It’s hard for people without a stable income to start a blog, which is why many of them don’t take a step forward in getting their online business started. I’m here to tell you this was more difficult years back when very little tools were available and the value of the Internet was unknown. Now that people and businesses know they can make enormous money online, you have an abundance of tools available for absolutely FREE. However, you have to find the best tools that are easy to setup and have no cost involved because they end up being perfect for beginners. I admit when I started blogging, I invested around $100.00-$200.00 purchasing tools that now, when I think about it, I don’t really need. I’m here to give you a breakdown of how you can build your blog and traffic without investing a dime.
The only two costs involved are $9.99 a year for your domain and $6.99 a month for your hosting. You don’t have to invest any money in marketing, social media, etc.
Let’s get started…
Blogging Platform
With hosting, you have the option to install WordPress from the backend with the press of a button. This is the best blogging platform so make sure you install it right away because it can be fully customized and is absolutely FREE. I’m currently with 4-5 different hosting providers and all of them provide a simple way to install WordPress after you purchase hosting.
Social Plug-ins
One of the best ways to grow your brand and increase traffic is through social media, however, many people fail to utilize the FREE options they have available. There is a reason I encourage people to use WordPress and that’s because social media integration is so simple. It’s as easy as installing a plug-in and then configuring your social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. By focusing on the MOST important, you’re able to reach a wide relevant audience and create buzz quickly. These plug-ins are FREE so it’s important you install them right away. Here are the two most popular plug-ins that I’ve tried and love because they provide complete statistics along the way…
- AddThis.com
- ShareThis.com
You can even automate your social media campaigns by using tools like Bufferapp.com, which you schedule once and let it do the “tweeting” for you.
Guest Blogging
Amazing for generating enormous niche relevant traffic and should be used by every blogger. By finding relevant high authority blogs within your niche, you’ll be able to pitch these owners an idea and write out content to be published later on their blogs. The real exposure comes when you add author bio links in the box below, which will link to your website and/or internal pages. I’ve always focused on the top 2-3 blogs in my niche because their traffic is enough to build a solid following while increasing traffic 10 X. However, guest posting is very sensitive because it can backfire if you don’t take the right precautions like…
- Writing the best content
- Formatting and editing before submitting
- Only write on trending topics
- Spam with affiliate links (immediate termination)
I forgot to mention this method is absolutely FREE and doesn’t cost you any money.
Forums and Blogging
Forums have been around even before we had advanced search engines like Google. If you do a quick search with the following: “keyword +forums”, you’ll be able to find high quality forums perfect for posting. Some will allow you to post a signature right away while others require you to build your reputation, but either way, these are great for traffic and link building. For example, when I started my SEO blog, I posted on forums like WarriorForum.com and TrafficPlanet.com. Both generated enormous traffic for me per month at a rate of 400-500 targeted visitors, which is awesome, especially when it’s absolutely free.
Start by doing a quick search in Google with your niche keyword + forums then skim through, looking for popular communities to start posting.
Outreach Mentions
Social media has also opened up the doors for “mentions” and for those of you NOT aware, it’s when you get high authority bloggers in your niche to “share” your content. A cool strategy I use is to create epic guides for my blog and mention top bloggers within the guide. After I publish, I will send them a link to the guide, letting them know they’ve been mentioned in the guide. 10/15 authority bloggers will share my content, which is awesome because it will generate enormous traffic through social media. Some of these bloggers have over 100,000 followers and then they “RT”, which is an even larger outreach.