Digital marketing is huge part of everyone’s lives, even if you’re not a business owner. Everyone knows someone who has made a successful career out of their social media presence. In today’s gig economy where bloggers, Influencers and freelancers thrive, deciding to get in on one of these endeavors is an excellent idea.
How To Cash In On Your Blog
The best way approach blogging is to look at it as a form of social media marketing. Your content is your brand (or product).
Here’s a quick refresher on how to start a blog from scratch…
- Set up your blog
- Choose a topic you’re passionate and knowledgeable about
- Create content
- Promote your blog to find readers
- Engage with your audience (even if it’s a small group to start with)
- Find ways to make money with your blog
Once you have created your blog and developed a following (no matter how modest) you can start looking into expanding your audience and making money.
Here are a few helpful tips to make your blog successful.
- Make sure your blogging niche is profitable.
When starting a blog its always important care about the topic you’re chosen. Unfortunately if this topic is too niche you run the risk of not attracting much attention to your work even in the long term. The fix – try to pick a broad topic. For example: if you’re passionate about handbags, your blog can focus on all types of fashion accessories to broaden your topic.
- Always focus on upping your content skills
Any social media marketing expert will tell you that great content is the key to being successful online. Remember you blog is your brand. Create a content that makes your brand stand out from your competitors. Be unique, engaging, informative, helpful and fun. This will also do wonders for your blog’s brand recognition.
- Work on increasing your blog traffic
When you’re just starting out getting people to visit and engage with your blog can be difficult. The best way to increase blog traffic is to ensure that your SEO (search engine optimization) game is on point. Choose keywords and phrases that are popular in relation to your topics. Make sure each page on your blog is properly tagged and named.
Another point to remember is that social media is your friend. Promote your blog on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These sites can help to increase you brand (blog) awareness through likes, shares and comments.
How to earn actual money from your blog
- Brand Affiliation
Having a product or brand affiliation is one of the easiest ways to make money from your blog. By partnering with a large brand or company you can earn a commission from promoting their products on your blog. These promotions can be done in the form of product reviews and recommendations.
- Advertising
Once your blog has a lot of traffic you will be able to sell advertising space on your site. This can take the form of banner ads or fully paid for posts that focus exclusively on a product or service. This is not quite the same as an affiliated post because you get to set the price when selling advertising space.
(Pro Tip: Google AdSense, Mediavine and AdThrive are good places to start when looking to sell advertising space.)
- Selling your services
Once your blog is successful and you have gained recognition in your filed you can offer your services as a blogger to magazines and news sites across the globe. Digital media sites are always looking for freelance writers with experience in a particular field.
- Hosting Events
In recent times a lot of bloggers have gained recognition outside of their blog by hosting or running events.Depending on your blog’s niche market these events can vary from appearing on a talk show as a food expert, hosting an E-Sports tournament or setting up a movie premiere night.
Final Thoughts…
Blogging is just like managing a business. You need passion, skills and knowledge to pull it off successfully. But once you have set your goals and mastered some of the basics there’s no limit to how successful you can become.