Building an online business is not tough, but it’s not easy either. But blogging as a business is possible. The question is: how will you pull it off and make some money in the process?
We’ll be taking a look at how you can build a business with the help of your own blog shortly. You’d actually be surprised by some of the benefits. If you have considered the idea of starting a business, a blog might be part of your success.
You might be good at writing or you might suck at it (we’ll show you a trick on how to get it done anyway even if you hate writing). As long as your blog post speaks to your relevant audience and contains the right message, then you will likely see success. Plus, you’ll learn some of the cool tricks you can use to get consistent traffic to your blog.
Enough talk, let’s get started with how you can build a blog that will play an integral role in your business.
1. Choose a niche that you know about
There are millions of blogs on the Internet. And they cover a wide variety of niches. If there is a niche that you are knowledgeable in and can be able to help others with your creative solutions through your blog posts, then you’re in a pretty good position.
Even better if your niche is within either one of the big three categories: health, wealth, or relationships. From there, you can find a sub-niche that you can whittle down so you have a laser-focused audience. This niche should also allow you to scale your blog to sell products and services (which will get into here in a bit).
Don’t find a niche because you know that’s where the money is. Start a business based on a niche where you can easily build yourself into an authority figure. Each one of your posts will be packed with valuable information along with actionable steps (if needed) to get the reader to act on solving a certain problem.
2. Find ways to monetize your blog
A lot of blog owners find creative ways to monetize their blogs. One way is to do affiliate marketing. In other words, you can make money by selling other people’s products.
You’ll notice that there are plenty of niche blogs that have review posts of certain items. Each of them is linked to an Amazon page where the blog owner gets a part of the sale if the item is purchased through their affiliate link.
Of course, you can also sell your own products and services. Whether it’s a course, an ebook, or even a freelance service that you offer, you can earn a killing selling your own stuff. However, it will mostly require you to do one thing.
Want to know what it is? That’s the next thing on the list. And you might also like this little trick that we suggest.
3. Build your email list
If you are going to monetize your blog, you’re going to need to rely on email marketing to do the heavy lifting for you. You write an email per day or every other day and you plug something every time you send one out. Email marketing may be a little challenging at first, but once you get the hang of it then you can write an email fairly quickly.
You write an email that’s short enough to hold your reader’s attention but long enough to cover the bases. Once you’ve written that, you can plug a product or service that you want to sell. One word of advice, create a promotional calendar.
What a promotional calendar does is that it will allow you to choose a product that you sell. And you spend the whole week selling it with email. After the week is up, you can focus on a different product (so switch it up if you have multiple products or services to sell).
If you don’t know anything about email marketing at all, don’t worry. We know a couple of guys that can help. Check out Ben Settle or Andre Chaperon as they are the go-to guys in email marketing. What you’ll notice is that Ben Settle often uses his emails that he writes and they double as his blog posts (so in case you run out of ideas, use your past emails).
4. Use Pinterest as a traffic source
No blog would ever be noticed without traffic. But what if you don’t have any idea how to generate it? Thankfully, there’s Pinterest.
Believe it or not, you can leverage the social media platform to your advantage to generate traffic for free (no joke). When done right, it can work to perfection. Who says that you need paid traffic in order to get a good amount of it going to your blog?
However, you may want to consider using Tailwind as a tool to schedule your Pinterest posts. It doesn’t cost much per month and it will help automate your posts so you can generate your target traffic to the blog.
Some Pinterest posts can still drive traffic to a popular blog post even years after its initial publishing. It’s also a bit easier than using other social media platforms where your promo posts get buried under cat videos and vacation pics.
5. Learn to play the long game
Like it or not, SEO may play a role in generating traffic for your blog. You’ll need to choose a focus keyword and learn how to write SEO friendly content. If you don’t want to do it yourself, you can always outsource someone who can write it.
But you should at least do some research on which keywords you want to rank for. Use tools like Google Keyword Tools or UberSuggest as go-to resources for finding relevant keywords for your blog. The less competitive the keywords, the better you’ll rank.
Final Thoughts
Building an online business using a blog can be a challenge. But it can be fun and enjoyable. As long as you have a niche that you love to write about and allows you to scale as high as you can in terms of monetization, you’ll be able to find success.
Just take your time, don’t overthink things, and if things aren’t working don’t be afraid to make some adjustments until something does work. You only fail if you give up on it completely. If building an online business is something that you’re up for, then dig in and take on the challenge.
*** This is a sponsored post.
