How to Start a Blog and Make Money on the Side [Infographic]

If you are looking for a profitable side hustle, one of the first things you should consider learning is how to start a blog. But if you do this, you must be aware of the nuances of doing it the right way.

The great news is that anyone can do it as long as they are willing to learn the ropes, but on the downside, thousand fail miserably because they think it’s just a matter of creating a WordPress website and writing about themselves or other random subjects that the general public will have little time for.

Successful blogging rests on a number of factors you should know before becoming a blogger.

First of all, you should learn the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). Even if the majority of your users are coming from social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, etc, you don’t want to neglect search engine organic traffic. Not only is it free, but it also converts extremely well.

After that, you need to understand your audience. Without knowing what your audience likes and dislikes, you’ll fail to produce what they want to read. Even if you have thousands of posts on your site, if your audience won’t read your writing, your growth will stiffen. Once you understand your audience, it’ll be easy to create an effective content marketing strategy that’ll help your blog grow quickly.

As the number of your readers increases, make sure you are still writing more for them than search engines. How? By making your posts user-centered as well as keyword-centered. It’s easy to be carried away with the free traffic you are receiving and want more. If you neglect your readers in favor of search engine bots, it might backfire, resulting in a loss of the readers you’ve been accumulating.

At this point, you should start to focus on building a recognizable brand. This is done by being true to yourself and only blogging on topics you really know well.

A final point before we introduce the infographic: Be patient!

Google and the other search engines are not going to rank (or trust) you overnight. If you are publishing fairly consistently it can take anywhere from six to nine months before you will be making any kind of half-decent income so stick with it, and don’t down tools when you might be very close to the traffic hockey stick effect.

Good luck!

For even more valuable tips on how to start a blog that will succeed, check out this infographic from StartBloggingOnline.com:

Courtesy of StartBloggingOnline.com