How To Start A Blog And Make Money 2021

Unedited transcript

[00:00:00] Hello. And welcome back to channel 10. I’m going to show you step-by-step how to start a successful blog and make money. So be sure to like subscribing the both this video or any other video on this channel helps you out. So basically, what we are going to do today is I’m going to answer the question.

[00:00:13] What is a blog? There’s a lot of confusion. There’s a lot of. Wrong information out there and stay. I’m just going to answer it simply. I will tell you how to pick a niche and why you need to niche down as a brand new blog or blogger. The next step is I’m going to show you step-by-step how to get web hosting.

[00:00:28] I will explain to you what web hosting is and how you can get a domain name for free if you click the first link in the description. After that, I will show you how to install WordPress, how to install a premium WordPress theme and why that’s important, and some important changes that you need to make to your website so that you can start getting traffic.

[00:00:46] Traffic is going to be the livelihood, the lifeblood of your website. And so you need to get it. And then next, I’m going to show you how to start writing so that you can actually start getting traffic leads and sales. After that, we’re going to talk about some ways to make money. One of the reasons why people start blogs is so that they can make money.

[00:01:02] And so we need to talk about that. Also, we’re going to talk about why you should start sharing your content on social media as soon as possible so that you can start getting the traffic that you deserve. After that, I’m going to answer about how many blog posts you should write to get started, and then the links in the description that you need to click on so that you can get up and running today.

[00:01:20] First things first, what is a blog? A blog is simply a website that answers questions within a niche. For example, people are going on the internet every day, and they’re asking basic questions. What is the square root of eight, or how long is a mile, how many steps of the mile they’re asking questions about literally everything.

[00:01:40] And so your job as a blogger is to go in, answer those questions, solve problems, and make money. And what I recommend that you do when you first get started is to pick a niche. Knowing niche is just an area of focus. A topic that you want to focus on and picking a niche is vital because it lets Google know it lets other readers know it, lets your audience know what to expect.

[00:02:03] If you start writing on sports, let’s say you’re a fan of the NBA. You start writing on the MBA. People that are going to know about your blog are going to expect content about the NBA. If you suddenly started talking about baking, you’re going to turn a lot of your audience off. It’s going to confuse Google just a little bit.

[00:02:20] Now, the only caveat to that is if you build this huge mega-site and have a thousand or more blog posts, you can do whatever you want. But when you first get started, you should pick a niche. For example, for looking right at the screen here, photography is a niche. Creating slideshow presentations.

[00:02:38] These are all niche ideas that you could potentially start creating content. And what I recommend that you do when you first get started is to niche down. Now, the reason why you want to niche down is blogging is insanely competitive. Everybody has at least one blog, it feels, and so to gain traction, You want to niche down, and let me just illustrate an example for you.

[00:02:58] So what we’re going to do is I’m going to jump over here, and I’m going to type in sports. This is a paid keyword research tool. You don’t have to use it, but this helps me find keywords faster. So I just typed in sports. And you can see. If the keyword is 98 on a scale of zero to 100, it is 98. It doesn’t get much more difficult than that.

[00:03:16] So what we can do is find different ways to niche down and still find a lot of traffic. We could do one thing we could type in, let’s say NFL, NFL is still going to be really competitive. As you can see, it’s a 94. If we did football, you’re going to see a little less 93 if we typed in Dallas cowboy.

[00:03:37] You’re going to see if we spell some words right. Correctly here. All right. So Dallas Cowboys, 83, much less difficult. And there’s some opportunity. What you can do is you can keep niching down and potentially find people to write content for that. We look at the matching terms here. You’re going to see that there is some opportunity under the keyword difficulty that you may want to explore, even more, but.

[00:04:02] As you can see when you start niching down, you are going to talk to a very select group of people. For example, the Dallas Cowboys fans will only come to this website because they want to learn more about Dallas cowboy stuff, and there are 3.5 million monthly searches. And so there’s a ton of opportunity out there.

[00:04:18] So that’s an example of niching down. The next thing that we want to do is get web hosting and get a domain name. Web hosting means that you are going to. Hard drive space for my web hosting company so that your website can show up on the internet. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to get a WordPress website.

[00:04:35] They’re going to host, save, store your website on their hard drive, call the server so that people from around the world can access it and people will access it, buy a domain name. For example, if we go to. If we go to themeforest.net, this is a domain name. That’s how humans refer to websites and web pages.

[00:04:57] And so when you click the first link in the description, you’ll actually set up your web hosting and get a free domain name for the first year. And in fact, I’ll actually walk you through step-by-step how to set up your first website, your first WordPress site. It takes about five minutes. So you’ll be surprised you’ll get up and running in this next section.

[00:05:14] I’m going to show you how to get up and running step by step. When you click that link, you’ll be taken to this website, where you’ll go ahead and click get started. What I recommend is to click the first one on the far left, the basic plan. If you’re just getting started with a website, as you can see, there are several options, but click that click select, and then move on here.

[00:05:30] You’re going to create a domain name. If you have one in mind, you’re going to type it in here. Like you see that I do. What I recommend is to try and find a domain name. It’s going to be related to your niche. Now, what I do is type in a domain name that I know is already taken. When it’s taken, you’re going to get this error where you can then go back and try different domains.

[00:05:48] Now make sure again, you want to pick one related to your name. Click next. And then you’re going to see a green box that says that it’s approved. The next step is simply to go through and enter your contact information. Make sure that you, when you scroll down here and make sure that you leave all of the settings on but again, entering your contact information, the settings right here, where it says domain privacy, leave all of this check.

[00:06:11] If you don’t leave a check, you’re going to get people reaching out to you. Spamming you, emailing you, trying to get you to sign up for. Web hosting. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to go ahead and sign up and then jump back to you once I sign on and move to the next step. All right. So I’ve signed up, and I’m going to go ahead and set up my website.

[00:06:28] Initially, just create a simple username and password and ensure it meets the requirements. And then move on, make sure that you write it down to write it down in a safe spot so that you have it. And you remember it because it can be a pain to go ahead and get everything back. You will have to enter in some vital information, but just make sure that you write it down.

[00:06:46] It’s elementary and straightforward. Now, one thing that I do want to note is that this part is not sped up. This is actually real-time. And you can see that you’ll go from absolutely nothing to a complete website in less than probably 10 minutes. And once you click submit, you’re going to move on to the next step, where you get to log in. So here is where you’re actually going to start creating your WordPress website.

[00:07:08] Now, the great thing is Bluehost really does everything for you. And it’s elementary. So again, I’m not speeding us up at all, and I want you to see what it really takes to create a website. So Bluehost is going to do a little bit of work in the background for you. And we’re just going actually to click on skip this step.

[00:07:24] This first one I clicked on. I started a blog, but just click, skip because we know what we’re doing for the next step. And I’m actually going to tell you what to do so that we can get up and running. So click get started right here on the left-hand side. And then move on, click, skip here and click skip. And then just pick the first one in the far left, make sure that you’re picking a free theme because they’ll charge you.

[00:07:48] They have both free and premium themes, which we’ll talk about in just a moment. So right now, it’s actually creating your WordPress website in just a few moments. You’re going to click on log in to WordPress on the right-hand side there. You’ll see it in just a second. And then we can actually start looking at some basic configurations.

[00:08:03] All right. So we click log. And now we actually have a WordPress website. What may need to happen is you may need to click refresh a few times to get it to work. But now we have our website. As you can see, what I’m going to do is I’m actually going to log in and delete a few plugins because right now, it has coming soon.

[00:08:23] And so if someone tried to get to your website at this moment, it’s going to say coming soon to them, even though we can see it, this is what your WordPress website looks like, but for everyone else outside of your network, it’s going to say coming soon. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to go down to plugins eventually, and we’re going to delete some of the plugins that we don’t need.

[00:08:41] No, I talk a little bit about plugins later on, but plugins add additional features and functionality. We are going to deactivate the blue host as well. Other plugins that are already activated, and then we can go through and make the necessary changes, which I’ll cover in just a moment. So we’re going to deactivate them and then delete them.

[00:08:59] Now, you want to make sure that you only have the plugins that you’re using on your website. The more plugins you have, the slower your website will respond and function, and you’re going to lose out on ranking. So make sure you have a lean setup, very few plugins, and then move on. As you can see right now, I simply believe some stuff you don’t need.

[00:09:18] If you want to, you could keep them, but obviously, you don’t need this other stuff if you’re just getting started. What’s more important is the themes that we’re going to talk about in just a moment, as well as getting writing. So I’m just going to go ahead and delete those, deactivate them. And then we’re actually going to start moving on to settings, which you see right here.

[00:09:35] All right. So now we have installed WordPress. We’ve got web hosting, we’ve installed a basic WordPress theme. I think you should install a premium WordPress theme, and I’ll cover that in just a moment. We’ve made some significant changes to our website so that we can get discovered. And then we’re going to start writing, but before we start writing, let’s jump over to theme forest, and you can come here.

[00:09:57] This is the second link in the description. The first link in the description took you over to Bluehost. This link will actually take you over to themeforest.net, and you’ll be able to find premium WordPress themes. Now there are free themes, and there are premium themes. Premium themes are going to offer more features and functionality.

[00:10:14] For example, if we typed in like sports. Here, you’re going to see all sorts of sports themes that you can download and install right into your computer. It just adds additional features and functionality. Maybe there’s a scheduler, or maybe a countdown to the next game. If we’re talking about the Dallas Cowboys, how cool would that be?

[00:10:32] If you had an automated countdown timer? That went from game to game. So people can start getting excited, but you can find all sorts of different things to install on your WordPress website. These are just themes. Now what you’re going to do is you’re going to find a theme that you’re interested in.

[00:10:48] You’re going to click this cart button, and it’s going to get added to your cart. The next step is you’re going to check out, and you’re going to pay for the theme, and you’re going to download a zip file was a folder right to your computer. The next step is to go over to your WordPress back office simply.

[00:11:04] Like I am. Now, you’re going to go to appearance. You’re going to click on themes, and you are going to click on, add new to add that new theme. Once we get here, you’re going to click on the upload theme, and you will drag and drop that second zip file right here. So you’re going to click on choose file.

[00:11:19] You’re going to drag and drop it, or you can manually find it and click, install and activate. Once you do that, you are going to have a brand new theme on your website. And so, really, the final thing that we need to do is just to start writing. Now, writing is critical in how you write incredibly important to get discovered by search engines.

[00:11:41] And what we’re going to do is we’re going to find keywords, and we are going to use those keywords to write our blog posts. So, for example, let’s say we were writing on Dallas Cowboys when we wanted to talk about the history of the logo. So I’m just going to copy this right now. I’m going to go back over to our WordPress back office.

[00:12:01] I’m going to click on posts, and then I’m going to click on, add new. When I click on add new, I will paste that title in, and the reason I’m doing this is so that it’s the keyword. Search engine optimized so that people looking for information on the Dallas Cowboys logo can find it at my website.

[00:12:20] And what’s going to happen is once I publish, this is going to be our webpage. So our webpage is going to be web hosting, rewind.com forward slash Dallas Cowboys logo. And if we do this, you’re going to see that other websites are doing this as well. And they’re doing this what the whole purpose of getting discovered via the search engine.

[00:12:41] So if we scroll through here and you’d be able to see if you clicked on any of these, as it says here, Dallas Cowboys logo, they’re doing the same thing so that they can get discovered. And so what we’re going to do as we’re going to come back over here and we need to, so questions that I get all the time when it comes to blogging is how long should my blog posts be and how do I start writing?

[00:13:00] And so let’s go ahead and address those right now. Now, when it comes to how long your blog posts should be, it really does. And many factors. One, it depends on how long your competitors’ blog posts are. Do you want to make those around the same? Like maybe a little bit more. Also, it depends on the question.

[00:13:18] If it’s a simple question like the Dallas Cowboys logo, and you can answer that in 500 words. Answer it with 500 words, don’t spend 3000 words answering a 500-word question that doesn’t give you bonus points in the search engine results. And then, when it comes to writing, I like to brainstorm for about 10 minutes before I start writing.

[00:13:37] And when I brainstorm, I write down who, what, when, where, why, and how, and what I do in my brainstorming session is I simply. Jot down different questions. So questions that I would ask myself for are the Dallas Cowboys? Where did they start? Where are their practice facilities? Where is their training camp?

[00:14:00] When you can answer questions like this is going to help you fill out your blog much faster. It’s going to help you write faster in the long run, and you will be staying on target. And what I like to do is once I get done with my brainstorming session, I’ll turn this into an H two, just like this.

[00:14:15] And now I’ll simply go through, and I’ll answer the questions. We’ll say the Dallas Cowboys are America’s team based in Dallas, Texas, they blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. As you can see, when you do it this way, it’ll help you write much faster where you’ll go through, you’ll write your answer, and then you’ll click publish.

[00:14:34] Your webpage will be available for the world to see. Now let’s jump back over to our slide deck, and let’s talk about how to make money. Now, there are several ways to make money on your website. One of the easiest ways is simply to place ads right on your website. For example, if we go over to let’s type in Dallas Cowboys.

[00:14:55] Okay.

[00:15:00] Whoops. I meant to say blog here. Here, I think it’s this one. Blogging the boy. So for this website, this is a WordPress theme, but right here in the middle, this is an ad they’re working with an ad network, and they will receive money when someone clicks on this advertisement. And as you can see, as we scroll down here, they have ads in a few different places, and this is designed to help you make some money.

[00:15:26] When you first get started, you can actually start with an ad agency like Google AdSense. And when you get started with Google ads, since it’s 100% free, but you’re not going to make a lot of money, you’re going to get paid pennies on the dollar. Now, once you start getting consistent traffic, so once you start getting a lot of traffic, one thousand five thousand ten thousand page views per month, you can move on to other ad networks like Zoellick at thrive and media.

[00:15:50] But this is just one way that you can make money. Another way you can make money is with affiliate marketing. And if marketing is simply recommending or selling other people’s products and services, now the key to affiliate marketing. I was simply recommending products and services that will be congruent or in line with your target audience.

[00:16:08] For example, if I were the owner and manager of the blogging, the Cowboys are blogging. The boy’s blog website. What I would do is I’d be an affiliate for NFL shop because they can earn a commission when people buy. Cowboy gear, you could be a coming affiliate for Expedia or Priceline because people who come to these websites are more likely to be willing to travel to games or come to Dallas for games or place you could be an affiliate for is other, maybe like sports.

[00:16:38] If I’m in fantasy sports like DraftKings has an affiliate program, you could be an affiliate program for them as well. So there’s a lot of opportunities out there. And if you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, click the third link in the description. I do have a free course when it comes to affiliate marketing.

[00:16:53] Definitely check that out. So after affiliate marketing, you could definitely sell your own. And services. Maybe you have a digital product that has the history of the Cowboys, or maybe you’re teaching people how to play football. If you have a digital product, you can sell it right on your website.

[00:17:09] And it’s actually effortless. You can find plugins that will help you sell it. That’s outside of the scope of this video, but you can get up and running that way, and you can also sell physical products as well. So maybe you have t-shirts custom t-shirts. You can sell those as long as they’re obviously trademark friendly.

[00:17:25] They’re not infringing on anyone’s trademark or copyright, but there are many ways to make money. So if we jump back over to our slide deck, now, what I recommend that you do is go ahead and start sharing your cards. As you upload onto social media, the reason why you want to do that in the very beginning, it will be challenging to get traffic. Google doesn’t trust your content.

[00:17:45] And it really hasn’t compared it to content that it does trust. And so, in the very beginning, it’s going to be challenging what I recommended. Is go out and share your content on relevant forums and websites. Where example, if we’re talking about Dallas Cowboys, go out and find relevant forums and Facebook groups and share your content there. You can share it on Reddit on Cora Pinterest, Instagram, tic-tac LinkedIn, YouTube. There are many places that you can share your content and get up and running much faster.

[00:18:15] And the final question they get the most is how many blog posts should I write? This is a personal preference, but I think you should write at least 50 blog posts before deciding if your website’s a failure or a success. Now, I think 50 is a good number because it gives Google. Also, a lot of content allows you to get better at writing, which allows you to fix some mistakes.

[00:18:34] So if you go out there and you write 50 blog posts, you write one blog post every day or one blog post every other day, you’re going to start to see some successes and failures. So make sure you write consistently so that you can start getting traffic. Now, make sure you check out the three links in the description.

[00:18:50] The first link is to blue host so that you can get your web hosting and free domain. The second link is for your premium WordPress theme over at three and fours. And then the third link is to get an affiliate marketing course for free. So be sure to like subscribe and ring the bell if this video helped you out.

[00:19:04] Thanks for watching. And we’ll see you then.