How to start blogging

At regular intervals I get questions like «How to start blogging» or «How to make it attend». I thought and realized that I still can't get out of it, and somehow I answer these questions. Therefore, I decided to write a couple of posts on this topic, share my experience, so to speak. But I warn you right away, you are unlikely to find here a guide to the steps, or some kind of universal formula for your actions. And also, I do not consider myself too knowledgeable in these matters, so you should not consider my experience and recommendations as the ultimate truth..

The content of the article

All parts of my little blogger FAQ:

I have written a number of blogging related articles. They do not pretend to be a complete manual, but beginners may find it useful. You can read it if you are interested.

0. I recommend the course «How to become a thousand-year blogger and earn»
1. How to start blogging
2. How to promote a blog - a list of my actions
3. How to make money blogging and traveling
4. An example of making money on our blog - Finstrip 2013, finstrip 2012, Finstrip 2011
five. Reader and Search Traffic, and Why Readers Don't Return
6. Some truth about travel blogging
7. Tips for securing your WordPress blog

How to start blogging

My philosophy of blogging

First of all, I want to tell you a little about my philosophy, so to speak. And it lies in the fact that I do not consider my blog, only as a means of earning money. I am trying to combine blogging for the soul and making money. As far as I can do it, you can judge for yourself by seeing my results: 2011 and 2012.

Yes, I know that many people share these concepts and make separate projects. That is why, you can often find good blogs that are conducted for the soul and bring practically nothing, and vice versa., «govnosites» bringing good profits. Now I will not discuss how and what is more correct to do, everyone decides for himself. Unfortunately, it is not always enough to just keep an interesting blog, as there are a lot of SEO bloggers around who research search algorithms and their articles turn out to be much higher than your articles in the search results. Of course, search algorithms are constantly getting more complicated, and I hope that everything goes to make everything natural..

But I will return to my philosophy, because I want you to understand the path I followed. For me, the blog, as well as everything connected with it, has already become a way of life. I cannot separate travel, photography, communication with people, our minimization of consumption, etc. from the blog. All this turned out to be interconnected, so in fact I am writing about our life, about our discoveries and achievements, although this often happens in travel and this is the main topic of the blog. So, it so happened that for me the blog turned out to be a favorite thing, which means that I will keep it even if it does not bring money. Actually, this was the case for the first year and a half, I spent 10-14 hours a day and did not receive material returns. Would I do this if I didn't like it? Hardly.

Therefore, I can immediately say that my path is not very effective in terms of money. I am sure that if I spent all this time on some other project, and it was initially tailored for earning, then the exhaust would be much higher. But my results and my lifestyle in general suit me at the moment :)

My most important conclusion

The most important thing that I have learned in two years of blogging is that the key to success is your originality / usefulness. Moreover, by originality I mean not only uncommonness, but also some features that no one else has. The more original / useful the project is, the less effort you need to spend on its promotion and promotion.

If a blog or site is already repeating what is on the network, then you will have to work hard and hard. This is exactly what happened in my case. Therefore, do not build illusions, if you do something ordinary, then earnings will not appear so quickly. Therefore, if you want to make money quickly, then it may be worth making a website for earnings right away, and not blogging for the soul..

So, I will summarize all the directions that we got:

  • Useful project

    • There should be a lot of useful information, which is very difficult for one person to do in a short period, especially when it comes to travel. Forums and travel portals will easily furnish you, hundreds of people collect information there, or it is simply bought.

  • Original project

    • Minimum promotion, but you need a competent presentation. Will spread itself on the net.

  • An ordinary project or blog for the soul

    • A lot of time will have to be spent in order to earn. Here you will have to optimize and promote, and sometimes in vain, since a person will come from an advertisement or from a search engine, but it is unlikely that he will return again..

  • The project is purely for earnings

    • Maximum cash exhaust. Promotion and optimization will be justified. Done more for search engines than for people.

The gradation is conditional, so do not find fault :) Ideally, the best option is a useful and original blog for the soul, or, if we move away from the topic of blogs, then an information portal where content is added by other people, or a useful service.

How to start blogging

I hope I was more or less able to tell you about the ways you can go in blogging, and what to expect in terms of earnings. Now about where to start blogging.

  • Choosing a blog theme
  • Choosing a hosting
  • Choosing a blog engine
  • We install plugins and bring the blog to the required form
  • Learning to search for keywords and use them in articles
  • We declare ourselves
  • We study SEO and SMM
  • We study the types of earnings on the blog
  • We analyze our actions
  • Generating ideas

Choosing a blog theme

I am convinced that it is necessary to write about what excites you the most and what interests you the most. Otherwise, you will not be enough for a long time and you will quickly get tired. If we are talking about a website for making money, then it is best to choose the most commercial topic, so later it will be easier to earn.

Choosing a hosting

I can recommend our hosting Beget.ru, to which we recently moved on the advice of our friends, who have had several sites there for a long time. Do not worry if hosting for some reason does not suit you, normal offices return money for unused months, and also help with moving your site. This is a completely normal procedure that almost everyone has to deal with sooner or later..

Choosing a blog engine

I am always in favor of WordPress. This engine has the largest number of plugins and design templates. That is, people who are not versed in web programming languages ​​will find it easy to find ready-made solutions that are necessary for the site. There are dozens of plugins for the same function, if one does not work, the other will work. Also, WordPress is the easiest to learn, both its admin panel and the design of templates and principles of work..

We install plugins and bring the blog to the required form

Over time, we understand what plugins we need, look for their descriptions through search engines and bring the blog to the form that we need. You can read the descriptions anywhere, and the best way to download them is on the official website. For example, I still try all sorts of plugins, this is an endless process.

Learning to search for keywords and use them in articles

I will tell you more about this next time. But you need to decide for yourself whether you are using keywords in your articles or not. And if so, then you need to read a little on this topic, and again decide for yourself in what form you will do it. You can search for keywords through Yandex Wordstat, or even the easiest way is through this free program.

We declare ourselves

When we have a number of articles, and the blog already looks like it can be shown to people, you can start to declare yourself. For example, commenting on other blogs, posting links to yourself where permitted, writing guest posts and articles in popular communities, etc..

We study SEO and SMM

If you decide to use SEO methods (search engine optimization), then you will have to read the forums on this topic too, and draw some conclusions for yourself. It is important to understand that no one will burn serious topics for you, there is no point in this, but you can learn some general techniques. They are workers, just not as efficient as we would like. Well, of course, after trial and error, you will have your own opinion about which things work and which don't. The same can be said about SMM (social media promotion).

Remember that Seo is completely different now, it's smarter or something. It all comes down to usability, behavioral factors, and semantics. That is, you need not just write articles for key issues, but make information pools, or, in other words, cover in detail all topics in your chosen niche. More about this.

We study the types of earnings on the blog

After you have a small traffic, TIC and PR, you can think about ways to make money. While you have nothing of this, I advise you not to bother too much about this. I wrote in detail about the ways to make money on a blog in my article - How to make money while traveling online

We analyze our actions

You always need to study the statistics of attendance, as well as analyze your actions in order to understand what had an effect and what did not. This is a very important point that I myself often neglect. But this is forgivable to me, I do not really like all these topics with earnings :)

Generating ideas

You cannot stop there and it makes sense to constantly think in the direction of what else you can do with a blog, or what other project you can create. Starting to rotate in this topic, I am sure you will discover a lot of new things for yourself, even something that you did not suspect before..

Where to look for information

Somehow I was asked for links where you can look for information. And you know what, I won't give them to you. The thing is that there are just a million resources dedicated to WordPress, website promotion and other things. Moreover, the information on many of them is outdated. So, firstly, get ready to absorb a lot of information, and, secondly, use search engines. Yes, and do not forget to keep links to articles that are useful to you. I do just that. And I can say that I have not yet found one resource that would replace the search engines for me.

Finally

Since blogging combines several professions, then your active steps to master them will help you sooner or later understand which of the directions you like best. What if you are a born SEO, or some kind of rhyming copywriter? Or perhaps your best photographs of wild animals? Then it may be worth all your efforts to direct it there in order to increase your earnings.

Also, the active rotation of the blogosphere and in the field of remote earnings will push you to a lot of new ideas that you could not even think of before, and will also bring you together with various people who may well become your partners or clients..

Well, of course, be patient, and don't be discouraged! If someone succeeded in everything in a short time, but you have not, then it is simply possible that your time has not come yet, and you are just on the way to your favorite work. Sure, «tolerate» it is much easier when you do what you like, and not when it is done just to earn money. But here everyone decides for himself where to start..

P.S. In the next article, I will talk about, what I did to promote and increase traffic to our blog.

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