Hi I’m Praneeth Kumar.
In this blog I will walk you through everything you need to know about how to start a niche blog and make money in 2021.
After reading this ultimate guide to starting a niche blog, I guarantee all of your doubts and queries related to niche blogging will be answered.
So without further ado let’s get started.
Here is a 30000 foot view of the blog post.
Why start a niche blog.
One of the most important reasons why you should start a niche blog instead of a multi niche or a Lifestyle blog is because,
- By starting a blog focused on a niche, you tend to become an expert/authority on the topic on the internet.
- By starting a blog focused on a niche, you will have a more targeted audience to your website which can increase the conversion rates.
- By starting a blog focused on a niche, you can easily make money and continue to dominate the market in future.
- By starting a blog focused on a niche, it becomes easier to stay focused and remain consistent in your efforts of publishing content on your blog.
Because of all these amazing reasons I would highly recommend you to start a blog on a particular topic rather than using a multi niche or a broad topic or a Lifestyle blog.
Different types of niche blogs;
There are different types of niche blogs that you can start on the internet like,
- You can start a personal blog where the author will be the name and face of your blog.
- You can start a business and a branded blog where your company will be the name and face of the blog.
- You can start a news and media blog where even if you focus on a particular topic, you tend to share the latest news and information on a particular subject to the audience and keep them up to date with the latest information.
For those of you who are interested in starting a news blog,
- You can read my ultimate guide on how to start a news blog,
But for now we will consider how to start a personal and business blog focused on a niche in 5 easy steps.
Now take a look at the step by step strategy on how to start a niche blog and grow it.
How to start a niche blog?
Here is a five step process on how to start a niche blog and grow it to large percentage and make money.
1. Select a Niche.
In any niche blog, what is the first & most important thing?
You guessed it right, it’s a niche.
You can read my ultimate guide on how to select a niche for your blog in 2021.
But for now, in a quick overview, let’s see how you can decide and identify a particular topic to start a blog on,
- What are you really interested in learning about, for example if you have topic about digital marketing, are you really interested in learning about digital marketing because if you are interested in it then by keeping some effort and time you can gain good knowledge on the topic so can you write at least 50 in-depth blog posts on digital marketing by yourself, if yes you should move it to next factor.
- Is the topic that you selected is short term or long term like a trending topic or evergreen one, you can check it in Google trends, it is important to ask because if you select a trending topic then you may get a lot of search volume and traffic to your website in less time but you don’t get traffic in long term because trends always change, I would highly suggest you to choose only evergreen topic because It will consistently get traffic to your website irrespective of time.
- What is the money making potential in the topic that you selected, which means can you either sell a product or any consultation service in the topic that you selected for your audience/is there something that your audience in the topic can buy from you because recommending and selling products to your audience is the biggest way to make money from blogging for the majority of bloggers.
These are all the important things you need to keep in mind in order to select a blog niche.
You can learn more about niche Vs micro niche market here.
You can learn more about best topics to make money in blogging.
2. Create a Blog.
Now that you have selected a topic for your blog it’s time to create a blog.
Although there are various platforms you can choose to create a blog, I would highly recommend you to start a blog on WordPress CMS.
By starting a blog on wordpress you have complete control over your website both front end and back end and you completely own your website.
You can customise your website exactly the way you want and monetise however you like.
But in order to start a blog on wordpress unique something called domain and web hosting,
A domain name is the name of your website on the internet and web hosting is the place where your website will be stored on the internet so that other people can get access and visit your website on the internet.
There are many web hosting companies on the Internet you can choose in order to start a blog on WordPress,
But I would highly recommend you to start a blog by choosing the bluehost web hosting service.
You should choose bluehost because they offer a free domain name and SSL certificate which is very important for your website security for absolutely free for a year,
you should also choose bluehost because it is officially recommended by wordpress and they offer a great support, faster website loading speed and 99% uptime guarantee and great security of websites.
- Read Bluehost review.
Let’s take a look at the step by step on how you can get your web hosting and install WordPress to create your blog.
Step1: visit bluehost with my special link to activate your 65% discount on your web hosting plans.
Visit bluehost with my special link to activate your 65% of discount on your web hosting plan.
Step2: click on get started as shown below in the image.
Step3: Select any one of the plan for your website in my case I choose a choice plus plan and you can easily upgrade to any higher plans in future if you want to scale your blog.
Step4: thankfully bluehost also offers a free domain name for one year so you can either select a domain name here or you can choose it later after purchasing the hosting, if you want to select a domain name later you can click on select domain later and move forward.
Step5: now it’s time to fill out all the important and essential details and location address.
Step6: uncheck all the upsells options that bluehost has because they are not really worth your money and you can easily get them through free plugins with WordPress.
Step7: purchase the web hosting plan.
Step8: after you complete the purchase of a web hosting service you will get an email to your inbox to the email address which you entered while purchasing the web hosting plan and you will get a confirmation email and you can easily sign up to bluehost with your Email and password.
Step9: now after you login into your bluehost account its time to install wordpress and you can do it by entering the cpanel and scroll down below untill you see wordpress installation like below
Step10: thankfully for non techies like me you can easily install wordpress with single click on bluehost hosting service and you don’t have to face all the technical issues, just fill out the important information asked and click on install wordpress on your hosting account and it can get started and wordpress get installed on your hosting account.
And you can install from something like this,
Step11: sign up to WordPress and login to your dashboard.
You have successfully installed and created your blog on WordPress.
After you install wordpress on your website it’s time to install and activate a neat and clean wordpress theme for your website because a theme is going to be the face of your website,
it is going to help you to build a good first impression of your website on the internet so there are lots of free and paid themes are there in the market but
I would highly recommend you to use a theme called Astra,
you can search it in WordPress themes section and click on add new and search for Astra install and activate the theme and there is also a paid plan that you can buy from the Astra Website.
The Astra theme is highly optimised for Speed and customisation for wordpress websites you can check the YouTube video below to learn how to customise your website with Astra theme using elementor plugin.
There are lots of important settings and configurations you need to do in your wordpress dashboard which you can check out here.
I have written a detailed guide on all the important plugins you should install on WordPress to create your successful blog.
Because security is an important aspect of wordpress websites, you can read my ultimate guide on how to secure your wordpress website in easy ways.
There are many people who feel wordpress to be very complicated and frustrating for those of you, you can read my blog to solve all the frustrations with wordpress that you have.
Now let’s move on to the next important step of starting a niche blog.
3. Publish Content.
Publishing content is the most important factor in your blogging success because your content is what speaks on the internet.
Publishing content on your website is what is going to drive traffic to your website from search engines and social media platforms.
Publishing content is what going to give a reason for people to stay on your website and brings you new customers to your business.
But you should be careful and strategic in terms of what kind of content you publish and how you publish it.
Before you publish any piece of content on your website the most important part is to do the research and come up with amazing ideas and topics which you can write about on your blog.
You can use many keyword research tools like,
You can use these tools to find keyword ideas and topics you can choose to you start creating content for your website related to your industry.
Whenever you are doing keyword research for your website you should make sure that you only target two types of Keyword search intent which are informational and commercial intent.
What this means is that,
For example if you want to start a blog focused on a topic of Search Engine Optimisation.
Informational intent keywords would be like,
How to drive traffic to your website?
Or why you should build backlinks to your website?
Or what is keyword cannibalization and why you should avoid it?
You get the point.
It is a set of keywords category which means that the user is trying to learn something when he types that keyword in Google and social media platforms.
The Other type of Keyword search intent you should target is commercial intent keywords and some of the examples for such keywords is topic of SEO is like,
Best keyword research tools, or, best backlink outreach services, Hostinger Vs Bluehost, Ahrefs Vs semrush.
You get the point.
It is a group of keywords which means that the user is trying to buy any product or is in search of any product or service.
When you target these two different types of search intent keywords on your blog you can both increase the traffic and drive sales and increase your conversion rates and make money from your blog.
You can learn more about keyword Research and search intent here.
After you get relevant keywords and topic ideas to write about, you should start writing and publishing content on your blog.
Thankfully I have a couple of excellent resources which can help you in your blogging journey.
- Read exactly how to write a blog post even if your not a writer and complete beginners?
- Read how frequently you should publish blog posts on your blog?
- Read important blogging mistakes you should avoid doing in your blogging journey.
And whenever you are creating content for your blog, make sure that you optimise your blog post for search engines by doing proper on page SEO, you can use popular SEO plugins called Rankmath in WordPress to help you sort out the on page SEO of your blog.
These are all the things you need to know in order to create and publish content on your website.
4. Drive Traffic.
Now that you have published in a content on your website it’s time to drive traffic to your website from different places,
But in a quick overview, let’s see the popular ways to drive traffic to your website.
- You can drive traffic to your website from social media platforms like Facebook, twitter, linkedin and Pinterest.
- You can also repurpose your blog post into videos & audios and publish them on YouTube and on podcasts networks like Spotify and link back to your website as original post.
- You can also run paid advertising campaigns on the social media platforms mainly on Facebook and Pinterest.
- You can use web push notifications to drive people to your website whenever you publish content on your website through push notifications.
- You can capture the email address of your audience and make them lead to your blog and you can send different emails to your audience in their inbox whenever you publish a new blog post on your website.
- You can also help people solve the problems on forums like Reddit and Quora,you can insert links back to your website as an additional source of information in your forum answers.
- You can publish guest post articles on different authority websites relevant to your industry and get Quality backlink and targeted traffic, brand awareness to your website.
- And obviously you can drive traffic to your website from search engines by optimising your website and blog for SEO.
Well, these are all the most popular ways you can drive traffic to your website.
5. Make Money.
There are various ways through which you can make money from your blog as soon as you get traffic to your website but let’s take a look at some of the most popular ways,
- You can join different ad networks like AdSense and Ezoic, display their ads on your website and make money depending upon the page views and Clicks on the ads.
- You can also join many affiliate networks like Amazon Associates and promote their products relevant to your niche on your website and whenever people purchase any product through your affiliate link in a limited amount of time you make money as a Commission for making those sales.
- You can also accept and publish sponsored content on your website by joining many networks like flyout and adsy, other than that you can also contact with relevant brands in your industry and pitch them offers for publishing sponsored content on your website for some charge.
- Because one of the most important benefits of blogging on a particular topic is that you build an authority and expertise on the topic, you can sell any physical or Digital products as you gain more knowledge on the topic and people will be more likely to buy from you because of your expertise and authority on the subject.
- Because of your expertise and authority you can also offer consultation and coaching services to your audience for hourly rates.
These are the 5 most important and popular strategies you can use to make money from your blog.
There you go, these are all the important things you need to know about how to start a niche blog.
With that said let’s conclude the blog post.
Ending remarks.
These are all the important things you need to know to start a niche blog.
Do comment down whether you are starting a niche blog or not, I would love to know that.
Share the blog post with your family and friends if you have found it helpful and let them know how to start a successful niche blog.
Sharing is caring.
I will catch you next time till then keep learning and keep growing.