Hey! Вon't believe what others are saying blogging is not dead! actually there is
no better time to start blogging than today because we're living in a digital
paced world where do you go to check reviews before you buy anything even if
it's sold in an offline store you first go to Google and search for reviews
don't you and where do you find the best whole organization tips and who gives
you all the recipes for your Sunday family dinners I bet it's not your
grandma I bet it's some blogger who never met
you and who has a fantastic collection of healthy recipes everyone is learning
and purchasing things online nowadays that's why it's such a great time to
start a blog hi I'm Alice tasia and you can find my blog at anastasia
blogger.com that's actually a pretty nice domain name for a blogger isn't it
I'll tell you secret I only chose it because when I started my blog I have no
clue what I was going to write about I was lost
in choosing the niche so I figured I'm going to just put my name on the blog
domain and eventually it worked out well for me as now Anastasia blogger Descamps
sounds like a solid brand name and on this channel I share my tips for
starting a blog in online business for driving traffic from Pinterest and for
making money online if that's what you want to learn about then subscribe to my
channel and hit the bell button so you get notified about my new videos so
we're all consumers of online content and it's not the future it is the
reality you might be here right now because you want to start a blog or you
already have one but you want to learn how to make money out of it and I'm
probably a good person to talk about blogging and making money because I am
in this game for about three years now and my blogging income has grown to
about twenty or twenty five thousand dollars in monthly income so I know what
I'm talking about when I say that you can make a very good income blogging and
I actually made another video with a detailed income report for the month
where I made $25,000 with my blog so I'll give
you a link to that video in the top right corner and in the description
below this video but before you start a blog I want to talk about the basics
what is a blog actually have to start it and finally how you will make money from
it what is it blog and what are the
benefits of running a blog a blog is considered to be an online journal but
technically it can be also considered an informational website it's good for
people who want to make money by sharing information and also for business owners
who want to promote products or services online the content of a blog typically
includes texts photos videos animated gifs illustrations and for graphics and
more and I would say there are two main types of blocks
the first one is blocks created by people who call themselves bloggers and
the idea is usually to make money on it with advertising work by selling
affiliate products and you share information people read your posts and
companies show their ads and you're getting paid for it
this model is great for beginners but don't get me wrong it's not only for
beginners a lot of huge online brands started technically as blogs probably
you know names like BuzzFeed TechCrunch the penny holder and these are all very
big publishers making now probably over a million dollars a month with
advertising and with sponsored content on their sites but they all had their
humble beginnings as blogs and the second big type of blocks is created by
companies or maybe people who already have a business and they want to use a
blog to connect with their audience better it serves as a platform where you
can put all the information about you or about your business and vlogging is the
perfect platform if you want to build a strong community and build trust with
your audience with consistent blogging and with constant production of
high-quality posts and information your business will look more credible and
people will start going to your blog for advice for reading about your products
recommendations and more and another benefit of blogging for business
especially if you're a product focused business is
that you can share more detailed instructions and how to's for your
products let's say you have a fashion brand you can make blog posts with texts
and photos about different ways on how you can style a particular piece of
clothing and if you are a beauty or a skincare brand you can share a detailed
procedure on how you can apply and use your products in a nutshell
you can build awareness and credibility for your business or personal brand
through blogging and if you ask me what kind of blog is Anastasia blogger.com
honestly it started as the first type of blogs I was mostly relying on
advertising income and on affiliate offers on my blog in the first year and
a half but over time I started adding some digital products and most of them
are printable ebooks and meal plans but I also built my signature digital course
that helps others learn how they can drive free organic traffic from
Pinterest platform it's called Pinterest SEO traffic
secrets and this course and the way I started using my blog posts to establish
connection with my audience around the topic of Pinterest marketing all of this
moved my blog more towards the second type so I treated more like a business
so when blog is used for growing your business
it becomes the second type of blog and what do you need to start a blog you
could start a blog on a free blogging platform like blogger or WordPress
dot-com but I honestly do not recommend doing
this because you have a very long and untrustworthy address of your site if
you do so it will look like on the wordpress.com it will look something
like my favorite recipes dot wordpress.com and if you have your own
domain name it could make it easier to memorize it because it will be shorter
it will be simply my favorite recipes com and the second reason I do not
recommend using these free blogging hosting platforms is because you will be
limited in lots of ways you won't be able to use all the monetization options
you might want to and your website will not be seen by search engines as a
serious candidate for ranking your pages high in search
results and last but not least since your website is hosted on a free
platform this platform can be shut down any day and all the work will be lost
there because your content was published on their platform so it's technically
doesn't even belong to you what do you need to do instead
well you intend to make money with your blog down to you so why don't you change
your mindset from trying to do everything for free - thinking of it as
of an investment into your business if you had to start a business in an
offline world in most cases you would need to invest something before you make
your first money right luckily with blogging you don't have to invest that
much you can start a self-hosted website meaning it will be your own domain and
the hosting will be an independent paid hosting for about the price of a cup of
coffee a month I recommend everyone the most affordable hosting provider that I
started with as a beginner blogger it can cost you from two ninety five
dollars a month if you use my affiliate link with a special pricing that
Bluehost offers to my subscribers by the way I cannot guarantee that the special
pricing will be available forever so you might want to go in the description
below this video and find the link to this offer while it's still available
and before we move on to the next part of this video I just wanted to let you
know that if you actually get got inspired by this video and you decided
to start your blog but you're not sure how to actually monetize it and what are
the steps of creating a blog or a website I have a free starter course
7-day free email course that includes also some videos and you can sign up for
this course on the home page of my site and also I'll give you a link in the top
right corner and in the description below this video and I also would like
to talk about the essential parts of a blog it's very important to understand
the parts of your blog so you don't have any issues whenever you need to
customize your theme or change something in the code of your blog so I will talk
about some fundamental parts of the blog that every blogger should know about to
deliver a seamless user experience but I want to note here
that you can add or remove some parts of the blog that even from those
fundamental parts that I will mention because it will all depend on your
personal preferences and also on the goals that you have with your blog just
keep in mind whenever you decide to remove some of the blog elements you
want to make sure that you're aware of all the pros and cons of doing this so
the first element is basically the your home page it's what we're looking at at
my side now the home page is where your visitors will go if they want to have a
quick overview of what your blog is about and what kind of content you're
creating the home page should be visually attractive and user friendly or
else your visitors will quickly leave it and they will not understand how to
navigate through your site and your home page should also clearly reflect what
your blog or what your business is about that's why as you can see on my home
page I talked here about my free courses my paid courses about all them I also
give links to the blog posts related to either Pinterest marketing tips or just
in general blogging tips and I also give links to some of the future both the
best posts that I believe are the most important on my site and other pages
that you can show on your site the important ones need to have links to
them from the home page I used the top menu for this so the important pages are
the most common ones are about page and on this page you can give and more
in-depth introduction about you or about your business you can add some history
of your business you can talk about your vision why you started your website what
your blog is about and anything else that you find really important to show
to your users to explain your story and the next type of pages is called
category pages in this case I'm giving you I'm giving a link to the blogging
category on my site because I find it the most important for me to show it to
my audience this specific category of blog posts and so inside this
category all the posts that I ever created related to blogging or to
Pinterest tips listed on this category and I think that it is essential to add
at least one category to your homepage menu the one that you think is the most
important for your audience because it will help your readers to find related
content to relate it to what they're interested in and furthermore by adding
categories you're helping your older posts like the ones that are on the page
7 for example be seen and they will not be buried by hundreds of new posts
because users can navigate route through this category a lot of blogs also have a
special page called contact page and on this page you will put your contact form
you can also add your email address or office address and if you have a
physical address you know or maybe your office hours so your visitors can easily
reach out to you in my case I prefer to keep the email address right here on my
about page but if you want to have a special page that has even a special
form where users can instead of giving them the email address you could just
give them a form right on that page you could use that option as well and then
you could have a page called shop I also give a link to it in my home page top
menu and this only applies to you if you're selling your own products it is
important to let your visitors know what they can easily find and buy through
your website so when you're adding this shop page you can conveniently showcase
all kinds of products that you sell on your side and you can redirect your
visitors even to an e-commerce site if you're also hosting your ecommerce store
on a separate platform a separate domain you could also use a page from your from
your blog you could link to a shop this way and then another type of pages you
could have on your site is either work with me that's how I called it it could
be called courses that could be called services
and this is somewhat similar to shop though to the shop page if you're
selling online courses or maybe you're offering some online services it is best
to let your audience know that immediately right in your homepage in
the top menu so they know that they can browse through your site and find a
selection of your services and of course an essential part of any blog site is
blog posts a blog post can be either a text article it can include images or
infographics or can even include some some of your videos that you published
it maybe even outside of your blog platform might be on YouTube but you can
also include them in your blog post and it is important to know that the more
regular you update or publish your your new blog posts the better it is because
it will make your visitors keep coming back to your website and of course the
content of your posts must be related to your brand obviously so if you are a
fashion blog it wouldn't be ideal to suddenly make a post about cars or
technology right so no one will find you credible that way and you should only
post about things in which you have expertise and you're comfortable and
confident talking about and another very important part of any blog website is
blog comments that can be found within your blog posts at the at the end at the
bottom part of them and it will actually depend on you if you want to turn them
on or if you want to keep them off but I just want you to know that the comments
section is one of the top places in your blog wherein you can build a community
and you can engage with your readers so I do suggest turning them on and you can
always have if you have worried about spam you can have a spam filter on your
site especially there on WordPress there are so many plugins to do this you can
also manually approve all the incoming comments so you can filter them out and
just add the ones that have no any spanner links in them and another
essential part of any blog as I believe it should be an opt-in form an opt-in
form is your subscription form for your email newsletter
this can either be in a form of a pop-up that shows up on top of your content it
can be a widget like this one inside the content of your blog post it can be even
in a form of a simple banner like this that gives you a link to another page
where users can opt-in to sign up for your list
I recommend collecting subscribers to your newsletter the very moment when you
start your blog even if you don't send any newsletters yet because you don't
want to miss out on people who might just be your potential customers so once
you decide to send send out your first newsletter you will already have some
significant amount of subscribers into your list and then of course every site
should have a footer you will see at the bottom of your blog post page it can can
usually be the same for the home page and for other pages and usually it
includes either the links to some important pages like contact page about
page privacy policy disclosure pages and also it may include some links to your
social media profiles so the audience can continue following you outside of
your blog so how do you actually make money from your blog I have another
video on my channel that covers in detail all the monetization strategies
that you can use for your blog including display ads affiliate marketing selling
your own products and services and using sponsorships and partnerships and as a
beginner you will probably need to start with display ads and affiliate marketing
since you don't have your own products to sell yet and the fastest way of
driving traffic in many niches I'm not saying that in all the niches but in
many niches its Pinterest organic traffic and I have lots of videos on
this channel that will help you start a Pinterest account and drive traffic to
your site and if you really want to start with a step-by-step guide a
blueprint and conquer Pinterest platform within months then check out my
signature program called Pinterest SEO traffic secrets and I'll give you a link
to it in the info icon and also in the description below this video now
I don't like repeating myself a lot so I would say if you want to learn more
about duration strategies for a blog then
check that video that I mentioned it will be in the description below this
video as well and I have to tell you that if you want to create a successful
blog that will bring you first side income and then probably it can even
replace your full-time job you need to be strategic and think very well about
the niche of your blog and the ways that you will actually make money with it if
you are starting a blog just to write about your travel experiences and you
hope that random information about the cities you visit it will make you rich
and famous then usually this is not going to happen you can't write about
things that happen in your daily life and hope that people will just follow
you for your story this kind of blogging is really in the
past and I don't think it was ever much profitable to be honest so to make a
profitable blog you need to offer users answers and solutions for their problems
and in my next video I will cover the most profitable niches that are great
for starting a blog or a website this year so if you want to learn more you
need to subscribe and hit the bell button to get notified about my new
videos and if you found this video useful then give me a thumbs up and
leave your comments and your questions below this video and have a great one I
will see you in the next videos