How To Work From Home Blogging? A Beginners Guide to Starting a Blogging Career

Many people have stories and ideas they would like to share with the world. Bloggers often channel their stories from personal experiences that allow them to connect with their audience on an intimate level. With the right strategies, commitment and hard work, you can turn your blog into a full time or part-time income. Like any other venture, your blogging journey will begin with the first step. However, before taking that leap, you must learn a few things to help make the process more manageable.

Here is an in-depth guide to help get you started blogging from home and building your business.

Work From Home Blogging (A Beginners Guide)

1.) Reasons for Starting a Blog

You must have a motive for creating a blog. In order to work from home blogging you need a clear plan guided by clear goals to help you stay focused and generate momentum.

Contrary to the misconception, you do not have to be an excellent writer to run a successful blog; you need the passion to share your knowledge and ideas. One of the reasons why people start blogs is to make money to supplement their primary source of income or as a sole source of livelihood. If you approach the venture well, you can indeed make money from it. The other reason is to share helpful content, experiences and stories with your friends, family, and even the whole world.

Other people blog to find a community to be part of; blogging about a particular topic attracts people with similar interests whom you can share your experiences with. You can also choose to further your skills as a writer through blogging. Before you opt to work from home blogging, make sure it is a venture you will enjoy doing. Remember, blogging is a long-term process and results won’t happen overnight. This needs to be something you can see yourself doing for a while.

2.) Choosing a Niche

Many aspiring bloggers take a lot of time trying to come up with the perfect niche for their website. First things first, pick a niche where you have some experience and expertise in. Also, make sure this is a niche where there are unlimited topics you can write about. Meaning you won’t have any shortage of great content ideas to write about.

Picking a niche that people are already writing about can be a good thing as well because from a business point of view, it means people are interested/searching for that topic. Again, make sure it’s a niche that you’re passionate about and have the knowledge to come up with quality article ideas. For example, it is not wise to start a sports blog if you do not fancy sports.

It’s important to note that by no means do you have to be the #1 expert in your niche. Even if you know just 10% more than most people, plus have the drive to keep learning, this will help you grow your blog. Your journey to find ways of how to successfully work from home may tempt you to pick the most “red hot” or “popular” niche. However, as stated, be careful because it is much better to create a blog around something you are passionate about and/or driven by (strictly from a sustainability standpoint).

3.) Name the Blog

The fact that there are companies that are in the business of naming companies goes to show you how challenging this can be. It is not necessary to hire professional assistance for the process. However, you should research and carefully think of a name that is relevant to your niche, memorable, and preferably short. Since the name of the blog will also serve as its domain name, it needs to be available when you go to purchase it. A blog with the same domain name is easier to find in search engines; hence they have better visibility. Mind mapping is an excellent way to derive a blog name. Write down the topic of your blog then write down words that are relative to the subject; it will give you a list of words to combine. Check the availability of the domain names in your list before picking the most suitable title.

4.) Choose a Web Host

Web hosting allows you to make your blog available online for the audience. Your host is responsible for the safety, security, and availability of the content to the readers when they type or click your URL. Working from home successfully as a blogger depends much on partnering with an excellent hosting company. If you intend to grow a successful blog, you may want to spend a portion of your money on developing a self-hosted, official, and professional blog. Going for a self-hosted blog gives you the freedom to do more, for example, the ability to really customize your website. By picking the right hosting company for your blog, you can focus on how to work from home and continue building your business with confidence.

Once you’ve settled on a domain name for your blog, you will then need to select your hosting plan from the available options. I highly recommend signing up with HostGator as they offer flexible hosting plans and also top-notch customer service. Many hosting plans that last for a year or more generally give you free registration for your domain name, so definitely keep this in mind.

5.) Plan Your Content Strategy

To work from home blogging, you must make sure that you have a clear plan and strategy for generating content. Your blogging career will involve spending a lot of time coming up with high-quality, catchy, exciting, and insightful posts. Since other bloggers may be operating in a similar niche as you, your content needs to stand out and give readers a different and unique perspective compared to the rest. Provide readers with your honest viewpoint about a particular topic. You can even make certain posts light-hearted to include a few jokes. It’s really up to you to discover your writing style.

Researching keywords is an excellent strategy for discovering people’s current discussions, thoughts and search trends. This data you gather will come in handy in ensuring that your content answers the questions of the readers and/or contribute to ongoing conversations on topics relevant to your niche. Decide the frequency and time of your uploads as well so your audience knows when to look forward to their next read. Consistency is key when blogging from home, so make sure you pick a schedule and stick with it.

6.) Designing the Platform

Over the years, WordPress has developed excellent and feature-rich themes and templates; therefore, choosing WordPress eliminates the need to create a design from the beginning. Visit the appearance section and go through the many theme options available. Preview several themes before settling on one. A quality theme generally has many active installs but offers customization to ensure your website still looks unique. A quality theme is also compatible with the latest updates from WordPress, and has excellent user ratings. The reviews, customer support, and responsiveness of the developer are also indications if you should go with a particular theme or not. If the developer responds within a timely manner, then the theme may be suitable.

Do not compromise on the mobile responsiveness and compatibility with your blog and theme. Many people use their smartphones and tablets for many activities these days, including reading their favorite blogs. Therefore, your blog should be adaptable; for instance, it should fit into both large and small screens perfectly to provide excellent viewing for your audience. Picking between light and dark theme is also crucial. You can either ask for the audience’s opinion, make the decision yourself or let the readers make their preference. Additionally, since screen resolutions change often, it is better to use larger fonts to improve the readability of your content.

7.) Marketing your Blog

The best content is not enough to make your blog grow at the speed you may want it to; promotion is mandatory. If you work from home blogging, utilize this quiet time to learn and implement marketing tactics to build your blog’s authority and following. One of the more powerful ways to market your business is through social media. Follow accounts that operate in the same niche as you and that have similar content; collaborate, connect, participate, and use relevant hashtags when posting your own blog articles on your social media platforms. Strive to become an expert and influence in your niche. Also, study the work of your competition’s social media strategy to gain necessary insight and inspiration.

Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures that when people search for relevant keywords, your blog appears among the top results in Google. The meta tags, titles of your articles, the URL, and even your meta description contribute to your page’s SEO. You should utilize a plugin called Yoast to make the SEO tag process easier. You also need to be conscious of the way you structure your content as well. The title and subheadings should be SEO optimized with target keywords. Your content should contain your main keywords and also be very informative and helpful. Compressing and including alt tags to the videos and images in the blog also can help your blog rank higher in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Guest posting is also excellent for gaining recognition in the blogging society as it not only gives you a larger audience but also builds backlinks, which raises the traffic for your site and helps with keyword rankings in Google. Try sending some pitches to bloggers in your niche for a chance to get your article published on an external website. You will get better at the guest posting process with time, stick with it and remain patient.

(Check out my video here if you’re looking for a more in-depth guide on how to build quality backlinks via guest posting).

8.) How to Generate Income through Blogging

If you intend to work from home blogging, you should know that you cannot monetize your blog by only posting content. You may have started your blog as a hobby, but as time passes, you can turn it into a full-on business in order to successfully work from home. You can choose to sell physical products such as hand-made jewelry, t-shirts etc. or you can sell services such as an online courses, consulting, and freelancing among others. Affiliate marketing is also an option you can take; by recommending a company’s product or service, you earn a commission for every click that results in a purchase.

Advertising is another way of making money through blogging by either posting ads for products and services on your site or doing a sponsored post for the item you wish to promote. However, sponsored content is only relevant if you have a broad and loyal audience. Typically, for you to do a sponsored blog, your traffic should be 5000 or more readers every month. Be careful not to alienate your audience when doing a sponsored post. Come up with a blog post that looks natural and relative to your style of publishing. By launching a simple podcast, you can use the traffic to seek brand sponsorships from companies who wish to tap into a particular group of audience.

Conclusion

It takes time to grow a successful blog and be able to work from home part-time or full-time, however the benefits of running your own business are priceless. Please use these tips to help get you kicked off in the right direction.

Also, if you’re looking for additional one-on-one assistance, please be sure to check out my blog coaching services here!