Blogging has been a very popular pastime for the past few years now for most people. In fact, you have probably had your own blog for a couple of years already, right? It’s a great hobby and gives you a public outlet to post your thoughts and feelings about a particular passion. Even if you don’t have a particular hobby or passion to focus on, it’s still easy to set up an entertaining lifestyle blog in which you document your everyday life. In fact, some people find that writing down their daily musings and thoughts in this way can greatly help them work through their thoughts and emotions, and gives them an outlet to vent and rant whenever they need to.
But do you now feel that it’s time to try to take your blog to the next level? Sure, there’s nothing wrong with keeping it as a hobby if you’d prefer, but wouldn’t it be good to try and make some extra money from it? If it is a big success, you might even be able to turn this hobby into a part-time income alongside your full-time work.
Taking your blog to the next level isn’t as hard as you might think. Read on to find out what you need to do to get started!
Start Email Marketing
Once you have built up a sizeable number of loyal readers and followers, it’s time to start utilizing email marketing. To start with, all you need to do is pop a box on your blog’s homepage where any visitors can pop their email in to join your mailing list. Then, whenever you send out your monthly or fortnightly newsletter, they will be tempted to return to your website and check out all your new content. Are you wondering what you need to link to? Well, you should always link to any new blog posts to drive traffic to them. It’s also worth linking to any new products, such as eBooks, that you may start selling. No matter what your news is, be sure to link to it in your regular newsletter!
Boost Your Site’s SEO
It will also be necessary to check how your website’s SEO is doing and see if there are any ways you could try and give it a little boost. This can be quite easy to do and doesn’t have to cost you a lot of cash. One of the best things you can do is to keep on publishing new blog posts that are peppered with SEO keywords. Linking to your own internal pages in each post will also see your SEO rankings rise as well. Don’t forget that anything that slows down the loading time of your website will have a negative effect on your SEO, so it’s worth removing any flashy graphics that are slowing down your site and don’t really enhance your site in any way.
Begin Some Social Media Strategies
Social media experts will tell you that using the various social media platforms is a fantastic way to increase your readership. Your main focus should be to always grow your readership and blog followers, as the more you have will mean that you are a lot more likely to land sponsorships and earn money from your blog. At the very least, you should create profiles for your blog on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This way, you are reaching as many people as possible. Remember to add a link to your blog in each of your bios so that people can find it without too much trouble. Similarly, you should also link to each social media platform from your website so people can also easily follow you.
Move Over To A Premium Theme
If you use a blog host service, such as Squarespace or WordPress, then you should think about switching your free theme for a premium one. Most people try and save a bit of cash by spending as little as they can on the design of their blog’s website, and this usually means by sticking to the free themes. However, lots of people will then have the same theme as you, and your website may not look unique. So, it’s always worth investing a little in the design as it’s one thing that can help you stay one step ahead of any competitor bloggers.
Mix Up Your Content
One of the main problems that quite a few bloggers have is maintaining loyal followers and readers. In order to build up a loyal following, you need to make sure that your blog is relevant, informative, and entertaining. There is one surefire way you could entertain all your readers, and that is by using a variety of content on your page. So, as well as writing regular posts, it could also be worth updating your site with some video content as well.
Network With Other Bloggers
Do you already know a few other bloggers personally? If not, you should consider contacting some and, if possible, meeting them in person. Not only is this a great way to meet new people and make friends, but it also gives you some great blogging connections. If you blog about the same topics, you will be able to write guest posts for each other’s blogs. This can help you increase your readership, as all of their fans and readers will find out about you and may check out your own blog to see what it’s about!
Start Monetizing The Blog
Finally, it’s time to start monetizing your blog. There are various ways to do this. You might want to offer advertising space to various businesses, for instance. Alternatively, you could write sponsored posts for some companies. If you blog about a very specific niche, you could also start selling eBooks or courses in the subject. You could even use your own writing skills to become a freelance content writer!
Hopefully, all of these great tips will help you take your blog to the next level and make some money!
Loose Leaf Literary 