Note: This blog post is a sponsored conversation written by Lynn Smythe, the Founder and Chief Blogger for The Creative Cottage lifestyle blog. The opinions, thoughts, ideas and text are all mine.
Running a blog is something hundreds of thousands of people do day by day, month by month, and a lot of them enjoy doing so. They’ve turned what was once a hobby into a full blown business, that allows them to rake in a good profit week after week, and gives them a good platform of exposure to all kinds of new opportunities and new fan bases that keep them happy to run a blog for tomorrow as well. So exactly how hard is it to start a blog?
But could you do the same? After all, you have to put a lot of work into a job that’s secretly 24/7 – everyone can see you at all times, there’s no clocking off, and you’re going to have a lot of work on your plate as soon as you wake up in the morning.
So with that in mind, let’s think about how hard it is to keep a run of a blog. It might be a little trickier than you first thought, it might meet your expectations, or it might just be a walk in the park!
Starting a Blog is Fairly Simple
Setting up a blog can be quite a simple process, and there’s all kinds of guides out there for someone to follow if they’re confused about the process. You don’t even need to build your own website when there’s various content management systems available to store all your work for you; WordPress is just one of the most popular to rely on, but you can always find somewhere else to host your blog if their functions and features are just not enough for your needs.
Get yourself a domain name, one that’s catchy and concise. Find yourself a hosting system, of which there are also many to choose from. And then you use your CMS to get your blog all put together – pick a name, pick a theme, set up an archive, install a search bar etc. All just little admin activities you can polish off in an afternoon. These things are also very easy to change, so you can come back to your blog design and layout whenever you think it isn’t working and give it a change around. All in all, the first steps are easy enough.
Do You Have Enough Ideas?
If you’re going to run a blog, you need a niche. You need something to write about, and it needs to be a topic that has a lot of content to indulge in. After all, you need to keep people coming back to even register at all in search ranking and advertiser minds – you need to have a niche or theme that allows you to churn out piece after piece, giving your blog more substance and credibility.
So you need to find ways to relate your content on a wider scale, and ways to keep people interested for more and more of what you’ve got to say. You need a good tone and style to your writing, and you need to always be abreast of what’s going on in the world – could you focus on a particular news story via your unique viewpoint? If you can, you’ve got a niche market to get the word out to!
Do You Know How to Advertise?
If you want to run a blog, and successfully monetize it, you need to get your head around advertising. Do you know that some blogs and blog like sites out there make most of their money off of the same five articles, or that you should Never do Adwords manually if you don’t have the idea down to an art?
Advertising is something we all think we’re good at – we use SEO, we link back to other pieces on our blogs, we guest post for bigger names in the business – but you need to know which of those efforts have the most outreach effect for you. You need to keep track of what adverts you have out there, in the form of things you’ve written and the opinions people have of you.
And staying on top of all these little details, and not just the plan for you latest marketing campaign, is going to take a lot of time out of you day. Do you have the commitment capability available? You’re going to find it hard if not.
If you want to start your own blog, go ahead and do so! But make sure you understand the gravity of the commitment you’re making first.
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