Most of us at some point have dreams of owning our own business. Being our own boss, earning money from something that we enjoy doing – what could be better, other than not needing to work at all?
The problem is that generally, starting a business requires a significant amount of capital and if you don’t have that, and don’t have access to loans or other forms of financing, it might not be feasible.
However, there is one form of business that requires very little other than an idea, commitment and one of the many laptops specials offers: a blog.
Blogging is not just the domain of moms or fashionistas. Anyone can have a successful blog, and if monetised, can earn you a pretty decent living. It isn’t easy; t takes a while to build up and get established enough to earn from it, but the effort can often be worth it.
Want to learn more about starting up a blog? Let’s take a look.
Think about your niche and name your blog
Niche is im[portant when it comes to blogging. While there are some successful ‘general’ bloggers, the ones that are most successful are ones with a tight niche, whether that is food, business, crafts, cars or whatever. Once you know what subject you want to write about, it is time to name your blog. Try to think of something that is easy to remember and spell, is available across all the main social media platforms and has longevity.
Pick a platform and a host
The next step is to choose a blogging platform to work from. One of the most popular ones is WordPress because of the funcionality and intuiiveness. However, others, such as Blogger and Wix are available. Have a look around and see which one would work best for you. You also need a host, who, as the name suggests, hosts your blog on their servers. Again, there are plenty out there, all offering varying levels of support and service and for different budgets – make sure you shop around and check out reviews.
Write, write, write
You can’t have a blog without content, so once you have the skeleton of your blog, it is time to produce plenty of well-written, relevant and engaging content. It is a good idea at this point to do some research into optimizing your content for search engines and how to promote it so that you get the traffic that you need to monetize. This takes us onto our next, and final point…
Monetize
There are various ways in which you can monetize your blog. You may, for example, choose to write sponsored posts or host guest posts. You can also add PPC ads (pay per click) from Google or places such as Amazon. You can also make money through affiliate links – recommending products and if your readers buy them through your link, you may a small commission from it.
Starting a blog as a business can be a time-consuming process and it can take a while to yield results but it can be more than worth it when the views and money start rolling in.