We’re in the midst of a worldwide pandemic and increasing numbers of us are spending increasing amounts of time at home. Unless you’re a keyworker, chances are you can’t go to work and you may have found yourself sitting at home not really doing an awful lot. This has encouraged many of us to turn our minds to different ways we can make money from home. Whether this is with the intention of tiding yourself over until the end of the pandemic, or whether you’re enjoying spending more time at home and would like to wave goodbye to the commuting lifestyle, the nine to five and uncomfortable work uniforms. Now, there are, of course, many ways you can earn money from home. But a particularly enjoyable one that might appeal to you is blogging! Here’s everything you need to know on the subject!
Can Blogging Really Be a Career?
Many of us associate blogging with personal activities. Something that we do in our free time for fun. A hobby. But the past few years have seen a significant rise in the number of people who are turning blogging into a full time career and who are making a pretty impressive income from the activity!
How Do Bloggers Make Money?
Put simply, bloggers make most of their money through advertising. Companies want to place their products and services in places where their target demographic are looking. If they want to sell their product to the people they realise are reading your blog, they’re going to want to make sure their products appear somewhere on your blog. This way, your readers will see them and may be tempted to purchase them. It’s as simple as that! Here are the three main ways bloggers can make money from the ads on their blogs.
On-Page Ads
If you build your blog up enough, chances are you’ll get a pretty broad readership. This could extend from your friends and family to a worldwide audience. Any company that’s looking to show off their goods is going to be drawn to the space that is your blog! This is why they may reach out to you and pay you to advertise their products in the banners of your webpage, through pop ups on your blog or in ad spaces between your posts.
Sponsored Posts
You may also be asked to create a sponsored post in exchange for payment. This will essentially mean that you get paid by a company to write up a blog post that endorses one of their products. It will generally involve complimenting and recommending the product to your readership. This could influence your readers to make a purchase and will make the company money. Let’s look at a few examples. If you run a beauty blog, a makeup company could pay you to write a good review of one of their latest lipsticks. If you have a travel blog, a company might pay you to stay at and review their hotel. If you run a fitness blog, a brand may want you to promote their home gym equipment or gym wear.
On-Site Merchandise
If you’re extremely popular, you may begin to get a fan base. If this is the case, you can create your own merchandise, which you can sell through a store on your blog. This is a simple way to make direct money from sales!
Creating a High Quality Blog
If this all sounds good to you, it’s time to get started. Now, there are plenty of free blogging platforms out there, but if you want to be seen as professional or serious, you could probably do with setting up your own website. This will involve working with a web designer, a web developer and perhaps a UX designer (or “user experience” designer). These professionals can all work together to create a page that’s not only appealing, but also functional for your readers. You’ll have to focus on all sorts of areas. From creating a logo to settling on a colour scheme, selecting a font, splitting your page into subpages with different categories and subcategories and learning things like what is card sorting in UX. Once your blog is created, you can start coming up with some content!
Choosing an Area of Specialism
The first step towards creating great content is to choose an area of specialism. People want to know what they’ll be getting when they come to your blog. If you regularly jump from one topic to another, you’ll find it hard to maintain a base of loyal readers who check in regularly. There are various blog categories out there that you might like to look into. Some of the most popular include fashion, hair, makeup, lifestyle, travel, business, parenting, news and more. You could, of course, go more niche if you like!
Creating a Schedule
As well as consistency in subject matter, readers tend to like consistency in the time and dates of your posts. So, come up with a schedule. How regularly are you going to post? You want to keep people engaged, but you don’t want to overwhelm them. Most will settle on every other day. Sure, this may seem like a lot. But you need to treat this like a career if you’re going to profit from it like a career. Try to post at the same time when you do post. Evenings are generally best, as people are home from work and able to actually check in and read.
As you can see, there really is a lot to take into account when it comes to blogging professionally. It may take a little time to get up and running and it will take some time to build a regular readership. But patience is a virtue and can really pay off when it comes to this!
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