The term “blogging” was not many popular years back. But today, there are many popular blogs almost for every niche such as health and fitness, digital marketing, food, travel, education, etc. The idea of starting a blog can be overwhelming for the first time, yet it is intimidating at times. You don’t have to write and post; there are a lot of intricacies where you need to focus on reaching a wider audience.
Though you see a lot of blogs emerging today that does not necessarily mean that they are going to be popular, maintaining a blog is not an easy task and requires a lot of consistency and dedication. While if you are someone who has a blog, it might be easy for you to understand, but if you are someone who still wonders what Blog is? Here is the answer
What is a Blog?
For many of us who are not familiar with the term, it might be a platform where you share your instances. No, not necessarily. There are different kinds and types of blogs. To be very precise, Blog is a platform or website (if paid) where you can see information shared by a writer or group of writers related to any particular topic.
For instance- I own a website www.subtleguy.in where I share my views and information related to male grooming and fashion. Similarly, there are different blogs where people share their views about politics, food, tour, and travel, etc.
Why should you start a Blog?
There are a lot of reasons to start a blog that might depend on you as an individual. But whatever the reason, maybe there are a lot of benefits to know things before starting a blog .
1.Build your Portfolio
Most of the people who want to build their career as a writer or explore the field of writing for them owing a blog or website is very imperative.
The Blog or website would work as your portfolio, which helps the client to understand your writing, and it would be easy for you to build yourself as a brand.
2.Make Money
Can I make money blogging? Yes, you can. There are different ways through which you can earn money with the help of the Blog. Some quite feasible sources are through ads, affiliate marketing, selling your products and services, etc.
3.Build an audience
If you are looking to launch your product or any service for it to be successful, you need an audience who should buy or enroll for it. So the most convenient way to get an audience is through Blogs.
4.Get Leads
If you own a business undoubtedly for you to run your business, you need customers. The best way to attract customers is through a Blog. If the customers find something that is interesting, they will click it. Every click made counts as a lead, which can be later converted into business.
5.Express yourself
Not necessarily, money is the ultimate goal. If you are interested in a particular niche and want to reach a wider audience, the most convincing approach is through your blogs.
Listed above are some of the major reasons that you should own a blog or website.
Things to know before starting a blog
If the points mentioned above have convinced you to start a blog. Great, you are ready to go. In the later section of this Blog, I will teach you how to start a blog. But before, here are a few things to know before starting a blog.
1.Blogging is not a paved road
If you are someone who is looking to start a blog, I would recommend you start it part-time. Most people quit their day jobs to become a full-time blogger who is not the right mindset. Remember, even when blogging helps you to become your boss and have a lot of time to concentrate on other things, you can not outlook the challenges it posses.
Generating money out of Blog requires a lot of effort, and it might take months to years to earn money. So until then, you need to pay your bills. Hence first, do it for part-time. Later, when you start making money out of it, you can drop your day job to take it full time.
Secondly, blogging for full time can be boring and lonely for many who don’t have a habit of working from home. When you are working for yourself, you don’t have fixed times, and this might make you feel frustrated. At times you might think of giving up. Starting a blog and being your boss is fun and exciting in the beginning, but later the mundane routine might turn out to be boring and stressful.
2.Growing a Blog is hard work.
When I tell people how hard it is growing my Blog. They wonder what is challenging to write a few blogs and post them on social media. People just don’t understand how much effort and hard work are required to write quality content. It requires a lot of effort right from the moment you start your search for keywords to SEO and building links. Also, owing to a blog does not mean that you start earning money; it takes months & years to earn money online. Until then, you have to be very dedicated and consistent even though you are not able to generate any income.
3.Blogging is not a quick-rich scheme
You might have received an email from a blogger stating how I made million dollars with the help of blogging. This makes a lot of us wonder wish we know things about starting a blog and make money. But keep in mind the income shared by these bloggers is their hard works of years, which is not visible in these reports.
Moreover, if you look at this email and get motivated to start a blog to earn money, you might leave it halfway. I see a lot of people who say they left blogging within months of starting it as they didn’t find any money flowing in. If you lack patience, maybe blogging is not the right choice for you.
As stated earlier, you need to be consistent even though you don’t make money out of it. When you are consistent, you will gradually build in more audiences who’ll pay you for your services.
4.You need to be passionate about Blog
The word passionate is a wide term that accounts that whatever niche or topic you choose for your Blog you should know you are interested in before starting a blog. Most people decide a niche based on the fact of what’s trending and if they will be able to generate enough money or not. But this will not benefit you in the long run. You will run out of ideas for content and just copy the content from other sources that are going to impact the SEO of your website.
The other important reason for you to write beyond the objective of money to maintain the quality of your blogs. If you write something you are not interested in, you will just complete it without checking the quality of content, which will serve no purpose as readers won’t find it interesting or worth sharing.
5.You feel frustrated and giving up
At times all your efforts seem to be in vain. Despite all your hard work, you won’t see enough traffic on your Blog. There are many reasons which might upset you.
This might frustrate you and make you feel like it is worth doing. When I have put a lot of effort into this but this turns out to be not working. It is the moment when I see a lot of blogging sites; affiliate sites are closed. But you need to remember that when its tough to continue, you need to keep working on your blog. They might reward you in the longer run.
If you are not able to achieve your objective underline the fact that you lack skills in some areas, you can ask for help or pay for services. It is not necessary that one can be master of all you might be good at content but not at SEO or social media. You can pay or outsource these services.
6.Being your boss means more responsibility
Know this thing in mind before starting a blog that when you work in a corporate structure, you have a fixed environment and time for working. You get time to interact with your teammates and have a team to handle a series of the task such as finance, IT, sales, etc.
But the scenario is different here. You no longer have to depend on anyone, which means you have to be self-reliant. Of course, you can outsource some work, but in the end, you need to meet the set objective.
Likewise, you need to have a proper structure to work, connect with people working remotely, handles all the technical glitches. Moreover, you have to be disciplined regarding your time. Being self-reliant does not mean you end up wasting your time and doing unproductive things.
7.Consistency is the key to start a blog
Many bloggers believe the fact that the moment they start seeing traffic on their Blog they need to give up. But wait, this does not hold with Blog, not even with any platform. You have witnessed an increase in the number of readers of the content you have written. Once the readers don’t find it coming, they’ll quit.
Hence you must remain consistent with your Blog and keep updating it with the quality content irrespective of the number of followers and traffic on your Blog.
8.You need to be creative and unique
Writing content on the Blog does not mean you write any information and expect readers to follow. Hence you need to keep your focus on Quality vs Quantity before starting a blog .There are a lot of bloggers who keep working on other parameters of the Blog but don’t improve the quality of content.
Content is the key other factors need to be considered later. If you don’t write quality content, Google is not going to rank your website, and you are landing nowhere. When I talk about quality content, it is generally considered as good information, but you also have to entice readers to click and provide value to them. Your blog content should answers questions in their mind or information they are looking for.
You can do this with the help of keyword research tool Ahrefs.com and look at what customers are searching for an exact keyword on major search engines.
9.Get Social
It isn’t sufficient to compose an incredible post and trust that individuals will discover it. While your Blog is new, no one will discover your articles through search engines. At that point, how might you get traffic? You should be proactive.
Perhaps the ideal approach to get traffic is to utilize social media to promote your posts. You can even purchase traffic by making promotions on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
It is OK to have similar content more than once, which is probably the most effortless approach to drive more traffic. Be that as it may, simply be mindful so as not to be a spammer.
10.Be Authentic. Don’t copy
What do you do when somebody takes your content without consent? It can happen anytime.
There are a lot of bloggers who copy and paste the content from various sources and just add it to their website by making some changes. This might bring you some traffic, but remember Google algorithms are so updated that they can understand if the content has been copied. So it is important to always publish your ideas instead of copying it from other sources. Google always tries to look for fresh and unique content. When you right authentic content, there are chances that your Blog might show up on some search engines.
Anyone can start a blog today, but what separates all the popular blogs from other blogs is content and consistency. It might be difficult to keep doing until you start earning, but if you are passionate about this, you will keep doing it and gradually drive traffic on your blog. I hope this blog on things to know before starting a blog will help you.
