What’s new in starting a blog in 2017? I don’t think there will be any difference if you think in a technical point of view. But if you try to realize why one should start a blog in 2017, then there is many things to explore which will blow away your mind.
Do you think that blogging has become one of the best way to make money online and this is a 100% genuine way without any shortcut. Blogging is not a scheme which will make you millionaire overnight, rather it has become a solid online business and a full-time career option for many people. So, without wasting any time further, let’s explore the steps to start your first blog or website to take your business into the online world for more visibility.
Start a Blog 2017 [Chapter 1] – Is blogging best passive income opportunity
Yes, when we talk about generating passive income online I don’t think there is any other way one can even make more money compared to your main stream earning source. E.g. if you are working for some company as full-time employee (9 to 5 job) and blog on your free time. You can make huge money in case know the tricks to make money through blogging.
There are people who are making millions of money jsu working from their comfort zone. If you are not aware about them, then have a look at Harsh Agarwal, Pat Flynn, Matthew Woodward and many more who are making money while sleeping. Yes, its 100% true. They have build their blogging business or online business in such a way that whether they work or not their websites are making good money for them regularly. But, don’t think that they are just sleeping. ?
They are trying their level best to make the blogging income more high every month. So, what’s the secret behind their high blogging income? In simple words, they have started several websites and through them they are making millions of dollar every month. I will be explaining various ways to make money from a blog in next few minutes.
Start a Blog 2017 [Chapter 2] – Must have skills required to make money through blogging
Many people think that it is easy to start a blog in 2017 and they don’t need any skill to run a blog. Off-course people always consider the technical staffs like installing WordPress, handle web hosting, set up a blog etc. But do you that you should first how to blog professionally to make money online? Here is the must have blogging skills you should know
- How search engines like Google is working in real-time
- What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO, on-page SEO, off-page SEO
- What is Black hat SEO, white hat SEO, Grey Hat SEO or Pink hat SEO etc
- How to connect to peer bloggers and increase the blogging network
- How to get expertise in Social media and get more visitors
- What other successful bloggers are doing, how they are growing their websites, what are the topics they are writing etc
- What is link building and how to become expert in advance link building techniques like building PBN, Guest posting in High DA blogs etc
- How to write effective content, unique content, viral content for more traffic
- How to market content and promote them on social media & other platforms
- How to create an effective discussion to attract more traffic and increase conversion
- How to comment like a pro-blogger and bring more referral traffic to your blog
- How to bring traffic to your newly started blog without building any links, learn what is zero building tactic challenge many bloggers are taking these days.
- What is affiliate marketing and how to promote affiliate products to convert more
This list is endless in case you want to blog like a pro. Learning is the key to get success in long run and success will then convert into money.
Start a Blog 2017 [Chapter 3] – Ways To Make Money Online Through Blogging
Now, let’s come to the point of behind starting a blog in 2017. You should know first what are the ways to make money online through blogging. So here are the few options which you have to plan before starting your first blog.
Contextual Advertising: Make money through Google Adsense program or related contextual advertising network. For that you have to build a website with high traffic and also target the Highly paid keywords naturally though content only. E.g. just consider a news website where everyday many articles are positing and they making good money from advertising.
Affiliate marketing: This is the best way to make money even without a website also. yes, there are people who are making money without a blog as well. But here we will make it very simple and need to promote products though our blog content. There are various ways to build a affiliate site and one of the common ways is by creating a coupon site. You can share coupon codes of various merchants and make money on every sale. Besides that you can write products reviews and get paid for per lead. Few of the top affiliate networks are shareasale, viglink, commission junction etc.
Paid reviews or Sponsored articles: Content marketing is one of the growing thing in the world of digital marketing and big companies are always communicating bloggers to spread about their brands. For that you should have a quality website with high traffic.
Selling Ad-Space: If your website is very much popular and you are able to get very good traffic, then various advertisers will contact you for promoting their brands in your website. In that case you can easily sell your website space for placing advertising banners like 300X250 banner, 728X90 banner etc. In such a case, BuySellAds.com is the best place to find more advertiser like this.
Providing SEO consultancy service: Well, are you an expert SEO guy? Then why don’t you start providing SEO services to others and make good money. In that case, you have to make sure that you are able to rank couple of websites first in Google for building reputation purpose and then promote the same in your website. You might have noticed, many bloggers are promoting the same through HIRE ME page in their websites.
Content writing: Although its not required to have a website or blog to start a content marketing business. But still you can have a website where you can show how much quality article with proper SEO optimization you can create to the world for bringing more business. People are making serious money these days by writing content for others. When you will find a 500 word may cost you only Rs 100 – Rs 150, there are people who are also charging for Rs 1500 – Rs 2000 / 500 word article and getting huge work. So your reputation and quality of writing is the key here.
Start a Blog 2017 [Chapter 4] – How to choose the best blogging niche
Well, there are thousands of profitable niche to kick start blogging career. Why I am mentioning profitable niche rather than niche is because we are here talking about blogging to make money online. ? If I have to start a blog in 2017 for making money, I would consider below topics
- Travelling
- Insurance
- Personal Finance
- Recipe
- Health
So, these are the top 5 profitable niche I would love to explore in 2017. Well, you don’t have to look for individual queries like below as this article is enough to start a website in any niche.
- Start a travel blog in 2017
- Start a food / recipe blog in 2017
- Start a health blog in 2017
- Start a personal finance blog in 2017
- Start an insurance blog in 2017
Just follow this single article to set up your blog in whichever profitable niche you want. I think a simple change in the theme as per the blogging niche is enough to make this process unique for all these 5 niches I have shared. I will also mention the theme which will suite these 5 niches I have mentioned here in the later section of this article.
Steps To Start A Blog in 2017
So, here are the basic steps which you have to follow to set up your WordPress blog. As we have already covered about the in which topic we want to start a blog and also the platform is WordPress, then I will start straight way with the next steps.
Step 1: Choose a web hosting provider. Better to start with a self hosted WordPress blog, compared to WordPress.com free blog.
Step 2: Buy a custom domain name and without compromising .com extension. If you have a plan to start a county specific website then go for the country specific extension. You can go with Bluehost with a Free domain name offer.
Step 3: To make your work easier, you can combine step 1 & step 2 and enjoy a very good offer from Bluehost.com. Here you can buy a web hosting plan with a free domain name [.com extension] which will simply save your cost of a domain for the first year. And also it ill help you to manage things properly.
Step 4: Install WordPress in your domain name. You can follow the step by step guide I have share while installing WordPress for this website on Bluehost. You can follow the exact screen shot by screen shot tutorial.
Steps to setup your wordpress blog on bluehost
I have hosted this blog on Bluehost shared hosting plan. Althoough earlier it was on Hostgator hosting, but I have migrated this site manually from Hostgtor to Bluehost. Installing WordPress on Bluehost is very easy as you can use the 1 click installation process and get this done in next 5 minutes only.
Follow the tutorial on Steps To Install WordPress on Bluehost
Must have plugins for wordpress blog in 2017
List of must have plugins
- Akismet
- Google XML Sitemaps
- Contact Form 7
- Jetpack by WordPress.com
- Wordfence Security
- Yoast SEO
- Regenerate Thumbnails
- WP Super Cache
- Google Analytics by Yoast
