If you’re looking for a new way to make money – or are simply looking for some extra cash – you’ve probably considered the lucrative world of online marketing. Still, entering this field can be somewhat intimidating. After all, you’ll want to establish yourself as an authority in your industry before you undertake any major projects. While this may be challenging, you can’t stop there. You’ll also need to learn a distinct set of skills that may not come naturally.
What follows is a guide to help you navigate this world and earn the monies you deserve. We’ll introduce you to some well-known platforms that can get you started (and eventually help you profit), as well as teach you some distinct online marketing skills that will make you unique in this field.
Step One: Create a Business Plan
Before you begin your online marketing journey, you’ll need to sit down and create a business plan. This plan will serve as a road map for your business – outlining your goals and strategies for achieving them. The further you get into this process, the more opportunity there will be to revise and improve your plan. Having a solid business plan in place will also help you find the right people to help you on your way to success.
Step Two: Identify Your Target Audience
Now that you have a business plan in place, you can move towards the next step. This step is critical to the success of your online marketing endeavours. After all, if you want to make money online, you’ll first need to attract the right audience to your content.
Your target audience is simply the group of people who will benefit the most from your product or service. In the case of an e-commerce store, your target audience will be those people who are planning to make a purchase. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself – “Who is my ideal customer?” What will they want? What do they need?
Step Three: Select the Right Platform
The most important step in figuring out how to make money online is to find a place where you can share your content. The perfect platform for your business is the one that suits your goals and the type of content you wish to share. For example, if you want to create engaging blog posts, consider using a blog platform.
There are many different types of blogs, each with its own perks. A personal blog allows you to share your insights on a variety of subjects. If you’re looking for something more business-like, consider checking out a commerce or e-commerce-focused blog.
Deciding which platform to use can be challenging, so it’s essential that you take some time to learn about the different types of blogs and what their perks are. Once you settle on a blogging platform, move on to the next step.
Step Four: Decide What You’ll Call Your Blog
This next step is pretty self-explanatory. You’ll want to find a suitable blog name that accurately reflects your business. If you want to create a successful blog, you’ll need to ensure that your blog name is distinctive, easy to pronounce and spell, and doesn’t have any inappropriate content or misspellings.
Step Five: Establish Your Brand
Your brand is your business’ identity. When customers encounter your product or service, they will have the opportunity to form an opinion about your brand. You want to establish a brand that is both memorable and easy for your customers to understand.
Your brand identity can be succinctly expressed in one word: authenticity. You want to present yourself as an honest broker who can be trusted to deliver on their promises. Once you’ve established your brand, move on to the next step.
Step Six: Create Your Blog’s Appearance
Your blog’s appearance is how you convey your message to your audience. This will include the way you write, the graphics you use, and the layout and design of your blog. You can further categorize the appearance of your blog based on the context in which you use it:
- Personal Blog: This is your blog – written for your own personal enjoyment. You may choose to establish a brand voice and style with your posts. Ensure that your posts are varied – including both long-form and short-form posts.
- Product Review Blog: If you’re reviewing a product and expressing an opinion on it, consider whether or not you should establish yourself as an expert on the subject. Conduct thorough, objective reviews of products you’ve purchased or been given the opportunity to try out. The goal is to provide your audience with valuable, authoritative information. This kind of blog can be quite profitable if you choose the right product or service to review.
- How-to Blog: If you’re offering helpful tips or advice on various topics, consider establishing yourself as an expert in those areas.
- Research Blog: If you’re conducting intensive research on a particular topic – be it historical, scientific, or otherwise – consider creating a blog to share your findings with the world. Establish yourself as an expert in your industry and create an authoritative space for your audience to turn to for information.
- Entertainment Blog: If you’re simply writing about your life, hobbies, and everyday occurrences, consider creating an entertainment blog. These types of blogs are usually quite funny, informative, or both. Some entertainment blogs earn their writers a significant amount of money every month – simply by engaging an audience and enticing them to come back for more.
Your blog’s appearance is simply how you want your audience to perceive you. In the SEO world, this is called “brand voice” and it’s an important element to establish if you want to appear authentic when your name comes up in a search. Your appearance influences your audience’s experience – whether or not they intend to buy from you. You want to ensure that when your name comes up in a search, your customers perceive you as an expert – and that you’re easy to trust. This is especially important if you’re reviewing products or services where you might someday be bought as a customer. Your blog’s appearance is one of the most important aspects of establishing your brand – so take the time to get it right.
Step Seven: Set Up Google Analytics
Now that you have a functional blog, it’s time to set up Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool that will track the traffic on your website. The more you use it, the more you’ll understand your site’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to make it better. When you set up Google Analytics, you’ll simply need to provide it with your website’s URL – and you can leave the rest up to the software.
Step Eight: Start Promoting Your Blog
Once you have a Google Analytics account set up, it’s time to start promoting your blog. Simply visit the Google Ads Manager and you’ll be presented with a dashboard that’s filled with all your past, present, and future ad campaigns.
From here, you can track the performance of each ad group you’ve created – as well as see the results of all your past ad campaigns. You’ll also be able to see how many people have visited your blog in the last day, week, or month. It’s also possible to see the geographical locations of your blog’s visitors, as well as the devices they’re using to access the blog. This information can help you see where your audience is coming from, and what type of content they’re responding to.
Use this information to identify new areas of your blog that you might want to focus on – as well as see how different content can appeal to different groups of people.
You can also use the Google Ads Manager to set up new ad campaigns, create templates, and track the performance of existing ad groups and campaigns. If you’re looking for more control over your ad spend, you can create and manage custom landing pages for your ads. You won’t need a CMS to do this, either. Simply use a domain that has a landing page set up – like mybloggy.com – and you can start getting visitors to your site.
Step Nine: Measure The Success of Your Blog
This is one of the most important steps to establishing a successful blog. Without it, you’ll never know if what you’re doing is actually having an effect on your audience. Google Analytics will tell you how many people are visiting your blog, how long they’re staying for, and what they’re doing while on your site. From here, you can determine the success of your blog and its content.
You might start with just a few metrics before you start making serious money. For example, if you have a travel blog, you might want to track the number of pages visited per month, the average time spent on the site, and the most popular posts.