How to start a blog and make money online

A blog (from the English “weblog” – a web log of events, an Internet diary, an online diary) is a site containing entries with texts, images or multimedia posted on a regular basis. It usually contains a list of current chronicles of short entries, ranked in reverse chronological order (latest posts first). Blogs invite the public to read, comment, and “stumble” on other posts.

The first ever blog on the Internet was created by Tim Berners Lee to publish news back in 1992. But they gained popularity in 1996. In August 1999, San Francisco-based company Pyra Labs launched Blogger, which was the first off-the-shelf web application for free use and monetization.

Ways to create + software

Free online platforms

The best free blogging platforms are:

  • wordpress.com. This is a platform that offers to start blogging without hosting. But, compared to a professional CMS (WordPress.org), WordPress.com has the disadvantage of limited functionality. In addition, in the future, you will face some problems in blog monetization. For example, to use a Google AdSense ad code, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid account. However, you always have the option to migrate your blog to the WordPress CMS.
  • Livejournal. Its features include posting your own entries, commenting on each other’s journal entries, joining other users’ communities, chatting with each other, and receiving RSS feeds. Adsense code is allowed.
  • blogger.com. It is the oldest blogging platform. Allowed to use AdSense.
  • Yandex Zen. The platform of the search engine of the same name. For monetization, you can use the default YAN, but with Adfox , you can use Adsense and other networks. We recommend that you study the rules of work, because. often there were cases of disabling monetization.

The first three platforms allow you to use your own second-level domain like “domain.com”.

There are also paid platforms for creating blogs. The most popular of these are Squarespace and Typepad, but they are only for English-speaking audiences.

Also, do not forget about other formats and even more top-end services.

  • Twitter. microblogging service. It is not suitable for everyone, and in terms of the convenience of a regular blog, it is slightly different, but for someone, it is enough and only it.
  • Instagram. Photoblogging is also becoming more and more popular every year. An article about how to make money on Instagram .
  • Youtube. Video blogging allows you to start much faster than creating a regular site, since you do not need to wait for indexing in search engines. There are a lot of stories when a person posted a video, and then, imperceptibly, quickly gained popularity.
  • VKontakte and Facebook . Yes, your pages on social networks are also suitable for a blog and making money on it.
  • telegram. Also a great tool for blogging, but due to the “non-publicity,” it will be more difficult to promote than on the platforms listed above. This means that you will not be found on the Internet, because the address of the blog will not be on the web.

Usually, when using the latest services, people still open a separate site as an application to them or vice versa.

Using CMS

WordPress is by far the best free CMS not only for a blog but just for any content project. The largest number of paid and free templates, as well as plugins on the Internet, are written specifically for WordPress.

Marketing and promotion

There are the following ways to promote your blog:

  • Quality content. This is the main key to success for the promotion of any Internet project. If you are not a celebrity, then your blog content should be relevant to the topics and queries that people are searching for on the Internet. Search terms are easy to find! Use for this Yandex. Words that, Google Keyword Planner, or better, special software and services designed to collect semantics, for example, Key Collector, Bookvarix, etc.
  • SEO. This is a set of measures to optimize website pages to improve visibility in search engine results, which, in turn, helps to increase traffic (for informational sites, including blogs), attract potential customers (for online stores ) and monetize this traffic. The higher the visibility in the search results, the more visitors your blog has come from search engines.
  • SMM ( Social Media Marketing ) is the process of attracting traffic through CC. In SMM, the focus is on creating content that people will share. People used to think that messages (reposts) distributed through the SS increase the level of trust among potential customers. This is due to the social relations that form the basis of the SS. That’s why SS messages look more like recommendations than advertisements.
  • S.M.O. _ This is the same as SEO. The difference lies in the fact that SMO is not aimed at search engines but at social networks (hereinafter referred to as SS) and blogs. The goal is to increase traffic to your CC website or build a community. At the same time, the task of an SEO specialist moves from search engine optimization to social network optimization, including winning, creating viral content.
  • Advertising networks ( banner , contextual, teaser ): Google Adwords, Yandex.Direct and many others. They can be used for blog branding, improving behavioral factors, and additional influx of visitors. But, as a rule, this method is quite expensive and not always appropriate for small blogs.

Monetization

There are the following ways to make money for a blog and other content projects:

  1. Contextual and banner advertising. AdSense and YAN are the most popular services of this type. After registering in the systems, you create an ad unit, set it up, and get a code that you then need to insert into those places on the blog (article, sidebar, footer, etc.) where you want to see ads. Visitors click on your ad and you earn money.
  2. Teaser advertisement. It looks like an image with text, which is very attractive to visitors.
  3. CPA (Cost Per Action) is a model for earning, which is paid for the action. But the fact is that only special actions of users on the advertiser’s project are paid, for example, registration on the site, ordering a product or service, and so on.
  4. Sale of products and services. You can sell handicrafts or offer services related to the blog concept.
  5. Affiliate Programs. The principle of earning is the same as CPA, but in this case, you will work with a partner directly, and not through the CPA network.
  6. Publication of paid content. You can post promotional articles and reviews on the blog. Here it is necessary to cancel that almost everything, even the largest media publications, publishes paid content. For them, this is an integral part of monetization. The main thing is that there should not be too much of such content.

To earn money, you can use all the ways to monetize your blog at once, but the amount of advertising should be reasonable. Or you need to learn how to make it discreet, but as effective as possible.