Steps to Grow Your Blog into Billion Dollar Business the right way

With the massive proliferation of blogs in Nigeria, starting a blog seems like an unprofitable business to do.

The question on most people’s mind is how do they get found among the millions of contents been poured out daily.

But it is not as hard as it looks, with determination, persistence and focus you are well on your way to making over a million dollars on your blog.

In this post, I will take you through the sure strategies you can use to grow your blog and how to maintain it.

Basic Skills Required For Blogging

Blogging has to do with putting up contents on a website to draw readers to it. The content can vary from text, images, music and videos. Here is a rundown of the basic skills you will be needing.

• Writing skills
• Communication skills
• Editing skills
• Analytical skills

1. Writing Skills

This shouldn’t be a problem. So long that you passed secondary school with good grades in your English Language then you wouldn’t have problem with writing. If you are still struggling with your grammar and tenses, I would suggest you pick up any book on grammar and try practicing. Learn to read and write daily to ensure progress. All in all you don’t need to become a master in English language to succeed in blogging business.

2. Communication Skills

It is one thing to write and it is another to communicate your writings effectively to your audience. As a blogger you must know your audience inside out and the best tone to use while writing. It will be a sheer waste of time to use a style of writing for adult on a teenager’s blog.

3. Editing Skills

Editing is a mark of professionalism. It makes you stand out from thousands of bloggers. Many writers rush to put their contents out to the public without editing it. Over time your blogs tend to loose respect and readership. Spare yourself an extra two minute in editing your blog post and save your blog from early death.

4. Analytical skills

Analytics are simply information pointing to key metrics on your blog. It gives you a clear picture of what is happening to your blog. Some key information analytics can reveal are numbers of people viewing your blog post, location of your readers, the source of the readers, monitoring of links on your blog post and several other information. Some example of popular analytical software include Google analytics, kissmetric, Mint, Spring Metric etc

Setting Up Your Blog

To set up your blog, you will need a content management system (CMS). The popular ones used today are wordpress and blogger. Each of these CMS has a free version and a paid version. The paid version enables you to customize your blog name, so instead of using XYZ.wordpress.com you have XYZ.com. It is advisable to use a custom name as it allows you to add many features on your blog.

Step one

Buy a domain from any domain company such as Namecheap, Godaddy, Whogohost etc

Step Two

You will need a hosting company to store all the files used on your blog. Some popular hosting company include Hostgator, Ipage, Bluehost, SiteGround etc

Step Three

After obtaining a host for your blog you will need to point your domain name to your hosting company. This can easily be done by looking for the Nameservers from your host website which usually looks something like this ns1.example.com, ns2.example.com.

Step Four

After identifying your Nameserver you would need to login to your domain website and look for “my domain page” or “domain manager”. After which you should click on the DNS or Nameserver and pasting the two nameservers you copied from your host into the primary and secondary Nameservers.

Step Five

After successfully adding your Nameservers, you will need to go to the cpanel of your hosting company and look for a CMS application such as wordpress and Blogger. Install it and start building your website.

Growing Your Blog

This is perhaps the biggest challenge many bloggers face. After going through the joy of buying their domain, host and designing their blog, they soon realize that all their efforts are not resulting to the money they have expected. At this stage many bloggers give up. To be really successful as a blogger you will need patience and focus.

The first thing you have to understand is that you will need to grow your own audience. There are so many ways to do this but I would be highlighting on some of them:

Social Media: This is one of the major ways many bloggers have grown their blog from one reader to thousands of loyal readers. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Whatsapp Instagram are some of the popular channels to grow your blog.

Forums: Forums can easily generate free traffic for you if you use it effectively. Many bloggers such as lindaikeji has used forums such as Nairaland to grow their blog. It is free and easy to use.

Networking with other Bloggers: The adage says, a tree cannot make a forest, so in the world of blogging you would need to network with many bloggers who can help in spreading your contents. Approach any blogger you are interested and discuss how you could work together in promoting each other’s blog.

Influencers: Influencers are people who have a strong following on social media. They have become popular over the years and people take whatever they say or post very serious. Try and locate any influencer within your niche using software like SumoMe.

Send a message to them that you are one of their fans and you liked what they have written or said. Whenever you do a post include a quote from their post and email them letting them know about this. Most bloggers appreciate this and will be willing to share your post with many of their followers. Also like, share and contribute meaningfully to their post and over time they will warm towards you.

Email Marketing: This is one of the most effective ways of growing your blog. Building up a list is not easy but when you are able to build it over time you are sure of getting high traffic to your blog. The most effective way of building an email list is by guest blogging on popular blogs.

The reason you must build your email list as a blogger is because email has the highest click through rate of any other forms.

Monetizing Your Blog

Now that you have grown your blog it is time to make money from it. New bloggers should expect between four and seven years to make anything significant from their blog. You have an audience that believe you, trust you and are ready to support you. The most popular ways of making money on your blog include:

• Placing ads
• Affiliate marketing
• Writing a book
• Sponsored post

Placing of Ads: This is very popular among all bloggers. You can make money by placing banner ads or using advertising network like Google adsense. With high traffic source you are assured of getting good money through ads.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is simply promoting other people’s products on your blog. It is a very easy way of making money on your blog. Simply visit any Affiliate company and register for a product which you can promote.

Writing A Book: With a growing audience who trust you, it is very easy to sell your book on your blog and make money from it.

Sponsored Post: This is simply accepting money from content to be posted on your blog from companies. But you have to be careful and only pick content that that fit with your blog.

There you have it; there is no reason why you shouldn’t make grow a million dollar blog in Nigeria. You have to start now. This is a no brainier, try as many other ways you think you can grow steadily but be reminded that to make millions from your blog you will need patience and focus.

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