumb is that your domain name should be easy to remember, and quite frankly, I would highly suggest you avoid any numbers (or) special characters in your domain name.

According to me, the best place to find any domain name will be Bluehost.com. Being a web hosting company, they do offer a free domain name for one year if you choose their one-year hosting plans, and I think that’s worth looking at.

You can visit Bluehost’s website and check weather your desired domain names are up for grabs.

Readers who followed the first two steps of this guide on how to start a blog should realize that they have a niche and list of keywords that can help them come up with relevant domain names for their upcoming blog.

But anyways in my opinion, here are some points to remember before choosing a domain name:-

1. Use tools like business name generator to come up with domain names.
2. If you wanna start a personal blog, purchase domain names such as www.yourname.com and try to avoid other extensions like .in, .uk if you wanna engage with a global audience.
3. Your domain name should consist maximum of 2-3 words. This is because most of the one-word domains will be already purchased, and you would only have few names to play with.
4. Make sure your domain name is easily pronounceable, as people can easily share it through word of mouth.

How to choose a web hosting for your blog?

Purchasing a web hosting plan and creating a blog on that hosting platform might sound too technical but trust me, it is actually damn easy to buy a hosting and build a website.

Every non-techie guy can do this, and if you follow this article throughout , then you will find it easy to do it on your own.

To purchase the best web hosting plan for your domain, I would suggest BlueHost, and I also know that most bloggers recommend it, and trust me they are not wrong; it is one of the best hosting companies out there.

To purchase their hosting, go to Bluehost web hosting services and buy their shared hosting. (If you buy any hosting plan by clicking on the links from this article you will get a great discount on their plans and I hope this helps bloggers save a few bucks)

Therefore once you land on Bluehost. Check their web hosting plans and you will find multiple plans with different pricing on them.

Since I know, for most of you, this is going to be your first blog. For that same reason, I would recommend the basic plan, with special pricing of $2.95 per month if you go through our link.

If not the basic plan, you can purchase any plan according to your needs, but once you pay for hosting you will be requested to buy a domain (or) get a free one (depending on the plan which you choose)

No problem! If you have an existing domain on other platforms. Bluehost offers an easy domain transfer option. Also, it’s up to you, you can eventually manage two platforms: one for the domain name and one for web hosting.

Step 5: Start writing your blogs

As you’ve learnt how to start a blog on WordPress, it’s time to learn to how to write a blog on your own.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional writer (or) not. Writing helps you put your thoughts into words, and it is no rocket science to understand what it takes to write good articles and as a blogger, you need to figure out how to write a blog.

Bloggers are meant for blogging, and writing is undoubtedly the most crucial element to starting a blog and making money with it. 

It’s okay if you can’t write a word right now, you can always hire writers from freelance platforms and make them write your content.

But to be honest, being a blogger, I would like every newbie blogger to learn how to start writing a blog.

In reality, your blog is something that represents your passion, interest, and determination, and there would probably be no better writer than you to write content on your blog.

However once you get used to writing and become habituated with writing, you can switch from self-publishing on social media sites to writing for your own blog.

Remember all it takes is confidence and patience as a blogger, and in general, if you can conquer both, then anything is possible even writing good articles.

Since I am a blogger too I want to share some practical steps that you can use while writing content for your blogs.

Research about your topic for at least 30 mins and create an outline:-

It doesn’t matter if you’ve written five articles or 500 articles; research and outlining are the essential things which impact your writing.

Personal bloggers who might pour their thoughts and experiences into their writing barely need this step because research is already done or experienced by them, and they have their own outline in their head, even though it’s not structured also it doesn’t need to be on the paper for them.

Therefore, I prefer at least 20-30 mins into research before writing, and while researching I try to understand what’s already out there and what’s not, in terms of my niche and that precise topic.

This process is pretty straightforward. All you need to do is a Google search for any content pieces related to your topic, click on the relevant results, understand what each article shares, and realize why readers love it.

Research helps you clarify how other writers have presented their ideas and what data is already available online that you use or share within your WordPress blogs.

Therefore research is the one step that lets you figure what you should write about and how you can present your ideas in terms of how to write the perfect blog.

As you’re done with the research, outlining is the next central part of writing. It lets you set the tone of your writing even before writing an article, and it should be obvious that research plays an evident role in coming up with a good outline.

For beginner bloggers, I wanna share some tips/elements which you need to must have in your outlines:-

1. For the most part, the outline should consist of headings and subheadings which you want to mention in your content.
2. You can add also some essential points in your outline so that you don’t forget to mention them while writing.

There you go, a good time spend on both content research and outlining should help you with how to write your first ever blog.

Focus more on headlines and initial paragraphs

Headlines are probably the first thing that people read before landing on your blog, and it is the only thing that will either dictate or deviate your potential readers.

Therefore much importance should be given to the headlines and according to me the only headlines which perform better are the ones which:-

• Are easy to read and understand
• Evoke curiosity
• Promises validity
• Offers a solution

For example, if my blog headline is ‘How These 10 Gardening Tools Can Reduce Your 75% of The Work‘, then my initial paragraphs should be related to my issues with old gardening tools, and here you can even share a specific problem which you faced while using traditional tools and within first two paragraphs you need to also share the reason why you shifted to the current tools.

The goal with your initial paragraphs and sentences of your articles is to make the readers read more, and you can only do it by being specific and making each point relatable to what they’ve come for.

Add data, images, and other media files

Today readers on the internet consume content differently, and they don’t like to read a block full of text anymore. Thus the blog articles which you write should also include other forms of content rather than just text. It can be:-

• Images
• Videos
• Gifs
• Audio files and more

This type of mixed content helps people consume your content differently and absorb it very quickly and certainly adding these things will help you deal with the syndrome of how to write a blog better.

Images are definitely a great way to make people understand your message by indulging in a consumable visual appeal. Therefore when images are placed in between text, it makes it easier for the readers to skim through and understand your content.

Other than images and videos, people like seeing data and research studies that can back up what you’re concluding or what you’re trying to say and if you can find a way to showcase valid data through images, videos, and gifs. Then it definitely enlightens your reader’s trust and enhances his/her reading experience on your blog.

Finally, be original and transparent at the same time

According to Neil Patel, there are 7-8 blogs for each reader online, and this number of blogs keeps increasing daily. So it becomes that much more important to have your own voice in the sea full of thousands, if not millions.

I am pretty much sure that people online who would promise to help you with how to start your own blog will never share this following stuff.

The best & only way to create your own voice is by being original. A blog post that shares subjective details on any topic is bound to help readers, but if you want your readers to connect to your writing and make them resonate with your blogs.

Being original in your writing doesn’t mean sharing your extreme sigmas. It’s all about making people connect with your essay with full genuine authenticity and simplicity.

Originality is something that makes your readers connect and remember you. But if you want to differentiate your writing from other blogs significantly, you must also need to be transparent to build a good rapport with your readers.

Realize that transparency is different from originality; on the internet, people love consuming content from other people well, and even though you might think that presenting yourself in a perfect manner is the way to go.

But today, you’re trying to connect with real people through your real stories, and real blogs. So don’t worry if your blog shows traces of imperfections, people actually like imperfections and they would rather choose a blog written by a human than a bot.

So be transparent with your data, value, and presentation so that your readers can trust you and differentiate you from other bloggers and I hope this whole section will inspire and help you with how to write a good blog.

Step 6: Build Backlinks and Promote Your Blog

No matter what kind of blog you want to rank on Google, backlinks are the one thing that can definitely help you to boost your rankings. In fact, backlinks are considered to be most valuable when you’re still learning how to start a blog and wanna make money quickly with your blogging efforts.

For people who don’t know what backlinks are?

Here is my definition/explanation,

Till date, backlinks are still the primary factor of rankings in Google.

You can indeed rank on keywords without backlinks, but when you’re up against giant competitors and looking to rank on high-volume keywords, then my friend, you need backlinks.

But don’t let this fear of building backlinks stop you from creating your own blog and writing content. In my POV, it’s not that mandatory to learn about building backlinks if you wanna know how to start a blog and build it in a very less competitive space.

In fact, you can actually build a niche blog without ever building backlinks, and to do so all you ever have to do is follow the above five steps of this article and publish consistent content on your blog.

But if you want to enhance your speed upto 2x-3x to rank on Google, then my friend backlinks are a great way to do that. Also again, doesn’t forget that content is still the sole primary asset that will bring you traffic, readers, and following.

Backlinks are just the steroids which can help you boost your SEO and search engine rankings as a blogger.

As a blogger, I have implemented multiple link-building strategies to acquire backlinks for my client’s websites. To my experience, I found only a few techniques to be helpful in building links and promoting a blog:-

1. Guest blogging
2. Broken link building
3. Branded link claims
4. Blogger collaborations

How to do guest blogging?

I have to say, guest blogging is by far the most effective link-building strategy till date. 

Here as a blogger to implement guest blogging for links, you have to publish content on someone else’s blog as a guest, and in return for the content, you will be rewarded with a backlink, which will mostly be a link in the author’s bio.

Guest blogging is way more potent than any other link-building strategy in SEO, and that’s the reason why guest blogging isn’t easy, and it is important to realize that it takes a lot of time to acquire links as a guest blogger.

The best part about guest blogging is that it’s all about perks. Once you consistently do guest blogging, you will be able to:-

• Build backlinks that will help in your SEO and rankings on Google
• Build authority as people see you writing on multiple blogs and they tend to look at you as an expert in the field.
• Bring in referral traffic onto your blog through the links.
• Create your own brand persona. Once you grow as a brand, your readers/followers will promote your stuff irrespective of whether you tell them to do so (or) not.

There you go, guest blogging is something which should be in your blog promotion arsenal. But remember to implement this strategy and make it work effectively, you have to first publish at least 20-30 articles on your own blog.

I felt that this guide on how to start a blog should also help you with how to promote yourself as a blogger, and that’s the reason I am sharing my personal guest blogging strategy and here are the steps which will help you to simplify it:-

Find writing prospects:- As a new blogger in your niche, you won’t be recognized by anyone, and there will not be people emailing you to submit a guest post on their blogs.

Therefore, for any new bloggers, this prospecting part becomes essential. To start you will need to find the medium to top-level blogs in your niche which are willing to accept guest writers, and as an aspiring blogger, you should be able to clinch on that opportunity.

To start your hunt, you can use paid tools like Buzzstream to find and outreach potential prospects or

You can go to our old friend ‘Google’ to help with link prospecting.

To do so, we need to execute a search on Google in this precise format: ‘your niche keyword’ + ‘write for us’.

For example, I searched for “gardening’ + ‘write for us.” Below you can see that all results were the websites accepting guest writers for the gardening topic.

To do guest blogging, you need to start creating a list of prospects which should contain their details like:-

• Website name
• Prospect name (It could be the owner of the blog or SEO manager or content manager or marketing manager of that blog)
• Email ID

Remember to choose websites with high DA (Domain Authority). I usually go after sites with DA 50+; you can use tools like Ahrefs and Moz to check any website’s DA.

Once you’ve a considerable list of prospects for guest blogging. It’s all about pitching them in the right way.

Structure an outreach email:- Emails are a fond way to reach your prospects for guest blogging.

But since you’re not the only one who is pitching to those sites. You will need to structure your emails to be more personalized and with a pinpoint approach to ask for a guest post.

Personalizing an email doesn’t mean mentioning their name or blog’s name; it needs to be more personalized than that.

But at the same time, you don’t need to dig deeper to make it personal; all you can do is look at their recent or popular blog posts and pass a positive comment about that article within your email.

This will indicate that you’ve actually read their content, and now they sure know that the email is coming from a genuine person who follows them.

(Note: You can follow your prospects on social media, and you can mention anything related to their recent social media content to make it even more personalized)

This little personalization tip will differentiate you from the hundreds of emails that land in your prospect’s inbox asking for guest posts.

To make your prospects respond positively to your email, you have to offer them something in your emails so that they are ready to communicate.

Most blog owners, aka prospects in this case, like to get pitched with unique content ideas for their blog, and if they feel that you’re credible enough, then you are more likely to get a good response.

So here you need to ask yourself a question?

What value do I need to provide to my prospects, is it a content idea? Should I first give them a link and ask for a reciprocal? Or do I need to share any data stats which I acquired through my research?

Your value in the outreach emails differs from individual to individual and also from niche to niche. 

Pitch those outreach emails:- Instead of answering for everyone in this guide on how to start a blog and do guest blogging. I would recommend you to look at my guest post outreach email in which I would be sending outreach emails to my gardening prospects.

To send more personalized and more valuable emails in bulk, you will have to use tools like Buzzstream (or) Mailshake to do it.

Or else you will have to go with the manual process of sending each email individually.

How to do broken link building?

Broken link building is another potential link-building strategy that can help bloggers claim backlinks from web pages pointing towards a dead page.

You might ask why would a blog link to you, right?

Well, there are few reasons why broken link building works:-

• Websites don’t want a dead link on their articles, and thus far, they would be happy to link to any active (& credible) content if notified.
• Also, readers like to read updated content. So there might be a possibility that the previous backlinks were redirected to old techniques/information, and anyhow, since the link is dead, bloggers would be willing to replace that link with new and updated content link.

To start your broken link-building process, you need to have access to tools like Ahrefs, which offers features for such type of tasks.

Once you have access to Ahrefs. You can follow these steps:-

• Log into your Ahrefs account and click on ‘Content Explorer.’
• In the tab, insert your keyword. For example purposes, I put the keyword as gardening.
• Later, I filtered out the results by choosing to look at only broken links.

• Once I have the list of dead web pages, you can notice that there are still domains referring to dead pages.
• After skimming through for a considerable amount you could find there is an appropriate and relevant dead page that resonates with your existing content.
• If not, you have to create a content piece that is 5x better than the current 404 pages.
• Once you have the content published, you need to reach to the domains linking to those 404 pages, notify them that the link is dead, and offer them your link as a replacement.

How to do branded link claims?

As a blogger, once you get traction on Google. Both readers and actual writers will notice your work. Thus it shouldn’t come across as a surprise when someone mentions you in their blogs even though if you don’t know them.

Some bloggers and writers who’re talking/recommending about you in their blogs might forget to link to you, and thus, this is where you have to pitch them and gently request them to link back to you.

Since people have already mentioned you/your articles in their content, they won’t hesitate to link it back, and that’s there your chance to claim links.

To implement this link-building strategy, you need to go to Ahrefs content explorer and insert your blog URL. Once you scan through the results with appropriate filters, you can find articles that mention you but don’t link to you.

However you can also use a tool called ‘Buzzsumo’ to find prospects for branded link claims.

How to do Blogger collaborations for links?

Collaborations and partnerships are a great promotion strategy to spread your blog name around your niche. Even most of the time, you don’t intend to collaborate with someone for the sake of links.

To start collaborating, you need to find bloggers who share the same exact interests as you and work on creating awesome content together.

The content which you create together doesn’t have to be blog posts. In fact, I have seen bloggers regularly do podcasts with other bloggers and from there they get traction, and you would eventually build yourself a brand when you start popping up in multiple podcast shows.

Today podcast collaborations are insanely driving links as people who run podcasts generally own a blog, and every time one of their podcasts goes live, they publish articles about it and probably there, you would have the chance to get linked by them.

One good example, will be this article which was based on the podcast show hosted by the Oberlo team named ‘Start Yours’ and Noah was the featured guest in that episode, and in the end, he was able to get a backlink to Appsumo, even though he might not have intended it to do so in the first place.

Step 7: Start making money with blogging

Now you have completed all the technical shit from building the website to writing content on your site, and I hope you’re writing content on the keywords that you’ve found through the keyword strategies that I shared in this guide on how to start a blog.

According to the plan, if you write content regularly and start publishing frequently on your new blog. It would be less than a matter of months before you could start seeing little traction on your blog, and I guess you’ve seen bloggers making $100 to $1000 per day, but can you earn the same?

Well the answer is ‘yes’ but the most important question here should be when?

In blogging, there are multiple ways to earn money and remember, you only have the best chance at making money when you generate good traffic within your niche.

So once you crack down the formula for traffic, you’re good to make money with your blog and here are the mainstream ways to do it:-

1) Ad revenue

The most common and popular way to make money with blogging is by running ads on your blog. The concept behind running ads on your blog is that businesses/advertisers throughout the world want to reach their audience and to do so platforms known as ad networks will help them run ads on hundreds of blogs online.

Therefore advertisers are paying money to reach the audience on existing blogs and this is your opportunity to make money as a blogger. So if you want to earn money by letting ad networks run ads on your blog. Then you need to join one of these ad networks:-

• Google Adsense
• Ad thrive
• Ezoic ads
• Mediavine

The most accessible ad network among the all to join would be Google Adsense. The approval process on this platform is simple, and you don’t need any traffic to get approved on Google Adsense.

But for other ad networks like Mediavine, you need to fulfill the criteria of having 50k+ traffic per month on your blog, and these ad networks are said to pay 2-3x more than Google Adsense on the count of 1000 views.

This is the most basic monetization channel for any blogger and if you want to start with an ad network immediately, then join Google Adsense and from there you get a clear picture of how to make money with blogging.

2) Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is another excellent way to make money with your blog. Here you can generate commissions just by referring products to your readers. But affiliate income for a blog varies from blog to blog also from niche to niche.

It also does depend upon multiple factors like what product you’re selling? Which niche you’re blogging about? And what’s the commission rate on each sale?

But the best part about affiliate marketing is that you never need to create any product or have to handle any customers/clients. All you need is to learn how to start a blog and make money with it.

For a heads up start, you need join an affiliate marketplace and get approved as an affiliate for their products.

To start affiliate marketing, Amazon is a great place. If you can dig deeper, you can find other affiliate platforms in your niche which may offer more commission rates than Amazon.

Affiliate marketing is a real passive income opportunity for bloggers and if your blog is generating traffic close to 50k or even more. Then you’re bound to make a sustainable income with just affiliate commission.

3) Sell your own products or training courses

If you’ve built a brand around your blog and people have started recognizing your blog as a familiar name in your niche. Then guess what, my friend?

You’ve already taken giant strides, and if people believe and trust in what you tell and offer, then it is time for you to launch your own product and sell it in wide-open.

But before selling your product, you need to realize it would only work:-

• If you have established your own user base
• If your product offers value way beyond any other current products in your niche
• If your reader base is loyal and trusts you as a brand
• If the product adds value (or) helps readers in their life in any shape or form. In short, it should be a beneficial purchase for them.

There is no limit to what you can sell to your audience. But if you want to know the most common products that every blogger often sells, then those will be:-

• Ebook
• Online courses
• Memberships
• Niche related physical products

To create your own product, there are already multiple tools online which will help you to do so otherwise you can hire any freelancer once you’ve learned how to start a blog and pay him/her to create products for you.

4) Publish sponsorship content

Companies and brands around the globe are hoping on the internet trend to connect with their desired customers and since people are preferring to shop more and more online.

It has become evident for companies to spend money online to market and reach their potential customers online.

Brands which are actively looking to spread their digital footprint are aware of the fact that there are different online channels through which they can find their customers and among those channels, blogging is definitely one of the most predominant channels to reach people and convert them into customers.

Thus companies and brands with a budget to spend would actually love to pay bloggers to write about them (or) their products on their own blogs which will indeed help brands build their online presence through so-called sponsorship posts.

Since you have mastered how to start a WordPress blog and grew it online in a specific niche.

You have a set of audience and constant readers who are willing to read your next post and it is a definite opportunity up for grabs.

All you have to do is find and contact brands online who are willing to pay for sponsored posts and like affiliate marketing, sponsored posts/paid posts are a very lucrative money-making model used by bloggers.

Also writing sponsored content will add an additional income stream to your blogging career.

FAQs about blogging

Conclusion

I hope you’ve followed this guide thoroughly, which was on how to start a blog and make money with it.

I do also hope that I have added some value to your reading time and if you’re indeed actually taking something valuable from this, then please mention it in the comments.

My intention with this article was to provide enough details about blogging and let you know what things to consider and how to plan content before starting a blog.

After this reading guide, you should know what your blog is going to be about and how you can easily create a site on WordPress, how you can write articles, and how you can make money with it.

One last piece of advice from me is that try to implement the steps one at a time also all by yourself, and let me know if there are any other questions related to blogging.