A few years ago, I started this crazy thing called "Blogging." Blogging for beginners is not fun-lots of obstacles, learning curves, etc.
I must admit.
Lots of pitfalls here and there, mistakes, and challenges. Then, along came some happy moments, success stories, achievements, etc.
In that early beginning, to be precise - 3rd July 2012. The very day I registered this blog domain name and secured hosting from Whogohost web hosting company.
I had little idea or knowledge of what this blogging for beginners thing is all about. All I care about and know is that I am starting something unique and funny at that time.
I read how a blog is a medium to reach thousands, even millions of people and the rest of the world, with my message. So excited I was to start a blog of my own.
Looking back at all I have gone through in the past, still passing through now.
And what I might meet in the future in the process of building a sustainable blogging business. I thought it would be good to share with you some of the blogging for beginners lessons I had learned to be Dos and Don't in building a profitable blogging career.
But, bear in mind that this does not reflect the general opinion or rule of any blogger. They are just personal experiences, based on my blogging routine, style, and business model.
12 Useful Blogging for Beginners Tips
Nothing Will be Perfect
Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." - Vince Lombardi
Nothing is the only thing that will be perfect.
Blogging is a continuous learning process where you keep getting better at what you do every day. Don't stop learning, and don't hit your head against the wall if you don't get it right at the beginning (you won't anyway)
So start irrespective of the current situation. Whether you're ready or not - start that blog today. Here is a complete guide on how to start a blog the right way.
Passion is not Enough
People often start a blog based on what they're passionate about - that could be a skill, ideas, knowledge, expertise, interest, etc...whatever you are passionate about could be a good way to start your blog.
But there is a problem with this strategy... Passion doesn't always equal profit.
You may have passion or interest in a topic that you feel comfortable talking about, but if people are not paying attention to it, it's going to be difficult to turn it into a business. Without attention, the brightest ideas or businesses will go unnoticed.
If there are not enough people who use search engines to find information about what you're passionate about, you won't get consistent traffic to your blog. Search engines are the largest drivers of traffic to most business websites.
If you want to make money with blogging, your blog topic needs to target people who use search engines.
So you need to find the balance between starting a blog you're passionate about and the income side of the niche. Here is how to do this...
- Make a list of 5 to 10 topics that align with your interest or passion.
- Go through the list and weed out the topics you're not comfortable with.
- Use keyword tools like Semrush and Rank Tracker to research your topic ideas.
- Pay attention to search volume, location, cost-per-click, trend, competitors, and keyword difficulty. You need to make a decision based on these keyword data.
- Pick a niche with the most income potential.
- Start your blog - ideally on WordPress.
For step-by-step information on how to start a blog on WordPress, read this post.
Love What You do and Give it Time
Blogging is never a get-rich-quick business. It takes time to build an audience, traffic, trust, and community, and to start generating income. If you don't love blogging, it is difficult to remain consistent.
This is why you need to love what you're doing and be committed to your goal, passion, and blog. On average, it takes many pro bloggers 12 to 24 months to start making money from blogging. If you're not ready for the long haul, blogging is not for you.
If you're looking for a shortcut to money, you need to start looking elsewhere.
Set Realistic Goals And Work it Out
For many who started a blog, achieving financial freedom is the ultimate goal. Being able to live your dream life, travel the world, and spend quality time with your loved ones are some of the goals.
But all these won't happen on their own. You need to have strategies to make them happen. You must set out the tactics to achieve your goal. Blogging without direction is one of the reasons bloggers fail.
Goal setting is important to blogging, it will help you in focusing time and energy on important tasks. Here is how to set realistic goals in blogging.
- Be specific - Don't set vague goals like I want more traffic, I want money from my blog, I want to grow my blog audience, etc...instead, be specific on the amount of traffic you want, the exact amount of money you want to earn and the expiration date. For example, I want to make $10,000 within the next 60 days is more specific, measurable, and significant.
- Track Your Progress - When you're specific with your goals, it makes it easier to measure your progress. If one of your goals is to post 5 timers per week, you can track how well you've achieved at the end of the month.
- Set Realistic Goals - While it's important that your goal should stretch you a bit, and lead you to discover your other self, it should also be something realistic. Don't set a goal that's impossible for you to achieve. If you've never earned $100 from your blog, don't set a goal of making $1000 in 30 days. That's unrealistic.
- Set Deadlines - By setting deadlines for your goal, it helps you in finding ways to achieve them. And it will keep you focused and always remind you of what you need to do to achieve your goal.
- Break down Goals into Smaller Tasks - This can help you achieve your goal faster without feeling burnout. For example, if your goal is to have 600 Twitter followers in 30 days, you already know that you need 20 followers per day. Your task is to get 20 Twitter followers each and not 600 followers at once.
Engage Your Audience, They Are Part of your Community
A blog is supposed to be conversational and not an academic class where the teacher is the only one speaking. In blogging, you speak with your audience and engage them in the conversation.
This is part of what you need to learn about how to blog for beginners, especially in copywriting. If you want to build a community of loyal readers for your blog, you must learn how to write engaging blog content that gets people to share and engage.
If you want to learn how do you write a blog for beginners, here is some helpful content:
Start With a Professional Blog
There are lots of free blogging platforms to create a blog - Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress.com, etc...but if you want to stand out and build a brand, you should start a self-hosted blog.
- Register a domain name
- Purchase a hosting package
- Install WordPress
- Select a WordPress theme
- Install WordPress plugin
- Create WordPress pages
- Publish your first post
A self-hosted blog gives you lots of advantages and opportunities to manage and grow your blog. It gives you more control over your blog SEO, marketing, growth, and audience. You're not limited by the free blogging platform's terms and conditions.
The question is how do you write a blog for beginners that gives you complete control over your blog content and audience, and why you need to start your blog on WordPress.
WordPress is the #1 blogging platform for many online marketers and businesses. At the time of writing, about 43% of websites on the internet are built on WordPress content management systems. I advise you to start your blog on WordPress.
Here is what you need to start a professional blog on WordPress.
For a details step-by-step beginner's guide to blogging on WordPress, here is a comprehensive blog post.
Start Building an Email List from Day One
When I started blogging, I made the mistake of not starting email marketing earlier. It is one of the decisions I look back to with regret. Don't make the same mistakes...
You may be wondering who is going to subscribe to your newsletter. You don't need to figure that out, just put up your email newsletter and continue publishing quality content regularly. Your blog visitors will decide whether to opt-in or not.
Email marketing is one of the most qualified traffic channels for many businesses and marketers. It gives you the opportunity to engage directly with your readers on a personalized level. You can mention your subscribers by name, location, gender, date of birth, etc...
The problem is that it costs money to maintain an active email marketing service. As a beginner blogger, you may not be earning from your blog at the moment, which makes it difficult to maintain a monthly active email account.
If this is you, you can subscribe to the free Getresponse email marketing services. The free account allows up to 500 subscribers before you can upgrade to a paid account. Here is the link.
Create Helpful Content
The main reason people will read your blog is to find solutions to their problem - this could be in their personal life, business, marriage, health, fitness, hobbies, etc...whatever is the reason you write to attract an audience to your blog, your content must meet their expectation.
- Write as you speak and don't use two words where one will do.
- Research your topic ahead of writing
- Do keyword research to gather more search terms
- Analyze the search result for your target keyword
- Write content outline to structure your content
- Use bullets point - see this section
- Use Sub headings
- Proof read your content - use a free tool like Grammarly
- Include original images - use a tool like Canva
- Spend more time on your headline - Use a tool like Coschedule headline analyzer
One of the mistakes bloggers make is trying to publish more content within a short period. The quality of your content is more important than the frequency of publication. Focus on the content quality, rather than running to meet a certain number of posts every week.
On average, it takes 9 hours to write a high-quality 3,500 word blog post. This is not taking into account the research process which could take anywhere from a day to a week, depending on your knowledge of the topic.
Some topics will take less time to write, some topics might take more, it all depends on your level of expertise and industry knowledge. This content you're reading takes more than 15 hours to write, excluding the research process. I had to keep a journal with me jotting down ideas, memories and writing down each point as it appears in mind.
Here are some helpful tips to help your write better content:
The Headline Matters
I have touched on this briefly above but it is worth a standalone section.
Your content headline is the first element of a blog post a potential audience will see to determine if the content body gets read or not. If the headline fails to grab the reader's attention, the article does not exist.
The headline is so powerful that many pieces of content created begin with a headline. Take a look at the newspapers, press releases, emails, newsletters, social media posts, adverts, letters, etc...all these content types usually begin with a subject line.
That's how powerful the headline is...
To learn more about how to write attention grabbing headlines, here is some helpful content.
Install Analytics
One of the beauties of internet marketing is that every piece of action can be tracked and measured. You can track virtually every action people take on your website and measure their effect towards your goal.
Analytics tools let you track your visitors actions like clicks, visit, gender, location, landing pages, traffic source, scroll, time on site, page visit, engagements, purchase, download, signups,etc. As you can see, you can track any action on your website..
There are different types of analytics tools to track many aspects of your marketing campaign, Google Analytics remains one of the best and widely used. In fact, Google Analytics is considered a default marketing tool for business.
As a beginner, you may not feel the need to install it on your website, but this is one of the tools you can't run an online business without. You need to track website traffic to make measurable adjustments and smart decisions backed by data.
Installing Google Analytics is not difficult, here is a step by step tutorial. And if you prefer a walk through video, you can watch below.
Don't Start a Make Money Online Blog
One of the biggest mistakes of blogging for beginners is writing about making money online when in actual sense, they have no real life examples to show.
Making money online is one of the most competitive niches in online marketing and where experience makes a big difference. If you don't have proof of earnings, it's hard to write convincing posts that will make people take you seriously.
Writing about how to make money for beginners without any proof of income is like teaching a group of students how to fly a plane when you've never flown one yourself. You're not even a trained pilot. How do you expect your student to take your advice seriously?
People will only listen and buy the recommendation of someone they consider an expert or authority on the subject. Start Working on building your expert portfolio and credibility, share success stories and failures, winning and losing, and gradually your readers will consider you an expert.
This is one best advice I read when I started blogging - it took me a while to accept but I'm glad I did.
- automatically share your latest post on social media
- optimize wordpress images
- lazyload
- monitor server downtime
- enable brute force protection
- Enable videopress
- Display images in full screen carousel
- Enable testimonial content types
- Enable portfolio page type
- And more...
The Less Plugins, The Better
For many beginners bloggers, this is something you can't escape
You'd think that the more plugins you have on your blog, the better its performance, right? Wrong...if you want to make a blog for beginners that will be SEO optimized, fast, mobile responsive, and give better user experience, you need less plugins.
What you need is the right plugins that will do the tasks, and most importantly, consider plugins that can perform multiple tasks. For example, you can use JetPack to:
So instead of using separate plugins for each of these tasks, use Jetpack to handle all of them and save yourself from installing over 7 to 8 plugins. Likewise there are other plugins that can perform several tasks and save you from installing separate plugins for each task such as WP Rocket.
If you have WP Rocket active on your blog, you can confidently disable many other known optimization plugins like Litepseed cache, W-3 Total cache, Autoptimize, Super cache, Lazy load plugin, etc. You don't need any of these plugins when WP Rocket is enabled on your blog.
Conclusion...
There are a million and one lessons to learn in blogging for beginners; therefore, I have just scratched the surface.
Over the last eight years or so, I have learned a lot about internet marketing. I'm sure you have learned more than I do in your blogging journey so far, right?
I would like and appreciate it if you share with us your experience. And the lessons learned from your years in the blogging for money and internet marketing industries.