Before you can start blogging, you need to spend some time preparing for the journey. If you hit the road without preparing for the adventure, you might have a bad experience.
When you are looking to start a blog, here are the things that you need to do before actually starting a blog.
- Select the niche and purpose
- Plan your investment budget
- Time management planning
- Equipment and tools required
- Content planning & promotion
Though most bloggers create a blog on a whim without giving much thought into planning and preparation. However, it’s not an ideal situation for successful blogging.
1) Select the Blog Niche & Purpose
Take a pen and paper, and write down the answers to these simple questions.
- Why do your want to start a blog?
- What is your blog going to be about?
- What is your expertise in the niche you want to blog about?
- Is it your personal or business blog?
Why do your want to start a blog? Is your blog going to be for: a) personal fun activity, b) side hustle for extra money, c) full-time income, or d) business blog. Once you have the answer, think about how to make your blog special.
What are you going to blog about? When you are planning to start a blog, you need to have a clear vision on topic and niche of the blog.
For example, you could blog about raising chicken, gardening, or swimming pool cleaning. Though the example topics might sound unexciting, there are many bloggers earning good money blogging about pool cleaning, gardening and raising chicken.
What is your expertise? When it comes to successful blogging, it is mostly about sharing your knowledge and domain expertise. Almost all professional bloggers create awesome content that drive people to their blogs. Their blogs wouldn’t have been a success without their domain expertise.
For instance, you read a real estate blog to learn about the property market. You won’t be interested in jibber-jabber of any random person. Instead, you want some realtor with a grip over the property market.
Another form of successful bloggers don’t share their knowledge. Instead, they are storytellers. Do you think you can weave great stories based on your experiences and gathered information? Storytellers are like journalists and documentary filmmakers. If you have that creative edge to impress and entertain your audience, you can create a blog around your storytelling. Of course, you need to come up with a smart idea around your storytelling skills.
Don’t have any domain expertise and aren’t much of a storyteller either? Think about your strengths. See how you can utilize your existing knowledge, skills and passion for developing a blog.
If you have been attentive, you must have noted the mention of a successful blog created around cleaning and maintaining swimming pools. That’s one awesome example of smartly using trade knowledge to create a blog and earn money.
Your expertise, passion and / or knowledge must have a direct relation with the niche you pick for blogging. Don’t start a blog about something you don’t have any understanding. Of course, you can break this rule if your blog is about your learning journey.
Expertise / Passion / Knowledge = Blog Niche
Selecting a niche for blogging is more than just passion and expertise. Some aspects such as search volume (or how many people actually want that content) and commercial viability need to to considered when picking the niche for your blog. Learn more about selecting the right niche for blogging here.
2) Plan Your Investment
Do you have any business objectives with your blog? Maybe, you are looking at blogging as a side hustle that can turn into a full-time occupation later on. Are you looking to start a business blog?
Blogging is business for successful bloggers. They invest time and money into developing blog websites.
Unless you are taking up blogging purely as a fun activity, you should consider allocating some funds towards your blogging venture. A small investment in your blog will help bring the best results from your numerous hours invested in blogging.
Figure out how much you can spare for blogging. If you can allocate $250 towards your blog website, you can stand out as a professional blogger like any popular website or blog. Even if you are broke, you must invest $1-25 towards your blog (details later) when planning to go professional.
3) Time Management
How much time do you have to spare for blogging? How can you fit in blogging in your daily routine?
Just like your workout plans, schedule and allocate time slots for blogging. Stick to your blogging time schedule. Don’t squander this time away.
Discipline is important for productive blogging. It’s easy to spend your blogging time on social media, shopping and other online activities. Be focused and stay away from distractions.
4) Equipment & Tools
For blogging, the basic tool is a computer with Internet connection.
Depending on your blogging plan and niche, you will need more equipment and tools. Of course, this depends on your niche. You are going to be the best judge for the equipment and tools you need.
For instance, a video blogger will need a camera capable of recording digital videos, a computer for editing and mixing videos, studio (maybe) and other related equipment.
Plan in advance for all the equipment, tools and space that you might need.
5) Content Planning
Content is at the heart of any blog. Everything else is dispensable.
When you plan to start a blog, you need to think about the content you are going to generate. Unless you are planning to start a news blog, you should plan your content.
Rather than sitting with a laptop and thinking about what to blog today, you should have a planner for your blogging work.
Brainstorm a big list of content ideas. Put all your ideas on a spreadsheet and decide on a schedule for those ideas to be published as real content (articles / videos) on your blog.
Unless you have a big list of content ideas to last for a year, you should consider another niche with better scope for creating new content.
Conclusion
At the end of this exercise, you should be fully prepared for blogging. You have a topic / niche for your blog, a long list of content along with scheduled publication dates, all the tools for blogging, a small investment budget, and loads of enthusiasm. Let’s head over to execution part now.