Amateur Blogging: The Ultimate Guide to Amateur Blog

The Ultimate Guide to Starting an Amateur Blog: From Passion to Profit

Are you passionate about a topic you want to share with the world?

Do you have what it takes to write and share your knowledge with others who need it?

Starting an amateur blog could be the best way to dive into the exciting world of blogging and content creation.

But if you have all the skills and experience, where do you begin?

We will share the step-by-step journey, showing you how to start an amateur blog and turn your passion into profit through blogging.

Whether you want to write about software, making money online, fashion, travel, food, or any other niche, this post will help you.

Below are what we will cover in this blog post

Choose Your Niche
Choose the right platform
Set up your blog,
Create compelling content,
Getting traffic
Tips for monetising your blog
Turn a blog into a full online business.

Amateur Blogging Step 1: Finding your niche

Are you passionate about a particular market or niche?

This aspect is crucial; you need to choose a niche where you can provide quality and informative content that can help and solve readers’ problems.

Narrow your niche

Finding your passion and niche is the first step in starting an amateur blog and growing it faster than you could imagine.

To create informative and engaging articles, you must write about something you truly love or are ready to outsource.

Think about your interests and areas of expertise. Once you’ve identified your niche, narrowing it down further is essential.

For example, if your amateur blog is about travel, you could focus on the following:

Luxury travel
Budget travel,
Solo travel
Adventure travel
And also expand it later in the future.

Choosing a specific niche for your blog may help you stand out and attract a targeted audience.

Find some related blogs and analyse their content to find more ideas about your niche.

Identify some areas where you can offer unique content, solve people’s problems and more.

Amateur Blogging Step 2: Blogging Platform

After choosing your amateur blog niche, the next step is to choose a blogging platform.

There are several options available, and each of these options has its advantages and limitations.

The popular blogging platforms are WordPress, , Wix, Blogger and Squarespace.

WordPress

WordPress is the best platform for bloggers because of its flexibility, customisation options, and extensive WordPress plugin and theme library.

WordPress is the best because It offers a self-hosted option that gives users complete control over their blog’s design and monetisation.

Blogger

Blogger.com is a beginner-friendly platform owned by Google.

It’s simple and easy to set up, making it an excellent choice for new bloggers who want to test their skills before going into a blogging career.

There are many limitations when choosing Blogger.com, which lacks some advanced features and customisation options that WordPress offers.

Wix

Wix is among the best website builders that also offers blogging capabilities.

Not only that, it is also created for people who want to start an e-commerce store.

Wix has a good drag-and-drop interface and beautiful templates. Wix is a good option if you want to design a blog with drag and drop builder.

And for bloggers who want a visually stunning blog with no technical knowledge.

Before choosing a blogging platform, consider your needs, budget, and technical expertise.

I strongly recommend starting with WordPress if you’re starting or an experience.

Start with one that aligns with your goals and requirements, as moving from one platform to another may be serious hard work.

Amateur Blogging Step 3: Setting Up Your Blog

Once you’ve chosen a blogging platform, it’s time to set up your blog. This involves registering a domain name, finding the best web hosting, and customising your blog’s design.

Your domain name is your blog’s web address (e.g., www.yourblog.com). It should be memorable and relevant to your niche.

Avoid using numbers or hyphens, as they can make your domain name difficult to remember.

Web Hosting allows you to store your blog’s files and data. Many hosting companies have different pricing options, from budget-friendly to more premium services.

Before choosing a good blog hosting, please find out about their feature and what they offer.

The factors to consider when choosing the best web hosting are:

Uptime
Customer support,
Scalability

After registering for web hosting, it is time to set up a WordPress blog and make it go live.

The steps are simple, and most web hosting provides step-by-step instructions.

Join Hostgator web hosting today and save 65%

Once your blog is live, it is time to customise your blog’s design.

In the WordPress theme library, you can find a good theme for designing your blog, reflecting your brand, and appealing to your audience.

They make designing and customising your blog’s colours, fonts, and layout easy.

Amateur Blogging Step 4: Optimising blog for search engines

Now that your blog is live, it’s time to create quality content to engage your visitors.

Creating compelling and engaging content is the pillar of a successful blog.

Quality content attracts and retains readers, builds your authority, and drives traffic to your blog.

Defining your blog content strategy is important before writing a blog post. This will give you more ideas of what to write and the type of content your audience needs

Identify the types of blog content you want to create, such as articles, tutorials, guides or interviews.

Determine the frequency or the number of posts at which you’ll publish new content and create an editorial calendar to organise your work.

When writing blog content, remember that your content must address your readers’ pain points, answer their questions, and provide solutions to solve their problems.

Add and Incorporate visuals, such as videos, images, and infographics to enhance the reader’s experience.

In addition, to stand out from other bloggers, you may want to consider diversifying your blog content formats. Different types of content you can include are podcasts, videos, interactive quizzes, etc., to engage a wider audience.

Amateur Blogging Step 5: Promoting your blog

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is crucial for driving organic traffic to your blog.

If you want to get the most results from your blogging, SEO is very crucial, and you need to pay more attention to it

SEO will increase your chances of ranking in search engine results (SERPs) and attracting targeted visitors, which can quickly generate sales.

The first step is to do keyword research to find what your target audience is searching for on Google and other engines.

There are many keyword research tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Search Key, etc., to find high-volume and low-competition keywords that can rank on Google.

Once you find low keywords, you can strategically incorporate a few of the keywords into your blog posts. Include the keyword in your blog title, headings, meta descriptions, and throughout the blog content.

NOTE: Avoid keyword stuffing, which can negatively impact your search engine rankings.

Here are other on-page SEO tips to help your blog rank more keywords.

Optimising your URLs
Using descriptive alt tags for images
Interlinking related content within your blog.

Off-page SEO Strategies

The off-page SEO you can use to help you are:
Building backlinks and guest posting on other relevant blogs.

It can also help improve your blog’s visibility, get more traffic and increase ranking.

Building an audience is a crucial step in the blogging journey.

And without quality readers, your amateur blog will remain hidden, and your efforts will go without rewards. Some strategies to attract MORE audience:

1. Use social media to promote your blog: Create social media profiles and share your content regularly. Engage your followers and join online communities like Facebook groups to build a loyal following.

2. Guest post: Reach out to other bloggers in your niche to write guest posts for their blogs. This will help your blog content a larger audience and help build your authority.

3. Collaborate with influencers: Identify influencers or experts in your niche and collaborate with them. This may seem complicated, but if you can make it work out, the rewards will outweigh the time and effort you put in.

For example, you could be involved in guest hosting a podcast episode, co-authoring an ebook, or participating in a joint webinar.

This type of collaboration can make more impact on your blog and, expose it to a broader audience and gain credibility.

4. Engage with your audience: Respond to some of the comments on your blog and engage with your readers on social media and other platforms. Building a community around your blog can encourage readers to share your content with others.

Remember, building an audience takes more time and requires consistent effort. You need to be patient and focus on providing more value to your blog readers.

Tracking and analysing your blog’s performance

Once you’ve built an audience and established your blog’s authority, it’s time to monetise your blog and generate income.

Amateur Blogging Step 6: Monetise your blog

Here are some of the best ways of Blog monetisation:

1. Display advertising on your blog

Join an advertising network, such as Google AdSense. Google Adsense allows you to display ads to make money when a visitor clicks on ads on your blog.

2. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is the best way to monetise your blog. Promoting products or services as an affiliate allows you to earn a commission for each sale or lead generated through your referral link.

You can choose from many high-paying affiliate programs and get paid.

Check this blog post to join some of the best affiliate programs.

3. Sponsored content

Another way to make money from your amateur blog is through sponsor posts.

You can collaborate with brands and allow them to submit sponsored blog posts or reviews on your blog. You receive compensation for featuring the brand or product on your amateur blog.

4. Create and sell Digital products

If you jump into product creation to increase your blog income, you can go wrong.

You can sell online courses, audio, ebooks, videos, templates etc.

This method gives you an idea to leverage your expertise and provide value to your audience while generating more income from your work

5. Freelancing or consulting

Since you’re a blogger, you have experience in writing quality content, SEO etc., you can offer all these services and get paid.

Use your blog to showcase your expertise and attract clients for freelance writing services.

The best places are Fiverr and Upwork.

Choose monetisation strategies that align with your blog’s niche and audience.

Amateur Blogging: Conclusion

To ensure the success of your blog, it’s essential to track your blog performance.

With this step, you will be able to know what’s working and what’s not to improve your blog’s performance.

There are many web analytics plugins, such as Google Analytics and Slimstat, to track key metrics such as blog traffic, bounce rate, and conversion.

Set goals and track your blog’s traffic to measure your monetisation strategies’ effectiveness.

In addition, regularly review your blog’s posts and consistently update them for higher ranking.

This is crucial if you want your blog to rank in search engines. Always look for areas for improvement. Let’s say, there are some blog posts or content that are performing better; you can link to other related topics and make visitors visit those posts.