This image displays the post's title being how to look like a professional blogger from the start.

How to Look like a Professional Blogger from the Start

by with No Comment Profitable Blogging

Fake it till you make it! That’s what I want you to remember for this post!

Why?

Well, today we are gonna speak about how to look like a professional blogger from the start!

But don’t get me wrong: I don’t want you to pretend to be someone you’re not. 

This post is more about giving you valuable tips and tricks on how to start your blog the right way!

I made enough mistakes and you don’t have to make the same ones!

So what is a professional way to start a blog? Let’s dive into it!

If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide on how to start a blog, consider reading this post:

Table of Contents

How to Look like a Professional Blogger from the Start

1) How to Look like a Professional Blogger from the Start

  1. Choose a Niche and STICK to it 
  2. Invest in a Professional Domain
  3. Use WordPress.org
  4. Having a Professional Email Address
  5. Use a Clean and Modern Design
  6. Have Business Social Media Accounts 
  7. Create High-Quality Content

2) The Takeaway 

3) Final Thoughts

How to Look like a Professional Blogger from the Start

After having made some mistakes, here are the key lessons I can give you to start your blog the right way!

1. Choose a Niche and STICK to it

This is the most crucial step of all following: Choosing the right niche!

When determining your niche, there are four main questions to consider:

  • Is it something I’m passionate about?
  • Am I good at it? (skills and expertise) 
  • Does it solve people’s problems? (relevance and audience needs)
  • Can I get paid for it? (profitability)
  • Is there a gap in the market? (low competition)

Here is a little infographic outlining the key point you should have in mind: 

Picture displays points that make a niche a perfect fit. This is an crucial step on how to look like a professional blogger from the start.

Once you found the perfect niche for your blog, remember to stick to this niche!

With your blog you don’t have to cover everything that come to your mind. 

Remember: Your readership expects a certain type of content from your blog. That’s why they are following you!

Don’t make them unsatisfied by posting content that is not relevant to your niche!

2. Invest in a Professional Domain

I know… Money is tight when starting out with blogging. 

Many beginners tend to not invest money at the beginning. And I can totally see myself in it!

Because who is gonna tell you that your blogging business will pay off to get your money back?!

But if you really want to treat your blog like an online business, it is a MUST to invest in a professional domain. 

You don’t want a free domain like yourblogname.wordpress.com, it’s just not good for building a brand!

Instead, we want a custom domain such as www.yourblogname.com to appear more authoritative.

To buy your domains, use reputable registrars like GoDaddy or Namecheap.

This picture shows NameCheap as a platform to buy domain names. This is an important step to start a blog.

To give you an example, here is the homepage of NameCheap.

Now buying your domain name is a really easy move!

Just type the name of your blog into the search bar and click “add to cart”. (when the name is till available)
 
Then, similar to any other online purchase, choose your preferred payment method and you’re done!

3. Use WordPress.org

To break it down, there are two general ways to launch a blog: 

a: Hosted 

Hosted blogging platforms are websites that give you a space on their platform to create and publish your blog.

They usually have a ton of features making the designing process of your blog a lot easier. 

While this sounds great, there is one big downside: You technically do not own your blog 100%. 

In fact, you still depend on the terms and conditions of the hosted blogging platform. 

This can ultimately limit your freedom of customization and monetization options. 

Therefore, I cannot recommend you to launch your blog this way!

b: Self-hosted 

With self-hosted blogging platforms we’re on the right track!

Why?

Launching your website this way makes you the complete owner of your personal space in the internet. 

You are given the opportunity to customize your blog in nearly every way possible. 

And most importantly: No restrictions concerning monetization. 

There is only one self-hosted blogging platform that I can recommend to you: WordPress.org!

So, make sure to launch your website with WordPress.org (not WordPress.com!!!) to have nearly endless customization and monetization options.

4. Have a Professional Email Address

Don’t underestimate your business email.

There is nothing more unprofessional than having a @gmail or @hotmail email address as a business. 

A professional email address should always include your business name (e.g. hello@yourbusinessname.com). 

Having an email address with your domain name makes you appear a thousand times more professional as a blogger!

5. Use a Clean and Modern Design

What’s the first thing visitors will notice on your blog?

Well, your blog design!

Having a clean and modern design improves readability and user experience making you your website appear more professional!

To do this, go ahead and choose a plain and simple WordPress theme with enough customization options. 

Currently. I’m using the Phlox theme, which is a free and modern Elementor WordPress theme!

Hold on, what’s Elementor??

Elementor is a simple and intuitive tool for building your website. With drag and drop mechanisms it can’t get any simpler to build your website!

Also, try to be consistent with your brand colors to look like a professional blogger. 

I use Canva , a free graphic design tool, to create my featured post images. 

With Canva’s business plan (about $12 a month) you can upload your personal brand colors to Canva ensuring each graphic align with your brand color.

6. Have Business Social Media Accounts

To look like a professional blogger from the start, it is almost a MUST to have some sort of social media presence. 

Nowadays, there are so many social media platforms to choose from, that I’m sure you’ll find something suitable for yourself!

Think Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook ans so much more!

I personally can 100% recommend Pinterest to you.

Why?

Well, Pinterest is such a powerful platform to get free traffic to your website. 

I published a complete guide on how to rank #1 on Pinterest and get traffic. Just click here for more!

7. Create High-Quality Content

What do you think makes people trust a blogger?

I’ll give you a hint: Qual…ity!

Creating high-quality content is (or at least should be) the primary goal of every blogger trying to look professional.

Fill your content with personal insights, valuable statistics and enticing images to lift your blog to the next level.

Try to avoid grammar mistakes and misspelling throughout your blog as good as you can to look like a more professional blogger!

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember everything you learned today! 🙂

The right decision of your niche is super important. 

Make sure to question yourself about:

  • passion
  • skills and expertise 
  • relevance 
  • profitability 
  • low competition 

If you want to trat your blog like an online business, you should invest in a professional domain. 

To buy your domain, consider reputable registrar like GoDaddy or NameCheap.

 

For the best customization options, you should launch your blog with self-hosted blogging platforms. 

You should definitely use WordPress.org!

To look like a professional blogger from the start, it is important to have a professional email address. 

Avoid email addresses ending with @gmail or something!

Your website should appear clean and modern for maximum readably and user-experience. 

Go ahead and use plain and simple WordPress themes. 

Also, try to be consistent with brand colors throughout your website.

Build a social media presence to get your name out in the world. 

Pinterest is super powerful when it comes to getting free traffic to your blog!

Your biggest goal is to create high-quality content for your audience. 

Include personal insights/stories, statistics and images in your blog posts to look like a professional blogger from the start!

Final Thoughts

I hope I could give you some ideas on how to look like a professional blogger from the start. 

Go ahead and implement my advice and you’re on your best way to look like a professional blogger!

You got this!

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch in the comment section below or write me an email!

This image displays the post's title being 7 opt-in ideas to grow your email list (and how to create them).

7 Opt-In Freebie Ideas to Grow Your Email List (and How to Create Them)

by with No Comment Profitable Blogging

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to get more traffic to your website and, eventually, drive sales.

That being said, there is one thing that effective email marketing requires:

(A lot of) email addresses!

To get these email addresses we have to give people something in exchange.

Because let’s be honest: Without a gift or something nobody would give you anything!

This „gift“ is our so-called freebie!

Offering freebies is a super powerful method to get email addresses.

So let‘s have a look at 7 opt-in freebie ideas to grow your email list like crazy!

Table of Contents

How to Rank Pins on Pinterest (and Get Traffic)

1) What is a Freebie?

2) Why are Freebies so Powerful?

3) 7 Opt-In Freebie Ideas to Grow Your Email List

  1. Checklists
  2. Ebooks
  3. Templates
  4. Mini Courses
  5. Webinars
  6. Exclusive Access to a Community
  7. Product Discounts

4) How to Create Freebies?

5) The Takeaway 

6) Final Thoughts

What is a Freebie?

We already touched on this point in the introduction.

A freebie is a resource given away for free.

But why would you do this?

Let me give you an example to answer this question:

Imagine a new bakery has just opened in your neighborhood. You notice that the bakery owner offers free cookies to people who visit their store on opening day. 

Why would the owner do this?

This is actually a marketing strategy encouraging people to try one’s products and become a regular customers.

You’re not doing something different with offering freebies, apart that you are in the digital world!

A freebie basically serves as a small peek of your product quality and expertise!

Why are Freebies so Powerful?

As just mentioned, freebies serve as a little preview of your expertise. 

But in the digital world you can leverage freebies even more, so that they are a really powerful tool!

How?

You might guessed it! Through collecting email addresses. 

As website owners and online entrepreneurs we don’t just want to give away something for “completely” free. 

More email addresses means a growing email list and that means more attention!

That’s what we wanna achieve.

The more attention you have, the higher is your chance of driving sales.

By the way, email marketing is one of the most profitable marketing strategies out there.

With an average ROI (return of investment) of $39 (source: ), email marketing has the highest ROI of any other marketing strategies.

I think that’s proof enough of the effectiveness of email marketing and thus why freebies are so powerful.

Related Post:

7 Opt-In Freebie Ideas to Grow Your Email List

There are so many types of freebies you can offer your audience: 

  1. Checklists
  2. Ebooks
  3. Templates
  4. Mini Courses 
  5. Webinars 
  6. Exclusive Access to a Community
  7. Product Discounts

Let’s deep-dive into the best 7 opt-in freebie ideas to grow your email list!

1. Checklists

Checklist are a great way to provide practical and actionable advice to your audience.

They are usually easy-to-digest as a checklist simplifies complex processes into a easy and quick reference guide!

That’s why this type of freebie is one of my favorite ones.

See a checklist like a cheat-sheet – not everyone has the time to read endless seeming blog posts. 

For those people of your audience, it’s always super useful to provide something like a checklist enabling them to quickly go through the most important points of a more in-depth blog post (e.g. tutorials).

Also, I personally like to create interactive checklists allowing you to tick boxes and to take notes on my checklists.

Example: For a digital marketing website, you might offer a “Social Media Content Calendar Cheat Sheet” to help users plan their posts effectively.

2. Ebooks

If you want to give your audience a bit more background information on a topic, then offering ebooks might be the go-to freebie for you!

E-books are actually classic and highly effective opt-in offers.

Ensure your e-book is well-designed and packed with valuable content that addresses specific pain points or answers common questions within your niche.

In your ebook you should really try to cover a topic completely – you shouldn’t just barely touch on key points. 

Why?

People signed up for your freebie in hope to get their questions answered.

If you cannot succeed in doing so, people will be unsatisfied with your product putting you at risk of loosing potential customers.

So always try to give your best when creating your ebooks (and freebies in general).

It will pay off – thats for sure!

Example: If you run a fitness blog, offer an e-book titled “30-Day Fitness Challenge: A Complete Guide to Getting Fit at Home.”

3. Templates

Almost everyone loves to save time (me too). This is why ready-to-use templates work so well as freebies. 

Go ahead and design some templates that align with your niche. 

Think content planners, fitness planners, budget planners, …. 

Templates are a great way to showcase your design skills, so better use the chance and create some awesome templates.

Example: If you run a productivity blog, a “Weekly Planner Template” could be a hit among your readers looking to organize their schedules better.

4. Mini Courses

Also, you can consider creating a series of video tutorials for a  specific topic. 

Sometimes offering videos are much more effective in helping your audience than writing tons of lines in a ebook. 

Similar to ebooks, mini courses are super good in explaining more complex topics that require a bit more guidance. 

Example: If you run a finance blog, you could create a mini course on “How to Make Your Own Website”.

5. Webinars

Among online entrepreneurs, hosting webinars are a super popular choice to grow email lists. 

Webinars are extremely good in showcasing your expertise and fostering more trust to a your audience. 

You can either create pre-recorded webinars, which comes close to a mini-course, or live webinars. 

While live webinars can be a lot more personal, they are barely manageable with a larger audience.

In your webinar, you should also go ahead and invite your audience to a Q&A session answering the most relevant questions of your audience. 

Example: A personal finance blog could host a webinar on “How to Create a Budget and Stick to It”. At the end of the webinar, you could feature a live Q&A session with a financial advisor.

6. Exclusive Access to a Community

You can also think about offering access to an exclusive community in exchange for email addresses. 

In this community you can entice people to connect and interact with each other fostering a sense of unity. 

Also, you can leverage this platform by sharing member-only resources or giving Q&A sessions.

Example: Imagine you’d have a health and wellness blog. You could invite people to become a community member to gain instant access to members-only recipes, workouts, and wellness tips!

7. Product Discounts

Let’s be honest: Everyone loves a good deal!

Offering discounts to new subscribers can be a compelling reason for people to join your email list.

BIG PRO: This approach not only grows your list but can also lead to immediate sales.

Example: An online clothing store might offer “20% Off Your First Purchase” for new email subscribers, encouraging them to shop right away.

How to Create Freebies

What’s at least as important as knowing about the best 7 opt-in freebie ideas to grow your email list?

You gotta need to know how to create them!

Most of the freebies presented can be created with a completely free tool called Canva.

Canva is an easy-to-use online tool that helps you create designs – in our case freebies!

Depending on the type of freebie you wanna create, you can choose between different formats.

For checklists and ebooks I recommend you to go with the standard A4 document format.

Depending for what purpose your template is, you can choose your format accordingly.

Designing Process with Canva:

Designing with Canva is super easy and beginner-friendly.

Canva has a rally huge collection of different templates and elements you can use for free.

Through drag and drop you can pick these elements, graphics and pre-created templates and use them for your own designs.

Once you finished up your deigning process, make sure to export your document as pdf (most convenient for your audience).

For other types of freebies (mini courses, webinars, etc.) you can also use Canva to create your course content.

For hosting your courses you can then use platforms such as Teachable or Thinkific.

Good news! I’m currently working on a in-depth tutorial for Canva to further help you to create visual content.

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember everything you learned today! 🙂

To put it in a nutshell, here are the best 7 opt-in freebie ideas to grow your email list: 

  1. Checklists
  2. Ebooks
  3. Templates
  4. Mini Courses 
  5. Webinars 
  6. Exclusive Access to a Community
  7. Product Discounts

Offering freebies is a super powerful way to grow your email list and to do email marketing. 

They serve as a preview of your product quality and expertise giving you the chance to acquire new customers in the future.

The magic platform is called: Canva!

Through its simple interface and an intuitive drag and drop mechanism, even beginners can create visually compelling freebies with Canva:

  1. Pick a format 
  2. Start designing with hundreds of free elements, graphics and templates
  3. Export as pdf 

That’s it!

 

Final Thoughts

You made it through the entire post, congrats!

You now know about the best 7 opt-in freebie ideas to grow your email list and why you should definitely start creating one!

Go ahead and grow your email list with freebies.

You got this!

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch in the comment section below or write me an email!

Image displays the post's title being how to write blog posts faster (in 60 minutes).

How to Write Blog Posts Faster (in 60 Minutes)

by with No Comment Profitable Blogging

Learning how to write blog posts faster in 60 minutes or less is the smartest thing you can do as a blogger. 

Let me tell you why:

Blogging is all about content creation. You have to create tons of content for your audience. That’s the truth.

But it’s also the truth that you have lots of other blogging tasks to do besides writing posts. 

Think website design, newsletter updates or setting up new campaigns. 

All this takes time!

So what we want to do is saving time on the other end.

So, here are hacks to write blog posts faster!

Table of Contents

How to Write Blog Posts Faster

1) How to Write Blog Posts Faster (in 60 Minutes)

  1. Choose a Focused Topic 
  2. Outline Your Post
  3. Write Your Post
  4. Optimize Your Post 
  5. Plan Your Next Post

2) The Takeaway 

3) Final Thoughts

How to Write Blog Posts Faster (in 60 Minutes)

Before we get to my hacks to write blog posts faster, it is important to know that not every type of post can be written in 60 minutes or less. 

Extensive guides or tutorials, for example, take up far more time!

I juts want you to have this in mind! 

But now you clicked on this post to learn how to write blog posts faster in 60 minutes or less!

So let’s get right into it!

I try to give you certain time frames for each step necessary to write a solid and high-quality blog post (we don’t want to spam our audience with low-quality posts … important!!!)

This makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on your time and eventually finish up your post within 60 minutes or less!

1. Choose a Focused Topic

First we are starting with a 10 minute preparation.

What’s the best method to gather topic ideas fast? For me it’s brainstorming! 

So start off by brainstorming some ideas for your next blog post. 

You can also leverage AI like ChatGPT to get some nice topic ideas. 

Just ask AI to suggest post ideas for a blog in the (…) niche. 

After having collected some potential post ideas, it is super important to narrow it down. 

It is not realistic to write a 3000 word blog post in 60 minutes or less.

We got to be realistic!

Therefore, try to refine your topic by narrowing down to a specific angle to keep the post focused and concise.

2. Outline Your Post

We are still in the 10 minute preparation for our blog post!

To write blog posts faster it is super useful to create a rough outline beforehand. 

In your outline you list everything don you want to discuss in your blog post. 

Subdivide your point into a introduction, body and conclusion.

When outlining your post, also have a Google tab open to find statistics, quotes, or references you might need. 

To save time avoid deep dives into research at this stage. 

For this task, you can also ask ChatGPT for help! By asking for a possible structure for your post, you can speed up the whole process even more!

3. Write Your Post

We are now entering the 40 minute writing part!

Take your outline as an orientation and start with your introduction. 

Catch your reader’s attention with a nice quote or personal story and end your introduction by stating what your readers can expect from this post. 

Now head to your body part!

Here you should expand on key point of your topic. 

Try to cover everything you have on your outline, but nothing more!

Remember? We want to write our blog post fast!

Also, don’t worry about perfection. You only get to a fast pace when writing freely. 

Later on, there will be enough time to proof-read everything.

To minimize grammar mistakes and to improve your writing style, I can recommend you to use the tool Grammarly.

Having less grammar mistakes saves you time when proof-reading our post!

In your body, it is also time to include statistics, images or other references you prepared in your outline!

End your post with a short and concise conclusion, outlining the key messages of your post as well as a call to action.

4. Optimize Your Post

With a 10 minute editing and formatting part, we are now coming to the end of our post.

First I can recommend you to read your post aloud. This helps catch awkward phrasing and errors very quickly. 

When reading aloud, also remove repetitive parts instantly. Your audience won’t like those!

Then, concentrate on formatting for SEO and readability. 

Add relevant heading and subheading to break up your text. 

Shorten paragraph and subdivide huge sections in two or three separates sections. 

For more insights and advice on SEO, check out the following post:

You should also proof-read every of your posts , before publishing it. 

In this quick scan look for typos, grammar mistakes, and ensure both all of your internal and external links work.

Also check formatting, tone, and style are consistent throughout the post.

Now you’re pretty much done! Hit publish and relax!

5. Plan Your Next Post

As a blogger it is super important to set routine to maintain a certain work flow over time. 

So after you’ve relaxed for a bit, go ahead and plan when you want to write your next posts. 

It’s best to write your posts at the same time each day to build a habit.

To make setting up a routine a lot easier for you,  consider using content planning tools.

Content planning tools such as Trello, can work as a to-do list, making it easier for you to stay consistent.

When you struggle to stay consistent in content creation, consider using tools such as Trello.

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember everything you learned today! 🙂

I think you see, how important a solid outline is to write blog posts faster.

Make sure to take the 10 minute preparation serious and create a solid foundation for your blog post!

In your preparation you should:

  • Choose a focused topic quickly from a pre-made list.
  • Outline your post with main sections and bullet points.
  • Gather any necessary resources for quick reference.

When writing your post, make sure to expand on key point mentioned in your outline. Nothing more!

Most important things for your 40 minute writing part:

  • Write a compelling introduction to hook the reader.
  • Expand on each key point with focused, time-bound writing.
  • Conclude with a short and concise summary and a call to action.
  •  

At the end you want to optimize your post in a 10 minute editing and formatting part.

Make sure to:

  • Edit for clarity and brevity, reading aloud to catch errors.
  • Format the post for readability with headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs.
  • Proof-read your text to detect grammar mistakes. 

As a blogger it is super important to have your own routine. 

Try to write posts each day at the same time to maintain workflow and consistency.

Final Thoughts

That’s it. I hope you’re now able to write blog posts faster in 60 minutes or less!

By following my hacks and tips, you can write high-quality blog posts in just 60 minutes without compromising on content quality.

You got this!

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch in the comment section below or write me an email!

Image shows the post's topic being the most profitable niches to make a full-time income!

Most Profitable Blogging Niches (to Make a Full-Time Income)

by with No Comment Profitable Blogging

If you are reading this post, chances are good that you decided to start your own blog.

Congratulations to that!

Blogging is such a great way to share your passion and knowledge, and eventually make money online!

But the amount of how much you’ll earn with your blog, strongly depends on your blogging niche. 

Therefore, it is super important to choose the right niches before you invest time in your business! It can make the difference between hobby-level earning and a full-time income! 

That’s why I collected the most profitable blogging niches to make a full-time income for you!

At the end of this post, you’ll also find some extra tips for your blogging success.

Let’s get started!

Related post:

Table of Contents

Most Profitable Blogging Niches (to Make a Full-Time Income)

1) Picking the Right Niche 

2) Most Profitable Blogging Niches (to Make a Full-Time Income)

  1. Personal Finance and Investing 
  2. Health and Wellness
  3. Technology and Gadgets
  4. Travel
  5. Food and Recipes 
  6. Lifestyle and Personal Development 
  7. Beauty and Fashion
  8. Parenting and Family 

3) Bonus: Tips for Success

4) The Takeaway 

5) Final Thoughts

Picking the Right Niche

Choosing a niche is the most important step of starting your own blog. 

This will be the general topic your blog will be dealing with. 

But picking the right niche for your blog, is not just about profitability. 

I know you clicked on this post, to see the most profitable blogging niches… and you’ll get to them in just a sec.

But before deciding on a final niche, let us have a look at this image:

Picture displays points that make a niche a perfect fit. This is an crucial step on how to look like a professional blogger from the start.

We can pretty much summarize it to these four points: 

  • Is it something I’m passionate about?
  • Am I good at it? (skills and expertise) 
  • Does it solve people’s problems (relevance and audience needs)
  • Can I get paid for it? (profitability)

The first three points are at least as important as profitability, as they ensure long-term success!

Most Profitable Blogging Niches (to Make a Full-Time Income)

For those of you who are short on time, here is a small breakdown of the most profitable niches: 

  1. Personal Finance and Investing 
  2. Health and Wellness 
  3. Technology and Gadgets 
  4. Travel 
  5. Food and Recipes 
  6. Lifestyle and Personal Development 
  7. Beauty and Fashion 
  8. Parenting and Family 

Without further ado let’s get right into the most profitable blogging niches to make a full-time income. 

For each niche, I’m going to provide you with some basic info and, most importantly, monetization strategies. 

1. Personal Finance and Investing

The very first niche we’ll be looking at is personal finance and investing. 

People are always looking for ways to manage their money better or to save for retirement. 

Also, there is quite a large audience interested in how to invest their money efficiently. 

So, in case you have some knowledge in this niche, consider to start your blog in the personal finance and investing niche.

But how exactly can you make money in this niche?

Here is a breakdown how you could possibly make money: 

Monetization strategies:

  • Affiliate marketing for financial products and services
  • Sponsored content and partnerships with financial institutions
  • Creating and selling online courses or eBooks on personal finance
  • Ad revenue from high traffic

2. Health and Wellness

Health, fitness and mental well-being are topics that are increasingly popular. 

With more and more health and wellness awareness, this niche offers you a large and diverse audience that is highly profitable. 

You can cover everything from fitness tips to mental health advice. The sky is your limit!

Monetization strategies:

  • Affiliate marketing for supplements, fitness equipment, and health programs
  • Offering online coaching or consultation services
  • Selling eBooks or courses on diet plans, workout regimes, or mental wellness
  • Sponsored posts and brand partnerships with health and wellness brands

3. Technology and Gadgets

Technology is one of the niches that are ever-evolving. 

And there is a constant demand for the latest products and gadgets out there!

Just think about how often you have bought yourself a new phone or laptop. 

But this trend is your chance to start a blog that provides information on hew technology developments. 

And as you might imagine: This niche is HUGE. 

Think vacuum cleaner, TV, phones, laptops car gadgets….

There are so many things you can write about in your personal blog. 

As there is such a huge variety of tech products, people are looking for reviews, tutorials or buying guides to make their final products decisions. 

Monetization startegies:

  • Affiliate marketing for tech products and gadgets
  • Sponsored reviews and content from tech companies
  • Display advertising due to high traffic volume
  • Creating and selling tech-related courses or membership sites

4. Travel

Due to global events the travel niche can fluctuate. 

However, the travel niche remains popular as people love exploring new destinations and experiences. 

Similar to other niches presented, the travel niche offers so many topics to create content about. 

You can, for example, start a blog about that covers everything one needs to travel Asia, America or Europe!

Monetization strategies: 

  • Affiliate marketing for travel gear, booking sites, and travel insurance
  • Sponsored trips and partnerships with tourism boards and travel brands
  • Selling travel guides, itineraries, and courses on travel hacking
  • Ad revenue from high-traffic travel content

5. Food and Recipes

Who doesn’t love yummy food? Everyone likes it!

That’s the reason why the food market is so gigantic. 

Do you like cooking? Then consider starting a blog about food and recipes. 

Teach your audience how they can cook delicious meals and share your own recipes!

  • Affiliate marketing for kitchen gadgets, cookbooks, and food products
  • Sponsored content and partnerships with food brands and restaurants
  • Selling eBooks, cooking courses, or meal planning services
  • Ad revenue from recipe and food blog traffic

6. Lifestyle and Personal Development

There are many people out there looking for ways to improve their lives. 

And there are so many ways to do so. 

The lifestyle and personal development niche covers areas such as minimalism, productivity, self-improvement and so much more!

So in case that you have an interesting lifestyle you want to share with the world, or even some smart tips on personal development, then this is the go to niche for you!

Also, this niche offers you some nice ways to monetize your blog:

  • Affiliate marketing for self-help books, productivity tools, and online courses
  • Offering coaching or consultation services
  • Creating and selling eBooks, planners, and personal development courses
  • Sponsored content from brands aligned with lifestyle and self-improvement

7. Beauty and Fashion

With a constant change of trends and “beauty standards” there is huge demand on the latest beauty and fashion products. 

This is the reason why this niche is so lucrative for bloggers interested in this field!

You can potentially make thousands of dollars!

Let us have a look how to monetize in this niche:

  • Affiliate marketing for beauty products, clothing, and accessories
  • Sponsored posts and partnerships with fashion and beauty brands
  • Selling personal styling or makeup consultation services
  • Ad revenue from a style-conscious audience

8. Parenting and Family

I think that those of you who have children can agree on that: Parenting is a wild up und down with both challenges and milestones!

And that’s why more and more parents are looking for sources with tips, advice and support on parenting and family. 

This is where you can help those parent by creating your own blog. 

You can primarily monetize your blog through these ways:

  • Affiliate marketing for baby products, educational toys, and family services
  • Sponsored content from family-oriented brands and companies
  • Selling parenting guides, courses, or membership communities
  • Ad revenue from a high-engagement audience

Bonus: Tips for Success

Of course, we don’t want to just create the blog, but also become successful in blogging. 

I’ve been blogging for a couple of months now and gained some experiences. 

Here are the key lessons I want to give on to you: 

Choose a niche that aligns your passion with market demand

Especially in your first few weeks or months blogging, it can be challenging to keep going. 

Why?

You will barely see someone visiting your site. And that’s completely fine at the beginning. 

It is super important to keep going from there on!

Having a blog that aligns with your interest makes it a ton easier and enjoyable to keep writing content!

Also, by choosing a high-demand niche (see above) you ensure high earnings in the future. 

So my first advice when choosing a niche is to keep attention to both: your passion and the market demand!

Focus on creating high-quality, engaging, and valuable content

Even though creating high-quality content is time-consuming it is surer important. 

Think about: Would you follow a blog with a lack of both detail and structure? Nobody would!

And that’s the point: To become successful you have to give your audience valuable content that helps solving their problems.

Try to go the extra mile to give your audience a reason to sick with your blog instead of those of your competitors.

Build an online presence through social media and SEO

In order to increase your website traffic, you also want to build an online presence. 

To do so, social media platforms, especially Pinterest or Instagram, are a perfect way to attract more people to your blog. 

Besides social media, you should also master SEO (search engine optimization) to rank Hugh on SERPs. This way, you get more traffic to your website. 

Without enough traffic you’ll not see huge successes. 

Therefore, here are some resources on how to get more traffic to your blog:

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember everything you learned today! 🙂

  • Is it something I’m passionate about?
  • Am I good at it? (skills and expertise) 
  • Does it solve people’s problems (relevance and audience needs)
  • Can I get paid for it? (profitability)

 

  1. Personal Finance and Investing 
  2. Health and Wellness 
  3. Technology and Gadgets 
  4. Travel 
  5. Food and Recipes 
  6. Lifestyle and Personal Development 
  7. Beauty and Fashion 
  8. Parenting and Family 

.

There are three main advice that I can give you based on my experience: 

  • Be selective in finding your niche: Your ideal niche should align your passion with market demand. 
  • Create high-quality content: Try to help your audience by giving insightful information, tips or advice!
  • Grow with social media and SEO: Learn how to do SEO properly and start a social media channel to increase your website traffic 

Final Thoughts

That’s it for today. I hope I could give you a helpful overview of the most profitable blogging niches out there.

Now there is only one thing to say: It is time to start your own blog!

Do not longer wait and start your blog today!!!

I believe in you!

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch in the comment section below or write me an email!

Picture displays post's title being why every business should have a newsletter.

Why Every Business Should Have A Newsletter by Now

by with No Comment Online BusinessProfitable BloggingStarting a Blog

To get started on why every business should have a newsletter, do me a favor and check your number of first-time visitors in your Google Analytics account. 

Let me guess: This number is way higher than the number of your returning visitors!

And there is a simple reason for that: People forgot about your blog!

Even if they loved reading a blog post on your page, they rarely find the way back to you!

So want we want to achieve is to remind people that your blog exists. 

Let us have a look at the solution and why every business should have a newsletter!

Table of Contents

Why Every Business Should Have a Newsletter

  1. Builds Relationships
  2. Targeting
  3. Personalization
  4. Drives Traffic
  5. Cost-Effective Marketing Tool
  6. Measurable Results and Insights 

The Takeaway 

 Final Thoughts

Builds Relationships

At its core, marketing is about building relationships with your audience.

And having a newsletter is a great opportunity to do so.

Why?

Email marketing offers you a new, more direct communication channel to your audience.

You basically have a direct line between your business and your audience’s inbox. 

This enables you to deliver valuable and helpful content to your subscribers without the need of them visiting your website. 

It’s like having the chance to remind people how great your business is!

Doing so, you can more easily build trust and loyalty over time.

Targeting

A newsletter is also an extremely powerful way for highly personalized and targeted communication.

Proper marketing is a constant struggle to meet your audience’s needs. 

What do you need for this? Data!

Through modern email marketing platform such as MailChimp and ConvertKit you can gather valuable data about your audience! 

A popular way to get these data is through so-called A/B testing.

A/B testing is nothing more than experimenting with your content.

To break it down:

Let’s say you create two identical emails but with different subject lines. 

You’re now sending one of the emails to half of your audience and the second to the other half. 

Now you get insights on what subject line worked better. 

With these data you can then optimize your content to specific groups of subscribers, ensuring that each recipient receives content that is relevant and valuable to them.

That’s what targeting means: Aiming your marketing at the right people.

Personalization

But there is so much more you can do to make your content specifically tailored to each and every subscriber of you!

With nearly every mail marketing platform (see above) you can personalize your content based on individual subscribers data. This, for example, includes greeting your subscribers with their names at the beginning of each of your emails. 

Even this small adjustment makes such a big difference. 

I think you know what I mean: You make your subscribers not feel like they are one among thousand of other people.

This is just one thing you can do to personalize your emails.

But actually the sky is the limit here!

Drives Traffic

Getting a lot of traffic to your website: That’s the goal of every business owner. 

The more people see your content or products, the better. 

That’s another key reasons why every business should have a newsletter. 

Email marketing drives traffic to your website!

You can do this by including call-to-actions, links or buttons directing to your blog, website or online store.

This is a fantastic way to promote your latest blog posts, products or freebies.  

Besides email marketing, there are other great ways to increase your website traffic. Consider reading this post!

Cost-Effective Marketing Tool

In nearly all cases, businesses, of course, want to make the most money possible.

And let me tell you: Email marketing is such a powerful tool to achieve this!

Email marketing has the highest return on investment (ROI) than any other marketing strategies. That’s at least according to a study by Dot Digital.

Believe it or not but the study found out that email marketing has an average ROI of $39 for every dollar spent.

That is awesome!

You invest a bit of money and get 39 times more of it back!

A BIG Eason for this is, that people are already interested in your content. Otherwise, they wouldn’t sign up for your newsletter.

Additionally, email marketing platforms are affordable to use. 

In every platform presented above, there is a free plan that is super lucrative for beginners.

Measurable Results and Insights

Prove me wrong, but seeing results after having put effort into something is the best feeling ever!

Luckily, email marketing platforms allow you to track and measure results in real-time.

Valuable insights provided are for example: 

  • open rates: The percentage of people who opened an email
  • click-through rates: The percentage of people who clicked on a link in an email. 
  • conversion rates: The percentage of people who completed a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form, after clicking on a link in an email.

As mentioned above, these tools are not only good to celebrate your success, but also to gather valuable data about your audience. 

With these information, you can then optimize your strategy to scale your business even further.

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember everything you learned today! 🙂

Once people start signing up for your newsletter, you’ve already won!

That’s because newsletters offer businesses a direct line of communication to their audience’s inbox.

This allows for personalized messaging tailored to individual subscriber interests and preferences.

In marketing, trust is everything!

By consistently delivering valuable content and updates, newsletters help businesses build and nurture relationships with their audience!

Make sure to use targeting practices to achieve the best results.

By including calls-to-action and links back to your content or products, email marketing serves as a super powerful method to increase traffic and conversions. 

That should be reason enough why you should have a newsletter!

The ROI of $39 for every dollar spent, speaks for itself!

Email marketing is a unique way to drive sales as people are already interested in your content. 

With a newsletter you can regularly remind people of your latest product or service!

At the end of the day, data is key to understand your audience. 

Email marketing platforms provide you with these data!

Make sure to use these valuable insights to understand your audience and optimize your content accordingly .

Final Thoughts

For me it is as simple as this: Every business should have a newsletter by now!

Email marketing is such a powerful tool to make your business even more successful. 

Do not longer wait with your own newsletter. 

If you have any questions on your way to do so, I’m there for you!

Feel free to get in touch in the comment section below or write me an email!

Picture displays the post's topic being 8 must-have tools and resources for running a successful online business.

8 Must-Have Tools and Resources for Running a Successful Online Business

by with No Comment Making Money OnlineOnline BusinessProfitable Blogging

The action you may have to take in order to run a successful online business, as always, depends on your specific niche.

However, running a successful online business pretty much comes down to two vital things: a solid business idea and the right resources. 

Therefore, I think it it worth to dedicate a whole post to tools and resources for your online business. 

Be ready to explore the 8 must-have tools and resources for running a successful online business.

Table of Contents

8 Must-Have Tools and Resources for Your Online Business

1) Why the Right Tools and Resources are Vital

2) 8 Must-Have Tools and Resources for Running a Successful Online Business

  1. Website Building Platforms
  2. Email Marketing Software
  3. Content Creation Tools
  4. SEO Tools
  5. E-Commerce Platforms and Payment Gateways
  6. Analytics and Data Insights
  7. Social Media Management
  8. Project Management Software

3) The Takeaway 

4) Final Thoughts

Why the Right Tools and Resources are Vital

Using the right tools and resources is extremely helpful to run a successful online business. 

Let me tell you why:

1. Efficiency and Productivity

Just imagine that you have to write every single email yourself, when someone subscribes to your newsletter. 

You would call this inefficient. 

It would take up a lot of time that you could use for other more important things. 

For example, with the right tools you can invest your time and energy on high-value activities such as product development, marketing and customer engagement. 

2. Competitive Advantage

Some of your competitors may not have read this post and thus not have the same knowledge on tools and resources as you. 

By leveraging the latest tools and technologies you can invest your time to get ahead of your competitors. 

Design a better product, provide superior customer service,… the sky is the limit!

3. Scalability and Growth

You want to choose resources that can scale with your business growth. These technologies help you to handle higher demand, transactions and customer numbers. 

Even if your online business is small yet, it is best to use the right resources right away. 

Why?

Changing programs afterwards, can be a challenging task.

8 Must-Have Tools and Resources for Running a Successful Online Business

So what are the 10 must-have tools and resources for your online business? Here you go:

1. Website Building Platforms

This list starts from the very beginning. 

What do you need first to build an online presence?

Most certainly an own website!

Having to create your own website can be an overwhelming task. But no worries!

Luckily so-called website building platforms were created by some smart people!

With website building platforms it is a breeze to create websites. 

These programs enable you to piece together a website without having to know a single thing about coding. 

They usually come with pre-designed templates and drag-and-drop editors, so you can customize your site to look just the way you want it.

Let us summarize why these programs are so great: 

  • No Coding Required
  • Variety of Templates 
  • Customization Options 
  • User-Friendly 

There are a few website building platforms out there. Here are my top 4: 

  1. WordPress – great for everyone 
  2. Shopify – for those planning to sell products, first month for only $1!
  3. Wix – beginner-friendly 
  4. SquareSpace – modern designs and easy-to-use

To get your website visible for others, there are more steps necessary. Nothing too complicated, promised. Consider reading this post for more in-depth guidance!

2. Email Marketing Software

Later on, it becomes essential to build an email list in order to run your online business successfully.

Let me tell you why: 

Email marketing has the highest return on investment (ROI) than any other marketing strategy. That’s at least according to a study by Dot Digital.

In more precise words, the study found out that email marketing has an average ROI of $39 for every dollar spent.

That is awesome!

You invest a bit of money and get 39 times more of it back!

Hopefully you see the huge potential proper email marketing carries.

To do so, there are useful and easy-to-use software tools you can use to get started. 

To build your first email list, check out the following programs: 

A few sentences ago, I mentioned “proper email marketing”

What do I mean by this?

Well, effective email marketing does not mean to spam your audience with senseless emails. 

Do this instead: 

1. Targeted Campaigns

In all of the programs mentioned above, you can set up targeted campaigns.
 
This are emails with which you want to promote new posts/ products/ services to your audience.
 

2. Automated Email Sequences 

Also, these programs enable you to send multiple emails automatically.

Let’s say you want to send out a welcome email after somebody subscribes to your newsletter and two days later an email promoting your latest product.

No problem with automated email sequences. Once created, everything is being send out to your subscribers automatically.

That’s extremely powerful and saves you a lot of time!

 

3. Content Creation Tools

For your online business to be successful, there is one vital step necessary: Creating high-quality content. 

Creating content that helps, entertains or solves your audience’s problems should be your goal at any time.

To ensure this you, of course, have to make enough research for your content. 

Speaking of content for your social media presences and graphical content, here are some useful resources: 

  • Canvas: Such a great tool to create logos, ebooks and social media content 
  • unDraw: Great to get royalty-free graphics 
  • PiktoChart: Easily create visually appealing infographics/ presentations/ posters
 

4. SEO Tools

Once your goal is to increase your website traffic, there is no way around proper SEO. 

For those of you who don’t know: SEO stands for search engine optimization and refers to everything you can do to get ranked higher in SERPs (search engine result pages). 

SEO can be subdivided into on- and off-page SEO. 

On-Page SEO

Optimizations you can make on your website, including the use of right keywords, user-friendly design, internal linking and title tags. 

Off-Page SEO

Optimization outside of your website such as backlink building or your social media 

That being said, SEO can be made a ton easier with the right tools. 

These programs are worth to be considered: 

  • RankMath – best for on-page SEO, excellent compatibility with WordPress
  • Ahrefs – backlink analysis, keyword research 
  • SEMrush – keyword research
  • Moz – backlink analysis, keyword research

As you see, the last three tools are offering you nearly the same. It is up to your preferences what tool works best for you. 

I can definitely recommend you all three of these SEO tools.

Using these resources can get you ahead of your competitors and make your website visible for a larger audience!
 
That’s what you ultimately want to sell your products and services.
 

5. E-Commerce Platforms and Payment Gateways

If you are planning to sell your own products or services to your audience, you have to provide secure payment options. 

Good news: There are solutions for this task too.

Some of those are:

Especially Shopify and WooCommerce are all-in-one solutions.
 
From creating your website to managing sales and customers. You can do it all in one platform. 
 
That’s great for those of you, who don’t want to jump between programs and tools.
 
In case you are just starting out, I’d recommend Shopify to you. 
 
Why?
 
Well, you only pay $1 for your first month. After this month, you can decide whether or not it meets your expectations.
 

The key is to provide payment methods your audience trusts and is familiar with. Otherwise people might avoid buying from you!

To do so, make sure to integrate modern payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe or Square.

6. Analytics and Data Insights

After all of the work you put into your online business, we of course want to see some results. 

Monitoring your growth and detecting things you can improve is crucial to run a successful online business.

Google Analytics is pretty much the go-to platform to collect these data. 

Google Analytics, for example, let you track your website traffic, user behavior, and conversion metrics.

These are all valuable insights for you, as you can see what works well and what could be improved. 

Based on these data you can optimize your online business strategy making it even more successful. 

7. Social Media Management

Whether social media is your main business or you use it to complement your website, managing your accounts is essential. 

Social media is so great because it is completely free to use and you have the chance to attract thousands of people to your business. 

We call this FREE traffic. 

To become successful with social media you need to things: 

  1. Understanding Your Audience and their Preferences 
  2. Consistency 

This can be challenging, especially when you have multiple accounts on various platforms.

But as you can imagine, there are tools for this (as for anything else too): 

All of these programs are great for scheduling posts, monitoring engagement, and analyzing performance across multiple social media platforms.

Have a look at each of them and decide based on your preferences.

8. Project Management Software

Once you are expanding and begin hiring people, managing everyone’s tasks is getting more complicated. 

That’s where so-called project management softwares enter the game. 

These programs help teams organize, track, and collaborate on projects efficiently.

Also, it provides a platform where tasks, deadlines, and resources can be managed in real-time. 

Why is this so great?

Well, it enhances the efficiency and productivity. It is as simple as that.

Finishing tasks quicker will save you money in the long-term, making these programs worth their price.

Popular management softwares are: 

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember the things you learned today! 🙂

Using the right tools and resources has several benefits, including efficiency, competitive advantages and a better scalability.

 

Email marketing softwares and social media management tools are great to do proper digital marketing. 

With email campaigns you can promote your products/ services/ posts and social media tools enable you to understand your audience’s preferences significantly better.

Website building platforms enables you to create your own website with themes and customization options. 

 

Managing your business can be challenging as you grow. 

For this purpose, you can use project management softwares and analytics. 

 

Content is key for online business success. 

Make sure to post SEO friendly content consistently. 

Content creation and SEO tools help you with this task.

 

If you plan on selling products on your website, you need the right e-commerce platforms and payment gateways. 

There are all-in-one solutions such as Shopify and WooCommerce.

Final Thoughts

Now that you know about the 8 must-have tools and resources for running a successful, there is literally no excuse preventing you from starting. 

Make sure to use some of the tools I mentioned in this post and aim for success! 

Do you have any questions? Let me know in the comments section down below!

 

Picture shows post's topic being how to use guest posting for link building.

Off-Page SEO: How to use Guest Posting for Link Building

by with No Comment Making Money OnlineOnline BusinessProfitable Blogging

As you had learned in my previous SEO guide link building is an essential method to increase your website traffic. 

And increasing website traffic is the goal for every blogger striving to grow their audience. 

A wonderful method for link building is guest posting. 

Be ready to learn everything you need to know on how to use guest posting for link building:

Table of Contents

How to use Guest Posting for Link Building

1) Importance of Off-Page SEO

2) Benefits of Backlinking

3) What is Guest Posting?

4) Why is Guest Posting so Powerful?

5) How to Use Guest Posting for Link Building

  1. Finding Guest Post Opportunities
  2. The Right Preparation 
  3. Crafting an Effective Guest Post
  4. Writing an Awesome Author Bio
  5. Tracking Results 

6) Final Advice 

7) The Takeaway

8) Final Thoughts

In case that you thought this page would be dead: How dare you ?! DEFINITELY NOT. I admit it has been a while since my last post.

Why?

Well, I was on vacations for 3 weeks!!! And I really wanted to relax during this time so I left my laptop at home. 

But now after 3 weeks of pure relaxation, I am back with new insightful SEO content for you. 

Be ready for fresh and regular posts on how to build a successful online business!

Let us dive into today’s exciting topic being link building through guest posting:

Importance of Off-Page SEO

In general, you can take several modifications on your website so that search engines such as Google and Bing rank you higher in their search results. We call this SEO (search engine optimization) 

At its core, SEO consists of two key components being on- and off-page SEO. 

 While on-page SEO focuses on optimizing elements within your website, such as content and meta tags, off-page SEO involves actions taken outside of your website to improve its search engine rankings.

As you’ll learn in a minute, guest posting is highly relevant to off-page SEO. So let us take a closer look at the concept of off-page SEO:

The principle of off-page SEO builds on so-called backlinks, also known as inbound links.

I’m pretty sure that you have already heard of inbound links. These are links directing to your website from external sources.

Backlinks serve as a vote of confidence from other websites, indicating to search engines that your content is valuable and worthy of reference.

Benefits of Backlinking

Why is it worth to put effort into building backlinks?

Let us break down the key benefits of building inbound links to your website: 

  • Website Authority

Google likes backlinks. That’s a fact.

Why?

Search engines consider backlinks as one of the primary factors when determining the authority and relevance of a website for particular search queries. 

So once your page has a good number of quality backlinks, search engines will start ranking your website higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

  • Enhanced Visibility 

Building backlinks comes close to spreading your footprints all around the internet.

Each backlink acts as a pathway for users to discover your content, leading to potentially higher traffic and engagement.

  • Credibility 

When reputable and authoritative websites link to your content, it signals to search engines and users alike that your website is trustworthy and credible.

This can have a positive impact on expanding your audience. This is because people who trust you will most likely follow you in the long term.

What is Guest Posting?

The concept of guest posting is pretty simple. Imagine you are a guest speaker at someone else’s party and leaving your business card behind. That’s pretty much the whole concept behind it.

In more precise words: Guest posting refers to writing blog posts or articles for other websites in your niche. Instead of being paid for that, you usually get the opportunity to link back to your own website.

This way you can build links back to your own page. 

Why is Guest Posting so Powerful?

Guest posting is a proven off-page SEO technique to increase your website traffic. 

Let me tell you why: 

Guest posting allows you to earn quality backlinks from authoritative websites.

And as we just learned before, building backlinks leads to your page being ranked higher in search results and increases your visibility across the web.

Here is a more precise breakdown why guest posting is so powerful:

  • Backlink Acquisition

The primary benefit of guest posting is the opportunity to earn quality backlinks from reputable websites.

These inbound links significantly boost your website’s authority and search engine rankings. Sounds good, right?

  • Increased Exposure

Also, guest posting exposes your brand, content, and expertise to a new audience.

By convincing the audience of your host website of yourself, you can attract more visitors to your own site.

  • Networking Opportunities

Guest Posting also offers you another unique opportunity:

Building relationships with other bloggers, influencers, and industry experts.

These connections can lead to collaboration opportunities, further expanding your reach.

How to Use Guest Posting for Link Building

Now that you hopefully know why guest posting is such a powerful tool, you surely want to know how it is done properly. 

Let’s breakdown the whole process on how to use guest posting for link building:

1. Finding Guest Post Opportunities

You want to choose websites that fit the following criteria: 

  • relevant to your niche 
  • decent page views and active readers 
  • social media presence ( so the owner promotes your content)

Finding opportunities fitting these points can be challenging.

BUT! There are great little strategies to find what you are looking for.

What strategies exactly?

Well, here you go!

1. Google 

Of course Google has to be in the list of the best ways to find guest post opportunities. For me, Google is always a great choice for everything.

So open up Google and search for something similar to these keywords: 

  • “guest post”
  • “submit guest post”
  • “guest post by”
  • “guest post guidelines”
  • “write for us”

The keywords ideally lead you to websites that accept guest posts. 

2. Competitor Backlinks 

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Regardless what niche or industry your website deals with, there will be always at least a handful of competitors. 

In my niche (online business, financial independence) for example are a ton of people I have to compete with. 

That won’t be different in your case. 

So what can you do?

Detect your competitors and try to analyze their backlinks. Chances are high that they have at least one blog post directing back to their website. 

Yes, I know… Backlink analysis sounds like something very time consuming. 

But it isn’t!

There are great tools out there tailored exactly for this task. 

A great tool in this context is  Open Site Explorer. 

With this tool you just need a couple of minutes to detect every single backlink of your competitor including every guest posts they have ever written.

You now know where you can submit guest posts.

So in terms of finding guest posts opportunities you really don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Trying to be unique and better than all of your competitors becomes relevant, when ultimately writing your guest posts! 

2. The Right Preparation

We don’t want to directly jump from finding a guest post opportunity to writing your guest post.

Why?

Well, preparation is at least as important as your final post content. 

Let’s have a look at what you have to do beforehand: 

1. Research Your Target Website: 

That’s maybe something you also thought of when preparing a guest post. 

Analyzing the content of your target website is infinitely important, as it determines, whether or not your post is going to be successful.

In this initial analysis it is key to define your audience and to find out their preferences as well. 

Look for: 

  • target audience: To what kind of people does the target website speak to?(young, old, beginners, advanced, businesses,…)
  • language and style: Is there any specific language or style used? (humorous and informal or neutral and formal)
  • type of content: Is there any preferred content type visible? (tutorials, articles, interviews, graphics, lists, …)

Once you detect a few of these things, you can try to implement those in your guest post later on. 

This way, you ensure that the majority of your “guest post audience” resonate with your post. And that’s what you ultimately want!

Be aware that these key elements don’t differ too much from your personal writing style, so that you don’t have to pretend to be someone you are simply not. New people who might decide to follow your blog after they read your guest post, might be disappointed then. 

So being yourself and sticking to your style is equally important. Choose your target website accordingly.

2. Checking other Guest Post’s Performances 

Before putting effort into filling your post with valuable content, it is advisable, to look how good other guest posts did so far. 

Why is this step so important?

Let me answer this question with another question.

What if the audience only tunes in for the blog owner?

You will barely feel any benefits from your guest post!

That’s why it is worth to look at other guest posts. Do they have similar comments, interactions and social sharing compared to blog owner content? Try to find this out, before crafting a guest post for your target website.

3. Personalize Your Email

After having checked all of the points we have just spoked about, it is now time to get in touch with the website owner. 

The best advice I can give you on this is: AVOID being basic!

Please, don’t start your email with “Dear madam/sir” or “to the website owner of”. 

With a bit more effort, I’m sure you will find the website owner’s name on his/her website. 

Use this name to start your email. It will signal the owner that you have dealt with the website more thoroughly.

Also, isn’s it just so much nicer to address you with your name instead of “Dear Sir…”?

In your email you want to convince the website owner of yourself. 

Start by introducing yourself as a blogger/business owner. To do this suitably, look at other guest blogger’s bio on your target website. 

This way you get an idea of what type of bloggers the website owner may prefer. 

Fill the rest of your email with evidences why you are a great and valuable blogger. 

Be sure to link to your own blog and other guest posts you have written so far. 

Advice Choose posts that have performed the best ;).

End your email with some nice words and make sure to provide your contact information.

3. Crafting an Effective Guest Post

Writing an effective guest post pretty much comes down to one key element: insightful and valuable content. 

Why?

Guest posting is not just about slapping links back to your blog. 

Don’t get me wrong: guest posts are great to build these backlinks (that’s today’s topic), but it is also effective in convincing your target website’s audience from your content.

With your guest post you basically fight for a new audience to follow your blog. 

This is why you should use all of your tools and expertise to craft a helpful and valuable guest post. 

Speaking of effectiveness, you should know what works best on your target website by now. 

Remember your preparation? You should now use your knowledge about style, language and target audience to craft a great guest post.

In your post, make sure to include both external and internal links to further content. As you learned in this SEO guide, those links are important for a good performing post.

At the end of your guest post, include a call to action. Something like “Isn’t it a controversial topic let me know your thoughts down below”. 

The more interactions your post generates, the better.

Very important: You should never try to advertise yourself in your guest post. It is not about you, but rather about the audience’s needs. Keep that in mind. 

Where you have enough time to talk about yourself and your business, is in your author bio.

4. Writing an Awesome Author Bio

In your author bio you now have the space to express why you are great and worth to be followed. 

1. Step: Give your audience a brief introduction to yourself, your experiences and your motivation behind your blog or business. Same thing here: Try to be yourself!

2. Step: Include a backlink to your website (here you can finally earn your backlinks)

3. Step: Link to your social profiles if you want to grow your audience there. 

4. Step (optional): Create a landing page you direct the audience to. This can be a page that describes your website ideally or a product/ service page. 

5. Tracking Results

After having written and published your guest post, you of course want to see some results. 

With guest posts you ultimately aim at increasing your website traffic. 

To measure this, the most proven and popular tool is Google Analytics. 

In case that you are not familiar with Google Analytics: Google Analytics is the go-to platform for checking your website data including traffic, sessions and user relevant information.

Final Advice

It can be challenging to write time consuming guest posts and maintaining your own website content fresh. 

Therefore, it is my advice to reverse the whole idea of guest posting. 

How?

Send an invitation to the website’s owner you have written the guest post on, and ask for a guest post on your page. 

This way it is easier to keep your readers satisfied with new regular content. 

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember the things you learned today! 🙂

Writing posts or articles for other websites – these are guest posts.

Guest Posting is a powerful tool to increase your website traffic. 

Guest posting gives you the opportunity to showcase your expertise to a new audience as well as gaining quality backlinks. 

Getting in touch with other bloggers in niche, also helps in building relationships.

Finding a guest post opportunity is the first step.

Use Google and search for keywords related to guest posting. Also, analyze your competitors to find proven guest post opportunities. 

Prepare your guest post by analyzing your target website. Try to convince the website owner with a personal email outlining why your guest post should be accepted. 

When crafting your guest post be as valuable and insightful as possible. 

 

Make sure to include a link back to your website in your author bio. 

Direct the audience either to a product/ service page or a page that explains your website/ business ideally.

Use Google Analytics to check your traffic growth. After a while you should clearly see any improvements.

Final Thoughts

I think we agree on that: guest posting is a valuable tool for boosting your website’s SEO and getting more traffic.

By writing helpful articles for other websites and including links back to your own site, you can improve your search engine rankings and reach a wider audience.

Remember to focus on quality, relevance, and building relationships with other bloggers. Your ultimate goal is to help your audience. Write your content accordingly. 

Now get out there and write your first guest post. I’m sure you will see traffic improvements any time soon!

Picture shows post's title being how to start a blog that makes you money.

How to Start a Blog that Makes you Money: Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide

by with No Comment Profitable Blogging

The world of blogging offers a unique opportunity to share your expertise, connect with like-minded individuals, and create a whole community. 

The best about it?

Everyone with basic knowledge on how to optimize and monetize a blog can eventually start a profitable blog that makes you money. 

Blogging gives you the chance to turn your hobby into a profitable income source with nearly endless potential to grow making it the perfect business model for each and every one of you!

That’s why I want to give on my knowledge on how I created “ProfitPursuers” so you can start a profitable blog that makes you money yourself!

Apart from blogging there are other ways to make money from the comfort of your sofa! Just click here to know more.

Table of Contents

Starting a Profitable Blog

1) Why You Should Not Start a Blog

2) Potential to Make Money Blogging

3) How to Start a Blog

  1. Pick a Niche
  2. Decide on a Blogging Platform
  3. Choose a Web Hosting
  4. Find and Purchase a Domain Name
  5. Open Pre-Installed WordPress
  6. Start Designing with Themes and Plugins
  7. Add Essential Pages
  8. Write you First Blog Post
  9. Get Traffic to Your Site
  10. Make Money

4) The Takeaway

5) Final Thoughts

Why You Should Not Start a Blog

It is kind of weird to start a post  on how to build a profitable blog with reasons why you should not start a blog.

But for me it is important to speak about some aspects of blogging that might be not visible for beginners. I just want to avoid that you have wrong expectations and eventually getting disappointed when starting your own blog.

1) Do not start a blog for quick money

If making money quickly from your blog is your primary goal you should better stay away from blogging.

Many gurus will most likely tell you how you can earn thousands of dollars within the first month of you being blogging.

Forget it. That’s not how the game works.

The truth: Especially in the first months blogging you will most likely not earn a single penny.

That’s why your initial motivation to start a profitable blog should be your passion. Only with passion you can motivate yourself to constantly create new content and help your audience.

But: If you managed to overcome the first hard months and kept posting new content consistently, trust me, (a lot of) money will come automatically!

2) Do not start a blog when you not want to learn 

Building a profitable blog over time will mainly require two things: patience as well as constant learning and improving.

In your first posts you won’t perfectly optimize your blog for SEO or struggle to create compelling and engaging content. But don’t worry! You also won’t play Beethoven’s sonata on the piano perfectly at first try, right? 

Even though I am now several month into blogging, I still learn a bunch of new things each and every day. 

You should just be aware and ready to learn new things on your journey of starting a profitable blog.

Potential to Make Money Blogging

But can you still make money blogging?

Let us have look at two success stories:

  1. Adam Enfroy

Annual Income (2020): $812,718

Started his blog in 2019, Adam Enfroy skyrocketed his blog to hundreds of thousands dollars of annual income.

This quick development is rarely seen and underlines the immense potential to make money blogging.

2. Michelle-Schroeder Gardner (Making Sense of Cents)

Annual Income (estimated): $1 million to $2 million 

Michelle-Schroeder Gardner has started her blog in 2011 and attracted over 20 million people since then.

In her blog, she specialized herself to give saving and making money tips. 

With her blog, Gardner represent one of the biggest finances blogs out there. 

These two success stories are supposed to show you that consistent blogging while pay off one day!

So can you still make money blogging?

YES!

When consistently giving people a reason to read your blog the sky is the limit for your blogging income!

How to Start a Blog

Fortunately, starting a profitable blog does not mean you have to follow an endless-seeming list of steps. You can break down the whole starting process in simple steps:

1) Pick a Niche

2) Decide on a Blogging Platform

3) Choose a Web Hosting

4) Purchase a Domain Name

5) Open Pre-Installed WordPress 

6) Start designing with Themes and Plugins 

7) Add Essential Pages

8) Write your First Blog Post

9) Get Traffic to Your Site

10) Make Money

1. Pick a Niche

Before bringing your blog to life, it is essential to first think about your blog theoretically. 

A niche is the general field you and your blog posts will be dealing with. 

It is vital to take time for this decision as it affects and limits your future blog. In your decision-making you should consider three things:

  1. Expertise 
  2. Audience
  3. Profitability 

Unless you want keep blogging as a hobby, you should also choose a profitable niche. And the fact that you clicked on this post tells me that you want to make money in the future. 

What is a profitable niche?

These are niches with a great potential to earn money with in long-term. 

The following niches are considered to be profitable:

  • Finances 
  • Food
  • Health
  • Self-Improvement
 
Now let me give you an example of a niche that is not profitable. 
 
Imagine you are very passionate about carrots and you decide to start a carrot blog. In your blog you outline each and every aspects on carrots: types of carrots, planting carrots, carrot history, health benefits and interviews with carrot enthusiasts. 
 
Maybe you find some people that share your passion about carrots. But you will never be able to make a lot of money with this niche. 
 
That is an example of a niche that is not profitable. 

So when choosing your niche, pay attention to passion and profitability. 

2. Decide on a Blogging Platform

With this step we are getting your blog nearer to reality: It is time to think about a blogging platform. 

A blogging what!?

Well, to be able to customize your website with tools and features, and to manage your blog, you need a so-called blogging platform. 

Even though I can only recommend one platform type (more later on), I want to give a short overview: 

Self-hosted:

With self-hosted blogging platforms you are given the opportunity to customize your blog in nearly every way possible. 

Self-hosted blogging platforms are great for those who want to be in full control of their website. Being in full control also gives you more opportunities to monetize and scale your blogging business.

There is pretty much only one go-to self-hosted platform out there: WordPress.org

Pros:

#1 Full Control

#2 Customization

#3 Scalability and Monetization 

Cons:

#1 More Responsibility

Hosted:

Hosted blogging platforms are websites that give you a space on their own platform to create and publish a blog.

They provide you with a domain name (like e.g. profitpursuers.com), with a hosting and a software to design your blog. That makes things a lot easier.

While all these features sound good, you technically do not 100% own the website. 

This can get you in trouble when, for example, the platform thinks you are violating its terms of service.

On top, these platforms usually limit customization features.

Hosted blogging platforms include Wix, Shopify, Squarespace and WordPress.com.

Pros:

#1 Simplicity 

#2 Managed Hosting 

Cons:

#1 You do not own the site

#2 Limited Customization Options

#3 Platform Dependency 

#4 Monetization Restrictions

My Recommendation:

If you plan to build a personal brand with your blog (what’s most likely your goal), I strongly recommend you to use WordPress.org. 

Why?

Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress.org:

#1 Huge Community -> If there is a problem, you’ll find people who can help you

#2 Full Ownership -> You’re in full control

#3 Huge Customization and Monetization Options 

Maybe you have noticed that I spoke about two kind of WordPress(es): WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

Make sure to use WordPress.org, since WordPress.com is a self-hosted blogging platform. 

That’s not what you want.

3. Choose a Web Hosting

Using self-hosted blogging platforms requires you to have a web hosting.

What is web hosting?

A web host is a company that provides the space on its servers to store your blog – it is the place where your blog lives.

Web hosting makes the blog accessible to the world.

See it as a home for your blog, in which all of your data and blog posts are safely stored for you.

Having a solid web hosting is vital when creating a blog. No hosting, no blog!

Hosting recommendation:

There are two blog hosting companies that I can recommend to you:

A: Hostinger

Picture shows Hostinger as a web hosting platform to start a blog.

The first of which, is called Hostinger. That’s the web hosting I use for this blog as well, by the way.

Hostinger has an affordable pricing and is easy-to-use.

It has a great dashboard equipped with all functionalities necessary to control your blog.

Also, something I really like, is Hostinger‘s great 24/7 customer service making it a great choice for beginners.

Hostinger

B: BlueHost

Picture show BlueHost as another web hosting platform to start a blog.

BlueHost is the second, also very popular, web hosting company. Similarly to Hostinger, it offers great and reliable hosting services for your personal blog.

 In terms of service and ease of use both Hostinger and BlueHost are on par with each other. 

BlueHost

To make the decision between Hostinger and BlueHost a bit easier, I created the following table providing you with the most essential criteria for both platforms.

Criteria
Hostinger
BlueHost
Pricing (per month)
Premium: $2.99; Business: $3.99; Cloud Startup: $8.99
Basic: $1.95; Plus: $4.45; Choice Plus: $4.45; Pro: $12.95
Performance
fast loading speed
fast loading speed (especially for WordPress sites)
Features
free domain. SSL, website builder with all plans, one-click WordPress installation
free domain, SSL, one-click WordPress installation
Customer Support
24/7 via live chat
24/7 via live chat, phone, and email

4. Find and Purchase a Domain Name

It’s now getting more exciting as you turn your ideas into reality. 

After having decided which web hosting to use, you now want to find and purchase a domain name. 

A domain name is the address of your website. It is was people type into their web browsers to find and visit your website. 

Your personal domain name should represent your brand name since your domain name is usually the same as your blog’s name. 

Therefore, choosing the right domain name is an important branding decision that requires time. 

Brainstorm a few ideas and try to have the following points in mind:

  • Brandable -> something that is good to remember (your or your business’ name)
  • Niche Relevance -> People should have a clue about the blog’s topic by looking at its domain
  • Avoid numbers and hyphens 
  • Use .com -> .com is still the most familiar extension for people 

This blog’s domain is, for example, profitpursuers.com.

Why did I choose this domain?

Because it is great in reflecting what my blog is about – striving for financial freedom by giving you guidance and advice to do so! 

So the bottom line is to find a domain name that reflects what you are writing about in your blog! That’s at least the theory.

Keep in mind that this is no rule to success. You’ll find many other successful blogs that ignored any of the points listed. 

Be creative, it is your blog!

Checking the Availability 

Each and every domain name can be only owned by a single person – domain names are unique. 

Makes sense, right?

Just imagine what would happen if hundred people buy YouTube.com – pure chaos. 

So you want a name that is still available. 

Fortunately, there is an easy way to verify this. 

Go ahead and google for Name.com.

Picture shows a service to check the availability of domain names. This is an important step to start a blog.

Just type your ideas into to search bar and you’ll see whether or not your domain name is still available.

For purchasing your domain name, I’d recommend the website NameCheap. 

This picture shows NameCheap as a platform to buy domain names. This is an important step to start a blog.

Why NameCheap?

NameCheap is:

  • secure -> the most crucial point to run your blog 
  • affordable -> relatively low prices 
  • good at customer service -> 24/7 via live chat in case you’re in trouble 
 
To buy your domain name, just type the name you have checked beforehand, into the search bar and click “add to cart”.
 
Then, similar to any other online purchase, choose your preferred payment method. 
 
Now you are an official domain name owner! Congrats!
 
You can now log in into your web hosting platform and add your domain name. You’ll find this option in your dashboard.

5. Open Pre-Installed WordPress

When choosing to go with one of the web hosting platforms I mentioned above, WordPress is already pre-installed for you. That’s great about it: It can’t get more simple.

 Once you open WordPress you will then see a dashboard similar to this:

Picture shows WordPress dashboard with everything you need to start a blog.

The dashboard is your control panel: You can pretty much manage everything from here.

This includes: 

  • adding pages 
  • adding and writing posts
  • adding plugins 
  • setting up menus 
  • managing comments 
  • general blog settings 

I think WordPress is pretty easy to navigate – at least for casual users like you and me!

Here is a video that explains the dashboard in more-depth – in case you need further assistance!

6. Start Designing with Themes and Plugins

That’s where it gets exciting: Making your bog your own. 

With WordPress you can bring any idea to life with the right themes and plugins. 

But let us start at the beginning: 

What are themes and plugins is?

Themes

Themes determine how your blog looks like. It is like the facade of a house.

Nowadays it is getting more popular to choose themes that are plain and simple. That’s because it offers you maximum flexibility. 

I would recommend you to do the same. 

Choose themes that are simple so you can customize them the way you want. 

Plain and simple themes include: 

  • Astra
  • Kadence
  • Phlox

To add a theme to your site, click on “Appearance” and then on “Themes”

You can now click on “Add New” just next to the heading “Themes”. 

Make sure to install and activate the theme. That’s it!

Plugins on the other hand, are tools for your blog’s functionality.

There are plugins for nearly every task you can imagine:

  • Spam Filter
  • SEO Plugins
  • Security Plugins
  • Contact Form Plugins
  • Table of Content Plugins
  • Mailing Lists and opt-in form plugins

The list goes on and on. 

Make sure to install a basis amount of plugins to cover spam protection, security and SEO. 

Adding new plugins is as simple as adding themes. 

To add plugins, click on “Plugins” on your left-sided dashboard and then on “Add New”. 

In the search bar you can now look for plugins. Once you found one, click “Install” and “Activate”.

An excellent page and post builder plugin is “Elementor”. I use this plugin for this page as well and can really recommend you to use it.

If you want me to make a post about the most essential plugins for your blog, just let me know in the comment section down below!

7. Add Essential Pages

Now is is time to create some content for your page. 

Let us start by creating a solid foundation. To do so, we have to add some basic pages.

These are, for example: 

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • About

You do not necessarily include all of these pages but a home and blog page is an absolute must-have. 

Everything else is optional but is recommendable to build trust with your audience. 

For adding pages, just follow these steps: 

  • Go to “Pages” -> “Add New”
  • Enter your title name (e.g. “Contact Me”)
  • Write your content using Gutenberg blocks (click on plus)
  • Press “Publish” once you are finished 
Picture shows how to add essential pages as a step to start a blog.

8. Write your First Blog Post

You made it! We are now officially entering the fun part!

You are ready to create your first blog post. 

And the best about it. It works just the same as for pages. 

  • Click on “Posts” -> “Add New”
  • Enter title and content using Gutenberg blocks (click on plus) 
  • Press “Publish” when everything is ready 
Picture shows how to create your first blog posts.

Let me give you some extra tips so that your blog posts turn out great. 

  • Add Value: Try to help people with valuable content 
  • Be unique: Do not write as any other does. Find other perspectives and come up with unique ideas
  • Optimize for SEO: Install SEO Plugins (e.g. RankMath) to do on-page SEO

9. Get Traffic to Your Site

Now let us go back to the making money part mentioned at the very beginning of this post. 

And yes, it is possible to make a lot of money blogging. 

The most essential step to start earning money blogging is getting traffic to your site.

That’s why we should have a look at ways to get traffic to your site.

I created a full beginner’s guide on how to increase website traffic. Just click here.

In short, there are some basics to start with:

On- and off-page SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and refers to everything you can do to rank higher in search results. 

Try to implement both on- and off-page SEO techniques to see significant traffic increase.

High-Quality Content

Creating high-quality content is essential. Why?

Well, people tend to follow your blog in the long term, once they consider you helpful. 

So when writing your posts, be as insightful as possible to see traffic growth. 

Social Media

With users rising constantly ,social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest have a great potential to get traffic to your site. 

Create an account reflecting your brands identity and publish posts consistently. 

Try to stick to your niche, so people know for what they should follow you.

Make Money

Once you have succeeded in increasing your website traffic there are different ways to turn your efforts into cash!

  • Affiliate Marketing: Promote other people’s products and earn a commission for each sale
  • Displaying Ads: Sign up for ad networks and start displaying ads on your website 
  • Selling Products and Services: Create own products such as online courses and coaching. This method is very lucrative but requires expertise and experience.

Consider reading the post on how to monetize your blog in 6 proven ways.

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember the things you learned today! 

Before making your blog reality make sure to think about:

  • your niche -> passion and profitability 
  • blogging platform -> self-hosted with WordPress.org
  • Web Hosting -> Hostinger or Bluehost
  • Purchase a domain name on NameCheap
  • Install WordPress and choose your theme and plugins 
  • add the most important pages
  • Start writing your first post

Increase your traffic through:

  • SEO
  • Valuable Content
  • Social Media

Use this traffic to monetize through:

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Displaying Ads
  • Selling Products and Services

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, starting a blog is a great chance for pursuing your passion and earn money from home.

I hope I could give you enough insights so that you can finally start your blog today!

Featured image displays the post's title being how to increase website traffic with 6 proven ways.

How to Increase Website Traffic (Top 6 Proven Ways)

by with No Comment Profitable BloggingStarting a Blog

You are spending days to write an in-depth guide, really wanting to help your audience, but soon you notice you are getting just a few or no views at all.

That’s frustrating.

As I am just starting out with this blog, I am more than familiar with this annoying problem.

Now you probably ask yourself, how can someone with relatively low website views can give me advice on how to increase my website traffic.

Well, I am now running this page for several weeks actively with new regular content published consistently. 

Especially in the last few weeks, I discovered new methods to increase my website traffic at least a bit. And what has started as a bit can quickly turn into a lot!

That’s why I want to share with you my top ways to increase your website traffic!

Table of Contents

How to Increase Website Traffic

1) What is Website Traffic?

2) Define Your Audience

3) Optimize for Search Engines (SEO)

4) Create High-Quality Content Consistently

  1. Content Planning Strategy
  2. Post Strategy
  3. Evergreen Content Strategy

5) Utilizing Social Media

6) Write Guest Posts

7) Start a Mailing List

8) The Takeaway

9) Final Thoughts

What is Website Traffic?

Let us start this topic by explaining what website traffic actually is.

Website traffic refers to the number of visitor who access your website and interact with its content.

For example, they read your posts and watch your videos or perhaps make purchases on our website. These are interactions.

If you are one of the persons who need it visually: Imagine your website as a storefront on very busy street. 

The street represents the internet and each person entering your store is equal to a visitor of your website. 

People are now seeing your products inside your store and you can perhaps sell some products and make money. 

That’s why website traffic is so crucial: You get heard!

Apart from blogging, there are a bunch of other ways to make more money. Read the following post to know more:

Define Your Audience

The very first step of increasing website traffic is to understand your audience. 

What do people look for on your website? What are their preferences?

To collect these data it is useful to have a look at your niche and your topics.

If you are, for example, in the food niche people most probably looking for recipes or food hacks. 

Also, try to define your audience’s demographics. Do you speak to younger or older people? 

Collecting these information at the beginning is important as you can design your whole website accordingly.

Optimize for Search Engines (SEO)

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, refers to all practices to make your website more appealing four search engines such as Google or Bing. 

Properly optimizing your website for SEO leads to your website being ranked higher in search engine result pages (SERP). 

Doing SEO is one of the most effective ways to increase your website traffic. 

Consider reading this ultimate SEO guide for beginners as it covers everything you need to know about SEO!

In short, try to implement these SEO practices for your website to increase your website traffic:

  • Keyword Research: Try to identify relevant keywords related to your niche and target audience
On-Page SEO:
  • Optimize your website’s titles, meta descriptions, headings, and content with targeted keywords
  • Design your website logical easy to navigate 
Off-Page SEO:

Pay special attention to link building as this is by far the most proven way to be successful with SEO.

Create High-Quality Content Consistently

Especially at the beginning with less views, it can be hard to motivate yourself to write posts consistently. 

But for your blog or website to grow it is crucial to do so!

In the very most cases this hard work pays off. 

So let us dive into some strategies to be consistent and high-qualitative in blog posting:

Content Planning Strategy:
This illustration displays the concept of content planning to increase website traffic.

Being consistent in blog posting is hard. I know…

But you can barely increase your website traffic without posting consistently. 

A proven content strategy is a personal content calendar:

Determine how many posts you plan to publish per week. 

The number really doesn’t matter as long as you stay consistent. 

For example, you are still working 9 to 5? Well, then just set your goal to one or two blog posts a week!

Try to figure out what amount of posts is manageable in your personal daily life!

In your content calendar, also plan your next posts: Their title and a rough structure of it.

This is a proven technique of many well-known bloggers out there, since it leads to a seamless work flow.

Post Strategy:

When writing your newest posts try to be as informative and insightful as possible. 

People tend to return to your blog or website if they found your content helpful. That’s a fact!

Therefore, once you caught a few people through SEO, for example, it is then your goal to convince these people from your content. 

Give people a reason why they should stick with you instead of the competitors!

The best way to do this is, again, through creating outstanding and relevant content! 

Evergreen Content Strategy:

Well, what does evergreen might mean?

It refers to content that remains relevant and valuable over time since it is timeless. 

Creating evergreen content is a great strategy to increase website traffic!

On the one hand, evergreen content generates constant traffic as it addresses timeless topics, and on the other hand it is resource efficient.

What I mean by this, is that, even though evergreen content evolves significant upfront efforts, it pays off in the long term. 

That’s because, unlike news or trend-based content, which quickly becomes outdated, evergreen content continues to attract traffic and engagement months or even years after it’s published.

Utilize Social Media

Using Social Media to Increase Website Traffic

Nowadays, you barely find people who are not using social media platforms. 

With hundreds of thousands new users joining per year, social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and Pinterest are growing more and more. 

Rising social media users underline the importance to use social media to increase website traffic.

This statistic is just to give you some proof. Accordingly, there were 4.89 billion users of social media worldwide. 

This number is expected to grow until 5.85 billion by 2027.

Isn’t that incredible?!

For us bloggers and website owners this is a huge opportunity for FREE traffic.

And that’s how you can make use of this traffic:

  1. Create social media accounts on platforms you expect your audience is active on
  2. Constantly share new content that reflects your niche 
  3. Engage with your audience by responding to comments, messages and mentions
  4. Link your profile to your website 

Ta-da free traffic for your website. 

Utilizing social media to increase website traffic is really a powerful tool in nowadays.

Write Guest Posts

Another source of completely free and high-quality traffic is guest posting.

Guest posts are typically written by individuals in a particular niche and are published on another website or blog to reach a new audience.

These posts provide valuable content to the hosting website while allowing the guest author to showcase their expertise and reach a broader audience.

In the most cases you create the content for the hosting website for free in exchange for links leading to your website.

This way you increase your website traffic trough two ways:

  1. Through people following your links to your website 
  2. Through SEO as these backlink typically lead to your website being higher ranked in search results 

When it comes to guest posting, there are a few thing to pay attention to:

Niche Relevance: 

You want to guest post on websites that share the same audience as you. That’s to make sure that people will also like the content on your website.

No Direct Competitors: 

Do not guest post on competitor’s websites who might sell similar products as you.

Most probably, people wouldn’t see a reason to buy your products instead of your competitor’s ones.

High-Quality and Authoritativeness:

That’s probably the most significant aspect: Only guest post win credible and high-quality websites.

Linking to your website on not trustworthy websites would lead to the complete opposite if what your are striving for.

Google would lower your rank in search results. Do everything to prevent this!

Links:

When it comes to your links, there are also some things to keep in mind. 

You don’t want just a link in the author bio leading to your homepage. 

Instead you want top include some contextual links. What do I mean by “contextual”?

Links back to content on your page that suits the topic you are writing about in your guest posts.

For example, let’s say your guest post is about your favorite dish. Link back to a post showcasing kitchen gadgets to prepare this meal.

Start a Mailing List

Depending on what you and the host agreed on, you want to use this free traffic to start a mailing list.

Why?

Email Marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies out there.

According to Dot Digital’s report, for instance, email marketing has a higher ROI (Return of Investment) than any other digital marketing channel. 

In particular, according to Dot Digital’s report email marketing has an average ROI of $39 for every dollar spent.

Just think of what you can promote with email marketing. new posts, product releases, affiliate products, videos, podcasts, … the sky is the limit!

To build your mailing list, give your audience something that is too good to pass on. A freebie that provides step-by-step guidance, for example.

To build an email list and to launch email campaign I’d recommend MailChimp.

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember the things you learned today! 

Website traffic is the amount of people visiting your site and interacting with its content.

Optimizing your page for SEO can boost your rank in Google search results. 

Optimize for on- and off-page SEO to achieve the best results.

Make sure to include strategies in your blogging routine.

Plan when and about what topic you want to blog (Content Planning Strategy)

Be as insightful and informative as possible (Post Strategy)

Create content that is timeless and that remains relevant (Evergreen Content Strategy)

Build a social media presence and promote your website on it. 

Make use of hundreds of thousands users of social media platforms worldwide.

Guest blogs are written by people for another website in exchange for backlinks. 

Backlinks to your website lead to your page being ranked higher in search results.

Starting a mailing list is on of the most effective marketing strategies. 

Give your audience a freebie in exchange for their email address. 

Promote posts, products, videos, podcasts, … by sending mails to your audience.

Final Thoughts

I am happy that you made it till the end of this post!

You are now well-equipped with everything you need to know on how to increase website traffic.

Now it is up to you. Will you apply these methods to finally see your traffic numbers grow?

I’m sure you will! You got this.

The picture contains the post's title being the ultimate SEO guide for beginners. On the right hand side of the picture stands a person looking at a growth chart.

The Ultimate SEO Guide for Beginners

by with No Comment Profitable Blogging

Attracting a lot of people to one’s blog or website is probably the goal for each and every one of you!

Doing proper SEO is a well-proven way to achieve this goal. 

Let us explore how you can do SEO as a complete beginner.

Here is the ultimate SEO Guide with everything you need to know to get started with SEO!

Table of Contents

Ultimate SEO Guide for Beginners

1) What does SEO mean?

2) What Makes SEO Important?

3) On-Page and Off-Page SEO

  1. Best On-Page SEO Practices
  2. Best Off-Page SEO Practices

4) How Can You Build Links?

5) Avoid Paying for Links

6) Measuring SEO Success

7) The Takeaway

8) Final Thoughts

Ultimate Blog Post SEO Checklist

Before publishing any of my posts, I make sure to follow each step in this checklist. 

Get this checklist to increase your website traffic!

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By clicking the button, you also agree to receive upcoming blogging tips & resources to grow your online business! Unsubscribe anytime. No spam – promised.

What does SEO mean?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. As I first heard this term, I was quite confused: Search Engine what?!…

But no worries. I soon figured out what this smart-seeming word actually means. And spoiler: It isn’t that complicated.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is like making your website more appealing to search engines, such as Google or Bing, so they show it to more people when they search for things online.

It involves doing things like using the right words on your website, making it load quickly, and getting other websites to link to yours.

The goal is to help your website appear higher in search results, so more people can find and visit it without you having to pay for ads.

So basically SEO aims to make Google happy. 

What Makes SEO Important?

Let us ask ourselves another question: What are the benefits of posts being highly ranked in search results?

Traffic! A bunch of new people will click on your posts and discover your blog.

You call this organic traffic: Visitors that come from unpaid search engine results.

Image displays traffic increase as a result of SEO practices.

An increase in your page views opens doors to make more money (traffic = potential customers) and to make yourself a name in your niche. 

That’s why it is crucial to learn about the key elements of SEO  and what you can do to be as SEO-friendly as possible.

Let us start with the key elements.

On-Page and Off-Page SEO

SEO can be subdivided in two key elements: On-page and off-page SEO.

A: On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is all about making changes directly on your web pages to improve their visibility and ranking high in search results.

 
Image is displaying high rankings in Google search results as a result of proper on-page and off-page SEO.

Imagine this: Your website is a shop on a busy street, and on-page SEO is like putting up a big, shiny sign that says, “Come in, we have what you’re looking for!”

 

B: Off-Page SEO

You guessed it! Off-Page SEO is all about what you can do outside from your website.

It is like spreading the word about your website all around town.

And how can I optimize my website for SEO?

As you might have guessed, there is no master plan to on- and off-page SEO.
 
Google does not share how its algorithm exactly works.
 
However, for both on- and off-page SEO there are more or less proven methods you can start implementing:
  

Best On-Page SEO Practices

Let us start with keywords, a powerful On-Page SEO Practice.

These are the words and phrases that people type into search engines when they’re looking for something.

By distributing these keywords throughout your web pages – in your titles, headings, and even in the actual content – you’re telling search engines, “Hey, my website is relevant to what people are searching for!”

On-page SEO is also about making sure your website is easy to navigate and understand, so that search engines get an idea of what your page is dealing with.

That means organizing your content into logical sections with clear headings, using descriptive URLs, and making sure your website loads quickly and works well on both computers and mobile devices.

Including internal links directing to related content makes your website even more attractive for search engines.

Also Google and other search engines love high-quality content to make sure their users find something helpful. 

This could be blog posts, articles, product descriptions, or anything else that’s relevant to your website.

The key is to ensure your content is helpful, informative, and engaging – something that people will want to share with their friends or link to from their own websites.

Best Off-Page SEO Practices

Link building is the most effective way to do off-page SEO. That’s a fact. Period. 

Why?

Google uses backlinks to determine a website’s authoritativeness. 

Backlinks is when other websites include links to your site on their own pages.

It’s like getting a recommendation from a friend – if other websites think your content is good enough to link to, search engines will see your website as more trustworthy and relevant.

Social media also plays a big role in off-page SEO.

When people share your website or content on platforms like Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest your website will get more visibility. The more visibility it get, the higher it can clim in search results. 

There are a bunch of other ways to do off-page SEO. But as I said, building links is the most crucial one!

How Can You Build Links?

As link building is extremely useful to achieve explosive growth, I want us to have a look at this topic separately. 

As I first heard of link building, I was like, “How can I ever bring somebody to link to my page!?”

And yeah, you do not often hear this in a SEO guide, but this is really hard, especially at the beginning.

That’s the truth!

The good news? Even as beginners there are a lot of ways to start building links!

Guest Blogging

Writing a blog post for another blog in your niche. That’s guest blogging!

You can leverage guest blogging for link building, by including links within the content, where relevant. 

This way you create backlinks to your website.

Make sure to create valuable content for the blog you are writing for.

That’s crucial, since the content decides whether or not people want to read more from you.

Linkable Assets

What about offering people something that they genuinely want to link to? 

These so-called linkable assets are another way to do lnikbuilding. 

Here are some examples of linkable assets: 

  • Online Tools and Calculators 
  • Tutorials (How-To-Posts)
  • Studies 
  • Statistics and Infographics

What asset is best for you depends on your niche. 

Calculators are, for example, a popular tool among bloggers in the finance niche.

Valuable Content

Having linkable assets can be beneficial for SEO, but it is no must-have.

It is more important to me to create valuable content that really helps my audience. 

The best thing about it is, that people automatically link to your posts once they found something helpful. 

Win-win situation. Your audience find helpful content, and you are getting high-quality backlinks!

Avoid Paying for Links

Among SEOs it is common to pay for links. Only on Fiverr there are more than 6,100 link building services available.

Just look at the screenshot below!

Screenshot 2024-02-14 at 21.45.57

I would NOT recommend to pay for link building. 

Paying for link building is of course not what Google likes to see.

In fact, your page can be punished for this practice resulting in very poor rankings in search results. 

Nonetheless, many people take this risk to gain more exposure from search engines. 

Again: I strongly advise against paying for link building.

Measuring SEO Success

Now, if you’re sill here with me, we’re now entering the exiting part: Looking at how your work pays off!

If you implement the advice provided in this SEO guide you’ll most probably see any kind of changes. 

You won’t do everything perfect right at the beginning. And that’s fine!

Learning from mistakes is key to improve your skills!

To see whether your SEO practices work it is important to use analytical tools. 

Using these tools, you get insights about a number of actionable data including traffic, conversion rates and audience preferences.

If you’re planning to use analytical tools, consider having a look at Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

You can use them for absolutely free!

The Takeaway

At the end of each of my posts I provide a short takeaway. Just to make sure you remember the things you learned today!

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) describes the practice of making your website more appealing for search engines such as Google or Bing.

The main goal is to rank higher in search results, so that more people can find your website. 

Doing SEO properly results in an increase of organic traffic.

This means that more people visit your site without you having to pay for this traffic.

This offers better opportunities to monetize your website  and to gain popularity in your niche.

On-Page SEO: SEO practices you can do on your website.

Off-Page SEO: SEO practices you can do outside of your page.

Apply both to achieve the best results.

On-Page SEO: keywords, high-quality content, internal links, clear and easy to navigate structure 

Off-Page SEO: link building, social media, etc.

Use the following ways to build links to your site:

  • linkable assets
  • valuable content
  • guest blogging

DO NOT pay for backlinks.

Use tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to measure your success. 

Final Thoughts

That was a lot of input, I know. But for self-defense: This was supposed to be a complete SEO guide.

I hope that you now have a better idea about the whole topic of SEO. 

Try to implement the steps provided so that your page ranks top in search results!