Start Blog Business 101: Everything You Need to Know as a Noob

If you are here you must be looking for ways to start your blog business and make some extra money by working online. Back in 2013 I was in your shoes, struggling to find some shortcuts to make money from blogging. Let me tell you this straight away! there is NO shortcut.

If anyone is telling you to follow them step by step and you will start earning, they are not only misleading you but infact they are using your innocence to make money for themselves. This is my biggest learning from past.

If there is no shortcut and step by step guide then how can I start making money? you might ask. Here is the million dollar tip for you.

To be able to own a successful business you only need two things; Patience and Care.

You don’t need to buy any training or course, all you need is to have patience and to be able to carefully manage your business (in this case, your blog). Everything else is available online Free Of Cost.

You won’t start making money after reading a single post. This post will help you to take your first step.

Saying it again, after reading this post till the end YOU WON’T START MAKING MONEY from blogging, instead you will have a clear understanding of;

• What WordPress is
• How you can start blogging using WordPress
• What is hosting and domain
• How you can set up your first blog
• The basics of publishing and optimizing your blog
• What is a niche and keyword analysis? And how important they are for making the money from blogging.
• How you can drive traffic to your blog
• and the best part, how you can monetize your blog.

Once your understand the whats and hows, making money from blogging is way easier than you think. The only catch is, it needs patience and care. Do you think you have both? follow along then!

Today you are going to take your first step to start earning with the blog business.

Making Money From Blogging Business

Have you ever heard about WordPress? Hopefully, you have. But if not, don’t worry. Let’s start with a “Website”, you must’ve heard about the website. In fact, you know what a website is because you are reading one right now.

Have you ever thought, about why people write so much content on the internet? Yeah, I know they have a passion for writing, but seriously who spends so much time on writing unless they are getting something back? Do you know what they are getting? “MONEY”.

Let me tell you this, earning online is as easy as boiling water. So, can you boil water?

• Pour water into a bowl
• Put it on the stove or oven
• Wait enough time, till it starts boiling.
• Now take it out with high caution, or else you will get your hands to burn.

You know the steps and you can do them easily. But still, the last two steps are somewhat tricky.

• Waiting, and
• Care

After doing the hard work of pouring water and putting it in a stove or oven, you have to wait to see the results of your hard work, but after seeing the results, you have to be highly cautious to take it out and use it.

The same thing goes for Websites and Blogs. (I’ll explain the difference in a bit)

• Create a blog
• Put content on it
• Wait enough time, to see some traffic
• Now use that traffic to your benefit, like showing them advertisements, or selling your product to them, etc., there are so many ways.

Everyone you see on the internet is making money out of their content. Let’s dive into this ocean and start a blog business for ourselves.

The Difference Between a Blog and a Website:

Let me first explain a little bit about the difference between a Blog and a Website; 

• A website is a place to showcase your portfolio whether you are an individual or a company. Mostly it has static content, which gets updated very few times. On the Website, you tell your viewers what you or your company is about, what service you provide, etc. An online store is also a website as it has products to sell.
• A Blog, on the other hand, is a place where readers come to gain knowledge. Bloggers write articles on their blogs, and readers read them and use the knowledge to solve problems in their real life. Blogs are dynamic, as content on them gets updated many times a day, and people write new posts and comments on them.

No doubt, nowadays, the concept of static websites is fading and the difference between a blog and a website is removing. But don’t get confused about this. Just remember one thing for now, on blogs you write new posts, and your reader takes knowledge from them and engages in them mostly using the comments section.

Before going into this more deeply, let me introduce another term to you, WordPress.

What is WordPress?

So, how can you start a blog business and what steps should you take to start earning from your blog? On top of that, how can you build a blog? 

Start a Blog Business: Simplified for Beginners

To start a blog, you need to have two things:

1. A domain name, and
2. A Hosting service

Let’s think of it as you have a plot and an address to that plot. You built a building on that plot and when you need to send someone to your building you tell them the address.

Now think of plot as hosting, address as a domain name, and building as a blog. Got it?

You buy hosting, built a blog on it, and point your users to it by sharing your domain name with them.

Easy? No…

Now the question is, from where should I buy hosting and domain?

There are many providers of this service. We will surely cover this topic later in some other posts. But for now, here’s an interesting post by Niel Patel that will help you pick the right option for you.

Here’s the one we recommend, you can pick any hosting which fulfills your requirements to start your own blog business. The below steps to set up your hosting will be more or less the same for all hosting providers. If you get stuck you can reach us anytime with your query.

Bluehost, the Web Hosting Compay

Bluehost is a globally recognized company that provides hosting services at a very good price. They have the most stable hosting environment and provide hassle-free services to their customers.

With their special offers for readers of this article, if you signup with this link, you’ll get web hosting at $2.95/month for the next 36 months, as well as a FREE domain, Premium customer service, one-click WordPress install, 24×7 technical support and, of course, 30 days money back guarantee.

They don’t even ask for a contract, you can cancel their service at any time even after 30 days. The reason they are giving this much independence is that they know they are the best.

Let’s just not get fully biased, there are other services too, capable enough to compete with them. But when it comes to website and blog hosting you cannot compromise.

Setup Your Hosting Account

To get started, visit BlueHost’s homepage and click on the “Get Started Now” button.

They have multiple packages, but the basic package is way more than enough for us to start with.

After you select the basic package, Bluehost will give you two options,

• New Domain: if you are completely new and you don’t own any domain previously.
• I have a domain name: if you own a domain already and you want to continue using it.

Remember, BlueHost offers a FREE domain. So, you can select a new domain option.

Enter your desired domain name and click Next.

Now enter your account information to create the account,

Below this, you’ll find package information. The longer duration you select from the dropdown, the more you can save. Select a minimum of 36 months to start with, it’ll give you hassle-free 3 years of hosting, plus a whopping discount of 50%.

You can also find a few other offers on this page, the one which is highly recommended is Domain Privacy Protection, it’ll hides your personal data from WHOIS records.

After selecting the package, enter your payment information and submit the form. On the next screen, create a strong password for your account, using that you will access your CPanel.

Now that you have set up your hosting and domain, log in to your BlueHost account for the final step, WordPress installation.

Installing WordPress

On your BlueHost account, go to CPanel and open MOJO Marketplace by choosing the “One-Click Installs” button.

Click on WordPress Icon, then on the installation window click on the “Start” button. It will start the WordPress installation process.

• Select the domain· 
• Check “Show Advanced options”
• Enter the site name and title
• Enter a new username and password, using these you will be able to access your blog directly, add new articles, and maintain your blog.
• IMPORTANT > Check “Automatically create a new database for this installation”.
• Check the terms and conditions
• Click “Install Now”.

All Done.

You’ll see the progress screen, once everything is ready, it will provide you the login URL, your username, and password. (You will also get this information in your email).

This is it. You have your own blog, this is your first step towards starting your own blog business.

Now, click on the login URL and enter your username and password. Once you log in, you’ll see the WordPress dashboard. This is your home now, from here you’ll manage everything, your articles, pages, appearance, widgets, etc.

Start Blogging…

Okay, why not come back to our main agenda? With the help of Bluehost, you have a domain name, hosting, and a fully functional WordPress blog. Now is the time to start writing…

Remember, when it comes to blogging, the first and highest priority task is building the trust of your readers.

“The currency of blogging is authenticity and trust.”

Jason Calacanis

Successful blogging can be done in 3 simple steps.

• Step 1: Publishing and Optimizing 
• Step 2: Driving Traffic (Free and Paid) 
• Step 3: Monetizing your website

1. Publishing and Optimizing:

“Content is king”, as king cannot runs his kingdom alone, the content alone is also not enough. The catch here is “Relevency”, how much relevant content you are publishing matters a lot. By relevancy means sticking to your topic, we call it here “Niche”.

What is a Niche in Blogging?

Niche is a specific segment of topics that you focus on building and promoting your blog or website.

Why do you need to focus on Niche, instead of writing about everything?

You might say making money from blogging will be more easy if I write about everything so that every person on this earth has something to view on my blog. More people more views, right? NO, A BIG NOOO…

If you start writing about everything, your readers will loose their interest. You won’t be able to build trust and make authority. Your reader will not find te relevant content. You will get waisted trying to please everyone.

Instead, you have to pick a specific niche, the more specific niche you choose, the more easy it will be for you to build trust and gain traffic from search engines like Google.

Once you have chosen your niche, now is the time for Keyword Analysis.

What is Keyword Analysis and How it will help making money from Blogging?

Once you choose a niche, now is the time to identify what you needs to write for this niche. To find relevant ideas start with social media.

Find some hashtags and check what people are posting, what are their complains, and what problems they are facing.

Why? you might ask…

Everytime you open Google.com (or any other search engine) what you write? You write your problem. right? You go to the internet to find solution to your problems. Same goes for everyone, people will visit your article to look for the solution of the problem they are facing, to get some tips, guides and understand specific topic.

The query you write in search engine to find the solution of your problem is actually a “Keyword“. You give Google a keyword and in return Google gives you a list of blogs and articles related to that keyword.

Usually, Google returns millions of articles against single keyword. How you will compete it? How you will find the place for your blog in first page of the search results? There are millions of blogs about same topics, how your blog will comes on first page? For this we do “Keyword Analysis“.

Here’s a video explaining keyword analysis in 7 easy steps;

You can learn more about keyword analysis on this hubspot article.

The more relevant content you publish, the more pages you create for search engines to display in their search results. Although I am saying quantity is better, remember quality is best. Don’t underestimate the quality factor.

Important Tips for getting more Traffic from search engines:

• The frequency of publishing articles matters a lot, research shows that bloggers who publish new articles 20 to 25 times in a month get over two times more traffic than those who publish less than 10 times per month.
• Use keywords of your article wisely, it must appear within the first 200 words and around 3 to 4 times in the whole article.

Write as much content as you can, take a hint from the below suggestions:

• “How To” articles.
• List articles like “Top 7 ways to…” or “10 tips to improve…” etc.
• Definition articles, explain complicated things to your reader in a common language.
• Present a theory or argument.
• Create and publish resources like a free report or e-course etc.

Once you have content on your blog, move on to the next step.

2. Driving Traffic:

The main ingrediants for making money from your blogging is your Readers.

If you have good quality content on your blog, it’s not hard to get traffic. Search engines automatically recognize your blog and start showing them in their search results. You can increase your search ranking by following simple search engine optimization techniques (Will definitely write some articles on different SEO techniques).

Apart from SEO, you can use social media for getting more traffic. Create a Facebook page, separate Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram accounts for your site, and share your content on them.

Don’t forget to build authority around your domain name, all your social accounts should have the exactly same name as your domain.

You can also try paid traffic methods by advertising your blog and social accounts in different places but it’s not recommended until you’re sure that you are getting benefit from it.

Moving onto the next step.

3. Monetizing Your Blog:

Here comes the best part, its time to make some money from blogging. You have done so much hard work in putting together your blog, it’s time to start getting benefits from it.

After five to six months of your blog, you must have 100 plus quality articles. Now is the time to start showing the advertisement to your readers. If you’ve done everything right and have followed Google’s policies and terms, you can apply for Google AdSense. Apart from Google AdSense, signup on BuySellAds and AdClerks network to sell spaces on your blog.

Important: Do not place more than three ads on a single page, or else your reader start hating your blog. Three ad spaces are more than enough when you have good traffic.

Another widely used method is Affiliate Marketing. Take products and resources relevant to your blog and promote them, every sale you make on your blog using your personalized link, the product owner will give you a share of that sale. Networks you can join to find relevant products and resources are: Clickbank, Rakuten, Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, etc.

Apart from ads and affiliate marketing, other popular ways to make money from blogging are;

1. Sponsered posts
2. Dropshipping
3. Create a T-shirt Business
4. Giveaways
5. Brand Partnership
6. Ebooks
7. Online Courses
8. Membership Content

These are some advance methods so we will cover them in separate articles.

For now that’s it, I am 99.99% sure that if you follow this guide, you’ll get successful in starting your online blogging business.

Found it difficult? I tried my best to show you how easy it is to start a blog business and make money from blogging. Please let me know in the below comments if anything above is confusing so I can update it.