Month: January 2020

Passive income from blogging: truth vs hype

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Passive income from blogging

Note: It is a fact that blogging is a way of generating passive income. But can it replace a full time job? or is the income blogging produce really as huge as protrayed by numerous articles on internet? How much of it are truth? lets find it here. You will get all your doubts about “passive income from blogging” cleared… go on reading.

Passive income from blogging: How much exactly?

Let me start with a simple statistics from Glassdoor.co.in. In its one survey conducted during November 2016, it estimated an average income of Indian bloggers, which was 392,590 INR!

Passive income by blogging

If this figure of earning by an Indian blogger surprize you then wait, a blogger from any corner of the world earns on an average$19,000 to $24,000 per year. Which if converted to Indian rupee then comes around 1,330,000 to Rs 1,680,000.

There are fulltime bloggers who are even earning even $200,000/year working 10-30 hours/week. So there are examples of persons who have made blogging an industry.

These are very reliable estimates calculated by some reputed bodies and we can rely on them. These earnings from a blog can be considered as passive income to some extent, as once blog posts are written, the earning from it is almost on autopilot mode.

So, Passive income! it was a very strange term for me when I first time heard it. To me, income was always something we get in turn of doing something, be it a job or a business of selling something.

So how come income can be passive anyway? I got curious, scour the internet and fascinated by the idea. It is all over the internet, hundreds of sites selling the dream of “get rich quick ” by blogging.

They sell the image of a blogger with his laptop beside a swimming pool enjoying his work or life, whatever you say. A life free from the 9 to 5 slavery and without any boss. Living life on your own term. Spending time with families without the tension of meeting deadlines.

Seriously, this was why started my blog almost one year back. No doubt the passive income factor worked as a strong motivation.

Truth vs Hype

But can blogging become such a source of income! This a very common question and very natural too. I was also full of doubt when I first heard about it. 

Although the prospect of earning from a blog is very thrilling and also very genuine, it is not that easy and not 100% passive as the dream sellers sell to you. This was what I learned during my first year of blogging.

Living such a dream life and still, money keeps coming at the month-end. Who does not want such a life? This dream can only become a reality when you have a steady source of passive income.

Marketing tactics

If you search on the internet with this search phrase “how to earn from blogging” you will get tons of article reading which you will develop the idea that blogging is very easy, needs no hard work at all. Money starts to flow automatically as soon as you start a blog.

Don’t get misguided by these articles because they are also selling something and facing fierce competition. Each year millions of new blogs are started with the same purpose, to sell blogging related tools.

There are bloggers who have become multi-millionaire, but their proportion is very less. There are billions of blogs on the internet, but only a small fraction of them are successful.

Here is another statistics that will show you another side of the coin

Passive income by blogging

So, now it is clear to you that not all who start their blog ultimately able to earn a lot. A significant portion of them manages to earn a very meager amount or even fail to earn.

So it’s a marketing strategy to beat the other rival marketers, they are in a competition to present earning from blogging as a cakewalk.

Take inspiration from them but also prepare your mind for a long battle and limit your expectations otherwise, you will get depressed when you will not get success as quickly as they portray. 

Why blogging for passive income?

There are a lot of passive income ideas that are well known and may go down well for many people. Passive income from renting a house, investing money in saving schemes and mutual funds, peer to peer lending, real estate investment, income from dividends, etc

These traditional income sources are called passive as they do not require your active involvement. These are such income sources well known and generally do not raise any question in peoples’ minds if they are really capable of generating passive income.

But when it comes to blogging, this idea still makes many people skeptical even in this 2020. And it is almost an impossible thought to take it up as a fool time career. 

Other benefits of blogging

Passive income is the most attractive side of blogging, there is no denial. But there are other benefits of blogging that improve you as a person and brings paradigm shift in your life.

The changes blogging brings in your life are

  • It helps to improve your writing skills. Though good writing skill is not a prerequisite for a successful blog. But as you advance in your blogging career automatically your writing skill gets sharpen.
  • There is no better platform to share your knowledge and skill than blogging.
  • If you were looking for some platform to express yourself then blogging is your best friend
  • As you go on providing useful content through your blog post gradually you develop a network of your followers and fellow bloggers. This is itself an achievement and brings a lot of recognition.
  • Blogging brings to you a lot of exposures
  • The niche you are blogging is your domain. The knowledge you share here is unique as it contains your insights. Thus it establishes you as an authority of that niche. People start to directly link that niche to you.

Creating a blog can really replace a full-time job?

Most of the people need an assured monthly income, which a 9 to 5 job only can give. Its good and I also agree with them. It gives mental peace. 

But is not a fixed time job limiting your potential? Can you expect to raise your salary beyond a fixed structure? Can you fulfill all your dreams with a job?

Ask these questions to yourself. A job is necessary to start a career but getting stuck whole life and waiting for a raise all the time to fulfill small wishes of your life, is a kind of slavery.

Everyone on this earth has some unique quality. And most of the times people live their whole life without recognizing them. Most of the people spent their whole life being mediocre working for someone else. Just to get a regular monthly income.

If you are also doing the same, you are not doing justice to yourself. Think beyond a job and express yourself to the world. It’s your right. And a blog is a very simple yet very powerful platform that can change your life. 

You can get details about blog writing here.

Read this article by famous blogger David Schneider where he reviews and summarizes blog writing tips from the world’s six topmost bloggers. Robbie Richard, Lena Gott of What Mommy Does, Ramit Sethi of I will teach you to be rich, Matthew Woodward, Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income and Neil Patel are those few names in the blogging world who have establishes there credibility beyond any question.

Read this article and note down the points as I also have done, it will help to save a lot of your time that otherwise be wasted finding the right strategy to write a blog.

Is it really a passive income?

Not many of us think of blogging as a business. To them, writing content is just a passion. So I have seen people with extraordinary writing talent and often they even have no clue that they can earn by writing.

But the thing is earning from blogging is not new. Bloggers are earning from their blogs for quite some time. Blogging has established itself as a multi-million dollar industry and growing further rapidly. 

There are many ways to earn from a blog. I have discussed in detail about the ways to earn from blogging here. 

This 2020 is going to see a boom in online marketing or digital marketing and blogging will have a fair share of it. 

If you are yet to start a blog, then there is no better time to start it than now. 

Read this article on How to write a blog post (actionable tips ANYONE can follow) to jump-start your blogging venture.

You can also watch this video of famous digital marketer Neil Patel on passive income from blogging. 

It’s a very informative video with important facts and advice. He is a master of online marketing with huge experience and also now guides new bloggers to be successful in their blogging business.

Is it possible to create passive income from blogging with no money?

Yes absolutely, you can open a free account at WordPress, Blogger or Medium to start blogging and gradually as you grow traffic, you can monetize it and start earning. 

If you want to start a real business then it is better to go for a paid WordPress blog setup. Compare to a free blog account, a paid WordPress account gives you much more liberty to customize it. 

To start with a WordPress account, it requires a little amount to invest, but the features you get with this account, worth the money. Your blog has a professional look that every prospective customer looks for.

The best thing, you get your personal domain instead of a subdomain. This helps you a lot when you are quite established in your business and needs a brand identity. With a subdomain that is tough if not impossible though.

For a paid WordPress account you can go for the personal account at the starting phase.

So as you can see here, even you go for a paid account it will cost you below $50/year (for the subscription of more than a year). It is a very little amount when we are talking about starting a business here. Is there any other business in the earth that you can start with such a meager investment. 

Patience is the key to success 

Blogging is an amalgamation of lots of skills and subjects at one platform. You may get overwhelmed to tackle all of them at a time. But this your hard work and consistent effort which pays in the long run. 

Especially if you are just starting as a blogger, during the initial stage, it is only learning, learning and learning. Invest your time and energy to learn writing skills, copywriting, SEO and get familiar with different blogging related tools.

Don’t expect any earning at this initial stage. Don’t get mad at me. I know this is what made you read this post to this point. What I mean to say that blogging is not some “get rich quick” strategy. It is a time taking process and needs patience. 

Being too focused towards earning money at a very early stage of blogging will also deviate you from creating good content, learning different skills and ultimately create frustration when things will not happen as you expected.

I have already said that blogging is also a business and like every successful business it also requires an establishment phase. As you can not expect a long queue of customers in front of your store just the next day of opening it, likewise you can not start earning when you have just started writing.

Create content worth reading

It is also true that the field of blogging has already become quite competitive. Each day millions of new blogs are getting published of which almost 90% remains unnoticed, no one ever visits them.

Most of these blogs don’t even continue after six months they are created. The owners of these blogs abandoned them as either they found it boring or gets frustrated being not able to earn from it.

The main reason behind this is that the content they publish, do not worth reading. And this happens when someone publishes something only to make money. Without any passion or knowledge on the topic.

Gone are the days when any kind of content created has a chance to generate income. In 2020 you have to create something which really stands out from the crowd. 

The content must be original, unique, engaging and very useful. If the content is useful, people will like it, there will be more traffic and the possibility of making more money.

Conclusion

So, hope that I am able to convince you why you should start a blog in 2020.

Start writing on topics you really love. Pour your heart into it. Share your real-life experiences however insignificant it may appear to you. There are always people out there who are experiencing the same as you and you can help them out with your blog.

Make it passion and then feel the magic. Slowly you will have your own audience. They will wait for your new blog post. And this the main reward of blogging. The recognition a quality blog brings to you is priceless. 

Blogging helps you to discover a new form of yourself. A far more improved version of yourself. 

At this stage when your blog already has a large target audience, you can apply a number of ways to monetize it. You can experiment with it as you wish. The game of earning money from blogging is in your control now.

But until you reach this stage, you have to show your patience and continue the hard work.

And when passive income starts flowing from your blog… this is the best thing you have ever done in your life.

How to write a blog post (actionable tips ANYONE can follow)

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How to write a blog post

If you are looking for a detailed guideline on how to write a blog post? This article is for you. The most effective way to let the world know about your skill, knowledge, experience and to build your own network o followers is nothing but to write a blog post.

As I have already mentioned in my earlier blog post, that a blog is a short form of “weblog” just like writing a diary of old days (you can get more about what is a blog here).

To write a good blog post it requires a passion within you about the topic. If you are writing a blog article without really being passionate about the subject or without proper knowledge about it, sooner or later you will get exhausted of content ideas.

 You need to post interesting articles for your readers at a regular interval. To do that consistently you have to create a big list of blog topics beforehand. So that you never get out of content ideas.

Good subject knowledge is also very essential to provide your insight and analyze the subject effectively. 

Here are some important tips which

3 most important factors to write a good blog post

Any blog has 3 most important building blocks to start with which are

  1. Identifying the target audience
  2. Choosing a niche to blog on and
  3. Selecting a domain

To write a good blog post, make it sustainable with any future algorithmic change in Google you have to make sure everything is correct regarding these three factors.

1. Understand your audience

The first and most important step to write a good blog is to know your audience first. Your language and tone of narration should be in accordance with your target audience.

The particular niche you are writing your blog should have a specific audience group of particular age and purpose, so always keep that factor in mind while writing your blog.

2. Choose a blogging niche

Selecting a niche is the most important step to start blogging. Select your niche wisely so that you do not get bored with writing and want to try any other topic. It may cost you valuable time and other resources dearly.

So don’t hurry to select your niche. Take some time, do proper research before finalizing your blogging niche.

Keep the following points in mind while selecting a blogging niche

  • Pick a topic which is close to your heart 
  • The niche should be profitable and with enough market opportunity

If your starting blog with business in mind and has a plan to do affiliate marketing or marketing your own product, then during niche selection, make sure if the niche is at all profitable.

  • Pick a niche which has good search volume and competition is low

As you are just starting your blog so you can not stand a competition with the authority websites or pro bloggers blogging for a considerable period of time. 

So your target should be to select such a niche that has a moderate search volume with low competition. You can use the Google keyword research tool to get an idea about monthly search volume and competition of any topic.

There are many other free very useful keyword research tools available both free and paid. You can go through a compilation of such tools here.

  • Should interest your audience

As you have now identified your audience, select an appropriate niche focusing the target audience; their age group and interest.

3. Selecting a blog domain

Now as the niche is finalized, its time to create a domain name. For those, who don’t have an idea about the domain name, the domain name of any website is like the address of any house. 

Your website is also like a small house in the vast world of the internet. How can a visitor be able to locate your website without an address? Here the domain name of a website comes to rescue.

A domain name is a URL or Uniform Resource Locator is the address that your visitors will type in the browser to navigate your site.

Points to remember while creating a domain name

  • Choose a unique name reflecting the blogging niche. Carefully select it avoiding any brand name or trade name. For example, if you are blogging on yourself then using your name in the domain can be a good idea.
  • Go for a .COM domain. The .COM is the most widely recognized and most trusted top level domain (TLD). this TLD is also very helpful for performing on-page SEO. 
  • Try to use any important keyword from your niche in the domain name.
  • Keep it simple, short and easy to remember. Avoid using hyphen and complex numbers.
  • A domain name is displayed as a continuous phrase without any space between words. So make sure that the domain does not bear any other combination of words.

Write a blog post about yourself

Writing about yourself is usually the best and easiest option for many people to start with blogging. This is in many ways is very similar to writing a diary of back old days.

Each and every person has some unique and special experiences in his life. You must have gone through some unforgettable experience and learned some important lessons therefrom. Sharing such experiences can help a lot of people who are also going through the same.

So, you also can start to write your blog post by writing about yourself. But here also you should follow the thumb rules as given below:

  • Maintain a very friendly tone. Assume that you are talking to someone sitting beside you.
  • Use your sense of humor wisely and sensibly so that it does not become funny or distract the reader.
  • Use your image. It establishes the authenticity of the post and creates a link between the reader and the writer.
  • Be humble, be honest.

Is there any advantage of writing a blog in English?

The answer is YES. The biggest reason being the huge reader base. You can reach the maximum number of people through your blog if it is written in English.

Another important advantage of writing a blog in English is that doing on-page SEO is easier if the article written in English.

Google algorithms, crawlers, and Google bots are developed to mainly judge the quality of website posts and pages written in English. And so are almost all the keyword research tools. 

So if you write in English then you can easily do your on-page SEO and have a higher chance to rank your page high in Google search result pages.

How to write a blog post and make money?

Blogging is a great way to earn a significant amount of passive income. Earning from blogging is a passive income in a true sense i.e. your blog will generate income even when you are sleeping.

You have to just work hard for once to set up your blog, add quality content in it and monetize it to reap the benefit later.

There are lots of ways you can monetize your blog. You can read the detailed guide of how can you earn from your blog here. 

Acquire the skill of writing a blog post fast

If you are fust starting your blog, then it is quite a daunting task to maintain a schedule of publishing your blogs at a regular interval. Especially if writing is not your cup of tea and typing is a big headache for you.

To make your start a little easier, here are some effective tips that can help you to acquire the skill to create a good blog in less time. Although you have to practice this to get perfect.

  • First of all, select a topic with good search volume and low competition. 
  • Write down a kickass title that exactly reflects your blog’s purpose and catch the attention of your audience instantly. 
  • Do proper keyword research and write down your H1, H2, H3, and other headings as required. Use your focus keyword in the title and main headings.
  • Consider each of your headings as a separate blog and target to write at least 1500 to 2000 words blog. If you have four headings in your blog then write 500 words for each of them assuming each one of them as a separate blog, thus you can easily write a blog with 2000 words.
  • Don’t get overwhelmed by planning and targeting a huge number of blogs in a short time. Most of the beginner bloggers fix a quite impossible target reading and watching different blogs and youtube videos and become frustrated if fail to meet them.
  • If you practice consistently and keep patience during the tough initial stage when you have to learn and also execute so many different things related to blogging. 
  • But once you sustain this stage, you will start to enjoy the whole freedom of creativity in the process of blogging. You get more and more confident. You will start to know your audience better, will get more involved in networking with other players in the field.
  • At this point, the quality of your content gets more improved; as a consequence, your website will start to get more visitors.

Creating your blog for free

Often people hesitate to spare money to start blogging. They are hesitant because they are not sure if they can continue with this and become successful.

This feeling drives them to look for some way where they can learn the basics of blog writing and can test their blogging skills for free before spending for hosting and domain.

Fortunately, there are lots of platforms are nowadays available where you can start your blog completely free. These blogging platforms are no doubt very useful and bloggers even earning a handsome amount from Google Adsense ads on their blogs.

One such platform is Google’s Blogger. It is a multi-user blog publishing service originally developed by Pyra Labs and later acquired by Google in 2003.

Blogs in blogger are hosted by Google and use the subdomain of blogspot.com.

Among other free blogging platforms, some popular names are Medium, Hubpages, Wix, Tumblr, etc.

WordPress which is running almost 34% of all internet is another option that provides paid as well as free content management services. But you need to pay for domain and hosting. 

Writing a blog: Do’s and Do not’s

Finally here are some quick tips which you should follow and a few things you should avoid while blogging.

First the Do’s:

  • Remain focussed on your topic 

Don’t get carried away while writing a long article and lose the relevance of your topic. Remain razor focussed on the topic.

  • Try to maintain a friendly tone and write as if your reader is sitting beside you.
  • Always remember that your reader will always an individual; so maintain a one to one conversion tone.
  • Your content should be a really useful one. It should provide answers to all possible questions of your readers.
  • Give a title that compels the user to click on it.
  • Add multimedia and infographics to engage your visitors and increase their dwell time.
  • Do avoid writing long paragraphs. 
  • Read your post thoroughly, correct all errors before clicking publish button
  • Use original content and provide your insight into the subject.
  • Be consistent in publishing blogs. Fix a time be it daily or weekly, maintain your schedule. 

Now the Don’ts:

  • Do not write complex sentences.
  • Never use any copyrighted item without permission.
  • Do not use any unprofessional language in your blog.
  • Do not over-optimize your article. Always remember on-page SEO is necessary but ultimately your readers are human beings.
  • At last, the most important one DO NOT GIVE UP. like any other business, blogging or digital marketing also needs an establishment phase. You have to keep patience and keep on creating content.

You have to learn many things when you are just starting your journey. But you also have to implement all those lessons by writing blogs. 

So do not spend all your time just only learning; start actually writing too. You can not expect your first blog to be a perfect one. As you go on writing you will learn, grow and become more and more perfect. 

So take the first step right now without wasting any more time.

Wish you all the best and very happy blogging 🙂