How to start a blog and (don’t) become rich

How many times did you think about the possibility to launch a new blog and start to earn money at the same Elon Musk’s speed? Well, chances are against you, and you will understand the reason when you will come to the end of this article. But before talking about some essential steps to do to start a blog, here’s some interesting fact that you need to know before to start:

• About a third of all websites are blogs. Competition is a thing.
• More than 2 million posts go live every day. You‘ll need consistency.
• Less than 10% of all bloggers generate some income. Are you good enough in blogging to join in this 10 percent?

Unfortunately, I am not drinking something on a tropical beach, so it’s obvious that I am not into that 10 percent. However I’ve worked in this sector for some years and even if I am working in a totally different sector right now, blogging is still one of my never-ending passions. In this post, I will talk about some of the most important things to consider before launching a blog whether it is for passion or work… The intent is to give you some hints about blogging avoiding to commit some of my previous mistakes.

1 — Find a niche topic

The first thing to do is to find a niche topic that is not largely treated by one of the millions of blogs on the Web. At this point, you are surely asking something like “Why I should talk about something that others are not talking about?”

The answer is simple: if this topic is something relatively new and there aren’t other blogs specialized in that topic, you may have found a cash cow, golden goose, or “place synonymous here”.

Obviously, before to start a blog that talks about something like chair pads, you should ask some questions like:

1. Why no one has already started a blog about chair pads?
2. How many contents I can generate on this topic?
3. There is a real way to monetize that? If yes, is that applicable in my current situation? (Only if you don’t want to write only for passion)
4. How many people will genuinely interested in this topic?
5. I can write about this topic for years?

Asking those 5 questions, you should be able to differentiate good ideas from a probable waste of time (and money).

2 — …But a topic that you are passionate about

If you are willing to start a blog and you are reading this post, there is a good chance that are you willing to start a personal blog without a staff behind it. Well, if this is the situation, the answers to the fifth previous question conceal another important thing: passion.

The passion for the topic that you want to write about is necessary because is the fuel that allows you to generate interesting content consistently. Let’s be honest, who’s like to dedicate one or two hours of their precious spare time to write posts about something that he doesn’t like? Someone said “Chair Pads”?!

If you don’t have a passion for the niche topic there is still a way to start your blog but is something extremely difficult and expensive to do. You need to found some good writers driven by passion that can collaborate with you. But let’s be honest: start a blog nowadays is something extremely simple… If there is a good writer that is specialized in a niche topic, he’s probably busy on his blog or for someone else that can pay dearly for his blog posts. So, as I said before, this way could be something extremely difficult or expensive to accomplish.

3 — The right platform at the right time

Ok! You’ve found the niche topic that you are passionate about. Now it’s time to choose your platform. And yes, it’s time to answer to questions like “It’s better WordPress or Medium?”, “Is Blogger something that I could consider to start a blog in 2020?”, “Can I write my blog with HTML and CSS?”, etc…

I will not answer to all those questions obviously… What I can say to you is that the platform is relatively important because the content is the real king of a blog.

There is a lot of platform in 2020 that allows you to start a blog in a couple of days. But, at the moment, I would only consider:

• Start a blog on Medium.com
• Develop a custom website with WordPress CMS

Both choices have good and bad aspects. So I will dedicate one paragraph to deepen Medium and WordPress.

Why you should start a blog on Medium in 2020/2021?

Medium.com is a relatively new platform and in 2019 it had something like 85–100 million monthly active users. That’s means that when you will publish new content, it will be hosted on one of the most important blogging platforms on the Web.

Medium isn’t just a blogging platform, but it is something very similar to a social network made by bloggers and readers. This is a tool in your blogger toolbox because you will start to publish content where people typically go to search for content. And not on an anonymous blog with just a few days of life.

Even more, Medium lets you publish content for free. That is a thing if you are just starting in the blogging environment… You can focus on content writing instead of spending time with blog setup, hosting problems, etc!

Using Medium as a first approach to blogging allows you to create a fanbase and, more important thing, you can start to understand if your topic is something that can arouse people’s interest… All of this without spending a penny!

Last but not least, with Medium you can start to earn money from your content using the Medium Partner Program. Obviously don’t you expect to become a millionaire from day one, but is something to evaluate if you don’t want to write not only for passion.

Why you should start a blog using WordPress CMS in 2020/2021?

Using a CMS like WordPress gives you some interesting advantages and a lot of disadvantages.

With WordPress you can build your blog from the scratch: freedom is the keyword… You can customize theme, font, colors, the homepage end every small detail. The bad news is that this approach isn’t for everyone… Most of the time, WordPress blog development requires very good Web design, Web development, Web marketing and SEO skills.

Yes even without skills in those sectors, you can arrange to build a WordPress website using some tutorial found on the Web but isn’t something that I suggest you. Even if at the end of the work you will probably build your WordPress Blog, there is a good chance that there will be a lot of technical problems that you can’t even identify by yourself.

The result could be catastrophic because your good editorial contents could be totally hidden by technical problems that could prevent your blog to be correctly found on search engines (exactly, is a very bad idea to ignore King Google!) or navigated successfully from users.

Ok, you can go over technical problems by hiring a good Web designer. And this brings us to another problem: build WordPress blogs could be expensive. You should pay for:

• a good hosting avoiding every possible entry-level offer (around 50–100 EUR/year)
• a domain (10–20 EUR/year),
• a good premium WordPress theme — not mandatory, but recommended (60/200 EUR)
• a good Web developer (at least 600 EUR for an entry level blog) — only if you don’t have enough skill

When I said expensive, I didn’t refer only to the economical aspect: a WordPress blog requires also a lot of time even after the initial setup (technical problems, security, technical/SEO and graphical improvements, settings problems, etc).

Ok, there are some bad aspects, but a custom website will allow you to monetize your posts in a lot of creative ways. Display advertising (the good and old advertising banner) and content marketing are two of the most common ways to monetize a blog… But don’t be too enthusiastic, unfortunately, this type of advertising requires a lot of time and daily users to become profitable. That said, the most common way to monetize a blog is not the most profitable… There are a lot of creative ideas that allow you to monetize a blog. But isn’t something that should be treated in this post.

Ok… At this point, you probably think that WordPress is a kind of monster, and it is… But also in a positive sense! When things start to become serious, it’s important to have your personal place on the Internet and a custom website with WordPress CMS is the best choice! But please, don’t waste this move by building it in a cheaper way, at the beginning, you should be able to write focusing totally on the content… And, when you will be ready to make the jump, find a good Web developer with blogging experience to help you to build a good custom blog with WordPress.

4 — Perseverance & Time

Typical blogger — Day1: “Ehy! I’ve just launched my Blog, come to see it!”
Typical blogger’s friend answer: “That’s great! There are a lot of good contents! Keep it on!”

When you will launch your first blog, you will probably write a lot of content before launching it. People that will visit the blog will be flooded by updated posts, images, etc. That’s is the target!

Typical blogger’s friend — Day30: “Ehy! I’ve just checked your blog… You don’t publish new contents in a while!”
Typical blogger answer: “…Well, I’ve earned only 0.20 EUR in one month and I gave up!”

Profits don’t arrive in one month and probably they will not arrive in a year! This is an important thing to understand if you want to start a blog in the near future. You need a good amount of perseverance to obtain good results… Perseverance is given by both discipline and passion. Discipline is necessary to be ready to publish new contents constantly. Passion is necessary to keep you motivated and don’t give up at the first obstacle.

5 — Analyze your contents every month

When you work on a blog, your passion for writing and communication will do the 70% of the work. The remaining 30% requires an analytics attitude (Stats feature on Medium / Google Analytics on WordPress).

At some point content analysis is mandatory to understand if you are doing a good job and, even important, to better understand your audience. Thanks to content analysis, you can understand which type of contents are the favorite ones of your target. In this way, you will optimize your efforts dedicating your precious time to topics with a high probability to be read and shared.

But don’t be too enthusiastic… Sometimes analysis lets you understand that better contents are also the most boring to write. And that’s another reason to be persevering during your blogging journey!

6 — Don’t be afraid to fail!

I’ve started to write for passion in my spare time. After some time I found a nice semi-professional blog with a lot of good writers leads by passion and I immediately asked to join the staff. The experience in that project opened a lot of good opportunities for me… After 2 years of amateur blogging, I’ve joined the staff of two of the most successful digital newspapers in my country (continuing to work also on my previous blogs).

I’ve worked as a freelancer Web writer for 4 years before to understand that blogging wasn’t the work of life for me (… I am in the Web development sector right now). But blogging is still one of my greatest passion.

During my blogger experience, lead by passion and curiosity, I’ve started some blogging project all alone. Some of them are still online nowadays and others just disappeared like a drop in the water. But all of them taught me something important about the blogging world… Things that you can’t completely understand until you live them.

• One of my failures thought me that a blog without a good and passionate staff can’t survive the year if it isn’t your only side project.
• In another case, I’ve learned the apparently boring topics are little treasures.
• Another one thought me that 10 good contents written with a strategy in mind could monetize more than 100 contents written just to increase the counter.
• … And trust me, I’ve about twenty other suggestions like these.

The point is that I’ve learned things because I’ve just tried! This is the key to gain experience and build something that could be defined as a ‘little success’, whether we talk about blogging, an app, or everything else.

So, if you have an idea, possibly a good one, and you have accurately planned your blog journey… Start as soon as possible! Only by trying you will understand if blogging is something that suits you in the professional way, if it is something that you can do just for passion (as in my case), or if blogging simply isn’t as you expected. Give it a go!