What is Blogging ?

Definition of blogging

Blogging is a collection of skills that one needs to run and supervise a blog. This entails equipping a web page with tools to make the process of writing, posting, linking, and sharing content easier on the internet.

Why is blogging so popular?

It’s important to mention that the popularity of blogging grows with each passing day!

To answer the question ‘what is blogging’, we need to look at the factors behind its rise.

In the early stages, blogs became mainstream, as news services began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. They became a new source of information.

Through blogging, businesses saw a positive way to improve their customer’s level of satisfaction. Blogs assist companies in keeping clients and customers up to date. Also, the more people that visit your blog, the more exposure and trust your brand gets.

Personal and niche bloggers saw the potential to reach more people interested in specific topics. Through a blog, visitors can comment and interact with you or your brand which helps you to create a network of loyal followers.

Did you know that you could earn money through blogging? Once your blog receives enough attention and fans, you can investigate ways of monetizing your blog. Through the blog, you can offer your services and sell products.

Who is a blogger?

In recent times, bloggers have become famous for various reasons. Blogging has become an alternative career or side gig to many. Seeing this, even more people are choosing to join the blogging ranks.

So who are bloggers? Bloggers are individuals who love sharing parts of their lives with you. They post on various topics from arts, home designs, carpentry, and finance articles. Bloggers are mobile and don’t need to be in one place. They live on the internet!

Definition of a blogger

A blogger is someone who runs and controls a blog. He or she shares his or her opinion and knowledge on different topics for a target audience.

Why are many people blogging today?

Would you want to have a blog of your own? Yes!

Most people today are creating blogs for a variety of reasons. Every human being has their own story to tell. Through the internet, bloggers can communicate to a massive number of people.

How to Start a Successful Blog in 5 Steps

1. Choose your blog name and get your blog hosting.
2. Start your blog by adding WordPress.
3. Pick a simple theme to make your blog your own.
4. Add two key blogging plugins to find your readers and track stats.
5. Write compelling content to create a blog that your readers love.

While there are other blogging platforms out there like Blogger.com and Tumblr.com, nearly every serious blogger uses a self-hosted WordPress site because of its creative freedom and flexibility

The Top 4 Ways to Make Money Blogging

Some ways to make money blogging are simply easier and faster, while other revenue streams take more time and effort to build.

As a blogger, you have many monetization options to choose from, and you don’t have to choose just one. In fact, it’s wise to have multiple revenue streams. That way, if something happens and one revenue stream drops, you still have other monetization methods in place.

However, we recommend focusing on just one or two in the beginning. Build up one revenue stream before moving on to the next.

There’s no one “right” way to make money blogging. The revenue streams you choose will depend on your audience and blog topic. Now, let’s take a look at some of the best, most common ways to make money blogging.

1. Advertising

When most people think of starting a blog, this is the first revenue stream that comes to mind. 

Often it’s not the most lucrative, but it is one of the easiest ways to get started.

There are multiple ways to make money with advertising on your blog.

You know when you visit a site and see ads for cars or clothes or something you were just looking at on Amazon?

Those are display ads. Each time you click one of those ads, the company earns a little bit of money, which is why they call it pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

The easiest PPC method to get started with is Google AdSense. However, to make any kind of decent money with display ads, you’ll need quite a bit of traffic. And by the time you get that much traffic, you’ll make more money going with an ad management company like Mediavine (minimum of 25,000 monthly impressions to join) or AdThrive (minimum of 100,000 monthly pageviews to join).

We used to have display ads on our sites, but we’ve since moved away from them. Why?

It makes for a poorer user experience. How many times have you been to a site and thought, “Good God, get these ads out of my FACE!”

It is totally dependent on your traffic. Not everyone who comes to your site will click on an ad, so the more traffic you have, the more money you’re likely to make, and vice versa.

It takes users away from your site. Yay, you got $0.80 for someone clicking on your ad! But now they’re on someone else’s site buying their things and making them money.

All in all, display ads aren’t the best way to make money with a blog. There are much better ways to make money blogging than sending people away from your site.

However, it’s also not the only form of advertising.

Sponsored Content

Once you start building an audience, you’ll be able to land opportunities for sponsored content on your site and social media.

This is when companies pay you for tweeting, writing a Facebook post, or publishing an article about their products or services. Putting that content out to your audience helps them build brand awareness and maybe even increase sales.

We’ve done this with a few companies on our personal finance website, but it’s also not our favorite way to make money with our blogs. Writing that content takes time, and unless you already have an audience, you can’t expect to make much money with this one.

The larger the audience you have, the more valuable you are to these companies, and the more they’re willing to pay you for media mentions. Therefore, this is not the best monetization method for new bloggers.

Reviews and Giveaways

Another form of advertising on your blog is to do product or service reviews or run a giveaway.

Oftentimes, companies will ask bloggers to write a review on their website about one of their products. In exchange, the blogger gets to keep the product for free. Or for a giveaway, maybe you get a product and you get another to give to the winning reader.

This can be nice if all you’re looking for is free stuff. But if you’re looking for cash, there are better ways to make money blogging.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate networks have many products and services for you to promote all in one place. Alternatively, you may earn higher commissions by working directly with the company you want to promote if they have a system for that.

Affiliate marketing can be done in a really spammy, deceitful sort of way, or it can be done in a very legitimate, thoughtful way that provides value to the reader.

The former is sleazy and won’t get you very far. We prefer the latter.

Many of the articles on both of our sites contain text links that lead to another website where our reader can buy or just sign up for something. In return, we get a commission of the sale or lead (if it’s a free sign-up).

The size of the commission varies depending on the cost of the product. For example, a sign-up for a free credit app might net us a few dollars, but a purchase of $100 could result in a $30-$40 commission.

The goal with affiliate marketing, and with blogging in general, is to always provide value to the reader. In this case, that means including links to products or services that you 1) have vetted and/or can attest to, and 2) believe would genuinely benefit the reader.

In this article, you’ll see affiliate links for things like blog hosting and our awesome email service provider. That’s because those products are relevant to the content and beneficial to other bloggers.

We have no problem promoting these affiliates because we’ve used them ourselves and can attest to their value.

3. Digital Products

Digital products are another awesome way to make money with your blog. Rather than selling someone else’s product or service, you’re creating something of your own and selling it directly to your tribe.

There are many options to choose from when it comes to digital products, but we’re going to look at what we’ve seen and consider to be the top three.

Ebooks and Workbooks

The first product we ever created was an eBook. At the time, we were still trying to sell investment advice online (before we figured out the whole blogging thing), so as we’ve already covered, that was a failed venture.

However, there are many bloggers out there who make great money from their workbooks and eBooks.

One who comes to mind is Rosemarie Groner of The Busy Budgeter. She sells her Budget Boot Camp Workbook for $27, along with various other workbooks and worksheets.

The difference between a workbook and eBook is the amount of involvement or activity on the reader’s end. An eBook is mostly text with maybe an exercise or two thrown in. A workbook helps your reader do or accomplish something by leading them through the process.

In Rosemarie’s budgeting workbook, for example, she leads her reader through the process of organizing their finances and creating a budget. Workbooks and eBooks are a great place to start with digital products since they’re decently quick to make, unlike our next digital product.

Online Courses

This monetization method has become incredibly popular over the last few years. As a result, there are many bloggers out there making a ton of money sharing their knowledge online.

The Perfect Pin was our introduction to the world of online course creation. And we can say from experience that creating courses isn’t a walk in the park. It takes a lot of time to create and, depending on your topic, maintain your course content.

However, they can also be a very lucrative way to make money blogging. Teachable is our favorite platform for creating online courses, and the one we use for our own courses.

Membership Sites

A membership site is basically a paid online community. Subscribers pay you a monthly fee for access to premium content, which could include weekly classes, workbooks and printables, video lessons, tutorials, or whatever else you have to offer.

Think of it as a mix between teaching and community.

4. Services

Offering services is by far the fastest way to make money with your blog. Your blog doubles as your portfolio when pitching clients, so you can make money working for others while building your other income streams. Let’s look at some of the best services to offer as a new blogger.

Digital Marketing

In case you haven’t realized it yet, blogging is about so much more than just writing and publishing articles. Along the way to building your blog, you learn about social media strategies, design, SEO, content marketing, and about a million other things.

Many of those things fall under the umbrella of digital marketing, and they’re incredibly valuable to other businesses.

Our friend Bobby realized that soon after he started his blog. His site wasn’t making any money at the time, so he needed to find another way to bring in some cash. That’s when he started reaching out to other businesses to offer his services doing the things he’d learned from blogging (Facebook ads, writing online content, social media strategy, etc.).

That bright idea turned into a nice little side hustle and allowed him to continue building his blog and growing his online business. Spoiler alert: he’s now a full-time blogger.

Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistants are in high demand for online entrepreneurs. A virtual assistant helps business owners with everything from administrative tasks to design to email marketing.

Your services will depend on your specific skills and experiences. For example, if you have impeccable spelling and grammar, then one of your services could be to proofread articles for other websites.

As a virtual assistant, your options are pretty much limitless. Here’s a list of 150+ services you can offer as a virtual assistant. Yes, there are really that many.

Freelance Writing

This is one of the easiest and most common services to offer as a new blogger. You’re already writing content for your own website, so why not get paid to write for someone else?

Freelance writing is a great way to practice your writing skills and get your name out there. It’s also perfect for building authority if you write for sites in your niche.

And don’t think for a second that “freelancing” is synonymous with “working for pennies.” Some freelance writers make upwards of six figures per year.