Some people blog just for the joy of it or to produce something of value without any expectation of financial return. This is probably the main reason blogging is so popular (along with the ease of setting up a blog today). Blogging today though is much more than a hobby. As it turns out, creating content that people want to read can attract the type of online attention that many businesses find particularly useful.
To take but one example, modern eCommerce is well known for making extensive use of blogs. The whole idea of eCommerce marketing is to attract people to the site, and the whole point of the site is to keep visitors there long enough to buy something (or click on an ad for non-ecommerce-related blogs). A good blog pertinent to the products being sold (but not exclusively about them) will not only provide extensive customer education about the products but will simply make the site worth visiting for those who have no intention of buying something. The idea is that those visitors are coming back frequently, and it will not be long before they become customers.
However, eCommerce isn’t the only way a blog can earn money. Blogging, in and of itself, is also a financially lucrative endeavor. But how do you make money from blogging alone? Well, the first and most obvious tip is that the blog needs to be popular.
What Makes for A Successful Blog?
Here are some things you should ensure your blog has before you can expect to make any money from it:
Great Content
But what does this mean? It obviously depends on what the blog is about, but good content can be understood as original content or useful content. How-to blogs are immensely popular because they are useful; travel blogging is popular because people are naturally interested in beautiful and exciting places.
SEO
If a blog is going to be found at all, it needs to appear on search engine searches, without the blogger having to pay search engines for the privilege. The way to get this for free is SEO. Sacramento web designer and SEO experts Peak Design say that the correct keywords are the ones that suggest other related terms people might be searching for as well. This means potential visitors don’t need to type in the exact keywords.
A Great Website
Website design is also important. Your blog should be attractive and wieldy at the same time. In other words, it should look good and it should be easy to use.
Making Money
So, that’s how you make a popular blog. But how do you make money from it? Here are just a few of the many tips:
Find a Profitable Niche
In practice, this means a niche that is not already saturated by other blogs, but also one which has real potential. It is therefore a broad description. A good trick is to focus on a niche within a broader topic. Say you’re a food blogger, you might choose to specialize in a particular cuisine that is not well-covered already.
Build an E-mail List
This way, people can find your articles even when they are not on the site. Grabbing the e-mail of all visitors (say, as a registration necessity) will then allow you to notify these people of new posts.
Chase Sponsors
If your blog is already successful, companies will want to advertise on it. That’s one way of generating income. You might also write specifically sponsored posts, such as product reviews, which will generate payment-per-post.
Successful blogs will usually turn into lucrative blogs, but chasing that success takes time and work.
