Blogging is a great hobby, or a way to make some extra money on the side. If you build a big enough following, you can easily make a full-time living out of it. If your blog has been going for a while and you’re thinking about taking it to the next level, you should look into finding collaborations with other bloggers and seeking out companies that are willing to pay you to review your products. But if you’re going to do that, you need to consider how you’re presenting yourself online.
If people don’t think that you’re professional, they’re not going to trust you to review their products. Having a big following is a part of that, but there are plenty of other things that you can do. These are some of the easiest ways to make your blog look more professional.
Fast Loading Times
There’s nothing worse than a website that doesn’t load quickly. People are only willing to wait around for a few seconds before they’ll get fed up and go elsewhere. If you’re approaching people about collaborations or reviews, the first thing that they’re going to do is have a look around your blog. If they’re waiting for ages for it to load and it runs really slowly, that tells them that you haven’t invested much money in good web design or hosting. They’re also going to assume that you’ll struggle to get new readers because of the slow loading times. There are a couple of different reasons for slow loading times. Sometimes it’s because you’re not using a very good hosting service, but it can also be caused by the theme that you’re using. Some of them simply aren’t built very well and they cause slow load times. It’s worth trying a few different ones to see if it makes a difference.
A Virtual Office
There’s no need to rent out an office space if you’re running a blog, but it doesn’t look that professional if you’re asking people to send things to your home address. Luckily, you can get a virtual office with a mailing address and then have the mail forwarded on to you. This gives the impression that you’ve got a much larger operation than you have and gets rid of any stigma about running the business from home.
Proper Editing
This is such an important part of blogging, but you’d be surprised how many people forget it. If you’re posting articles that are filled with spelling and grammar errors, it’s frustrating for your readers. But more importantly, it shows a lack of care on your part. It doesn’t take that long to read through your posts a couple times and check for any mistakes. If you can’t even be bothered to do that, it gives the impression that you don’t put much effort into the blog. If you’re trying to convince people to sponsor posts and send you products to review, they need to be confident that you’ll write a well crafted, quality post that is going to help them sell more products. If you’re writing badly edited articles, that reflects badly on the company and they won’t want to work with you.
If you follow these basic rules, you can make your blog look much more professional, and find more sources of income!
•What tips or tricks do you have for bloggers trying to make an income? Comment below!
Disclosure: This post was a collaboration.
Thank you for reading!
