Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

Blogging is a great way to build a business that allows you the freedom to work from anywhere in the world whenever you want. That sure does sound amazing, but it doesn’t just happen you have to put in the work. Blogging requires commitment and it requires you to wear many hats. 

Now if you are committed and you want to make this work then the good news is you will see results and you will create a business from your blog. This blog is one of many for me but its one of my more enjoyable blogs to operate.

I suggest for anyone new to this start with 1 blog. If you handle it ok and you can get things done then consider adding another one and so on. Distractions don’t make successful projects. Focus makes for a successful project.

I blog because I enjoy the creative process of taking thought to the web page. Lately, I’ve had a lot of emails and messages from people telling me how the content here has helped them grow their business and start a new business. I love that stuff, helping people create a lifestyle that suits them is one of my main goals with this site.

You can earn money from your blog from a multitude of ways, this article I’ll keep pretty simple but in the end, I have included a few ways that you can monetize your blog. 

If you are serious about creating blogging as a great business mindset. This is just what you need to read, take it in and then apply the steps listed. You can be successful you just have to apply yourself to the goal.

Step 1 – Market Research & Domain Names

The first step on your way to success is to identify the niche where you will be building your niche site in. For me, this is one of the hardest steps in the process because the choices are unlimited. I feel like I need to have something draw me to it before I choose that niche.

I was selling women’s clothing on a dropshipping store before. I know nothing about women’s clothing or how to promote them. My advice is that you choose something you can write about and have an understanding of the audience that would be interested in your niche. It helps.

What to look for:

• Low to medium difficulty
• Enough traffic to be profitable 500+
• Variety of products & offers to promote
• The quality level of content needed to get momentum

Once you have identified the niche you want to play in you will need to have somewhere to build your website. Start with a domain name and then we can start building your website.

There was a time when keyword-rich domains were all the rage. This still works but it’s not pretty and they often look like this – weightlossformen.net or something to that effect.

You should be looking at a branded type domain. These domains are much easier to brand theme and then sell in the future. This would look something like this – bendis.com 

I use NameCheap.com, NameSilo.com and GoDaddy.com to buy domains. There are hundreds of domain registrars that you can use, this is what I use.

Use the domain search bar to find the domain that you like. Type away using keywords or your branded name.

Does it matter what TLD you use?

Honestly, I say it doesn’t. I have sites using .plus, .site, .shop. me. io. and this one uses a .xyz pick what you think works.

Once you purchase the domain we can move to step 2.

When you have a successfully gone through this process in full for your niche website you will see results like the one below

Step 2 – Get Website Hosting

Your domain needs somewhere to live and that is where web hosting comes from. You will also be able to create domain name emails like [email protected] that you will need to make your business more professional looking.

Get Website Hosting Here

You want web hosting for either 1 website or future planning for 3 or 4 websites. The choice is up to you. I have recommended a few on this page.

Hosting is best when you have enough resources to run your blog, If you start to get a lot of website traffic and you have a small hosting plan you will have to start increasing your hosting plan so the resources you have can accommodate the visitors who are on your website.

Once your domain is connected you can create some domain emails to use. You can use your name or your pen name if you are using one and you should have a hello@ or admin@ type email as well. You can use this email to sign up to tools and business required platforms.

If you need help setting up your website hosting you can speak to the web hosting platform support people.

Step 3 – Setting up your blog and installing it

When it comes to the convenience of setting up your blog, your web hosting platform can assist you if you need help. To set up your blog, you can call their customer service department and tell them that you want to install a WordPress blog to your site as well as ask them to talk to you throughout the process.

Once you have done this process a few times yourself you can start to get a site live in just under 10 minutes. It took me a lot of time, failure and long conversations with tech support to get to this place but now I’m gravy baby 

You can use whatever content management system that you want. I like WordPress and Shopify for my blogs. Shopify because I am heavy into eCommerce as well. You can make money online with any CMS it is not restricted to just these two.

Now you have the website connected and your logins you need to start building the pages and theme of the website.

You will need to choose a theme, for anyone on a budget you can easily use a free theme with no negative impact on your website performance. But if you want to have a little more appeal you should look at getting a theme builder like Divi or Thrive Themes.

Get Thrive Themes Builder.

The theme builder will be able to help you custom edit your entire website look and feel. These also have added features now for SEO, Advertising and affiliates built in so you get a little more than just a theme builder.

The next step is to fill out the theme. This involves adding your logo, selecting the theme colours and branding so it looks nice.

To get a deeper look at creating a professional-looking Blog read this guide.

After you have themed the website look and feel you can now push forward with the page builds.

Pages are long term pages that are designed to act as the foundational walls that support the house. Posts are designed to be date-based, they may get lost when you are creating multiple posts.

Pages are for your core money pages

Posts are for quick updates or supporting content that supports your money pages.

The key pages you will need:

1. Home page
2. About page
3. Affiliate disclaimer page
4. Privacy policy page
5. Contact page

You will need more pages and posts but that’s for the next step. This is for you to build the core pages.

Add the plugins that you need to add to get the job done.

What I suggest as a starter pack is:

• SEO plugin I like SEO Framework
• The backup plugin I like is Backup Buddy
• Image Optimiser plugin I like ShortPixel
• Affiliate link manager plugin I like Affiliatly

This is your quick starter pack of plugins. You can add more or use different ones but try to limit the plugin number to 10 so you do not slow down your website.

Step 4 – Mapping Content & Writing Great Reviews

Content is the fuel for your vehicle and you need a lot of fuel to get that starting momentum. In my experience, a blog starts to get moving after you have 25-30 articles live on the blog. These are all pages that have more than 500 words and use unique images where possible but they also link to internal pages to help power each page up.

You should have some market research and keyword research from Step 1. You will use that to map out the content schedule and additional pages and posts. The keywords should be used as a focus topic of each page you create. 

Affiliate blogs usually consist of review type content and recommendation posts about products and services. I suggest you build a sitemap of your website navigation and structure in excel or Google sheets.

Here is a great example:

You can see the topic of web hosting and how it has 4 core pages

1. Reseller hosting
2. Dedicated hosting
3. VPS hosting
4. Shared hosting

You can see the topics attached to each core silo is about something more specific and it relates to that topic silo. Very powerful, very effective and I suggest you map this out with your keyword and content so you have a plan for what to write about and where to publish it.

I write 70% of my content for this blog. It is also very obvious that I write most of this because I have this inconsistency with my writing of the word “the” it often comes out on my laptop, on my mobile, on my Facebook everywhere as “the” and I can’t catch it every time to fix it. Drives me mad.

I love creative writing and educational writing formats. I can’t do it all though, I manage a portfolio of sites and have ongoing work projects meaning I am time poor. You will become more aware of your time as you grow the website.

For some of my other blogs, I don’t write anything at all. You can find content writers on Fiverr, Legiit, Upwork, Facebook groups or anywhere people are looking for work.

Step 5 – Promoting your site

To optimise the earning ability of your blog to make money, you need to promote your blog. And by promoting your site, you need both work and money. If you are writing articles and the content of them are helpful and informative, some of your works will grow organically, meaning, your articles will find its way to generate incoming links. But this will take some time before you rip the benefits of your efforts.

I highly suggest you build out the most popular social media profiles, question and answer websites and forums where you can share your blogs. Joining groups and activity posting to your social profiles is just the start.

I like using DLVRIT social content sharing software you can get a free account to start with. You can also use an app like OneUp.com to promote your content online.

As far as my experience goes, you must be active in generating shares, posts and communicating your latest blogs or pages with your social network and activity growing your syndication networks like Scoopit, Hubpages, Pearltrees and other content syndication websites.

You need to make things happen and not be waiting for things to happen. If you want to get massive amounts of incoming links, you need to use some reliable link building tactics. This involves money, but the rewards will certainly outweigh your costs for getting incoming links.

Backlinks make the momentum happen. Content is what you use to attract the links. You may need to pay for some backlinks especially the powerful ones. The other tactics are outreach with an email to other websites or helping people out online by doing something for them so they return the favour with a link or review of your service.

Backlinks are nitro fuel for your vehicle they push you further ahead. There is a market for buying and selling backlinks is a huge market. Not the focus of this article but I will cover this in a future article for sure.

Step 6 – Sources of income

Now that we have the blog built and have actively started promoting our content we need to add in that money-making sweet sauce. Here are some easy ways to add commission generating elements to your blog.

How To Monetize Your Blog

You need to have at least one of these to start getting paid. 

1. AdSense

I used to be all in on Adsense but like anything that you don’t own you need to be prepared for a sudden switch in policy or algorithm. I had an active and healthy portfolio of Adsense revenue-generating blogs. Each site was earning me a lot of money, easy money each month until I didn’t I lost it all overnight.

I still use Adsense today but I am very careful with how many sites I have and how many accounts I have active at one time. 

Adsense works by showing banners on your website for other promotions and companies. You get paid based on the number of clicks and type of banner shown. Each banner topic has a keyword style focus and a CPC per click that you get a portion of when people click that banner ad.

What I do is to set ads into a text and image-based ads with a 250 by 300-pixel ads and it works best for me. Not only that, but I also get some shares on their referrals programs and I earn a lot with their normal ads.

2 Affiliate programs

Another effective way for your blog to make money is by promoting several affiliate programs on your site. Now, this is one thing you should not be missing in your site since its the entire reason we are creating a niche site.

Some affiliate networks to join are:

1. ClickBank
2. JVZoo
3. CJ.com
4. Share A Sale
5. Join these networks

One of the best affiliate products that I used to promote is the Thesis WordPress theme. In this product, I was earning $500 a week from promoting a theme like the ones we used in the earlier steps in this article. Imagine if you have 5 to 10 products in your blog, then your income from these products will grow like weeds in your garden and soon enough you will have a lot of weeds. A bad analogy I know but it does compound and stacks up.

Make sure that you choose to sell those affiliate programs that are of high quality and good reputation so that you will have a greater chance to sell them and make a profit. I added JVZoo as there can be some gems on there and the software side of the network is pretty easy to generate an income from just using 2 or 3 software promotions. You should stay away from those products that are of low quality since they will do no good to you or your reputation.

3 eBook sales

Selling an eBook is one of the most overdone ways for you to earn extra income with your blog. It still works though even though everyone has promoted an ebook at some point in their online journey.

If you are good at writing then create an informational PDF that you will use to build the ebook. Take, for example, let say you’ve successfully created an eBook on best ways to treat skin problems and have healthier skin, and it is worth 10 US Dollars.

If your eBook is worth $10 and you can sell it to about 1000 people, then you could earn a sweet 10,000 US Dollars for your effort. Not such a bad idea right? Imagine if your eBook is priced at $20 and 5000 or more people all over the world will buy it, you could also add your affiliate program and allow 20% of the purchase price and let other people sell your ebook. What more if you have several eBooks that are priced for more than $20?

This is an option that still works and it does generate good money. You would do this by having a dedicated page on your blog about the ebook and why people need to buy it. 

4 Continuity programs

A good way to generate regular income is to have a continuity program. A continuity program is a site where you can gain a continuous source of income from those individuals who are subscribing to service your offer. This works for memberships, SaaS, Service-related or subscription to a thing.

Making your blog a membership site gives you the ability to generate monthly income from thousands of your member. You must have something worthy of people paying you monthly to get access to you or the things you promote.

5 Sponsorships or private ad sales

You can also gain additional income from offering private ad sales in your blog from advertisers.

This is a good thing to do as the money you can gain from your 125 x 125 ads or bigger is direct from buyer to seller with you being the seller. You would need to know your numbers and have a growth plan to make your blog a place that is worth paying to advertise on.

You can use this tactic for selling link placements on your blog as well. The money involved with link placement is decent and you could do a one-off payment or a monthly low-cost rental. A lot of money is exchanged in the backlink market.

7 Amazon associates

With Amazon’s affiliate program, you can earn an increasing amount of monthly income. They have slashed commission numbers this year but the organic conversion on Amazon is insane. The money will be hard work to get substantial amounts but it works and you will see sales.

For each purchase that is made from Amazon through your blog, you will get a commission from it. So if you are part of the program, and you are promoting 5 products or even more and each of those 5 high-quality products is making sales, by the end of the month you will get the percentage of commission allocated to that category that you are promoting.

I do not use Amazon for affiliate marketing but you are welcome to use it because it does work.

Blogging as a business is a reality and it is available to everyone. You can create blogs on just about any darn topic and you will get active visitors and an audience. But the hard work and slow start are what stops many people who try, I stopped first because my targeting was way off.

I picked some monkey poop niche with non-niche related targeting and saw nothing happen on one of my first blogs but as I learned the craft of who my audience WAS and WHAT my keywords should have been it all changed.

It takes 3-6 months to see momentum take place. You need to be consistent through the quiet times so that you are building the momentum. When Google is ready to reward you all that hard work will catch up to you and your affiliate links will start driving commission and the blog will become more popular and more like a business.

I never in a million years thought I would be a blogger. Things change and my viewpoint shifted to a lifestyle that suited what I wanted. Now I own several blogs and I am extremely happy to have made the change.

The concept is simple. Build the blog, fill it with content and promote it. Keep adding content and keep promoting it and the magic happens.

This takes time and repetition just like working out at the gym your scrawny arms need repetition of weight lifts to get bigger. That’s the same thing happening to your blog.

This information will help you and guide you to get that start at blogging as a business. Follow the steps and do the work. Nothing comes from inactivity. I hope you find this helpful and it inspires you to build a blog.

I want you to build your own business and work your hours that’s all a simple request from me to you.