So you want to start a website? Are you thinking to make money online by creating a website? If yes.. this post is the right place for you to get the basics right.
Before starting your own blog, you need to remember few essential things to make your blog or website a passive income source. And you can’t ignore these factors at any cost!
There are millions of blogs out there, have you ever wondered why only few blogs succeed to make money online? The main reason is that, successful bloggers all have a proper strategy and monetization plan that most of us don’t have.
Blogging is simply a mediator that acts between you and your targeted customer. First of all, you need to define your audience before placing ads or launching various products to make money from your websites. Here’s where most bloggers fail to grab the attention of their readers and if you don’t want to be a failure blogger, implement the steps mentioned in this guide to make a perfect launch of your blog.
If you are thinking to launch a new website, figure out how can you make money from your blogging efforts before even writing a post. That way you will be able to analyze your audience and can build a better blog. Without much details, we will get into the details.
Before starting your own blog
1. Choose selective topics
Don’t write everything under the sun, it only gets worse as you go on blogging in the long run. You have to preselect the best topics that you are passionate about. Divide your topics into 3 to 5 topics no more that.
And come up with 3o to 50 blog post headline ideas for these topics. This way you will not only get clarity about your blog audience, but you will never run of blog post ideas.
Define your audience
One of the biggest blunders most bloggers make when they are new to online world is that they don’t define their target audience. Without knowing who you are targeting to, it’s almost impossible to make profits from your blogging efforts.
You also have to focus on serving your targeted audience and customers to increase your blog credibility. After all, credibility is the main factor that can help you make more sales and leads to build a profitable online business.
Define your objectives and target audience to build a profitable website or blog!
2. Choosing the RIGHT blogging platform
To start a blog or launch a website, you need a blogging platform. It simply works as a content management system that will run on hosting. There are so many blogging platforms out there namely blogger, WordPress, Type pad, Tumblr etc.
All of these blogging platforms have huge audience, but the one I use and recommend is WordPress. And there’s a reason for it!
WordPress CMS is used by over 18% of the websites worldwide! No other blogging platform has so many exclusive features that it has and WordPress is used by top blogs like Mashable, TechCrunc, HuffingtonPost etc.
I’m doing so because it is not only used by majority of the bloggers and webmasters around the globe, but it is also has the best in-built SEO that can give you more search traffic.
3. Make sure you have a great domain name
There are millions of blogs and websites out there. According to a recent survey, there are 1 million websites are being created each and every month. That’s a whooping sum of websites right?
So how do you think you can stand out from gazillion blogs out there? One of the effective ways to stand out is to get a great domain name. Now what I mean by a good domain name?
A great blog domain name is
- Easy to remember
- Easy to spell
- Easy to type
- No hyphens
- No numbers
- No SMS language
Make sure to remember the above things when you are choosing a domain name for your blogs.
4. Web hosting matters a lot
Online readers and visitors are lazy, when they land on their sites they instantly search for what they want. Loading time of a website matters a lot in retaining web visitors. If your blog loads really slow, either forget about building audience or make sure to speed it up.
Web hosting is one of the primary needs of any fast loading website. Choose the best hosting provider such as Bluehost, HostGator etc. (they are widely used and recommended by top bloggers). If you are thinking about getting a cheap or free web hosting service for your blogs, you better don’t start a WordPress site.
I personally use and highly recommend Bluehost for beginner bloggers who are thinking to use WordPress as their blogging platform. Bluehost is not only the reliable hosting service but it also offers great customer support and features to its users.
Here are few features of Bluehost just in case if you are interested.
- unlimited domain hosting
- unlimited hosting space
- unlimited file transfer
- unlimited email accounts
- free domain name
- free site builder with templates
- anytime money back guarantee!
Click here to sign up for Bluehost
5. Focus on blog visitors not page views
Most new bloggers start their websites and blogs just to get more traffic from search engines. So that they can get more clicks and make more money through Google AdSense. The idea itself sucks and can dump all of your time and energy. Why is that? If you are solely focusing on getting more traffic that focusing on building engagement from real people, your blog simply sucks. And no one buys your stuff if they don’t find any value on it.
In a nutshell: If you want to start a successful blog, focus on engaging with people, not page views. Create great stuff that solves your audience problems and networking is the real key to make more money online. Spend money on essential things like buying a top web hosting, list building, domain name etc. You will definitely create a blog that stands out from the remaining crowd then.
Final thoughts about before starting your own blog
If you want to start a blog to make profits or to build authority, WordPress is the ONLY way to go. You also need to consider about your ideal reader if you are serious about making money online.
Web hosting plays a crucial role in building a profitable online business so don’t go beyond Bluehost as it offers excellent features to the beginner WordPress users.