How do you set up a blog and make a living from it?
Why and how to set up a blog?
So you've decided to embark on the great adventure of blogging! Whether it's for your passion or to earn money with a professional blog, do you know how to set up a blog?
You'll need to go through a few essential stages, such as finding a web host, a domain name, the right CMS (content management system), creating a site, taking care of content creation and management, and finally working on your natural search engine optimisation.
Don't know where to start creating a blog?
Find out how to manage the creation of your blog in 7 steps, which blog platform to choose and how to monetise it successfully!
Why create a blog?
Give your website visibility
A blog is a highly effective tool for raising your profile. As soon as a new article is published, Google's algorithm understands that your site is active, which will boost your ranking, and therefore your traffic. This is all the more true if the articles are of high quality.
What's more, it gives you something to share on social networks (instagram, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn).
Last but not least, an active site with recent content adds to your credibility in the eyes of visitors to your blog.
Show your expertise
Your expertise in your core business is one of your best selling points. Blog posts are a quick and inexpensive way of expressing yourself on a subject that affects your prospects, and positioning yourself as an expert in their minds.
Win new customers with inbound marketing
Blogs are at the heart of any inbound marketing strategy.
The idea? Using the content of your blog to attract quality traffic, i.e. visitors who could potentially be interested in your solution. In other words, you get them into the first stage of the conversion funnel thanks to your quality content, specially written for your target audience.
Once the prospect is on your blog, you need to encourage them to take action, whether by leaving their contact details, requesting a contact, etc.
What's the best site for creating a free blog?
Create a Jimdo blog
Jimdo makes creating a website accessible to everyone, even the most experienced among you. Thanks to its artificial intelligence, all you have to do is answer a few questions and Jimdo will automatically create your entire website from your existing content on Facebook and Google.
Jimdo
Then all you have to do is choose your theme from a range of modern, ergonomic templates, set a few details and decide to put it online.
💰 F ree : ✅
⭐️ Its strong point: 3 minutes to create your blog
👎 Not for you if: you want to create everything from A to Z and modify it as you wish
Creating a Wix blog
Wix offers a wide range of customisable features, particularly suited to blogs, such as comment management and post scheduling. Choose the design of your blog from over 500 templates and launch a blog that reflects your personality.
© Wix
💰 F ree : ✅
⭐️ Its strong point: very intuitive
👎 Not for you if: you want to sell products
Creating a WordPress blog
Wordpress is the undisputed leader among CMS on the market:
One in three websites worldwide uses the WordPress platform.
source: W3Techs, January 2019 report
Creating your blog on this platform is a sure bet, and allows you to find a whole host of resources (articles, tutorials, training, etc.) on the Net, to solve a problem for example, or help you optimise your blog.
If so many websites have chosen this CMS to create and excel in content management, it's because it's so adaptable, even for the most complex projects, whether in terms of development or the choice of plug-ins of all kinds.
💰 F ree : ✅
⭐️ Strength: the possibilities are endless (or almost)
👎 Not for you if: you can't solve technical problems on your own
Creating a Drupal blog
Drupal is an open source platform that was initially aimed at the most technical profiles, who could envisage absolutely anything in terms of functionality and design.
Thanks to the Drupal community, which has been very active on the Internet for years, you now have free access to the plug-ins they have developed for search engine optimisation, sharing on social networks, managing your articles, etc.
💰 F ree : ✅
⭐️ Its strong point: flexible and powerful
👎 Not for you if: you're a beginner and/or in a hurry
How do you create your blog? 8 steps to make sure you don't forget anything
Step 1: choose your niche
It can be tempting to launch a blog on a subject that you're passionate about and that you're good at: that's usually what motivates you when you launch your personal blog.
But if your aim is to create a professional blog, we advise you not to choose a theme, but rather to choose a target audience with a problem to solve.
Step 2: Define your editorial line
Your editorial line is what will define the personality of your blog and ensure the consistency of your future content:
- to be credible in the eyes of your audience,
- to guide you in the choice of topics for your articles and in the way they are written,
- to help you in your choices (type of partnerships accepted).
Define your editorial line in 5 questions:
- What is the purpose of my blog? The reason for its existence, its raison d'être. Be precise in defining your vision. Examples: promoting 100% natural solutions for cleaning your home, showing men how to look after their beards, selling training courses on how to succeed as an e-tailer, increasing traffic to your e-commerce site, etc.
- Who am I targeting? As we saw in the previous section, defining your target, your marketing persona, is essential. At this stage, you should have all the information you need to get to know your target properly.
- What do I want to talk about? The what. Try to go into a little more detail about the different subjects or sub-topics covered by the issues your persona is facing
- How do I address my target? The way in which you address your target audience must both resemble THEM and resemble YOU. The tone, the vocabulary, the images, the writing angle, the length of the articles: all this makes up your editorial charter.
- When should I address my target audience? Regularity is very much appreciated by a community. The graph below shows that the more articles you publish, the more visits you get. However, you still need to maintain a certain level of quality in your articles.
Hubspot
Step 3: Choose your CMS
As we saw in the previous section, choose your CMS according to your objective, your skills and your resources.
Step 4: Choose your domain name
Choosing your domain name is more important than it seems. Here are some things to bear in mind when making your choice:
- A name that's easy to remember. It's sometimes useful to know a bit about cognitive science when choosing a domain name. How can you make it easy for people to remember your URL? The human brain remembers combinations of words that already exist and have a link between them more easily than a name invented from scratch;
- A short name that's easy to type on a mobile phone. Don't underestimate the mobile-friendly potential of your domain name. Type the name of your site on your mobile phone before choosing it to check how easy it is to use (or better still, test it out with your granny);
- Including keywords can boost your SEO and is a strategy that pays off. 63% of sites that appear on page 1 have keywords in their URL (source: HigherVisibility);
- Check that the domain name is not linked to a registered trademark. Be careful, you never know and you don't want any legal problems, do you?
- Choose the right extension. What should you choose between .com, .eu, .fr, .co, .tech? There are more and more extensions available, but we recommend that you choose the timeless .com, if it's not too expensive. Otherwise, choose according to the countries in which you want to have a presence, your budget and your business sector.
Step 5: Choosing the hosting solution
Like any website, your blog needs to be hosted on a server in order to function. The best-known are OVH and 1&1, but there are plenty of others, with their own specific features, advantages and disadvantages.
Step 6: Create and install your site
Here is our selection of tutorials on the different platforms we recommend, to guide you step by step through the creation and installation of your site:
- View the WordPress tutorial
- View the Drupal tutorial
- See the Jimdo tutorial
- See the Wix tutorial
Step 7: Search engine optimisation
Search engine optimisation is a discipline that requires hard work, patience... and knowing the right tricks, in order to reach page 1 of Google.
Step 8: Create content
Write a good blog post
Smart Entrepreneur
Different types of content
Varying the content on your blog helps to prevent your readers from getting bored and offers additional resources, especially at a time when images and video are playing a major role:
- computer graphics
- podcasts
- downloadable documents
- online tests,
- videos,
- testimonials and interviews, etc.
Promoting blog content
Plezi
Creating a blog and earning money: monetisation
Building an audience for your blog and succeeding in monetising it is an activity that takes time, several months or even several years. It's essential to think about monetisation as early as possible, so that you can make it a clear part of your strategy and maximise your chances of success.
Whatever monetisation strategy or strategies you opt for, bear in mind that you first need to obtain a minimum amount of quality traffic for them to work.
So don't hesitate to try out several of them, combine them and carry out numerous tests to see what works best for you.
Writing an e-book or electronic book
Writing an e-book or electronic book is a relatively easy way to earn money.
- Write about a specific problem facing your target audience. Give interesting information, talk about your experience and give concrete solutions to solve it;
- Look after the design. If your customers print it out, they should have the impression of holding a real book in their hands. Colours, photos, diagrams: use all the tools at your disposal to make it a pleasant read;
- Convert your book to PDF format;
- After payment, direct your customers to a page with a link to the PDF for downloading, or send it to them by email.
Offer online courses and training
The online courses and training business is a fast-growing sector, set to reach 325 billion dollars by 2025.
Research and Markets).
As with the e-book, try to see how you can help your community on a specific issue, and give them the keys to solving their problems.
To find the subject that will hit the nail on the head, pay close attention to what your community is saying on forums, Facebook groups, in comments on your articles, etc.
Don't hesitate to use specialised software, such as Podia or system.io, that lets you manage your online training courses, from hosting to email promotion to download links.
Selling consulting or coaching services
Your blog is the best showcase for your expertise, and companies may be interested in it. While reading a book or taking part in a training course is a good way to start, getting one-to-one advice can help you move up a gear and boost your results.
Write a few well-targeted articles for the part of your audience that will be interested in this type of service, at slightly higher rates.
Offer a subscription service
Deliver a quality service to your community for a monthly or annual subscription fee. The advantage of this business model is that each sale can bring you income for several months or years, if the members are satisfied. This service can be exclusive content (in the form of a podcast, emailing, video, etc.), access to a platform, forum or group.
Use advertising
Some tools allow you to display advertisements on your website and be paid per click. This is often an easy way to earn money when you're just starting out, but don't expect to make a living from it, as a click only pays a few centimes. You'll need a certain volume of traffic to start generating a decent income, but it's a good way of supplementing your income without any extra effort.
There are two ways of offering advertising on your blog:
- via an advertising network such as Ad Sense (Google),
- or by offering private advertising without going through an advertiser. In this way, you can integrate your advertising inserts and negotiate directly with the companies. In general, this method is much more profitable.
To encourage your visitors to click :
- select relevant adverts, in line with the theme of your blog;
- don't overload your blog with ads, so as not to bore your visitors and maximise visibility;
- carry out A/B tests on your ads to see which perform best in terms of clicks or conversions.
👉 Bear in mind, however, that more and more Internet users are using software that blocks ads, which makes this task more difficult.
Affiliate marketing
This is one of the most common ways for bloggers to generate money.
Affiliation involves promoting a product or service and being paid a commission on each sale generated.
How does it work?
Once you've chosen your niche, written some interesting articles on the subject and started to build a community, you become legitimate to talk about services and products that can be useful to them.
How can I find products to sell?
- Amazon offers an affiliation programme. Its strength lies in the wide choice of products and partners, maximising your chances of finding the products best suited to your niche.
- Specialised affiliation platforms bring product creators and affiliates together. Here is a non-exhaustive list: Affilinet, Effinity MarTech, Hasoffers, 1TPE, Selldorado, CJ Affiliate, etc.
- You can also approach the seller of a product directly by contacting them or via their affiliate programme if they have one. This can be a good alternative when you're looking for tools you already use that you could promote.
Tips for successful affiliation
A good affiliate product is...
- a product that you have tested,
- a product that brings value to your community,
- a product with a high commission,
- a product with a high price tag.
Also...
- don't write too many articles about affiliate products so as not to bore your readers;
- don't be afraid to be transparent when you do affiliates (no one will bite you);
- write a complete, well researched article with as much evidence as possible of the usefulness of what you are promoting.
Adopt an influencer marketing strategy
A company or entrepreneur can pay you to talk about a product or service if you write an article, or create a podcast or video. It is often necessary to have a certain audience in order to interest companies, which need a certain amount of visibility.
Here are a few figures on influencer marketing to convince you:
- a market estimated to be worth 20 billion dollars in 2020 ;
- 4 out of 5 consumers buy a product that has been recommended to them;
- 60% of consumers consult a blog article, social networks or a video before making a purchase.
source: Influencer Marketing Benchmark 2019 report
So if you're feeling like an influencer, don't hesitate to take the plunge!
Selling products (e-commerce)
It's not uncommon for bloggers to explore e-commerce sales, either by creating a marketplace where they can find their favourite products, or by creating their own products to sell.
You can either integrate an e-commerce shop directly into your blog if the CMS you're using offers this option (often in the form of a plug-in), or create a shop on another platform such as Shopify or Etsy, and send your visitors to your products from the blog.
Creating a blog and making a living from it: is it really possible?
Creating a blog has never been so easy, and is now within everyone's reach.
With a well-honed SEO, content management and monetisation strategy, you have a good chance of generating income from your blog.
But in practice, is it really possible to make a living from your blog?
Few bloggers manage to make a living from it, because :
- it's a time-consuming activity, and it's hard to keep up a steady pace on top of your job ;
- you need to be good, or even very good, at creating content to stand out from the competition, appeal to both search engines and readers, and convert visits into clicks or sales;
- some niches generate less money than others. Note that health, personal development and business issues are the most lucrative.
It will be a long road, requiring perseverance, hard work and ingenuity.
One day, you'll become the best blogger!
Article translated from French