How to Make Money Blogging

Businesses are turning their attention to how to make money blogging. Blogging may have once been an online journaling platform, but businesses are identifying the unique benefit of not only informing their audiences about their products but also using it as a platform to engage with potential customers.

Blogging specifically can help you to share your vision with customers and should become the foundation of your marketing strategy. This marketing strategy will show you how to make money blogging as well as giving your business a platform to communicate directly with your customers.

What is a blog?

Blogging began as a type of online journal which enabled users a quick and easy way of writing, publishing and distributing their opinions. Entries appear in a chronological order which promotes the idea of a type of online diary.

How blogging has evolved?

Blogging are now more comparable to a website which has become very effective communication and marketing tools for businesses. Each blog post about your business will archive on your blog and become another resource for your customers.

Successful businesses have positioned their blogs as highly informative, positioning the business as a thought leader in their space, building trust in their expertise. Your business blog should be the centre element of your online marketing strategy.

Types of blogs

Blogs can be used in every field and for any purpose. These will give you a starting point of what type of business blog your business could use. These are the 5 most common types of blogs:

1. Thought leadership blog

Blogging from the perspective of the CEO/Founder. Can also be the voice of senior leaders from within their areas of expertise or from the perspective of their roles and responsibilities. These types of blog posts can have a big impact because it’s coming from the source of influence in the business.

This is quite a powerful perspective for your customers to be exposed to. These types of blogs are few and far between making them a rare and precious gem.

Challenges: The leaders in your business might not have enough time to post consistently or regularly. This could hurt the blogs potential.

Opportunities: Invite experts in their field to contribute to your blog. This will not only build your own networks but will also build audience trust of your content.

2. Company blog, several contributors

This is when you have general blogging with one or more contributors. These can sometimes be a full-time position in a company or a group of key leaders within the organisation will rotate publishing responsibilities. This offers a well-rounded perspective of your business. It also helps distribute the responsibility of publishing consistently.

This type of business blog works particularly well for smaller companies with fewer staff members but can also work for larger companies. This type of business blog can be a good starting point as well as a place to test the waters with your blog posts as part of your social communication strategy.

3. Department or team blog

This is an interesting option if your company is big enough to have a dedicated department that writes your business blogs. These blogs can then be specific to what each department is responsible for. Examples of this are:

• The IT department having a blog expressing their opinions on infrastructure and data management
• The software development team discussing their method and difficulties with shipping their product.
• The HR department could discuss their strategy of how they hire well.
• Customer service department have an open line of communication with customers. Possibly receiving feedback from the comments feature.

Challenges: Some departments may have excellent sector specific expertise but lack the ability to write well. It will be important to set guidelines and the business orientated writing for your blog so that your teams adhere to the same editorial style and your businesses tone remains uniform.

Opportunities: Involve your employees in the content of the blog creates ‘brand ambassadors’ out of your teams. Your staff will have a vested interest in your business growth.

4. Product, service or marketing specific blog

This type of blog strategically focuses on products, specifically a flagship product. This business blog would then be devoted to communicating the details of the product, the team of creators, the difficulties, the updates as well as a behind the scenes look. Very good business blogs use this as a marketing tool by work in soft-marketing strategies to lure new customers.

Challenges: if you punt your products to much you could lose your customers interest. Make sure to write it in a way that doesn’t sell products directly to your customers but rather helps them engage with you brands.

Opportunities: You will receive instant customer feedback on your products. You will easily be able to identify which products are preferred by users and what there “pain points” are with your products.

5. Employee blogs

Employee blogs or even a network of business blogs powered by individual employees. This can be a blog which is company branded or an independent blog which became the voice of the business.

If employees understand their responsibility to your business and are made aware of what the detailed expectations are, then this can work very well.

Challenges: Difficult to control what your employees are posting as well as maintaining a business perspective and not letting it turn into your employee’s journal. When staff leave their blogs must be taken over by another employee preferably the one who takes over their position.

Opportunities: This helps your employees become brand ambassadors and makes them feel like they are uniquely involved in the marketing of your business.

How blogging can benefit your business

Customers:

• This platform allows you to communicate and connect directly with your customers
• Blogging creates a conversation between you and your customers, potential investors and industry partners. This platform encourages interactions and feedback. How else will you know where you’re falling short if you don’t see your feedback?
• You can use this platform to introduce new products and services to your customers. You could also comment on significant new events or market trends. Share your businesses behind the scenes initiatives. A business blog give your business a voice and personality, potential customers can now get to know your business.

Marketing tools:

• Businesses should use all free marketing tools at their disposal and a business blog allows you to build both brand awareness and brand trust.
• Your blog analytics will allow you to determine who your audience is, when they prefer to visit your site and which entries are the most popular.
• Cost-effective marketing investments. Every entry you publish becomes a long-term asset which will help with brand awareness as well as promote your expertise, products and services.

Business specific benefits:

• To have a successful blog you need to keep up to date with news, trends and what your competitors are doing. This helps you stay on top of your industry and helps you to be a leader in your industry.
• With blogging you can tell your businesses story. You can offer more insight into your business, your philosophy, employees and ideas.
• It is great PR. Journalists will often interview business bloggers as industry experts.
• Allows you to share your experiences and introduce yourself as an expert in your field and perhaps even a thought leader in your sector.

Ways to make money directly from blogging

• Advertise and selling your own products
  • You can sell or advertise directly through your business blog and you’ll get paid directly. No need to outsource or get anyone else involved. Make sure to have a polished product before putting it on your blog. Make sure that the blog is correctly targeted for the product.
• Paid for reviews
  • You can be compensated for putting a comprehensive review on your business blog. Make sure that the review isn’t completely irrelevant to your business.
• Affiliate marketing
  • You can sell or recommend connected products on your business blog. You’ll receive a commission when a visitor to your blog clicks on the affiliated link and buys the product.
  • Commission is usually 30% – 70% of the product/service price.
• Sponsors
  • You can earn money by setting up a donation button or asking readers for additional funds. Make sure to tell your readers what you will be spending the donations on for example: Product creation, researching costs.
• Selling advertising space
  • You sell the space around your business blog at a certain price every month. The price will depend on the amount of traffic your blog gets and you will get paid upfront every month

How to create a blog

1. Choosing your platform

• Which platform is the most popular?
  • WordPress is home to over 72 million bloggers
    • It doesn’t require HTML or code knowledge
    • It offers a choice of 3000+ free themes and templates
    • Offers a host of 1000’s of plugins which can add different features such as newsletters or photo galleries
    • With so many people using it, there is a vast community who will assist you if you get stuck.
  • Why free blogging platforms are traps
    • They control your content
    • They can shut you down
    • They can prevent you from making money for any reason they decide
    • With a blog in your own domain you are in charge of the content, you are not limited by branding or monetization
    • Because the software is open source, free blogging platforms are vulnerable to being hacked

2. Creating a name for your blog

The web address is called a domain name. This is where your blog will be found. Choose a name which is:

• Memorable
  • If you choose a made-up name, something that is difficult to spell or is too complicated, it won’t stay with your potential customers. Choose a name that is:
    • Short
    • Catchy and memorable – if you can’t remember it how will your customers?
    • Easy to pronounce
    • Easy to spell
    • Isn’t similar to your competitors domain names
    • Doesn’t violate some else’s trademark
  • Out of the ordinary
    • Your name needs to reflect who you are and what is important to you.
    • Be creative, your name should excite you
  • Trustworthy
    • Avoid using domain extensions like “.rocks” or “.biz” because they are less well known and will not inspire trust. Rather stick with the well-known options like “co.za”, “.com”, “.org” or “.net”.

3. Hosting your blog

• Requirements for a good host are:
  • Support: Help options in understandable English. With various contact techniques like chatting, email or phone
  • User-friendly control options:Beginner orientated way to manage your blog
  • Consistent Uptime: Your site should be consistently up for 99.9% of the time.
  • Reasonably priced: Find a balanced host, you don’t need to spend a lot. But cheap isn’t always good.

What to avoid when blogging

1) Being inconsistent with your blog posts

• When writing a blog your publishing schedule should be consistent.
• Create an editorial calendar for your blog writing. This will help you stay on track.
• Readers will not continue to visit your blog if they don’t know when you will be publishing a new blog post.

2) Not staying on point

• Your blog posts need to provide value to readers who either are customers or may potentially be customers.
• You need to answer their questions and tell them how you can help them.

3) Weak appearance

• Make sure you have a strong, interesting and creative blog title
• Include good relevant images which will catch your audience’s attention

4) Ignoring comments and questions

• Readers want you to respond to their comments and questions. You need to keep your audience engaged and feeling connected to you and your business.

These blogging tips will help your businesses image and connect you to more potential customers which will essentially mean you will make money online. You can also use the direct money making techniques to make money blogging.

Social media marketing can result in more customers, more traffic and more conversations about you and your business. These are fun, create ways how to make money blogging.