Have you been blogging for years and its growth has been stagnant? Maybe, the traffic is not what it used to be in the past.
What could you have done that lead to this situation?
You’re still uploading consistently, you’re still writing quality articles that are relevant to your audience, and you’re still communicating with your followers.
And yet, you feel like something is not entirely right.
Before you do an overtake, hang on for a minute.
It’s not an unknown phenomenon. It happens to a lot of bloggers like yourself.
Now that you’re reading this article, it’s time to step up and have a change of plans. Or really, just fine-tune the plans you’ve set up before. A lot of times, when people set goals to gain more income, they think about those money-making schemes.
In blogging, there are much more things to evaluate and consider for you to have a profitable blog. Here they are below:
Develop a better plan
When you started your very first blog, the reason could be because you love to write.
And, just like everyone else, you developed a plan. However, this plan you created before needs to be updated and keep up with the trends we have today.
Social media and SEO changes a lot. Even your audience probably have changed in the past few months. Look into what’s happening in the industry and your blog’s data. This will allow you to craft a new and solid plan for the future of your blog.
Understand your audience well
Are you writing for yourself or are you writing for your audience?
The answer could be both.
At the first stages of your blog, it would be all for yourself. Nobody knows you and nobody have seen your content.
But traffic will slowly come to your blog. And then you can know who your audience indeed is. To be able to understand them, you must dive deep into your analytics. Know their demographics, where they come from that lead to them to your site, identify their interests, and they know how to empathize with them using your blog posts.
Create other types of content
When you’ve been doing the same thing for months, you’ll just get the same results. In blogging, you’ll need to have more than just a long and well-researched articles.
For instance, when you blog about facts and statistics, why not use an infographic to deliver your message?
When you review a product, you can create a video review instead.
Posting various types of content can be challenging, but if you do it well, you’ll see a spike in your traffic.
Optimize for search engines
The old trick in the book that almost never fails when done right.
If you want a profitable business through your blog, you’re going to have to level with the SEO efforts of your competitors.
There are a lot of sources that can get you started with this. Follow them and make your judgments.This is not an overnight thing, though. You need to be consistent so your ranking will stay up for as long as you can.
Improve your online presence
You spend a lot of time perfecting your blog posts, and that’s great. However, the time you spend in content creation should not block the time you have for outreach and promotions.
Go out there and do some paid promotions if you need, follow people in your niche, and most importantly, communicate with your audience.
If you’ve already built a substantial following, now’s the time to improve your online presence.
Read this guide to get more some ideas to get this done.
Network with like-minded people
While it’s important to build a connection with your target market, building relationships with influencers and bloggers can be beneficial to the growth of your blog.
Reaching out to people who have the same passion and interests as you can open you to a lot of opportunities. By partnering up with those who are in the same industry as yours, your blog will gain readers that come from them.
Automate tasks and look for help
With all businesses, there are ‘small’ tasks that may add up leading you to stray away from your primary goal. Some tools can help you with this. But if tools are not enough, you can always get a personal or virtual assistant to help you.
Raise your capital
You have to remember that your blog could be profitable. View it as a business and understand that a successful one needs time, effort, and money.
Yes. Money is part of the blogging business.
Getting serious about turning your blog into a money-maker machine would require you to spend a few (or a lot) bucks. This could be used for better theme and design, tools, reliable hosting, writers, and assistants.
If you have some money issues, crowdfunding could be a lot of help to you.
To put it simply, crowdfunding is where a bunch of people raise small amounts of money to fund a project they want to support. If you are interested in starting your own, you can go ahead and read Shopify’s comprehensive guide.
Lots of successful businesses that you see now are a product of crowdfunding. And you may be just one of them in the future. Who knows? Remember that your readers would want to support your blog if they value you enough.
Email marketing
Build an email list if you haven’t already. Email marketing remains to be a valuable part of your marketing strategy. It’s still a dominant communication platform, and those who signed up to your newsletter are open to being contacted by you. Make sure to learn how to do email marketing the best way.
Finally, offer your services
If you have great content, have a solid following, and is continuously making improvements on your site, it’s now time to offer some of your services. From writing, consultations, to selling an ad space, you can also launch your own branded product. Here’s a very inspiring post about someone who monetized their blog by offering services.
Over to you
What we want here is for your blog to be able to stand on its own for an extended period.
There will be revisions and refining of plans along the way, but those will be worth it.
Also, don’t forget to test and optimize according to the results of your efforts. One key to an effective strategy is to adapt to new learnings you get from the data you gathered on your blog.