I started this blog out of curiosity. As curious as you are about blogging right now. If you’re wondering what this fancy term means, this post is for you.
Here I will be talking about everything about blogging. I have included practical questions that are most common among beginners. Also, I will be keeping this post up to date whenever I find new questions suiting this topic. My goal is to educate you about blogging and help you create your own blog and make a living out of it.
I’m sure you are aware of the money you can make by blogging, that’s why you’re looking for a blogging guide so that you too can do that. If you’re a person who can be dedicated to at least 8-12 months of consistent efforts, I promise you that you will have sustainable income from a blog.
This guide covers everything you will need to get started with blogging, so you don’t have to refer to any other guide on blogging. I may not be able to address every question there is, if you have any questions, you can get in touch with me on Twitter and shoot your questions.
With that said, let’s get started.
Table of Contents
What is blogging? The definition of blogging.
If we go by Wikipedia, a blog is a made-up word of web log aka weblog. Furthermore, blogging is a practice of posting relevant content on that blog.
As mentioned in Wikipedia, a blog is a log on the web. Therefore, blogging is simply keeping a log of the topic you’re most interested in on the web. You can also call it a web-based diary where you log/post your personal thoughts.
This is the simplest definition that you can get. There’s no need to complicate the definition more than this.
It’s important to understand the process more than the definition.
Initially, blogging came into existence with the idea of posting personal thoughts. It was never to make money online. But since the time Google came up with its Adsense program, blogging changed forever.
Then came affiliate marketing and blogging changed forever and ever.
Fast forward to 2020, blogging is to not only get more clients, but it is used by major companies to get more clients and it is a major part of the content marketing funnel.
A blog post is an individual web page containing information about a specific topic.
That was brief on blogging. But why should you care about it? If you’re interested in investing time making money by blogging, how do you get to that track?
Blogs are webpages that have information that the end-users are consistently searching for on search engines. If you don’t already know, search results of the first page of Google get almost 88% of clicks.
Did you know that Google has a market capture of 87.3%?
With that said, let me share a brief of how search engines work.
Understanding search engines
It is important to understand how search engines work in order to create content that ranks high on search engines. Without which you cannot make significant money by blogging.
I mean, what’s the point of blogging if you can’t make money online? Understanding how search engines work helps to get discovered and hence make more money.
The point isn’t about making money, but it’s all about getting discovered.
Let’s dive right in.
Search engines have 3 major components that do the heavy lifting.
Crawler: Also known as web spider, continuously crawls the web to discover newer links on the web.
Index: The crawler stores information about the crawled webpages in a huge database.
Algorithm: When a user searches for something on Google, the algorithm ranks the relevant searches from the index stored by the crawler. The algorithm ranks the results based on over 200 ranking factors.
This is everything you need to know about how search engines work. This is a 30,000 feet overview of it. But this is all it’s required to begin with.
Why is blogging is so popular?
I’ve mentioned earlier that there are over 600 million blogs out of 1.7 million websites. The basic difference between a blog and a website is the purpose.
Blogging is getting more and more limelight because of the way it is transforming the web. More companies are finding more money for blogging about their products/services.
You can not only make money by running ads or affiliate marketing campaigns, but you can pitch your blogging skills & connections to big companies who want to market their business.
Since the whole point of blogging is ranking high on SERPs, it helps you get better and confident about pitching your skills.
Leaving aside outsourcing your skills, you can live an independent life just by blogging about the topic you’re most interested in. Sure, this is a lengthy process, it will take time but once it’s set you will have a lot of time to produce quality content.
If you do things right, each post will bring enough traction and for long enough to give you time to create another blockbuster.
If you don’t already know about Amit Agarwal & Harsh Agarwal is one of the finest & biggest bloggers in India. These two guys were one of the first professional bloggers in India.
Harsh Agarwal has affiliate marketing as a major source of income and he makes around $50k a month. Amit Agarwal is already A class blogger in India who’s selling digital products developed by himself.
How are these two guys making so much money? Basically they are blogging to market their skills and make money online.
And this is why blogging is so famous in India right now. It’s important to note that blogging has just begun, it has just started maturing in India and hence there is a lot of misconceptions & clarifications required.
Make sure you think & research a lot about blogging before you decide anything in this direction. I’ve been blogging since 2011 and I have enough experience to say that there’s a very fat margin of failure in blogging if you don’t have basics right.
I know it because I was one of the wrong ones. I have failed multiple time so I know what doesn’t work. And now that I know what doesn’t work, I’m spending more time on what actually works.
One thing I’m not liking about recent beginners who’re getting into blogging space is that they’re doing it for money. Doing it for money isn’t a problem, but applying shady tricks to bring traffic that converts as money is bad.
Now that you’re serious about blogging, let me talk about a bit about the platforms you can use for blogging.
Best blogging platforms/Best platforms for blogging
Since blogging is becoming mainstream, there are more and more options available. It is even becoming easier to start a blog.
But I started my blogging journey for free and even today there is a couple of option that doesn’t require a single dime to start blogging.
Free options come with their own merits & demerits. Free blogging options include platforms Medium & Quora.
Medium is a platform where you can talk about any topic that interests you. Though it has enough user base, the platform isn’t mature yet. The users on Medium have a different mindset.
In my experience of creating content on medium in the past 5 years says that the platform isn’t for obvious topics like how to create a Facebook page.
The users have a higher level of intelligence, the users are mature, the platform isn’t. But if you’re serious for blogging as a career and want to continuously grow as a writer, I’d recommend medium.
No matter what degree of steps you take here, spend time on this platform. Medium has a solid future when compared to Quora or other competitors.
Speaking of Quora. Quora is a Q&A forum where you can showcase your expertise by answering related questions. Though Quora has a very strict policy for self-promotion, you can still promote your work & drive traffic to your blog. I personally use Quora & medium to build authority.
I avoid linking to my content in my answers, if at all I have to link, I’d link it as footnotes so that it’s clearly known that it’s my links. Links to other’s blog pages are embedded.
This is my way of showing transparency in my content.
WordPress.com for blogging
Another platform that’s changing the face of the web is WordPress.
I began my career on Blogspot, spent around 3 years. It was so easy thousands of views back then. I switched to WordPress in 2016. It was wordpress.com, the free version of WordPress.
You can host your blog for free. However, you are given 3GB of space per blog and the domain name would have wordpress.com at the end.
For example, if you register a blog named yourawesomedomain.com as a free WordPress blog, your blog’s original address would be yourawesomedomain.wordpress.com.
Furthermore, monetization & customization options were too less. WordPress.com is recommended for those who don’t have any plans to make money out of the blog and only want to share thoughts. If that is the case, medium or Quora is a better option.
Read also: Difference between wordpress.com & wordpress.org
Blogspot for blogging
Just like wordpress.com, Blogspot is a Google-owned product that lets you create a blog in minutes. It’s as simple as creating a Facebook account.
I have used Blogspot for 3 years and I’ve found that Blogspot is a great option for two types of people.
- Those who can code & build a custom website. Here you just have to pay for the domain, which is available for as low as $12 a year.
- Who needs a simple blog without the fancy stuff. Just write content and let it do the needful. This one is similar to the free wordpress.com blog. Instead of wordpress.com, where you’d get blogpost.com at the end.
Blogspot is really very useful for those who can create a website from scratch as you don’t have to pay for Webhosting. There’s no limit to how much you can upload on your blog. Unlike WordPress, there aren’t any plugins to make the customization easy.
However, Blogspot is not ideal for those who want to customize the blog. Blogspot is fully customizable, but you need to code every single customization. This is the only downside of using Blogspot.
Furthermore, all your content will be hosted on Google’s ecosystem, therefore, you can expect the highest security. Blogspot runs on HTML so its very lightweight for browsers to load fast, especially in times when mobile traffic accounts for more than 50%.
The bottom line, the best platform to blog is the one that suits your need.
Here’s a summary to help you make better decisions:
- Can code & less budget: Pay $12 for the domain & use Blogspot as web hosting. There’s no limit to how much you can host.
- Can’t code & less budget: A free WordPress.com blog but there’s only 3GB of space allocated per blog.
- Can/Can’t code & have a budget: Self-hosted WordPress on Siteground or Bluehost
- Can/can’t code & deep pocket: Managed WordPress by Kinsta or WPEngine.
- Just wanna try blogging: Use medium or Quora, all you have to spend is time.
How to pick a niche for blogging?
So far, I’ve convinced you that blogging is not just about making money, it’s a discipline. Furthermore, I shared the best platforms for blogging.
Now that you’re convinced about the power & magic of blogging, let me shed some light on the process of picking up a niche for blogging.
The problem with picking up niche is that there’s already at least one blog for every niche. I mean, of course, there aren’t 600 million niches.
So how to pick a niche for your blog.
The basic idea is to think of a subject you can talk about for the rest of your professional life. I’ll tell you why digital marketing is the niche that I think I can talk about for years to come.
- I’m interested & passionate about this niche
- I can see a massive list of topics I can talk about. Even if I talk on one topic for 5 minutes, I have enough content to keep talking and not repeat a topic for years to come. On top of this, there’s the practical experience that I get while practicing digital marketing as a profession.
- I love the subject so much that I can keep talking on and on.
- I’ve gone wrong so many times that just by talking about things that don’t work, I’ll do just fine in this industry for years to come.
- I don’t have any other skillset :p
So is there any niche you feel the same about?
I’m being very specific about this topic because I’ve seen a lot of bloggers rant about blogging being a scam. When asked how long did they put effort, mostly the answer is within 12 months.
Imagine, you start a blog on health & fitness. You put effort into creating awesome content for 4-6 months and don’t get noticed. Upon investigating I find out that you just kept creating content without focusing on SEO, repurposing & social media, and lot more.
Who’s fault is it?
Picking the right niche won’t help you. You need to be consistent, patient & student. Keep learning and applying what you learn. This way you will keep improving your work.
It takes 15-18 years for a newborn infant to be profitable, blogging is no different. You can turn a blog into profitable within a year though.
The best way to pick a niche is to figure out what you’re passionate about. I always had a passion of writing and photography. I own a photography blog, but since I can’t practice photography every single day, the blog is sleeping right now.
I can’t tell you what you’re passionate about, but I can suggest some of the best performing niches in terms of userbase & monetization.
The trick is to pick a niche you can practice every single day for however long you wish to have a professional career.
With that said, here are some best niches for blogging
Most profitable niche for blogging
- Technology: Write about gadget reviews, help guides, news & more.
- Health & Fitness: People are becoming highly health-conscious. If you are someone who can set an example of being healthy by working out daily and helping people get fit, this niche is for you.
- Travel: Nasdaily got 25M followers across the web just posting 1-minute travel videos & telling stories of places he visited. Remember, he has posted 1-minute videos for 1000 days without any breaks. He didn’t even make enough money until then.
- Photography: With travel becoming one of the most common hobbies, photography goes hand in hand with traveling. If you’ve taken your 10,000 photos already, you’re ready to teach the world everything you’ve learned in that journey.
- Fashion: If you have a good fashion sense, you can make people look good. Fashion is a huge industry with global brands pumping more and more money into blogging.
- Legal: With more business hitting the marketing with each hour passing by, legal operations are becoming a necessity. If you’re the licensed law guy, you can blog about the law. If I were a law guy, I’d begin spreading awareness about the right of citizens of my country. We’ve totally neglected this part of our existence. This is the easiest way to get attention online in this niche.
- Finances: Personal finance is something that is becoming the talk of a town. Especially after Rich Dad Poor Dad making it to the masses. People are earning more and everyone wants to debt-free and enjoy retired life by 30. If you’re someone who can help people do that, this niche is for you.
- Luxury: Almost 3% of the human population is multi-millionaire. With money, comes luxury. If you want to make more money quickly, target the rich dads. They’re difficult to reach and it’s even more difficult to gain their attention, but once you have it, you can make a few sales & still be miles ahead of the others. Luxury items like supercars & bikes have a lot of viewership. If nothing, you can simply educate people who’re aspiring to get the luxury.
- Entertainment: Text form of entertainment is difficult unless you can write creative fictional crossovers. Videos are the best way to entertain people. Create videos for YouTube, Tiktok, or Instagram and monetize the attention people give you for entertaining them.
- Education: Just like this blog, you can educate people about the subject you’re knowledgable about. It’s not necessary to have complete knowledge about the subject, but it’s inevitable to have the basics right. You can educate people about any subject that’s under the sun, there are always users searching for solutions you have already talked about.
- Food: Food & hospitality is a multi-billion dollar industry. Food blogging is slowly getting a lot of limelight. Though it not yet organized and there are very few big players dominating the game. But the ball isn’t in single court right now. It’s an amazing space to explore if you have that foodie tooth inside of you.
- Life lessons & Psychology: Depression is becoming the most common reason for death globally. It’s becoming a disease. If you can talk people out of it, start talking about it right now, the world needs it. Leaving aside the money part, you’ll save a lot of lives.
These are some of the most profitable & engaging niches on the web. These don’t end here, if you want to test the user base of your niche, simply google it. You’ll get to see a glimpse of people you will be targeting.
As shown in the above image, 37 million people are talking about decorative mirrors. If these many people are talking about this highly specific niche, imagine how many people must be Googling about it?
This image shows that this search term is searched for 3600 times a month. What about other topics under this keyword? Other variations of this keyword?
Though this is a very specific niche, you can make a load of money by selling ads on your blog, Google Adsense, affiliate, or directly selling the products to an interested audience.
Even if you convert 1% of the audience you reach month on month, you’d make in thousands.
Remember, 58% human population is online and 5.5 billion searches happen on Google every 24 hours. All you need to target is 1% of this number.
Seem interesting right?
I’m sure I’ve caught your attention. You’re hooked.
If you’ve made this far, let me show you how to create a self-hosted WordPress blog.
Start a blog on WordPress
I’m a huge fan of WordPress, both as a business point of view and for the featured-packed script that it is, and that too for free. I’ve covered this part in a 9000+ words guide, but I will save you some time and brief about it right away.
Here’s how you can create a WordPress blog
Step 1: Register a domain & web hosting
If you don’t want to wrap in a lot of technical stuff of pointing a domain to web hosting, you can simply register domain & web hosting on the same platform (it’s simple & easy to manage for beginners). I’d recommend hosting your domain and web hosting on Siteground. It’s hosted completely on Google Cloud ecosystem, and hence you can expect top-notch performance.
Step 2: Install & setup WordPress
Installing WordPress is a straight forward process. Since you have bought the domain on Siteground itself, you won’t need to point to the domain and then install WordPress.
Once you setup your account on Siteground (at the time of payment you will be creating the credentials) navigate to My Siteground section and click on websites link in the top menu.
In the next screen, your domain will be listed and you can install the WordPress script from the Site tools given under the domain.
Step 3: Start creating awesome content
The toughest part of maintaining a blog is here. Creating content should be audience-driven, it should focus on solving problems of your target audience.
This requires a lot of research and actually spend time among your target audience and to actually determine what exactly they are looking for.
I didn’t know this back then, but now that I’m aware of it I am able to think of awesome topics and write decent writeups around it.
So how do I come up with awesome content, you ask?
I have written a lot of content that’s a pure textbook, i.e. the theory part of my niche. I’ve written about blogging, SEO, keyword research, social media marketing, and more.
Now that I’ve made myself comfortable around the textbook, I’m programmed to think in terms of blogging (& digital marketing on the whole) and continuously ‘think’ about it.
In this conversation, I come up with actual topics that can solve my target audience’s problems. Over the years, I’ve realized that there are a huge gap and misconception around this niche.
Most bloggers think that blogging is easy and it’s all about making money. And there’s nothing wrong with it.
But all those who want to mint money by blogging will fade away sooner or later. Because those who have this mentality, will not put more efforts to create quality content. They will continue to write about what’s already there online.
The market is becoming more and more saturate and only those will survive who will share their practical experience of applying the theory part that’s already available online.
Sure there will be beginners at any point in time, but those beginners won’t be unaware of the topics you want to discuss. Basically, they’ll need guidance about how you’d carry out if you were a beginner like them.
And this is how I’m able to think of awesome topics. The topics usually hit at an unusual time, and I simply note the topic as write on it.
Step 4: Promote your content
Promoting your content is very easy these days. Promoting is basically repurposing content across other platforms. The trick is to find an intersect of the content you’re creating & the existing content you have on your blog.
I personally did not begin liking repurposing the content on other platforms, but lately, I find it more fruitful than anything else. So much that I publish one post a week and promote it on other platforms the remaining week.
Here’s how I promote it across other platforms once I publish a post on any of my blogs.
- Find an intersecting topic for medium & link back to the post
- Find relevant questions on Quora & answer all the variations of it.
- Create YouTube videos & create short videos for Instagram & TikTok. Direct users to YouTube & from there direct users to the blog post.
- Create social media posts linking back to the blog post.
Furthermore, there’s another practice used by many established bloggers, (even I’m practicing it for long term results). The fact that SEO takes time to yield results, you can rely on creating content on social media, building a loyal audience there the redirect & retain users to your blog.
The fact that social media has ready-made audiences actively consuming content is the point to be considered. Promotion is something that’s a creative job. There are limited tools to promote your content but there are unlimited strategies one can apply.
Near perfect blog post structure
I’ve deliberately mentioned this as a near-perfect blog structure as there is no perfect structure. Everyone has their own writing style and varies from person to person.
I’ve taken forever to crack the perfect structure of a blog post. I have finally digested this for good. I’ve written a lot of articles that no one wanted to read.
Those failed attempts to gain visibility online have taught to me come up with the exact recipe to gain decent attention online.
There’s also the type of content that matters. Case studies and statistics have a higher retention rate. Problem-oriented how-to guides have an even higher retention rate.
Apart from the type of posts, it’s what’s inside that makes the difference. Here’s a breakdown of my blog posts. The elements that I used the most for all blogs I own.
- Introduction: The toughest part of a blog post. This is where I’ve failed the most. I was able to write decent stuff in the body but the introduction was the toughest to write. I’m not sure if you already know it, but if you don’t know it already, begin with building context for the whole blog post. Use this space to talk about the inspiration behind the post. Don’t make it too long, else you will navigate out of context & you wouldn’t even know it. Keep it super simple & finish it within 150-300 words. Depending on the size of the first fold you have for posts.
- Body: The meat of my blog post, this is where the real magic happens. I’m a huge fan of numbers, especially if it makes sense. I ensure I share some data, statistics, or numbers, with an intention to get organic backlinks. You can include case studies, surveys, real-time questions from forums like Quora, or any niche-specific forums on the web. This is the part where you address the most questions. I also try to include the FAQ section for almost “how-to” blog posts, where I can address top questions. If it’s a step by step guide, I include a lots & lots of screenshots. In this step by step guide on starting a blog, I’ve added 97 screenshot images. Images won’t only help you give a great user experience, it will also rank in image search and help me get traffic to the post. I can also use those images for social media marketing.
- Conclusion/Final thoughts: Here you can summarize your post & include CTAs like follow me on social media or signing up for the newsletter, redirecting to other blog posts. It can be a course, lead magnet(s), and a lot of other things. The conclusion is to end the post on a good note and the last chance to establish a relationship. You can also provoke questions that transform into doubt and the users will turn up to comments to get that cleared. This will be noticed by Google and hence get you a boost in ranking.
Get traffic for your blog
I’ve already covered this in the promotion step. However, the traffic doesn’t that counts the most is organic traffic from the search engines.
The main purpose of getting traffic from the search engine is the fact that organic traffic is free and once you get into that league, you don’t have to look back unless you get hit by an algorithm update. Which is why personal branding is important. Ex-Google CEO, Eric Schmidt said that “brands are the solution”.
So how to get traffic from search engines forever, you ask?
That’s where SEO comes into the picture. SEO is a set of practices that one has to perform in order to gain visibility on search engines.
SEO is totally vast topic in itself, so I will cover that in a separate post. But for now, I will share some of the most basic & easy to apply best practices for SEO.
SEO best practices for blogging
- Focus on search intent: The search engines are smart enough to understand the search intent. That’s to serve the end-users better. Search intent is understanding the reason for the search. For example, the search intent of searching, “what is blogging” is to learn more about the subject. The end-user has little to no knowledge about the subject and hence it becomes my duty to cater as many questions as I can to make this post the best available on the web.
- Adhere to basic On-page SEO techniques: On-page SEO is the best practices you perform to make sure that search engines can understand the page structure & the content of your webpage. On-page SEO techniques involve descriptive meta tags & description, keywords in the first 100 words, & reader-friendly URL. You will be tempted to stuff keywords into the blog post, but don’t do that. Google has officially stated that keyword stuffing is not going to help in any way. Even if you manage to rank, the algorithm will push you back onto lower pages or even worse, ban your blog.
- Optimize the headings for higher CTR: Only 2 out of 10 users actually click the link by reading the headline. This tells a lot about the CTR being so low for almost all search results. The average CTR is 1.91% for ads, for organic search, it’s even less. There’s a difference between having a clear headline & a clickbait. You need to avoid clickbait. Furthermore, you need to take care of headlines in the body too. Headlines are in the limelight, it helps the crawler understand the subject of the blog post.
- Interlinking & anchor-text optimization: One of the most underrated on-page SEO techniques is interlinking. If you have pages that rank higher on the SERPs and want to rank newer or less visible pages, then interlinking is the gold standard for SEOs. Interlinking not only helps rank newer pages, but it also helps retain the user on the page, which is a ranking factor.
Email & push notification is yet another medium you can bring traffic to your blog. I’m using Push Engage for push notification & MailChimp for email marketing for all my blogs.
Monetization ideas for blogging
Now comes the fun part. I get it. Blogging is a great way to make extra income, but if you’re looking for paying your rent next month, blogging isn’t for you.
Blogging isn’t a get rich quick Ponzi scheme that will start printing money soon after you begin it. With tried & tested methods, it will take 6-8 months to gain visibility and at least 15 months to earn some reliable & consistent income.
Though there are an ample number of ways to make money online, there’s still no legal way to get rich quick.
Since you’re here, I’m assuming a majority of you would be in your early 20s and it’s still gonna take at least 2 years for you to make money by a full-time job.
If you are too lucky, you might have 3-4 years. When it took 25 years for you to earn decent money doing a full-time job, blogging is no different.
If you can wait for 25 years to make money, why can’t you wait for 1-1.5 years for blogging to show true potential?
I don’t want to be rude but most of the young bloggers I meet or interact with do not have patience. They want instant money without even putting the required efforts.
How to make money blogging full time?
Blogging is a real career now. When I began, it was considered a bubble and today blogging is a multi-billion dollar industry. But how can you get started with making money?
This is a complex process and has a lot of layers of research & development involved. This industry is a multi-billion dollar industry for a reason.
I’ve shared 30+ monetization ideas for a blog here, but you can explore your own options, think out of the box. Making money blogging is both complex & easy, depends on your approach.
If you can keep an eye on the target audience’s needs, you can really make a fortune blogging even on weekends.
Here are solid steps to blog effectively & generate side income.
- Choose a niche & target audience
- Pump ideas around the topic you’ve chosen to blog about.
- Research on topics, especially that solves your target audience’s burning problems.
- Create a blogging calendar & promotional strategy. Remember, spend 20% of efforts & resources on blogging and 80% on promoting it.
- Have a set article structure. Even if you write on a different platform, readers should recognize your writing. Integrate CTAs inside the structure so well that it looks naturally appealing.
- Become an expert in SEO & marketing your blog. Be shameless in promoting it.
- Experiment on styles of blogging, headings & media type. Text isn’t the only form of content you can create & rank for.
- Keep updating the old content based on the keyword impressions your blogs are getting.
- Keep track of numbers. What can’t be measure can’t be improved. Remember this.
Best practices for blogging & blogging tips
I’m gonna leave you with a great video on blogging tips that have personally helped my blogging career.
Once you watch this video, spend time practicing these. It’s not gonna come easy.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is Blogging still profitable in 2020?
Blogging has never been more profitable than it’s right now. It will be more profitable with each day passing. With more and more businesses getting online, they will need someone to promote their business, that’s where blogging can come handy. Furthermore, in the era of pocket influencers, one can kick start the promotion by joining forces with bloggers.
If you do it right, the future is bright.
Is blogging dead in 2020?
Another awesome video I found in my YouTube history. Enjoy.
Which is more profitable, Vlogging, or Blogging?
It depends on your niche. If you are someone who needs to show the work, vlogging is a better option. However, if you are someone who’s shy to get in front of the camera or love writing or have a low budget, consider blogging, as you can get started with absolutely no cost.
Of course, you will need a decent internet connection & a laptop, because writing on mobile sucks. However, I’ve met people who blog from their mobile phones, and yer have amazing content.
Which is the best blogging platform for beginners?
Here’s the summary that will help you choose the best blogging platform for beginners:
- Can code & less budget: Pay $12 for the domain & use Blogspot as web hosting. There’s no limit to how much you can host.
- Can’t code & less budget: A free WordPress.com blog but there’s only 3GB of space allocated per blog.
- Can/Can’t code & have a budget: Self-hosted WordPress on Siteground or Bluehost
- Can/can’t code & deep pocket: Managed WordPress by Kinsta or WPEngine.
- Just wanna try blogging: Use medium or Quora, all you have to spend is time.
What is the difference between blogs and websites?
All blogs can be websites but all websites aren’t blogs. It’s a blog specifically when you share information as blog posts to educate your target audience, acquire new users, or any similar blogging goal.
Generally, blogging is when you share information to make money, and the website is when your business is the information. In so many cases, a blog is a section of a website, like this blog.
A typical website has a dedicated homepage that talks about the business, and then there’s a blog section that shares the information.
What can you blog about?
Pretty much anything. But there’s a difference between writing about passion and blogging for money. Sometimes, writing about passion may not clearly help you make money. To make decent money you will need to add a flavor of business into your blogging.
I’ve shared this step in detail here.
Final thoughts
The sole purpose of this post to help you understand almost everything about blogging. However, it is humanly impossible to address all the questions one might have about the topic. Furthermore, in every post, I publish here, I try to implement one of many things I preach.
Also, every post has one intention, to be the best page on the web for the topic my target audience might be searching for. It becomes overwhelming when you have just got started and there’s a ton of information on a subject. It’s even more confusing when you have search from multiple sources, that’s why I take a lot of time researching about a topic before I publish.
Blogging is one such topic that has no end to topics I can write on. But there’s always gonna be something I’d miss in my blog posts. That’s why I want you to reach out to me on Twitter or shoot an email in case you have something specific.
I’ll end this post with other valuable reads you’d find useful: