My Five Days To Better Blogging and Monetizing The Blog
0Many of the bloggers want to earn money from their blogs, few earn it too. But for most of us it remains a place which though seems reachable enough but we are still finding and trying out various ways to do it. Though I do not make living out of blog but it provides me supplementary income {which I quite like it as it’s just about a year that I have started blogging}.
In this post I will share, what worked for me. When I started blogging I did not start it just as a hobby (as many bloggers tend to project) for me it’s always been a serious thing where I wanted to connect with like minded audience who share same passion of food and photography. So I started by taking out time off from my routine work and plan how I can make it work for me. These are the things which I did and these worked for me.
Planning
I am planner by nature (sometimes that’s frustrating too), so naturally when I start something new, I plan it beforehand (sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t) but I still plan.
Day One
As I said I was serious about blogging so taking into consideration on what was needed to be done, I sat down to chart out a
workable plan . With a family {a sick MIL , two all the time hungry teens and ever understanding husband } and already there Lifezing to look after , I did not have too much time at hand so planning was mostly about the expectations from my blog and how am I
going to find time for maintainace and designing of the blog and rough sketch work on how to keep posts going.
workable plan . With a family {a sick MIL , two all the time hungry teens and ever understanding husband } and already there Lifezing to look after , I did not have too much time at hand so planning was mostly about the expectations from my blog and how am I
going to find time for maintainace and designing of the blog and rough sketch work on how to keep posts going.
Day Two
I actually got down to work it out, started by tweaking the design {an advantage of knowing web design and graphics} so that it is easy to navigate and user friendly so that my reader can find everything on my main page and do not have to navigate from maze of so many hundred thousand things which sometimes is the main cause of putting off your potential subscribers. Plus a clean and uncluttered design and theme is search engine friendly too. Designing completed, now was time for some
posts.
posts.
Day Three
Since I did not start this blog afresh {I took over from Smita}, I had some content and readers to start with. Along with writing new posts, I created a schedule to write my posts regularly, so that I always have two three completed posts in my drafts and scheduled (in case some surprise work or life comes in way) for later dates.
This done it was time for some mild promotion, to let people know that I have started blogging. Social media helped me a lot (as I did not have much time at hand for visiting other blogs and leaving a comment, even though I was a regular reader of so many beautiful blogs). I set up social sharing widget so that people who like my work can share it freely across various social networks (Read: Online
reputations of bloggers how and why to measure it).
reputations of bloggers how and why to measure it).
Day Four
Designing and posting taken care of , now was the time to sit back and enjoy what I did it was time for some reality check and see objectively if this really going to work out . Though You will always love what you have done, but some serious checking, from your readers perspective like if this was someone else’s blog and you are a reader; would you like to stay here enough and read what author is trying to put across and does it provide any value or information to you as a reader ?
Though it sounds like time consuming task, but very important for your blog. This was the step where I decided to share something about me so that my readers know what to expect, and brands to know that how they can work with me {important step if you are looking for getting work from your blog}.
Be honest here, as faking is not going to take you anywhere. Check stats for the week and analyse them to know the quality of traffic you are getting, what keywords result in getting more traffic to your blog {will talk about these in details in coming posts}.
Day Five
Time to do some research work, Go and read other blogs in your niche, what is latest that’s going around; join some online groups to connect with people gain insight about latest trends. While watching for broader trends stay away from the topics which other bloggers have already covered I am sure you have got something unique to say { find your blogging voice and style instead of copying someone else’s style}.
Other thing which I did this day was responding to comments and feedbacks which is very important as your that reader made that particular effort to connect, and if responded rightly would be your regular reader. In fact now I takeout some time everyday to check comments and answer them if there’s query or genuine feedback.
Weekends, oh! generally do not like to work weekends as those are reserved for family and friends as weekends are the only time when all of us are together at home and can spend some quality time together. So shared only what I could accomplish within the work week.
Now that I did all that work, after a week while analysing the stats I realised the number of subscribers went up by 15% and page views by 25% and bounce rate dropped by 35% which was main aim of the exercise. So whenever I feel growth rate is stagnating I go ahead and do site maintenances, check for SEO (as I receive almost 60% of traffic through search engines.
How all these translates to money
A good subscriber and reader base not only may help you in earning money through as monetizing tools like adsence, but makes you visible and attractive to brands and your future clients ( in my case photography and writing assignments as well as guest speaker opportunities) Not that I earn sustainable living out of my blog but still it supplements my income and helps me to indulge on props
accessories and recently one photography lens and a Samsung galaxy tab.
accessories and recently one photography lens and a Samsung galaxy tab.
I hope I was able to clear some doubts and what worked for me in monetizing my blog. If you like me to write about any specific topics or frequency of posts on blogging do write to me, as your feedback is the stimulus that keeps me going.
