Blogging has been around for a while. There are a lot of people doing it and a good chunk of them are making a lot of money with their blogs.
In this Step By Step Guide you're going to learn the foundations of starting a blog, mixed with real life examples (ME) and a little bit of awful storytelling (ME again).
The goal with this blog post is for you to get a decent understanding of How To Make Money Blogging in 2019 and beyond.
Blog is a website like the one that you're reading right now. It is a source of organic traffic as well, which is what blogs are used for.
Many business websites have blogs with very short articles that are not driving any traffic.
BLOGS ARE A TRAFFIC GENERATOR FOR BUSINESSES
That is their main purpose and this is what we are going to focus on in this article.
It takes a lot of time and effort to create a blog that drives a lot of traffic, but when you do...you can literally change your life.
There are a few components that are required to start making money blogging in 2019 and let's start with the first one is SEO.
What Is SEO ?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation.
That is what Google and other search engines use to give the best possible results when you search for something.
It's what determines the results on the SERP Page.
But what does SERP stands for ?
When you type something in Google, the results are being shown on a search engine results page. It looks like that :
what is serp
So we need 3 things for search results to be generated. This is what is happening behind the scenes.
This is what Google and the other search engines are actually doing. When you type a certain phrase on Google.
The 3 elements that come into play when typing a phrase in Google, that Google uses to generate the SERP are :
Crawling
Crawling or Fetching is a process when Google bots are searching different websites and pages on the web, identifying what type of content is available.
When you put some kind of a content, text on a website, those small Google bots are crawling the website to gather information so they can deliver that to the Google algorithm and then show relevant results when you're writing a key phrase.
The second thing that's happening is called...
Indexing
Indexing is the process when you add a website to Google's catalogue.
If someone asks you if your site is indexed, they are basically asking if your website is showing in Google's results.
You can choose if you want Google to index your website or not.
When you want more organic traffic and your goal is to increase the traffic to your website you need to make sure that your site is getting indexed by Google.
If you are using WordPress, your site is being indexed by default.
When a site is crawled and indexed Google is then...
Pulling The Information
Delivering the information on the SERP Page.
That means that every time you search for something, Google is showing you all the crawled and indexed websites that it has in it's huge catalogue.
Sounds simple but they have probably thousands and thousands of computers doing all that stuff.
We are getting it for free. 🙂
Now that you know how SERP are being generated let's have a look at...
Serp Features
You know that Google doesn't show just text on their SERP's.
There are other results as well, not just the organic.
Paid Results
Firs there are PAID results. Most of the time you can see paid results on the top and the bottom.
They come on top when someone is paying for advertising to Google.
The prices for paid ads on Google have gone up significantly but it is still something to consider if you already have a running business.
We are not going to focus on paid ads in this guide.
Organic Results
This is our target and this is what SEO is used for.
Organic results are usually in the middle of the SERP.
These are results from websites that are using SEO to rank higher in the SERP.
Image Results
Quite often you will see images on the SERP.
If you want your images to show on Google you need to fill in the information when you are uploading an image to your website.
That includes :
- Title
- Alt Text
You can also put a link and description.
Video Results
Youtube is owned by Google and video is the number one method that people prefer to consume content.
Google shows more and more results from Youtube and is something that I am paying close attention to.
If you have a Youtube channel be aware that Google now shows Youtube results on 25% of the search queries.
There are way more types of results that you get on a SERP.
Now, with all that being said, the question that most people have is the following:
How To Rank On Top Of Google ?
Ranking on top is what you want to achieve.
That is where most of the traffic is.
If you are on page 2 you probably won't get any traffic.
A lot of "Marketing Agencies" selling SEO to small businesses don't promise anything when selling SEO.
They might say that you will rank on first or second page but, depending from the volume of the keyword, that might have no effect at all on your business.
With this guide I hope you can get a decent understanding of the whole SEO thing so if you decide to pay a marketing agency to do your SEO you know what questions to ask.
The truth is that nobody can promise ranking on top.
Google's algorithm is a well hidden secret. We can guess how it works as much as we want but nobody except people working in Google really know.
That being said Google themselves are providing information on what COULD help to rank.
That is what SEO is. Taking what we know about the algorithm and doing it in an attempt to rank.
Here are 3 basic tips on how to rank, even if you don't know anything about SEO.
The first one is to write long blog posts.
Google are saying that a blog post needs to be at least 300 words.
From my experience this is not enough. SEO doesn't work if you are lazy and don't want to write.
You can find some articles on my blog that are very short and quite lame to be honest.
These are my first attempts at writing a blog and do you know how much traffic i get from them ?
ZERO
So you need to write long blog posts.
But...
How Long Should a Blog Post Be ?
Good question.
There is no direct answer or at least i don't really know.
I'll tell you what I do though.
I usually try to make an article longer than 3000 words.
I don't find it that difficult because of the way I structure the whole blog post.
At the end all I am doing is writing like 100-200-300 words on a subtopic.
It takes me around a good 6-7 hours to write something like that and I do it once a week.
Remember, that every single blog post that is well researched and SEO optimised is an asset that will live online - forever.
It is well worth it if you ask me.
I'll show you the system that I use below to structure a blog post well.
When you do that...writing get a lot easier.
I'll link to a favourite of mine blog to see the numbers yourself if you want to.
Second tip to increase your chances of ranking on top in Google is keyword research.
Like with most things in life preparation and planning is extremely important when it comes to rankings.
Execution is easy when you have a plan ahead of you right ?
How To Find The Best Keywords To Rank For
There are many keyword tools out there, literally thousands of them.
Read more and we will discuss keyword research more in depth down below.
Keyword research is crucial to increase your rankings, maybe the most important bit.
How To Create Backlinks
Google has been saying for a while that backlinks are not as important as they used to be but the SEO community and pro's are saying different.
According to my experience - creating backlinks is crucial.
There is a guide by Brian Dean that I use as a reference. Check it out.
There are many other factors that can affect your Google rankings.
This is one of the basic things that you need to understand in order to make money blogging.
Let's get back to
How To Do Keyword Research Like A Pro For Free
This part here is important as this is what generates traffic the most.
It's not how your site looks or any of that. Your site may not look very nice but if you have a lot of content and you've done your keyword research it will generate traffic.
That is what we want right ?
Planning your blog posts and using the right keywords is crucial to your success.
There are loads of different tools that you can use.
Some are free other are paid.
We are going to focus on the free tools only in this guide.
The first keyword research tool that I want to mention is...
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords everywhere is a Free Chrome Extension.
It tells you whats the volume of every word or phrase you type in Google.
I would highly recommend that you download it now.
It's FREE.
The second tool is...
Google Suggested
Yep, Google tells you what information people are looking for.
You can create a big list of keywords by just using Google.
Third tool is...
Ubersuggest by Neil Patel
Ubersuggest is a free keyword research tool owned by Neil Patel.
Currently it's version 3.0 and it has some missing features so it's not on par with paid softwares.
That said, the combination of these 3 is enough for you to do keyword research for free.
Watch this video to see how it's done.
So this is how you do keyword research for free.
Use a combination of these 3 methods, find keywords and put them on a note app.
From there when writing your article make sure you sprinkle the keywords around the content.
It needs to make sense.
Write for normal people so it all makes sense and you'll be good.
Now that you know how to do keyword research we are going to have a look at how to structure a blog article.
To do so I'll share with you my...
Blog Post Template (That I Have Used For This Article)
This is very important as well.
When I was starting writing blog posts they were really bad (getting better).
There was no structure, no plan to follow, I just sat down on my desk and started typing.
Since then I have learned a lot and now, before I even start, I structure the whole thing.
The blog post template I follow is very simple and to do it right you need to understand what Header Tags Are.
Your blog post need to be structured like the table of content of a book.
I explain it all in this video down below.
I know that all of that seems boring and the name of the blog post is "How To Make Money Blogging."
The main problem is that most people don't want to learn the skills to make money. They just want to make money.
Unfortunately I don't think it's possible.
Who makes money out of nothing ?
All the bloggers making full time income online understand the things I am writing about in this article.
So please bare with me it will all make sense at the end (if it doesn't already).
We are going to get into...
How To Monetise Your Blog
We have covered how Google works, How To Rank and How To Do Keyword Research.
All of these things when done properly and when combined will result in increase of traffic coming to your website.
That is why I said that SEO is a traffic generator.
There is no point of having a blog if it doesn't generate traffic.
Now that people actually read your stuff, you can start thinking about monetisation.
As the name of the post suggests our goal is to Make Money Blogging right ?
How to...
Make Money From Your Blog With Affiliate Marketing
In most of my articles I mention products or services which I am affiliate of.
These are products that I don't own and I don't really sell.
I simply recommend them to people that will find them useful and get a commission from the product owner.
What are you going to promote depends from your niche.
Obviously your blog needs to be about something that you are passionate about or something that you do on a daily basis.
Otherwise you might struggle with creating enough content.
There are hundreds of affiliate marketplaces where you can register and get access to affiliate product to promote, for free.
In most cases promoting digital products offers higher commissions.
Pretty much every single company pays for referrals or has an affiliate program.
You won't struggle finding product to promote.
The second way to make money from your blog is...
Sell Your Own Products From Your Website
It comes to no surprise that you can sell your own stuff on your blog.
To do that you will need a cart plugin or a funnel software if you are using a WordPress.org website like mine.
There are probably gazillion of tools that you can use. I'll mention a few here.
- 1Woocomerce
- 2Thrive Cart (Nothing To Do With Thrive Themes)
- 3Sam Cart
I don't use the tools above. The only one I've tried was Woocomerceand it works quite well. However I've heard about the other tools that are great too.
There is another way for you to sell from your website.
This is by using Shopify.
Shopify is a online store software, which makes it different (kinda).
Here we are talking about making money from your blog so I won't talk about drop shipping or any of that.
Another way to make money from your blog is to...
Write Advertorials
So what is an advertorial ?
It basically is an article with a sales pitch in it.
It could be an educational article with a little bit of copy at the end.
Not sure that is the best thing for you to do.
It might put some people off.
See the advertorial I wrote about Builderall.
This was a review article where I shared my experience about a marketing software.
It had an amazing affiliate program and at the end I literally pitched the product.
It was a success.
The last thing that that you can do is...
Sell Ad Space
This is only possible if you are generating traffic already.
Otherwise there is no point of doing it for 2 reasons :
- No-one wants to buy space on your blog
- No one will click on the banner ads
You can also install Google Adsense. It will display relevant ads to visitors to your website.
Keep in mind that no-one likes going to a website/blog full with ads. It might scare people away.
As I said most of the products online have affiliate programs.
They provide you with email swipes and banners.
You can use the banners to place them around your website.
With Thrive Themes you can display different widgets depending on what category people are looking at.
For example if you are reading an Amazon article you will see banners related to Amazon products.
If the article is about internet marketing you can see banners about marketing softwares and etc...
Great stuff !
So what do you guys think ? Let me know in the comments down below if you're already generating income from your blog or if you're just starting out ?