How to start a Blog? Learn How to Turn Your Passion Into a Real Business

Are you a Shy? Do you feel awkward in social groups? If the answer is yes then just relax, you are not alone; there are a lot of people who feel the same including me. We are called introverts.

I'll teach a simple method to start making money without starting an awkward YouTube channel or cringy status on Instagram.

So what is it? The answer is good old blogging. Today I teach in-depth tutorials on starting a successful blog and how to monetize it.

Blogging fits perfectly for introverts since we tend not to go out often and prefer to stay at home; this doesn't mean we introverts have to sit at home watching Netflix and just enjoy alone time by ourselves.

We are capable of achieving bigger goals in life; all we need is a little push and knowledge to get started to chase our dreams.

Before I begin my actual topic, I would like to share some pictures of famous persons who were introverts by nature, but it never stopped them from achieving their goals in life.

These faces say a thousand words, and I felt this could motivate you to start what I'll be teaching next.

So let's cut to the chase and begin our real topic, which is How to Turn Your Passion into a Real Business.

Does everybody have a passion in life for something that they always love right? What if I teach you to convert your passion into a real business.

Relax, I am not going to teach you how to start a YouTube channel, or launch a digital course, or start a social media page to post daily status updates. I know we introverts are camera shy and hesitate to disclose our personal life on social media channels.

But there is one other way that introverts are very good at and take full advantage of the medium to turn their passion into a real business, that is, writing content. This is one of the easiest ways to start making money without showing your face or needing to get out of your house. You can share your content online by starting your Blog.

Is Blogging Dead in 2021?

The simple answer to this question is No, absolutely not because the google search engine gets around 5.5M searches every day and most of the content shown in search results are blogs.

Most of the consistent bloggers make a minimum of around $5k a month. The solution to maximizing earning potential is by diversifying the earning model.  

But of course, the strategy of blogging has changed over the period. Google algorithm has become smarter and it's now become more challenging to get a top spot on Google page rank.  

This doesn't mean it's impossible to get the top spot on google ranking. We just have to stay consistent, be patient, focus on quality content over quantity, and follow a few Search Engine rules.

Blogging For Business

Blogging is publishing content online which you are more passionate about writing.

In this article, I'll teach you to find a niche topic to start a blog, market your content and strategies to start making money.

Blogging has been for more than 2 decades now and it is a very much underrated platform today in 2021 that many people get away from blogging saying it's hard and competitive.

Yes, blogging is hard and competitive; this doesn't mean it will not work at all. Google gets around 5 billion searches a day and most of the results shown are from blogs. Isn't that enough to get an idea that a blog has huge potential and continues to be in demand in the coming decades?

However, I'll not say blogging is easy; blogging in 2010 was much easier when compared to 2021. I started my first blog a decade ago, i.e. bharathautos.com. I could easily rank on google by posting 5-10 posts a day The more content more visitors I could get to my blog from Google.

But in 2021, the strategies have changed today quality beats quantity. It doesn't matter how you post a day, even if you post 1 post a week you will be able to get a good amount of traffic from Google.

Choose a Niche Topic From Your Passion

Niche means picking up one specialized topic for blogging which you are good at.

One misconception among new bloggers is that you need to research your passion on the internet to check if your blog niche is well on demand and you have potential readers.

This delusion is widely spread online from most of the top bloggers since they all depend on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or Google Search for their blog traffic (traffic means people who are reading your blog).

This is true only if you choose SEO as your main source of traffic, which is highly competitive and takes years to rank top on Google search results.

Well, let me correct it for you, there is nothing wrong with following your passion while choosing a niche topic.

I say this to my students for 3 reasons:

1. Google gets 5.5 billion searches a day, so certainly there is a high chance someone is in the world who is searching for your topic.

2. Google is not the only source of traffic for your blog.

3. Blogging is hard, you need to be passionate about the topics you are posting else this may result in tiredness and gradually lead to the closure of the blog.

So coming back to the original topic, that is finding your niche.

Steps to Choose your Niche:

1. List down all the topics which you are passionate about. Choose 1 topic that you are extremely good at and have a solid knowledge of.

2. Visualize your targeted audience in mind who will be reading your blog & how you can help solve the pain points of your audience with your information.

3. Now that you have decided on your topic; Research how big is the market for your niche and list down the ways to make a profit from the chosen niche.

Note: Repeat this process until you find the right niche that you are passionate about. Once chosen start by writing at least 3 blog posts using the word; this is just a way of knowing that the topic chosen is right for you and you enjoy writing about it.

Not finding what you're looking for? Here are 9 niche topic ideas for your blog:

1. Career Growth: Helping students with useful career advice that can help them to discover new career paths.

2. Health & Wellness: Helping people with the right health advice and tips to improve their health.

3. Finance Management: Helping people to manage their finances more effectively.

4. Food: Blogging about some amazing food recipes.

5. Travel: Helping people with travel hacks or reviewing good destinations to visit.

6. Money Making: Helping & Guiding people to make money online or offline.

7. Parenting: Give your expert opinion to all moms & dads valuable parenting advice that can help raise their kids.

8. Business & Marketing:   Helping businesses with the right ideas that help them grow their business and profit.

9. DIY Blogs: Do-It-Yourself blogs are a way of teaching your audiences to solve any specific problem themselves.

Note: Again, these are just some ideas you don't necessarily have to choose from in these niches. If you can't find the right niche that you are very passionate about then blogging may not work for you.

What is a Micro Niche? Why Is It Important?

A micro-niche is choosing a topic that makes your broadly chosen niche more specific to a smaller topic to a specific audience.

In this competitive world, choosing a wide niche is not enough; you need to drill down to a specific topic for a specific audience under your main niche.

How to Start a Blog?

Congratulations! Now that you have chosen your micro-niche, and completed the hard part, you can now start your first blog.

Here are some guidelines for starting your first blog:

1. Choose A Blog Name: Now choose a name for your blog, this can relate to the niche topic that is selected.

2. Buy A Domain: Now you need a domain name to be able to access your blog, for example, www.azfar.co. To buy a domain, go to domains.google. It's advised to choose a domain name with either .com or .co extensions.

3. Choose A Platform: There are numerous platforms regarding blogging like WordPress, Ghost, Medium, Squarespace, Blogger.com Etc. I recommend for beginners to go with www.ghost.org it is simple, easy, and fast. Their paid plan starts from $9/Month. If this seems expensive then I suggest you go with the self-hosted version of Wordpress or Ghost and learn to set up your blog step-by-step, you will find 100's of tutorials online.

4. Logo & Branding: The logo makes your blog professional. To make a logo you can either use canva.com or hire a freelancer at fiverr.com who can do it for less than $25. Also, make sure you also choose branding colors (Max 3) to use these branding colors all over the blog & products.

Ghost CMS Tutorial, To Setup Your First Blog:

Note: There are plenty of ghost tutorials online to set up tags, navigation & themes. But learn how to post articles using ghost CMS.

The 3 Most Effective Ways To Promote Your Blog

Google SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a technique or strategy used to rank your website top on Search Engines, especially Google.

Google SEO is one of the easiest and free ways to get traffic to your blog. Even though we say it's free, it's also very competitive; it may take months sometimes years, to get top rank on Google.

Here are some tips to write SEO-friendly articles:

1. To improve SEO, you need to optimize the website content to make your website SEO-friendly.

2. Before writing the article figure out the keywords that people may be looking for on Google that are related to your article that you are about to post. For Example Keto Diet for Teens;

3. Now do your keyword research; It's a way of listing the right keywords to include in your post. Go to ubersuggest.com (Or any other Tool) and type in the keyword (example Keto Diet For Teens) that you are looking for, and ubersuggest tells you its volume of search and SEO difficulty. A higher volume (100+) and lower difficulty (>30) means the keyword is a good fit for you. Ubersuggest also gives keyword ideas that are similar to your typed keywords that get more searches.

4. Now include this keyword in the blog title, main content's first paragraph, main content sub-headers, post URL, meta title & meta description.

5. Optimize your images, include your keywords inside the image ALT tags.

6. Refer to any other blogger's article links within your post; this proves the credibility of your source.

7. Make sure you make friends with relevant bloggers in your niche and mention each other’s links in their respective posts. The higher the backlinks you get from others, the more the rank on google, plus this also increases your Domain Authority (DA). Higher the DA less is the difficulty to rank top for keywords.

Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the best traffic sources regarding blogging, and it's also a most underrated platform by bloggers.

When Google SEO takes months or maybe years to give traffic to your blog, Pinterest can help you to get traffic within three months.

For the folks who don't know what, Pinterest is, it's an image-sharing platform. Unlike other social networks, Pinterest is not a social networking website; it is an image search engine that can help you to find ideas like food recipes, fashion, home decor, etc.

Here are a few tips to rank top on Pinterest:

1. It's easier to rank top on Pinterest than on Google, as the Pinterest algorithm isn't as advanced as Google's yet.

2. People who are searching on Pinterest have higher buying power than any other platform.

3. Start with Pinterest keyword research, just like I told you how the keyword is important to rank top on Google in the previous point; similarly, it is important to start with posting on Pinterest with the right keyword.

4. Go to pinterest.com, and on the top search bar type the first word of your keyword, then Pinterest will show a few keywords ideas as suggestions, make note of these suggestions. (Refer to the image above)

5. Now that you have shortlisted some keywords, go ahead and create your first pin. (Creating Pins means posting an image). Remember to include your keyword in the pin's image, title, and description. The image should be of size 1000 x 1500px and an aspect ratio of 2:3.

6. It is better to write a catchy text on top of the pin's image; this will help increase the chance of clicking on your image when users are searching.

7. Put your blog post's URL in the destination link.

8. Now that your pin is ready, just go ahead and post it. Your pin will be shown in search results if your keywords match the user's search query and will be shown in search results.

9. This can help you to get traffic to your blog post.

10. Create boards (Boards are kind of categories where your Pins will be saved) with a  relevant topic name example Keto Recipes and save all your pins example: Pins relevant to keto recipes under this board. You can also save other people's pins under boards. The ratio should be 70:30 (70 is your original pins).

11. You can post multiple pins with different images for the same blog post URL on Pinterest.

12. You need to post at least 7-8 times a day for good results.

I highly recommend reading this article, as it explains a lot about pins in detail - https://supermetrics.com/blog/pinterest-blog-traffic.

Quora

Quora is a question and answers website. At Quora, people ask questions and experts answer them.

It is easy to do content marketing on Quora; just head on to quora.com and at the top search bar type in your keyword and hit enter.

Now go to the bottom left side of the page and filter the questions by time,  let's say, a week.

You will find a lot of questions posted recently, now go-head answers their questions genuinely, if you feel like your posted article can help them, then provide a link to your article in the answer section.

The best part of Quora is that the questions asked will stay there forever, so whenever other people search for similar keywords they can find your answer with the link to your post.

This is another way to get free traffic to your blog.

The Best Ways to Make Money From Your Blog

I know this is the happiest part to know about blogging; after all, we are solely doing this for the sake of earning income.

But just to be alarmed, it's not the quick as you think, monetizing your blog will take time; it's mainly because you should get good traffic to your blog.

Traffic to your blog is measured in page views; it's the number of visits your blog pages get every month. The more the page the higher your chance of earning.

But the real question is how will we earn it?

The best answer to this is to diversify your monetization strategy. That means you shouldn't always stick to one source of income; rather, look, at multiple sources.

Here are some ways to earn from your blog:

Ad Networks:

This easiest way to earn from your blog. As soon as you start getting small traffic, let's say 100 page views a month apply for an ad network.

There are several ad networks out there, but most of the ad networks have minimum page views requirements. The easiest to apply is Google Adsense will max of 2-3 days to get it approved and you can follow instructions to run ads on your blog. Although Google Adsense is easy, they are the least paid platform regarding payment. Adsense pays $2-$3 per 100 page views, which isn't enough for any blogger who is hoping for some real money.

Alternatively, there are many Ad Networks such as Mediavine & Adthrive, but their minimum page views requirements are 40-50K a month.

Affiliate Marketing:

Affiliate Marketing means promoting someone else's product on your blog with a special link provided by the company, and when people make a purchase from that link you can earn some commission.

This works if your blog post is very effective and people are truly interested in what you are explaining, and when you recommend a product with your affiliate link, they immediately click on it to buy the product.

There are several affiliate partners, but again most of the ad networks go through the background check of your website to accept your application.

Amazon Associate is the easiest one to apply for; you can also apply for ShareASale, Commission Junction, and more. Please visit momsmakecents.com to learn more about affiliate partners.

Paid or Sponsored Posts:

Another easy method is to post an article about promoting a company or their product specifically to get money in exchange. You can directly approach a company relevant to your blog niche or several partners can help you get sponsored posts for your blog.

Sell Personal Branded Products:

This is one of the most effective income streams when compared to all. When you have good followers who trust you and want to help them, you can start selling your personal branded products. It can be physical or digital products.

Digital Products are most effective as it doesn't have any hassle of shipping or returns. You can sell your digital products like ebooks,  courses, 1-1 consulting, etc.

You can also start services like Drop Servicing Business that I have explained here for additional income.  

Learn more about monetizing your blog here.

You Need To Build An Email List

Another important step with blogging is to own your readership by building an email list. When a visitor comes to your page, reads your article, and leaves your website, you just lose a person who was interested in your niche topic.

You should start learning to build an email list, visitors coming from Google, Pinterest, Quora, etc. You don't own them; so start collecting their email so that you own your readers.

The easiest way to ask visitors to sign up for your newsletter is by providing a value like a lead magnet, such as a free ebook or a guide.

Then nurture your email audience by providing value-packed content every week. Please don't spam your audiences with too many unnecessary emails or try to sell your products directly without providing any value on your email.

Try to Build Relationships with your audience on your email and gain their trust before you try to sell anything.

Conclusion

By now you are fully qualified to start your blog and start a real business around it.

Although I have covered almost all the essential things that are necessary to start a blogging business, I would suggest going to Google and searching for more information regarding the same.

Anyways, I'll end this topic hoping you will act after this, and if you have any questions, email me at hey[@]azfar.co.

If you are looking to boost your motivation then I highly recommend reading my other article here - The 7 Secrets About Millionaires Only A Handful Of People Know.