When you start a blog, you do that with the goal of having your content read by a lot of people and hopefully earn some money from it. As many new bloggers discover, that is not easy as it seems. You need to be consistent in your blogging and have high-quality articles as a foundation for blogging success.
You will need more than just great content to drive traffic to your blog. Not that great content no longer matters, it still does, but you need other strategies to get your blog seen over the million others.
Identify your blogging niche
Your blog needs to be known as an authority on a particular topic or subject if you want it to get noticed. You need to identify who your target audience are, know what they want and create content that is appealing and relevant to them.
You are able to consistently meet the expectations of your audience when you know what your niche is and stick to it.
Have a great website
No one will visit a blog that takes forever to load. Your blog should load fast and have a neat and organized layout for easy navigation. Group your articles and have a menu where someone can easily locate whatever they want to access.
It is also important that the website be responsive so every visitor, regardless of their device or browser, gets the best viewing experience.
You have the liberty to choose whichever domain name you want but it should be short and memorable.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines can direct a lot of traffic if you optimize your blog for their algorithms and crawlers. Your content should be good and long enough to hold a reader’s attention on your blog. This is part of content marketing which complements your SEO tactics. If you are not certain how well your blog is optimized for SEO, you can have Yourcontentshop.Com do an SEO audit for your blog and advice accordingly.
Some of the SEO strategies you need to learn to drive traffic to your blog include keyword research and link building.
With some traffic coming into your blog, you can monetize your blog through these means:
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a commission-based arranged with other business to sell their products and services on your blog. When you sign up for an affiliate program like Amazon Associates Program, you get links to various products which you promote on your blog and you earn a commission if someone makes a purchase through that link.
To make considerable earnings, only sell products that are relevant to your blog audience.
Sponsored posts
A business will pay in cash or in kind to market their business products on your blog or to include backlinks to their website. This is different from affiliate marketing in that you are not selling anything, but simply promoting the business.
Advertising
Selling advertising space on the blog is one of the popular way bloggers monetize their blogs. It is also the one that leverages the most on the size of your blog audience.
You sign up with an advertising network like Google Adsense which then sends you a link for ads to appear on your website. You are paid based on the number of views and clicks the ads get.
