1. Before you start, think about how you can monetize your blog.
One of the big mistakes most beginners make when starting a blog is they first create content, try a few ways to increase traffic, and then find ways to monetize their blog.
Let me be honest. If you go the same way, you will eventually fail to build a blog that makes money. Why?
If you don’t find ways to monetize your blog before you even start, you’re not going to make much money online.
Always start with the end in your mind.
Analyze your top competitors and analyze how they monetize their websites. Find out how they generate their traffic, how they engage their readers to buy their stuff, and repeat the same.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel continually. Spend time carefully understanding your competitors, and you will find intelligent ways to monetize your blog.
2. Stand out from the crowd
You’re not Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, or Barak Obama, who people naturally remember.
There are a ton of blogs out there, and 99% of them are pure crap. There’s just too much competition out there on the Internet.
It’s tough to build a successful blog that makes money in 2019 because the competition is so fierce. If you offer the same advice as everyone else, why would anyone follow you and buy what you recommend?
Watch any highly profitable blogger like Darren Rowse, Pat Flynn, Seth Godin, Derek Halpern; you’ll find that they’ve built millions of dollar blogs by focusing on one thing: standing out from the rest of the competition.
When everyone else in your industry is writing short posts, you are creating profound and gigantic informative articles. You will stand out.
When everyone else is blogging, you’re making videos or podcasts. You’re sure to stand out.
When everyone else in your industry is using AdSense to monetize their blogs, try email marketing! You’ll stand out.
3. Write detailed articles
Did you know that articles with more than 2,000+ words always have a good position in Google?
Gone are the days when you could simply increase your overall search traffic by publishing short articles of 500 words a day. Now the short pieces will no longer give you an advantage.
They simply won’t help you get better search results.
Google wants to give its users the BEST information and is giving more importance to sites that publish detailed and evergreen articles.
So if you’re just starting, instead of 10 short articles, write two full-length articles in a month. It can help you in the long run.
4. Write many articles for others
One of the most frequent complaints from new bloggers is, “I’m not getting enough traffic.”
How do you increase traffic if you only write for your blog?
Here are three ways: 1. Write for other blogs, 2. do guest blogging, and 3. increase your online reach. Build up some quality links and improve your overall domain authority.
That way, you will get traffic. Plus, improve your general search ranking for your targeted keywords.
Do not make the mistake of writing only for your blogs. This is the biggest blogging mistake you can make, especially at the beginning.
And before you submit your article to a quality website, make sure your content is first class, well researched, and well written. Avoid stupid grammar mistakes, or your item will be rejected.
You can use tools like Grammarly to check your content for spelling and grammar errors.
5. Building some authority
On the Internet, people simply do not buy from strangers.
They only buy from those they trust or with whom they already have relationships. It always come down to trust and authority.
Without authority, trying to increase your blog traffic is a waste of time. Even if you generate tons of traffic, you will undoubtedly have difficulty selling online.
That’s why you should focus on building your online authority from day one. Here are a few quick tips on how to increase your online influence.
Don’t recommend products or services that you don’t use. Never advertise a product or service just for the idea of easy money. Focus on your audience, and they will take care of your business. It’s as simple as that.
Get testimonials from experts is easy – interview them. At the end of the interview, ask them to say a few helpful things about your content or website. In the long run, everything will fall into place.
Write guest posts for top blogs and present the portfolio on the home page of your blog. When people see that your guest posts end up on the top blogs, they think you have some skills, so don’t hesitate to read your stuff.
6. It is useless to focus on SEO.
If you are just starting out SEO is a vast ocean.
If you are just starting, it is a waste of time to focus on SEO to increase your traffic. Why?
You could be punished by filling in keywords or quickly building bad backlinks. You never know what SEO mistakes you will make until you acquire some rudimentary SEO skills.
That’s why you should forget about SEO in the beginning and just concentrate on writing appealing content for your readers.
Make your content so enjoyable your readers share it in social media, and you will naturally attract backlinks from other blogs.
SEO is all about backlink quality and the right keyword research. If you don’t know these two factors very well, focusing on SEO will not bring you good results.
Short note: Even if you don’t focus on SEO at all in the beginning, you should learn the SEO basics. This way, you can maintain your SEO skills and use them later to bring more traffic from search engines to your blogs.
7. Connect with the influencers
Having connections to the influencers and top bloggers in your industry can help you with the following.
You can leverage their existing traffic.
It can help you grow your sales (whenever they call you)
It can help you to increase your expert status.
The three factors mentioned above are enough to build a very successful blog fast.
Always look for opportunities to network with the top influencers in your field. Instead of seeking their help, think about how you can offer them free support.
And always reach out to them, either through social media or email. The reach of email is significant to get your blog from zero to hero.
8. Focus on just #1 website traffic source
There are unlimited ways to increase traffic to a website or blog. Social networking, email list, guest posts, videos, content marketing, blog comments, email outreach, and the list goes on and on and on.
And everyone loves traffic. That’s why most beginners spend their time being everywhere to get more traffic to their websites.
But this is a surefire way to burn out. What happens if you spend most of your time with every traffic source under the sun and don’t get as the results you expect?
You will assume driving traffic to a blog is difficult, and you will eventually stop.
Concentrate on only one source at a time, whether it’s social media, content marketing, or SEO. When you focus on one traffic source, spending all your time on it, you will eventually get so good at it that you will see better results.
9. Monetize your blog from the very start.
The number one way to monetize your blog is to create content, increase traffic, and then monetize the traffic, right?
Wrong!
Although the monetization strategy for blogs varies from niche to niche, monetizing your blog from the start is often the most effective way to define your audience best.
Once you know clearly what your target audience wants, you can create more laser-focused content, attract more targeted visitors, and drive more sales to your site.
Don’t forget, if you wait until you get a certain amount of traffic and then monetize it, you may not get the attention of the right audience.
What happens if you attract unfocused website traffic?
You will find it hard to make sales! So think about how you can monetize your blog traffic from day one.
10. Create an email list before you even start.
If you read articles about blogging for a while, you may have heard about the importance of building an email list.
If you ask a successful blogger or marketer to report their biggest blogging mistake, 90% of them will say, “I didn’t start building a list from day one.
No, you should not start building an email list from day one.
But you should consider it before starting a new blog.
Just imagine how great it would be if at least 500 or 1000 email subscribers were waiting for your first blog post?
That’s why you should think about expanding your email list before you start a new blog.
Here are a few ways to do just that.
Send an email to all your friends, blogging buddies, and family about the launch of your new blog. Tell them what you’ll be blogging about and ask them to subscribe to your email updates.
Make promotional gifts. They’ll help you get your email subscribers quickly.
Use social media sites to spread your message. Have a “subscribe” link on every page for visitors. Tell them you’ll send them a free gift as soon as the blog goes live. In the meantime, you can create an eBook, video, or anything else to provide for free.
Try each traffic source for a month or two. Then focus on another source and so on. That way, your website traffic will grow in less than a year.
