First thing first, do you want to Start a Blog to make money online without the headache of 9 to 5 drama or for the business? If Yes! Absolutely, you can and the great news is it’s not rocket science. Honestly, it’s easy to start a blog but a winner has to put a lot of time, efforts and even some initial investment to do fast.
OK! If you start a blog to make money blogging over any other silly or great techniques, I promise it’s fun and you can if you have few hours per day. Please don’t quit your job before your blog yields enough money to serve food on your plate. By the way, let’s dive into the way to:
Start a Blog from scratch to 100K Visits.
Here is a step-by-step simple and practical way to start a blog. Bonus whether you are blogging to make money online or just for business, this guide will help you to build it from scratch. Let’s start with a solid plan.
Note: Although I will explain how to set up self-hosted WordPress blog later in this post, if you want to set it up now, before going ahead, click to create it first.
Pro Tips 1.
Before we will go ahead, login to your Google Drive account and create a spreadsheet and name it “{Blog-Name} Mastersheet”. You can get a free copy here by clicking “Open Thrive Master Sheet”.
Although I would recommend making your own sheet by going through this post. However, if you want to save few minutes, you can make one copy of this by replacing Open Thrive with your own blog.
Pro Tips 2.
Create a New Folder on your computer, name it “Your Blog Name” e.g OpenThrive and sync it with Google drive to access from anywhere. That’s the way I manage my 2 blogs daily.
1. Start with a solid plan:
As I said the toughest part of starting a blog is consistency and regularity, so let’s make a quick solid foundation to take it from 0 to 100K and so on… Take a blank paper and pencil (Recommended) or simply notepads like Evernote or Apple notes etc.
Pen down the reasons why are you going to start a blog. Now take another paper and write down what do you want to put on your blog, so that people will come to see, share, click (on ads) and even buy if you will be selling something. It can be simple text, images, infographic, podcast or video, eBook or digital goods etc.
Most importantly select a suitable niche i.e perfect topic(s) for your blog. To select this, pen down all the subjects of your interests randomly on the sheet as much as you can. Then, give it number 1, 2, 3 and so on based on your skill set and the possibility that people are going to read. This is one of the biggest mistakes that we select the wrong niche and get stuck in the middle of the blogging journey.
OK! you have selected a suitable topic. Now move on, open master sheet and write down 50+ topics randomly on your topic. Now, you have some solid reasons & a perfect topic(s) to start a blog. Let’s move to the next step.
Pro Tips 3.
Create a Sheet in Mastersheet, give a name Plans & Strategies and note all important and final points for future reference. Find how in the sample sheet.
2. Do A Quick Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis will help you to understand the latest insights and potential of your niche. Moreover, it tells what people like, dislike, what works or doesn’t and so on.
To do this make a long list of all blogs and websites in your niche with author’s twitter accounts and email addresses.
Then take top 10 blogs and list down their top performing articles in a spreadsheet. See how they are writing, frequency and the way of communication etc.
Pro Tips 4.
Lastly, follow them on twitter and make twitter list and go ahead for the next step.
Pro Tips 5.
Add another sheet in master sheet “Competitor Analysis” and note down all competitors there.
3. Set Up The Professional Blog
Now start your magic with all resources and solid foundation. If you already have a blog, you should skip this step.
Register a domain:
Easy, short, simple and memorable. Fortunately, some of the web hosting service providers will give you a free domain with the yearly hosting plan. So, if you are an absolute beginner, go and get web hosting service directly along with the free domain.
Get a WordPress Hosting:
I would recommend SiteGround a great option to start a blog exclusively for beginners. Here are some other web hosts.
WPengine: Costly but #1 WP hosting provider.
BlueHost: SiteGround Alternative with almost same features.
HostGatore: Another BlueHost or SiteGround.
Pro Tip 6.
Don’t waste much time pick anyone, setup your blog and run to the next step. As you are starting with shared hosting, all service providers listed (except WPengine) have almost same features and benefits.
Bonus tip: Create your WordPress blog.
Select WordPress Theme: look smarter.
After the perfect niche and quality content, the design of your blog is the most important thing to consider while starting a blog. There are hundreds of WordPress theme providers to select from, both paid & free. If you start a blog seriously and have some bucks I would recommend Premium theme.
I personally use Genesis Theme by StudioPress, which is lighter, faster loading and minimal design.
If you can’t find anything there, head to Themeforest: the largest WordPress themes directory to select one.
Pro Tip: 7
Create another sheet “Tools and Resources” and note down all technical aspects and tools to run & monitor your blog smoothly.
4. KickStart The Content Creation
Blogging without content is just like a car without an engine. Can you imagine the performance of world’s most advanced car without an engine? In the same way, you can’t get anything from your blog without content. In short content creation is the oxygen of starting and running a professional blog.
So, start with a strong content strategy to streamline the content creation process for a long time. Create a content calendar, set the frequency of posting and create high-quality content that people would love to share. The simple way is to create a content calendar.
Pro Tip: 8
Add two new sheet in Mastersheet “Content Seeding”.
Blog Post Ideas: Pen Down all random blog post idea, noted previously or in future anytime.
Content Calendar: To set a frequency of publishing articles on time.
Pro Tip: 9
Write your first blog post today to go ahead with the next steps.
5. Market Your Blog:
Congratulations! You have become 50% professional blogger. Publish your first content and let others know that you have something to change their life from now. As your blog is completely new so people won’t find it until you help them. Honestly, it will take weeks or even months to appear through SEO, Social media marketing, link building etc. So, Start spreading through smart and non-conventional channels like:
- Offline Marketing: Tell your friends, family and also request them to tell others.
- On the way or in a coffee shop: Don’t agitate to ask strangers to give their feedback and suggestions.
- Send a formal email to all your contacts and ask them to forward to all of their contacts.
- Join the local groups and request them to give their combined feedback.
- Your college friends and office : These people maybe the most loyal for you, ask them to let other knows.
- Print a card and sticker and give them for free.
- Join the online community and forum to post valuable comments. If possible, mention your blog appropriately.
- Join Facebook group and post it there.
- Join Google plus community.
- Quora is a very nice place to write your blog post’s snippet as answers.
- And so on: Quick ways to promote your new blog like a pro.
Pro tip: 10
If possible ask some of them again if they remember. Collect their contact details and send them your future publications as they are your mentors.
Pro tip: 11
Create a sheet to manage this all at one place.
6. Build Your Own Loyal Audience
A successful blog has its own community and readers who come again most of the time, share and recommend to others. According to Problogger Founder, building the community of your blog is the foundation of the steady growth of your blog. So, returning visitors are always more important than people who come and never come back.
Bonus Tip: How to Find Readers For Your Blog
This can be possible only if you share high-quality content of certain niches. Whenever people will get stuck, they will come to your blog to find the solution.
Apart from this, capture email addresses, ask them to follow on social media and so on. Join the different communities and ask community members to become your blogging friends. Request influencers and readers to share your new blog posts.
Pro Tip: 12
Give some takeaways like a case study, eBook, digital content, templates etc when users subscribe to your email list.
7. Connect With Other Bloggers
Whether you are a newbie blogger or professionally doing for years, connecting with other bloggers will add some value to your blogging experiences. It helps you explore out of the box to understand how others are doing the same thing, how they are solving problems you usually get stuck with, how they interact with their audience and so on.
It also helps you to explore the community of your fellow bloggers directly. There are many ways to connect with them. Start from online community, forum, twitter or other social networks, then find the way to meet them personally.
Ask questions, comment on their blog, share their contents, mention their blogs in your posts and ask them to do the same for you too.
8. Track, Measure & Grow Your Blog
Finally, you are your own boss, so it would be a little bit hard to manage and go with the same energy every day. As being your own boss, no one will push you up to finish the deadline, no one is going to ask when you are going to publish the next blog post. This is the hardest part of blogging journey that every blogger faces.
So, to manage things and for the exponential growth of your blog build your own daily routine. Make daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly target to follow every day. There are lots of tools and apps that you can use to streamline the process to start a blog from scratch to 100K visits in few months if you follow perfectly.
Pro Tip: 13
To track the past, current and future growth of your blog fix certain metrics and parameters. It depends on your preference and of course the purpose of starting a blog, but most common maybe:
No of unique visitors: Total number of people who visited your blog.
Page views: Number of time unique visitors loads your website.
Social followers: Also Separately for Twitter, facebook and all other that you will be using.
Email signups: Number of people who signup for future interactions.
Comments: Comments on blog posts.
Blog posts published: How many time you publish the content.
Time (Hours Spent): Total time spent by you.
Total Cost: Cost of running the blog.
Total Revenue: How much money you are making from your blog.
Net Profit: Total revenue – Total Cost
Measuring these on weekly basis will help you a lot to remain on track, will always push you up to go ahead and do the next.
Conclusion: How to Start a Blog!
Congratulations again, you have either new blog or you are renewing existing from ground. The bottom line is, starting a blog is not rocket science, anybody can do it. But getting benefits from this is impossible until and unless you are damn serious until You are capable of managing it on regular basis, creating great content and telling new people to come and join the journey every day.
So, if you want to start and run a blog professionally, go create it, share some great content, market it, and finally do everything again and again daily.
The post Start a Blog – 8 Simple Steps From Scratch to 100K Visits appeared first on OpenThrive.