BLOGGING
Starting a blog is a great way for entrepreneurs to earn an income online. It provides the flexibility (both in time and location) that traditional businesses don't offer. As a blogger, you can monetize your creative talents or expertise by helping consumers with their everyday issues.
Below you'll find blogging articles, guides, tools, courses, and even a free blog installation service. Everything you need to start, grow, and monetize your blog. Our goal is to help you start a blogging business so you can have the time and freedom to live life on your own terms!
Free Blogging Resources
Guide: How to Pick a
Blog Niche
Picking a blog niche is super important. Our guide will help make sure you pick the right niche.
Guide: 1,000 Subscribers and Generate Revenue in 30 days
A mailing list is a powerful tool in a bloggers arsenal. Learn how to get your first 1,000 subscribers.
Free Blog Installation
& Setup Service
Interested in starting your own blog? Let us handle installation and setup for you absolutely free.
Featured Articles
Favorite articles selected by our Editors. We hope you enjoy them as much as they did.
Blogging Articles & Guides
Guides
Featured Articles
Successful Bloggers
Best Blogging Courses
These are the blogging courses we recommend for those looking to dive deeper into blogging and turn it into a full time income.
The Blogging Blueprint
Join over 1,000 students in learning strategies for growing a successful blog and earning a full-time income blogging.
The Business of Blogging
Stand out from the crowd and earn a living doing what you love. Learn how to create a successful long term travel blogging and media business online with these detailed courses and programs from travel media experts
Blog Life
A Beautiful Mess break down subjects into easy, manageable lessons taught through text, photos, and videos, so that you can grow, be challenge, and get to that next level!
The Blogging Process
Research
Decide on a niche and research topics to blog about
Install/Setup Blog
Install WordPress and setup your theme & plugins
Content
Create amazing, interesting, valuable, quality content.
Promotion
Promote and monetize your blog.
Blogging - Summary
Difficulty Level
Blogging is one of the easiest online businesses to start and has the lowest learning curve to start and run a blog.
Timeframe
Blogging can take longer to generate revenue than other online businesses because of how heavily bloggers rely on SEO.
Startup Costs
The initial costs to start a blog are minimal. A domain is $10/year, hosting is $5-10/month and a premium theme is ~$50.
Profit Potential
Bloggers can generate multiple 6 and even 7 figures online. See our "Successful Bloggers" section above.
Pros & Cons of Blogging
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
Blogging is a great tool for keeping track of your thoughts or for raising your business’ online visibility. That said, it does come with its own drawbacks; you won’t get any of those benefits for free, especially if you’re maintaining your blog’s content yourself or paying a copywriter to do so.
Blogging Explained
What is Blogging?
Blogging can be defined as an informal, internet-based writing format with a very wide area of influence. It’s based on the term ”web log,” which is exactly how blogs began: as a kind of online journal you could use to cover whatever you were interested in. There are blogs that cover the news and blogs that cover lifestyle trends. There are blogs for every sport imaginable and for movies, paintings, different kinds of arts and even fields of academia. Essentially, blogging is as wide as the interests of real people are. If there’s a topic, product, field of study, piece of art, food dish, or anything else that people are interested in, then you can bet that there’s a blog about that thing somewhere on the internet.
That said, while blogging is pretty freeform, there are a couple of defining features that characterize most, if not all, blogs. First, blogs are usually chronological in order, just like a diary. They’re also online; if it’s a page in a diary or a newspaper, it’s not a blog. Blogs are definitely a product of the internet age. They are usually organized around a home page, where entries are listed individually by page or section.
Finally, blogs are informal but target a public audience; they aren’t as buttoned-up as a news article, but they are a little more organized than, say, a text you would send to your friend. In addition, there’s one last thing to add to the definition of a blog: they tend to talk to each other. The blogosphere is real. Blogging puts you in conversation with others who are writing about the same topics.
How Does Blogging Work?
Luckily, starting a blog is really easy. All you need is a website (or a hosting service, such as WordPress, blogger.com or Tumblr) and ideas to write about. The main component is a home page, which will either host individual entries (like a diary) on its own, or be able to list titles that link to other pages with entries. You can then fill it with whatever information or musings you’d like!
Keep in mind, the majority of blogs have some kind of consistent theme, topic or design, like covering great food recipes or discussing recent football games. Sticking to one topic area, or at least some overarching theme that ties posts together, is always a good idea when it comes to blogging. One dynamite post might bring readers to your website for the first time, but consistent formatting and content will keep them there for the long haul.
Blogging is a very useful tool for businesses or freelancers because, assuming the blog in question is updated regularly and features informational content that accurately and succinctly answers the questions of potential online readers, it’ll increase the host website’s SEO, or search engine optimization. That means the website will show up closer to the first page of results when users search for that type of content using Google, Bing or another search engine. In short, blogging certainly isn’t easy — but it could well be worth the effort.
A good blog can bring your business revenue or increase your web presence, while also giving you a platform to write and express thoughts and ideas. It’s not just a good business move; blogging can be personally fulfilling as well. And with the internet full of blogs of every topic and size, finding a community shouldn’t be too difficult either. Happy blogging!
Most Popular Blog Categories
You can blog about virtually anything! But if you’re creating a new blog, especially for business purposes, sticking to a single niche will help you attract a readership, get you page views, and enable you to use ad networks and the like to monetize your web presence. With that in mind, here are a couple of the most popular categories for blogs to cover:
These are just a couple examples to give you an idea of what a successful blog looks like. If you search, there are plenty of blogs out there for every subject area imaginable — in reality, your imagination is the only limit.
How Do Bloggers Make Money?
In the same way that blogging is open to a wide range of content and purposes, the way bloggers earn income is equally diverse. There are many different ways one can make money using a blog, and it often comes down not only to blog type but to what your personality and preference are. If you are digitally savvy and willing to figure out how to work with new technologies, then selling private ads or working with public ad networks like Google Adsense could be right up your alley.
On the other hand, maybe you’re not so good with technology but you’re good with people. In that case, consulting and coaching others on your subject area (or on how to achieve a blog with your level of success) could be a great way to make money. In short, it’s possible to make money in myriad ways, and finding one that suits you is easy. Here are a couple options
How Much Do Bloggers Make?
Blogging is a very wide field, so the money bloggers make can often vary a lot by subject area, revenue source, and audience. For example, Pinch of Yum, a very high-earning food and cooking blog, was valued at around $45,000 per month. On the opposite end of the spectrum, The Endless Meal, an equally good food blog with a slightly smaller following, made around $6,417 in March 2018. And those are just two examples from one of blogging’s most popular subcategories, food and wellness.
Incomes vary just as widely in other disciplines as well; travel is one example. Wonderful Wanderings, a blog known for providing quality travel itineraries, was reported at around $4,300 per month, while Local Adventurer, another travel blog, reported $23,001 in July 2018.
In short: there is a wide range of incomes in the blogging world. When you’re starting out, it may be significantly lower than these numbers, but most well-known and well-run blogs make thousands or tens of thousands per month.