Maybe you’ve been writing a blog for a while as a hobby, but recently have found it’s attracting attention from sponsors. While this can be a nice bit of extra pocket money, if you go about it in the right way you can actually turn your blog into a full-blown career.
Companies have realized the influence that blogs and bloggers have, and are keen to get backlinks and reviews on these sites which are written by real people, for real people. This means that blogging can be very lucrative, and if you already have an established blog that’s gained some attention, it’s not impossible to think that it could become your full-time job at some point.
There are a few things that will help your blog stand out and attract the sponsors who will be paying you money, therefore allowing you to turn your hobby into a career. Here are a few of them.
Focus on Content
The first and most obvious point is to focus on your content. Ensure it’s well written, proofreading and running each article through a grammar checker before publishing. Posts should be interesting and engaging, aim to write articles that answer a specific question rather than keeping it vague. For example, a post that speaks about specific funding options for bootstrapped businesses in their first year is more focused than simply ‘Finance Tips for Businesses’. Your posts should be well researched rather than written from the top of your head, and linking to relevant content where needed so that readers can find out more information.
Get a Professional Design
The first thing people will see when they click onto your page is your blog’s design. You might want to really showcase your personality here with things like wacky colors, music and flashing sidebar images but honestly, all of this stuff should be avoided at all costs. While it might be something you love, all you will do is put people off. You want your site to look clean and professional. It should be responsive and easy to navigate.
You could add some personality with a beautifully designed header, but keep the background white and the text dark, in a size and font that’s easy to read. If you enlist the help of a company offering web design services, they will be able to tackle the job and have your blog looking the best it can possibly look. Sponsors are far more likely to opt for a professional looking and nicely designed blog when it comes to spending money on ads and links.
Buy a Domain Name
When you signed up for your blog, your URL link will end with something like ‘.blogspot.com’ or ‘.wordpress.com.’ depending on which platform you’re on. Buying your own domain, so it ends in .com (or .net, .co.uk, .au, etc. depending on your preference or location) looks much more professional.
Some sponsors will only work with bloggers who have their own domain, so no matter now good your site is you could be losing out on opportunities due to this. It’s relatively simple to set up and only costs a few dollars a year. It’s definitely worth doing.
Improve Your Photos
Your content might be excellent, but rubbish pictures will quickly cheapen the look. While people will come back to your blog due to the writing, it’s the images that will grab their attention and draw them in so they need to be right. Whether you take product photos or more lifestyle images, if you’re serious about making your blog a success a DSLR camera is a worthwhile investment. They’re serious pieces of kit so if you’re a complete newbie, check out DSLR introduction classes near you.
Even a one- off session can teach you the basics which you can build from. Use an editing software to enhance pictures once you’re done, if you’ve used the right camera settings it should be a case of adjusting the brightness and contrast a little and maybe cropping down the image to make it more focused. If you need a photo on a subject that you can’t take yourself, there are lots of great free images online you can use. Sites like Pexels and Pixabay are useful and have plenty of great options to choose from. If you’re using a stock photo, choose carefully. Don’t choose something that looks tacky, go with a really nice image.
Learn How To Promote Yourself
The blogging world has exploded in the last few years, and so to get your name out there in such a saturated market requires you to promote yourself. Social media sites are excellent for this. Scheduling tweets and posts, or setting them to post notifications automatically after you publish (Bloglovin has the option to do this) can ensure that your feed is kept up to date.
However, you need to do more than just post an endless amount of links since this will look spammy. Attaching beautiful photos from the blog posts to the tweets will make them far more click- friendly, and be sure to use relevant hashtags. This will increase the chances of your posts being seen by people who are genuinely interested in reading. Twitter has a number of ‘chats’ for bloggers at different times, joining in with these and chatted to likeminded people will build your network and can get the word out more too.
Inform The Tax Office/ Register as a Business
Once you’re earning money from your blog, the tax office needs to hear about it. The tax man always gets his cut, unfortunately! Even if you’re not liable to pay anything as you’ve earned under the threshold you need to let the authorities know. While this can seem like a very complicated and scary step, it generally just involves a few online forms, and you’re good to go. Each year you will do a tax return, stating how much you have earned and will be told how much tax (if any) you have to pay.
