I have always been passionate about technology, especially ‘the Internet’. Yet, if you had told me 10 years ago that it is possible to make a living from a blog …
…I probably would have laughed in your face.
I had the belief that a good job could only be found on the top floor of a skyscraper in Milan or Rome.
But it sure seems that things have changed!
For example, we at WebsiteToolTester create a lot of other content besides blog articles. However, we are incredibly proud to see that about 50% of our readers come from the blog. We run the blog in 7 languages, reaching about 150,000 visitors each month.
But enough about us, I’m here to show you how to create a successful blog (I hope).
Buckle up, we’re in for quite a ride!
Pros and Cons of Starting a Blog
As I said, running a blog can be a very rewarding job, not only financially. But it also comes with some downsides. Here’s in more detail what to expect:
Pros
It can be lucrative: There are many examples of shouty blogs, but I bet there are some very hard workers behind the scenes.
It’s flexible work: Unless the idea for your blog involves special needs (e.g., reviews of restaurants in Naples), you can work anywhere and at (almost) any time.
You’re always learning something new: Over the years, I’ve had to learn new things and face constant challenges (e.g., SEO, email marketing, content marketing, etc.). But I have also met many interesting insiders.
You are your own boss: You have absolute control over the approach you take to your business. Right or wrong, you make every decision.
It makes you feel good (at least me): It is rewarding to write an article knowing that it can help (potentially) thousands of people.
Cons
Not everyone makes it to the top: You may run into someone who brags about making a lot of money from their blog. But you should be aware that not everyone makes it.
It can be lonely work: Unless your project grows quickly and needs collaborators, chances are you’ll have to work alone for a long time, and that isolates you a bit. Working in a coworking space can be a great way to socialize.
You will need (some) technical knowledge: You don’t have to be an engineer, however running a blog does require some technical knowledge. And in any case, you will need to be willing to study a little.
You will be working overtime: Be aware that starting a blog is like starting any business. If you want to succeed, you will have to work harder than your competitors.
It takes a while: I have yet to meet anyone lucky enough to have made (decent) earnings with their blog in the first 2 months. I would say it takes at least 1 year (if not more) before you can start to see any results.
So I wanted to define a process consisting of 8 basic steps to create a blog. Let’s go through and see what they are.
Ideas for a Blog: What to talk about?
Maybe you already have an idea for your blog. Maybe you are a professional golfer or you are passionate about vegan cooking.
In that case, follow your instincts and start a blog to talk about your hobby (or profession).
If you don’t have such clear ideas (or you have many and don’t know what to choose), it’s good to investigate thoroughly before making a decision.
However, always make sure it is a good idea. You could use this process:
1- Brainstorming
A stroke of genius can come out of the blue. But if you feel stuck, grab a pen and paper and start brainstorming.
Side note: I personally find it helpful to sit comfortably with relaxing music in the background and a cup of coffee or tea.
You can start by answering the following questions:
Write down 5 things you love to do (unconditionally) in your free time.
List all the topics you are already an expert in.
List 5 topics about which you would like to learn (a lot).
List the top 5 sources of information you consult (online and offline).
Write down 5 things you are good at.
Take a look at your Internet history to see what kinds of articles and products interest you.
What kind of Social profiles do you follow?
By now you may have come up with a couple of good ideas. In Step 2 we will look at how to evaluate them and decide which one to pursue.
2- Are you passionate about the topic?
I know-you just wanted to start a blog and make money?
You don’t care if that means writing about universally boring topics like “History of Statistics”-which, by the way, really exists.
Wait though, not so fast!
I know it may sound patronizing, but in your blog you should write about something you really love (or will love).
If you want your site to succeed, you’ll need lots of articles that cover the same topic. And if you don’t like what you do, sooner or later you will quit, maybe after wasting hours and hours of work.
A friend of mine had found the perfect niche for his blog: inflatable fishing canoes. It was the ideal situation represented by low competition and (relatively) high Google traffic. He had even created a couple of posts, but he soon realized that he hated fishing and ended up never posting again.
3- Is your niche big enough?
Understand well that in order to monetize your blog you will need to generate traffic. Not only that, you may need many more visitors than you anticipated.
Unfortunately, there is not much hard data on this. But let’s assume:
You get 200 visitors a day,
Have a conversion rate of 1.5 percent,
You receive an input of 3€ per conversion.
With such traffic you would earn around 270€ per month. Yes, that’s not bad, but it’s probably not life-changing….
So unless you want to be paid a few crumbs per hour, 5000 visits per month is not enough and you will need to increase the volume. And yes, that takes time and commitment.
You won’t know if your chosen niche will be big enough until you’ve tried. However, keep an eye on a couple of indicators to see if you are on the right track:
There are already established bloggers,
You find many results when you perform related searches,
See Google Ads among the results.
4- Can you monetize with your niche?
There are several ways to earn money through a blog (we will discuss these in detail later). But not all niches are equal, in fact some are more profitable, and usually more competitive, than others.
To understand whether the niche you want to occupy is more or less profitable you can analyze these aspects:
Search Amazon for products related to the same niche. Are there many of them?
Does Google show advertising related to similar products among the search results?
Check for related affiliate programs (e.g., Google search ‘[TOPIC] + affiliate program’).
Look for affiliate programs on sites such as Awin, Amazon.co.uk or Tradedoubler.
5- Study the expertise
It is to be expected that niches with high traffic and highly lucrative (such as gambling or online trading) attract many people with large budgets.
It is natural that you would want a slice of such a large and lucrative segment, but it is very unlikely that you will succeed with such cutthroat competition.
Start by identifying your competitors. Simply use Google to find the biggest competitors, say 5 to 10 sites.
You should use some common sense and discard those topics that already have strong competition. Here are a couple of tricks for assessing the competitiveness of an area:
Find how many (consistent) blogs on the same topic already exist.
Calculate the number of articles published by each competitor.
Estimate their quality overall – is it good or poor content?
How often are they published?
Are they individual bloggers or large online publications?
Use tools like Moz, SemRush or Ahrefs to check their SEO parameters: take a look at the traffic they receive, number of backlinks, SEO optimization, etc.
6- What will be your approach?
Your blog cannot be just ‘another blog’, you will need to differentiate yourself in some way from the rest of the competition, especially in a highly competitive market.
Otherwise, why should users (or search engines) care about your blog at all?
In my opinion, these are some of the most commonly used ways to stand out from the crowd. If you want, you can also use more than one.
Specialize on a subtopic (e.g., cooking > vegan cooking > vegan cooking for athletes).
Strive to provide as much information as your competitors do not.
Continuously update your content.
Invest in multimedia content such as videos, podcasts, professional photos, etc.
Start an online community (e.g., open a forum, provide opportunities to leave comments, etc.).
What to call your blog?
Now that we have a topic for your blog it is time to find a name for it. In my opinion this is a personal choice and there is no magic recipe for finding the right name.
However, keep the following in mind when you are faced with choosing between various alternatives:
Prefer short names (2-3 words maximum) as they are easier to remember.
Opt for words somehow related to your site or to you (it could even simply be your first and last name).
Choose words that are easy to spell and pronounce; avoid jumbles of letters or doubles, such as flickr.com or elegantthemes.com.
If your main strategy is SEO, include a keyword in the domain, but be warned: Google says this move won’t help you anymore (in English).
Make sure it is branding-friendly, meaning not too long to be used in a logo.
Leave some room to expand the reach of your blog to other topics. For example, ilmondodeltelefonino.it is not the best name if you also want to cover tablets and other electronic products in the future.
Also keep social in mind and make sure your name is available on Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Most importantly, be very careful about trademarks! Sites like ShopifyNinjas and AdsenseFlippers have had to change their names due to copyright issues.
Consult their synonyms online.
Do a small survey among friends and family members proposing your best ideas.
Great. Now that you have found the name, let’s hope it is not already in use and register the domain:
You can use domain registries such as Namecheap, GoDaddy or 1&1.
Try registering a domain with a popular extension such as .com or .it.
I usually advise against using numbers as words are easier to remember.
If you can, avoid using hyphens in the domain because they can give the impression that it is a shady or low-quality site.
Before registering the domain make sure that there is no doubt about its meaning and that it does not give rise to double meanings, as in the unforgettable example of penisland.net (i.e., Island of Pen which can also be mistakenly read as Land of Penises).
Enable the automatic registration renewal option so you don’t forget and run the risk of losing your domain.
Where to start a blog?
But then, what is a blog?
A blog is nothing more than a website, or part of a website, with a definite structure in which as a rule posts are ordered from the most recent to the oldest. It consists of several posts (or articles or pages) that usually deal with the same topic.
So you will need your own site (or an ad hoc platform) to start your blog.
WordPress – A Powerful Approach
WordPress(.org) underlies about 30 percent of all websites, and it is without a doubt the most established CMS on the market. This PHP platform was born in 2003 and is designed specifically for bloggers, so you are in good hands.
In any case, it is very important to have a good hosting service (for example with reference to SEO). So if you are serious about it, I would go with an advanced, albeit more expensive, hosting solution like SiteGround.
One of the advantages of WordPress is that you can change the theme (template) of your site to make it look completely different with just a couple of clicks.
WordPress already includes a number of themes that you can use for free. But if you needed a more sophisticated template and include support for it, take a look at theme marketplaces for WordPress such as ThemeForest or Templatemonster.
WordPress has all the features you’ll need (e.g., categories, tags, etc.) for your blog. Unfortunately, all that glitters is not gold, and you should know that using WordPress involves quite a few headaches.
Choose a template
Templates, or themes, are what give your blog a certain layout and design. My advice, of course, is to choose one that is elegant and intuitive.
WordPress Themes
Choosing a template for WordPress can be a bit stressful since there are thousands of themes available.
As mentioned above, you can use one of the templates that WordPress offers for free.
But if you’re looking for something more chic or that requires minimal support, you can choose a paid theme from those available in marketplaces such as ThemeForest or Templatemonster. And this is where it’s generally easy to get confused.
When faced with choosing a WordPress template, I always ask myself these questions:
Does the price meet the budget allocated?
Is the design beautiful?
Is the template responsive (does it fit well on smartphone and tablet screens)?
Does the vendor have a good reputation? Does he constantly update his themes? Does he answer any questions? Does he offer free demos, etc.?
Are the reviews (if available) of the templates positive?
How popular is that template? How many times has it been sold? The more times it has been installed, the higher the likelihood of receiving support and updates in the future.
Does it support the plugins I chose to use (e.g., Yoast, WPML, Gravity Forms, etc.)?
Is it SEO friendly?
Personally, I prefer not to deal with overly complicated settings. That’s why I avoid themes that offer a lot of features I don’t need, such as those for registered users, as they tend to complicate maintenance tasks.
I usually end up with a list of 4 or 5 themes relevant to my niche. To these I assign a vote for each of the categories listed above to determine the winner.
Other pages
Sure, maybe you just want to devote yourself to writing posts on the topics you are most passionate about. However, you will need additional pages to complement your blog.
Terms and Conditions of Use & Privacy Policy: I know, it’s a very boring topic. But unfortunately, more and more countries are demanding that all websites, including blogs, include these kinds of formalities. You can go to Iubenda, which is a pretty convenient service (it even offers a free version) to create your own privacy policy text.
Contact page: Your readers should be able to contact you, but making your email public is not a smart move since it could be the easy target of spammers like the ‘Nigerian Prince.’ To avoid this, add a contact page with an appropriate form tied to your personal email box.
Who we are: Whenever I see a site without an “About us” (or “About us”) section, I immediately suspect they have something to hide. This probably happens to you, too, so be sure to create a nice About Us page.
Sitemap: Most platforms create one automatically. But make sure not only that it actually exists (as posting a sitemap is good SEO practice), but also that it is submitted to Google Search Console!
If you want to offer something else through your site besides your blog content, such as online services, you should create special pages to talk about them.
Plan your blog content
If you want to have a profitable blog, it is important that you create unique content that your readers enjoy and can interact with (e.g., by leaving comments or sharing).
I know, this is easier said than done.
But since content creation should be your No. 1 priority (on the other hand, that’s what blogs are for), you might want to get organized by creating an editorial calendar. This is how I would do it:
Decide how often you want to publish posts, once or twice a week or once a month, etc.
Create a year-long calendar with weekly slots, monthly slots, etc. I use an excel to do this, but an online calendar like Google Calendar is more than fine too.
Jot down a few ideas that your readers might like. For this do some brainstorming, do some research or ask potential readers.
Think about what kind of content you want to produce for each idea (more on this later), articles, images, videos, etc.
If you want to rely on SEO (and you most likely will), find the most relevant keywords for each idea.
Fill the calendar with all these ideas keeping in mind a possible seasonal aspect. You can use this diagram from HubSpot (in English).
Review the calendar every 2 or 3 months to adapt it to new situations if necessary.
Needless to say, your content must be flawless and have no grammatical or spelling errors. You can always ask a friend or hire a proofreader through UpWork or Freelancer.
How to promote your blog and generate traffic
There is no universal, winning recipe, I can only assure you that it will take a lot of time and work. To quote the teacher in the TV show Will They Be Famous:
“You have ambitious dreams: success, fame. But these things cost money, and that’s where you start paying for it, in sweat!”
Lately, the success of promoting your blog depends on the characteristics of your project and your personality. However, here are some ideas for increasing traffic to your blog:
SEO: If your goal is to receive as much traffic to your blog as possible, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) must become an integral part of your plan of action. Optimizing for Google (and other search engines) takes some time; it is a medium- to long-term strategy. However, this does not mean that it requires a major financial investment since you can take care of it yourself.
Guest post: It is not uncommon to see some bloggers writing for other sites in order to receive so-called backlinks and therefore traffic, especially if their articles end up being published in well-known publications, such as the Huffington Post. Personally, I get a bit heartbroken every time I see one of my articles posted on another site.
Paid traffic: If what you want is a small initial push for a few hours, you might consider setting up a paid campaign through AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc. For this you will need to allocate a budget and be aware that once this is used up, you will suddenly stop getting traffic.
Social: Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter can be a great way to increase the popularity of your blog and increase the number of followers who will convert into loyal readers. It is difficult to quantify the effort invested in Social, but it is potentially a good investment, especially if your blog has many visual elements, for example if you are into cooking, jewelry or photography.
Email marketing: Although the first mass email was sent decades ago (1978), email marketing still offers a substantial ROI, apparently $38 for every $1 invested (in English). In my opinion, building your mailing list is a great way to keep your audience’s interest high. You can use tools such as Mailchimp, SendinBlue or GetResponse for this purpose.
If you partner with companies or blogs, have them include a link to yours on their site to increase your chances of getting more traffic. This is usually a win-win deal for both parties.
