Blogging is an incredibly popular pursuit on the internet. nIt is estimated that there are over 600 million blogs across the web and out of those there are more than 30 million active bloggers. Imagine how many blogs are being written right now.

Some people blog for pleasure and like to write about their hobby or to give information and share their knowledge with the world. For other people, blogging is a source of income. Some may still write primarily for pleasure but have found they can make a small income and others have hit a rich vein and can now survive purely from their writing skills.

If you wanted to make a blog how could you make it successful, and how long would it take? There are a lot of factors that you may not consider including hosting, SEO, and how to drive traffic to your site so here are some tips for making a successful blog.

Find your subject matter

It makes sense to write about something you know, understand, and enjoy. It is probably best to write a blog because you enjoy it rather than expecting it to be a money-spinner. There are blogs on almost any subject matter you can think of but the most common ones and also the ones likely to make money are on the following subjects:

- Law
- Health and fitness
- Finance
- Travel
- Cooking
- Technology
- Gaming
- Lifestyle
- Fashion
- Business
- Marketing

Of course, you can write about any subject matter you like but how successful it is will depend on more than just the subject.

Build a good website

Firstly, you need your blog to be on the net. Unless you are knowledgeable with code the easiest way is to use a CMS or content management system such as WordPress to make your blog. Millions of websites are powered by WP and while it has its faults it helps non-coders build blogs and websites quickly and easily.

Choose one of the many free or paid-for themes and start to put your blog layout together. Plan carefully first, build the site with your audience in mind and look at other blogs to see what they include. Perhaps you can see something that your future competition is missing. Planning when building a website is essential to reduce any problems further down the line and minimize how many hours of work you will do. Once your site is finished you will need to do two other things...

Choose a domain name and purchase hosting

When you are planning your blog try and think of a catchy name. It shouldn’t be too long and needs to be easy to recall and to type. When your blog eis built it will be time to choose your domain name if you haven’t already done so. Ideally, this domain name will have relevance to the name of the blog and this is why it needs to be easy to recall and not too long.

Now for the hosting. There are so many hosts on the net it can be difficult to choose one but Hosting Foundry’s favourite Australian web hosts is a good way to compare the best hosts on one page. Hosting is important for a lot of reasons and it can even affect your search engine ranking.

The importance of choosing the right host

The hosting company you choose can affect your blog. Things to consider are:

Customer service
Type of hosting
Server speed
Hidden costs
User interface
Easy to upgrade

If you run into problems you want to know that you can get tech support quickly. Shared hosting can lead to spikes in activity meaning your site runs slower. This can lead to a higher bounce rate which can affect your Google rankings. Look at the cPanel and see what features there are. You must also set up SSL certificates and show visitors your site is secure.

One other thing to check is if there are any hidden costs. You may receive a great introductory offer but in the second year, the hosting price jumps through the roof. Likewise, if you think you might need to upgrade your package in the future, is it going to be simple, or will there be an exorbitant increase in fees and difficulty switching packages?

Write relevant, quality content

Your blog needs good, relevant content to bring people to your site. When someone searches on Google and they are looking for travel advice for Southeast Asia it will bring up relevant results. These results come from searching websites for keywords and phrases so if your site only has short-form content and little of it your blog will be overlooked.

Add new content along with images and videos regularly to help with Google rankings. Also, invite your visitors to submit relevant articles. If you are running a travel site then get visitors to submit their stories or experiences. You will quickly build up content without costing you any money.

Write for other sites

You need backlinks and content to help bring in visitors and one way you can do this is to write guest posts on other sites. Find relevant blogs and see if they accept submissions. Also, you can use blogging sites like Medium and write interesting content and add links to your site through these.

If you write articles that people are interested in you will be more likely to receive visitors to your site. Interact with other people on relevant forums like Lonely Planet if you are writing about travel.

Use social media

Assuming you won’t be utilizing a large marketing budget then use social media to help draw attention to your blog. Link it to Twitter, Instagram and make a Facebook page so you have multiple web-presences and are more likely to receive followers. Make sure you interact with any posts and messages you receive to drive interest. Don’t underestimate the importance of this area. Social media is great for marketing and expect to spend some time working on this.

Advertising and monetizing

Ok, now you have a blog online with a good hosting package, you have relevant content, and a good fan base. It is time to make some money. The most obvious and common way to do this is from advertising. You can achieve this through Google AdSense or from private advertising. How much you make from Google will depend on how many click-throughs you get and it could mean you need thousands before you make anything. The niche you are in will also affect how much you make.

Private advertising means you take control of the pricing structure but you will need to find your customers and prove to them it is worth placing ads on your blog.

Selling a product is one other way to make money. If you were running a cookery blog for instance you could sell products you use in recipes from your blog. This can be done as an Amazon affiliate seller or by drop shipping.

Summary

This is a basic way to set up a blog and get visitors which could then lead to monetization. Realistically, you will have to put a lot of work in and have patience while your fan base builds up. There are many marketing tools online that will help and you will need to optimize your content and images and improve the SEO to help with rankings. However, with interesting content and some passion you could make a successful blog quicker than you may think.