Unless what you’re really asking is “for those who plan to try and flood the already-saturated blog space with more mindless self-promotion in a desperate bid to try and out-grey-SEO all the other grey-SEO blogs out there” in which case, my response is “Don’t. Go try ACTUALLY putting together something worthwhile that isn’t just another regurgitation of everyone else’s words to try and score e-points.”
That’s a good point.
Though, the thing is that many people actually “just do it” but “finishing it” and actually “generating income” is much tougher for most people.
By the way, “To just do it” actually happens to be hardest task to many people. Everyday, I see many people finding hard to “just to start”.
I have no interest in blogging, but I’ve seen people on these forums asking about getting started, and they all seem to be approaching things back-to-front. The first question they ask is “What should I write about to make money?” My response to that would be: nothing. If your sole interest is making money, then you’re unlikely to be writing things others will want to read, and if you’re having to ask what topic(s) to cover, the chances are you don’t have enough knowledge in the relevant area to produce anything worthwhile.
There are good reasons to start a blog. For example:
“If I write some articles showing folk how to use the products on my site, would people find that helpful?”
“I have a fascinating collection of eighteenth century silverware. Maybe people would be interested to read about it.”
“I love writing. I’ll write a blog about my activities for my own pleasure, and maybe others will enjoy it, too.”
All positive reasons, and none of them centred around making money. If the blog does go on to make money, or increase your sales, then that’s an added bonus. It shouldn’t be the aim, as far as I’m concerned.
First, do you really know what a blog is? The term is a shortened version of Web Log, as in a diary or journal. People have quickly degraded the meaning to be something very general. People now call articles blogs. What you are calling a blog used to be called a magazine, except just an online version.
Exactly.
Yes. I think it is no different from the dilemma that most authors and journalists are in.
There are previous questions in these forums with responses, correct?
There are a number of things that most first-time bloggers find difficult, including choosing a niche. Trying to appeal to everyone will ultimately leave you appealing to nobody. While you should admire the work of other bloggers, don’t compare yourself to them. Most successful bloggers have teams of professionals behind them, and they probably have a wide variety of talents. It’s important to remember that your niche will dictate your voice, which may not be what your audience wants.
Aside from the technical aspects of creating a blog, most people don’t read headlines and contact forms. But that’s OK, since you’re a human. And if they did, you’d get a lot of similar questions from them. So, what’s the best way to engage your audience? Creating an email newsletter and building an audience are the best ways to build a loyal following.
Plugins allow you to add functionality to your blog. Many platforms have plugins that allow you to add different functions. You can also add social following buttons to your blog through a plugin. You can also add text widgets to your sidebar. Creating a blog is not a rocket science. Just make sure that you have a healthy ecosystem of plug-ins. Plugins will make your life easier, and you can use apps to streamline the marketing process.
The layout of a blog will influence how your readers react. According to a study conducted by the University of Basel and Google, people judge a website’s functionality and beauty within just 1/20 of a second. This psychological bias, called the “Halo Effect,” extends to other aspects of your blog. A well-designed, well-organized blog is more likely to attract readers and build trust.
And for the non-technical aspects, articles, groups, books and forums for authors would be much more helpful than here. There is an abundance of such help available and there has been for many years before the internet existed.
I’m not saying you should totally ignore SEO; of course you want your well-crafted article to be found. But in my experience, good content written for humans works for search engines, too, but the opposite is seldom true. As with all things, you need balance.
I agree. Every online business owner knows how effective blogging is. Writing great content that gets shared on social sites is not so easy.
The real problem is to know exactly what to write about so you have a chance to rank in Google and other search engines. There is a lot of competition, no matter what niche you are in. If you write about the wrong topic, you will never rank and basically wasting your time.
By doing keyword research (there are many no-cost keyword research tools out there) you will get great ideas for your next blog post and also have the possibility to rank in the search engines. Most people are blogging to make money, and without a stream of targeted traffic, you cannot become successful.
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1. What is stopping you? Finding the right topic to write about. It needs to be something “ever green” you can blog about for years to come. There should also be a suitable product or service to promote in the blog content. Building an email list is also very important.
2. What is delaying you? Simply procrastination to learn all the technical stuff. Afraid of doing mistakes and wasting money.
3. Which tasks do you find difficult about starting a blog? Starting from getting a domain name, hosting, setting up Wordpress, theme, plugins, setting up an email list with autoresponder…
4. Personally, what did you find difficult or time-consuming when you were launching your blog?
The most difficult and time-consuming part of launching a Wordpress blog is to set everything up the right way and of course writing the blog content itself.
5. How long did it take you to start making some income?
It took around 2 months before I received my first commission check. Then it took off from there.
Out of curiousity (and this post will probably get mauled by mods, but whatever)…
For all the blog experts who magically have come out of the woodwork to sign up for Sitepoint just to answer this one thread (because we can clearly see that its your first post on the site… that signpost ain’t going away, fellas)…for the good of the bloggers i’m sure…
When’s the last time you signed up for a blog mailing list? Using your ACTUAL mail address?
When’s the last time you googled for a blog that wasnt “opposition research”?
When’s the last time you went to a blog for more than 1 article?
When’s the last time your blog had a singular category, as opposed to “whatever buzzword will get me e-points this week”?
Just feels like the whole blog setup being talked about here is just bloggers chasing their own tails in a closed loop. Bloggers chasing bloggers.
If that were true, it wouldn’t be effective. S’how the system works, you see. It only is effective if not everybody’s doing it, otherwise its just a standard part of a website like a homepage.
While this might be true these days, that… really just speaks to how far that ‘blogging’ has fallen from being a communication form to being more mindless drivel advertising.
I started a blog and affiliate website 2 year ago, i think it was 25 august 2020, but lack of inconsistency, i lost my sites, now i starting a new news website that helps me to improve my consistency, because News website need hundreds of post per day.
It seems few people are willing to answer the OP’s questions, and even the OP seems to have lost interest, so I’m closing this thread before it accumulates any more fluff.