A blog is a website that usually presents information in a set of list-like entries. These entries can be in any form, including comments, descriptions of events, photographs or videos. They are usually interactive so that readers can leave comments or messages on the entries. A blog can cover a wide range of topics or focus on one in particular. The choice is yours! However, we've found that thematic blogs are more effective from the point of view of monetising traffic, for example, blogs covering financial topics. Creating a blog to express yourself can be quite fun but it is also possible to do so and make money.
Part 1. Getting prepared
1. Consider popular blog topics
Blogs fall into several categories. If you think about one of them, it could help you better decide what to write about. Remember: in order for you to make money, people have to read your blog. Below is a list of popular blog topics:
- Personal blogs. Successful personal blogs give readers the impression that they almost know you. It creates the impression that they are having lunch with the blogger or seeing an insider's view of their daily life. If you're good at expressing your personality online, this may be a good topic for you. Advantages: easy to write. Disadvantages: difficult to monetise.
- Special interest blogs. These blogs can offer tips and tricks about your hobby. You can share knowledge about a topic you are passionate about through this kind of blog, which is really effective if you have a special perspective on it. This category is better monetised than the previous one.
- Industry blogs. These specialise in a particular field or industry. They're a good option if you're already an expert in something and want to share your skills. Since you have to keep up with the news and developments in this industry, you have to be sure that you're comfortable conducting searches and understanding your topic. This category has the highest monetisation potential if you choose the right niche, for example, finance and investments.
2. Choose your topic
Some of the best financial blogs provide news about a specific topic or target a particular audience. The best blogs focus on topics that you, the blogger, are passionate about. This topic can be anything that you feel you have enough about to say to interest others. This works best if you can find a topic that is not being tapped to its fullest potential. We also found that not all niches have the same potential to generate profits.
There are many things to consider when choosing your blog topic:
- Who is your audience? There are millions of blogs in the world, so it's crucial that you know who your target audience is so you can attract them. In this sense, the subject of finances and making money online also comes to the forefront. A great advantage of discussing finances is that this topic is of interest to almost any adult. Everyone wants to make money, and everyone needs extra income.
- What does your audience want? For example, if you've decided that your audience is housewives, you're going to need to consider this demographic's possible interests and needs. Make sure you don't make a bunch of assumptions. Search other blogs that cater to your audience to see what they offer.
- How qualified are you? Good blogs convey familiarity and comfort with the subject matter. If you can't think up at least 25 different posts about your topic in one go, you may not be familiar enough with it to keep the content going. In any case, don't worry. If you need a little bit of knowledge to write in the most profitable niches, for example, financial markets or forex trading, go to our website to find comprehensive information about basically anything, including forex. Just take a look at what recognised experts in the field write and learn from them.
- How sustainable is the topic? Be sure to choose a topic that will not lose relevance in the future. You will need to provide new articles on a very frequent basis, so the topic "make money with forex" is a very good choice. Financial markets are always a good source of news because new instruments and strategies appear regularly.
- How much competition do you have? Do some research to determine what already exists in relation to your topic. Some topics may seem relatively simple and popular, but the competition is huge, and it'll be difficult to attract enough of an audience to make money. This is another advantage of discussing financial topics: the competition is not very high, and you'll have a good chance of attracting a lot of readers to your blog.
- What makes you unique? To stand out from the crowd, you're going to have to do something different and interesting with your content. No matter what you choose for your blog's topic, make sure you have a creative approach and offer new and exciting content.
Specify topics to guide you through profitability and other objectives. To make money, you have to find a niche that others haven't filled yet but is still popular enough to attract a significant number of visitors. Consider other factors, as well, such as the money you'll need to invest. For example, if you plan to write product reviews, you'll have to buy these products with your own money first. In this sense, talking about finances is better because it doesn't require useless investments.
Choose a specific area, not a general topic. If your topic were about running, you should write about running marathons, not about exercise in general. Or, if the topic were about making things, you could write about how to make glass jewellery, not about arts and crafts in general. So, for finance, write about how to make money with forex, not about financial markets in general. This can help you attract a larger audience.
3. Visit some popular blogs
Your blog can be about anything, but once you've decided on your general area of interest, visit several popular blogs to see what they're doing. Use search engines to find blogs related to your topic. Read some of their most popular posts or the ones with the most comments. Get an idea of how much interest and competition there are. Pay attention to the design of their blogs and their subject matter.
If you can't find a popular blog related to your topic, your choice may be very specific. People interested in a particular topic usually visit several blogs, and each blogger can leave a link to another link to generate more traffic for each site. If you find a popular blog that fits your topic perfectly, keep in mind that it's going to be hard to compete with it. Try to vary your topic and switch to a related but slightly different one by trying to complement other popular blogs instead of trying to outdo them.
4. Choose a domain and a title for the blog
Your domain and blog title are the first exposure your readers get to your brand identity. In addition to letting your audience know what to expect from your blog, your blog title and domain name will help your blog rank in online searches, which is crucial for generating traffic (and revenue!)
Make sure your blog title fits your overall blog identity. For example, if you are an authority on a business topic, you don't want your blog name to be too informal.
When choosing a domain name, choose a name that is easy to remember and includes keywords that other users can search for. Choosing a good keyword can help a lot. Search engines work through SEO (search engine optimisation), which ranks search results based on the number of keywords related to a person's query. However, you don't want to get so wrapped up in SEO that your readers start to feel that your blog is banal. Developing a strong brand identity is the best thing you can do to attract readers to your blog.
Choosing a domain is also important. The domain is the ".com" or ".net", for example, after the website. You have to choose the top-level domain that best fits your audience in terms of language and geographic location. For example, ".com" is usually associated with English-language website sites, but it's universal and works well with other languages, as well. On the other hand, ".de" is clearly oriented towards Germany. We recommend choosing a national domain name, e.g. ".es" for Spain, ".de" for Germany, etc.
Part 2. Choosing a platform (or software) for the blog
There are a number of popular blogging platforms, including Blogger and WordPress. Most experts recommend WordPress because it makes monetisation very easy. We'll explain how to create a free blog and earn money.
1. Free blogging services
Many choose to create a free blog with a popular service such as WordPress or Google Blogger. We recommend this option for those who aren't at all familiar with web design, who don't want to pay for their own domain or who want to enjoy the simplicity and stability of these services. However, these systems have limitations when it comes to generating revenue. We recommend using these free services only to gain the necessary experience to create a blog. In the future, we recommend switching to a "standalone" blog for serious monetisation.
With WordPress.com, you can publish a limited number of ad spaces, PayPal links and affiliate links. The website will not host blogs containing third-party advertising services, banners and sites containing affiliate links or any advertising about gambling, pornography, multi-level marketing or "disreputable" advertising.
With Google Blogger, you can publish advertising with Google AdSense, PayPal links and a limited number of affiliate links. If you post a lot of affiliate links and don't generate relevant content by including affiliate links, Google will move your blog to lower positions in the search listings, which will significantly reduce the traffic of your visitors.
If terms like "affiliate links" are unfamiliar to you, we'll describe them below in the "Making money with your blog" section.
2. Consider hosting your own blog.
If you buy your own domain name, you'll have to pay monthly or yearly to a web hosting service to make your website available. The advantages are greater customisation, no limits for monetisation and the ability to analyse the statistics of your blog's visits. We recommend precisely this option if you really want to make money with your blog.
Having your own domain and hosting does not prevent you from using very useful and comfortable platforms for blogs, such as WordPress.
We recommend using WordPress.org to create your own standalone blog. WordPress is the most popular platform in the world. It's flexible, functional, and easy to use. Plus, a large community of people share tools and ideas to work with it.
Note: WordPress has two options you can work with, and people sometimes get confused between the two:
Self-hosting: This usually refers to WordPress.org blogs (recommended).
Hosted: This usually refers to WordPress.com blogs.
We're mainly interested in the first option, WordPress.org, which combines the advantages of the WordPress platform and the own website.
Also a great advantage of WordPress is the availability of a large number of people willing to help with the installation and configuration for free or at a low price. For example, if you don't know graphic design and can't do it yourself, you always have the option of asking someone you know or paying for this service, which is not very expensive.
Part 3. Creating and designing your blog
1. Create and customise your blog
If you're going to use a free service, you'll have a tutorial during the initial stages of setting up the blog. Additionally, you'll have a forum of people who will answer your questions. If you host your own website, you'll need someone with web design experience to customise your blog or who can use software such as WordPress.org.
It's important that you create a design that reflects the content and image of your blog (from the font to the choice of colours). Make sure that every element of your blog's overall design fits your blog's image.
Most blog hosts, including Blogger and WordPress, have themes that can be installed. Sometimes, these can be customised.
To get started, we recommend choosing one of the ready-made paid or free WordPress themes. You can find a suitable theme in the official WordPress catalogue https://wordpress.org/themes/. Choose the theme that best suits the area you have previously chosen.
You should also consider hiring a professional designer, at least for your header and logo. You have only one chance to make a first impression.
3. Choose elements to include in your blog
Most blogs have common elements, for example, the "About Me" and "Archives" sections, that allow readers to learn more about you and read previous posts. Some of the common characteristics are:
- About me
- Categories
- Posts
- Portfolio
- Contact
4. Make it easy to navigate your blog
Don't create clutter on your blog! Make it easy for readers to find the content they're looking for. It offers useful features such as a search bar and a sidebar of popular posts.
A splash header can be a good way to orient new visitors. This is a long banner at the top of the page that mentions the most important content and provides a quick introduction to the areas of the blog that readers will be most interested in.
Add an option to go to the next and previous posts. One way to generate a good readership is to keep your visitors wandering around your blog. By adding "next" and "previous" buttons at the end of each post, you can get your readers to read more content.
Part 4. Start a blog
1. Write blog posts that people want to read
Good blogs speak honestly and openly about issues that their writers are passionate about. Be yourself and share your ideas with the world!
- Be professional. Even if your blog talks about your personal life, make it appealing to readers by making sure you don't have spelling mistakes or ugly design.
- Be helpful. Focus your content on the reader, not yourself. This means that you must consider what the reader can get from reading each post. Find a problem you can address, a question you can answer, or a story you can tell.
- Be personal. Using pretentious and elevated language is not very useful in blogs. Readers usually want to experience blogs in a way that resembles having a conversation with the blogger. Develop your own writing style and stick to it.
2. Make your posts 'scannable'.
- When faced with a huge wall of text, 99% of readers will simply go elsewhere. Break your posts into scannable chunks to invite your readers to stay and read. For example, you can use a list format or divide your post into several short paragraphs. If you have a very long post, try to use headings before paragraphs and prevent quotations from breaking up the text.
- Other design elements, such as highlighting important points or using italics to emphasise something, can quickly draw readers' attention to the most important points.
- Remember that most readers don't want to spend a lot of time reading anything online. Make your posts easy to skim while still understanding the basics.
3. Create catchy titles
You can have the best content in the world, but if your readers don't instantly recognise it, they're not likely to click on it. Titles are important because many readers will casually find your content through a feed reader. At first, they'll only see the title, so you need to convey what your post is going to be about in an attractive and entertaining way.
- Create titles that are useful but without creating a sense of urgency. What you want is for your readers to feel that they need to read this content.
- Play on readers' emotions. You can do this by asking questions or challenging expectations.
4. Create background content before publishing your blog
Don't advertise your new blog for readers to discover that there are only two posts about it. Publish 10 to 15 posts to start with and queue up another 10 to 15 on a regular basis.
- Consistency and quality content are crucial when developing a mass readership for your blog. If you don't have enough content by the time visitors show up, they won't spend much time on your blog and are unlikely to come back.
- Make back-to-back publications. Drafting posts and queuing them up to publish later is a good way to ensure you have frequently updated content.
5. Make it easy for readers to subscribe to your blog
Many readers subscribe to blogs through RSS feeds, which provide automatic updates when you write a new post. Post a clean link on your blog to let your readers know how to subscribe.
6. Be persistent and write good content
Once you've gotten a hold of the basics, you'll continue to develop and learn more. It may take a while to generate a mass readership, so just be patient and keep posting.
7. Try to write original content
Even if your publications are based on information previously obtained from other sources, always try to add a unique touch. If readers enjoy reading your writing style and the topic you've chosen, they'll visit your blog.
Part 5. Marketing your blog
1. Post relevant comments on related blogs to make yourself known to readers.
Sign up on whatever platform, use the name of your blog as your username, and post comments on related blogs. This will drive traffic to your blog.
- Build links to your blog by posting comments on other blogs that have "dofollow" links, which means they're visible to search engines.
- Don't use these comments exclusively as advertising because doing so could look like spam. Make your comments interesting and insightful. Remember that you're making a first impression in these comments.
2. Write guest posts on other blogs
If you're a good writer and have something to say, a guest post on another popular blog can help you get your name out there. Check out other popular blogs similar to yours to see if they have a guest post option.
- Don't despair if you don't see any information about guest posts. Read through the blog to see if other guest posts have been published. If you find them, contact the blogger and explain who you are and what you would like to write about. If not, you can still contact the blogger to ask whether or not he/she is interested in hosting a guest post from you.
3. Quote important people in your blog
Mentioning prominent people in your area or subject matter can serve several functions. It shows your readers that you're aware of who the important people in your field are. You can also have this important person check out your blog or promote it to their followers or readers.
- Don't just name-drop. Be sure to incorporate this person's name in an organic and meaningful way.
- Link blogs you like to your posts. Lots of bloggers track where their readers are coming from and may even visit (or promote!) your blog in return.
4. Use social media networks and blog directories
These days, if you're not on social media, you're missing out on a huge readership. Post a link to your latest article in your Twitter bio, ask for retweets, or link your content to your Facebook page. On the other hand, don't play exactly the same content over and over again. Use social media for short, eye-catching posts and your blog for longer, more engaging posts.
The following sites are popular social media sites:
Find blog communities similar to your readership and post links to your articles in the comments or forums. This will help increase traffic to your website and improve your search engine ranking.
5. Optimise your site for search engines
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is very important, but it involves a lot more than just repeating a bunch of keywords.
5. a. Brainstorm keywords for each post
Keywords are important words that are related to the topic of your blog and especially to the new subtopics that you deal with each time you post. Choosing relevant words that people search for can increase your blog's visibility and attract more readers. You can use the Google Keyword Research Tool to find the right keywords for your area and also look at the statistics for these keywords, for example, the number of queries in a month and how much money advertisers are willing to pay Google for these keywords.
5.b. Include keywords in important places in your posts
Put them in the title of your post, section headers, the first sentences of the post and internal links. Adjust the settings so that each post's URL includes the title of the post. Make them as descriptive as possible to improve your search engine rankings and attract the right audience.
6. Follow related blogs and ask the bloggers if you can exchange links.
Establish relationships with other bloggers who write about your topic and similar topics and have them exchange links to similar articles. Many bloggers will gladly post a link to their article in one of your articles if you do the same. Don't publish too many links at the same time. If you do, your position in search results in search engines may drop.
7. Promote your blog with paid advertising if necessary.
If you're going to invest serious time and money to attract more readers, you can create your own ads on Facebook, or you can be an advertiser on Google AdSense or another advertising service. You can use the same keywords for advertising that you used when writing and promoting the articles.
Part 6. Make money with your blog
Remember to promote your blog first! The instant ways for monetising your blog won't be effective if you don't have any visitors. Do a little reading about marketing and advertising first, even if you don't plan to include ads. At the very least, you need to post links to your blog on social media to attract readers.
1. Sign up to post an ad for your blog
Accepting advertising is the easiest way to make money with a blog, but unfortunately, it's not the most effective way. Incorporating and adjusting ads is simple, but doing that can only generate real profits under certain specific conditions. Advertising requires a much larger audience compared to affiliate programmes that start generating tangible income for the blogger early on with a small amount of visitors.
With pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you get paid when visitors to your blog click on advertisements that redirect to other customers. You usually need to have a large audience and lots of visitors for buyers to show interest in your blog. Here are some examples of websites that can pay you for advertising:
- Google AdSense is the most widely used PPC programme because it's powered by Google Search. Google will read your article, find advertisements that are relevant to the topic, and will publish them in the middle or on the side of the article. It will also use your readers' cookie reader to display ads on your blogs that are relevant to the websites they've recently visited. However, if you want to make real money with Google AdSense, you're going to need to have a unique article niche where advertisers are willing to pay big money for clicks on their ads, which is hard to find. Or, you'll need to have a lot of traffic, which is hard to do, especially for beginners.
- You can also subscribe to cost per thousand (mille) impressions (CPM) advertising. This feature is similar to PPC but pays based on the impressions (views) the advertisement receives, even if the visitor doesn't click on the link. Units are usually sets of 1000 impressions.
- If you don't have around 10000 unique visitors to your site per month, it's very difficult for you to make money with advertising.
Running banner ads is an old-fashioned and ineffective method of monetising websites and blogs. It's easier to sign up and make adjustments, but it offers much less income than with an affiliate programme.
2. Sign up for an affiliate marketplace and earn money as an affiliate
Affiliate marketing is a popular way to monetise a blog because it shows that readers trust you. If you have quality posts, your audience will be inclined to believe in the products or services you recommend. You can provide links or recommendations of relevant products and get commissions from any sales made thanks to your blog.
How to make money with affiliate programmes
Sign up for a company's affiliate programme, and you'll receive a special link known as an affiliate link. In your own blog, you should recommend this company's products or services to your readers. You can write about these products, publish banners or links to these products, and much more. At the same time, all your links and banners that redirect to the company's product have to be affiliate links (include your personal identifier). If one of your blog readers clicks one of these links and buys a product from the company, the company has to pay you a commission. The size of the commission usually depends on the type of affiliate programme and the products and services you're promoting. The largest commissions are offered by financial-themed programmes, e.g., forex affiliate programmes.
A successful blogger can make a lot of money per month with a good affiliate programme.
Making money with affiliate marketing is the best way to make money with a blog, especially if you have chosen the right topic for your blog. For example, if you choose a financial niche and write about how great forex trading is, Libertex is willing to pay up to $800 for each trader you attract. This cooperation model is known as CPA (cost-per-action).
It also has a revenue share or lifetime commission model. In this case, the blogger receives from 40% to 60% of the forex broker's revenue for each blogger that he/she attracts. This model is well-suited for those seeking a stable and lasting income.
These are the conditions offered by our forex affiliate programme, which is one of the most profitable in the market. You can sign up for free and receive a wide range of advertising materials for your blog, including banners, logos and ready-made landing pages. You can also receive instant support from us about any concerns that may arise.
We hope the information we've provided in this article has been useful to you. If you've decided to create a financial blog, join our affiliate programme for free, and we'll be happy to help you with any questions you may have. Click the link to learn more about our affiliate programme and the terms of cooperation we are willing to offer to our affiliates.
We wish you the best of luck in monetising your blog! We also look forward to your comments.
