10 Blogging Fundamentals for Growing a Successful Blog

These blogging fundamentals will help you achieve your blogging goals faster if you want to start a blog and make money online. I’ve covered almost everything you need to know as a beginner so you can get started on the right foot.

So, are you interested to start your blog?

Of course, you do. And, that’s why you are here, right?

Do you want to make money from your blog? I bet you do. In fact, hardly anyone nowadays starts a blog as a hobby, but instead to make money online.

This is a fact.

Blogging is no longer a hobby; it has evolved into a lucrative online business these days. Whenever you search online looking for information, over 80% of result pages are actually blog posts and belong to a blog. How amazing, right?

But, can anyone who starts a blog and jumps into this popular online publishing business become successful? Is it really worth it to blog?

Yes, to put it simply.

But honestly speaking, it is not enough to know whether it is worth it or not. What’s more essential is to understand the fundamentals of blogging.

And, that’s when you can expect to become successful.

In this article, I’ll go through the blogging fundamentals that you should be aware of even before you launch a blogging business.

It will help you in getting an advantage over your competition.

So, without further ado, let’s get started…

1. Choose The Right Foundation

When anyone decides to create a blog, the first thought that comes to mind for a beginner is to use free blogging platforms such as Blogger or WordPress.

Sadly, this is not the best option.

Why is that?

Consider it for a moment.

Why would you want to start your business on a free platform? It is not safe, and it does not give the impression that you are in business, right?

You are smart. You want to give it the right foundation.

If you’re serious and really want to turn your blog into a business, you need to lay the right foundation first.

So, what exactly do I mean when I say “The Right Blog Foundation“?

It’s simple. You’ll need to purchase a domain name and a web hosting account to host your blog. You would be the sole owner of your blog if you do it this way. Now, no one has control over your blog except you.

Click Here to Set Up Your Blog Step by Step

That’s the kind of situation you want to be in when you are building a business, right?

The best part?

Starting a blog does not have to be expensive. The cost of starting a blog can be as low as $2.75 per month for web hosting charges. The rest of the expenses are mostly optional except for what you pay to buy a domain.

In other words, owning a blog isn’t something you can’t afford.

You can get a web hosting account at HostGator for just $2.75 per month and get a free domain name for the first year. HostGator is truly one of the best web hosting options for beginners. I myself host with HostGator.

Click Here to Get Hosting at $2.75 Per Month

As a result, the annual expense is only $33 per year or $2.75/month.

Isn’t it amazing?

If you are starting your blog for the first time, you can get a free domain name from many web hosting companies.

They offer free domains to get new clients.

It’s good for you.

You will get a free domain name and hosting as well.

So, why would you want to use free blogging platforms when you can start your blogging business on the right platform for only $33 per year?

That doesn’t make sense, does it?

It makes sense only if your goal is to create a blog rather than a business. It’s a hobby, and you do it for pleasure rather than profit.

That way, you are not after building a business.

For you, Blogging is just a hobby.

No worries, if your blog is just for fun, you can use any of the popular free blogging platforms. But if blogging is your business, I don’t recommend it.

Read – Blog Your Way to Riches: Step-by-Step Guide

2. Choose a Good Theme

The theme of your blog isn’t something you can change every day. Changing your theme frequently can have a negative impact on your readership and SEO.

It also does not look professional to switch themes frequently.

What does this mean?

You should start with a good theme and stick with it for a long time. So, deciding which WordPress theme to use is essential at the beginning of your blogging journey.

Choosing a high-quality theme has many advantages.

A good theme doesn’t only help with increasing your readership but also helps with SEO and lets you customize your site any way you want.

The majority of high-quality WordPress themes are not free.

Yes, it’s not always possible to get the best things for free. But, it’s really worth it, in the long run, to pay for a theme. However, there are some free WordPress themes that really deserve your attention.

Read – 21 Best WordPress Themes of All Time

3. Select a Specific Niche

There are hundreds if not millions of profitable blogging niches that you can choose to focus on your blog. But honestly, choosing the right niche for your blog is difficult. At the same time, this is the most essential part that determines your success as a blogger. That’s why it’s critical to choose the right niche.

Also, it’s not recommended to choose a random niche and write about every random topic you come across. It’s a smarter choice to choose a specific niche.

And, you know what?

The right niche will help you succeed faster. The wrong niche can take years of hard work to make your first dollar from blogging.

The point is that you should choose the right niche the right way.

Here are some of the features of a perfect blogging niche:

Minimal competition
High-Profit Potential
Solves a Practical Need
Strong Market Demand
Professionally & Personally Satisfying

If your chosen niche meets most of these criteria, you’ve hit the jackpot.

Relevant: How to Choose a Profitable Niche for Your Blog?

4. Monetize Your Blog

There are many ways to make money from your blog.

However, not every method would be suitable for your blog. While thousands of bloggers have found success with display advertising, thousands of other bloggers prefer affiliate marketing over display ads on their blogs.

Of course, you can use all of these money-making tactics at the same time. But, it may be challenging to scale your blog revenue while focusing on multiple strategies.

When your blog has achieved a certain level of popularity, it’s a smart idea to diversify your revenue streams. Then, it can work.

However, if you’re just getting started, it’s best to concentrate on one method.

It helps you in making better decisions on how to proceed with your blog from the start. If you want to monetize your blog with display ads, for example, you should prioritize having as many pageviews as possible.

In most cases, pageviews don’t matter if you’re focusing on affiliate marketing. What counts is that you get laser-targeted traffic that converts into sales.

It will be easier to make smart decisions if you know how you are going to monetize your blog right from the beginning. You can always use additional methods to make money from your blog, but as a beginner, focusing on 1 method makes sense.

Understand that making your first $1000 online will be the hardest, but making your next $1000 is not.

Recommended – 8 Best Ways to Make Money Blogging

5. Focus on Content

Blog content or blog posts are the foundation on which your success will be built.

It’s always a good idea to produce as many blog posts as you can.

Of course, it should not affect the quality of your articles. Either you can write yourself or hire writers to blog for you. What matters most is that your readers should get what they want in the best possible way.

If you want to be a successful blogger, you should know the following:

You need high-quality content in high quantity.

That’s right.

It will be challenging to persuade readers to return to your blog if you are unable to create high-quality content that they enjoy, share, and connect with.

Your blogging income will suffer, as a result.

Also, more content usually means more opportunities to attract relevant visitors from organic searches. If you do a quick check on the biggest blogs on the internet, you’ll find that there are thousands of blog posts on these sites.

Obviously, you won’t be able to write thousands of blog posts in a year or two.

But, to be honest, 20 blog posts won’t get you anywhere.

According to my experience, you should have at least 200 to 300 blog posts on your blog before you can hope to make a decent income from it.

Yes, it takes time. But that’s how it is.

In most cases, blogging requires patience. You can’t expect overnight success.

6. Become a Better Writer

Blogging mostly involves writing. So obviously, you can’t expect to become a successful blogger if you are not a good writer.

Yes, you can hire someone or many writers to write for your blog.

However, you should have at least a basic understanding of how to write a good blog post. That qualifies you to hire a good writer. It would be difficult to judge a writer’s content quality if you do not understand what goes into writing.

So, before hiring writers to write for your blog, try writing a few articles yourself. Trust me. It helps in the long run.

Honestly, you can’t be in a business if you don’t know the basics.

Useful: 9 Best Grammar Checker Apps for Serious Writers.

7. Focus on SEO from Day 1

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

SEO means search engine optimization.

Why should you care about it?

Simple. You need traffic or visitors to your blog. More traffic usually means more money. It’s impossible to make money from your blog without traffic.

There are 2 options you have to get traffic.

You can either pay to get traffic to your blog.
Or, you can produce quality content that search engines love.

The result?

Search engines direct more and more traffic your way.

As a beginner, it may be challenging to understand all types of SEO issues, you may have on your blog. You need to do an SEO audit to find these SEO errors.

The best way to do it is to use SEMrush. It will help you review, manage and control almost every aspect of search engine optimization.

You can sign up for a free SEMrush account.

The free account is limited, but it should be sufficient for a beginner.

8. Get Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are still the number 1 factor that determines where your website should rank on search engine result pages (SERP).

Of course, I am not referring to those spammy links from spammy websites. Those links don’t work. There are better ways to create links that matter.

In fact, there are certain factors that make a backlink high quality. Below are some of the most critical factors that make a backlink high quality:

A backlink from an established and trusted website
Link from a relevant website or web page
Relevant anchor text used while linking
Backlinks that send traffic your way
Backlinks that are surrounded by text

There are many ways to get quality backlinks to your site. The following are some of the most effective ways to get backlinks:

Blogger outreach
Guest blogging
Build relationships with other bloggers
Write outstanding content that people love to link to.
Do original research that people prefer to link to.
Create an infographic.
Write testimonials
Link to external sites
Make comments on other blogs

Read – 9 Best Ways to Get Quality Backlinks to Your Site

9. Be Patient

Blogging is time-consuming.

If you want to create a blog that makes money, one of the most important characteristics that you should have is patience.

Why?

Like any business, blogging takes time.

In fact, getting a decent amount of traffic to your website that can produce some decent profit takes at least 1 or 2 years, in most cases.

And, here’s the fact:

It may take a few hours to write a high-quality blog post. But it’s not going to rank on top search engines like Google within a few hours.

You know what?

It can take anywhere from 3 months to 3 years for a blog post to rank on search engines for relevant keywords, depending on how competitive the keyword is.

The result?

You cannot expect instant success.

Of course, there are many examples of blog posts getting ranked in less than a week or in a few hours. But, this is very uncommon. It’s not going to happen to you.

So what should you do?

Be patient and keep working on your blog.

10. Take Blogging Courses

If you’re just starting out, you almost certainly lack the necessary skills or knowledge that can help you succeed as a blogger. There are many blogging courses available online that you can take advantage of to get ahead faster.

I’m not suggesting that you pay for those expensive blogging courses.

I know there are courses that cost hundreds of dollars.

Honestly, you should never pay to learn how to create a blog. There are numerous tutorials available online that will show you how to start a blog.

However, there are a number of things you should be aware of, as a beginner.

You don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars either.

On Udemy, you can find a variety of free blogging courses. And, with lifetime access, most premium blogging courses on Udemy will cost you about $10-$200+.

Final Words

Frankly, it doesn’t hurt to pay $10-$100 and deep dive into blogging.

Of course, you can do a quick search online and find hundreds of blogging-related articles that can help you in learning the fundamentals.

The article you are reading right now is a good example.

But, to be honest, telling you everything you need to know about blogging in a single article is impossible. And also, it doesn’t make sense to waste endless hours reading hundreds of blog posts trying to figure out what blogging is, how it works, and how you can make money blogging.

You need better information quickly, without spending hours.

And that’s why taking a blogging course can help.

The way all of the material is organized is the biggest difference between online articles on blogging and blogging courses.

When you conduct research online, you are going to get random information. On the other hand, if you take a blogging course, you’ll get all of the knowledge in a logical, structured, and easy-to-understand format that makes sense.

It also saves time and helps you launch your blog faster.

Finally, we have come to the end of this article.

Please do not hesitate to share this article if you find it to be useful. It doesn’t only help others who might need this information, it also really helps me and motivates me to write more to help more.

10 Blogging Fundamentals You Need to Grow a Successful Blog