A blogger is a person who posts information on blogs for people to consume. That is the best blogger meaning or blogger definition out there. The key word there is information. You can blog from anywhere. Whether you are in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, India, United states or anywhere at all, in this article, you will learn how to make money blogging
Blogging is all about sharing information. From News to technology, games, videos, finance, gossip and all of that. If you are sharing any of these information on a blog then you are a blogger. So a success blogger is in other words a successful information distributor. This article is suitable for those looking for how to make money with a blog for beginners.
If you want to become a blogger, that means you want to become an information distributor.
Gone are the days when becoming a blogger was just to kill boredom. Now, becoming a blogger is very lucrative. Bloggers are rich, powerful and influential people in our world. If you are looking for a good career that will give you time, space and money, then you should consider becoming a blogger.
But blogging has become very competitive as more and more people try to make money blogging. However, no matter how competitive it has become, you can become a successful blogger if you follow what is written in this article.
A lot of the people who become bloggers don’t follow the good ethics of blogging. They just open a blog and start blogging and nothing more. That means if you start blogging today and you follow some basic instructions, you will already fly above these people.
Blogging is not very difficult when you have a plan and follow best practice. As a matter of fact, I have started a blog and in less than 2 months, I started making $100 a month and receiving lots of traffic. Of course I have big blogs where I generated tens of thousands of dollars. But no matter how successful I have become in blogging, I always follow the basic rules. I will share these with you.
First, if you want to create a blog, we have written a step by step guide that you should follow to create a blog. You can go here to read it and start your blog today: How to create a blog in less than 20 minutes
With that guide, you should be able to create a blog in about 20 minutes. Now let’s look at how to make money blogging
How to make money blogging
Follow these steps to to make money blogging in Nigeria, Ghana, United states or anywhere in the world
1. Pick the right niche
The first step to become a successful blogger is to pick a niche (topic) that you are passionate and good at. This is very important in order to have a profitable blog
Don’t open news blog because everyone is doing news blogs. If you are good and passionate about game, open a gaming blog that is primary focused on game. No matter the niche you are good on, start from there. In future when you have established, you can venture into other niches.
When you blog about a niche that you are good and passionate about, it becomes easier to write content because you know it all . Your motivation level will also be high because that is what you love. There is nothing wrong with blogging for money but you have to be sure that you balance that by give your readers good contents
So in summary, blog about what you love.
2. Choose a fast hosting and fast Theme (Template)
When you are launching your WordPress blog, we recommend that you pick a good hosting company that is fast and with good customer support.
Speed is very important in blogging. Nobody loves a slow loading blog. Neither do Google or other search engines. A fast loading blog will help you rank high. And the speed starts from your hosting. Also a a good customer support is important because you may run into trouble and need help.
In our guide, we recommend Hostgator, they are a very fast web hosting company with good customer support. For this blog, we are currently using InMotion hosting. They are fast with good support too. We have also tried NameCheap in the past and they are good . Any of these is fast with good support. Bluehost is also popular among bloggers.
Another thing that will impact your speed is the WordPress theme or blogger template that you use. You need a fast and clean theme. The theme you use can greatly affect your speed. So make sure you use tools like Google speed insight and Pingdom to test any theme before you purchase.
You can search Theme Forest for fast themes, MyThemeShop are also known for building fast and SEO friendly themes.
3. Originality
Pay a very big attention, if you want to become successful at blogging and make money bloging, originality is very important! This is where a lot of bloggers fail. They open a blog and start copying and pasting post from other bloggers. You may fool your readers but you cannot fool Google and other search engines. Google and other search engines spend so much money to fight plagiarism, so, they are ahead of the game.
In no time, you will be found out and your blog marked as spam. That will be the end of the love from search engine. Your traffic will begin to go down.
In this blog, we write all content 100%. We use our many years of experience and where necessary consult big experts in the field to put out educative and informative contents to help people make money.
Note that, Google and other search engines have tools that allows people report duplicate contents to them. Let’s say you copy a post from another blogger without permission and credit. They sees it, and go to Google and report you, in less than 24 hours, Google will check and remove your link from their search. If 5 or more report comes against you and they investigate and find it is valid, your blog maybe marked as spam.
It is very dangerous to be marked as spam by Google. Because one of the best way to make money blogging is via Google adsense, which is also owned by Google. Although it cannot be established, but being marked as spam might likely have effect on your Google adsense. You never know
Google and other search engine love original content. They will reward you for it with more traffic.
Original content also tells Google that you are not just another blog, that you actually have good information to share. It makes you authoritative.
If you ever have to copy a paragraph from a anther blog in your article, make sure you give them credit. Google will see it and not penalize you.
Unless you are in the news niche where quotes and press release are sometimes the same, you sould by no means use duplicate content.
4. Do your SEO
SEO means search engine optimization. To simply put SEO is the way in which you try to improve your traffic from Search engines. As you may already know, the most important traffic for bloggers and businesses are those from search engine. That is because they are targeted traffic.
Search engine traffic has the potential to make you more money than any other traffic. And it will give your blog more authourity and leverage than any other traffic. Advertisers love blogs with lots of organic traffic. Meanwhile, traffic from search engine are generally called organic traffic.
The basic SEO that you have to do here is on page SEO. It is very important.
There are plugins that will guide and help you. The two most popular SEO plugins are Yoast and All in One SEO pack.
Yoast is the most popular at over 5 million downloads. And guess what? We use yoast here at MakeMoney.ng
It is not just okay to write a blog post and click publish. Use any of these plugin and follow the instructions when posting to optimize your article and help it perform well on search engine.
When you open your WordPress writing interface after installing Yoast plugin, you will see the box below it. Here is example of Yoast box
Then click on Focus keyword. Set a keyword for the post you are targeting. The plugin will automatically bring up suggestions for you to try. Try out those suggestions in red and at least get an average green light on the top bar. That shows your on page SEO is good and well optimized for that post.
Here is how the focus keyword box looks when you click on it, note that we are yet to set the focus keyword for this post in this screenshot.
The importance of this is to optimize your post and help search engine understand it more. The suggestions are helpful and has the potential to help your article rank high in search engine if you do them.
Most new bloggers just install the yoast plugin or any other SEO plugin and that is it. They don’t take their time to work this.
5. Be consistent
It is not enough to open a blog, drop five post, disappear for a month, come back, drop one post and disappear again. No one will take you serious. Not your readers and not search engine. Consistency is key.
Keep writing. As much as you can. No matter how low, write at least a post every week. If you can, do it more frequently.
Put yourself in the shoes of your readers. You saw a nice blog today, you click, read the posts, you love it. Then you come back tomorrow, nothing new, come back a day after, nothing new, 5 days after, nothing new, one week after, nothing new. Will you seriously keep going back?
So try and be consistent. Google and other search engines love consistency too. It means you are a dependable source.
You also don’t know which of your post will be your break even post. The one that will go viral and draw the attention of the world to you.
Never stop. Keep writing. The more you write, the more readers you gain, the more authority you build.
Don’t expect to start a blog today and tomorrow, it is boom! Unless you have big money to throw at it. If you are starting from the scratch, be consistence and patient.
6. Monetize your blog
One of the ultimate reasons of becoming a blogger is to make money from your blog. Learning how to monetize your blog is key to making money from your blog. To make money blogging is to monetize your blog the right way
One question beginners ask is, how do bloggers make money? All blogs cannot be monetize same way. There are blogs, because of their niche that will make good money from Google adsense, there are also blogs that will make more money from Affiliate marketing or selling your own products.
As a blogger, you have to experiment and find the best way to make money from your blog.
These are most popular ways to make money blogging.
1. Google Adsense
Google Adsense is one of the most popular way to monetize and make money from your blog. As a matter of fact, we use Google Adsense here at MakeMoney.ng. Once you start having traffic and have written enough content on your blog. It is time to apply for Google Adsense. All you have to do is go to Google Adsense website and apply.
It is easy and straight forward. Once you are approved, you put the code in your blog and start making money. Google will show ads on your blog, get money from the advertisers and split it with you. Without struggle or any issues.
Google Adsense works well on all kinds of blog as long as it does not violates its terms and conditions. You should experiment and try different kind of ad units and placement to see which works well for your blog.
For more, read our article: How to make money with Google AdSense
2. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing can make you so much money from your blog but that depends on the niche. If you are in a niche that revolves around products and services such as: Insurance, properties, finance, Fashion, blogging, gadgets, gaming and more like this, you can make a lot from Affiliate marketing than with Google Adsense.
All you have to do is join an affiliate network like: Commision Junction, Linkshare, Amazon Affiliate, ShareASale, ebay Partner Newtork, ClickBank. Then look for products or services that relates to your niche and offer good commission and promote on your blog.
As your readers buy or sign up, you are making money.
For niche like News and gossip, Affiliate marketing may not perform so well.
You can read more here: How to make money through affiliate marketing
3. Sell your product
You can also sell your products on your blog and make even more money than any other method. The good thing about selling your product is that you don’t share your profit with anyone.
Depending on your niche, you can sell your books, ebooks, fashion, gadgets and anything that relates to your niche. The good thing is, if you dont have product to sell, you can create your own an online shop with Shopify.
Then copy inventories from different manufacturers and suppliers around the world into your online store. Promote them on your blog. When people buy, the suppliers will ship the product to the buyers and you get your payment.
You can find a step by step guide to create an online shop with 14 days free trial here: How to create online shop very easily with Shopify
4. Sponsored post and direct ad
You can make money from your blog by accepting sponsored post. Individuals and companies will pay you to place a post on your blog. The post will usually rhyme with the content of your blog. If you want to accept sponsored post, you should put up information on your blog that you accept sponsored post and drop an email they can contact you.
You can also make money from direct adverts on your blog. Advertisers will contact you, you reach an agreement and get paid. It is advisable to have an ‘advertise with us’ section, where you put your contact details and media kit.
These are the basic, there are other ways you can monetize your blog. Research more depending on your niche. You have to be creative as a blogger, experiment and find the right income stream. You can use more than one income channel.
7. Optimize your blog:
You should optimize your blog for search engine and for your users. This is important. As a blogger, you should always make sure that your blog is well optimized at all time
Google and other search engines love blogs with:
Low bounce rate
Your bounce rate should not be higher than 69%. Bounce rate is when visitors come to your site, read one page and leave. Use tools like Related post plugins to keep them engaged. Also Interlink your articles.
Mobile friendly
Make Your blog mobile friendly. Google loves this. To do this, make sure that your blog is responsive. By that I mean, it can adapt to any screen be it computer, laptop, Tablet or mobile phone. You can check the mobile friendliness of your blog here
Load time
Make your page load faster. Don’t use too many unnecessary plugins. Try using a caching plugin to improve your speed. A CDN network can also help.
Get visitors coming back
Engage with your visitors and get them coming back to your blog. That will tell search engine that your site is loved.
Click through rate
When your blog appear on search engine, how many times it is click will go a long way to influence your ranking. If a lot of people click when they see it, it tells search engine that your blog is informative and educative. they will reward you
So make your search engine snippet catchy for readers to click when your blog appears on search engine. You can use the Yoast plugin to write a good meta description for your home page, pages, categories, tags and posts.
Submit your blog to search engine
Submitting your blog to search engine will help them understand your blog more. And it will also help you understand how your blog is performing and where you need to make adjustment.
You can click here to submit your blog to Google. All you have to do is sign up and submit your link. Verify that you own the site. Then generate a sitemap with the yoast plugin or any other sitemap plugin and submit it.
Click here to submit your blog to Bing and Yahoo. After submision sign up for an account so that you understand where you can improve.
Also click here to submit your blog to Yandex.
Link Building
Link building is all about other blogs that link to you. It is very important for SEO because it tells search engine that your are important whenever a bigger site links back to you. But never ever try to build links with blackharts. Let them come naturally. Only white hart method.
In your own article, try linking to resource page of big blogs and websites, they may notice and link back. Also explore other white hart method of getting natural links.
8. Build followership
It is important to build followership. You can use an email list like we do here at MakeMoney.ng. Let your readers subscribe to your email list. Anytime you publish a new post or set of posts, you can email them. A lot of them may not know there is something new.
Also whenever you have a product to, use it. Email list is very powerful for the success of a blogger.
You can also build social media followership. But try and focus on one social netwrok first. It is very distracting to try and do all at once. You can open many but focus on growing one. Facebook and Twitter perform better than the rest in terms of referral.
9. Invest the money you are making
You have to understand that blogging is a business. It is not just an hobby. Treat it like a business. As you make money, try and invest a portion of it in your SEO, creating ads, enhancing designs, contents and expand your reach. A success blogger is a blogger that treat is blog like a business. Don’t just focus on how to make money blogging and forget to invest some part of the money back into it.
10. Keep learning
You never stop learning. To become a successful blogger and make money blogging, you have to keep reading and researching. New information come out quite often, dont be outdated. Search engines change their algorithm frequently, stay updated.
