We hear and read about blogs and successful bloggers often on the internet. But what does blogging mean, and how we can use it for our strategies and ideas? The truth is that anyone can start a blog these days, but most people cannot get great results and create effective strategies.
People usually fail because of one thing – they don’t put enough effort. What the most successful bloggers do, is they treat blogging as a real job. So, let’s have a look at what does it take to become a successful blogger, and how big the rewards can be.
What Does Blogging Mean?
A basic description of a blog that you can find on Wikipedia is the following: A blog is a discussion or an informational website published on the internet. Also, it mentions that a blog has posts that you can find them in chronological order. Another definition could be that blogging is the creation of posts.
Today, blogging is a business model. Many people pay for mortgages and build houses from blogging, and the sky is a limit with this business idea.
The first blog was created in 1994, but it took a few years to become popular and used for business. Blogging had extreme growth from 2000 up to 2005. In 2005, over 32 million users from the USA was already reading blogs.
Google launched AdSense in 2003. It was the first advertising network for bloggers and allowed anyone to monetize their blogs. It made blogging more attractive than before, even though some marketers already used it for traffic and lead generation.
Today many things have changed. There are millions of blogs online, and people still search for content on the internet. It is estimated that 70 million blog posts are being published every month on WordPress alone. These are blog posts in their basic format that include content and images. However, there are other types of blogging that include video, microblogging, as well as the question and answer websites that we have not added to this number.
Users on the internet consume information on different topics and formats. For example, vlogging is blogging with videos, and podcasts – blogging in audio format.
YouTube has thousands of new videos every single day. Also, there is a big growth in podcasts today and you can find them on platforms, like SoundCloud, BuzzSproud, Podbean and more. It proves that blogging is a growing industry available in different formats.
In the future, blogging will keep being a part of our daily life and business. Digital marketers will keep finding ways to improve their communication with their audience through their content, and it can be only positive for the internet and online marketing.
What Does A Blogger Do?
A blogger is a person who blogs. So, the bloggers create content that is being published in their personal or business blog. While nowadays not every blogger needs to be a good writer, the traditional, written blogs are still on a huge demand.
Most top bloggers write new articles daily and read relevant topics to become better. Creating a nice piece of content requires more than good writing skills. Before getting started, they research the topic and make sure that they have enough information about it. They add beautiful relevant images or videos and try to make the titles as more appealing as possible.
We live in a world where readers can reach a blog through multiple channels. Bloggers utilize search engines, social media, or ads on various websites to attract those readers, and this is a crucial factor to become successful.
For this reason, professional bloggers must optimize their blogs and content for top marketing channels. If they want to get visitors from search engines, they must optimize their websites for SEO. If they want to get traffic from social media, they need to learn how to build the following list and engage with their audience. And this is where bloggers become digital marketers…
To find for a blogger what’s working or not, there is a lot of research and testing required. Every blog has a unique audience, and every audience has unique behavior. Therefore it’s important to define which marketing strategy is right to implement.
For a quick example, imagine that your blog is about fishing. Of course, spending a lot of time while advertising on Pinterest, where the majority of its users are women, wouldn’t be a great idea.
Lastly, bloggers manage their blogs. A blog has some expenses when it comes to hosting, domain names, and paid plugins, themes or marketing platforms.
They make sure that everything is up-to-date and all technical problems are fixed. Of course, they can outsource any of the technical tasks, so they don’t necessarily need to be tech-savvy. The best bloggers in the world have teams that work with them. In many cases, they outsource even their writing tasks.
The bottom line is that a blogger is anyone who publishes content on a blog. However, in the blogging business, bloggers are the people who own blogs and usually have multiple people working for them.
How Do Bloggers Get Paid?
There are many full-time bloggers these days, and you can find them on multiple platforms like their websites, YouTube, and social media. They create different types of content, and there are many ways to make money with it. So, here are a few examples of the most effective blogging monetization methods:
Advertising networks:
The most popular advertising network is Google AdSense, but it is not the only one available out there. There are also advertising networks like, Media.net, Propeller Ads, Popads and many more. Each of them has its own benefits and works for different needs.
If you have a blog, you can apply to their programs. When they accept you, you can put ads on your blog or your videos and get paid per click. On YouTube, Google AdSense is the only way to put ads on your videos.
Affiliate marketing:
Many blogs and niche websites recommend products or services of other people. If the blogger adds an affiliate link for these products, he can earn a commission for each sale generated through his link.
It works better for blogs that are focused on a narrow niche or the ones that are based on reviews of affiliate products. While you can add as many affiliate links as you want on your blog, they are not allowed on every platform or have certain limitations. So, make sure that you follow the rules when you add your affiliate links on social media and YouTube.
Sponsored posts:
Many authority websites sell space on their blog. If you create a big audience and get a lot of traffic, you can consider this option.
Selling ads:
Instead of using advertising networks, which automatically places ads on your blog, you can sell advertising space directly to people who want traffic from your website to their products.
Sell your own products:
Many companies start with blogging to promote their own products. Blogging can be an effective marketing channel, and you can use it to get traffic to your product pages on Amazon, eBay, a Shopify store, etc. Many bloggers also sell digital products directly from their blog.
Examples Of Successful Bloggers
Here are few very successful bloggers who have earned millions of dollars from this business model. They have all started from zero, and put significant effort to become who they are now.
Neil Patel:
If you don’t know who Neil Patel is you are probably new to digital marketing. He is one of the most well-known names in blogging and digital marketing. There are many blogs and stories about his successes, and he has multiple successful blogs and online businesses. According to a post on his website, he makes over $300k per month from one of his blogs. Also, he says that it is realistic for a new blogger to make 10% of this amount with the right strategy. Neil Patel has his own products and services that are his main source of income.
Pat Flynn:
He is the owner of The Smart Passive Income. He is a blogger and affiliate marketer who have earned millions of dollars from his websites. He is famous for creating podcasts that he monetizes them with affiliate marketing. According to him, a single episode of his podcasts helped him generate over $100,000 in commissions in two-plus years. He has published many monthly income reports that prove his earnings from blogging.
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner:
She is a great blogger who uses her blog Making Sense Of Cents,to create multiple sources of income. According to SBNC, she earns over $100,000 a month blogging and traveling around the world. She has published many income reports that show her earnings from affiliate marketing, Google AdSense, and her own digital products.
How To Start A Blog
Back in the early years of blogging, it was not that easy to start your blog as it is today. You should have some knowledge of coding and put the time to set up your website. Today, you can start a blog in just a few minutes, with the most powerful website builders, like WordPress.
But, starting a blog isn’t the hardest part of the process. Finding the right marketing strategies, being consistent and dedicated is the most important thing, and that’s where most people fail.
Anyway, the first thing that you should do as a new blogger is to take action to build a website. All successful bloggers have their websites, and they are proud of them. It only takes a few dollars and a bit of time. You will need to purchase a domain name, and a hosting provider to get started, and that is enough for the beginning.
The next common thing of successful bloggers is to find the right topic. Because of the large competition these days, it’s a good idea to create a blog in a specific and unique niche.
Make sure you love or at least have a bit of interest in a topic you are willing to blog about. It’s all because blogging requires publishing a lot of content, and it’s nothing worse than creating it around the topic you don’t like.
What you don’t want to do is to start a blog and write about multiple niches, as well as to start multiple blogs at the same time. It’s simply because you just can’t be an expert in everything, and you can’t be developing multiple quality websites at the same time on your own.
Once you fully establish your first blog in your niche that generates income, you can focus on buying or creating more sites.
Lastly, successful bloggers create quality content and take care of the technical parts of marketing. If you have a look at any high authority website that publishes new posts, they try to create the best article on each topic.
Without publishing content, you simply cannot attract visitors to your blog. More content means more rankings on the search engines, more traffic, and more earnings.
Time has changed over the years, and you can’t be tricky with your content anymore. You need to provide helpful content that attracts visitors and makes them read it. If you fail to do that, Google will notice it and it will not reward you with the most effective, organic traffic.
Articles, which are not engaging and helpful, do not help with your affiliate links or ads being clicked either, so content is a key in blogging, and you should focus on it in the first place.
The bottom line is that great bloggers know about SEO, social media marketing, copywriting, advertising, and other relevant tasks. But you don’t need to know about it all when you start. The best advice would be to focus on consistently providing valuable content for your audience, and you will get rewarded eventually.
Conclusion
If you like to create content, you have no excuses for not getting started. You can start blogging and searching for content ideas in your free time. As you keep blogging and sharing your content, people will find it, leave comments, and share it on social media. The most important thing is to not give up.