How To Start A Blog Business in 2023 (in A Successful Way)

Do you want to know how to start a blog business?

You’re in the right place. This step-by-step guide will show you how to start a blog that attracts an audience and generates revenue.

You can turn your blog into a rewarding business with a well-executed plan. Learn everything you would need to know in this guide.

Keep reading to learn what blogging is for beginners and how to start a blog and make money.

If you have already started a blog, I recommend this list of great resources for blogging.

Disclosure: Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, for which I may get compensation at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. I’ve personally used or thoroughly researched these products and stand for them. This site is not intended to provide financial advice and is for entertainment only. You can read our affiliate disclosure in our Privacy Policy.

How to start a blog Business – Instructions Step-by-Step 

Starting a blog business can seem daunting, but it can be a successful and rewarding venture with some planning and effort. If you’re ready to start a blog, follow these steps:

1. Select your Niche

When choosing a niche for your blog business, there are a few things to consider. First, think about what topics you are passionate about and know about.

Choosing a niche, you can write about consistently is vital, at least at first, while you may not be ready to outsource.

Second, consider your target audience. Who do you want to reach with your blog? What kinds of topics would they be interested in? Once you have considered these factors, you should be able to narrow down your options and choose a niche for your blog business.

In selecting your niche, be broad enough to change your direction if needed.

If you narrow down too much to start, your niche is fishing apparel, and your domain name is “Best fishing apparel,” a blog post title such as “Best Soccer Balls” will not be relevant, and the Google algorithm will detect it and not rank your site.

So you are limited to content related to the best fishing apparel and perhaps some related sub-niches like fishing food, but that will be about it.

It would be different if your niche and website were “best outdoor sports apparel” cause Fishing and Soccer are outdoor sports.

If posts related to fishing aren’t that successful, in the hypothetical case above, you can write new blog posts related to Soccer. In other words, you give yourself the ability to change when things are not going your way.

2. Choose a blogging platform

You can choose from several platforms: WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Medium, or Squarespace. But for bloggers, the best CMS (Content Management System) by far is WordPress because of its friendly and effective ecosystem and WordPress Dashboard.

Why WordPress

For many small business owners, a WordPress blog is the perfect platform for promoting their products and services.

Not only is it easy to use and customize, but it also offers a wide range of features that can help to engage readers and build a following.

The most important advantage of using WordPress for your small business blog is that it is free. You can avoid the expensive fees associated with other blogging platforms and focus your budget on other business areas.

In addition, a large community of users and developers back WordPress up, so you can always find help and support if needed. WordPress is an ideal solution for small businesses looking to establish an online presence.

Read this review to know more about WordPress.

3. Select a hosting provider

WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr offer free hosting, while for Medium and Squarespace, you have to pay to start a blog. When you begin blogging, you’ll want to choose a paid hosting provider for more control over your blog and monetization ability.

The best for blogging is a WordPress hosting service, such as Bluehost.

Most hosting plans make it easy to install WordPress, which gives you access to the WordPress dashboard to choose your blog theme, blog post editor, and many other features, installations, and customizations.

The speed at which your site loads and uptime are also significant for rankings. You should consider that when choosing your web host and blogging platform. Reliable web hosting companies offer great uptime rates; your website is always present, in other words.

4. Choose a domain name

Your domain name is your blog’s URL (address on the web). Hosting providers may offer you a free domain name, for example, with the hosting service.

Select a .com extension. This is very important for ranking in Search Engines, which we will discuss further. So don’t worry much about how you will do it; I will show you that a bit further ahead.

When you sign up with Bluehost, you can select your domain name within the process, which is included in the package price.

First, consider these significant facts:

When starting your blog, it may be a good idea not to be too niche-specific with your domain name, that if your desired niche doesn’t go well, you will not be able to pivot to other sub-topics or blog post ideas that may be more successful. In other words, you will pigeonhole yourself.

5. Set up your blog

Provided that you went for my suggestion of a Hosted WordPress Blog, you will need to set up several things to start a blog from the beginning.

Such as creating your Home Page or Blog’s Archive, installing WordPress plugins for Security and Anti-Spam, speeding up your page loading, and others in a WordPress Site.

Some of these functions or plugins will come pre-installed as a part of your chosen web hosting service. Most web hosting companies incorporate different plugins and blog design features.

Others are easy to install in just a few clicks.

The WordPress blogging platform has many free themes to help you design your website. Your blog theme is how your website will look to others once your site is online.

Also, analytic tools such as Google Search Console and your Google Analytics account are easy to integrate with your WordPress blog.

Following the instructions of your chosen blog hosting platform would typically and eventually take you there. Below is the Bluehost website set up step-by-step, directly in your WordPress backend.

However, at times it’s challenging to understand too many new things, interfaces, and terms, especially for beginners.

Or they are not available, so you need to search and find the help of a professional or do it yourself, researching online and proof and error many things.

That is good, and it is part of the learning curve. But you will also be exposed immediately to a lot of distractions.

This guide aims to help you cut that curve and the guessing and deviations.

Below is a cheat sheet of what you need to do and get based on this guide:

6. Start writing your content

Write about topics about which you’re knowledgeable or passionate. However, remember at first that you are aiming to blog for business, too, and you need to be able to shift directions as you go.

And be sure to include images, videos, and links to other websites. When you finish writing a post, proofread it and hit publish.

Proofread tools such as Grammarly have become very useful for this matter.

Your blog posts must be easy to navigate and read. Many free blog themes give your blog a clean and professional look while enhancing users’ reading experience.

Perhaps the most important thing about writing posts is your content, which needs to be engaging, helpful, and solve a problem for your followers.

It would be best if you learned the needs of your target audience to write content that attracts them and ultimately sell them the solutions you promote.

Keyword research is essential for any business, especially a blog business. You can find out what people are searching for online by researching keywords.

You can use these keywords in your blog posts to attract more readers. Keyword research can be done using free tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner.

Simply sign up with your Google account and get free access.

Other Keyword Research tools, such as those from Ubbersuggest or SE Ranking, are essential to identify search intent, but again, the most important is that your blog posts are aimed at people more than search engines.

These are some inexpensive tools, and they give you free trials.

There are many other of these tools. Some of the most advanced are SEMRush and Ahrefs. However, they are more costly.

They are worth the investment if you have the budget, but as a beginner, you may not give full use to all that you will pay for.

With the tools mentioned above, you can also track your keywords. After you publish posts targeting them, you can analyze your competition and even have some AI Copywriting; such is the case of Ubersuggest.

Writers Block? Although Artificial Intelligence is not yet perfect for copywriting, some AI systems are helpful when it comes to producing content of different kinds automatically or assisted. With the proper feedback, most of that content is really WOW!

Chat GPT from Open AI, Bard from Google, and Bing Chat are revolutionizing this century.

For Long-form content creation, the best option is Content At Scale.

The new update of Content At Scale 2.0 can also produce content from urls and YouTube Videos!

The new UX is also excellent!

Jasper and Copymatic are two remarkable examples.

Try Jasper for free for five days with 10,000 words of credit.

Get a free trial of Copymatic.

7. Promoting your blog

Sharing your WordPress blog posts on social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, are ways to promote your blog.

But to be successful as a blogging business, you need to get organic traffic from people searching for the topics you are writing and, ultimately, the products and services you will promote.

That means when anybody performs a Google Search, and your goal is that through that Google search, your most relevant blog post topic is shown to that person in the search engine results.

Search engines then show the most reliable information to the users at the top of the first page (after results that other bloggers or companies pay to be at the very top, which is the paid network).

The result above will get approximately 30% of all the clicks because the post is well-optimized and engages an audience enough to be ranked. Still, the domain also has enough authority, another critical factor, and authority is built over time and with content quality and backlinks.

For this matter, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is probably the most crucial skill you need to be successful at blogging (you help search engines such as Google find your blog posts based on the people’s search intent).

To learn how to dominate SEO and blogging, here is a tremendous free masterclass:

You can hire the services of SEO professionals, or you can learn more about blogging as you move to apply the best SEO tactics and practices to attract audiences.

To use SEO best practices and have clear guidance for your SEO efforts, I highly recommend the RankMath plugin; it is free and will open a world of possibilities for you to rank high in search engines.

Other plugins, such as Yoast SEO and All-in-one SEO, are also good choices.

But my favorite one I use is RankMath. You can check RankMath here and sign up for the free account.

You don’t have to worry about SEO being too complicated. There are dedicated tools that can be used for SEO analysis and improvements, many of them free, although the most effective ones are available at affordable costs.

Search Engine Optimization and Backlinks deserve a complete guide to understand all their parts.

Further down, you will have basic information about these critical factors when promoting a blog business.

8. Monetize your Blog

There are several ways to make money from your blog.

You can sell advertising space, accept guest posts, do affiliate marketing, and create digital products like e-books and online courses.

Each of these ways has different approaches and times to do in the life of a blogging business.

When you have considerable traffic to your new blog, you can start thinking of ad networks such as Google Adsense to monetize your site.

To start making money when you start a blog business, the best bloggers recommend starting with Affiliate Marketing.

What Is SEO, And Why Should You Care?

When it comes to blogging, there are a lot of moving parts. You’ve got to come up with topics that will resonate with your audience, write engaging posts that are also SEO-friendly, promote your content across social media, and so much more. It’s a lot to keep track of!

One element that you might not be giving enough attention to is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What is SEO? Why does it matter? And how can you ensure that your blog posts are optimized for search engines? Keep reading to find the answers to all these questions and more.

In short, SEO is making your website and its content more accessible for search engines to find and index.

The goal is to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), ultimately driving more traffic to your site.

Why Does SEO Matter?

SEO should be a top priority for any blogger because it is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your site.

Studies have shown that organic search results receive the lion’s share of clicks (upwards of 70%!); if you’re not paying attention to SEO, you could miss out on a considerable amount of potential traffic.

How Can You Optimize Your Blog Posts For Search Engines?

You can optimize your blog posts for search engines in many different ways. Some of the most important things to keep in mind are:

• using keyword-rich titles and descriptions;
• incorporating keywords naturally into your blog post body;
• adding alt text to all images;
• creating backlinks by promoting your content across social media and other platforms; and
• keeping your site’s design and navigation simple and user-friendly.

SEO is an essential part of blogging that cannot be overlooked to drive traffic to your site.

Luckily, it’s not difficult to get started with SEO. Remember to use keyword-rich titles and descriptions, incorporate keywords into your blog post body, add alt text to all images, create backlinks, and keep your site’s design and navigation simple.

By following these tips, you can ensure that your blog posts are optimized for search engines and that you’re giving yourself the best possible chance of driving traffic to your site.

One of the first and probably most dedicated activities of any blogger for SEO is Keyword Research. Keyword Research is one of the ways to decode search intent and know what people need, and then you will be able to give that to them in your content.

What Are Backlinks and Why They Matter

The term “backlink” gets thrown around in digital marketing. But what are backlinks, exactly? And why do they matter for your blog?

What are Backlinks?

A backlink is any link that points from an external website to your blog.

Backlinks are vital because they show search engines that your site is popular and relevant.

The more backlinks you have pointing to your site, the higher your ranking in search results. That’s why it’s essential to focus on building backlinks for your blog.

Ways to Build Backlinks

There are a few different ways to build backlinks for your blog. One way is to guest post on other blogs in your industry.

When you guest post, include a link to your site in your author bio. You can also build backlinks by syndicating your content on sites like Medium.com.

As with guest posting, include a link pointing to your site when you syndicate your content.

Finally, you can build backlinks by creating helpful resources on your site (like infographics or eBooks) and promoting those resources on social media and other websites.

How to make money from your blog

Sell advertising space

You can start selling advertising space once you have organic traffic and a reasonable number of page views.

Sell digital products

You can start selling digital products like e-books and online courses as soon as you have an audience large enough interested in learning your expertise topics.

Create a membership site.

You can start creating a membership site when you have enough readers who trust you and are willing to pay for exclusive content.

Your imagination is the limit for monetizing your blog. The important thing is that you start with methods that are easier for you and that require less time and effort.

Once you start making money from your blog, you can reinvest that money to grow your business even more.

Affiliate marketing

You can start promoting affiliate products when you have an engaged audience that trusts your opinion.

This is probably the best way to make money blogging, and the options of products to promote are unlimited.

You can get juicy commissions from many products by writing blog posts about them. One very informative post reviewing a specific product that people are searching for can attract a lot of traffic and, most importantly, conversions (sales).

Most successful bloggers’ primary income comes from affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing has many benefits, but the four main benefits are that it’s a performance-based marketing channel, it’s relatively easy to get started, it’s scalable, and it’s suitable for businesses of all sizes. And the best Affiliate Marketing programs are free to join.

Here is a selection of excellent affiliate marketing programs and networks you can join.

As Affiliate Marketing is one of the primary sources of income for all bloggers and a high percentage of companies worldwide, I dedicated a whole section to it below.

Affiliate Marketing to Monetize your blog business

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make some extra money on the side or even turn it into a full-time business. But is affiliate marketing worth it? Does affiliate marketing work? Is affiliate marketing legit?

Let me answer all of those questions and more! We’ll discuss affiliate marketing, how it works, the different types of programs available, and how to get started.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. \

The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’), and the customer.

The market has grown in complexity, resulting in a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates, and specialized third-party vendors.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing works by connecting merchants with potential customers. The merchant pays the affiliate a commission for every lead or sale generated.

When a customer clicks on an affiliate’s link and makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission.

Affiliate marketing is often seen as a way to get around the middleman, but it can also be a great way to build relationships and drive sales.

What are the different types of affiliate programs?

There are four main types of affiliate programs: cost-per-action (CPA), cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-impression (CPI), and cost-per-lead (CPL).

• CPA affiliate programs are the most popular type of affiliate program. CPA stands for cost-per-action, and affiliates are paid based on their actions, such as sales or leads.
• CPC affiliate programs are less common than CPA affiliate programs. CPC stands for cost-per-click, and affiliates are paid based on the number of clicks they generate.
• CPI affiliate programs are less common than CPA and CPC affiliate programs. CPI stands for cost-per-impression, and affiliates are paid based on the number of impressions they generate.
• CPL affiliate programs are the least common type of affiliate program. CPL stands for cost-per-lead, and affiliates are paid based on the number of leads they generate.

How can you get started with affiliate marketing?

Now that you know more about affiliate marketing, you might wonder how to start.

Luckily, getting started with affiliate marketing is relatively easy. The first step is to find a reputable affiliate program.

Once you’ve found a program you’re interested in, the next step is to sign up and promote its products or services. And that’s it! You’re now an affiliate marketer.

Of course, there is more to affiliate marketing than just signing up and promoting products or services.

But these are the basics of how affiliate marketing works. If you’re ready to start, check out my beginner affiliate marketing guide.

This guide will walk you through finding a reputable affiliate program, signing up, and promoting products or services.

What is a blog, and what are the benefits of blogging

A blog (short for Web log) is a website where entries are written chronologically and displayed in reverse chronological order.

Blogging can be a personal diary, a political commentary, or a marketing tool.

There are many kinds of blogs; here, you can see some personal and business blog examples.

You can use blogging as a personal diary to document your thoughts and feelings. It can help you explore your emotions and understand yourself better.

A personal blog can also be a way to share experiences. A personal blog post can promote some coaching services in your space.

Blogging can be used as a political commentary to express your views on current events. That can help you start discussions and raise awareness about important issues.

You can use blogging as a marketing tool to promote services or products, whether they are your own or not.

You can share information about your company and other companies, post product reviews, and create promotional images and videos.

Those are some of the blogging business ideas to blog and make money.

Benefits of Blogging and good reasons to Start a blog business

Why should you start a blog? Is it profitable to start a blog?

There are many benefits to blogging, including the following:

• It helps you connect with others

• Boosts your creativity

• It enables you to process information

• It allows you to express yourself

• Improves your writing skills

• Increases your knowledge

• It helps you promote your services or products

• It will allow you to build an audience

• Starting a blog business enables you to make money

More benefits of writing blog posts

• Establishing yourself as an expert in your topic

• Attract new customers and clients

• Generate leads and sales

• Build relationships with customers and colleagues

• Attract new talent to your business

• Get free publicity for your business

• Improve your search engine rankings

• Boost your website’s traffic

• Generate new ideas for products and services

• Increase customer loyalty

• Improve communication within your company

• Enhance your business’s credibility and reputation

Critical Considerations For Successfully Creating a Blog – blogging for Beginners

If you’re thinking about starting a successful blog, there are several things you need to do to ensure your success.

These are the few most critical considerations you should keep in mind as you start your blog:

Niche

What topics will you write about? What type of audience are you targeting? What are your interests?

These are vital questions to answer when starting a blog because they’ll help you determine your niche.

Your niche is the specific topic or audience you’ll be writing for. For example, your niche could be fashion, cooking, travel, personal finance, or technology.

Choosing a niche you’re passionate about is essential because you’ll spend a lot of time writing and promoting your blog.

But perhaps it is more important that you don’t choose something too specific at first, so you can pivot as you go and see what works and doesn’t.

Content

Your blog posts should be well-written, informative, and engaging.

Writing at least 1000 words per blog post and including images, infographics, and videos would be best to break up the text.

It’s also important to format your posts to be easily read. Use short paragraphs, and include subheadings to help readers navigate your content.

Finally, ensure your posts are SEO-friendly by including keywords relevant to your niche.

A whole section on SEO is further down in this guide.

Design

Your blog should have a professional design that’s easy to navigate.

Your readers should be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.

Choose a simple theme and use contrasting colors to make your text easy to read.

And be sure to include social media buttons so your readers can share your content.

Here Themes and Page Builders come into play.

Promotion

Once you’ve created great content, you must promote it to reach a larger audience.

Use SEO tactics, social media, email marketing, and other channels to spread the word about your blog.

There are several ways to get your blog posts out there, including:

• Social media

• Email marketing

• Guest blogging

• Paid advertising

• Content syndication

Promoting your content regularly and on multiple channels is essential to reach the most significant number of people.

Analytics

It would help to track your blog’s analytics to see how well it performs. Google Analytics is a free tool you can use to track your page views, unique visitors, and other data.

This information is vital because it allows you to see what’s working and what isn’t. You can then make changes to improve your blog’s traffic and engagement.

Monetization

There are many ways to make money from your blog, such as selling advertising space or using affiliate links.

These are just a few critical considerations as you start your blogging business. By following these tips, you’ll be on your way to success.

Conclusion

Starting a blog can be a gratifying experience, both personally and professionally. You will have a platform to share your thoughts and ideas with the world and use your blog as a business tool to make money online.

What is blogging as a business? I will depend much on you and on getting things right from the first steps.

Blogging is a great way to start an online business. It is relatively easy to start, and you can do it cheaply.

This guide outlines the steps you need to take to start a successful blogging business. We’ve also provided vital considerations to remember so you can make the most of your blogging venture and make money online.

Follow these steps, and you’ll be on your way to creating a profitable blog that brings in traffic and revenue.

Of course, there are many other things you need to do to be successful at blogging. But these are the essential steps to follow when starting.

Are you ready to get started?