Blogging in the web world is an absolute necessity, both for the blogger and for the users.
When the world has become digital, people nowadays get on the internet for everything, for every small need.
Whether we have to look up for something, or buy a product or need a service, or just simply learn new things, the internet is the instant savior.
That is why more and more blogs are being launched every day. There are more than a million blogs that exist on the internet today and has made our lives so much easier.
Now, not all blogs become as successful as a blogger would want it to be.
Some blogs fail miserably and are unable to generate traffic, while some run as smoothly as gliding on butter.
For a beginner who is planning to start a blog, his inspiration is the number of blogs that have become successful.
But having inspiration is not enough, one has to know all the right ways as to how to launch a successful blog.
This article talks about the ways to start a successful blog, for beginners who are damn serious about blogging. But first let’s see why you should start blogging, in the first place.
Reasons Why One Should Start Blogging:
It opens new opportunities for you:
If your ultimate plan is to do something in the web world or run an online business, the first smart step is to start a blog.
When you continuously write informative blogs, readers start recognizing you when they keep visiting your website.
When so many people are interacting on your web platform, you might just find some new opportunity that you have been looking for.
It gives you credibility:
When you continuously write informative articles following Google’s guidelines, people will start visiting your blog more.
Once your readers recognize and establish your blog as an ultimate authority on a particular niche, they will keep referring to your site for every detail.
This will help you gain credibility in the online world and will build your goodwill.
To build a network and stay in touch:
For people who have set high goals for themselves, they utilize the platform of blogging for building a network.
Now it is a known fact that whatever you do professionally, it is important to build a network.
Blogging serves that purpose like no other web media. Not only you get to know other bloggers in your network, but you also get to connect with readers who comment on your blogs.
It helps you earn money:
Although it takes time to generate earnings that you would want, blogging is nevertheless a good way to start earning revenue.
The best part about earning money from a blog is that you can do it from the comfort of your home space, rather than having to run to an office every day.
This is why more and more people resort to blogging, even if they are pursuing a full-time job.
How to Start a Successful Blog?
That brings us to the most important part of this article. while the benefits of blogging are plenty, one has to know how to launch it in the first place.
Here are all the steps that you would need to take.
1. Decide your niche first:
It is not absolutely necessary to define a niche, a lot of people will say.
But finding a niche will help you get better clarity at the earliest stages.
Before you start a blog, there are a few questions you should ask yourself. One of them is that you need to define what your passion is.
It can be anything- fitness, food, fashion, lifestyle, science, technology, gadgets, just anything! But there’s a catch to it.
After you have figured out your niche, look for topics that have not been extensively covered. If you keep doing the same old topics on your blog that have been done to death, no one is going to read your blog.
So come up with fairy new facts and information. Also, do not start a blog about a particular niche unless you are sure that you have expertise on that niche.
Content scraping is not going to help you in the long run.
2. Define your target audience:
Just finding a niche is not enough, you have to define your target audience well, even before you start the blog.
Then you have to constantly keep generating content that will cater to this particular set of target audience.
This will not only make your blog’s purpose fruitful but will also promote your blog effortlessly.
You have to consider all aspects and then filter out your search and narrow down to the particular set of people, who you are sure will consume your product.
Your target audience depends on a lot of factors, like, age, education level, geographic area, occupation, the income level of the individual or the income bracket, hobbies for sure, sex, religion, sometimes sexual orientations as well, and any special interest that is not defined.
Once you have narrowed down on your set of target audience, then all you have to do is create content for them and them market that content properly on the internet. If you do not market your content properly, your blog will slowly die.
3. Choose your ideal blogging platform:
After completing the pre-launch research you have to then come to the actual part.
Deciding on an ideal blogging platform can be pretty tricky. Most of the bloggers around the world rely on WordPress to build their blog.
It is the biggest blogging platform in the world. It has countless plugins and you can keep adding add-ons as many as you want. It gives you the liberty to design your blog just the way you want.
Statistics show that there are more than 82 million active bloggers in the world who use WordPress. That number says it all about the popularity of the blog.
The other platforms that you can use are Blogger and Tumblr. But still, a lot of people go for WordPress because of the following reasons.
- Its set up is very easy and it is completely free to use.
- It gives you access to thousands of free themes and layouts so that you can choose the one you like for your website.
- The support forum of WordPress is huge and is always there for you, in case you get stuck somewhere.
WordPress makes your blog very fast. - It allows your content to be easily shared on other social media platforms. Not just that, people can even comment easily on WordPress blogs. And blog commenting is a very essential tool for your blog’s health.
4. Decide if you want to self-host your blog or look for a free alternative host:
This is the BIGGEST decision that you have to make before you move ahead in developing your blog.
The blogging platforms like WordPress, Tumblr etc. surely help you get a free host, but it has its own downsides.
- These platforms won’t give you a domain name. When you use a free platform, the domain name you get is not really nice. Your URL will look like yourblog.wordpress.com. This will do nothing to promote your blog’s reputation.
- With the certain limitations that the free platforms impose, it becomes difficult for a blogger to fully express himself. For example, these platforms do not allow you to upload certain pictures and videos that you might want to show to the world. also, they have a limit to the size of a picture that you are uploading. The problem is that you cannot fully express yourself.
- Hosting on a free platform also means that you are not the real owner of your blog. They might delete your entire blog, if they feel like.
On the other hand, when you self-host your blog, you do it on your own domain name. You get to own the blog and nobody can delete it at their will.
You can name it according to your wish, and the URL will look definitely better. you also get unlimited bandwidth for uploading videos and unlimited pictures and content.
5. Design your blog the way you want:
This is not just a very important part, but the most fun of all too.
You can get as creative as you want while designing your blog. For this, you can either choose from the uncountable free themes that WordPress offers, or you can also go to a premium theme website and buy a theme that you think would perfectly fit in your blog.
Whether you want to make your blog look professional or you want to make it look quirky and out of the box, is completely your choice, but make sure its interface remains user-friendly.
If you are using a WordPress theme, you can easily keep changing themes with a few clicks. Remember that your blog design will reflect your personality and the content of your blog.
6. Now you have to plan your content well:
Now that you have figured out your niche and you have successfully developed your blog, then comes the most important part, that is, content creation.
You have to remember that your blog content should be exceptionally well and very different from what is already out there on the web.
It should be unique and informative enough, but not like the boring informative articles that are out there.
You will need to find something that they have never come across before. Now we understand that it is not always possible to create unique content.
In such cases, what you can do is you can research from various sources and then put them all together and give your own unique touch that readers would like to read.
Since you have figured out your target audience, you have to do your research to understand what are the questions that your readers generally ask.
Once you have figured that out, you can then spin content around those questions and continuously keep feeding your readers what they want.
The most common questions that readers generally ask are all ‘how to’ based questions. Whatever niche you pick, there will be plenty of unanswered questions about that particular field.
Target those questions and build ‘how to’ answers to the common things.
For example, if your niche is home decoration, you can write an article or a blog post about ‘ how to beautify your home in a budget of 10000 rupees’.
7. Optimize your blog on SEO as much as possible:
So now, you have developed your blog, have a domain name and you have also created the content that you want to publish.
What’s next?
The next step is the most important step if you plan to keep surviving on the internet that is Search Engine Optimisation.
Without SEO, you cannot attract readers to your website, which means the traffic will be zero.
Without traffic, your website will not generate revenue from ad clicks, nor will it be able to build any credibility among the target audience.
When you are writing an article, make sure that you use the title tags and proper meta descriptions, to optimize your post.
Next, do a plagiarism check thoroughly with the plagiarism tools that are easily available online. Google is not a fan of plagiarized content.
Conclusion:
And with that, you have now successfully created the blog you had always wanted to. From the first step to the last one, it is actually a matter of time, dedication and patience.
For those bloggers who want to generate revenue from their blogs, they should know that it is going to take time, a lot of it. If you are serious enough about blogging and really want to take it ahead with a certain goal in mind, the waiting part won’t really be difficult.