Have you been passionate about a certain subject (or niche) and you would like to write about it on your own blog? Even if you would answer yes to the question, blogging might still not be for you. Making a blog takes a lot of time and work. It’s going to be a long term commitment to delivering quality content to your readers on a frequent basis.
With some questions and depending on your answers, you will get some insight if making a blog is worth it for you. By the end of this post you will also get to know why it will be worth it and how to make it work. I will include a bonus tip there at the end of this article.
What is the purpose of your blog?
There are different reasons to have a blog. Some would like to have it to write down their personal experiences and do not really care if a lot of people read it.
Others are doing a lot of effort to gain a lot of readers and also website traffic. This is also often done to gain money through advertising of affiliate.
If you are trying to make money from blogging, it’s harder than what most people claim on the internet. Believe me, I am also trying since the pandemic has sidelined me.
Facts about blogging
- There are more than a few million blog posts created per day
- 71% of blogging content is in English
- The average time spent on reading your article is 37 seconds
- An average blog post is more than 1100 words
Source (Techjury)
You can imagine that making money out of your blog requires some great content. Do read the Google Webmaster Guidelines when you want to create great potential blog whether you create it for money or not.
Earning money from blogs 2020 is not that easy
My own personal experience of making money from blogging is that it isn’t easy. Especially when you are alone like most. Working together can be a hassle for dividing earnings. Imagine your pages are not being visited at all, and your co-creator ends up with generating 100% of the traffic.
Then comes how much does advertising earn? How much do I earn from affiliate sales? So from my experience, I write about travel, food, lifestyle and blogging. I generate about 2$ per 1000 visitors, this number seems to vary but it’s always close to it.
I am yet to make any affiliate sales because of the current pandemic nobody can go on vacation to Bali. So it’s hard for me to talk about this.
Other ways to earn money by owning a website are to sell your service or product. This could be consultancy for other bloggers or selling your e-book. Some would even sell a potential back-link to increase domain authority.
It comes down to this: to earn some money you would need a lot of traffic that is interested in your website.
How much time can you spend on creating content?
Creating content takes time. It takes roughly about 4 hours to create a post according to 99firms. This can vary, it depends on how much research is done for your article.
Research? Yes, you have to read and do some fact-checking. It is also a good idea to actually mention your source where you got your information from.
With so much content created every second, it is hard to stand out, especially when you are just starting a new website. Then comes the fact that when you make your very first post, there is a chance that nobody will find it on Google the first few months.
Yes, you can post in social media and get readers from there, but getting found via Google, that simply just takes patience.
Tips on creating relevant content
With millions of posts appearing in different languages worldwide, the content you want to write about might already be out there.
Why do you create content, when there is already so much out there? Something has already been written about the topic you are going to write about
A friend
This question was answered easily. Because it’s hard to make good content that is up to date and stays that way. Relevancy, quality is what you should aim for. So before creating your content, think about how people would find your article on Google. What would they type? Try to type and check out the top results, everything on the first page. You can find something these articles have in common.
Your article should be giving the extra relevant information. Do check the word count on the given results of the competitors. This could (or not) indicate how much you should be writing. Give your article a wow factor by adding information, video or something extra relevant others do not have.
By typing in the words what your visitor might use in Google is part of keyword research. I have written about some awesome free SEO keyword tools to help with that and how I use it.
Is a travel blog in 2020 with the pandemic even worth it?
Travel blogging is changing, what was written before might in many cases not be relevant any more. Think about the changes the world is going through with the coronavirus pandemic.
Travel and tourism are yet to restart and everything will be different. It might be a good opportunity to document and blog about it. Everything will focus on health, hygiene and safety more than before. Avid travellers will want to read about this, where can they go and enjoy a corona safe environment.
So I would say yes it’s worth it. I am going to try and keep up. Old content not taking into account changes might become obsolete or give wrong information even.
Do you have a travel blog? Make sure to update your old content to match the current situation. Flight experiences are changing, I can imagine tours, accommodation and every aspect of travel will change.
What are your expectations for traffic (and income)?
Some bloggers it takes some years of creating quality content before it even generates enough readers to make some decent traffic and money. I remember I was making 3 articles per week, for 3 months. Barely any visitor that came in via Google.
Now I get some traffic and My blog is being read by enough people that actually find my website through Google. It took about 3 months for me to get an average of 1 visit per day. That was 36 quality content articles.
If I take the average of 4 hours to create one article it means 144 hours put in just to get 1 visitor per day. That on average reads about 30 seconds. Yes, this is not all the ideal things I wanted. But it was something, a start at least.
In my 7th month, I managed to gain 2.3k visitors! Then some algorithm change happened. (Google Core May update 2020). I lost 35% of my visitors that came in through Google. A lot of my travel articles declined back to 0. Luckily I have some more articles which I am currently focussing on. In my 8th month (May 2020), I manage to still get more than 1.6k sessions.
The recipe to make any blog work: 3 Essential tips!
It’s not hard when you think why the majority of the population use Google. Yes, there are others, but most still use this search engine giant. Why? Because Google tries and delivers good quality content for the users. Most people would find what they are looking for on page 1 of Google. Sometimes we would need to go to page 2 or even 3 to find what we are looking for.
One of the main ingredients of making any blog work is to release relevant and quality content that your readers might find interesting. It is important that this type of content is published on a frequent basis. For example once a week, or even more often. You could do once a month, however, I would not recommend this if you are just starting out.
Before writing your blog post, start with keyword research. Collect a lot of keywords and try to use these by processing them in an article that is easy to read and understand.
Everything you do on your blog is supposed to be for the visitor. Make it as easy as possible to navigate and find articles. Do not make the website too slow to load! It’s important that you do whatever you can to speed up the website. Besides improving the user experience, you are also ranking better in Google.
With these 3 ingredients: Keywords, frequency of posting and keeping the visitor in mind is the road to make your blog work.
There are many challenges of blogging, and if you are considering to start now and want to earn some money out of it the following niche topics might be useful.
- News
- Health
- Financial
- Gaming
- Recipes
- e-commerce
- blogging
- Gadgets
- Virtual Travel
- Travel Insurance
- Working from home
- Homeschooling
- Indoor workouts/fitness
- Self Help, meditation
Of course there are more niches to blog about, but now these are kind of trending up in the searches. Especially Health and news are getting more traffic because a lot of people are reading it on the internet nowadays.
Travel itself was impacted by the pandemic causing people not to look into vacation and such.
Ok I think by now you should know if it is worth starting a new one if you want. There are some expectations now as I shared my experiences. As promised here is the bonus tip:
Translate your content in multiple languages. Doing that attracts more visitors, your website targets more keywords. Besides that, you can earn some more money by translating your content.
Hi I am Dwi. I am a blogger, travel agent and a mom of a lovely daughter and wife to a supportive husband. I customize and plan tours in Bali and islands nearby for a living and have been doing this for more than 14 years. Get in touch via contact [at] taletravels.com