Turn your blog into a successful business

2 Shares

In this new article, we show you how to turn your blog into a successful business and give you 3 key reasons why you should monetize your blog.

Let’s get started!

Starting up a blog is a great way to express yourself creatively and pursue a topic you are particularly interested in in-depth.

You can link up with others who share your enthusiasm from all over the world, building up a supportive community of online friends.

Blogs are not limited to certain topics – you can write about whatever takes your fancy, whether that is makeup and fashion, films and gaming, or reading and photography.

You could even use your blog to chronicle your journey to leading a healthier, more fulfilled life, for instance recording a new healthy eating and exercise regime, all with the support of followers from around the world.

However, have you ever considered turning your blogging hobby into a business?

You might think that succeeding in this is only possible for the super bloggers out there, who have made huge names for themselves as online influencers in their field.

Nonetheless, it is still possible for you to monetize your own blog and build up your number of followers.

Read on to find out how to turn your blog into a successful business.

In this new article, we show you how to turn your blog into a successful business and give you 3 key reasons why you should monetize your blog.Click To Tweet

3 Reasons to monetize your blog

To start off with, let us consider the 3 reasons why you should monetize your blog.

Reason 1

The first and most evident reason is that your blog can provide you with an additional source of income.

It can often seem that most people have a side hustle going on, so why not join them and make your hobby work extra hard for you?

Monetizing your blog could prove to be a particularly shrewd move as the 2020 coronavirus pandemic continues with no sign of coming to an end any time soon: your blog could provide an essential source of income if lockdown has affected your work and income level.

Turning your blog into a successful business is also particularly useful if you are looking to become self-employed, either building up your own business or freelancing your particular skillset.

Reason 2

Your blog could act as a portfolio of your work, providing potential clients with an interesting insight into your business practices.

By collaborating with others in your field and producing, for instance, sponsored content, your blog can be used to establish yourself as a leader in your field.

Reason 3

A third and final reason why you should monetize your blog is that, if you spend a large amount of time and effort on writing blog posts, photography, and designing your blog page, you might as well make this work for you by making you money.

You have already proven that you have the dedication to keep your blog looking pretty and producing interesting content that others want to read – why not turn this into a business?

Turn your blog into a successful business – Avoiding Blogging Pitfalls

With all the horror stories out there about internet trolls and online harassment, you might understandably be dubious about putting yourself out there even more as an online personality.

Furthermore, with other commitments such as work and family time, you might be concerned that you will not be able to dedicate enough time to keep up with your content, the result being that your blog quickly goes from a fun hobby that you enjoyed to a stressful, time-consuming commitment.

However, there are certain steps you can take when turning your blog into a successful business to make sure that this does not happen.

1/ Make sure your blog design is up to scratch

One of the first steps to take when transforming your blog from an amateur hobby to a successful business is to make sure that it looks the part.

Comic sans font on a grey background with grainy photographs will be less than impressive to businesses and other blogging professionals with whom you hope to collaborate.

For a professional look, you should consider designing an attractive theme to be used consistently throughout your blog. Do not worry if the design is not your strong point and the thought of completely redesigning your blog overwhelms you – you can download blog templates to use on your own blog.

Additionally, use a sans serif font such as Calibri to maximize the readability of your articles; fancy fonts with lots of curlicues and embellishments might look pretty, but readers will soon lose patience if they struggle to decipher each word.

2/ Consider upgrading your website

If you already have an amateur blog, the chances are that it is hosted on a free blogging platform such as WordPress.

This has many benefits, such as having a wide selection of ready-made themes for your blog from which to choose, and a huge amount of free and paid plugins with which to customize your site.

Of course, the fact that WordPress offers a free hosting service is a great benefit if you are simply dabbling in blogging for a hobby and cannot afford an expensive domain.

However, if you have decided to turn your blogging hobby into a business, you might consider upgrading your website to another hosting site, particularly if you are establishing your own business.

Doing this could help to make a clean break from your amateur blog, signalling that you are serious about becoming a blogging professional.

3/ Ensure your content is consistent and high quality

To be blunt, readers want engaging, well-crafted content, and do not expect them to stick around if you are not consistently providing that.

Treat your blog as you would your business and create a plan for the content you want to publish.

For instance, you might decide to post several product reviews each week, along with a longer thought article every two weeks.

Regularly posting interesting blog posts can become overwhelming, especially if you are juggling your blog around another job and family life: along with actually writing the article, there is research to carry out and photographs to source.

If this is something that you are concerned about, you will be pleased to know that there is some assistance available. Professional content writers will provide you with consistent, high-quality writing to ensure that your blog is regularly posting interesting articles that are sure to draw readers to your website.

Visit clickintelligence.co.uk for more information about finding content writers.

4/ Develop your blogging skillset

In addition to subject knowledge, blogging is a creative endeavour that involves a varying set of skills.

You have to be able to craft well-written, interesting articles, compose aesthetically pleasing photographs, and use editing software to ensure that your blog looks its best.

You will no doubt discover that you are more naturally inclined towards certain skills than others.

If your blog has previously simply been a hobby, you might have been satisfied to live with a drop in quality in a certain area; however, turning your blog into a successful business requires you to view it in a professional light, and part of this professionalism includes

continuously strengthening your skillset.

You could, for instance, take a Skillshare course in photography or web development to boost your blog or take an online business and marketing course to learn how to develop your brand.

5/ Host advertisements

Many businesses are by now aware of the huge marketing potential of online influencers such as bloggers and Instagrammers: a single tweet from a trusted influencer gets their brand out to thousands – sometimes millions – of potential customers all over the world.

Even with a modest following of a few hundred people, your blog will be an attractive prospect to businesses who will pay you to host an advertisement on your site.

To show businesses that you are open to collaboration, make sure that you have a contact page on your blog detailing your business email so that companies can easily contact you.

You might also like to detail any terms and conditions you may have, for instance, if there are any products that you do not want to promote on your blog.

6/ Sponsored content

In addition to hosting advertisements, some businesses might approach you to produce sponsored content for your blog.

This might take the form of a paid review of a particular product, or providing you with the materials with which to complete a particular project (for instance, if your blog is about home baking, the business might be a wholesaler who provides you with the ingredients needed to bake a show-stopping cake).

You might even build a trusting relationship with the business which could establish a long-standing collaboration – an attractive scenario for the both of you.

However, if you are producing sponsored content on your blog, make sure that you specify this on each sponsored post.

The blogger-reader relationship is built on trust, and many readers can feel deceived if a trusted blogger extolls the virtues of a particular product only for it to then be revealed as a sponsored review.

7/ Collaborate with other online influencers

The blogging world is often described as consisting of ‘communities’ built around certain topics, for instance, sewing bloggers, fashion bloggers, DIY bloggers, and many more.

To firmly establish your blog as a voice in your particular community, make sure that you converse with other bloggers and your readership, and provide a supportive voice in the community.

Also, make sure that you participate in community events such as blog tours and giveaways or organizing your own with other bloggers.

Being a proactive member of your blogging community in this way will firmly establish your blog as a trusted source of information and help to build your following.

You could also decide to collaborate with influencers from other social media outlets, such as Instagrammers.

Doing this will allow your blog to be seen by a wider potential readership who might not otherwise come across your blog.

8/ Use other forms of social media to converse with your readership

Although blogging might be your primary outlet, do not forget about other forms of social media such as Twitter and Instagram.

Make sure that you have social media accounts specifically for your blog so that you can notify followers when you have a new blog post up and so that it is easier for businesses to contact you for advertisement and collaboration purposes. Social media is also an incredibly important tool for connecting with your blog readership.

Although many people will often leave comments on separate posts on your blog, social media such as Twitter can be used to converse directly with your readers in real-time.

Doing this regularly enables you to build a trusting relationship with your readers and establish yourself as a reliable voice in your blogging community.

Being active on other social media channels might allow for expansion in the future.

For instance, you might decide, as part of a future business plan, to make a monthly YouTube video discussing various topics from your blog in more detail.

9/ Maximize your SEO

When seeking to turn your blog into a successful business, you should look to maximize your search engine optimization (SEO).

This means the optimization of your online content so that a search engine such as Google is likely to display your page as one of the top results for a certain keyword.

This might sound complicated, but there are some simple ways that you can ensure that your blog SEO is maximized.

For instance, be strategic when identifying keywords for your blog and individual articles to boost your discoverability. This involves considering what terms people are likely to search for on Google.

As an example, you might run a mommy blog, in which case, choosing key words around childcare advice, reviews for child-friendly products, and baby diaries are likely to score high on SEO.

Turn your blog into a successful business – Your How-To Guide

So, there you have it: why you should transform your amateur blog into a business and nine steps to take to ensure that your new blogging business is successful.

Whether your blog is about home improvements or sewing, film reviews or fashion, with a bit of hard work and strategic thinking you are sure to find your place in the blogging world, and turn your passion into a profitable business.

So now it is over to you!

Are you a blogger?

Is your blog a hobby or have you turned it into a profitable business?

Did you do anything different from what is being suggested in the article above?

Let us know in the comments section below.

Make sure that you subscribe to the comments so you are notified when we reply.

Regards Dexter