How to Start a Successful Blog in 2020 and Beyond

This article is not your regular post of starting a blog just by buying a domain name and hosting and continuous bombardment of your blog with contents! Contents!! Contents!!! With NO RESULTS!

Because of how in-depth this post is, I recommend bookmarking it or pinning it on Pinterest so you can refer back to it later.

Disclaimer: This Post Contains Affiliate links. I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you use my affiliate link. Read Full disclosure policy here.

Successful blogging doesn’t have to warn you out before achieving your set goals. To run a successful blog, you need to know the people you are going to be serving and be able to grab their attention with valuable contents and the right marketing strategy which is the easiest and the surest way to make money blogging. If your blog serves no one or is without an audience, even you the owner wouldn’t make any head way with it. When you create a blog on a strong foundation of knowing whom to serve or whom you are serving then you are sure of building one of the very best businesses online.

If you want to skip all the details and only want to setup your blog right away, then switch to this blog post.

Starting a successful blog requires the following;

1. Knowing Your Niche

Knowing whom your blog contents or products would serve is very important in running a successful blog, you need to learn to build a brand of loyal following by targeting a particular audience. You must be able to speak to their needs and be able to proffer solutions to their problems via your blog.

Why is it so important to have a target audience? It’s simply because you will find it much easier to expand your blog direction when your audience is interested in the same contents or offers.

Choosing the right niche is so important because It determines if you get to make money blogging or not. The niche you choose must be what people are searching for and can be easily monetized.

Some popular blogging niches are business, beauty, parenting, fashion, travel, lifestyle, personal finance, health and fitness

Still need some help with choosing a niche? Download my 100+ top Money Making Blog Niches to get you started or take the Free Blogging Email Course for more freebies

2. Start A Blog with The End Result in Mind

Before starting a blog, it is essential to figure out how you are going to grow the blog into a full blown business empire through various monetization strategies. Blogging is just like any other business that you get to nurture using various actionable plans in order to achieve your set goals.

Having known your target audience and what to blog about, the next step is to pick a catchy domain name and a reliable hosting company

3. Pick a Domain Name and a Reliable Web Host

A domain is the name your blog would bear on the internet and hosting services make your blog live on the internet. In choosing a domain name for your blogging journey, it’s advisable to go for a catchy domain name that can be easily remembered by your audience. Some of the hosting company I would recommend for your blogging business are Bluehost and Smartweb and for your domain name, I would recommend Namecheap because their prices are cheap and you get free privacy protection with your domain purchase.

With Bluehost, you get a free domain name for a year with your hosting plan, 24/7 support, free ssl certificate and 99% uptime. Smartweb is another web host that is reliable and much more cheaper than bluehost if you are starting on a small budget and their support system is also great!

4. Find Relevant Products to Promote

This step actually depends how fast you would like to start seeing results with your blog! Do you want to take the fast track by finding some products to promote through affiliate marketing / eCourse creation or would you like to take things step by step by focusing on giving contents and growing your email list first? If you would like to focus on the latter, you will need to have some freebies in place that will be given to your audience in exchange for their email addresses. It all depends on what you want. Whichever strategy you decide to adopt, the result would depend on the marketing strategies you are going to be using and the amount of traffic you are able to generate to your contents and offers/products

5. Install WordPress

If you are serious about blogging for cash, WordPress is the best platform to put your blog on. With its various themes and plugins, you get to design your blog to your taste and most of these themes and plugins are free to use. There are other blogging platforms out there but WordPress is recommended because it is the most SEO friendly and is trusted by about 90% of businesses on the internet.

To install WordPress, you can check out my previous blog post, its gives you a detailed step by step information on how to install WordPress and get your blog up and running and you can also watch the video below;

VIDEO SOURCE: YOUTUBE

6. Create Your Blog Pages and First Blog Post

Now we are in the fun part, after installing WordPress with the theme of your choice and necessary plugins, the next step is to create your blog pages like the About me page, Contact page, Services page etc. as well as a few blog posts.

I must tell you this fact, to remain consistent in order to achieve your set goals, you will need a blog plan before you even start writing.

A blog plan would guide you on your daily, weekly and monthly posting schedules in your chosen niche, guide you in planning your products and offers, help you plan your list building techniques/sales funnels as well as your optin freebies

You can download this amazing blog planner that I used in running all my blogs. You can also take the Free blogging Email Course for more freebies and future tips!

In writing your blog post, make every content you write valuable and epic so as to keep your blog readers coming back and even sharing your contents on other platforms. Remember content is KEY.

7. Optimize Your Blog for subscribers and Sales

In running a successful blog, you need to be strategic by setting up various funnels through your contents showing your audience your various offers and freebie which will eventually bring in the leads and sales via list building techniques.

8. Drive Traffic To Your Blog

When you ask about 90% of bloggers what their major challenge is, in blogging, the answer would definitely be driving traffic to their contents and offers. In driving traffic to your blog, there are few steps you would need to take;

Install social media sharing buttons – I used Ultimate social media plugin
Install pin it buttons – I used jQuery Pin It Button.
Focus on one or two social media platform especially Pinterest and Facebook.

If you would love to learn how to use Pinterest in driving tons of traffic to your blog and also making affiliate sales through Pinterest, you will need to checkout this paid course “Get Paid to Pin” . With this e-course, you stop worrying about traffic and start making affiliate sales through Pinterest!