How to Write Blogs and Earn Money Online Via Blogging [The All-in-one Blogging Guide with SEO Tips]

 

What is a Blog?

A blog is a piece of information used to disseminate information about a product, service, concept, or as a medium to solve a particular problem of the target audience. Every blog has a specific audience base. The main intent of blogging is to focus on the problem of a particular group and provide information or practical solution to it.

The success of a blog is when your reader has to look no further after reading your blog. If there is an underlying business intent, there should be an inclusion of a CTA (Call-to-action) to guide the audience to the next step.

Why is Blog Important in 2023?

Most of the businesses that we see today are online. If not, they are striving to create a website or an app to market their products and services. The search engine results have changed the paradigms of business success. Customer-centricity is the topmost criteria to succeed in the digital race and search engine results.

Given this, blogging is an effective means to communicate a brand’s message to a specific group of audience. The message that gets portrayed in the right way gets more business. When a search engine finds that more number of customers are engaging with a blog, the value of the blog increases, and it automatically makes it to the first page of a search engine result.

Usually, people refer to the first page of the search engine results to solve their dilemma. In such a case, quality blogs hold the potential to rank higher on the search engine results and attract more number of audience.

5 Successful Bloggers and their Income

Many people opt for blogging as a means to generate passive income. While there are some bloggers, who have created a fortune for them:

• Amit Agrawal:

Amit’s Labnol is based on the How-to guides. His platform receives monthly views of over 3 million. Though Amit has never revealed his monthly income, according to sources, his monthly income would be around US$ 25,000 to US$ 50,000.

• Harsh Agrawal:

Harsh Agrawal’s ShoutMeLoud has been one of the popular blogs in India. Harsh earns about US$ 20,000 to US$ 40,000 per month. His blog receives approximately 1.5 million page views a month.

• Shradha Sharma:

Shradha Sharma receives a monthly hit of nearly a million views a month, which leads to a whopping income of about US$ 20,000 a month for her blogging website—YourStory.com

• Abhijit Mukherjee:

A graduate from Delhi University, Abhijit Mukherjee, began his blogging journey in 2008. He writes in-depth guides and how-to articles on technical stuff. GuidingTech, his blogging platform receives about a million views a month, bringing him about US$ 15,000.

• Nandini Shenoy:

While most of the bloggers mentioned above has pioneered in the technological field, Nandini Shenoy carved a niche for herself through entertainment. Pinkvilla, her blogging platform receives over 8 million visitors per month. She earns about US$ 25,000 to US$ 30,000.

How Much Does Blogging Cost?

A hosting website, domain cost, content cost, and design cost. These are the basic cost.

Web Hosting	US$ 20
Domain Name	US$ 1.2
WordPress Theme	US$ 3.75
Image Designing	US$ 10

The total monthly cost of blogging would be around US $16.95. Now comes the content part of it. If you are a blogger yourself, it is upon you to decide whether you want to write a blog or hire content writers who can do it for you.

Typically, you can get a content writer for about US $20 to US $30/ hour. Besides this, there is advertising. If you wish to grow your blog organically, you have to know the right keywords and your audience. On the contrary, you can loosen your pocket for the advertisement and generate a loyal reader-base.

How to Select a Niche?

You can be a writer and all on your own. Certain niches might interest you naturally. For instance, in your personal life, if you are a fitness freak, you may love to talk about fitness and wellness. In this case, fitness is your niche. Similarly, if you are a tech-savvy person who cannot just get over the latest gadgets, you can select technology as your niche.

In a nutshell, follow the niche that you are passionate to talk about. Get in-depth of the subject and write an informative piece.

How to Select a Domain Name?

If you are there to solve the problem of your audience, there is actually no need to fight your brains on a domain name. However, to start with, it is crucial to select a good domain name to capture the attention of your audience.

Below are the steps to select a domain name for your blog:

• Opt for a domain name that ends with either .com, .net, or .org.
• Choose a brandable name for your blog rather than choosing a generic name.
• Select a shorter domain name. A long one is difficult for your audience to remember.
• The domain name should be easy to spell and type.
• Do not use numbers and symbols in the domain name.
• Make use of niche keywords and avoid using the synonyms.

Once you are sure about the domain name, you should get it registered ASAP. If you are stuck midway, you can use domain name generator tools such as DomainHole, LeanDomainSearch, and Wordoid.

Which are the Top Webhosting Sites?

In order to start blogging, you will need to find a reliable web-hosting website. Load time and uptime are the two most critical criteria for the selection of a website. Some of the web-hosting websites are inexpensive; however, they have a poor load time.

Without any further ado, let’s learn about the top four web-hosting websites:

• SiteGround:

Siteground is quite a popular choice for web hosting. Currently, it is hosting over two million domains. The load time is about 673 ms, and uptime is about 99.99%.

Along with the website, you get nearly 20 email accounts and 24/7 customer service support. The hosting plan is inclusive of a website builder, SSL, Cloudflare CDN, SSH access, daily backup, and more.

The company do not have in-house servers. All the data is stored on the servers on the Google Cloud.

Let’s take a look at the pricing plans.

• Hostgator:

With stellar load time and uptime, Hostgator is yet another web hosting platform. Hostgator has a load time of nearly 399ms. The company does not rely on any of the basic servers, which makes the operations quite faster.

In case you have a query or need assistance from the customer service, Hostgator provides 24X7 support. It nearly takes about five minutes for the assistance to answer your query.

Though it follows suit offers most of the web-hosting bundle features, it does not currently provide social media support. Besides this, compared to the other web-hosting platforms, the price of Hostgator is on a higher scale.

Let’s look at the pricing plan of Hostgator:

• BlueHost:

With over three million domain names, BlueHost is truly a writer’s paradise. What sets them apart from the other web-hosting platforms is the fact that they provide low-cost hosting for new websites.

Talking about uptime, it is nearly 99.99%. The load time of BlueHost is nearly 405ms. All the hosting plans by BlueHost are covered under the 30-day money-return policy. A website can be easily activated, and you can start adding content right away.

The three-year introductory offers come in with features such as a free domain name, a website builder, Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress.

• GoDaddy:

You may have heard the name of GoDaddy quite often. However, it has many shortfalls. First things first, it’s uptime is about 99.97%, while its load time is nearly 554 ms.

The web-hosting platform provides you with website storage of about 100GB. You can easily access multiple versions of PHP, Python, CloudLinux, cPanel, and MySQL. Besides this, it also offers unmetered bandwidth, DDoS protection, and security monitoring.

Currently, GoDaddy is hosting about 44 million websites; however, it doesn’t own servers of its own. It has web-hosting plans that are suitable for both—small and big websites.

Let’s take a look at the web-hosting plan:

What is a Content Management System?

A good thing about using a content management system in recent times is, you do not have to learn coding and programming to build your website. WordPress is a classic example of a content management system. Once you have purchased a domain name for your website, it is time to build the website block by block.

If you have used any other web hosting website, you will first have to set up WordPress in your web-hosting site.

Follow the steps mentioned below to setup your website:

• Login to the WordPress panel with the email id and password
• Set up the permalinks
• Choose whether you want to make your website public
• Select the title and tagline of your website
• Choose your timezone

Once you are done with this setup, you will now have to select on the design, theme, plugin, and pages.

How to Choose Themes, Plugins and Setup Pages on the CMS?

WordPress offers myriads of themes for building your website. Every year, new themes are added to the cohort for website builders to enhances the look of their websites.

It is crucial that you select a responsive theme for your website, which means you would be able to control how the website appears on different resolutions of screens. Divi, Hestia, Astra, OceanWP, Tusant, Ultra, Authority Pro, Guten Theme, Prime News, Essence Pro, and Allegiant, Nozama, Breakthrough Pro, and Float, among others, are the most popular themes available on Wordpr

Among these, Divi comes in with nearly 20 different templates and layout for building a website. In addition to this, you can create your own Divi layout and use them. There are many other elements, which you can leverage to drag and drop to build a website.

Once you are done with the themes, you will need to have plugins on your websites. Since you are going to be a blogger, as a writer, you would require plugin such as—SEO by Yoast, BackupBuddy, OptinMonster, Edit Flow, Sucuri, Floating Social Bar, AdSanity, Login Lockdown, etc. Among these plugins, SEO by Yoast and OptinMonster are must-haves for your website.

Yet another important feature offered by WordPress is page setup. The content management system allows you to set up a separate blog, about us, contact page, and home page for your website, as per your need. Go to the left corner and choose the—Add a page—option. Here, you can choose to add, edit, and delete an existing page.

What is the Ideal Structure to Follow to Write a Blog?

A blog consists of the following elements:

• Title/ Headline
• Introduction Part
• Body with Subheadings
• Conclusion

Title/Headline:

The title is the most critical part of the blog, as it determines whether the reader would click on your blog or not. You should take about 40% of the time working on the headline and 60% on the blog. Use multiple subheadings in your blog to have a clean structure for the blog.

Some of my all time favourite #headline templates:

How to__

The Ultimate Guide to [Outcome]

Who else wants to__

[Number] Proven [Actions/Ways] to [Achieve Desired Result] in [Time Period]

[Number] Simple/Easy Ways/Unknown ways to [Desired Outcome] in [Time Period]

Would you like to__

The secrets/Insider secrects to__

Introducing/Announcing__

How__ helped me__ and it can help you too

Give me___ days and I will__

How I improved… [problem] without [objection] in just [time]

What the [industry] experts don’t want you to know about solving [problem]

The introduction:

The introduction part in your blog should make the first impression and encourage the reader to read the next of the blog. The conclusion should help the reader get the answer he wanted after reading your blog. This stands true for informative blogs.

You need to hook your reader right away.

Seriously – a compelling introduction matters a LOT because it’s what’ll catch people’s attention and make them want to keep reading.

Here are some effective ways to approach your blog post intro:

Share a few relevant statistics that lead into the main point of your blog post. Use a bulleted list to share these points, if possible.

Share a personal story related to the blog post topic. Not only will this hook your reader – it’ll make them actually care about the brand. And that is the key to creating long-term readers.

Present your reader’s problem in a relatable way, and position your post as the solution. Writing about how to cook when you’re clueless?

You might create a light-hearted intro that tells the story of where their cooking skill level is at right now, agitates that problem (by talking about the consequences of not solving it / the negative experience that they’re dealing with right now), then presents the blog post as the solution.

This is effective because it uses the P-A-S (Problem – Agitate – Solution) copywriting formula.

To make your intro extra effective, use a combination of these methods.

The Body:

Most Imp. – Don’t just create a giant wall of text.

Before you write the bulk of the blog post body content, create headers that logically outline the steps or main points in your blog post.

THEN…

Think of each header as the title of a mini blog post!

For example, if you’re writing about “10 Steps to _______,” you’d want to first map out what each of those headers should say.

Then, think of each of those steps/headers as their own in-depth blog post.

…So, instead of writing one massive blog post, think of it like you’re writing a bunch of small, in-depth blog posts and putting them together in a way that flows.

It makes the whole blog writing process feel a hell lot easier.

A few more tips for your body content:

Show, don’t just tell.

Can you use a screenshot or image to illustrate or teach a point instead of just using words?

Write at a middle school reading level. Save the flowery language for that poetry book you’re thinking to write.

Add in statistics. Make it more entertaining with memes. Include a tutorial video.

You want to write the best content in the industry!

Conclusion:

Conclusion, in brief, should summarise the whole blog and have a #CTA (call to action).

People who read a blog post from start to finish are often going to be more interested in engaging with the brand, signing up for the email list, buying the products, etc.

Close your blog post with a strong call to action for readers to take whatever action it is that you want them to take.

For example, you might want them to download a “lead magnet” related to the blog #content if your client is trying to build their email list via the blog post.

OR say your client is promoting an event…

Put a STRONG call to action (with a nice image) at the end of the blog post to sign up for the event / get on the waitlist for the event.

P.S.- Go back and sprinkle some subtler call-to-action statements throughout the rest of the blog post!

Besides this, there is a CTA (Call-to-Action) kind of blogs. These blogs are used for promotional activities. There are certain unwritten rules to blogging that you can adapt in you writing to generate high traffic:

Start strong with a powerful headline—make use of power words in the title and introduction.

Keep the blog to the point. Do not add fluff.

Ensure that you actually give the reader what he was seeking from the blog.

Keep your blog SEO-friendly.

Link to the other blogs to generate back links and increase the traffic of your blog.

What Keyword Research Tools You Should be Using for your Blog?

You may have a good topic to write on. You have created the first blog, but you still feel that there is something amiss.

We are living in the era where people look at Google or the other popular search engines to find answers to even the most simple of the issue such as changing a bulb. In such a case, you know there is a lot of competition on the Internet to grab the reader’s attention by getting on the first page.

In such a scenario, it is crucial that you find relevant and most searched keywords for your topic. You can make use of keyword research tools such as Soovle, Jaaxy, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, etc.

Soovle scans the entire Internet—Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Answer.com, and Wikipedia to search for the most relevant keywords for a particular topic. A unique feature that Soovle offers is the save suggestion option. You can use the drag and drop feature to save the suggestions for its use later.

Another one is Jaxxy. Jaxxy claims to offer you thousands of relevant keywords in a matter of seconds. It also provides average search volume, traffic, key quality indicator, etc. One of the unique features of Jaxxy is the QSR—Quoted Search Result. This feature shows how many other websites are trying to rank for the same keyword. When the QSR is low, it means there are more chances to rank for the keyword.

Ahrefs keyword explorer offers you the leeway to explore thousands of relevant keywords and ideas so that you can understand the traffic potential. With the help of the tool, you can assess the keyword difficulty, clicks, CPC, and search volume. It scans through nearly ten different search engines to compile the data. You can use the filter option to set the criteria to find the keyword. Besides this, you can use the advanced metrics to gain deep insights.

Among the many other keyword research tools, Ubersuggest has gained quite a lot of popularity. The tool lets you enter the keyword to analyse the trends, volume, estimated visits, cost per conversion, buyer intent, and probability to rank. One of the unique features of Ubersuggest is that you can find content ideas for your next blog.

What are the On-page Strategies to Follow to Have Better Rank?

If you are wondering what SEO is, it is a technique to follow, in order to have a better rank in the search engine. Below are some of the best on-page strategies to follow:

• Begin your title with your keyword
• Use your keyword in the first 100 words
• Make use of the outbound links to make your blog sound credible
• Ensure that you use click-worthy meta descriptions for each of your blog
• Have your target keyword in the URL
• Mention LSI keywords after every 100 words in your blog
• Write a lengthy blog with a higher word count. A blog with 2000 words ranks better than a blog with 500 words
• Leverage internal linking to increase the site traffic dramatically
• Optimise your image
• Make use of less competitive keywords, especially the longtail ones.
• Use LSI keywords rather than using the target keyword
• Increase the load time of your blog

How can Backlinking Help in Increasing Traffic to a Website?

SEO tactics move beyond on-site strategies. These are known as off-page SEO strategies. Off-page SEO strategy is often linked with backlinking. Backlinking simply means linking your blog to another blog. Make sure that you build high-quality backlinks using highly credible websites.

Below are the other off-page strategies that you can follow:

• Replace the broken link with an active one
• Leverage guest blogging to increase the influx of traffic to your blog
• Use Quora platform to answer the relevant question and increase the traffic to your blog
• Promote your blog on social media
• Ensure that you are on the same page with Google’s algorithm

SEO tactics are critical for businesses, and so are the keywords. Ranking better on the search engine pages help in driving more traffic to your blog. Once the reader has clicked on the blog, the quality of your blog will govern the bounce rate of your page.

As a result, you have to strike a balance between the quality of your blog and the SEO tactics.

Use keywords optimally. Do not have an SEO-heavy blog. Try to write in a way that your reader has to go nowhere after reading your blog.

How to use Google AdSense to Make Money from your Blog?

For AdSense to help you monetize, your blog should fall in the following category:

• Blogging site
• News website
• Online forums and discussion boards
• Niche social media platforms
• Free online tools

You can choose the type of ad you want on your blog. In addition to this, you can control the placement of your ad. You will be able to make money for every person visiting your blog and interacting with the ad. You can track the performance of your blog and a particular ad and change it if it’s not working.

How to use Affiliate Products to Make Money from your Blog?

In order to make money using affiliate marketing, you have to look for products and tools. You can subscribe to different types of affiliate programs and products. Once you build an audience on your blog, you can start promoting affiliate products.

Usually, earning through affiliate marketing program depends on the owner of the products. Depending on the demand for the product, you may receive 3% to 10% and in some cases even 20% of the total cost of the product.

However, you should select a niche and products that are in high demand.

What are the Other Ways to Monetize a Blog?

To start with, you can start offering free downloadables to your audience from your blog. However, with time when the credibility of your blog increases, you can start offering your readers with paid content materials such as digital downloads, eBooks, video tutorials, and eCourses.

However, the content that you put up on the blog needs to be very engaging for your readers. Only then, you would be able to instil trust in your readers and get them to spend money on your blog.

Which are the Ways to Increase Traffic to your Blogs?

Now that you have written a good blog on the website, you cannot only sit back and rely on the SEO. You will have to get your hands deep into the content to bring in the traffic.

There are several ways to increase traffic for your blog:

1. Guest Blogging:

Guest blogging is a modern-day tactic to increase the number of views on a blog. Several websites help you publish your content on their websites. You should look for websites that have over a million views on their page. This way, you can have good traffic coming back to your website.

However, you should first confirm with the publisher regarding the placement of the links. If you add too many links to the content, your blog might get rejected. So, it is a good idea to confirm the number of links that you can place in your content.

Below is the list of the best practices for guest blogging:

• Choose the website with the right audience for your niche
• Do not overwrite what others are already done and dusted with. Have something original to say
• Do not use too many link backs to your blog. This would make your content look like spam.

2. Blog Commenting:

Among the other methods to get traffic back to your blog, blog commenting is a bit of an old-school way. Blog commenting is a way to post a comment on the webpages and blogs that have a good amount of traction regarding your blog.

You have to create a copywriting post with a link to your blog and post a comment for the other readers to see it and click on the link.

Below is the list of the best practices for blog commenting:

• Choose a website that has a loyal reader base.
• Select the best blog that you have on your blogging platform.
• Write a short copy for your blog and post it in the comment section along with the link.
• Check if the link is active, and you are done.

3. Article Submissions:

So, you have a blog that is so well written that you want more readers to come to your platform. In this scenario, you can try article submission. All you need to do is write a content piece related to the blog.

This way, you will be able to generate another piece of content and have a link back. Forbes, Huffington posts, etc. are some of the examples of websites that allow article submissions. You can benefit from these websites as these enjoy great traffic.

Below are the best practices to follow for article submission:

• Choose a relevant keyword to your blog
• Write an article and use the keywords and links in your signature
• Submit your article to authentic and credible directories
• Write lengthy articles but make sure it does not answer all the questions. Encourage readers to click on the link of your blog to get more answers

4. Social Media:

Social media platforms are like the new cash cows for increasing traffic of a blog. You can join groups that discuss a niche, or you can create a page, wherein you post the link of your blog.

All social media will require a different tone of copywriting. For instance, when you are talking about Instagram, you need to have creative content. When you are talking about twitter, your copy should be to the point and precise. When you are talking about Facebook, you can take the liberty to be informal.

Below are the best practices to promote a blog on social media:

• First things first, have—share on social media—option integrated on your blog
• Keep on posting on the social media about your blog
• Ensure that you generously use hashtags. This will help you get to the right audience
• Ask for shares

Which are the Additional Tools that you Should Use to Make Blogging Easier?

Blogging is no longer a pen and a paper task. You need to plan it properly to achieve your objectives. While you can write a blog on a relevant topic, it is crucial that you ensure that your blog is readable and comprehensible for your readers.

Below are some of the tools that you can use to make blogging easier:

• Sumo:

Sumo is the bundle of tools that makes your blogging experience better. It offers you various options, such as social sharing buttons, analytics, and email capture forms. All these features are available in the free version.

• Grammarly:

Who can talk about writing and not about grammar? Grammarly can help you get rid of all the embarrassing mistakes while writing when you are least expecting typos and grammar issues.

Here, you can set the knowledge level of your readers and set the standards accordingly. The free version of Grammarly helps you avoid typos and common grammatical mistakes.

• Canva:

Blogging is no longer about writing. It is about making the blog look appealing. You can use Canva to create your own images or edit the existing ones.

• Yoast SEO:

When you are done writing your blog, you can make use of the Yoast SEO to see whether your content complies with the SEO guidelines.

• Sendinblue:

Yet another effective blog promotional tactic is to make use of emails to get to the readers. Sendinblue can help you with this. It is effective digital marketing and email marketing tool to create a word-of-mouth marketing, in order to retain your customers.

Courses to Learn More:

No matter how much you read about blogging, the actual experience comes in with practice. However, before that, you can refer to many courses, which can help you learn a lot more about blogging.

If you wish to learn about blogging, below are the best courses that you can study:

Blogging Masterclass: How To Build A Successful Blog In 2020

Brad Merrill created the course. Nearly 18k students have already enrolled to the course.

The course will help you build a successful blog from scratch, which means you do not need to have any type of prior experience in blogging to start the course. In addition to this, you would also learn how to explore a niche for your blog that interests you as well as your readers.

The course intends to develop a blogger mindset. The course is available on Udemy.

Blogging for a Living: Perfect Small Budget Project

Created by McArthur, about 17,642 students have enrolled in the course. The course includes lessons on the best practices on the type of blog posts. It also shows how you can monetize your blog using the high commission digital products and Amazon Associate Program. The course will help you learn to be able to build about 50+ new subscribers a day. The course intends to help you make money using blogging. You can find the course on Udemy.

Blogging for Business: 3x Traffic Without Ads

Ali Mirza has created the course, and it has helped about 4,092 students.

The course is based on organic tactics to increase the traffic to your blog. The creator of the course claims to help you increase the traffic by 153% to your blog. The course covers various blogging strategies such as social media marketing, email outreach, content repurposing, content curation, and promotion for increasing organic traffic to your blog.

The course intends to help you drive consistent traffic to your blog. You can avail the course on Udemy.

Learn Blogging and Affiliate Marketing in 2020

Created by Saddam Kassim, the course has benefitted nearly 7,000 students.

The course helps in getting started with a niche blog. An individual will be able to create a blog from scratch and use on-page and off-page SEO tactics to achieve a high rank on the search engines in an organic manner. The course also covers information on how to monetize a blog with Google Adsense for generating a passive income.

The course intends to equip a student with all the information to start with blogging and make an earning out of it. You can enrol to the course on Udemy.

Blogging for Beginners: Start, Grow, and Monetize Your Blog

 

Created by Salvador Briggman, the course has touched the lives of 321 students so far.

The course provides a step-by-step framework, which you can follow to start, grow, and monetize your blog. The creator claims to grow the subscriber base from 0 to 20,000 in a short period of time.

The course intends to help you start making money even if you are a noob. You can find the course on Udemy.

The Sum and the Substance

A lot of bloggers are out there, making money through blogging. You can do it, too; however, it is crucial that you follow the initial steps right. Once you have an appealing website and the right niche, you can, in turn, get straight to the content.

Initially, you will find it time-consuming and difficult to write and find the right keywords. However, these are just roadblocks. You have to be consistent in your writing and promotional activities. Alongside, stay updated with the latest Google algorithms to learn about the ranking criteria.

Once you have a reader base, though small, try to gauge their nerve and write content that can bring them delight. However, be original in your efforts, and there will be more people waiting for your next blog.