Blog writing

This is a blog I created which is, by the way, my passion too, and will guide you to follow your passion too to earn a handsome income

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 🙂

What is blog writing? a comprehensive guide

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What is blog writing

In a very simple way, it can be said that blog writing is sharing your knowledge in a very informal way. Blog writing is generally performed either by an individual or a group of individuals.

Blog writing is generally done in a very informal way. As the main purpose of a blog writing is sharing knowledge, so standard of language is not a point of concern here.

Blog writing is something like writing a diary

Have you ever written a diary to record your day to day activities? In our childhood days, we often advised by our elders to maintain a diary.

It helps a person in many ways like make him disciplined, improves himself correcting mistakes earlier made by him and in every way to be a better version of himself.

One can write a blog out of passion, to publish something he/she wants to share with the world. Or one can write a blog to start his own business.

Passive source of earning

Blog writing can be a very lucrative way to earn passive income and if implemented in a correct way with proper business strategy, then one can become a full-time blogger even earn a fortune.

Before we dive deep into our main topic of blog writing, lets first discuss some basic terms.

What is blog?

In this digital age, blog writing is like writing a diary of past days. Blog or “web-log” is more or less a digital diary.

A blog is like an online journal where one or more than one person can share their views on any particular topic. In a blog, generally different posts appear starting from the most recent one.

A blog can be of various types like a food blog, fashion blog, travel blog, etc. Any topic which is close to your heart or you have experience of it or you have some special skill or knowledge that can be shared with others can be chosen to write a blog.

What is vlog?

It is also a blog that is a weblog, but the difference is it contains video clips. So it gets its name from the video log.

Here the message the person shared with the world is through web television and most often contains embedded messages, supporting texts and other metadata.

The purpose of creating vlogs is the same as writing blogs. Generally, people do it for fun or generating revenues.

As with the time video contents are getting more popularity than text-based content, vlogs are also gaining huge popularity.

Celebrities are just creating videos of their daily activities and their followers are liking it crazily.

Vloggers may create their own websites or can simply post their content on youtube.

Blog writing in Hindi

If you are a blogger from India and your target audience is mainly Indians, then you can think of writing your blog in Hindi.

As Hindi is the most popular dominant medium of communication in India, people love to read in Hindi. This language is very close to their hearts and easy to understand for billions of Indians.

So, there is a chance that you will create a large follower base of your blog very quickly.

Although there is a serious problem associated with Hindi blogs. Which is, Google search engine and bots don’t understand Hindi. So, doing SEO for a Hindi blog is a tough call.

Blog writing and make money

A blog can be a very useful instrument for generating passive income. There are many avenues for earning from a blog. You can get a detailed idea about earning from a blog here.

Many people are there doing full-time blogging and living a boss free life on their own terms. To me, this is the best life one can dream of.

If you are also interested and wish to live such a life, then start a blog of your own today. You can take the help of online resources of blog writing courses. The internet is flooded with such courses and many of them are even available free of cost.

Blog writing course

There are so many resources are available online nowadays. You can easily gain a good amount of working knowledge about blog writing simply following some good youtube videos.

For example, here is a youtube video from the famous digital marketer Neil Patel. Watch this short video to jump-start your blog writing.

Besides, there are popular blog writing courses available in Udemy both free and paid.

Follow this blog by Ryan Robinson to know about some popular blog writing courses if you are really serious about it.

You may be familiar with the name Harsh Agarwal of Shout Me Loud. He is one of the most famous blogger from India. Shout Me Loud of Harsh Agarwal can be a good online source for beginners to start.

Blog writing jobs

Blog writing of content writing is a very lucrative job nowadays. You can do freelancing and offer your writing skills to create content for your client’s blog.

Generally, depending on your skill and experience you can earn $50 to $500 US Dollar and even more per 1000 words.

As you establish yourself as an experienced and skilled content creator, you get more clients and earning also gets increased.

Blog writing sites

A blogger can choose a variety of platforms to showcase his content writing talent.

There are lots of sites where you can start your blogging journey. Some of them are completely free whereas some are not, but they provide lots of customization power to you.

Free blog writing sites

If he is a beginner and in a tight budget, then he can choose the most popular platform Blogger of Google. It is a very good blogging platform and provides a sophisticated blog publishing service free of cost!

But here you have to use the subdomain of blogspot.com which is hosted by Google.

Besides Blogger, there are other numbers of free blogging platforms are available, like Medium, Tumblr, Wix, Ghost, etc.

All of them are good and free. If you are blogging just for your hobby then these platforms are the most suitable for you.

But if you are planning to start blogging with a business plan in mind and want to scale it in the future, then I would suggest you go for building your own website.

WordPress blog

If you have a business in your mind, then better start your own website and for that setting up a WordPress blog will be the most ideal.

WordPress is the most popular content management system till date, powering almost 26.4% of the total web.

It is very easy to use and start a website. You don’t have to know anything about coding.

The best part of WordPress.com is that it is a freemium website and one of the best hosting services for not only blog but any kind of website and eCommerce.

Blog writing topics

Blog writing topics can vary from person to person. It is solely your choice which topic you like to write about.

Any niche where you have a special interest, can provide your insight and help people to solve their problem can be your blog topic.

While selecting your blog writing topic you should also keep in mind its marketing potential if your goal of blogging is to set up a business. The topic should be such one that has considerable search volume and low competition.

It is very common that people easily get out of content ideas, get bore of writing blogs. This happens when anyone selects some topic that is not of there choice.

When you are starting your blog then you should select such a topic that is close to your heart and you should have a list of 100 content ideas always ready to continue your blog posting.

For example, you can start a blog about yourself and write about any experience, struggle you did to overcome any hurdle of your life or any good experience whatever else you want to share with the world.

Blog writing format

Following a standard blog, writing format is essential to engage your audience and keep them as long as possible on your post. Here are some tips which can be followed to write a well-formatted blog post.

  • Start your blog with a proper title with H1 tag.
  • Start your content immediately after the title
  • Break your content using H1, H2, H3, H4 and other tags to display major headlines
  • Use small paragraphs (consisting only 2 to 3 lines)
  • Use multimedia contents to keep your audience engaged
  • Infographics are a very attractive and effective way to present data and statistics. It makes your content more attractive as well as make numbers and figures easy to understand for your audience.
  • If possible, make your own video or share relevant videos from youtube, Dailymotion or any other video hosting websites. As video content is gaining very fast popularity among the audience, it can significantly increase the time a visitor spends on your site.
  • Follow a defined structure while writing a blog, it should have a header, footer, title, main content, sidebar (optional) and other necessary components at the proper place.

Here is an ideal blog structure is given for your reference.

What is blog writing and an ideal blog structure

Conclusion

I hope that this article helped you to have a good idea about writing a blog. Writing a blog opens a whole new world to you and helps to transform your life. It boosts your creativity, makes you more productive.

Whatever age group you may belong you can start blog writing. You just need to be creative to provide unique and useful content.

Latest from WordPress: generate recurring income from blogging

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Generate recurring income from blogging

Generate recurring income from blogging

As you know that almost 34% of the total website in the world has been built using WordPress; according to W3Tech, WordPress has 58.55% total market share of Content Management System (CMS). Making WordPress the most trusted and loved content management system.  And WordPress is making life easy for millions of bloggers for years. This new feature also added by WordPress to add value for its users so that they can generate recurring income from blogging from there readers, customers and fans.

Steps to generate recurring income from blogging 

There are already a hundred other ways to generate recurring income from the WordPress blog. WordPress in its blog expressed their concern for the user of their content management system that they want their content creators to be free from the worry of making money and to give their hundred percent in creating quality content. The earning part will be taken care of by this new feature by generating additional recurring income besides there regular income from different ads.

Your followers can be supportive with periodic payments for your newsletters, donations, exclusive access to different courses and books and everything about the payment will be handled by an automated system.

Basic requirements

This new feature has some prerequisites. Your WordPress site needs to be set up with the following essential components.

Jetpack plugin

To make this payment feature fully functional, your website should be a jetpack powered WordPress site. This feature of WordPress has come into existence during November of this year after the Jetpack team has completed its beta test during May 2019.

Association with Stripe account

For subscribers to make the payment seamlessly, a Stripe account needs to be configured in your WordPress account.  Stripe is an online payment account joint that has tied up with WordPress for this new feature.

Though Indian bloggers cannot use this payment system right now as the service of the stripe account payment system not yet available in this country.  You can get the list of countries here where Stripe service is already available. But we can expect that in future the service may be extended to this region also.

A paid WordPress account

Also, this feature WordPress is not providing to those users with a free account in WordPress. Which means you need to become a paid subscriber of this CMS. Below the fee structure for WordPress account is given for your reference.

  • WordPress.com eCommerce (Without Jetpack plan) – No fee
  • WordPress.com Business (With Jetpack Professional plan) – 2% per sale
  • WordPress.com Premium (With Jetpack Premium plan) – 4% per sale
  • WordPress.com Personal (With Jetpack Personal plan) – 8% per sale

From the above fees structure, you can notice that if your earnings from your blog are in a lower bracket then most of your earnings may be lost from the fee you need to pay to WordPress.  So, the scheme is only profitable to those bloggers who earn from their blog a considerable amount and they also think to choose a higher level plan to optimize their earning adjusting the fee.

How can you use this new feature of WordPress to generate recurring income from blogging

Here are four easy steps that you have to follow to implement this new feature is your website.

1.  login into your WordPress account

Log in to your WordPress account with your user id and password.

Generate recurring income from blogging

2. Configure your Stripe account

In this second step, you need to configure your Stripe account. If you are an Indian blogger, then you may not have heard its name as its network has not still spread in this country. But it is already a reputed name in Internet’s payment processors, in fact, the biggest one.

To configure Stripe account, just go to the Earn page In your WordPress account; start using the new payment feature by navigating to the Connect stripe to get started.

Generate recurring income from blogging

3.  Complete your setup

To complete the setup process, open your website or blog post and create a new block and insert the payment button.

Generate recurring income from blogging

4. Offer subscriptions

Generate recurring income from blogging

Now you can offer subscriptions for the content in your website specifying the currencies in which you need the amount, payment frequencies and other terms and conditions.

You can also check out this short video made by WordPress for step by step configuration of this payment process.

Okay, now you are all set to go.

As you have already configured the total payment process, you are good to reap the benefits of this new feature.  which are as follows:

This will generate recurring income so, kind of peace of mind of getting an income at regular intervals.

Your supporters can pay you at a predefined schedule and also can unsubscribe any service from your website at any point of time.

You can offer subscriptions of different products and content of your website, site membership to your customers and can also accept donations from them.

The total system is automated with automatic collection of membership dues. All kinds of payments are smoothly handled by stripe system easy integration.

Your target audience will be also happy with this service as they can now easily e subscribe and purchase your content, with the seamless transaction process and also all the subscriptions individual subscriber is maintained at one place.

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[BEST] 14 effective tips to boost organic traffic using Pinterest in 2020

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Boost organic traffic to your blog using Pinterest

This post contains a comprehensive guide about how you can boost organic traffic using Pinterest in 2019. If you have just started your blog this year and looking for bringing organic traffic to it then this post may prove very useful to you. As no one knows about your blog at the initial stage so, naturally there is no visitor on your website. To get noticed quickly promotion of your blog plays a vital role. And, what can be a better medium than social media to promote your blog? 

All popular social network platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. are very effective to interact with your audience and fellow bloggers. But in this article, I am going to focus on the most effective social platform amongst these which is Pinterest.

Why Pinterest?

You can use your Pinterest account as a traffic magnet. Why Pinterest is the best option and so much effective to boost organic traffic to your blog?…. 

The following infographic will give you the answer…

Boost organic traffic to your blog using Pinterest
Pinterest driving the most organic traffic among all social media platforms

So, you must be convinced that if you have to promote your blog, Pinterest is the most effective platform you have. So my suggestion will be as you work on your blog, put some time to promote it also; otherwise it will be like a shop without a signboard, no one will neither know about it nor ever visit.

Need for a comprehensive article

Now if you search in Google typing the search phrase “ How to increase traffic using Pinterest”, you will get 5,53,00,000 search results. I have also searched typing the same keyword in Google, as I have no idea about using Pinterest itself, leave alone using it for increasing traffic.

Boost organic traffic using Pinterest

I have a facebook account and this was the only social platform I have ever used. So, I was keen to gather knowledge about using Pinterest to boost traffic to my blog theblogpassion.com. So, after scouring the results from the first search page even next 2-3 pages I found really some good helpful tips. 

I searched youtube too for help. There are some really helpful videos that guided me quite well. One such video from Caffeinated Blogger with millions of views was really awesome. I could not resist myself but to share it here.

But the problem was with the tips are completely scattered on the internet. I need to visit a number of pages to get the complete picture of how can I best manage my Pinterest account to drive maximum traffic. So, I planned to compile all those tips at one place which I can refer to any time.

So here is that compilation I am sharing with you so that you get the comprehensive guide on how to boost organic traffic using Pinterest in one place and save you lots of time.

Boost organic traffic using Pinterest: Pinterest traffic strategy 

1. Research your pins in context to your niche

The first step of using Pinterest to drive organic traffic to your blog is to start creating well-researched pins that are in line with your niche. These pins must qualify the following parameters:

  • Process well described: The pins should focus on a particular keyword and contain a detailed description of the process.
  • Interesting: The pins should arise interest among the visitors. The image or texts must be eye-catching.
  • Emotion evoking: If any pin is able to touch visitors’ emotional chord then it is highly likely that they will want to read the complete post linked to the pin.
  • Informative with data and statistics: Present some very relevant and insightful statistics which will give a glimpse of the topic you are going to discuss in your post.
Boost organic traffic using Pinterest

You should visit the boards of your domain and observe minutely the highest repinned posts. From them you will get a good ides about how and ideal pin should be. See the above image; as my niche is blogging and earning from it, so I have presented here some popular pins of this niche.

2. Always go for a business account

While opening an account with Pinterest, choose the account type as a business account; or if you have already had a normal account on Pinterest, you can convert it to a business account. 

A business account has some special features helpful for business promotion and analysis which a normal account does not. For example, you can not create a rich pin without a business account and the analytics part is also exclusively for business account holders.

For a Pinterest Business account, either you can open a fresh account of business type or can change a personal account to a business account from account settings option, see the image below.

Boost organic traffic using Pinterest

This is the screenshot of my Pinterest account settings. As my account is a business account already, so it is showing the option to convert to a personal account.

3. Create pins linking valuable resources

It is very important that your pin in Pinterest directs the visitors to some engaging content resource. Any pin with only a beautiful image and without any content is less shown by Pinterest. 

You have to keep in mind that Pinterest is different than Flickr which is solely based on images without any content. After an algorithmic change during 2016 Pinterest puts priority to all those pins leading to good, useful resources.

4. Describe your pin appropriately

Your Pin’s description is very important. This description is what makes your visitors decide whether to read the complete post or not.

To create a good description, focus on four essential components of a very effective pin. These four components have been identified by Pinterest by analyzing over 10,000 pins:

  1. Your pin should contain some actionable tips, which ensure an immediate result when any user implements them. An actionable tip can improve your Pin’s viewer engagement as high as 80%.
  2. The one or two sentences (generally, only the first 50 characters of any Pin description are visible to any visitor) of the Pin description should contain a crisp but detailed purpose of your pin. This should entice the reader to click on the pin for reading the whole article.
  3. The copy description should be interesting and create positive sentiments.
  4. Must be helpful which is a factor responsible for more than 30% viewers engagement.

5. Create pins with great images

Pins with great images easily catch viewers’ attention and have a high probability that the reader will also visit your blog. To get an idea you can visit any popular digital marketer’s Pinterest account and can experience the way they organize their accounts with beautiful and informative images.

Pinterest can be imagined as a very attractive, glossy digital magazine full of great visuals. To make yourself stand out from the crowd, you have to compete for those visuals and create pins more enticing than others.

Another important fact is that usually, the long format of photos gets more attention from the readers. That to say, images like infographics which generally have more height in pixels, generally get more number of pins and helps to boost organic traffic using Pinterest.

6. Use texts in images

Use appropriate texts that will help your reader to have a quick idea about your pin and its context. 

Boost organic traffic using Pinterest

See the above pins, when you know what the pins are about, and it is of your interest then you will click on the pin and read details about it.

Now see the below pins, they have nothing mentioned about them. When a visitor has no idea what are these pins about, there is a far lesser chance that anyone will click on it.

Boost organic traffic using Pinterest

Nowadays, adding text in images is very easy. You can use online tools like PicMonkey or Canva to add beautiful and meaningful texts to your images. 

7. Put efforts in networking, increasing followers 

There is absolutely no doubt that as your network grows and followers increase, traffic to your blog also increases. But having said that, you can also find several boards in Pinterest with few thousand and with a few hundred thousand members having the same traffic to their website.

This fact made me believe that there is a threshold of traffic driven by followers on Pinterest. So, my suggestion will be beside increasing networking, you should be consistent to pin consistently linking quality content in your domain.

Reach to millions

Eventually, it will lead your pins to be labeled by Pinterest as “Picked for you”. This “picked for you” segment is generally displayed on the user’s home feed. Thus your pins set to reach now millions of Pinterest users who are not even following you.

Here the example of Etsy can be a good fit. You can learn how to keep your audience engaged and market your content through pins. Basically, it is an eCommerce site with a focus on vintage and handmade items and craft supplies. 

To boost its online marketing, Etsy uses its Pinterest platform quite remarkably. It rules the Pinterest marketing arena with its 90 boards and more than 8,600 visually eye-catching pins.

Boost organic traffic using Pinterest

8. Create board names, pin descriptions using focus and LSI keywords

As you now know that if your content qualifies to be displayed as “piked for you” or as a relevant topic on the user’s home feed, then you are already visible to millions of Pinterest users. 

But another vital point to qualify as a relevant topic, your pin title or board title and description should contain the focus keyword or related or LSI keywords. Otherwise, Pinterest will not understand if your topic is a related one.

9. Use related keyword suggestions

As you log into the Pinterest account and search for some keywords in the search box. With the search result, Pinterest also displays some related keywords at the top of the window (please see the image below.)

Boost organic traffic using Pinterest

These keywords are like Latent Semantic Keywords or LSI keywords provided by Google search console for any keyword search.

You should include these keywords also in your board title or pin description. This will help the Pinterest algorithm to understand the particular domain or niche your pins are related to.

For example, if I consider pinning this article then an ideal board name for that pin can be “blogging tips” which will clearly signal Pinterest that it is a blogging related pin. 

10. Repins are important, try to increase them

In recent times any content becomes viral depending on how many users have shared it. As you know any twit becomes popular when a huge number of other twitter users retweet it. 

Pinterest is also no exception. The quality of your pin is judged by the Pinterest algorithm using the number of repins.  Any pin which gets 1000 repins in 2 days has a higher chance of ranking higher in Pinterest search engine result than the pin which gets the same number of repins in 7 days.

11. Group board: Old, but still an effective strategy

This is an old but still an effective Pinterest traffic strategy. If you have just started any blog and wish to have maximum traffic possible from Pinterest, then joining several group boards and interacting with board members is a good idea.

Earlier I have the idea about Facebook groups only, so I can’t help but compare Pinterest board to Facebook groups. And, I found lots of similarities between these two. Here also every Pinterest board is owned and moderated by someone and has some guidelines which every board members have to abide by.

If you manage to an appropriate board to be a member of, you can exhibit your pins to thousands of like-minded Pinterest users with a common interest.

12. Use rich pins

Rich pins are a feature of Pinterest which shows much more information on each pin to provide a detailed context about any idea. Such rich pins are mainly of four types, Recipe pins, product pins, article pins, and app pins.

Boost organic traffic using Pinterest

Rich pins have several advantages over ordinary pins. Like your pins always stand out of ordinary pins by its appearance. Rich pins get a favicon when it is displayed in mobile and with a bold title when users see it on desktop. 

So, users can clearly distinguish a rich pin from ordinary pins and naturally get attracted to it. Again for reach pins, Pinterest populates the description part from the source content and users can not manipulate it anyway.

Especially if your promoting your blog, then an article pin is the best choice for you. Through article rich pin you can easily create very attractive pins with your blog title & logo, its description, bigger headline and a link to your blog post. If you have a WordPress blog with Yoast SEO plugin, then creating an article rich pin is super easy.

But you have to either create a business account in Pinterest or convert your ordinary account to a business account to avail this facility of creating rich pins.

13. Be consistent and maintain a schedule to pin

This is a very basic rule for even in blogging also. If you are a blogger and blogging seriously for sometimes, you know why it is so important to post regularly and update your content regularly.

To keep your audience engaged and signal Google that the blog is active and serving useful content to its audience at a regular interval, consistency is the key.

Same here in Pinterest too. Try to pin consistently, at least 10-15 pins daily. When Pinterest will see that you are creating a number of good pins daily, it will also ensure that the pins get visitors.

14. Fix a time to pin

Every day thousands of pins appear on any Pinterest user’s home feed. So, what is the way to make your pin stand out from the crowd? How can you make a maximum number of people see your pin and repin it as maximum as possible?

A very effective way to do that is to fix a particular time and date when your parget audience remains online in the highest numbers. A study report published in HubSpot blog disclosed a very interesting fact that Saturday morning is the best time to start Pinning. 

If you have a fashion or retail blog then you should post it on Friday after 3 PM.

During working hours generally, very less number of people remains active on Pinterest, so. You must avoid the working hours to post any of your pins.

Audience location and demography plays a role:

To fine-tune your pinning time, you should analyze the locations of your target audience and their demographics. But always remember over pinning is a very bad policy. Optimize your number of pins also.

Some more ideas to improve your pinning strategy in order to boost organic traffic to your blog using Pinterest:

  • Pinterest has several other effective features except for Rich pins which can help you to display your content to more people. To name some of them are Pin it button, Promoted pins, etc. make it super easy for any visitor to find your pins.
  • Pinterest has a dedicated marketing blog and Pinterest guide providing a comprehensive guide to gain good knowledge about marketing, pinning analytics and all latest news and updates on Pinterest.
  • Watch video tutorials from the Pinterest video library about creating effective pins and optimize them.

Conclusion

Since its inception, Pinterest is a very popular platform and its popularity is still increasing. Bloggers should use such a popular social platform where millions of people visit daily to create a highly targeted audience. They can sharpen their skills of marketing, networking and creating attractive images here.

Certainly, if you continue your good work and put effort consistently following all the tips of this post, you will be able to boost organic traffic using Pinterest. But you have to remember that patience is the key here. All the points mentioned here are helpful and certainly drive traffic from Pinterest to your blog but you have to give it time. You can not ask or expect an overnight jump in traffic.

As you will go on creating good pins consistently at least for the whole one year, then if you compare the traffic volume one year before that to traffic volume today, there will be a significant increase for sure.

Everything You Need to Know About Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program

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Everything You Need to Know About Amazon Affiliate Programme
Everything You Need to Know About Amazon Affiliate Programme

Everything You Need to Know About Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program

Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative option to generate passive income from your blog. And, if it dome properly it can bring financial freedom to you. There are so many options available for affiliate marketing like commission junction, ShareASale affiliate program, etc. Among these Amazon Affiliate Programme is the most famous and popular.

There are several reasons behind its so much popularity. First of all the brand Amazon, has a huge reputation and trusted by people across the world. And because of this trust, people mostly choose Amazon to sell their product instead of any other marketplace.

As an associate, your choice should be Amazon Affiliate Marketing as here the conversion rate is much much higher than any other platform. Buyers simply love to buy from Amazon again and again and as a marketer you also get a very fair share as commission.

The best part is even if buyers buy any other products instead of the product mentioned on your website then too you get the credit of driving buyers to Amazon through your Amazon referral link.

So, if you have your own blog and planning to earn from affiliate marketing, you should try Amazon affiliate marketing.

What is actually an Amazon affiliate marketing program?

Amazon Affiliate Programme or Amazon Associates is one of the oldest affiliate marketing program launched way back in 1996. Since then Amazon is helping marketers, bloggers to earn by advertising Amazon products on their websites and to earn tons of money therefrom.

Anyone who has a website can monetize it and obtain an amazon referral link. If you own a blog or any website of your own and have joined the Amazon associate program (the process has been covered in details later in the article) then you will earn referral fees each time any user clicks your affiliate link.

After getting the referral link, your main task is to create a good copyrighting content that should be compelling enough to make the visitors buy the product or at least click the referral link. Through this, you can earn up to 10% as referral fees. 

Is not it great! You don’t have to have your own product or shop; you have to simply review any product available at Amazon and provide the referral link within it for your target audience. If you are writing your blog for Indian customers then you may want to get associated with the Amazon India Affiliate marketing program.

Can you earn more from the Amazon Affiliate marketing program than Google AdSense?

Is Amazon Affiliate Programme better than Google AdSense
Is Amazon Affiliate Programme better than Google AdSense

If you are an Indian and write your blog for Indian audience then from Google AdSense you will earn $0.5 to $3 US Dollar which is called Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM). Now if you have 60 to 70 blogs on your website and each of these blogs has 1000 page views per month then you can expect an earning around $100 per month from Google AdSense.

To know about how to earn from Google Adsense click here

On the other hand, if you have an amazon referral link and per day your blog is driving 100 potential buyers to amazon then with a very safe conversion rate of 2%, there will be 1-2 sales every day. Then depending on the product, you are using the referral link, you can expect to earn from $150 to $2000.

So you can clearly understand now that the earning potential of Amazon Affiliate Programme is much much better than that of Google AdSense.

Where Google AdSense is somewhat like income from the fixed deposit, safe and secure but less; the earning from Amazon Affiliate Programme is like stock market earning not fixed and secured but much more than AdSense.

Positive sides of Amazon Affiliate marketing program

Good sides of Amazon Affiliate Programme
Good sides of Amazon Affiliate Programme

Here are some more facts about the reasons behind the Amazon Affiliate Programme’s popularity. The program has lots of positive sides to attract bloggers and website owners to get associated with it like:

The brand value

I have already mentioned it above. The brand Amazon is already very popular and trusted by all walks of people, be it marketers, customers or website owners & bloggers who get associated with Amazon. 

People feel safe when they deal with such a large eCommerce site. People keep faith on such a big brand and even promote products that are not manufactured by Amazon itself. So, its a matter of mutual trust and highly correlated with the brand value.

The start is really smooth

To get associated with Amazon Affiliate Programme is as such is a breeze. Only the prerequisites are, you should have a well-designed website or blog with a good amount of traffic. Once you achieved this level you are good to proceed with Amazon Affiliate Programme.

There is no fee to become an associate. You have to just apply to the program Amazon Associates and get Amazon referral link.

No threshold criteria

There are no threshold criteria fixed for traffic or other metrics to be eligible for Amazon Affiliate Programme. At any stage of your blogging, you can join it. But without huge traffic, you can not make significant earning.

Not niche-specific

You search any product you use in your daily life in Google and you are highly likely to get directed to Amazon. The reason is it is an online store of almost every physical product of our daily needs you can think of.

Likewise, you can create your website on any physical product and get associated with Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program. Any physical-niche can be very profitable if planned well and content are useful.

Hassle-free payment

You will get what you earned directly to your bank registered with Amazon Associates.

Problems with Amazon Affiliate marketing program

Problems with Amazon Affiliate Programme
Problems with Amazon Affiliate Programme

Till now all the good things are discussed about  Amazon’s Affiliate Program. But there is nothing under the sun with only good sides. So do this Affiliate Program. Here now I am going to reveal some concerns about this program which you may not like but are facts.

Fierce competition 

Gone are the days when Amazon Affiliate Program was launched and even until 5-6 years back any basic site reviewing any product can expect to earn a significant amount from it. It was gold mine then and the competition was very very less. 

Today if you are just starting a blog or website then it is not that easy to start earning from Amazon Affiliate Program. Especially when popular brands and pro bloggers are ready with their articles on every profitable super niche. You have to face fierce competition.

Another big problem arises with all those blogs and websites which 100% depend on Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program. They built their sites focus only on the products which can bring referral earnings. This approach has a far greater risk as they are susceptible to any algorithmic change from Google. 

Think about the situation of Amazon suddenly revises its commission rates or removes the particular product you are bating on; your all efforts are gone in a flash. So try to build a stable business model rather than building an Amazon-specific affiliate blog.  Focus on quality content which will grow slowly but the income it will generate will be stable and sustainable.

A cookie period of 24 hours limit the revenue

Amazon has a cookie period of just 24 hours. That means if any visitor purchases anything from Amazon through your referral link 24 hours after visiting your website/blog you will earn no commission.

And it is very common if your blog or website deals with some product which is costly or complex, then usually any user does not buy the product immediately reading the review. So, in this case, this 24 hours window is pretty less. Like other affiliate programs that of Walmart, target generally offer a cookie period 3 to 7 days.

The commission is comparatively low

Generally, the starting affiliate income is just 4%, it may increase depending on the volume of the sale later. But at the start, the earning is much lower compared to other affiliate marketing programs. 

So, should you get associated with Amazon Affiliate marketing program?

The straight forward answer is YES, you should get associated with Amazon Affiliate Programme. But you should never rely completely on this single source of monetization. That is you should not make an Amazon Affiliate Programme focussed any particular product based website.

That policy will be very vulnerable and anytime any policy change by Google or Amazon can cause great loss to your hard work and huge time that you invested. So, always use a mixture of more than one monetization policies, which will greatly diversify the risk.

Finally… how to boost income from Amazon Affiliate marketing?

Boost income from Amazon Affiliate Programme
Boost income from Amazon Affiliate Programme

Now here is the main part I know you were waiting for. The million-dollar question is how can you make money from Amazon Affiliate Programme. The prerequisite of making money from any affiliate program is having a well-designed website with a good amount of traffic where you can promote the product with a referral link. 

I here assume that you already own a website. Then the steps to become an associate in Amazon Affiliate Programme are as below:

SEO optimize your blog/website

This is crucial to increase the organic traffic to your website or blog. There are several SEO plugins for WordPress and SEO tools available, make use of them.

Sign-up as an associate through Amazon website

It is a very easy step. You just have to go to the Amazon website and click on the Amazon affiliate link at the bottom of the page. But keep in mind, in this process, your website should be at the basic stage as Amazon will review your website manually before approving it.

Amazon Affiliate link
Amazon Affiliate link

Creating the referral link

Now you have to visit Amazon Associates account and look for the specific product you want to review and use for referral. As you select any product you can obtain your personalized referral link for that product from the top of the screen (in grey stripe)

Writing a useful review

Ideally, you should review any product based on your personal experience. Otherwise, it will not be of any value to your readers. Sites like best reviews employ a group of employees to test rigorously any item they are going to review. 

The testing team tests the item every single way possible and come up with a genuine product review. Such a product review presents a really helpful guideline for the customers to make their minds about whether to buy the product or not.

There are lots of blogs and websites there which are writing reviews just for the sake of affiliate earning. These reviews are generally just compiled from different other articles available online. The authors never tried the products themselves and their reviews clearly reflect that. Such reviews can not sustain for a long time. The bounce rate will go higher and gradually Google will index out your page.

So, you have to write such product reviews that can compete with the best reviews available online. Your content should be very useful with your unique insights about the product. 

Increase the number of products with referral links over time

As your site grows, try to incorporate a number of products with referral links. As you will get a commission for all the products purchased and not only the product with a referral link.

Target high valued products

It is simple mathematics. If the product you are reviewing is costly, then you will earn more money as a commission.

Target different events

Round the year there are several occasions when people tend to buy event-specific products. So, create a list targeting different occasions like Navratri, Diwali, Eid, Christmas, etc. when sales go up significantly of particular products and make use of these opportunities.

Promoting your website

Once you have created your content and prepared your affiliate site well, it’s the time to promote it. Because if no one knows about it there will be less traffic and the very purpose of becoming Amazon Associate gets defeated.

Social media is a very effective way of promotion. Use Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social platforms to get connected with people.

Build a strong network with other players in the field. Interact in different question-answer forums like Quora, Reddit, etc. Millions of people use these platforms to get the answer to their queries. 

Try to provide useful answers to those queries and let people know about your existence and domain knowledge. Provide a link to your website anywhere in your answer. If readers find your answer really helpful, they will certainly visit your blog and start to recognize your expertise.

Conclusion

Right now you must have gained a good idea about Amazon Affiliate Programme its earning potential and highly motivated to become an associate. Then good to get you encouraged. But my advice will be if you are already using Google AdSense, then continue using it too. Don’t get 100% dependent on the Amazon Affiliate Marketing Programme.

Use both of the monetizing strategies at a time in your blog and have close look at their performance. Gradually increase the proportion of the better performing strategy.

Finally, the most important thing is to keep your expectations as practical as possible. There are so many blogs and videos you will get on youtube to earn crores from the Amazon Affiliate Marketing  program within years. For getting motivated these contents are okay. But don’t get carried away by them as when you are just starting and alone, it will take time to grow in this highly competitive marketing sector.

Any business model needs initial establishment time and investment. Amazon Affiliate Marketing program is also no difference. At the initial stage, you have to focus just on providing value and wait patiently. Time will come when your hard work will start to pay.

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Is Google AdSense still a profitable way to earn by blogging?

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How to make money by Google AdSense through blogging?

Google AdSense is considered to be an important source of income from Blogs. Many people are there who are full-time bloggers and Google AdSense in one of the major sources of revenue from their blogs. This article contains a list of such bloggers who have made a fortune by earning from Google AdSense. This article covers a detailed discussion on how much revenue can expect from AdSense, how can you estimate your earning from AdSense and how can you earn from Google Adsense. But first of all…

What is Google AdSense? 

Google AdSense if the most popular, free and very simple way to earn money by showing advertisements on your website. There are millions of advertisers who bid for their ads and ad spaces on your websites. The more people visit your website and view those ads, you earn a fair share of the total money paid by the advertisers. According to Google, in 2015 itself Google has paid $9,860,908,459 to its publishers !!!

Amount paid by Google AdSense in 2015
Amount paid by Google AdSense in 2015

The earnings per click from Google AdSense vary depending on the niche of your blog and the countries your majority of the audience belongs to. 

For example, if you are targeting mainly the Indian audience, then earning from Google AdSense is very meager. You will earn just between $0.5 to 2.0 USD depending on your niche for 1000 page views in India.

It is quite less earning compare to that one can earn from selling a personal product or from affiliate marketing. Besides getting approval from Google AdSense is not easy and also there is always a threat to get banned by Google AdSense for violating any of their guidelines.

But why still Google AdSense is popular in India?

Because of all the above reasons most of the pro-bloggers do not use AdSense any more or at least AdSense is not any more their major source of income. But still many bloggers especially newbies in blogging dream about earning from AdSense.

If you implement your blog properly and include high-quality content then in very less time you will start to earn from AdSense. And Google never fails to pay his publishers. These two are the major reasons behind the popularity of Google AdSense.

Another big plus side of Google AdSense is its simplicity. As a blog owner, you just have to create a Google AdSense account, create your add and put the source code in your site that’s all. Inserting source code is a little bit tricky issue especially if you are a completely nontechnical guy, but still a lot easier than other ad networks.

How much Google AdSense pays for a blog?

Before we start discussing this possibility, a few terms we need to be clear first. Because these terms are going to be used here frequently. So here are some of them you need to know to estimate your earnings from Google AdSense. I have summarised them here from Thomas Maiers’ article and Kriteshrules’ article on Google AdSense earning facts.

Impression: 

It is just the count of any advertisement viewed by any reader. It has nothing to do whether the advertisement gets clicked or not. 

For example, if any of your blogs has two ads, one at the beginning of the post and another one at the end of the post. Then if any reader visits the blog and reads the complete post then the count of impression will be 2.

Cost Per Click (CPC): 

This is a variable that carries the amount of money (as decided by the advertiser) you earn whenever any visitor clicks on any link. Different niches have different CPC values. Niches like health, finance, technology generally have high CPC compare to other niches.

Click-Through Rate (CTR):

It is also a key term to calculate revenue from AdSense. CTR is calculated using below formula

CTR=(Total number of clicls/Total ad impressions) ✕ 100

Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM):

In this case, advertisers will pay you for each 1000 view for their ads, it does not matter if ads get clicked or not. 

Another important key term in Google AdSense revenue calculation is 

Revenue per thousand impressions (RPM):

RPM is calculated as:

RPM=(Estimated earnings/Number of page views) ✕ 1000

For example, if you earn $2.00 for 1000 page views then your RPM will be RPM=(2/100) ✕ 1000=20

Cost Per Engagement (CPE )

This is the most recent bidding term in the Google AdSense network. In the case of CPE the advertisers impose a condition on viewers’ activity with the ads placed by them, i.e. if the viewer has clicked it, expanded it or watched any video, etc. The payment made by Google also depends on it.

Now the CPC is calculated through an auction. Each and every add which is potentially displayed in your blog take part in this auction. The winner is decided based on the highest bidder and also it’s quality. 

For this Google runs some of its smart algorithms to calculate the maximum income from every thousand impressions or in short RPM (Revenue per Thousand Impressions)

The selection of the best bid type is not in your hand. Google itself calculates which may be the best way to achieve the highest income with respect to your blog niche and content. Advertisers may place CPM ads on your website if they found that your blog is reputed and attracting a lot more traffic. In this case, your earnings with CPM can be much more than that with CPC.

If you have these all metrics of Google AdSense you can calculate your revenue from AdSense.

Now we can enter into our main topic that is “how much Google AdSense pay for a blog”

As I have mentioned before, in India Google AdSense will pay you approximately 0.5 to 3 US dollars depending on the niche. Keeping this figure in mind you can chalk out earning potential of your blog.

Suppose you have written 60 to 70 articles in your blog and each of these articles has approximately 1000 page views per month. So, your blog will earn close to $100 a month. To increase this income, you have to increase the number of articles in your blog, as simple as that.

How much you can earn from your website is largely determined by its content. There are also a lot of other variables and the exact earning from Google AdSense is not easy to know. As, neither Google nor ant website owner discloses their real earning using Google AdSense.

Still, I have gathered some earning reports of a few famous bloggers both from India and outside India reviewing mainly from Thomas Maier’s article on AdSense, Anil Agarwal’s top 7 bloggers list and Harsh Agarwal’s own report on his AdSense income.

Top earners from Google AdSense by blogging

Outside India:

  • Wikihow is such a site that comes to rescue us in every crisis in our life, so there is nothing surprising that it gets around 15 million visitors everyday !!!!.
Top earner from Google AdSense
Jack Herrick of WikiHow.com

Jack Herrick earns approximately $330,000 per month. The site registered back in 2004 and as of today, it has 40 million daily page views, 3.3 million backlinks.

  • Peter Cashmore, the CEO, and founder of famous blog Mashable is another example of making a fortune from Google AdSense. 
Top earner from Google AdSense
Peter Cashmore of Mashable.com

Mashable is a technology blog started by him way back in 2005 when he was only 17 years old. Today it earns $10,00,000 per month and has daily page views around 37,320,000

  • If you are blogging for passive income then you must have come across the website named “Smart Passive Income” of Pat Flynn.
Top earneer from Google AdSense outside India
Pat Flynn from smartpassiveincome.com (Image source: smartpassiveincome.com

He is earning an impressive income from Google AdSense. According to his own report in 2013, the earning from his niche site SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com generated an income of $1,466.33 from 800-1000 visits per day. You can find here the earning is lesser compared to others, this because his main earning source is not from Google AdSense. Still, I have mentioned here mainly because of his popularity. He is almost a house hold name today mainly because of his website Smart Passive Income.

  • Like WikiHow, another popular website with all how to question-answer is ehow . The website was started way back in 1999 by Courtney Rosen.
Top earner from Google AdSense
Courtney Rosen of ehow.com (image source: guitricks.com)

This website is so popular that it gets an approximately daily page view of 31,400,000 and earns a stupendous $650,000 per month.

Indian bloggers with huge revenue from AdSense

  • Here the first position will be occupied by Amit Agarwal of Labnol.org without fail. He is like a living legend of the Indian blogging industry. He was most probably the first Indian who pioneered blogging can be chosen as a career. An alumnus of IIT Roorkee turned professional blogger in India.
Top earneer from Google AdSense in India
Amit Agarwal of Labnol.org (Image source: Labnol.org)

His blog is mainly on technology, you can find every updates and innovation in technology there with insightful content. He is consistently updating his site and providing every detail for the whole last decade. So, no surprise that his site attracts almost 3,00,000 daily visitors from which he almost earns $25,000 as revenue from AdSense.

  • Harsh Agarwal of ShoutMeLoud.com is considered as one of the topmost bloggers in India. Although his main revenue source is not AdSense, still he earns around $1000 with estimated traffic of 80,000 every month from various blogs he owns.
Top earner from Google AdSense
Top earner from Google AdSense-Harsh Agarwal

He mainly covers different topics to help bloggers to solve their problems related to WordPress, SEO, Internet marketing, etc. His blogs are really very helpful. New bloggers can always visit his site and can get answers for almost every query he has during their initial stage.

Here I would like to mention another blogger from India who can also be considered as a pioneer in the Indian blogging era. Arun Prabhudesai of Trak.in is one of the names which can not be skipped when we are discussing Indian bloggers. 

His blog is really very popular and he earns almost $5000 per month with 100,000 traffic every day to his site. He is also being an IT guy covers different technology news and updates in his site, mobile technology, startup news. He is one of the highest earners with Google AdSense in India.

Here is what Harsh Agarwal from shoutmeloud.com revealed about his Google AdSense income

As you can see from the above list that Harsh Agarwal is one of the top earner bloggers from India using Google AdSense. He has earned a total of $50,581 in the last 10 years from all his blogs (Source: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/adsense-earning-reports.html). 

He started blogging in 2008 and opened his Google AdSense account in the next year i.e. in 2009. He is quite frank with his blog earning and shares with his readers. His blogs are really helpful for beginners as well as established bloggers.

You can also go through his one blog on Google AdSense, which is quite helpful informative. 

He is of the opinion that although Google AdSense is quite tempting for a new blogger and they 100% depend on its earning, if you want to choose blogging as your career then being solely dependent on Google AdSense can be a bit risky.

Google AdSense account can get banned any time for any sort of violation of its guidelines which you are not aware of. In that case, you may feel your world gets shattered and devastated. 

So, he advised, “not to put all your eggs in a single basket”. That to say, don’t rely on only Google AdSense for your earning, diversify it and use multiple channels of earning like affiliate marketing, CPM ads, sponsored ads, selling your own product, etc.

How and when does Google AdSense pay?

This is one of the most frequently asked questions which bother any new blogger. So, I have tried to clear the payment method of Google AdSense. 

Generally, the total clicks and revenue generated according to Cost Per Click (CPC) with respect to page views for your website for a particular month are calculated by Google in the following month.

Google usually finalizes the valid clicks and reduces revenue estimated for false clicks within the first week of the following month. Thereafter can take another two weeks i.e. approximately 20th of the month to send the payment to AdSense. You can change the payment before that only. 

So, you can expect your Google AdSense earning for any particular month, during the 3rd week of the following month. Although this timeline can vary depending on different timezone of different countries, the interval between the process remains the same.

For a quick realization of the payment made by Google AdSense, you should set your payment method through a direct bank transfer as it takes the least time (around 7 working days only). Whereas payment through other popular methods like cheques take almost 10 days, wire transfer takes around 15 days and the Western Union Quick Cash can take up to 60 days ! (Source: https://wpadvancedads.com/adsense-payment/)

Is there any payment threshold for Google AdSense?

Google AdSense has a policy of not paying any amount until your total AdSense earning reaches $100. That means if you earn less than $100 in any month, say you have earned $50 and then $90 in the second month, then you will be paid a total $140 at a time in the 3rd succeeding month.

This is the threshold for the US Dollar, which is the most predominant payment currency received by the majority of bloggers (in India too). The threshold varies with the currencies too. For example, in the case of Euro, the Google AdSense threshold id €70. 

Finally…How to earn money with Google AdSense through Blogging?

Google AdSense pays on a per-click basis. Each click of your reader on the ads given by you gets counted for revenue calculation. What the user does after clicking the adds on the target website does not matter. 

But reading this don’t get tempted and start clicking your own ads, as Google is very strict to penalize such activities.

Now how much you will earn from each click depends on the cost of AdWords fixed by any advertiser. AdWords is another service provided by Google where advertisers of different products, services etc. create ads and ask Google to display them on search engines or different websites under the AdSense network. You receive 68% of the cost fixed by advertisers on per-click and the rest is received by Google as commission.

Conclusion

Google AdSense is a popular source of income through blogging. But you have to invest a significant of time for that. If you are blogging solely focusing on Google AdSense earning and you are not really interested in that particular domain, then there is a risk that you may get frustrated very early. 

You have to keep in mind that Google AdSense earning is something like interest earning from a bank fixed deposit, which is less but gives peace of mind. Whereas income from affiliate marketing or CPA is like a stock market investment, which is not fixed or sure but certainly higher than income from Google AdSense.

So, plan a blog on a niche close to your heart and on which you can go on creating high-quality content without feeling exhausted. As I always say that in blogging “content is the king”, so never compromise the quality of your content for anything. Nothing can help you if your content is not helpful to your readers.

Finally, last but not least keep in mind that the income earned from Google AdSense is taxable income and comes under the Income Tax rule of the particular country you reside in. 

Here I have covered as much information as possible on Google AdSense payment. If you find it helpful, please share it with those who also might benefit from it. If you like it and wish to please share it on social networks too.

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What is a backlink strategy and why it is important for SEO?

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Backlinks and their importance in SEO

What are backlinks and why they are important for SEO?

Backlinks and their importance in SEO

Backlinks are very important parameter based on which Google algorithm determines the authority of your website. Backlinks from reputed websites are an indicator for Google that your website contains content which worth a mention in sites already loved by people. This article is dedicated to developing a backlinking strategy to draw more organic traffic. So, first of all, the question arises…

What are Backlinks in SEO?

Backlinks are the hyperlinks given in any site which points back towards your site. It can be considered as a citation where one cites external relevant and significant content in their own article.  Like citations universally considered as a parameter to judge the usefulness of one article, in blogs backlinks play the same role.

Example of backlinks

Backlinks are the most important criteria Google has set to determine which site qualifies to rank higher in SERP. Even a few years back also it was the only criterion to judge the authority of any website. But as this algorithm starts getting abused by the Black Hat SEO technique creating false pages and links, Google has to improvise its page ranking criteria. Now Google’s page ranking algorithm is much more complex and gives less weightage on backlinks.

Any reader who is visiting any website page which contains something relevant with a link to your website and lands on your website through that link then it is called referral traffic. Such traffics are signals to Google that your website contains valuable information and hence needs to be ranked higher.

Further backlinks can be of two types as below:

Do-follow backlinks

These links navigate any reader to your website and thus contribute towards your website’s domain authority and reputation

whereas

No-follow backlinks

Do not direct readers to your website though it helps people to know about your website. Sometimes the websites where you get backlinks from do not want their readers to go away from their sites by clicking links, to avoid this they use nofollow links.

According to the stats obtained from the research conducted by website postmm.com almost 60% of total backlinks are usually do-follow links and the rest 40% are no-follow links.

How to create backlinks?

Getting backlinks is tricky, time-consuming and also takes hard work. For backlinks, quality is more important than its quantity. Try to acquire high-quality backlinks over time than getting more low-quality backlinks quickly. It is also true that not all backlinks will improve your ranking, some will have no effect whereas some backlinks will be of the kind affecting your site negatively, so choose backlinks wisely. 

Here some effective tips which will help you in this process.

Write content worth backlinking

This is a universal truth, if you write very useful content, your blog will automatically acquire backlinks. It is in the same way you link good content to your own blog. 

Commenting on other related blogs

This is a quick way you can create some backlinks. You visit some popular blogs related to your domain. Read the blogs thoroughly and leave some thoughtful comments, appreciation or relevant questions. In this process make sure to provide a link in the comment to your website. 

Guest posting and blogging

It is a very effective way to acquire quality backlinks. You need to find out reputed websites of your domain which accept guest blogs. Then you will write quality guest blogs for that website following their guidelines and submit for approval. In that guest blog, you must put a link somewhere which will direct readers to your website as the whole purpose of writing a guest blog is only to backlink your website to an established website.

This takes time but to me, the best way to get very high-quality backlinks.

Always keep in mind that the website you writing guest blogs must be related to your niche. Many websites generally accept guest blogs as they are getting free content for their website in exchange for backlinks.

Outsource link building

Link building can be outsourced too. But, always remember don’t compromise the quality of backlinks for a cheaper deal. It can lead to a penalty from Google on your site. Link building is a time taking process. Links grow gradually if your site gets 100 links within a week, Google senses foul play of unnatural link building process.

Locat references and social media

If you can manage to get mentioned in any of the social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Yellowpages as business address listing then these citations also serve as backlinks. There are many more sites available and your target should be creating citation profiles at regular intervals.

Donations

If you have any popular NGO, charitable organization, club, school, etc. You can help them with cash or kind or providing any services and get a mention on their website as sponsors or donors. Which will also serve as backlinks and can attract good local traffic to your website.

Conclusion

To get your website rank in SERP, backlinks are more important than anything else. But, always keep in mind that link building is a time taking off-site SEO process. Only those links from websites with high domain authority count. Keep patience and don’t go for quick links from unrelated low rated websites. 

Don’t fall prey to offers for backlinks from websites in exchange for money.  This very common nowadays and webmasters get tons of such offers from various websites bidding for backlinks. Always keep in mind that you can not buy backlinks cheap and its just matter of time Google will punish such backlinks without fail. Google strives to provide content with true quality to its readers and any effort or Black Hat SEO to misguide Google algorithm can not bring sustainable benefits.

Most importantly, the basis of quality link building is creating quality content which really helps your audience to satisfy their queries. According to Paddy Moogan from Moz.com,

“All link building campaigns must start with something worth linking to”

If your content is of low value, it is highly unlikely that any authority website will show interest to link your content to theirs. If you are just beginning your blog journey, please first focus to create good content for the first few months and then go for its promotion and link building campaign.

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How to earn money writing blogs in India? fundamental strategies you must know

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How to earn money writing blogs in India

How to earn money writing blogs in India? fundamental strategies you must know

How to earn money writing blogs in India

Earning money by writing blogs is not anymore a new thing. This is a recognized profession in many parts of the developed world. But if you consider only the Indian perspective, it was quite a late starter in the digital marketing arena. So, in India, this question is still a very relevant one. Many new bloggers sought for the answer to be double sure before choosing to blog as their full-time job.

Is it possible to earn money writing blogs in India in 2019?

Yes, of course, perhaps it’s the best time to start a blog in India. India is in the era of the digital boom and going to see unprecedented growth in the number of internet users. as the below image depicts,  the current internet user in India is 627 million which is going to be around 850 million by 2025. so there exists a great marketing opportunity that you can best utilize if you start your blog right now in fact, now is the best time to earn money writing blogs in India.

Mostly the established full-time bloggers in India did start blogging only by passion, to write and share their knowledge with the world. Over time the came to know the earning potential of blogs and shared their life-changing experience through their blogs. How exciting it is if your passion becomes your way of earning.

Many of them are not only earning their living through blogging, but they have become financially independent, started a successful business and eventually become entrepreneurs.

Here I have reviewed many such blogs of how they are making money and come up with an exhaustive list of how can a blog become a good source of earning. It is here important to remember that all of these strategies may not always apply to all types of blogs. Although a single blog can adopt more than one of them to monetize itself.

How much does a blogger earn in India?

During the recent past years, the number of people doing fulltime blogging in India has risen astronomically. Though the number of persons who made a fortune out of blogging is still less in India compare to other developed countries. To name a few of such achievers are like Harsh Agarwal of ShoutMeLoud.com, Amit Agarwal of Labnol.org, Ashish Sinha of Nextbigwhat.com, Arun Prabhuedsai Track.in, Jane Shebba of probloggingsuccess.com, Anshul Tewari of youthkiawaz.com, etc. They are earning millions by blogging.

Mr. Amit Agarwal started his blogging venture back in 2004 and now his website labnol.org fetches around 35 lakh INR per month!!!. This is the earning potential of blogging if you keep patience and stay consistent.

These people have built their blogging empire bit by bit and started it out of passion. With time their blogs gain popularity as people found the content very useful. As organic traffic rises, automatically the blogs start earning money. Now they are authority websites in their niche.

So, blogging is also like a business, you have to invest time in initial phases and keep patience. But in India, the most prevailing misconception about blogging is blogging can give you a lot of earning quickly, within months of starting it.

People starting blogs with such mind setup very fast gets frustrated and quit saying that it is not working for him/her. If you are also planning to start your own blog then I will request you to please set your expectation as practical as possible. Especially if your only goal is to earn money writing blogs. You will not get overnight success if you start blogging from scratch. There are a lot of things to learn.

So invest time, enrich yourself first about blogging philosophy, enjoy the journey of learning, take it as if you are launching as your business and nurture it for the first 1-2 years and rest assured your hard work will eventually bring success and money that you would have not imagined.

Strategies to earn money from blogs

1. Displaying advertisements

This earning mainly comes from Google Adsense and one of the most popular ways to earn money writing blogs in India. If you have managed to get its approval, then you can display different ads from Google Adsense abiding their guidelines of displaying ads.

You will earn as people searching for that particular keyword visit your site and click on those adds. So, here earning is directly proportional to the amount of traffic your site is getting. For any significant amount of earning Google Adsense requires a huge amount of traffic, which is not easy to come by at least at the initial stage of ane website. And these ads also take away your visitor from your website.

But Google Adsense provides a piece of mind for bloggers. You just connect your bank account after getting approval and at the month-end, the earning from it (if more than $100) will be transferred to your bank account. So its a very transparent and hassle-free way of earning from blogs.

Some particular blogs which don’t have any scope for affiliate marketing (like sites for inspirational quotes), Google Adsense is their best friend. They only need to focus on bringing more and more organic traffic by focusing on different SEO strategies and tools.

If you are using both avenues of affiliate marketing and Google Adsense for earning, it will be wise not to use both of them at a time in any post. It may lead to losing any potential customer of affiliate products by clicking on Google Adsense.

2. Earning through Job Boards

Almost every popular blog website has its own job board. These popular blogs use the huge traffic they get to earn money through posting jobs on their websites. As it is highly dependent on the traffic, so earning from creating a job board is tough for any blog at its early stage.

3. Selling your own product or service

Once you have established your authority in that particular niche through your blog; you can think of creating an e-book on the topic or a useful video course in learning sites like Courseera or Udemy to provide further in-depth knowledge to your audience. Actually creating a good course on that topic can serve as the first step in building your audience. You can establish your credibility in this field through this course. This will add more value to the ebook you created and enhance its sell.

You have to build an email list of your readers too and it is the most important. You will need this email list to pitch for your ebook.

This is a very good way of generating sustainable earning. Once you have created the ebook with hard work, it will go on earning for you for a long time in the future. Make sure that the content of your product is really helpful to your readers and worth the money you set as a price.

4. Selling affiliate products

This strategy has great potential to generate significant earning. As you are writing your blogs on a micro-niche, you are already addressing a very targeted audience. That means, your visitors are already funneled down to this keyword and highly potential customers.

For example, if your blog is on the keyword “best smartphone under Rs 15000 with a good camera and battery life” then a visitor who is reading your blog has already made up his mind to make a purchase. So, if you are using an affiliate link for this blog post and the post is viewed by a lot of people then you can earn a good amount as a commission from every purchase.

There are a number of an affiliate program where you can register, get their affiliate link and use them on your website. The most popular one is the Amazon affiliate program. You can get an idea from here about miscellaneous products from Amazon which you can sell through your website and commission percentage that you will earn after every purchase.

Try to suggest any product to your viewers which are really good. Don’t blindly suggest any product just going by their commission percentage. As if the product does not meet the expectation of the user, it will affect your trustworthiness and prove harmful for your brand in the long run.

The best way is to suggest only those products which you have personally reviewed. This has double benefits, you can write a good review of the product as you have tested the product and secondly, you are confident about the product’s quality.

5. Earning from sponsored posts

This is also a good source of earning when your website becomes an authority in that niche. As your blog starts getting a significant amount of visitors and you make your mark as an expert in that niche, you start getting requests to post some content from other bloggers of the same niche. These posts on your website help them to get backlinks from an established website of the same domain.

These backlinks ultimately help them to rank their posts in search results. So, they are ready to pay you in exchange for their posts on your website. But you have to do a quality check of these posts as they generally come from new bloggers.

This offers as a source of recurring income and you can also renew the link of these posts at regular intervals.

6. Earning from online surveys and polls

This is another way of earning where you post different online surveys and polls which are sponsored by other websites.

7. Earning from sponsorship

Several famous brands will want to sponsor your website if it becomes popular. In this case, you have to advertise for their brands for which you will be paid with the condition that you can not display any ads of their competitor brands.

8. Collect emails of your visitors and followup

You have written an excellent and most helpful content, as a result, many people are visiting your site, few of them are clicking in some of the ads and ultimately leaving. So, such temporary visits to your website are not going to help you anyway. You should find a way to connect to your visitors and remain in touch as long as you can.

Building an email list of your visitors is the most important step in this process. You should attempt this from the very first day. Thus you will have a way to contact all those people who have shown interest in your content and hence all potential buyers of your products.

You should use this email list to inform them about your new blogs or products like an ebook. You have to very specific and customer-oriented in your email content. This is called email funneling. For example, if I found any visitor of this post is a newbie then I will send him emails about “how to write blogs” and basic WordPress and SEO tips; whereas if the visitor is a ProBlogger then advanced SEO tips and latest digital marketing tips may be more useful to him.

Thus you have a higher probability of conversion as you are providing them with more relevant information and services they are looking for.

9. Earning through e-commerce

You can start e-commerce for selling physical products related to your blogging subject. As you have already created an audience base for that particular niche so who follows your blog may be interested to purchase hose items too. Thus e-commerce can add some serious income.

For example, if you write about any particular sports, then you can sell sports equipment through your website and earn commission on each sale.

10. Earning from organizing events

You can organize workshops, seminar/symposium or conference to brainstorm different ideas between like-minded people who also take an interest in your blogging niche. Here earning is made through the registration fees paid by the participants.

Conclusion

The strategies mentioned here to earn from blogging are the most predominant ones. But there are several other avenues too which can generate income from blogs. Like creating newsletters and earning from its subscriptions, organizing training and conferences and earn from registrations and many more; you are free to innovate new ideas. And the sky is the limit depending on your creativity.

As your blogging career grows and you start gaining experience, you should start adopting multiple income avenues mentioned above at a time. This would enhance your total income from your website as well as cause diversification in income sources and minimize the risk of keeping all eggs in a single basket.

It is important to keep patience and go on experimenting with new ideas. This is something that does not give a result overnight; any new idea implemented takes time to show the result. Persons with the attitude “never give up” are bound to get success. Keep your self motivated.

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How to automate content marketing? a detailed guide

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How to automate content creation
How to automate content creation

How to automate content marketing in 2019? an easy and helpful guide to saving your time

Content marketing is a tedious and time taking task. Especially when the deadlines come closer and creating quality content becomes a challenge, marketers desperately look for some way to automate content marketing. When it is true that content creation can never be truly and completely automated, there are some parts of the content marketing process that can be done by taking the help of some automation tools. This article contains an in-depth detailed discussion on how to automate content marketing, its steps that can be automated and popular automation tools that you can rely on to automate some tasks to save a great amount of your valuable time which you can invest in other aspects of your business.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic digital marketing approach for promoting a brand mainly through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. or the brand’s very own website. It builds trust amongst its audience through creating and providing valuable relevant and consistent content to turn the audience into customers. 

Content marketing encompasses both content creation as well as its distribution and quality checking. The fact of the matter is, here user experience is more important than the quality of the content. Let me explain it with an example if you serve a well-cooked tasty preparation for a person who is not hungry, he may not relish the item. So, here quality of the content was not the issue as the target audience was wrong.

Why it is important to automate content marketing?

Creating content is an important part of any business system. The success of a company is hugely dependent on good quality content generation. And it is also the most difficult part. Presently a large number of business houses use several automation tools for content generation and curation and it is increasing at an astonishing rate.

The infographic below presents some statistics revealing the stupendous growth of automation in marketing industries

Automating content generation
Statistics related to the adoption of automation tools for content generation

According to the Social Media Today “state of marketing automation survey report 2019” 75% of total marketers currently use at least one type of marketing automation tool.

An automated content creation process makes a huge difference as it saves a lot of your time which you can invest to improve your content quality. Several aspects of content creation, content curation and distribution can be automated through efficient use of different automation tools available. Artificial Intelligence (AI) also playing a key role in automating content creation nowadays. 

Different important steps to automate content marketing

Steps of content creation
Major and subcategories of content creation steps

Content creation

This is very important in content marketing according to L2’s content and commerce report. Creating quality content is the biggest challenge in content marketing as it takes considerable time to write a detailed informative blogpost or well-designed infographic.

Content creation can be automated using AI in combination with Big Data and Natural Language Processing, all of them are buzz words in the data analytics industry in recent past years. Many business houses are using AI-driven bots to create content. For example, news websites like Washington Post and The Associated Press are taking the help of bots to automate creating in-depth articles mainly based on data structures.

They are so efficient to create a full-length article based on data provided to it that they even pass Turing tests! Which means articles written by a boat are very similar to one created by human. And, they are constantly improving and advancing in all aspects to give a close fight to human creation.

Further, the whole content creation task can be divided into subcategories as given below according to their suitability for automation.

1. Topic selection

The selection of topic or ideation is the first step and most important step to start content creation. The topic you select must be of interest to your target audience and of course relevant to your brand and business. 

But it is a hurdle for marketers to find out such a topic.  You can automate the ideation process with the help of tools like Buzzsumo.

2. Keyword Research

Keyword research is of utmost importance for implementing a successful SEO strategy. But this process is quite time-consuming. It was estimated that for a medium-size business typically takes almost 12 hours for conducting keyword research.

But the good news is that there are very popular tools are already there to help you out. Like SEMrush and Ahrefs; both of them are a very popular choice of content marketers for SEO tasks. These tools streamline the processes of identifying winning keywords preferably long-tail keywords, keywords used by competitor websites and backlink analysis.

 3. Typing

It is the most tedious and time taking task while creating and writing your content, especially if you are a slow writer. Tools like google doc’s voice typing can be a big relief and ease the typing task for you. You just voice type the whole content and at the end, just proofread it and correct any other mistakes.

 4. Content management

Content Management System (CMS) is an automation system that enables you to create, curate and publish your content all at the same place. WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world powering almost 25% of all the websites. This website also uses the WordPress content management system

Content curation

It is a comparatively easier step than content creation. Curated content is more focused on your target audience and gives an edge to your content over other competitive websites of your domain.

Content curation tasks like handling social media activity, scheduling posts,  finding new content ideas, etc. can also be automated using some tools. As these time taking but mechanical tasks are taken care of by automated tools, you can focus on creating high-quality content.

Content curation can further be divided into subcategories as below:

1. Proofreading

If your content has grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes and problems with sentence construction, then the content is straightway rejected by your audience. Content with such errors can not win the trust of its readers. Hence, proofreading is an essential part of content curation and can be easily automated. Grammarly is one popular and very effective tool to proofread your content be it written in MS Word or Google docs.

2. Plagiarism checking 

It is about checking the originality of your content and is of utmost importance. Google’s new algorithmic changes can detect any copied content in no time and can blacklist your post if it has been blindly copied from other websites. To check the originality of your content you can take the help of tools like Grammarly Plagiarism Checker.

3. Interest monitoring

This is simply analyzing the topics you are serving to your audience if creating enough interest among the readers. This analysis will further enable you to curate your content. Tools like Headline analyzer helps you to automate this task by analyzing headline scores and suggesting word patterns.

Content distribution

This is the final step in which the content created by you placed before your target audience mainly through social media. Here also automation tools can play a key role by posting the content as scheduled by you; particularly a chosen time of day when most of your audience becomes online.

Further, there are several steps of content distribution that can be automated to save time. These steps are as below:

1. Repurposing

Repurposing is using the same content for different purposes. The articles already written by you are cut down and restructured to make them suitable for posting on different social media platforms or for writing ebooks and other content. 

2. E-mail marketing

Content marketing is heavily dependent on email marketing for its content distribution. A recent survey revealed that it takes almost one week to generate a compelling email marketing newsletter for almost 68% of business houses.  It takes quite a significant time and labor to create at least 3 to 4 marketing newsletters per week.  and again the task is a mechanical one and can be automated using tools. Automation can reduce the required time to compose a mail significantly and I allow you to concentrate on other vital tasks. 

Lead nurturing in email marketing

Lead nurturing is an integral part of email marketing. Email marketing is not all about compelling a reader to signup for your newsletter, rather it starts there. If any email receiver is yet to read your email and open it, you should send him a reminder and if he has already read it then send him another piece of information about your product.

Some examples of tools that can be used to automate the whole email marketing processes are Buzzbuilder Pro, MailChimp, etc.  These tools are discussed in the automation software section below. 

3. Social media marketing

Social media have witnessed a meteoric rise in the last few years and become the main channel of content marketing. You might have come across news reports about celebrities earning a significant portion of their earning only through promotional content on Instagram or Facebook or in other social media.

Any marketers now days heavily rely on their brand’s social media presence considering the huge amount of online content consumed by people. But maintaining a quality presence in no. of social media channels at a time is not an easy task and also quite time-consuming. Also, social media posts are time-sensitive, which means the particular time of the day you post your content decides how many visitors are online and receive your content. This is also a mechanical task and can be better handled by an automation tool than a human being. But fortunately, this task also can be done through content marketing automation tools like Sprout social’s content publishing tool.

4. Outsourcing website

In case if you don’t have enough hands to tackle the whole content marketing process, you can outsource the whole content marketing task right from content creation to content distribution to any other professional companies. Once it is outsourced, the professional will automate all hiring and management tasks through their websites. You just sit back and give deadlines. 

Some important automated content writing tools

Automation tools for content marketing
Automation tools for content marketing (Source: https://icons8.com)

Here we will discuss some popular tools which help us in each step of content marketing.

Content creating tools

Buzzsumo

It helps you to choose a topic of interest by recommending keywords related to your marketing areas. It also helps you to identify earlier posts and keywords used by you which are well acclaimed by page visitors.

Headline analyzer

Keyword research tools like SEMrush/Ahrefs. Beside these paid tools, several free keyword research tools like google autocomplete, Ubersuggest, etc. are also available and very effective.

Grammarly

It is a very popular tool providing proofreading capabilities to your wordprocessing platforms. With the help of this tool, you can easily and quickly correct spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, wrong selection of words and even detect problems in sentence construction. It has its free version too and comes as a chrome extension. So, very easy to use, you can add the extension and start writing your content in google docs in a fly without being worried about proofreading.

Content curating tools

DrumUp

Finding content ideas that are relatable to your brand and curable is not easy. DrumUp is here to help you streamline your social media activity, allows you to discover new content ideas for each social media accounts.

You can also edit your original post, ad images, and the best part your post can be scheduled through it too. But again a word of caution is don’t rely on this tool blindly, always perform a check by yourself to confirm if the content ideas are in line with your business and not promoting the ideas of your rival.

Feedly, Pocket & Sniply

All these tools are content curation tools that suggest you with topics relevant to your brand ideas. You just provide them with your topic keywords and start finding interesting and relevant articles.

Swayy

Its a collection of sorted and recommended articles from several authentic professional platforms like LinkedIn. At one place you will be provided with tons of articles of your interest in content curation. You don’t have to jump from one site to another in search of relevant articles and thus your valuable time saved. Additionally, Swayy provides a very simple and effective analytics dashboard showing the trend and performance of keywords of my choice and also rank the sources.

Content distribution tools

CrowdFire & Hootsuite

It is a tool to manage multiple social media networks at one go.  It includes almost all popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. You can schedule your posts on all these platforms using CrowdFire.

Buffer

It is also a social media management tool like HootSuite only with a more sleek and clean dashboard showing a que of your scheduled posts only. Both of these tools help you to merge and monitor social media platforms and manage your content posting. 

Buzzbuilder Pro & MailChimp

These are automation tools for email marketing. The MailChimp tool helps to automate the scheduling of emails and generate auto-response for users, like a “thanks” mail if the reader who chose to accept receiving the newsletter. It ensures as you create any new content, your readers get notified. It provides a prebuild mailing template to welcome any new reader who has subscribed to your newsletter if you want you can also send personalized mail created by yourself. 

Whereas Buzzbuilder Pro helps you to run a professional email marketing campaign for lead generation with more personalization capability. Hundreds of its prebuild templates save lots of your time in designing outbound emails. Thus these tools help you sell more, get your customer more connected and engaged as well as improve productivity.

Sprout social’s content publishing tool

It comes very handy to automate content posting on multiple social media platforms at a time. You can take the help of its inbuilt calendar to schedule your content posting at a particular time of the day as you find suitable and accessible for the maximum number of visitors.

Conclusion

You can automate many business tasks that are redundant and mechanical in nature but content creation really needs creative juice of a human brain. That to say, content marketing can never be truly and completely automated. No automation tool can ever produce a deep and insightful article readers prefer to read. So automation is not a replacement of the human brain and never will be.

You must need a human brain to create high-quality content which is relatable, free-flowing and engages the audience. Companies that want to project them as thaught leaders are less likely to take the help of any content creating automation tools to maintain their brand uniqueness.

There is already 60% website content that fails to truly represent their companies’ brand message and let down that 84 % of consumers who really want quality content through which they can relate and know about companies’ offerings. In this situation automating content creation can make it worse. 

So my advice will be to don’t go for automating the creation of whole content as it will negatively affect your thought leadership. So, better you take leverage of automation tool for selective tasks as mentioned in this post for content marketing. Even if you automate these parts only, you will be able to save a big chunk of your precious time and can focus to add more value to your content.

So, go on to create your content… I wish you all the best 🙂

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