How To Start A Blog Business From Home

How to start a Blog business from home is becoming a common question as more and more people are seeing the benefits of blogging, both for personal development and as a potential second income.

Starting an online business can seem quite daunting for a lot of people but it is now a lot easier than you realize and starting a Blog business from home is probably one of the easiest ways to get started online. Once you have a Blog business up and running many of the skills you learn will help you to prepare for lots of other options related to working online, this is another reason why a lot of people are using a Blog business to test the water and see if working online is for them.

What is a Blog?

Blog is short for Web Log and is essentially a modern day equivalent of a diary, but instead of writing your thoughts in a book that only you get to read, people started writing their thoughts on a website that meant anyone could read them. Just like keeping a diary, writing a regular blog can have a lot of personal benefits as it offers you a creative outlet and a lot of people find that writing their feelings down helps them to process difficult circumstances. Sometimes just writing it down can help you to get emotions off your chest and it can also help people to feel better about themselves as writing a good post can offer a sense of achievement that many people are lacking elsewhere in their lives. If you start to achieve some interaction with others through your blog this can really help as you begin to understand that there are others in the same situation as you and you are not alone with how you feel, this can be a really powerful support for people in difficult periods in their lives. Many parents with challenging situations have been able to find real comfort in sharing their circumstances with other parents going through similar things.

Professionally, writing blogs can also help in developing your career as writing a blog requires you to develop new skills, people that start writing about things other than themselves generally need to do some research and so writing a blog can actually help you to learn more and then display your new found expertise. Blogs have even evolved now into fully professional platforms where many businesses have blogs to promote their businesses and even have guest writers posting content for them. Overall, blogging is a great tool for personal development, improving skills, confidence and finding like minded people.

How Do You Start A Blog Website?

The first thing you need to do is to get a journal to write in or in this case a website to post your blogs on, this is pretty easy now as there are loads of platforms that specialize in this. One of the most common ones is WordPress, they have approved partners such as Bluehost that will walk you through the whole process. They have packages that will provide and maintain a standard Blog website for you, all you need to do then is create the content. Once you get more experienced you are going to want to start developing your own style with branding and an improved user experience but initially you just want to start getting your content posted.

If you prefer you can sign up to one of many platforms that offer the WordPress functionality but also additional resources and training to give you the full package of whet you will need to start and run a successful Blog website, there are lots available online but my preferred one is Wealthy Affiliate as they will walk you through the whole process with step by step training and provide all the tools you will need. I did a full Wealthy Affiliate Review if you want more information on what they do.

What Should I Write My Blog About?

This is completely up to you but you need to decide why you want to start blogging first, is it to share your experiences, to open up about how you are feeling or just to make some extra income. Once you know WHY you want to do it then this will help guide you towards topics that will work for you. If you have decided to write a blog purely to make some extra money then please be careful as writing with this in mind could end up meaning that your blog is dull and uninteresting, if this happens then no one will want to read it and so you won’t make any money out of it either. Most of the best and profitable blogs start out as people just writing about their experiences and interests such as Travel blogs

Whatever you decide to write about in my opinion it needs to be something that you have a genuine interest in or you will find it hard to maintain motivation in creating new content. You could write about your hobbies, your career or education, your life or even just a topic that you enjoy. If you have a topic that you know many other people will be interested in but also feel that you have a different perspective to others then this is perfect as you will find a big audience to engage with but be able to add something different to the topic. For example if you like travelling but always bring your young child with you then this would give you a very different perspective to share that many people would find interesting.

Remember that Blogging is about creating your own space online, your blog becomes a platform to share your knowledge, connect with like-minded individuals, and build a loyal following. By sharing your experiences and insights, you not only create something interesting to read but you also cement your reputation as a credible authority in your niche. 

How Do I Make My Blog Interesting?

This is a hugely important part and this is where you really need to fight the urge to do what everyone else does, if you do this your blog will just be like everyone elses and there will be no reason for anyone to read it. Everyone is different and that is what makes everyone interesting,

Writing a blog isn’t just about word count, it is about letting your audience get to know you and all of your little quirks and interests. This is actually what people want to read, especially at this moment in time where so many people are using AI tools like ChatGPT to create content. ChatGPT is great by the way but when everyone uses it for content then everyone just sounds the same, you don’t want to be like everyone else, you want to be YOU. Share your stories as if you were telling one of your friends, because you want people to read your content as if they were one of your friends….Have fun, enjoy yourself and write your Blog in this way then other people will have fun when they read and want to read more.

How Do I Make Money From My Blog?

If you want to turn your Blog into an actual business that will generate some income then you need to have a plan to achieve this, there are a lot of different ways to monetize your Blog and how you use them will depend a lot on what you want to achieve and the amount of income you want to generate.

What Generates The Income On A Blog Site?

Paid adverts: Google AdSense is the most common form of advertising on websites and works by Google paying you to place adverts on your Blog site but if your Blog has a niche audience you can also get paid adverts from companies that specifically want to advertise to your audience.

Affiliate Marketing on your Blog: you can promote products on your Blog for other companies and if your audience buy them you will be paid a commission, Amazon have a big affiliate program but you can sign up to affiliate programs with other companies or you can sign up to an affiliate network, these are companies that will have 1,000’s of affiliate products that you can sign up to and promote on your Blog site.

Promote Your Own Products: You can use your Blog site to sell your own products, everything from merchandise or physical products, digital products such as guides and tutorials are probably the easiest to sell as there is no physical delivery so they can be sold (electronically) anywhere in the world. There are loads of tools available such as Visme which you can use to create your own eBooks and digital guides. I wrote a post on What Visme can be used for if you want more info

How Do I Actually Get Them To Work?

All of these opportunities rely on you generating lots of traffic to your Blog to make them worthwhile and this is where the work really starts. When you are getting started it is really important to be YOU and let your personality shine through as this is what will lead to good engaging content but once you have developed your content a bit you will then need to incorporate strategies to drive extra traffic to your Blog. It is no point having great content if no one is coming to read it…

SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the process of making sure that your content stands out and appears high up in search engine searches (Google, Bing, etc) and there are various methods for maximizing this. Using Key words to make sure your content has the words and phrases that people are looking for, incorporating relevant images, getting other relevant websites to link or promote your Blog (these are called backlinks)

Social Media: Google search is obviously regarded as the biggest source of a websites traffic but this is not always true and is changing a lot in recent months. Social media is fast becoming one of the best ways to drive traffic to your Blog, make sure you have a presence on the main social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram and make sure you are posting about your Blog site regularly. This helps to increase traffic but also to improve your sites credibility as it is being mentioned elsewhere on the internet.

UGC Forums: Another platform that is really gaining traction in terms of generating traffic for websites are User Generated Content sites (forums) such as Reddit, Quora, Medium and even LinkedIn. Make sure you are posting on one of these and linking to or at least mentioning your Blog.

Guest Posting: Posting on industry forums are another great way to promote your website, if you are blogging about a certain topic and there are well known forums for your topic then make sure you are posting on it and you might even be able to offer a guest post which is a guaranteed way to increase your own traffic.

Whatever you are doing one of the most important things is consistency, wherever you are posting or promoting make sure you are consistent in your activity. Consistent blogging will be much more effective that writing a great post today and then nothing for 6 months, it builds credibility in your site and many of the search engines use consistency of posting as one of the key measures they look at so being consistent really helps

I really hope that you enjoyed my post and if you are thinking of starting a Blog I would encourage you to just jump in, get started and start writing, you will improve as you go and it will help you both personally and professionally. If you want to get started but don’t feel comfortable then I would suggest that you join a good platform like Wealthy Affiliate, they even have a FREE membership option that you can use to get started and see what it is all about. If you want to give it a try just click the image and link below.

Have fun and good luck with your blog

Pete