Want to say goodbye to your 9 to 5 day job and start blogging from home to make money? While it’s not easy – by any means – it can be done if you have the skills and a desire to break free from the ordinary and become independent. Keep reading for the recommended process for making the dream of blogging for a living an actual reality.
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How to Blog From Home
Here are the basic steps you’re going to want to take so that you can eventually quit your day job and start working from home.
Choose a Topic
The first thing you want to do is decide what you want to blog about. Instead of going for topics you think might make a lot of money, going in for a niche that interests you makes a lot more sense. This will make the writing easier and the content better. You are bound to write more naturally and engage more with your user if you really know what you are writing about. Random read and write blogs don’t last long. You end up losing interest and falling short of new concepts for updating.
Build or Buy the Site
Once you know what your blog is going to be about, it’s time to find a home online. You can get a free website service, but it’s better to spend a little money on getting your own domain and hosting. The personalization on your domain signifies how serious you are towards the whole thing. Also, when you invest on a good website, you feel motivated to keep up with the zeal you started it with. Also, if you get to chose your own design, you can always decide how you want to place things and define what parts should be salesy and which ones devoid of any ads.
Think About Platform
Nine times out of ten, WordPress is going to be the software you want to install to run your blog. It’s easier to use, is good with all the SEO steps you want to include, and has tons of plugins for almost anything you’d like to do with your website. Every part of it is easily customizable and very user friendly.
Design the Site
From the logo to the background colors and everything else, you should spend some time designing your blog before you make it live. Make sure it really shines before you show anyone. As they say, first impressions really do make a difference. Let the first time viewer be attracted to your efforts and let him feel the desire to navigate through each and every part of it. That’s the magic of a good UI/UX design.
Start Blogging Early
Even before you start telling people about the blog, start writing posts and putting up content. Be sure to use images and videos if you can to make the posts even better.
Launch the Blog
Once you have five to ten posts published, start to let other people know about your blog. By now the search engines should know about it if you have properly configured your SEO and XML Sitemap options within the WordPress dashboard. Share your blog and posts to social networks and to your email contacts. We’ll share more on how to promote your new blog posts in a moment.
Keep at It
As mentioned, you’re not going to be able to build an audience and make a lot of money overnight. However, if you have a plan and stick to it over time you can grow your blog audience – and revenue.
RELATED: The Ultimate Blogging Planner to help you organize your blog & blogging business.
The best thing to do is start while you still have a job. You’re not going to make money overnight by blogging, so keep your job and start the blog in your spare time. As it grows and starts producing revenue, you’ll have to eventually make a choice about whether you want to make the leap and start doing it full time. If you time it right, the extra hours you spend blogging will cause your revenue to really skyrocket.
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