Most aspiring bloggers are keen to create an income stream out of blogging but have no idea where to start blogging for money and get on a fail proof journey.
How to Start Blogging With No Experience
GroundZeroe is your “Square One” of no fluff successful blogging training. On this platform we assume that you have zero knowledge and skills for getting your blog career off the ground, and let alone to get it to yield meaningful results.
Most blogging gurus will give you low value tactics on how to start a blog. The advice normally takes the form of a 5 step or a 9 step outline that runs like: choose a niche, register a domain name, get hosting, install and customize WordPress, create content and monetize.
I am sorry to break it to you, but many have followed this path and failed dismally.
80% of new blogs are likely to fail within 18 months of their inception.
The 5 step or 9 step process of starting a blog makes up a workflow and not a strategy for successful blogging. The process will ensure you do get your blog running, but the workflow itself will not necessarily yield success. What often happens is that newbies follow the workflow religiously only to experience failure and disillusionment a few months down the line when they realize that:
The anticipated results are not coming through
It will actually take a lot more than the 7 step plan to have a successful blog and earn meaningful income from blogging
Here is the number 1 mistake that most bloggers make:
Thinking that blogging is about writing and publishing content.
Pro Tip
Pro tip. Shift from thinking about blogging for income as a writing and publishing endeavor -to thinking about blogging for income as a running a startup.
So what then does it take to blog successfully. i.e. earn meaningful income from blogging?
Below are the 10 fail proof and actionable steps you must follow to begin a journey of successful blogging.
1. Master the factors of successful blogging
This is the first and most crucial step. Skip this at your peril and the risk of losing valuable time and resources. Before you touch any aspect of the blogging workflow, spend time mastering the factors of successful blogging.
Successful blogging requires choosing the right online business concept / monetization model that matches the skill set and experience you can leverage to extract value from the market.
We break down this aspect and explain every part in detail in our Free Blogging GroundZeroe Training.
2. Choose a monetization / business model
There are numerous ways to monetize a blog, you could earn from display ads, affiliate marketing, drop shipping, eCommerce, selling your own course content, etc. Again the business model you go with must be suited for the skill set and experience you already have and not the experience you hope to acquire.
3. Niche Down
There is an art and science of choosing a monetizable niche. It’s not just about picking something from your hobbies, interest or passion, it has to match the MM (monetization model) – SSE (Skill Set & Experience) – VM (Value from the Market) triangle.
There is no point picking a niche that is hardly monetizable, a niche without sufficient search interest, products and services to monetize even if this niche is of great interest to you.
GroundZeroe presents a niche identification matrix that will guide you on how to pick a niche that you can extract meaningful value from.
4. Register a domain name
What will be the domain name of your blog?
Also, what will the extension (top-level-domain) of that domain be?
What is the impact of domain name format and extension on Search Engine Optimisation?
What can research data tell us?
GroundZero answers all these questions and helps with a process to pick an appropriate domain name for your blog concept.
5. Choose the best web hosting service
With thousands of web hosting services and options available, the process of choosing the appropriate web host has become overwhelming particularly for newbies with no experience on what to consider as key features of a good hosting platform.
The choice of a good web hosting service must be informed by the blog concept, monetization model, content and traffic strategies.
GroundZeroe has thoroughly reviewed dozens of web hosting services and we present both summarized and comprehensive insights on which web hosting service is suited for your blog concept.
6. Choose a Blogging and Content Management System (CMS)
Blogging platform (CMS) options rage from WordPress.com (pre-hosted), WordPress.org (self-hosted), Web.com, Wix, HubSpot CMS, Gator,Blogger, Tumblr, Medium,Squarespace Ghost, to Weebly, etc.
You need to have a complete picture of your blogging needs before you settle for a blogging platform. When choosing a blog platform consider a platform that is user friendly (biginner friendly) and doesn’t require technical knowledge. Pick a platform that you can easily grow you blog with without the need to shift to a different platform later.
WordPress.org is a great blogging platform out of all. It is mature and has thousands of free themes and plugins. There are also hundreds of websites that offer WordPress tutorials, hacks and how-tos.
7. Customize WordPress
One of the advantages of WordPress is that it is template driven and therefore user friendly for bloggers with no design or coding skills. That said, your choice of theme/template is crucial in your success equation. The most crucial factors are:
1) The On Page SEO aspects of your theme 2) How long it will take for your theme (pages and posts) to load when a visitor opens the page.
Slow site load speed is a red flag to Google and that has grim implications for your SEO, which has a knock on effect on traffic and the overall success of your blog.
GroundZero will present you a list of top performing WordPress Themes that are load speed and on-page search engine optimized off the self.
8. Choose A Blogging Strategy and Create Content
Now comes the fun part. Content creation is not just fun, it is also crucial and demanding. Blogging for income is not the same as the original purpose of blogging – which was about journaling one’s thoughts online and gaining some following over time.
Remember what we said earlier, a serious blogger must shift from thinking about blogging as just about writing and publishing to thinking about blogging as running a startup. First off, you need to decide on a blogging strategy:
Will you be publishing posts frequently with the hope of snowballing traffic volumes over time?
Will you publish more quality and shareable content and leverage link building to accelerate your success?
Or perhaps you will have a hybrid blogging strategy that leverages the various approaches?
Secondly, your content creation strategy must be informed by demand from the market. i.e. content must be search intent driven. Your content must also be formatted primarily for human beings and secondarily, for search engines.
9. Monetise
The monetization aspect of your blogging business is tied to everything but more so your blogging strategy and content creation aspect. For example, if you intend to earn from display ads you will need to generate massive volumes of traffic to earn significant income.
While all models require significant traffic, if the monetization model is high ticket affiliate marketing for example, you can generate substantial revenue without as much traffic as you would need for a display ads monetization model.
GroundZero will take you through the traffic, income and strategic aspects and implications of each of the covered monetization models.
10. Analyze and Optimize
The last step is to analyze data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console (We will show you how to set these up). The aim of the analyses is to map out what your wins are in terms of traffic and traction from your search data driven posts. Key questions to ask here are:
Which of your keywords and posts are performing well? What search terms does Google like your site for?
Identify those and scale your content strategy.
Rinse and Repeat. Done!
Subscribe to the Free GroundZero Blogging Training
GroundZeroe does not only publish how-to-guides. We offer you a set of free and premium tools and resources to help you with each aspect of successful blogging until you reach your ultimate goal which is to earn meaningful income from your blog.
