The Lowdown
What is Blogging?
Blogging started out as a personal diary where you'd write about your personal life and topics that interest you on the web. These blogs were accessible to anyone with a computer, internet, and your blog website address. However, blogging took on a life of its own. People realized they were able to monetize (make money) their knowledge and gain influence through blogs. Blogs now make up a large portion of all websites. In 2019, it's estimated that 1.6 billion websites exist and over 500 million are considered blogs.
Blogs are now used by both individuals and businesses. They've become a platform for generating content about a companies core business, building influence, and driving traffic to their website. For individuals, it's a great way to create content around a subject you're interested in and monetizing your blog traffic through blog sponsorships, affiliate products, display advertising, e-books, courses, etc.
Blogging can be a business of its own or it can be part of a bigger marketing strategy. There are many who have made blogging a full-time profession and others who make over a million dollars a year blogging about niche topics like finances, side hustles, gardening, crafts, parenting, travel, relationships, animals, etc. The possibilities are endless.
How Does it Work?
How Do You Make Money?
Creating a successful business through blogging is dependent on your ability to capture an audience's attention. You do this by creating valuable content relevant to your target market in the form of blogs, photos, audio, video, etc. Once you've captured their attention you can make money several ways:
Affiliate Products
With an audience that knows, likes, and trusts you, they see you as the expert. If you recommend products to them, they are likely to buy what you recommend. Many companies that sell products or services have an affiliate program. They will give you a fixed amount or a percentage of the sale of the product that you recommend and your viewers buy. (See Affiliate Marketing).
Sponsored Blogs
Small businesses and companies are willing to pay you to publish on your blog. They want to gain exposure for their products or services with your audience. The blog can either be written by you or by the company.
Display Advertising
If you build a large enough audience, you can join an advertising network like Google's Adsense, where they will automatically post relevant ads on your blog. Whenever an ad is clicked or seen you'll get paid for each click.
Digital Products
Creating a digital product like an e-book (See E-books) or online course (See Online Courses) is another way to monetize your audience. You can create relevant content for your audience that they are willing to pay for.
These are just some of the ways to monetize your blog. The key to any successful blog though is providing valuable content to your readers.
What Are The Pros & Cons?
- Simple to get started.
- You're building an asset because all the content you create lasts forever.
- It can lead to multiple streams of income.
- You create personal credibility that can lead into other business opportunities.
- You can make almost any passion into a monetizable blog.
- You need to create content regularly.
- Easy to start but it also means a lot of competition.
- You'll need to learn Search Engine Optimization to get your blog read.
- Blogging takes time to build a serious audience and income.
Estimated Startup Cost
Web Hosting
Domain
Website Theme
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Total Cost
Key Activities in Blogging
As a blogger, your main priority is creating content. The content will be in the form of written blogs but you can use a combination of video, audio, images, and other mediums as long as your providing valuable content.
Aside from creating content, you'll need to gain exposure for your content. This can be done through organic and paid social media marketing (SMM), search engine optimization (SEO), and search engine marketing (SEM). The rest of your time will be maintaining your blog site and interacting with customers.
Start Blogging
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By Ryan Robinson
Back in 2014, I started my blog here (ryrob.com). Since then, I've grown it to become a dependable source of six-figures in annual side income.
Today, my blog gets over 400,000 monthly readers, has more than 140,000 smart subscribers getting my weekly content, and my podcast reaches 25,000 monthly listeners. It generates anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 in monthly income-on the side of my day job.
I've used my blog to broker five-figure monthly retainer deals, consulting for companies like LinkedIn, Google, Zendesk, Adobe, and Intuit. It's helped me launch multiple products and courses. My writing and content has been featured on Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, Business Insider, and Fast Company amongst others.
I've worked with entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss, Lewis Howes, Nir Eyal, Steli Efti and Vanessa Van Edwards to effectively market and grow their online businesses.
Choosing to invest in building a blog-and spending 1000's of hours over the years testing, experimenting, and learning how to double down on what's actually working best-has changed my life. But it hasn't always been easy…
In Built to Blog, I'm opening up my personal playbook-learned through 1000's of hours of testing, experimenting, and doubling down on what's actually working-to show you exactly how I've grown my blog into a six-figure source of side income.
Throughout this course's 54 lessons, over 8 hours of instructional video lectures, more than 15,000 words in private written content, and 5 hours of exclusive video interviews with ten of the world's most influential bloggers, I'm showing you exactly how to build a profitable blog (without wasting time and money on tactics that don't work today).
We cover the nitty-gritty details of everything from the mechanics of getting your blog set up and optimized, to developing a writing practice, creating content that's designed to attract readers, driving traffic, building an email list, monetizing your blog and more. To say this is epic would be an understatement. Come join us today.