It is likely that you have come this far because you are not very clear about how to create a blog and make money with it. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to start from scratch and tell you what you need to do to make it profitable.
Throughout the Internet there are countless blogs on different topics and in different languages, and many of them thrive thanks to the passion with which it were born, either because of the blog’s theme or impulsed by the constant desire to generate passive income.
Either way, we know that you have passion or knowledge about a particular topic, and it is perhaps from there that you can take as a starting point to begin to materialize the idea of creating a blog that generates money.
Although there are various platforms that allow you to create content such as Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, among others; These platforms have many limitations for the creator. Of course, it is easier to create content with them, but you will not generate much money.
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Choose the domain name
The first step in creating a successful blog is choosing the domain name. This is the most complicated decision you will have to make and the one that would directly affect your brand, and organic positioning.
It is for this reason that you should take your time, to make sure you have chosen the correct one.
1. Concise
The domain name you should choose should be concise, as this will help people to recognize and remember it immediately. Very large domains are detrimental to the brand.
You can consider choosing a first and last name, if you want to create a personal brand based on your knowledge and background. That is, if your name is Alberto Piedras, you probably want to have the domain albertopiedras.com
2. It must describe the theme
The domain name you choose should describe the theme of your blog, as people often remember things by association.
For example, if you are talking about food, it is better to choose a related domain such as thebestdishes.com, gourmet.com, etc. However, domains with generic or short words are usually already taken by someone else, so you will have to contribute a bit of creativity to find the correct one.
If you can find a domain name that describes your site, you will have earned an additional point for marketing strategies.
If you’ve already chosen one, you can check domain availability on Whois.net.
3. Choose the best TLD
A TLD (Top Level Domain) is the suffix of the domain name that you will choose. Among the most popular are .com, .net, .org, among others.
For people in general, it is much easier to remember the .com compared to the .net or .biz, so you should always choose the best, among the most popular.
A .com domain generally costs around $ 10 per year. So it is not a big investment that you have to make for this.
4. Avoid choosing a complicated domain name
It is likely that based on your creativity, there are hundreds of ways to name your project, however, you should avoid at all costs choosing a name that is too complicated to write or easy to misunderstand.
That is, choosing the domain want1dog.com is original and creative, however, if you wanted to mention it verbally, people could misinterpret it and probably unless you tell that person to replace the “want” with a “1”, they will enter a wrong website.
Identify web hosting needs
Once you have chosen the domain name, it is time to choose the web hosting or only called hosting, which allows you to publish your website on the internet.
To explain it better, I’ll give you an example: Consider the domain name as the title of a book, and the web page as the content of the book. Without pages to write on, you won’t be able to write the content of the book. In the same way, a website could not exist without hosting where to place the content.
Particularly the best hosting I have worked with so far has been Banahosting, not only because of its excellent level of customer service (they serve 24/7) but because they offer enough web hosting for a medium project at a low cost.
1. The hosting you choose contributes to the speed of the web
You should know that the web hosting you choose will contribute to the loading speed of your website, and you should consider this, since if you want to appear in the first Google search results, this is an essential factor.
2. Project the traffic you will have
Web traffic includes the visitors you will receive, and even if you do not get a million monthly visits during the first months, it is important to consider it and think ahead, since many servers are not capable of supporting a considerable amount of monthly visits, causing errors in your website and making it slower for the user.
Choose the correct platform
At this point, you should already have the ideal domain and hosting for your blog, and now is the time to choose a platform for content creation.
There are several platforms for creating content, and among the most popular we find WordPress and Joomla. Personally, I recommend using WordPress, and I’ll detail why later.
Most hosting providers offer the ability to install the most popular CMS like WordPress, in just a few easy steps.
1. What is WordPress?
WordPress is a platform of the CMS (Content Management System) type, which allows you to administer and manage the content yourself, without the need for technical specialists or programming knowledge.
This platform was designed from the beginning, to help bloggers manage their content.
All of this makes managing and creating content easy. In addition, this platform is the best option compared to its competition, as it has a wide catalog of modules (plugins) that can allow you to place specific functionalities to the need of your project.
2. Attractive design
In WordPress “themes” are used for the design of the web. There are hundreds of themes in the official WordPress repository, so you will not need to invest anything to achieve an attractive website. However, if you want something more than this, there are also paid themes, which have many more modifications, making them exceptional.
3. Quality content that generates traffic
You sure don’t want one or two people to visit your blog on a monthly basis, right? If you are looking to capture the attention of a large audience, you should focus on creating complete content, full of keywords and well written.
4. Quality content that generates links
Undoubtedly, the links placed on other websites, which directly bring traffic to our site, is something that we should always look for. Not only to generate more traffic, but to have authority before Google. That means, the more pages that link to the content of our site (quality links and reputable pages), the more authority we have with Google.
To get other sites to link to our website, it is important to generate quality content that provides the user with adequate information. The content that users like the most, of course, is the content that is shared the most.
5. Quality content that helps you generate more income
Creating quality content not only provides you with more traffic and more inbound links, but as a result, it will also help you earn more money. If you have achieved all this, it means that your reach has multiplied.
This reach will help you sell more products or services, or generate more advertising revenue.
Monetize the site
Well, the time has come where all the effort must pay off and turn into passive income. It is important that you know that this is not achieved overnight, and you will probably have to spend a good time developing the content.
There are several ways to earn money with a blog, among the most popular are earnings from ads, from the sale of affiliate products or from the sale of courses or own products.
1. Make money with ads on your website
Among the most popular and profitable platforms we find Google Adsense, a platform that allows content creators to place ads anywhere on the web. You will be able to earn for each click made by your visitors, or also for each thousand visits within your web page, where the ads appear.
WordPress allows you to include these ads with a simple plugin.
What you should know is that, currently all pages must apply before they can place ads on their pages. To do this, you must have an average amount of 40 articles, with original content (not copied) and your page must not violate any of their policies.
2. Make money by selling affiliate products
Selling affiliate products is about selling other people’s products and earning a commission for it.
Amazon is the best known platform for the sale of affiliate products, however there are other options as well, such as Hotmart. Both platforms will pay you a commission for each sale that is made on your blog, through a link that they will generate for you.
You can place a link, images and a striking button, to get your visitors interested in the product. Choose products according to the theme of your site.
3. Make money selling courses or products
In addition, you can earn money with your blog, selling courses (if you are an expert in a certain topic and develop one for your users) according to the theme of your site.
You can also offer your own products or services. Actually, it all depends on your site and the topics you have focused on writing, avoiding placing products that have nothing to do with your blog.
That is, imagine you have a site where you talk about pets, and suddenly kitchen products appear for sale. Definitely people will end up leaving without buying anything, since the user was only interested in pets.
On the contrary, if your website talks about pets and a course to train dogs appears for sale, or toys for cats appear on the site; you will increase the possibility that the user who was interested in pets, buy something.