Ultimate Free Blogging Course to Become a Professional Blogger

A free blogging course to get you started making money fast on any type of blog

Nothing has had a bigger effect on my life than starting my blogs in 2014. I’m not exaggerating and it’s not hyperbole. Blogging has allowed me to create a work from home business to control how much I make and literally reach millions of people a year.

…and the money is pretty nice also!

I made over $292,000 last year, less than six years from starting blogging and in the middle of a global pandemic that shut down most businesses. That was 99.9% more than I made the year before…which you can bet set my goal for this year to reach 100% growth.

I love the sense of community I get from other bloggers and I want to bring you into that world. Together, we can be more successful than either of us imagine…but you have to get started.

That’s why I put together this five-part free blogging course to share everything you need to get started blogging and making money. I’ll walk you through step-by-step from starting any type of blog to getting traffic and the income sources I use, it’s a professional blogging course that will put you on the path to your own online business!

I’ve linked all five blogging videos in the post below to guide you through getting your blog online. I’ve also put together a free blogging checklist that will guarantee your success. The checklist is completely free, just click through the link below and use it to follow along with the videos.

Click to get your free blogging checklist

How to Start a New Blog Fast

This first video in our free blogging guide walks you through everything you need to get your blog online in less than an hour. I’ll show you how to pick a blog topic that makes money and how to narrow it down to become an authority fast. I’ll then show you how to set up a blog and the easy tech tools that allow anyone to be a professional blogger.

Get this special offer from Bluehost, the lowest price on the internet. Get your blog name and get it online for less than $3 a month.

What Do You Need to Become a Professional Blogger?

Writing is a vital skill for any professional blogger. One of the most important skills to have as a writer, and arguably one of the hardest ones, is being able to write content that people love. This may seem easy at first because you are writing what interests or excites you like your passion— but it becomes more difficult when trying to convey that same enthusiasm through an article someone else might find boring or uninteresting in their own area of interest while still maintaining quality control on grammar and spelling mistakes. However, even if copywriting isn’t necessary, early on there will come a time where this extra talent can be used (i.e., converting audiences into customers).

The point is that if you want your blog to be successful, you need to have other significant skills as a professional blogger. For example, you might need design and coding expertise or be marketing savvy to be able to use social media correctly. The key takeaway here should always stay with this: make sure you have great content for your audience because without it, no one will read anything else about them.

The idea of working from home, seems attractive and easy for most people, but the reality is that professional blogging takes work. It’s important to set expectations early on so you don’t get discouraged when your blog doesn’t take off as quickly or easily as you expected.

How to Choose a Blog Topic

Choosing a blog topic is more important than most new bloggers know. This is not only going to be five or ten hours a week, it’s also going to influence how much you make with your new online business.

Certain topics like health & fitness, personal finance and relationships tend to make more money. People are willing to spend a lot of money when it comes to these parts of their lives so if you can find a blog topic here, you’ll be on your way to a more profitable blog.

I don’t want you to make the decision solely based on the money though. It’s overused but your blog and your business definitely has to come from a passion. You’ll likely be spending a LOT of time here in the next three months building your blog and your experience in the topic…and not making much money just yet. That means you need to get some satisfaction from learning about it other than just the money.

Even if you don’t want a blog in one of these topics, you can still make money. I’ll reveal my five favorite income sources for bloggers in the fifth video below.

Getting Your New Blog Online

Getting your new blog online means registering the website and getting webhosting. Webhosting is just the service that holds your blog on a server, then delivers it over the internet when people want to visit the site.

Fortunately, this is also one of the easiest steps to starting a blog. The webhost I use, Bluehost, makes everything pretty much automatic. I explain it in the video but getting online takes less than five minutes.

A few changes you’ll want to make to your new blog once it’s online:

Go to ‘Settings’ then ‘General’ in the left-side menu and change your Site Title and Tagline. This will show up in Google when your blog appears in search.
In ‘Settings’ go to ‘Permalinks’ and check Post Name so your post URLs are only your site name and the post name.
Go to ‘Appearance’ and ‘Themes’ to test out a few free blog themes until you find a good one you like.
In ‘Appearance’ and ‘Menus’ decide how you want your site menu to look.

One thing to remember as your building your new blog is that it DOESN’T need to be perfect! In fact, Churchill is credited as saying, “Perfection is the enemy of progress,” and it’s never been more true as in starting a blog or any online business.

I’ve seen so many people get started planning their blog or YouTube channel. I check in a few months later to see how they’re doing…and they never launched! The got so focused on making everything perfect before they started their website that they never ended up getting it online!

My advice, spend a few hours planning for your new blogging business. Use the link below to get your website hosting and spend an hour getting your blog ready…and then launch it! Don’t wait and don’t spend any more time than that. Just get started and make changes as you go.

Get your blog started in 15 minutes with this special offer from Blue Host! Web hosting under $3 a month – the lowest price anywhere! Get your special rate here.

Free Blogging Plugins to Start a New Blog

Plugins are just software created by companies that allow bloggers to do something without having to be technical. A good example is the Akismet plugin, which filters out spam comments from your blog. Without the plugin, you’d either have to write your own computer program or sift through hundreds of spam comments every day.

Most blogging plugins are free to use though they’ll ask for a donation. Some have premium levels though you’ll get most of what you need with the free versions. Below are the plugins I recommend to all new bloggers.

Akismet blocks spam comments
Broken Link Checker is a tool to find bad links on your blog and save you from a Google penalty
PrettyLink is the only premium plugin I recommend and a great one for managing your affiliates
Shareaholic makes it easy to share your blog on social media
Wordfence Security is a go-to security plugin to protect your blog from hackers

You’ll find quick-start guides with each plugin but they’re all easy to use and intuitive. Most plugins will do all the work for you, that’s what they are there for.

How to Write a Blog Post

The biggest reason most people never get started blogging is they think they can’t write or that blogging is too hard. As someone that never liked English in high school and couldn’t write to save his life, I can tell you that you don’t need to be Shakespeare to be a successful blogger.

In this video, I’ll show you how to make blogging easy. No lie. I’ll start by showing you how to always know what to write about and never run out of ideas. Then I’ll reveal the simple process to make writing easy, even for non-writers.

What is a Blog Content Strategy?

As a blogger, your content strategy is the type of articles and topics you post on the blog. The type of article might be a list article, interview, reader questions or news. Using different types of posts keeps things fresh and interesting for your blog readers.

The other part of your content strategy is the topics on which you write. How narrowly you plan your blog will determine the love you get from Google search and the readers you attract. My recommendation is to start as narrow as possible, covering one niche from as many perspectives as possible. This will make you the ultimate authority in the topic and create a loyal following. After doing that, you can expand out into other topics.

Making Writing Easy for Non-Writers

Making blog writing easy is a matter of knowing what you need to talk about and organizing it in a template you use every single time. Google makes it easy to know what to talk about, just do a search and see what is already being discussed. With that research, you can decide what else to include to add to the conversation.

The actual writing part of blogging is easy, especially once you get the feel for the template I share in the video. Again, Google will be your guide because there are certain things it looks for when ranking posts.

You’ll want a headline and section headings to tell Google what the post is about. Within each section, make sure you include bullet points and relevant images to break up long blocks of content.

Another tip for getting your blog started fast, outline five ideas for your first blog posts. Then fill in the details for each part of the outlines. Don’t worry too much about grammar or structure, just get your notes down. You can even bullet point ideas if you want…

Then hit publish! Here’s another place you don’t want to wait for perfection to get started! Get five blog posts on your website to give you that momentum and force you to keep going. You can always update and refine a blog post after publishing and you’ll learn how to write quickly and effectively as you go.

How to Get Social Media Traffic to Your New Blog

For new bloggers, social media traffic is the most important thing in the world. You’re not ranking much in Google for the first month or two and direct traffic to the blog is nil. It’s social media traffic that you can build quickly and get that first motivation to keep blogging.

In this video, I’ll give you an overall social media strategy as well as a way to boost blog traffic on each of the major social platforms. I’ll show you how to take advantage of the differences on each platform to bring in more visitors and make more money.

Getting Blog Traffic from Social Media

Your strategy for getting traffic from social media will vary depending on the platform but there are a few things to keep in mind that will determine an overall strategy. Before anything, remember that social media is about being ‘social’ and engaging with your community. Too many bloggers simply spam out their links and then wonder why they never get any traffic from social.

Make your blog as shareable as possible by including quotes, images, infographics and videos when possible.
Use a social media plugin that floats on the screen when readers scroll, making it easy to share.
Keep a list of bloggers you know and their articles you can share. Include their social handles in each share and they’ll share your articles with their community as well.
Focus your social media strategy on just three or four platforms. Engage with individuals and groups to really build a community.

How to Share Your Blog on Social Media

Beyond the overall strategy you use on social media, there’s a tactical component to social as well. This means the types of posts you share and how they work together to maximize blog traffic and community building.

Approximately four-in-ten posts you share on social media should be promoting your blog posts with direct links.
Two- or three-in-ten posts should be shared content from other bloggers. This shows your community that you have their interest in mind and gets your content shared by other bloggers.
Two-in-ten posts can be sharing blog articles that are highly monetized. You don’t want to overdo these but you have to make money.
One- or two-in-ten posts should be community building posts with no links, only to start a conversation on the social media platform.

Besides starting a social strategy, start building an email list from day one. The subscribers on your list are going to be your most loyal visitors. They’ll not only visit and share your posts regularly but they’ll be your first customers. I’ve used lots of email providers but none come close to the kind of value and features as ConvertKit.

Try out ConvertKit free for two weeks with this link

How to Get Free Traffic to Your Blog from Google

If you asked me the one thing that has helped me grow my blogs faster and make more money, I would have to say devoting some time to blog search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is what you do to rank your blog posts on Google. It involves everything from how you write your posts to some things you can do on other sites to get more Google search traffic. The reason why this is so powerful is because hardly anyone does it. Whether laziness or because they think SEO is too complicated, most bloggers completely neglect this part of blogging.

In this video, I’ll teach you everything you need in the two types of blog SEO to boost your rankings on Google. I’ll reveal strategies I’ve learned over years of blogging and one SEO trick I use to boost traffic four-fold.

On-Page SEO is the keywords you use to write your articles and how you set up each post. This is fairly easy and works into that writing process I showed you in the second video. It also works into the social media strategy we discussed by making your posts shareable and linkable.

Off-Page SEO is what you do off-site to get links and boost your ranking. This is the part that most bloggers avoid because of the time and effort it takes. These strategies will take a little extra work but they will get your blog ranked on Google and will bring you hundreds of thousands of visitors a month.

Guest posting is easy because it’s just providing an article for other bloggers. If you’ve been sharing other bloggers’ content on social, they’ll be happy to host an article of yours on their site. You can include two links in your article pointing back to different articles. These will act as a sign of authority to Google for each of those articles.
Broken-link Building is a very effective strategy and can get you dozens of links. It’s a longer process and one I share completely in the video. This is one every blogger needs to try!

There are some types of blog posts that attract links like a magnet. They might take a little longer to build but these are the articles that will be crucial to the growth of your site.

Interviews with big names and influencers
Super-lists within a topic
Step-by-Step Tutorials
Annual Surveys or Reports

Republishing is a great blogging tool and it works on so many levels. Not only does this strategy boost traffic to a post by an average 400% but it frees up my time when I’m too busy to write an article.

Find an article at least six months old and getting some Google search traffic to republish.
Research Google to find more information to update and improve the post. Add images, links to relevant posts and any relevant affiliates.
Republish the post and share it out just like a new post.

Want more ways to boost your blog on Google? I walk you through my entire SEO process in the book, SEO for Bloggers. Get your copy on Amazon Kindle.

Ultimate Video to Making Money Blogging

This is the video you’ve been waiting for, how to make money blogging. Blogging is a business and it’s important to make money. It’s just as important that you have everything set up before you try making money though, that’s why I waited until the fifth part of our free blogging course to reveal the five income sources I use on my blog.

In this video, I show you how much bloggers make and reveal how to get started in multiple income sources to diversify your blog profits.

One of the most important things you can do is diversify your monthly income through different streams. Few blogging revenue sources will make you rich and many are volatile from month-to-month.

how much do bloggers make each month — How Much Money Do Bloggers Make?

The secret is to build three or five sources to the point they are providing a consistent income that can reach six-figures.

Affiliate marketing is the base of most new blogger’s income. It works so well because you don’t have to spend the time creating your own product. Concentrate on a few affiliates that resonate with your readers and then focus on two types of posts, reviews and lists, to make as much money as possible.
Sponsored posts are another great income source because it’s guaranteed money. Start at $100 or more for a post and raise it as your blog grows. Create a media kit you can use to justify your price and negotiate for longer-term partnerships with brands.
Self-publishing needs to be in your blogging strategy from day one. You’re already producing the content, it’s effortless to reformat it into a book and make money every month. Use your blog strategically to develop and market your book.
Membership sites are a great source of recurring income you can count on every month. Concentrate on creating a community around the membership to keep people coming back every month. That means treating it like a social media site and focusing on engagement.

Get the nine income sources I use on my blog from ads to self-publishing and webinars, all in one book. Make Money Blogging is the last book on getting paid to blog you’ll ever need. Get your copy on Amazon Kindle or paperback.

I’ve tried to make this free blogging course as detailed as possible but there’s only so much we can cover. Click through and watch the free blogging course videos. Get your free checklist by clicking here for the step-by-step on how to become a professional blogger to each video. Blogging can change your life just as it did mine. Blogging is a business and you need to know how to run it just like any other type of business.

Read the Entire Blogging Series

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