Blogging is a great way to make money by sharing your knowledge online. It will connect you to new people, open the door of opportunities, and lets you earn through different monetization methods.
The main advantage of blogging is that you can work from anywhere in the world with a computer and an active internet connection.
Create a blog and write content whenever you want like in early mornings, midnight, and take rest throughout the day. No one will question, why you are sitting idle and not doing the work as there are no job rules for a blogger. It gives you unlimited freedom in handling the tasks and making money.
What is a Blog?
A blog is an informative website, managed by an individual or a group having similar interests, to publish content in different subjects. It may be related to technology, fashion, investment, travel or something else.
There are several types of blog posts. It could be in text, audio, and video formats. Regular blog posts will appear as texts along with images, illustrations, and videos. Audio and video blogging is a new form of blogging. It is known as podcasting.
Mostly, blogs built on a specific niche. But you can also find out several blog sites like Mashable that publishes content on multiple subjects.
Blog posts appear in the reverse chronological order and the latest posts will be shown on the top, followed by previous posts.
How to Create a Blog for Free?
Is it possible to create a free blog without paying anything for domain registration, hosting, and others?
Yes. Free blog sites allow you to create blogs for free. Blogger, Google’s free blog publishing tool, is the best example for this. It hosts blogs for free on Google servers. So you don’t need to pay even a single penny as hosting charges.
The domain address is accompanied with a .blogspot extension (example.blogspot.com). But you can replace it with a custom address (example.com) by buying a domain.
Even though, such free blog sites have several limitations. There will be limited themes and limited customization options. So it will be difficult for you to manage blogs as you need. Hence we can’t recommend them to create professional-quality blogs and make money from them.
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Creating a Blog and Make Money in 2022
Today we are going to talk about the step-by-step process of starting a successful blog and make money in 2022. I will tell you everything you want to know including choosing a domain name, hosting company, blogging platform, and money-making methods you can use in the beginning stage.
Follow these steps to create a blog and brand yourself in the cyber world.
1. Choose a profitable niche
Choosing a niche is the first step in creating a blog. Niche is a common term to represent a group of similar topics like technology, fashion, travel, finance, etc.
Choose a niche in which you are familiar with. It should also generate a steady income from affiliate marketing, product reviews, and ad clicks.
All the niches are not profitable. You should search and find the trending subjects in order to create a successful blog and make money from it.
These are the top niches that can bring huge traffic to your site,
- Make money
- Finance
- Health and fitness
- Food
- Fashion
- Lifestyle
- Marriage
- Travel
- Personal development
- Education
- WordPress
- Freelancing
- Movies
- Parenting
- Pregnancy
Once you decided about the niche, go to the next step.
2. Choose a Domain name
A domain name represents your activities online. People can visit your site and read posts through its web address. So it should be short and keyword-specific to get all types of traffic like direct, referral, and search engine traffic.
Use a domain name suggestion tool to craft a perfect name for your blog. They will help you to find a memorable domain name within a few moments. Some of such tools include,
Visit any of them and enter one or more keywords on the search box to automatically generate domain names for your blog. Change settings to begin or end names with the keyword. Pick a domain name and check if it is already registered or not. If available, go to the next step.
3. Register your domain
Domain registration is the next step to create a blog. A domain name represents your business in front of others. It should be clean and short. So people can memorize it easily and visit your blog directly by entering URL on the address bar.
Several domain extensions are available including .com, .org, .net, .blog, and more. Dot com domains are most popular among them. They have global value so it’s better to go with them. Even though, you can also consider many other tlds according to your geographical location and industry. Tlds like .uk, .sg, .in indicates your area of business and tlds like .tech, .app, .blog indicates your industry type.
These are the popular domain registrars on the web,
4. Choose your platform
A base is needed for every work. Pick a platform to create your blog. WordPress is the most common and popular platform for bloggers. It is easy to use, flexible and offers many features to better manage your blogging activities. But it is not a single option.
Blogger, Tumblr, Weebly, WordPress.com, Medium are some other leading websites that allow you to create blogs in a few minutes. Learn about 50 most popular blogging platforms in this post.
If you have no time to go into such a huge list or want to know about the pros and cons of top free blog sites, read Best Free Blogging Sites (2022 Edition)- Pros and Cons. I recommend WordPress which is used by more than 30% of the total websites around the world. It is perfect for any kind of site including business, e-commerce, blogs, forums, and others.
5. Choose your hosting
Now you should host the domain with a reliable hosting provider. There are several things to consider before choosing a web hosting company. It should protect your website against the latest security threats and deliver content at lightning speed. The uptime percentage, hosting plans, and features are other important factors that you should consider while choosing a host.
WordPress hosting is almost similar to the regular web hosting. But it will contain WordPress optimized servers and hosting environment to run websites at a better speed. Built-in caching and expert support are some other advantages of WordPress hosting plans.
Recommended hosting: GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is a fast and affordable hosting provider for bloggers. Powered by LiteSpeed servers, it can serve content smoothly on all device types. Free domain name is a major advantage of GreenGeeks hosting. So you can save a good amount in domain registration for the first year. It also offers free SSL, daily backups, free CDN, and many other features in all hosting plans.
Key features of GreenGeeks hosting,
- Unlimited SSD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited email accounts
- Free SSL
- Free CDN
- LiteSpeed cache
- 24/7 customer support
- 30-days money back guarantee
Click here to visit GreenGeeks and choose your hosting plan with up to 65% off in pricing (Limited period offer)
Also consider: WPX Hosting
WPX Hosting is our favorite hosting provider. But it is expensive than GreenGeeks. Their plans come with many premium features like Malware scanning and removal, DDoS protection, unlimited expert migrations, and WPX Cloud CDN (a custom, fast CDN with 26 global server locations). They have a lightning fast customer support that will address your queries and tickets in a few moments.
Key features of WPX Hosting,
- Unlimited SSLs
- WPX Cloud CDN
- LiteSpeed SSD servers
- Unlimited email accounts
- Daily backups
- Manual backups
- Free malware scanning and removal
- DDoS protection
- Unlimited expert migrations
- 24/7 fast customer support
- 30-days money back guarantee
Click here to visit WPX Hosting and choose your plan with 2-months free hosting (Limited period offer)
6. Install WordPress
It’s the time to install WordPress on your blog. Sign in to your hosting account and follow on-screen instructions to install and start using WordPress. It will take just a few seconds to finish the process.
We published a step-by-step guide for HostGator and WP Engine users on how to start a WordPress blog. If you host the site with them, don’t forget to read our relevant posts.
7. Install themes
Find and install a suitable theme on your blog. There are thousands of free and premium themes available for WordPress users. Start with a free theme and you can change it to premium when the blog starts making the money. But make sure that you download themes and plugins from reliable sources. Otherwise, it may damage your site.
These are some of the best marketplaces to buy premium themes and plugins for your website,
GeneratePress is one of the powerful themes to create a blog. It is fast, light-weight, and customizable. It is packed with several professional-quality templates to lets you launch a stunning website in a few moments.
The theme is free, but you need a premium subscription to get full control over the settings. Read GeneratePress Review: Why All WordPress Pros Like it?.
Astra is another beautiful, mobile-friendly theme for bloggers. It is also fast and highly customizable. From the top to the bottom, it allows you to customize any part including header, texts, backgrounds, images, and others.
Similar to GeneratePress, Astra is a free theme available in WordPress repository. But premium modules are necessary to customize the theme as you like. Read Astra Theme Review: Is It The Best WordPress Theme?.
8. Install the best Plugins for your blog
A wide range of plugins is another reason why people love WordPress. You will get plugins for any purpose including customization, social media marketing, security, backup, monetization, and so on. They will reduce your workload and smoothen the workflow.
Consider installing these plugins:
9. Monetization
It will be difficult to monetize content in the beginning of your blogging career. There are several ad networks like Google AdSense that you can use to show ads and make money from each user clicks. But they should approve your blog first.
They may have requisites in terms of website age, number of contents, traffic, etc. So there is a chance to reject your application if you have limited number of articles and not getting enough traffic.
Affiliate marketing is another way to make money from your blog. It lets you earn by referring products to the readers. Amazon is one of the most popular affiliate networks to make money blogging. Create product reviews, listicles, and display ads to send buyers to relevant pages and get paid.
Consider these ad and affiliate networks to make money from your blog:
10. Analyze search trends
Know what readers are searching for. Keyword research is a crucial thing to analyze current search trends and develop content accordingly. Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that will help you to find profitable keywords and search volume. But being designed for advertisers, it has several limitations.
Semrush is our favorite choice for keyword research, SEO audit, and competitor analysis. It is the most comprehensive SEO tool to detect opportunities, optimize content, and more.
Detect less-competitive keywords to rank higher in search engines easily. Filter results based on CPC rates to find high-paying keywords, so you will get more money from AdSense-like networks. Read How to Find Best Paying AdSense Keywords with Semrush.
11. Create compelling content
Create compelling content to provide detailed and up-to-date information about the topic. With Semrush, you can analyze pages ranking in top 100 positions for the selected keyword. Read those posts to prepare a better content on your blog and also, build high-quality backlinks to gain traffic.
Avoid complex phrases and use simple words to target people of all types. Add relevant keywords to make it search engine friendly. Images are good traffic sources. So don’t forget to use royalty-free or custom images on your pages.
12. Promote your content
Let others know about your posts. Promote your posts on leading social networks and blogging communities to get maximum referral traffic from them. Influencer marketing is another option to share items and get more readers.
Social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest can bring a huge instant traffic to your pages. Design custom images in recommended sizes for each network to reach audience at large and boost engagements.
Recommended image sizes for social media posts:
Facebook: 1,200 x 630 pixels
Twitter: 1200 x 628 pixels
LinkedIn: 1200 x 627 pixels
Pinterest: 1000 x 1500 pixels
Adobe Photoshop is a popular software to create custom images and add texts. If you are looking for online image creation tools, consider Canva or Visme. They have built-in templates to create beautiful social media images to promote your articles.
13. Create a Google Analytics account
Google Analytics is the best tool to monitor and optimize your traffic. It will provide detailed statistics about your traffic sources, number of visitors, popular pages, and many others. Create an Analytics account for your website and install unique tracking code on pages to start monitoring your readers.
Monitor statistics to identify leading traffic sources that divert maximum traffic to your content. Spend more time on those networks to develop a strong audience for your blog. Promote posts at peak times to enhance their social media reachability and page visits.
If you have any questions, let us know through the comment form below.
