How To Start A Blogging Business in 2011
I want to make this guide as simple and as easy to follow as possible. If you are wanting to know how to start your own business based on blogging then I can most certainly help. There are a million routes to success with blogging, so you don’t have to follow a precise path, but you do have to follow certain rules which will be revealed later.
What is blogging?
Blogging is just the same as having a personal diary stuffed in your bedroom – you write things in it for safe keeping, except people all over the world have the chance to see your blog, so it’s a good way to share ideas, articles and thoughts.
Blogs represent you and your innermost thoughts so they can be as personal as you’d like them to be.
How do I start a blogging business?
Well in a nutshell you write about products and services, with the view to making money out of them.
Millions of people every day of the year log on to the internet search for things to buy.
Your job is to be that website that they click on to in order to get the sale. they are going to buy anyway, so why not from you?
Where and how do I start?
(Quick note: Starting any business is likely to incur some costs up front, but if done right you can soon recoup those costs. Blogging is no different, if done correctly – don’t be swayed by offers of totally free hosting – the pitfalls are numerous – many people have lost entire blogs when hosting has gone down, so buyer aware is the advice I can offer to you!)
Ok, let me help by explaining all to you. First of all you need a blog to write in right? Just like you need a diary that you have to go to the store and purchase you need somewhere to write electronically.
There are many places you can start, some are free, some are paid. Personally I’d say keep it free. However I strongly suggest you get your own paid hosting to host the blog. Hostgator is my first choice. Their customer service is outstanding and you can get started hosting multiple blogs all in for one price of just $7 a month which for a business expense is incredible.
Then you need to decide which blog to use – in other words, what kind of diary to use.
You want one that Google can easily find, and likes a lot, and is likely to put high into the search engine results page(SERPS). The one I recommend the most, and in fact the only one I use, is called WordPress. It’s got a technical name called a CMS(content management solution), but suffice to say WordPress is one of the best, and its free, and it can be installed on your hosting easily by clicking a few buttons!
Once you get your hosting, go into your control panel, look for a button called Fantastico, then choose a Wordpres installation. I wont go into it in detail here (but ask me if you ned help).
How do I make money?
Well, you are going to need products to sell, or recommend aren’t you. They can be your own products or you can recommend other peoples products and make a commision for each one you sell. This is called Affiliate marketing – whereby you are an affiliate for other peoples products.
You can also build websites/blogs that have nothing but content on them, ie words, phrases, thoughts, product reviews etc, and then ahve advertsiing appear on your blog. Google offer advertising called Adsense which places adverts on your blog, and those adverts will be relevant to the content on your site.
How do I actually make money in my blogging business then?
Well, you can have a nice loking site with 10,000 pages of content, but if those pages arent anywhere to be seen, then nobody is looking at them and you wont make money.
To do this you have to try and find the people who are interested in your topics and try to get them to come to your site.
How do you actually DO this though? Well, think about it – where do people go when they want to know something? They open up their internet and type into Google or Yahoo or Bing etc, what they want to know.
When they hit the enter or return button, a load of websites show up – these are called the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
If your blog was to show up on those results pages then there is a chance that some of those people will click through and look at your site – hey presto your first visitor!
Your job is to find what phrases people are typing into the search engines.
Imagine if you realise or discover that 1000 people every day earch for a phrase, and they type in “Pink Fluffy Slippers For Sale”
If your blog was called Pink Fluffy Slippers then your blogs content is HIGHLY RELEVANT to what the searcher is looking for.
The search engines like to show HIGHLY RELEVANT CONTENT to the searcher. If they can master this then they keep their searchers using them – basic business sense.
If Google shows information on Blue shiny shoes each time people want to buy pink fluffy slippers there is a strong chance people will get annoyed and fed up and go to another search engine. So it is important top Google(etc) that they only show relevant content in the SERPS.
What are the steps involved to grow a business in blogging?
Find the phrases people enter into the search engines. Googles external keyword tool will help – go to it, enter a general phrase relating to your topic and it will list the phrases people type in, along with how many times a month that phrase is being searched for. You will also get an idea for how many competing websites also want to get onto page 1 for the same phrase – so look for phrases which high search volume and low comeptition. This can take some time to learn but you can learn more about it by joining me at WordPress Goldmine – a membership based forum Ive been at since October 2009. It is one of the friendliest places I have ever been lucky enough to come across.
Once youve discovered a suitable phrase, write a article about that phrase, at least 300-500 words long, and then make sure you include the phrase in the topic about 2 or 3 times, no more. Then create a hyperlink. Link that bit of text that is the phrase and link it to your product you want to sell.
Rinse and repeat, and eventually your page should start to show up in the SERPS for when people type that phrase in.
If you are excited and want to get started, I can wholly recommend you do one mroe thing right now in your life before you embark on the journey.
Join me at WordPress Goldmine – right now you can try it out for just $1. Why am I pushing this?
Because, for me it has been the ONE THING the ONLY thing that has helped. It’s the only place where I ahve elarned the ins and outs of starting my own blogging business.
Join me today and I’ll see you in there – I am in there almost 7 days a week talking and answering questions.
Stay on the right path and I promise you’ll not regret it if you want to know how to start a blogging business in 2011 and beyond.
Thanks,
Shaun
Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.