Creating your own blog is a great way of expressing yourself and sharing your story with others who have a similar interest to yourself. In this post we will be exploring a blog in more detail and showing you how easy it is to get yourself a website to house your blog, how to scale it to reach more people and also how to monetise your blog if you so desire.
What is a Blog?
In short, a blog is defined as informal or conversational updates on a website. But in reality, a blog is so much more.
It is a way of exploring the subject you enjoy in more depth, allowing others to join in and learn from you and get ideas. You will regularly land on a blog site when exploring different subjects, such as a food blog – these are great at checking out new recipes, new ideas and the health benefits of a certain diet.
Or if you are into the outdoors, you will find a blog where they explore certain parts of the country you are thinking of checking out. Why go somewhere to find it isn’t what you expected, check it out from someone who has been there before.
Blogs are so useful nowadays, when most people buy online they want to check out other people’s opinions on products, activities, etc. That is where a blog is really useful.
Why Does Your Blog Need a Website?
Some will argue that you don’t need a website to blog or earn money online. I will take a moment to argue that you need a foundation for your blog. Many people start a blog to share their story but actually decide to move it into an online business and earn enough money to work from home. This is why you need a website. A foundation to an online business where you can share your content across multiple channels including social media.
You Blog Website also needs the right content management system and hosting.
WordPress + SiteRubix = Awesome Blog Website
WordPress is an ideal base for a blog website. It is a great content management system with great functionality that is really easy to use. But your hosting is just as important. Think of your website being the house and the hosting is the land the house is built on. You cannot have one without the other.
SiteRubix is a fantastic hosting provider, it is part of the Wealthy Affiliate family and with a free starter membership you can get 2 free websites using WordPress on their SiteRubix hosting.
How to Create Your Own Blog Website
Let’s get down to how you can create your own blog website in 5 easy steps for free
Step 1 – Choose a relevant website URL. Use the tool below to check whether your preferred URL (website address) is available.
Step 2 – Complete Your Free Account Setup. Create Your Account to Continue onto the Website Builder.
Step 3 & 4 – Choose a Title for Your Website & Choose a Theme. In the example I have chosen My Dog Training Site
Step 5 – Click Build Your Site.
There, you now have your very own free WordPress website up and running in a matter of seconds.
There is much more to a Wealthy Affiliate membership, and you can learn more about it at my Wealthy Affiliate Review.
How to Grow Your Blog Website
Having a blog website is all well and good, but what you really want is to know how to grow your blog website and increase the number of people it reaches.
One of the great things about having a blog is getting people to engage with your website, ask you questions, share their experiences and creating a relationship with you as the website owner and the readers. But if no one can find your blog, then that is a big stumbling blog.
Wealthy Affiliate offers much more than a website for you to start blog with, they have specific training on subjects such as:
- Search Engine Optimisation for Your Website – If the search engines do not find your website, no one will find it
- Content Creation – Creating content for your blog that actually works and engages with the audience.
- Training on WordPress – Learn How to Get the Most out of WordPress
- Growing Traffic – How to get people to visit your blog
- Mastering Social Engagement – Social Media can play a huge part, get the most out of it for your blog.
How to Monetise Your Blog Website
Whilst there are a number of bloggers who are not looking to monetise their site, most are looking for ways to bring some money in from their online pursuits. Affiliate Marketing is a great way of monetising your blog and is less complicated than you might think.
There are 3 parties involved in Affiliate Marketing. You (blog owner), the Owner of the Product/Service and the Buyer (Visitor to Blog). You introduce the buyer to said product/service and they choose to buy it, and you get a commission for the introduction.
It is a simple premise, by including product reviews in amongst all of your other content with an affiliate link it can lead to you earning money through your blog.
Amazon is one of the biggest marketplaces online and it has its own affiliate program called Amazon Associates. Their commission rate is lower than other programs but has more customers than most, so it evens out.
More and more people are researching products and services online before they buy – there is the opportunity to earn money.
Now there are some things that will help you succeed:
- Only pick Products and Services that your readers would benefit from
- Don’t Sell to them, helping them decide will yield better results
- Don’t flood your content with affiliate links, there are strict guidelines on this stuff
If you truly want to benefit from Affiliate Marketing with your blog website, my biggest recommendation is Learn Affiliate Marketing the right way. Wealthy Affiliate has some fantastic training that will take you through building a website, understanding affiliate marketing correctly, adding affiliate marketing to your blog, growing your blog the right way and leaving you with a business that can earn you a living from home.
If you would like to ask any questions about creating a blog, affiliate marketing or Wealthy Affiliate – please leave them in the comments below. I am here to help anyone get started online and I promise to come back to you with an answer to your questions.
Very informative article. Everyone who is looking to succeed online must have a website. It is one of the most effective and promising ways to earn online without investing too much. I am in affiliate marketing and I would definitely recommend all those people who want to earn cash online to build their own niche website.
Hi Daniel,
thanks for checking out my post and leaving a comment. Having a website is a great platform to launch your online business whether it is affiliate marketing, selling your products or creating a blog.
A website doesn’t cost a lot nowadays, but some free websites do not actually end up being the best option for those looking to earn money online, or you find out there are a lot of additional costs down the road. That is why I suggest SiteRubix & Wealthy Affiliate – all prices are upfront, do not change (haven’t changed since the platform launched) and offers some great help, support and awesome tools too.
Thanks again Daniel
John
Thank you for this amazing article. At the moment I am gathering information and I want to create my first website. I read many reviews and I am a little bit confused about what domain I should buy how to put my image and data on the website and stuff like that. I read different reviews and I do not know what to pick.
Do you think SiteRubix is good for beginners?
Hey Strahinja,
thanks for checking out my post and leaving some comments.
I understand how you must be feeling, I didn’t have a clue when starting out and for many it might actually put them off – but with the right training material and help and support, it actually became quite easy to learn and put into practise.
To your question, SiteRubix & Wealthy Affiliate are geared up to totally help with beginners – their step-by-step training is awesome and you will have your own website up and running by lesson 4, you will learn how to place images, videos and anything else you need to make your blog look exactly like you want.
Hopefully that has helped, if you need anything else let me know.
Thanks
John
Thank you for a really detailed article. You really have covered exactly what is needed to make money from a blog. The article has been a real refresher for me.
I wish I had come across an article like this many years ago. I really struggled when first starting out on what was needed to actually make money from my blog. I loved writing but didn’t have a clue how to monetise it.
Keep up the great work. So many people are going to find this helpful like I did
Hi David,
thanks for checking out my post and leaving some comments.
Without the right guidance, many beginners do find it harder to monetise their site or even find traffic from it.
I want to help people avoid the struggles with posts based on my experience and helping people find the right directions.
Writing is a key element of any blog – but it does need a purpose (ideally helping people) and then if you can add the right monetisation routes it will work.
Thanks for the feedback David
John
I think Your website is done really professionally. The content is clean and crisp. I really liked that you had a table of contents at the top so people know exactly what you were going to show them. It’s set up very much like informative training and I think that’s just so helpful in selling the idea of Wealthy Affiliate as well. You’ve shown just how straight forward and easy it is to set up a website and blog in a simple way that makes one feel as though they could do this.
There are a lot of relevant images which also help to give a visual idea of what setting up the website looks like. Very well done.
Melanie
Hey Melanie,
thanks for checking out my post and leaving some comments. I appreciate your feedback, I want to help as many people as I can understand Affiliate Marketing and only find genuine opportunities like Wealthy Affiliate.
Anyone can start their own website or blog – it has become much easier nowadays as you don’t need to know computer coding (unless you want to). But it will require time and effort to become successful.
Thanks again Melanie,
John