21 Blogging Tips : Advice for Starting a Profitable Blog Today

21 Blogging Tips : Now in blog article today, we’re going to be walking through 21 highly actionable blogging tips and pieces of advice that you can take and apply to growing your own audience and monetizing your readership as well.

So you want to grow your blog by driving traffic and making more money, but there’s so much blogging advice out there.It can get overwhelming. It’s easy to think of all the things that you should be doing with your blog, that you can actually get paralyzed and end up doing nothing at all.

I’ve gathered these tips here today from both my own experiences and from conversations with some of the world’s top bloggers, and we’re going to be covering three main sections.

1. Launching your blog.

2. Getting readers, growing your traffic

3. Making money from your blog.

1. launching your blog.

These tips in section number one are going to be all about launching your blog.

Tip #1: Create blogging habits that set you up for long-term success

My biggest, most important blogging tip out there is to create smart habits that set yourself up for success. To me, that includes blocking out time on your calendar to actually work on your blog. Chances are you’re going to be blogging on the side of a day job or other commitments in your life.

At least while you’re just getting started, while you’re building momentum, right? So what you need to do is to carve out the actual time, the physical hours in a given day or a given week, whatever your schedule permits and other commitments in your life allow for, to actually work on your blog.

And once you put that block of time, that commitment onto your physical calendar, honor that commitment, show up and work on your blog.

It doesn’t matter if it takes you days or hours or weeks even to publish a blog post. What matters is that you show up and you build a habit around writing and promoting your content and working with other collaborators to build up an audience.

It will take time, but by forging the right habits, you can set yourself up for long-term success with your blog.

Tip #2: Think about positioning before you launch your blog

Think about positioning before you launch your blog.

And this tip comes from Brian Dean over at Backlinko. Who’s grown a massive audience and business for himself there.
And he recommends in the very early days of your blog to think of your blog as a brand or a product, something that you can position within a marketplace,

what makes it unique? What kinds of experiences or skills or talents can you bring to the table to create a unique offering within the niche your blog is going to be operating in?

Ask yourself that and try to distill all of your blogging efforts through that lens of, how you’re going to stand out from the crowd within your space.

Tip #3: Figure out what you stand for (articulate your “why”)

to figure out what you stand for and articulate that very clearly right now.

This one comes from Gaby Dalkin over at “What’s Gaby cooking”. One of the most popular food blogs out there today. And the reason why Gaby believes this one is so important is because she has benefited immensely from figuring out exactly what she stands for before she got started with her blog and using that as a tool to inform what content she goes on to create from there.

But one thing I really like about this piece of advice is that you can actually dive in today, start blogging and figure out your voice. As you grow and develop, the more you write, the more you publish, the more you get your content out there to real readers and listen to their feedback.

The more you will grow in your voice. And that will also clarify what you stand for, but it helps immensely if you’re starting from this point of strong conviction. A message you want to share, beliefs that you hold dearly to yourself and want to share with the world.

Tip #4: Get ahead with pre-written content before you launch

to get ahead with pre-written content before you actually launch your blog.

This one comes from Grace and Silas Moser over at chasingfoxes.com, where they actually wrote about 40 articles before they even launched their site. And they believe that this helped them have a ton of content already live for visitors to crawl through upon when they started their blog.

Now, I’ll add to this, that in the very early days of your site, most of the blogs that are brand new are not going to have a ton of readers, unless you already have some sort of audience or you’re spending a ton of time promoting your content on social media, you have communities where you can share your articles and drive in readers right away.

If that does sound like you, then yes, having pre-written content is a great move. But I’ll add the caveat do not let the goal of having pre-written content hold you back from actually launching your blog.

If you need to start your blog today and publish one article at a time, that’s okay too. But if you have a backlog of content already pre-written ready to go published on your site for visitors to crawl around and engage further with you and get a stronger feel of who you are and what you stand for, then yeah, that’s going to increase your ability to engage readers, keep them coming back for more and encourage them to also sign up for your email newsletter list, which is a very important step in the journey to building relationships with readers.

Tip #5: Set small, incremental goals and have a bias toward action

to set small goals and have a bias toward action.

This one comes from startup founder, Steli Efti and he recommends carving out a minimum of 15 minutes a day to work on your blog. And here’s his rationale, thinking in small incremental steps will path you towards the bigger, larger goals you want to achieve one day. It’s easy to sit back and think,
“Oh, I can’t make any progress on my blog this week because I’m feeling super busy.”

And just because you may not be able to carve out an hour or 2, 3, 4 hours in a given day, that doesn’t mean you can’t set aside just 15 minutes somewhere and actually make some small, even if it’s measurable progress towards growing your blog.

Because again, the reality is the sooner you start and the more frequently you show up and work on your blog, the further you will be in one year, 2, 3, 4, 5, years’ time.

Tip #6: Reach out to your network when you start your blog

to reach out to your network when you launch your blog.

And this one comes from Chris Guillebeau, the author of “The $100 Startup” who recommends reaching out to everyone you know, who could possibly be interested in relating to your content when you launch your blog and not necessarily having a clear ask for them, but to rather just give them a heads up, plant this in their mind, say, “Hey, this is something I’m doing. I wondered if you would be interested in checking out my blog?”

Because if you start by sharing your content with people, you know, and who care about you most. chances are they’re going to know people who would be interested in your blog, even if they aren’t and that will encourage them, or at least create the opportunity for them to share your blog content out on their own social media channels.

And these are the very small seeds that you can plant today that will help drive some early traffic to your blog and allow you the opportunity to begin learning from the readers who come in and help create stronger content moving forward.

Tip #7: Don’t blindly follow any blogging advice (& stay true to yourself)

Don’t follow other people’s advice blindly.

This one comes from Anna Vital, a blogger and creator of an infographic maker tool. And she recommends not just taking the advice of what other people have to say, what’s worked for them and hope that it’ll apply directly to you and your own unique circumstances.

I also believe that this is very important advice to follow. And I would add to this that you shouldn’t follow advice or tips that go against your own convictions, that feel uncomfortable to you, or may compromise something about what you stand for personally.

If you feel strongly about a particular conviction, then you should follow that. Don’t allow the advice of others to discourage you or dissuade you from something that’s a very deeply held and important to you.

Especially given that this is your blog. This is your opportunity to share your message with the world.

All right, moving into section number two

2. Getting readers, growing your traffic

on getting more readers and attracting subscribers to your blog.

Tip #8: Publish new content on a regular schedule

In this section is to publish new content on a regular schedule. This one comes from James Clear, the prolific blogger and author of “Atomic Habits” who recommends creating a habit,a schedule around publishing content.

For example, every Monday or every Thursday, or perhaps every Wednesday and Friday, you publish blog posts, whatever works with your own schedule and your own time constraints. However you’re able to incorporate blogging into your life.

But what’s important is that you create a schedule and you stick with it. You honor that commitment. It’ll only serve to benefit you personally, by having this built in responsibility to publish on certain days of the week.

And you’ll also be able to condition your readers over time to expect this from you. And James adds to this, not to worry about individual results in the early days of your blog.

It’s hard to expect that you’re going to drive a ton of traffic from individual blog posts, as you’re just getting started, as you’re building up momentum, but you’re going to learn a lot over the coming weeks and months as you do publish regularly and show up and keep pushing out content to an audience that you want to attract.

Tip #9: Build your email list and get to know subscribers from day one

to build your email list from day one.

And this one comes from Alexis Grant of The Write Life who recommends creating an email list and allowing those early readers to subscribe to your blog, right from the start. You don’t want to miss any opportunities for spikes in traffic or people who share your content on social media and allow for the opportunity to bring in subscribers to your blog.

And here’s why this is so important, having an email list is so much more valuable than having a following on social media, because you own the channel of communication. You have the opportunity to send emails directly to your readers, your subscribers, rather than hoping that the algorithm of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest allows for your content to get in front of those people on any given day.

And so this is an investment that you want to start making from day one. And I do recommend the email platform Convert Kit. It’s what I use personally, have used for many, many years. And they do have a free plan that you can get started.

Tip #10: Discover where your readers spend time (online and offline)

to find where your readers are spending time and to meet them there.

This one comes from Poornima Vajayashanker from Femgineer, who recommends meeting your readers half way. You can’t sit back and hope that as soon as you publish content, readers are going to magically discover it and come to you, come knocking down your door, asking for more.

You have to put in the workto go out and meet those readers.Start establishing those relationships by guest blogging,sending out emails, doing video calls,meeting people at conferences.

However you can best get in front of the right people who want more of your content. That’s how you should be considering ways to experiment with getting in touch with them and bringing them to your site.

Tip #11: Consider writing on Medium and LinkedIn to get more traffic

to consider writing on Medium.

Now this tip comes from Austin Belcak over at Cultivated Culture, where he’s had a ton of success using platforms like both Medium and LinkedIn for publishing long form content and engaging with those already existing large communities, where people are spending tons of time, any given day.

If you can take snippets of the articles you’ve published on your blog and repackage them, repurpose them, write a little bit of a different intro conclusion, add some bullet points, make it more scannable,and then publish that on LinkedIn or on Medium.

Then you have the opportunity to tap into a new audience with fresh content that’s related to what’s on your blog already. And that will give you an opportunity to drive more traffic back to your blog, and also build up your cachet on these platforms as well.

Tip #12: Write guest posts for other blogs that have similar audiences

to write guest blog posts. And this is one of the best pieces of advice I could give any blogger, regardless of the stage you’re in,if you want to grow your site and drive more traffic, get more subscribers.

And this tip does come from bestselling author, Jeff Goins, who personally built his blog from a thousand subscribers up to 10,000 subscribers by doing a ton of guest blogging back in the day.

That being said, I can also personally attest to guest blogging being the best way to promote your content, to get it out there in front of new audiences to drive incremental traffic back to your blog.

Sometimes you’ll get a spike in readership if you get published on a particularly large website, but overall it’s a slow build. The more guest blog posts you drive out there, the more you’ll be able to bring in incremental traffic and also increase your sites domain authority.

Something you want to build over the course of months and years, and the higher your domain authority is, the more likely and the more easily you’ll be able to get content ranking higher in organic search results as well. So it’s a long term strategy. However, it’s one of the best you can begin investing in today.

Tip #13: Examine your competitor’s content for inspiration and differentiation ideas

to examine your competitors content.

This one comes from Garrett Moon over at Co Schedule, who recommends taking a really close look at what every major competitor in your space is blogging about and using that as an opportunity to both gather inspiration and to differentiate your own content.

Take those ideas, what they’re writing about and see how you can add a unique flavor, a unique spin, more advice, different types of skills and experiences that you personally have. Add that into your content and make it more valuable to the specific slice of audience you want to reach.

Try different content formats, maybe a long form article, or maybe a video post, maybe an infographic. Take a different approach based on what you see working out there in the market. And also just try something out new with your audience too. You never know what’s going to stick.

Tip #14: Create content that solves your target audience’s key problems

to create content that solves your core target audiences real problems.

This one comes from Sujan Patel over at Mailshake and he recommends only writing blog posts about topics that your audience is clearly dealing with a problem to. If you have a skill or a process or a problem you’ve learned how to solve, then you can teach that to real readers who also want to learn or solve for the same thing.

Plus when a reader emails you, you can send them a link to a blog post rather than writing a long reply to them.

This kind of content not only helps build more trustworthy, stronger relationships with your existing readers and subscribers, but it also allows you to build up a process for selling to your audience.

By showing that you can solve their problems in a written format or a short video format, you can then go on to produce longer form offerings or products, courses, books, whatever that product may be that you want to sell to your audience, you can then more easily sell to them by having this trustworthy content already on your site that instills this sense of credibility in what you have to offer them.

All right, this is our final section

3. Making money from your blog.

Tip #15: Treat your blog like a real business, right from the start

to treat your blog as if it’s a real business from day one.

This one comes from Preston Lee over at millo.co, Who’s treated his blog as a serious business right from the start and has reaped tons of rewards as a result.

Don’t get hung up on questions like which theme you should use for your blog or what font choice to make, or what colors you should have.

What kinds of stock images you should have on your site, but rather focus on the activities that are going to path you towards driving real revenue from your blog one day, even if that’s not in the near future, you have to start laying the foundation, making incremental steps toward those eventual goals of generating revenue from your blog.

Tip #16: Figure out how you’ll actually make money (and plan for it)

figure out how you’ll make money from your blog, or at least have a pretty good idea of how you’re going to do that.

This tip comes from Tim Soulo over at Ahrefs, where he recommends thinking about how you’re going to monetize your blog right from the very early days.

And more specifically, he recommends coming up with content ideas and prioritizing which ones you’ll write about first based on which ones have real clear tie in to potential revenue sources.

For example, if you plan on using affiliate marketing as a way to generate revenue from your blog one day then consider writing some posts about affiliates, maybe comparison articles, comparing web hosting company A to web hosting company B and having that as an article that’s on your site, existing for awhile, collecting links, driving incremental traffic in the early days.

And over time, those posts will build up momentum and should increase in organic traffic rankings because it takes time to drive traffic in from organic search and you want to begin planting these seeds that have real revenue potential from the very early days.

Tip #17: Align your blog topics with future products or services you can offer to eventually monetize your audience

to make the topics you’re blogging about jumping off points for potential products or services you could offer one day.

Now this tip comes from Darren Murph, who holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s most prolific blogger. And he recommends choosing topics to blog about that’ll have clear paths towards revenue sources that you personally are going to be most interested in monetizing one day.

He says to think about your blog as a way to build off-ramps to other types of offerings you can sell to your audience one day, whether that be online courses, a consulting offering, a podcast, a physical product or something else entirely.

The sky is truly the limit if you have that mindset and that mentality, but you do not need to use your blog as only a way to make money from the written word, take a more broad open-minded approach to it.

Tip #18: Identify your ideal customer, understand their problems and work with them on creating real solutions

identify your ideal customer.

Now this one comes from Ada Bernier over at Skill share, who’s built a massive digital course business around her own blog as well. Her advice is to avoid having a solution in search of a problem. Rather, she says, take the approach of intimately getting to know your ideal customer and uncovering what their real problems are.

Not necessarily the problems they say they’re having, but the problems that may be beneath the surface, the ones that you can come in and solve with a real product or a service offering and charge a reasonable fee for solving that problem for them.

And that is something that they’ll be happy to pay for if it helps them overcome some sort of need that they want to fix.

Tip #19: Get outside your comfort zone and experiment always

to get out of your comfort zone.

This one comes from Nathan Barry over at Convert Kit, who’s not personally someone who likes to sell, but he’s benefited a ton from pushing himself, forcing himself to get outside of his comfort zone in when it comes to selling

And if that sounds like something you can relate to, you’re going to need to get over your fear of selling, it’s something that once you start talking to people and selling to your early customers, you’ll start to overcome those challenges within you, it becomes easier as you generate more sales.

Maybe this is something totally different for you, maybe you need to push yourself to talk to people at conferences or to spend more time interacting with your readers on an online community, whatever that may be.

If there’s something that you’ve identified as a challenge, but something that may grow your blog immensely, then push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Give it a try, see. You never know how good the results can be.

Tip #20: Don’t rely on only SEO (or any single traffic source) for driving traffic and getting new readers to your blog

to not rely on just SEO traffic.

This one comes from Brian Jackson over at work up, where he has benefited immensely by diversifying traffic sources so that dips in organic search traffic don’t completely tank his business.

Not many people take advantage of remarketing on social media. And that’s when you are targeting people, who’ve already visited your site with sponsored posts, or ads that drive them back to your content or your lead sign up forms that can help generate more action and drive in the traffic from social media sites, where people are also spending tons of time, when you have moments where organic traffic may not be playing in your favor.

Tip #21: Build your blog’s team for the long haul

To build your team for the long haul.

This one comes from Jon Morrow over at SmartBlogger, who has always, always, always invested in building out a team of people who are invested, who are stakeholders in his business, rather than just outsourcing everything.

Now, this one won’t be as relevant in the very early days of your blog. However, once you have the foundation for a real business, once you have income sources coming in, then you can afford to say, “All right, this is a channel I want to grow. And I want to go all in on bringing in people who are invested in helping me do that.”

It’s a higher investment, but there’s much higher reward when you have a team that’s invested in outcomes with you. All right now, for the impossible task, summing this all up.

Treat your blog as a business, take the tips that sound right to you and apply them. If they don’t work, set them aside for now, pick up what does work for you, what sounds most genuine, most authentic, and relates to where you’re at in your blogging stage today and apply that.

See how it works. I encourage you to take the mindset of experimentation and adopt the kinds of tactics and strategies that you see getting results.

And if something is getting results double down on that, keep working hard to get as much traffic or as much sales out of that particular strategy as possible until it’s not working anymore. Then you can reinvent and find something new to work on.