Who would have thought you can make money by sitting in your room at home and posting your opinion on the internet? But you can, and many people are getting pretty famous for doing it. They are also earning serious amounts of money too, making it a great low-cost business opportunity for anyone with a smartphone and something to say. However, starting a blog and making money from it are two separate things and to be a success you will need to know all about the four stages below.
Starting up
In the beginning, you also have to think about the tone of your blog. Although you don't need to limit yourself too much in the subject matter at this early stage because it can be useful to try out different things and see how people respond. However, you do need to think about what gives you a unique perspective on the world and the thing you want to talk about and use that as your starting point.
Gaining followers
The next stage is, of course, gaining follows. This is usually the hard bit because after you have asked all your friends and family, it can be easy to run out of people. Luckily there are other ways of increasing your readership that include guest blogging on someone else's site, making your content SEO friendly and interact with others blog comments.
Remember, this is such an important part of the blogging process because your revenue streams will come directly from this.
Monetizing
Once you have secured a decent amount of followers and you are getting upwards of 1000 views a day, it's time to monetize that blog. There are a lot of ways of doing this that are discussed in more detail here, but the main ones are through advertising, affiliate marketing, or using the blog to promote your own products and services.
Some bloggers combine these revenues streams, and others even get to collaborate with particular companies in the field in which they are blogging and bring their own special edition products out. Of course, as they have a premade fanbase, they can pretty much guarantee that they will sell, especially after using their blog and vlog to “review” them.
As your monetization strategies start to take off, it can be valuable to keep an eye on the actual analytics involved with your blog. Luckily, you can get website appraisal, traffic valuation (or anything you want) easily online now. Something that allows you to monitor any rises and falls in worth and readership and addresses these issues with these promptly. Something that is particularly useful if you are losing followers and views.
Selling Up
The last stage to consider when blogging as a business is selling your site on to someone else.
To do this, you will need to be able to prove that it brings in revenue and the design and functionally will need to be spot on as well. So take some time before you open it up to offers to ensure that everything is as professional as possible.
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