How To Be A Successful Blog Writer

You may have come across successful blog writers who earn thousands or more, passively and wondered whether you should give it a try. Stop! If you don't like to write, choose a separate profession. A full-time job requires a full-time effort. This article is indexed towards readers who dream of becoming a successful blog writer or are struggling halfway.

The important steps to become a successful blog writer

Overview

This article is categorized into six topics that will cover everything a successful blog writer needs. So, let us establish the 6 steps:

Pre-planning: What is the big idea?
Production: How will you make the content?
Traffic Generation: Who will read your content and how?
Reader Relationships: How will you keep your readers?
Costing: How much does it cost to you?
Revenue: How will you earn money?

Conclusion

FAQ

1. Pre-planning: What is the Big Idea?

Niche:

All right, let's simplify things a bit by chalking out a plan on how a successful blog writer operates. Let's find your niche. Your niche can be things that you have experience on or you are currently learning. And you'll have to carry that idea forward for the rest of your life. So, just because someone's cosmetic blog started generating revenue doesn't necessarily mean that yours will too. Choose wisely.

Business Model Canvas:

The first thing you need to understand is that any revenue-generating system is a business. This means that a successful blog writer recognizes his activities as a business. For a successful blog writer to earn revenue, he must acknowledge the nine pillars of business planning. These are:

Value Proposition: What values are you serving? Why does it matter?
Key Activities: What is it that you are doing? Identify the whole process.
Key Partners: Who is also in the process?
Key Resources: What assets or resources do you have/need for the process?
Channel: How will your customers get to know you and reach you?
Customer Segment: Who are your customers/readers/audience?
Customer Relationships: How do you gain/maintain the customers' trust?
Cost Structure: How much cost have you calculated/estimated for your whole process and what is your forecast?
Revenue: How will you earn money?

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Pre-planning Mantras of a Successful Blog Writer

In their content, all of the successful blog writers address a solution for a problem or at least identify a problem. On top of that, the creators have done a great job with SEO(Search Engine Optimization) to rank at the top and they have successfully established their statement. You need to do that too.

Think from the readers' perspective, why do you assume that they want to consume your content? Why do you matter? Until you find these answers, learn and reflect. While you are doing that, let's make a website for your blog.

Domains and Hosting:

Set up your WordPress/Wix/Squarespace account once you are ready. You may be biased towards WordPress, but all have their USP. You'll need hosting as well as a domain. Godaddy or WordPress domain is recommended if you are a beginner.

If you can afford you can try Google cloud hosting, AWS hosting, Siteground, etc. There is no hosting or domain plan as a free plan. However, if you don't plan to monetize your blog, there are some free service plans in WordPress. This article is not a sponsored post for WordPress, by the way.

Website Designing:

There are page builder plugins (like Elementor, DIVI, or EditorX for WordPress) that have drag and drop modules. Build your blog site. Stick to 2 (or 3) colors for the entire site. The same goes for fonts. Choose a primary font and one (or 2) subclass or complementary font.

Once you have decided on something, hold on to it for all pages and posts. The overall layout needs to be clean and clutter-free. Internally link your pages and posts. Use other plugins and APIs you need.

You may be interested to know about the Best SEO Plugins

Optimization for Mobile/PC/Tablet:

Once you have finished setting up your blog site, optimize it. The more images you use the better it is for your content and the more will be the loading speed. A website that's taking 3-4 seconds to load completely is not user-friendly and also questioning your authenticity.

Reduce image sizes. Get creative with user interactions but go easy with pop-ups; they are annoying. Only use them when it feels necessary to you. Remember to make your blog site optimized for mobile since about 65% of the globally read blogs get to read through mobile phones.

By now, you must have planned your niche and your statement. So, your "Value Proposition" is ready. Let's proceed to the next questions such as key activities, personnel, and resources, etc.

2. Production: How will you Make the Content?

This step solely deals with your content and content creation. A successful blog writer will break their content creation into three major parts – research, design plan, and writing.

Research:

Build a topic that answers someone's problems. Check Reddit, quora, and answerthepublic.com to learn what others are thinking. Make a bucket of one target keyword and 9-10 suggested keywords. Use google keyword planner, keywords everywhere, and google trends to find your target keyword.

It is easier to rank in search engines using keywords with low competition and high search volume. You can also use search engine suggestions such as: "people also ask" section of the Google search result page or related searches for Pinterest etc.

Design Plan:

Think of your content design first, i.e. text positions, image positions, alignments, internal links to other posts in your website and author bio, etc. In case you can't make up your mind, there are many blog templates available on the internet. But, my advice would be to build everything on your own. There are even bloggers who use their own custom fonts.

Abstain from using click-bait titles, but make them rather semi-click-bait which means that the title should clearly address the problem or the solution or both yet not completely. A successful blog writer uses titles that impart curiosity in the readers' minds. You can use numbers for better visibility.

Establish a thumb rule of only using 0.5% target keyword. That means in a 1000 word article, you can use your target keyword 5 times. Use thesaurus, dictionaries, and other tools to mix up words but read it aloud lest it sounds weird. Your content should be 100% plagiarism-free.

Use Grammarly or smallseotools.com for plagiarism checking. Make everything easily readable to your target readers as if your webpage can almost work as infographics. Avoid using fonts that simply look "cute" and have no actual purpose.

Writing:

Since you like to write already, read as many books and blogs as you can. By now, you should know that any writing is creative writing if it is unique. Writers' block isn't real, write anything on your topic. As a beginner blogger, quantity matters more than maintaining quality. That answers the "Key Activity" part.

Now, who is writing, who is designing images, researching, proofreading, and advertising, etc? If you have a team, your job gets easier. If you are more of a one-man show, distribute your working hours accordingly. You can also collaborate with freelancers or blog agencies.

You can try premium versions of writing/proofreading/email-marketing/advertising/social media scheduling tools and services to reduce workload. That answers the "Key Partners" part.

The "Key Resources" part depends on what resources you need for the content, or rather for your blog. That means things that you own like your PC, electrical appliances, camera – for a visual blog, audio appliances – for a podcast or video content, etc. With that, your production i.e. the content is almost ready to be published on your website, but who will read them? The next section explores this part.

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3. Traffic Generation: Who will Read your Content and How?

Customer Segment:

Now, the "Customer Segment" part starts. Focus on this question, "who will come to your website?" Create your approach in a similar manner. For example, if your blog is about content writing courses in India, your target customer should be 22 above age group, graduate fresher or equivalent, lives in India, etc.

If your blog is about selling mobiles, you can write a post on a comparison between two processors. Be patient, it may take 6-12 months to generate traffic, but it is a long-term haul. This concludes the organic traffic.

You can also use traffic generators for inorganic traffic, like "Website Traffic Generator/Traffic Bot.uk/Traffic Swirl" but it is not recommended. None of the successful blog writers use inorganic traffic. Other than these options, paid traffic is also available for you. This will be discussed properly in the ads section.

Channels or Platforms:

Unless you have a dedicated person or service for social media handling, try one or two platforms for traffic generation. Research on the platform about your niche competitions and customer habits.

If your content statement is not compelling enough, people aren't going to come to your website from their leisurely Instagram scrolling. Decide on your platform and contribute. Find who ranks the highest in Google/Youtube/Pinterest search results in your chosen niche. Facebook is not really a good place for blogs but you can find blogging groups there and they are really fun.

Instagram is for topics with visual aspects such as fashion, beauty, travel, workout, etc. Reddit/Quora/Discord are places to understand ongoing trends. Youtube is a great platform in general since lots of bloggers are camera-shy.

The last platform is definitely google search. Depending upon your SEO keywords, your post can rank well in the search results. If you are using proper Search Engine Optimized keywords, you don't have to worry about organic traffic. Different niches have different platforms for traffic generation.

Here, take a look at this study. That addresses the "channel" section of the business model canvas. Once you have generated traffic to your website you need to maintain them. For that, you need to use email marketing tools or personally mail your readers one by one. This part is addressed in the next step.

4. Reader Relationships: Why will your Readers Trust You?

Once the readers start coming to your website, you need to convert them to your fans. From the words of Marty Neumeier, answer three questions – i) who are you? ii) what do you do? iii) why does it matter?

Until you can answer these questions to your readers, you will not be able to gain trust. Think of your readers as your friends; if you don't spend quality time with them, there will be no relationship to build.

Newsletter:

A newsletter for your fans can be a recommended option. This way you can collect the readers' mails for your pitch. You may be bewildered by this idea, but without collecting reader information it will be difficult to connect and interact with them.

Analytics Tools:

Also, keep your activities interactive otherwise you will be treated as spam. Try Clickmeter/Pinterest Analytics/Google Analytics etc. for tracking which posts get to read most. Link your content accordingly. If you link your product to the most-read posts, there will be a higher chance for conversion than simply linking your sales pitch everywhere.

Giveaways:

To create a list of customer emails, first, make a lead magnet. Suppose you build some infographics or extra content or giveaways for the registered fans etc. and it can be a physical or downloadable product.

Automated Mail Services:

Then use an email marketing tool or services like Mailchimp or ConvertKit. There you can create an automatic mail pushing which are pre-written emails being sent on registration or new posts.

You can also target your emails as customized mails where you can solve a particular customer's problem and while you're at it, you can tell a bit about yourself. Keep it within the 15% range, i.e. your solutions will be contributing to 85% of the mail and 15% is for your flexing and showing off.

This is how you can respond to the needs of your readers. Only then you can expect a successful conversion of sales. Now you have a clear idea of "Customer Relationship". Next is "Costing".

5. Cost Structure: How Much Does it Cost You?

Let's assume that you are building a blog site from scratch. Please, keep in mind all costs mentioned here are in INR.

Hardware Costs:

PC: 30k to 50k+
Mobile: 10k to 20k+
Camera: 30k to 40k+
Headphones: 2k to 5k+
Microphones: 4k to 10k+

Total: 76k to 125k+

Utility Costs:

Electricity: 6k+/year
Internet: 6k+/year

Total: 12k+/year

Hosting Costs:

Hosting:4k to 5k+/year
Domain: 0 to 2k+/year

Total: 2.4k to 7k+/year

Designing Cost:

Freemium Web-builders: 0 to 4k+/year
Freemium Plugins: 0 to 7k+/year
SEO and Other Optimizations: 0 to 10k+/year

Total: 0 to 21k+/year

Content Cost:

Keyword Research: 0 to 1k+/year
Canva or Illustrator: 0 to 4k+/year
Proofreader: 0 to 12k+/year
Outsourcing(optional): 100k+/year

Total: 0 to 17k to 117k+/year

Customer Management Service Cost:

Mailing: 0 to 3.5k+/year
CRM Plugins: 0 to 15k+/year
Security: 0 to 1.5k to 15k+/year

Total: 0 to 20k to 33.5k+/year

Adding Up:

All the costs discussed here are merely outlined and vary greatly depending upon your delivery. For a beginner, about 14,500 rupees is enough to set up your own blog site (excluding hardware costs); but to be a successful blog writer (from scratch), you need to spend 90.4k to 217k to 330.5k rupees with recurring costs of about 200k from the next year. On top of that, you need to pay accounting costs as well. This means your revenue per year needs to be more than that for a profitable blog site.

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6. Revenue: How will you Earn Money?

While your blog may be having 500k readers per month on average, that doesn't necessarily mean you are earning as much accordingly. Let's understand the different revenue streams.

i) Ads:

Ads are the most popular choice for a blogger and it is also the lowest-paying revenue stream unless you have joined a premium ad network. You can enlist in Google AdSense and gradually earn a few bucks. Remember, none of the successful blog writers you see uses ads.

ii) Sponsored Posts

You can contact other businesses that are connected to your blog and make sponsored posts. This can be a good monetization strategy. However, getting a contract for sponsored content can be very difficult for a beginner blog writer.

iii) Premium Ad Networks

If you are getting 1M+ visitors per year to your blog, you can approach premium ad networks like AdThrive or Mediavine, etc. They pay you better – much better than Google AdSense. But this strategy is applicable for bloggers who get huge traffic.

iv) Affiliate Marketing

This is one of the best sources of passive income. Simply recommend services or products in your blog that you are happy with. Enlist in Amazon affiliates so that every time someone uses your affiliate link to buy products on Amazon, you'll get a certain percentage as commission. This is also a good way to gauge your readers' needs which will help you decide your main product or service.

v) Courses

Most of the earnings of a blog comes usually through online courses or tutorials. Depending on your business model, the courses can be subscription-based or one-time payments. If you truly deliver value to your readers, your courses will sell.

You can also offer freelance or contract-based services to your readers. It can be a tiring process but in my field, five digits per article are quite common. Some bloggers have even completely turned their blog site into a lead-generating machine for freelance work or consultation for their clients.

vii) Products or Books

Once you have understood the needs and problems in your niche for your readers, you can start writing your book. It can be a physical product (paperback) or Ebook or both. Then you can approach publishing houses or you can publish it yourself through your blog.

Recommended Read: Your Ultimate Guide to Ebook Writing

viii) Events

Now, your blog has started gaining momentum. You can participate in speaking events or consulting sessions with your clients. This is quite profitable compared to the hours of effort you put into the events.

Frequently Asked Questions:

i) How to be a successful blog writer in 2021?

A: There are plenty of competitions in today's market of blogs. Even so, If you have established these six steps,

Pre-planning: What is the big idea?
Production: How will you make the content?
Traffic Generation: Who will read your content and how?
Reader Relationships: How will you keep your readers?
Costing: How much does it cost to you?
Revenue: How will you earn money?

ii) How to write a successful blog?

A: You need to prepare your content properly first. The three stages of content preparation should be

Keyword Research
Content Designing &
Writing

iii) How do bloggers earn money?

A: There can be plenty of ways you can earn money once your blog gets traffic.

Ads
Sponsored Posts
Premium Ad Networks
Affiliate Marketing
Courses
Services
Products or Books
Events

iv) How to find your niche?

A: Finding your niche is the most important part of writing your blog. It is that particular topic you always bring up at the dinner table. That being said, your niche is what sets you apart from the crowd.

v) How much does a blog site cost?

A: For starters, if you already own the hardware and hosting, you can start your blog at zero cost.

Conclusion:

Let's summarize what we have learned:

The competition in your niche is directly proportional to your visibility to your readers.
If you expect to profit from your business, you need to invest time, value, and money.
Your passion or hard work or both mean nothing without proper planning and execution.
Your readers are your friends in need.
If you fulfill their need, you have built a relationship.
Just because you have a huge visitor volume to your website, doesn't necessarily mean you are earning plenty.
Find a different profession if you don't like to write since there are no shortcuts to becoming a successful blog writer.