“Forty percent of my readers are based in the US and 30% are from India”, says Amit Agarwal, a full time Indian blogger with an estimated earning more than $7,20,000 per year.
Amit left his job in 2004 to make blogging a full time career. After 11 years, he became a famous blogger in India.
Blogging is the easiest way of making money online without being hustled by a boss or the need of an employee.
Most bloggers (including Amit Aggarwal) start small and work individually but gradually earn million dollar per year. No job can give you a luxury of blogging.
So here are the breaks of how to start building business with blogging
Step-1: Register a domain name
But before that, come up with a niche and a resembling domain name.
Brainstorm and understand why you want to do blogging apart from making money. Blogging is not about making lakhs every month but it is about adding value to your audience.
The equation is simple,
Make your audience happy, they will help you to make million.
If you are completely amateur in blogging, then brainstorm like this,
Make a list of ideas that you see are working for people around you (both online and offline).
Prioritize all the ideas based on your interest.
Pick the first idea.
For example, suppose I can see that people are making money by blogging about android phones, selling coupons, telling marketing tricks, reviewing products on amazon and writing helpful articles.
I will prioritize my list based on my interest like this,
1. writing helpful articles
2. telling marketing tricks
3. reviewing products on amazon
4. android phones
5. selling coupons
And then I will pick the first idea, writing helpful articles.
Now find a catchy name for your domain which is easy to remember and resembles what you are doing. Register your domain name with the website registrars like godaddy or bluehost.
Step-2: Setup your business blog
Remember you have to make your audience ‘feel good’. Keep this in your mind while you are installing wordpress and theme for your blog name.
Wait… let me explain the previous line.
Registering a domain name means you have registered a plot to make your shop but you still need to make the infrastructure for your shop. The walls, paints, interior etc.
But in the blogging business, you do not need to spend extra money for infrastructure. Wordpress and Blogger are the free (and most preferred) infrastructure available for your blog. But among them, WordPress is best for blogging by all means. Install wordpress and a theme (either free or paid).
Step-3: Publish Content
The blog is setup (Read: Shop is ready) now you should write content for visitors.
Experts say start writing awesome content. But this is an expert language. Let me give a brief about what the experts really want you to know about the content.
First, you must note an extremely famous idiom around blogger, that Content is the king. So you have to be a king maker.
Here is the formula for making an impressive content simulated in the form of KING.
K- Knowledgeable You must write a valuable content will full of knowledge your audience are seeking online.
I- Impressive After you have added valuable stuff in your content, add something impressive which no none other than you can share. It can be anything, your sarcastic tone of writing, impressive images, giveaways or anything.
N- New Keep your content fresh. No one likes to read an outdated stuff. But everyone is curious about something new in the industry. Be a hustler and keep an eye on the changes in your niche. People love to receive a regular update in their industry.
G- Good to share Write something which a reader wants to share with their friends and community. Remember the ancient marketing strategy which is still alive after thousands of centuries. It's word of mouth.
The only change that this marketing strategy has seen in millennium is that the mouth and ear have now become social media share and likes.
Step-4: Learn marketing and promote
There are two ways of bringing the audience to your blog. Either you hire a marketing guy by spending money or do the promotion by yourself.
You can do either way.
If you want to hire a marketer, social media is the best place to find one. You can get every type of marketer depending on your budget.
But if you don’t have a budget, you will need to learn marketing by yourself.
Learning marketing is not a one day, month or year process. You learn while you actually experiment.
Start with promoting your blog in your friend circle on social media. Many people feel shy about telling their friends and fail. Your friends will anyhow know about your business one day, why don’t you tell them now.
Meanwhile keep reading about search engine optimization (SEO), social media management (SMM) and email marketing on the internet.
Keep on learning about marketing but do not hesitate to promote your blog posts.
Step-5: Earn Money
Selling your own product (or service). It is not necessary that you need to have a product before starting a blog. In fact,
If you start a blog before launching your product, it will be easier to understand your buyers and make relationship with them.
If you fail in building a blogging business, you do not lose much. Now compare this with failing in your startup business.
You can also link your posts with affiliate links of the other products so that if the visitors on your blog, shop with your link, you get a bonus earning.
Bloggers like Mark Ling, Kristy McCubbin, Ian Fernando monetize their blog in many forms but earn most of their revenue from the affiliate links.
Your take away
Doing business has changed in the era of the internet. You do not need to have an MBA degree or a business family to support.
It is rather easy than the classical way of doing business. You can do experiments, fail, learn, implement your learning and build a business.
Do let me know in the comments if you need any help in starting your blogging business.
