Blogging can be a fantastic way to earn money, and many have carved out a legitimate career path with their site. For some, it’s a fun way to gain a little extra pocket money while doing something they love, others have managed to turn it into a full time job with a reliable income. If you’re looking to earn money from blogging, here are some tips to help you reach your goal.
Focus on branding
Just like with any business, branding is really important with blogging. With so many other blogs out there, your branding is what will allow you to stand out from the crowd, appeal to a specific audience and keep them coming back for more. If you’re first starting out, think about what your branding will be. It could be anything from writing your blog about a specific subject (anything from beauty to beekeeping- blogs can be about anything!) Or you yourself could be the brand, writing about your experiences and everyday life. Think about who you’re trying to appeal to here, if for example you write mainly about baking, women’s fashion and motherhood then most likely you’ll be appealing to the 18-40 female demographic and can target your posts and branding to this. When you know who your audience are you can work out what they want from your blog, their expectations and what they like to read. This enables you to create content to keep them coming back and build a loyal readership. You should consider your branding when it comes to things like the aesthetics and design of your site, logo, colours and more. Do some research and work out exactly what you plan to achieve, and then you can hire graphic designers on places like Etsy to bring your vision to reality without it costing a fortune.
Create great content
Your content is what people want, there’s no denying the importance of an aesthetically pleasing site but you need to be able to back it up with great content to keep people coming back. Your content should provide something to a reader, whether that be information, humour, a relatable story- whatever it is. If you have been blogging for a while and want to turn your site into a business, it might be worth going through older content, getting rid of anything that’s not up to scratch or doesn’t fit with your branding or changing and updating posts. Going forward, create content that fits your brand, speaks to your audience and provides them with whatever they are looking for. Utilise SEO to ensure that your posts rank well in search engines which will improve your site traffic and increase the chances of growing your following.
Improve your skills
The great thing about blogging is that it’s fun and enables you to improve your skills in lots of different areas. Improving your skills is great for your mental health, it could give you transferable skills that look fantastic on your CV and in the process you get to build a better blog. You could take courses in things like DSLR photography to improve your photos. Things like viral marketing to understand what makes posts go viral, and SEO to boost your chances of ranking well within search engines.
Monetise
There are a number of websites that you can sign up to with your blog’s credentials which connect you to advertisers. If these advertisers believe your site is a good fit and has the correct metrics for what they’re looking for, they will pay you to put links, banners and ads on your site or within your content. You could also sign up to schemes like Google Analytics which earn you a small amount of money each time your page or ads are clicked on, while it can take time to build (especially for new blogs without much traffic) it costs nothing to run so you don’t lose out on anything by having these implemented. Even if you withdraw earnings once a year, it’s another chunk of cash you can gain from your site and you don’t have to do anything in particular to get it aside from setting up the code one time.
Paying taxes
It’s important to decipher whether your blog is legally classed a business, or just a hobby. This can be a bit of a grey area, chances are when you first start out it will have been as a hobby but over time as you start earning income, things change. But while you’re at the stage where you’re only ever earning a tiny amount, or payments are incredibly sporadic it can leave you wondering where you stand when it comes to the business or hobby conundrum. The answer to this is £1000. HMRC has a tax-free trading allowance for micro-business owners earning money from hobbies, including those selling on Etsy, eBay, and Amazon. It’s important to track carefully what you have coming in, as after the first thousand is earned you are considered a business and required to pay tax on any earnings. You do this by registering for self assessment and completing a tax return each year. As a business/ self employed person you’re permitted to deduct any reasonable and necessary expenses in regards to your profession, so when it comes to blogging this could be anything from office furniture to electronics, even utility bills since you’ll be working from home. So keep receipts for everything that you spend relating to blogging if you plan on claiming back the tax, and do your research to find out what exactly is deductible. You could hire an accountant to do your tax return if you’re unsure, while they are relatively self explanatory and all done online, if you get your numbers wrong it could lead to a HMRC investigation, fines and penalties.
Do you own a blog that you’re looking to monetise, or are you looking to get into blogging for cash?
(Disclaimer: This content is a partnered post. This material is provided as news and general information. It should not be construed as an endorsement of any investment service. The opinions expressed are the personal views and experience of the author, and no recommendation is made.)
