blog website business plan

How to Create a Blog Business Plan (Free Template) 7 Easy Steps to Write a Blog Business Plan: How I've Earned $1 Million+ Blogging

If you want to become a successful blogger, you’re going to need a smart blog business plan that can guide your decision-making, tell you what to invest your time in and keep pointing you toward the next stage in the growth of your blog business. Here’s how to write a blog business plan, including my free downloadable template.

" * " indicates required fields

For more than 10 years since I started my blog , I’ve been strategically implementing my own blog business plans with great results. This guide pulls from that exact plan—and you can download my (free) template to follow along as you grow your blog too.

Want My Free Blog Business Plan Template?

Grab my free blog business plan template in both Google Doc and PDF format (that’s helped me build a six-figure blog) and reach 500,000+ monthly readers today.

Last year alone, my blog generated $449,107 in revenue (see more in my blog income reports ), and it’s been earning in the six-figures for several years now.

Despite the numbers, it hasn’t always been easy—like all entrepreneurs will tell you as any small business owner, there are ups and downs with business blogging, too.

A blog business plan helps you navigate the storm and can keep you on track, working toward your most impactful goals despite short-term fluctuations. At the end of the day, I’m living proof that you can turn your passions into a profitable small business as an entrepreneur through blogging.

To turn your blog into a viable business, though, you need to create a strategic  blog business plan .

How to Create a Blog Business Plan in 7 Easy Steps (Free Template)

• Define Your Blog Business Plans and Set Meaningful Goals
• Do a Competitive Analysis of Other Blogs
• Start and Grow Your Blog (the Profitable Way)
• Map Out Your Traffic Generation Strategy
• Formulate Your Blog’s Work Process
• Launch (and Optimize) Your Blog
• Download My Free Blog Business Plan Template

Disclosure:  Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. When you purchase a product or service using my affiliate link, I’m compensated, which helps me create content like my ultimate guide about how to start a blog free of charge. Know that I only recommend products and services I’ve personally used and stand behind.

What Makes a Blog a Business?

Any blog can easily make you a small business owner with the right level of strategy, care and time investment. The basic foundation of a blog business is that you’ve:

• Developed a repeatable process for publishing content
• Learned how to bring in traffic consistently
• Figured out how to monetize that traffic through a variety of channels

The monetization aspect is where much of your efforts will (soon) be going as your blog evolves into a real business. You’ll experiment with tactics like running ads, taking sponsorships, joining affiliate programs , selling your own physical or digital products, and many other blog monetization strategies .

And in order to execute on these three core components, it helps immensely to have a solid blog business plan telling you what to do next.

What is a Blog Business Plan (and Why Should You Create One)?

A business plan, in its simplest form , is a roadmap for your business. It outlines your business and blogging goals and maps out how you’re going to achieve them. And in order to be effective, your business plan must be written down (so you can reference it often) and must include timelines wherever possible.

So why do you need a blog business plan ?

These are the four main ways you stand to benefit from creating a blog business plan, particularly for beginners:

• A blog business plan gives you a clear picture of what you want to achieve
• It helps you create a greater sense of accountability
• It forces you to set clear priorities (that ladder up to your overall goals)
• It shows you some of the challenges to expect along the way

A smart blog business plan is like a road map. If you follow it closely—and expect to spend some time experimenting, navigating detours and bumpy roads along the way—both the journey and the end destination will be very rewarding.

How do you write a business plan for a blog?

The first step to writing a business plan for your blog, is to define  what your blog business is going to be (the main ways you expect to generate revenue)—and set meaningful, realistic goals that can help you make daily, weekly, monthly progress toward achieving those goals that ladder up to success with your blog business.

From there, you’ll want to research your competitors, start your blog (if you haven’t already), make sure it’s set up the right way with the correct themes & plugins, put in place winning habits that’ll help you achieve your goals, figure out the best ways to drive in traffic and promote your blog content—then begin to work on monetizing.

For a step-by-step walkthrough on the process of writing your blog business plan, grab my free template right here in this guide (through the form just a little bit above here).

Now, let’s discuss how to create a blog business plan that will guide you to your desired goals in the coming weeks, months, and years.

We’ll start by helping you develop your own blog business plans, which will set you on the path to generating revenue as quickly as possible.

1. Define Your Blog Business Plans and Set Meaningful Goals

The very first step in creating a blog business plan is to define what your business is going to be. That’s where we’ll be talking about things like your mission statement (why you’re blogging in the first place)—and while I don’t  love the corporate term, executive summary, defining your blog business will be the closest thing we cover to that.

That means laying the foundation for everything from which niche you’ll be blogging in, who your target audience is going to be , which (tangible) blogging goals are most important for you to aim for, and at least a loose sense of how you’ll plan to make money from your blog in the near future.

Picking a niche

Picking a niche to blog about is one of the most important steps you can take to eventually generate an income from your blog.

A niche is simply a specific range of related topics (segment of a target market or target audience ) that you want to specialize your blog around being a trusted resource. Examples of some highly lucrative niche topics you can blog about include things like:

• Photography
• Personal Finance
• Career Development

When it comes to choosing a niche, the sky truly is the limit. If there’s a topic area that has enough demand—and you’re genuinely interested in building a blog business around it—then you’ve got the makings of a potentially profitable niche. Check out my guide for much more: How to Pick a Niche to Blog About (+ Examples) .

The reason why picking a niche comes first when laying out your blog business plans—is that how your blog functions as a business will be heavily influenced by the niche you’re operating in. It’s only after you’ve landed on a clear niche that you can move into defining and learning more about the audience you’ll be serving.

Learning about your target audience

After your niche, the next most important business decision you need to make is deciding who your target audience will be—and committing to learning more about them.

In a world with billions of people using the Internet , the reality is that not everyone will discover or even resonate with your blog, let alone be willing to buy whatever you’re selling when you eventually start monetizing your content.

You have to research your target audience and understand their pain points and how you can help them through your blog.

Think about your readers in terms of the demographics and psychographics that define them:

• Demographics: The quantitative traits of your readers. Like age, gender, location, and job title.
• Psychographics: More unmeasurable traits like values, interests, attitudes, and belief systems.

In short, who are your target readers, and which problems will you be solving for them?

The answer to that pivotal question will also help you determine the kind of content you’ll create and the best channels to monetize that content.

Determine how you’ll monetize your blog

There are many ways to make money blogging , but it’s extremely important to remember that you can only generate revenue from your blog—once you’ve started attracting an audience.

Still, it helps to plan today for which ways you’d like to monetize your blog (ideally in a manner that engages your own unique strengths & experience).

A few of the most time-tested blog monetization channels include:

• Sponsored Blog Content
• Affiliate Marketing (like how I generate sales from my Bluehost reviews roundup)
• Blog Advertisements
• Sell Online Courses (like my blogging courses and Built to Blog in particular)
• Physical Products
• Release a Software Tool
• Selling Your Own Services
• Writing an eBook and Selling Them (like my blogging books )
• Launch a Virtual Summit
• Business Partnerships
• Podcast Sponsorships (see my guide on starting a podcast )
• Freelancing and more

I’d caution you not to pursue a particular monetization path simply because it’s a money-making opportunity. Your most important task at this stage, is to decide which monetization channels will be best for your niche, the type of audience you plan to attract and how you can best engage your own interests.

Again, keep in mind that your audience will be the lifeblood of your blog—so learning from them in the early days will be key in collecting valuable feedback about how you can best help them. For an in-depth look at my best blog monetization strategies, check out my guide: How to Make Money Blogging This Year .

Setting blog business goals

Lastly, when defining your blog as a business, you have to set clear blog business goals to begin working toward.

This will help you break down the big-picture objectives into bite-sized tasks that won’t overwhelm you on a daily and weekly basis.

Setting smart goals will also help you stay ultra-focused on doing only the activities that move you closer to those goals.

A few examples of goals you  could consider setting for your blog during the first year include:

• Getting to 10,000 monthly visitors (within 12 months)
• Working 15 hours per week on creating and promoting blog content
• Attracting 1,000 email subscribers (within 6 months)
• Earning $1,000 in revenue from your blog (in the first 6 months)

Whichever goals you decide to set for yourself, make sure they’re as realistic as possible, clearly actionable and measurable—so that you can regularly look back and reassess how you’re doing.

Once you’ve laid this solid foundation for your blog business plan, we can move on to analyzing competitors and learning more about how they make it work in your niche.

2. Do a Competitive Analysis of Other Blogs

Before you even launch your own blog (or transform an existing blog into a proper business), you need to learn from your competition.

Yes, that’s allowed. And no, you don’t need to do anything shady—or involve Russian spies.

Spying on your competitors and gathering insights is a great way to validate your own ideas for how to bring a blog business plan to life best. Take a peek at my top small business ideas to see if they inspire any new angles for your full-time (or part-time) business blogging efforts, too.

It’s also a fantastic way to learn what it takes to become successful within your niche. These are the three main things you’ll want to do when it comes to competitor analysis.

Identify your main competitors

Identifying your competitors helps you see the potential your blog business has within the niche you’re operating in.

Even more importantly, it also helps you clearly see the kinds of products your audience loves and is already paying (someone else) for.

So, how do you identify  who your competitors are?

• Do some keyword research to determine which top words & phrases you want your blog to rank for in Google results (considering setting up Google Alerts to monitor them, too)
• Take a careful look at the articles & sites already ranking on the first few pages of those search results
• Examine their content, looking for ads, links to affiliate programs , products they’re selling, and other monetization efforts

For just about every keyword phrase related to your niche, there will already be competitive blogs, websites, and companies intentionally trying to rank their content at the top of those search results (in order to bring in readers and generate revenue somehow). For that reason, learning from the competition can provide meaningful insights to incorporate into your own blog business plans.

Use My Free Keyword Research Tool

Try my free AI-Powered Keyword Tool to get dozens of research-backed ideas for keywords & topics to write about on your blog today.

Research their strengths, weaknesses and top ranking keywords

Another smart reason to do competitor analysis is that it helps you identify your competitor’s unique strengths and weaknesses.

Doing this will help you identify some gaps in the market research that you can (profitably) fill by thoughtfully positioning yourself toward a segment of the audience, learning how to write a blog post that’s more impactful to readers, crafting catchier blog headlines and other ways to grow your blog .

As I’ve already alluded to, one of the best ways to gather this intel is through keyword research .

Keywords are simple words or phrases commonly used by people to search for something on the Internet.

You can use that information to thoughtfully position your own content to rank at the top of those search results.

Thanks to the awesomeness of technology, you can use many free tools (and free blogging resources ) for conducting keyword research today—including my very own free keyword tool . Type in your keyword phrase and get monthly search volume, difficulty & suggestions for other keyword phrases to target for your blog content:

I built this free AI-Powered Keyword Tool to solve a problem I’ve had in the blogging industry for nearly a decade. Anytime a new (free) keyword research tool comes out and gains popularity, a switch flips and it’s suddenly only a paid tool—or has dramatic limitations on usage. This keyword research tool was build to be forever free.

When you type in a keyword you’re considering blogging about, you’ll get dozens of research-backed ideas for keywords & topics to write about on your blog today. You’ll get insights like:

• Monthly Search Volume: A snapshot of how many people search for a particular keyword phrase each month on major search engines like Google.
• Difficulty Level: The difficulty level of ranking for a particular keyword phrase based on the amount of existing (and anticipated future) competition from established websites.
• Country Targeting: The default country view is for the US (United States), but you can select other countries from a dropdown menu to see what regional search volume & difficulty look like for your target keyword phrases.
• Ideas: Use the ideas tab (or click the lightbulb) to get dozens of AI-powered blog topic ideas related to the keyword you’ve chosen. It may even inspire some real business ideas to pursue with your business blogging efforts.

When it comes to competitor analysis, identifying the (most valuable) keywords your competitors are ranking for is a great leg up.

Sure, you can plug in your own keywords you think could be valuable (and attract the right audience), but you also risk choosing keywords that may miss the mark when it comes to driving traffic and ranking well in the search engine results.

Competitor analysis is a great way to find high-ROI keywords that others have already done the research on quickly. It’s also a good way to find lower-competition keyword opportunities to capitalize on yourself.

Which strategies do competitors appear to be using?

Competitor analysis isn’t complete until you have a clear picture of the strategies they’re using, too.

• How do they appear to be monetizing their blog?
• What do they do to promote their content?
• How are they driving traffic to their blog?
• Which keywords are they going after?
• Is there a clear opportunity for creating better (more helpful) content than theirs?

This is particularly effective if your competitors are doing well.

You can learn a lot by studying how they operate—without spending a dime.

Decide how to set your blog apart

At the end of the day, the most important insight to come away with from doing competitor analysis is how you can set yourself apart from the crowd.

With thousands of blogs launched every day, one of the only ways you can succeed in the long term is by carving out a unique position for yourself within your niche.

To do that well, observe out what others aren’t doing—and make a call as to whether or not there’s a need you can fill in the market.

After you’ve spent some time analyzing the competition, let’s build another layer into your blog business plan.

3. Start and Grow Your Blog (the Profitable Way)

Now we come to the fun part—actually starting your blog .

If you already have a blog that’s live, you can skip down to the next section on mapping out your traffic generation strategy by clicking right here .

Starting a blog is very easy, but getting everything set up for being able to (soon) maximize your profit potential is a bit more nuanced.

The main difference is that you need to pay careful attention to your decisions and settings, as your blog is your primary business asset.

All of this is broken down in clear, step-by-step detail in this guide: How to Start a Blog (and Make Money) , but here’s the overview. These are the two most important aspects of setting up your blog.

Get your domain name and blog hosting

In its simplest form, a domain name is the name you give to your blog (.com, .co, .net, or otherwise).

And just like any business name, your domain name has to be registered. Try as much as possible to get a domain name that fits in with your brand, mission statement, or niche you’ll be blogging about. Use my free domain name generator to get tons of clever domain ideas.

Your web hosting plan on the other hand, is the service that actually gets your blog online (and discoverable on the Internet). That hosting service you choose will host your blog on their servers and keep your pages loading fast for the readers that discover your content.

It goes without saying, that you need to invest in a reliable hosting service to make sure you’re maximizing your opportunity to succeed.

I personally recommend Bluehost as they’re one of the most reliable, affordable and capable hosting companies that has a great team to help with technical support as you go.

Plus, they offer free domain registration when you sign up for your hosting plan.

If you’re not quite sure how to best name your blog, then dive a little deeper into this guide: How to Name a Blog (+ Examples) . And if you wan to shop around with your hosting options, check out these comparison guides, I keep regularly updated here on my blog:

• The best month-to-month hosting plans on the market today
• 9 of the best cheap hosting plans for blogging on a tight budget
• My list of the top free hosting plans to get started without a budget

Design your blog with branding in mind

Another advantage of using Bluehost to power your blog is that they offer a one-click, easy WordPress installation immediately after you’ve signed up.

What is WordPress? WordPress is a simple blogging platform started in 2003 to help publishers, bloggers, and businesses quickly build, publish, and maintain websites without having to hire a technical team to do it, but WordPress has since become the most popular publishing platform in the world. Here’s what WordPress looks like behind the scenes:

The fact that WordPress also comes free makes it a no-brainer, as it means cutting down on your expenses (a bonus in any blog business plan).

As you design your website, make sure it feels professional enough to establish trust with the types of readers you want to attract and retain.

One aspect to nail right from the beginning is how you brand your blog. I’m not just talking about a beautiful logo (although that doesn’t hurt). Branding also includes:

• Blog aesthetics : Aesthetics have to do with the visual appeal of your blog. Craft your blog layout in such a way that it’ll be attractive to your ideal audience and easy to navigate.
• Blog personality : Your blog’s personality encompasses your writing tone, style, color palettes, and the vibe you want your readers to pick up on.
• Your vision and mission : This will help dictate the content you produce. For example, my blog is all about helping fellow bloggers (like you) become more successful in turning their interests into a profitable online business.

For more, be sure to read my detailed guide: How to Start a Blog (and Make Money) to get all of the basic foundations squared away on your blog—before switching over to the traffic driving and revenue generating aspects of your blog business plan. And be sure to peek at these blog examples to see how successful blogs operate today.

4. Map Out Your Traffic Generation Strategy

Traffic is the currency of the Internet and one of the primary goals to work toward in your blog business plans. Without traffic, you won’t be able to monetize your blog.

Last year alone, my blog brought in over 4.4 Million readers—and it’s the helpful content I’ve provided for those readers that has helped me to generate in excess of $50,000/mo during some months of the year (through a combination of the many different ways I make money blogging ).

The math is pretty simple here: more visitors = more revenue (potential) .

That’s why mapping out a clear plan for how you’ll bring more traffic to your blog over the long run is a critical step in creating your blog business plan.

Figure out how to nail your traffic sources for the types of readers you want to attract—and your blog business is almost guaranteed to thrive.

So how do you drive traffic to your blog?

Pulled from my (larger) guide: How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog , we’re going to break down a few of the highest-impact strategies for attracting readers to your blog.

Create niche-specific SEO optimized content

The largest single factor that’ll get more people to your blog is creating extremely value content within your niche.

If you can create content that’s worthy of being shared by your readers, then more people who stumble upon your article—whether it be from social media sites, search engines, online communities or otherwise—are going to want to spread the word to others they know.

The foundation for making that happen is providing real value within your niche.

However, no matter how great your content is, it still has to be discoverable on the search engines of the Internet (mainly Google, today).

That’s why you need to learn how to follow SEO best practices that can get your content discovered by more people. That includes things like:

• Nailing your keyword research
• Focusing on user intent and understanding the needs of searchers (not just search engines)
• Taking your time writing SEO-friendly headlines
• Using the right heading tags
• Optimizing your page URL
• Being strategic with your links
• Crafting an enticing meta description
• Optimizing your images
• Ensuring mobile friendliness and reducing page loading times
• Promoting your content (where your audience is spending their time online)

For a deep dive in how to quickly optimize your blog content, read my guide: 10 Blog SEO Strategies to Get More Readers today.

Use guest blogging to increase your reach

Guest blogging is hands down the #1 way to drive the best quality, highly targeted traffic to your blog (from the websites where your ideal readers are already spending their time).

Check out the spike in traffic I got from my very first guest post back in 2014 on the Buffer blog:

So, what’s guest blogging? It’s very simple, really.

Guest blogging is the act of writing a blog post that you publish on another website which is not your own—presumably one that has the right kind of audience you’re trying to tap into. It’s a win-win for the blog or publication that accepts your (high quality) guest post, because they’re getting free content that they want for their readers, and you’re getting the opportunity to tastefully link back to your own blog within the guest article.

Four of the biggest advantages you’ll get from guest blogging are:

• Relevant traffic . This is extremely important, so make sure you’re guest blogging on sites frequented by your targeted audience (this comes down to smart blogger outreach ).
• Build quality backlinks . Guest blogging is a great way to build your portfolio of reputable sites that link back to your blog (which is a positive signal search engines look at when evaluating the trust and credibility of a website). This in turn, will help improve your organic search rankings for your content over time.
• Build brand awareness . Another great benefit of guest blogging as a new blogger is that it helps get your brand in front of more people, giving your new blog an opportunity to connect with new readers.
• Establish your authority . One way you can set yourself apart from your competitors is by establishing yourself as an authority in your niche. Guest posting helps you do just that.

Now, it goes without saying that your guest posts have to be of the highest standards if you hope for your campaign to actually pay off on that objective of attracting readers who want more of your content. This far into your blog business plan though, I have no doubt you’re committed.

Build and grow an email list

Another dependable way of driving traffic (back) to your blog, is by building an email list of readers who’ve already consumed your content—and want to return for more.

Growing your email list (over time) is one of the best ways to consistently bring more people to your blog. And blog email marketing isn’t as daunting a task as it may sound—it can even help you monetize faster with affiliate marketing & create a more successful business for you.

One of the most important ways of ensuring that you build an active and engaged email list, is to create a truly beneficial lead magnet that your target audience will find worthy of signing up to your email list, in order to get access to your gated content.

You’ll also need a reliable email service provider to help you with delivering your subscriber emails, eventually setting up automations and more.

If you want a deeper dive on how to be a better email marketer with your blog, read my guide: Email Marketing for Bloggers This Year .

Craft a creative social media marketing strategy

Social media—whether it be Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest (or otherwise)—is a great channel you can use to promote your blog content and drive traffic back to it.

Make sure to genuinely connect with members of your community on the social platform(s) you choose to invest your time on—and be sure you grow a following on the main social media channel that your ideal audience actually spends time on.

If you use Instagram to promote your blog , use an Instagram follower tracker tool. If you see no increase in the number of followers, it means you should improve your content and create more engaging posts.

When you’re just getting started and still on a tight blog budget , organically sharing your content is the best way to go (as it’s completely free), and you can focus on connecting individually with people who seem to fit the profile of a potential reader.

However, as you grow (and start generating revenue on your blog), you can also increase your reach by promoting your posts and targeting a specific audience.

If you can drive traffic to your website (the right traffic, that is), then turning your blog into a money-making machine becomes a matter of giving your audience what they need… and finding win-win ways to provide more value in exchange for a payment.

5. Formulate Your Blog’s Work Process

Formulating a true process by which you’ll bring your blog business plan off the paper and into the real world is a critical step.

Your work process will be the roadmap that’ll direct the activities you spend your time on (creating content, promoting it, monetizing it) in order to push yourself forward and up to hitting your blog business goals. Some of the processes you’ll need to develop a clear game plan for include:

Deciding how often you’ll create and post content

Content, be it written, audio, or video, is the backbone of every successful blog.

The better your content, the more attractive (and profitable) your blog will be. For this reason, you need to develop both a smart blog strategy and a logical content marketing strategy , then stick to it.

Here’s a quick preview of what my content editorial calendar looks like. You can grab a free copy of it right here —and I recommend picking up my free blog post templates too.

Aside from just the editorial calendar that dictates when you should publish new articles (and what those topics/titles should be), other aspects of content creation you’ll need to decide on include answering questions like:

• How are you thinking about your blog titles ? Use my free blog title generator tool to help.
• Will you be doing all of the writing yourself? If not, can you afford to hire writing help?
• What’s a realistic goal for how often you can expect to publish a new article?
• How will you promote your content ?
• Are you going to get any custom designs or images for your content? Who will be in charge of your designs?

The bottom line, as far as content creation goes, is that you have to create high quality content that positively impacts outcomes for your readers (consistently).

When and why you should outsource

As with every business, growth eventually leads to one thing—work overload.

While it may not be today, you do need to anticipate and prepare for this stage in your blog business by determining when you should start outsourcing certain components of your process. The simple reality is that you can’t always do everything, and you’ll stand to get much quicker results on your blog if you can afford to bring on some help every now and then. Plus on the positive side, hiring contractors to help with tasks on your blog can make for a nice deduction when it comes to doing your taxes for bloggers at the end of the year.

It’s also important that you know which tasks you’ll outsource first, and strive to outline that early on in your blog business plans so that you have a set of rules to fall back upon when processes start to break down.

Trying to do everything on your own can lead to quality issues or worse—result in burnout that can lead to abandoning your blog altogether.

How much time you’ll spend on your blog business

One of the biggest advantages of running a blog is that you can do it as a side business for as long as you’d like.

However, just because it’s a side business, doesn’t mean you can neglect your blog and expect it to continue growing in spite of your lack of attention.

You have to decide from the beginning:

• How many hours each day (and week) you can safely commit to your blog business
• Find the exact blocks of time you’ll be using during the day—and put placeholders on your calendar
• Respect the commitment you’ve made to the growth of your blog
• Know that however much time you’re able to invest determines how much bloggers make
• Set realistic expectations for how long it’ll take to make money from your blog

All the planning in the world isn’t worth a thing if you don’t stick to the times you’ve allocated for working on your blog. As a quick aside, if you’re having trouble with your content planning efforts, you can grab my free blog planner bundle and turn things up a notch today.

Carve out as much time as you can realistically spend—and naturally, the more, the better. It’ll not only help you grow your blog (and income) faster, but it’ll also help you view and value your blog as a serious business.

Make sure to detail your work process within your blog business plan (and follow it as strictly as possible).

It’ll require the formation of new habits and a level of discipline on your part—but so does everything in life that’s worth working hard to achieve.

6. Launch (and Optimize) Your Blog

Starting a blog is certainly not the lazy person’s ticket to riches (as many claim it to be). I’ll be the first to tell you it’s a ton of work.

Building a profitable blog takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears… as you can see from my personal journey executing my own blog business plan. But the rewards are well worth the effort.

If you make it this far in your blog business plan—to launching your blog and shifting over to working hard on growing it— then congratulations! You need to reward yourself.

By this point, you’ll have:

• Set your blog business goals
• Carved out a clear niche for yourself
• Researched your audience
• Designed and built your blog (optimizing it for SEO)

And you’ve probably figured out an article or two you’re ready to start writing by now as well. Be sure to try my free AI article writer tool if you want to experiment with how AI writing tools can amplify your blogging efforts.

So… once you officially launch your blog, it’s time to boost the awareness and begin attracting readers.

Tap into the right online communities

There’s an art and science to figuring out exactly where your ideal readers spend their time online. Start by asking them!

My best blogging advice is to experiment with these platforms as well:

• Start answering questions on Quora (and tastefully link back to your blog when appropriate)
• Engage in thoughtful discussion on sites like Reddit and carefully test the waters promoting your blog after building your credibility in a space
• Find niche communities on Slack, groups on Facebook, and forums on LinkedIn, and track down independently owned community sites that focus on your vertical

This is one of the most important times to  start building your good will in relevant online communities within your niche.

It’s these relationships you begin forming today that can lead to years-long collaborations, an influx of targeted readers, and more.

Promote your content on social media

If you already have some followers or friends on a particular social media platform, then start there.

Ask for support, build some buzz to lead up to your launch day and see how involved you can get your social network into your content creation process.

Now, if you don’t have much of a social presence today—that’s ok. It’s time to start planting the seeds of how you’re going to build one .

Check out my in-depth guide about how to promote your blog for several more proven strategies that’ve helped thousands of my readers build more profitable blogs.

Ask your network for help in getting the word out

One of the biggest benefits of blogging, is that it helps you build a network of like-minded people… and the chances are high that you  already have at least a small network of people you relate well with—ranging from friends to family, co-workers, former classmates, industry associates or otherwise.

And guess what? The person behind every meaningful relationship in your life wants to see you succeed.

Don’t be afraid to ask your friends to help you launch your blog. A few ways you can do this is by asking them to:

• Announce your launch by re-sharing your social media posts
• Take a guest post from you for their blog (if it’s a relevant destination)
• Be a featured guest on their podcast—or ask for an introduction to a more relevant show host

There are many other ways you can leverage your network, but this gives you a pretty good idea of where you can start.

7. Download My Free Blog Business Plan Template (Google Doc and PDF)

Your blog business plan only works if you do (first). A blog can become a very meaningful, profitable business venture.

But in order to grow your site to that stage, it requires a strategic blog business plan. I’d highly recommend downloading my free blog business plan template today.

Grab my free blog business planning template in both Google Doc and PDF format (that’s helped me build a six-figure blog) and reach 500,000+ monthly readers today.

More than just a blog business plan, running a profitable blog requires a lot of commitment, discipline, and consistent hard work.

If you can pull it off though, you stand to increase your chances of escaping the 9-to-5 employment world—and give yourself the freedom to live life on your own terms as a full-time blogger with a real business model powering your long-term growth.

So, if you haven’t already, start drafting your own blog business plan using the structure I’ve broken down in this guide.

And if you need more actionable steps on how to turn your blog into a viable business, read my ultimate guide: How to Make Money Blogging This Year .

Hi I'm Ryan Robinson

I'm a blogger, but I'm not my blog. I am not my business either. Occasional podcaster and very-much-recovering side project addict. Co-Founder at RightBlogger . Join me here, on ryrob.com to learn how to start a blog and build a purpose-connected business. Be sure to take my free blogging tools for a spin... especially my wildly popular free keyword research tool & AI article writer . They rule. Somehow, I also find time to write for publications like Fast Company , Forbes , Entrepreneur , The Next Web , Business Insider , and more. Let’s chat on Twitter (X?) and YouTube about our feelings (and business, of course).

Leave a Reply: Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

147 replies to “How to Create a Blog Business Plan (Free Template) in 7 Easy Steps: How I’ve Earned $1 Million+ Blogging”

Wonderful, thank you

I really need this information, thank you so much for sharing amazing information. I am currently building a website. Little nervous but I am going to make it.

Wishing you all the luck, Tanmai! You can do it 🙂

Thank you so much for this free blog business plan. I want to create a blog, but didn’t have any idea where to start. Honestly, I rarely give my email address to a website because I don’t think the freebies are worth it. In this case, I’m so glad I did. Your How to Create a Blog Business Plan provided everything a new blogger needs to get their ideas organized and understand the purpose behind it. I will be checking out your site in the future for more guidance as my blog gets rolling. Thanks again for the great content!

You’re welcome, Erin! Looking forward to seeing how you do with your blog soon 🙂 and please let me know anytime you have a question I can help with!

Should I use a pen name? In these polarized times, I am not so sure I would want someone to Google my uncommon, generally unpronoucable, unspellable French Canadian surname and find me, or even worse, since my town posts its tax list online, show up at my door.

Writing would be a new business for me, so no loss of continuity. I have a junk Facebook to join a couple of groups, but my hopes of moving have been put on hold so the information is irrevelant until I can. I have not interacted with anyone there. I doubt I even used my real name!

Is there an advantage to incorporating in a state different than the one of residence? When I Googled “ryanrob” to take me back to this site, I noted a different place of incorporation and was curious.

Good question! Using a pen name is totally your choice, I don’t personally go that route but there’s nothing wrong with it. My business is incorporated in California (where I live), and in my experience there are only advantages to be had by incorporating in more tax-friendly states like Delaware (or other countries) once you have a very substantial amount of income—though I’m personally an advocate of contributing my share 🙂

Want my free blog business plan template?

Grab a copy of my blog business plan template (in a Google Doc and PDF) that helped me build a six-figure blog and reach 500,000+ monthly readers today.

Monetization

How To Create a Blog Business Plan (+ Free Template)

By kelsey mclellan · published aug 12, 2024.

Want to launch a blog? Or you’re looking to earn more from your existing blog? If you’ve landed on this article, you’ve already taken the first step to launching a successful blog: having a business mindset. Step two? Creating a business plan for your blog.

A blog business plan is an all-in-one roadmap to creating, launching, and implementing a successful (read: profitable) blog. This comprehensive blueprint helps you set blogging goals, develop your content strategy, build a marketing plan, and deploy your monetization strategy, so that you can stay on track and earn as much as you can from your blogging career.

Ready to start raking it in as a blogger? Then read on and check out our Blogger Business Plan Template , which includes helpful step-by-step instructions, handy writing prompts, and fillable tables that speed up the process of plotting out your business blueprint. Get it for free !

Get Our Free Blogger Business Plan Template

Transform your blog into a successful (aka super profitable) business, today.

Why create a business plan for your blog?

So, why should you create a business plan for your blog? First of all, reframing your blog as a business will help you actually run it like a business. By making business-oriented decisions about your blog, you’ll be able to better target your ideal audience , create content more strategically, and ultimately earn more money.

It may be tempting to just start writing blog posts and marketing your content. However, the truth is that creating a well thought-out business plan actually makes it easier to run and maintain your blogging business for the long haul. In other words, creating a business plan makes your business more sustainable for you, as a content creator. Because does anyone really love burnout?

Benefits of having a blog business plan

Besides the aforementioned, there are tons of short and long-term benefits to developing a blogging business plan, including:

• Create better blog posts: Planning your posts strategically ensures you’re creating content that’s aligned with your goals and your audience’s interests, which in turn boosts your engagement and grows your subscriber base.
• Reach your dream audience: Developing a solid marketing plan helps you better target and reach the people who will love — and want to subscribe to — your blog content .
• Build a strong personal brand: Identifying your target market and strategically planning your content help you build a strong personal brand , which boosts your credibility and brand recognition within the crowded blogging market.
• Get a leg up on the competition: Solidifying your personal brand and creating content in line with your goals sets you apart from competing bloggers.
• Achieve your goals faster: Setting clear objectives helps you plot out your roadmap to influencer superstardom, so you can keep on track and reach your goals.

Sure, each of these benefits are great on their own. Altogether, however, they ensure you’re making the most out of — and earning the most from — your blogging business.

How to create a blog business plan

Now that you’re aware of all the income-boosting benefits of creating a blogging business plan, it’s time to dive into the nitty-gritty and actually start building your own plan. Here, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to creating a successful blogging business, from finding your niche to building your budget:

• Define your blog
• Identify your target audience
• Develop a content strategy
• Build a marketing plan
• Develop your SEO strategy
• Create a monetization strategy

Want to speed up the process? Our Blogger Business Plan Template lets you press fast-forward, helping you build your business plan in minutes so you start earning more, like, today.

Step 1: Define your blog

Before you can start writing blog posts, you’ll need to cover the basics, which means defining your blogging business. This important first step entails choosing your niche and defining your unique value proposition as a blogger.

Choose your niche

The very first step in crafting your blogging business plan is choosing your niche. That’s because your niche will dictate everything from the kind of blog content you’ll write, to the type of audiences you’ll be targeting . 

From personal finance to productivity, there’s a seemingly infinite number of niches out there to tap into. So, how does one “niche down”? Not to get all philosophical on you, but you’ll find the answer to that question within yourself.

To put it differently, the niche you ultimately go with will depend on your interests and your area of expertise (and the demands of the blogging market, but more on that later). When choosing your niche, think about the content topics you’re passionate and knowledgeable about. What do you love talking about and looking into online? What kinds of things do your family and friends ask you for advice on? Do you know the ins and outs of the stock market, front to back? There’s a potential niche. Are your friends always asking you for relationship advice? There’s another.

Identifying your passion and expertise, however, is only half of finding your niche. Once you’ve figured those out, you’ll need to do some market research in order to determine whether those prospective niches are financially viable . This means you’ll need to conduct some keyword research, using tools like Google Keyword Planner , to figure out just how large and how competitive your potential niche’s market is.

Following the basic principles of economics (and just common sense), a lucrative niche will be one with high demand (i.e. high search volumes) and low competitiveness (i.e. low search results) . This all indicates that there are likely gaps within your niche that are ready to be filled (by your blogging content, of course).

Determine your unique value proposition

Next, you’ll want to define your blog’s unique value proposition.

What’s what? Technically speaking, your unique value proposition is a statement that conveys why your blog is better than your competitors’ . Your UVP should include your blog’s unique benefits and how it provides solutions to your audience’s pain points. As a rule of thumb, it should be compelling, comprehensive, and concisely written.

So, why write a unique value proposition? Because it’s a unique identifier for your blogging business. Without it, audiences won’t have a reason to read your blog and subscribers won’t have a reason to, well, subscribe. They may even go so far as to choose another competition simply because that blogger is able to communicate its value proposition clearly in its marketing campaigns.

Step 2: Identify your target audience

Now that you’ve found your niche and written your unique value proposition, it’s time to find your blog’s target audience.

Basically, your target audience is the specific group of people who will be most interested in and most benefit from your blog content (and any products you might offer in the future). Gaining a strong understanding of your target audience, from their demographic info to their pain points, is crucial to building your blogging business plan. Why? Because, ultimately, it’s this group of people who will determine the kind of blog content you produce and the marketing campaigns you create. In other words, as a blogger, you’ll be tailoring all of your business strategies towards their needs, preferences, and pain points.

Conduct a competitor analysis

To determine your target audience, you’ll need to conduct some competitor research.

The first step in conducting a competitor analysis is to chart out your niche and compile a list of competing bloggers. From there, do a deep dive into each of your competitors’ blogs as well as any social media profiles they might keep in order to gain an understanding of their content and marketing strategies. With all of this data, you’ll also be able to piece together your competitors’ unique value propositions as well as their target audiences. Finally, complete an analysis of your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies in all of these categories, and describe how you and your blog are different — or better! 

A comprehensive competitor analysis allows you to understand which audiences your competitors are targeting and how, exactly, they’re doing it. The data you pull and the conclusions you draw during this phase are useful to your blogging business for a number of reasons. First, they’ll alert you to any opportunities you have to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Secondly, they’ll open your eyes to any potential gaps within your niche’s market, which you can fill with your blogging content. Thirdly, they can help you identify and target audiences that you hadn’t previously considered, so that you can expand your blog’s reach — and grow your income.

Create user personas

It’s important to remember that your target audience is only a subset of your niche’s larger target market. That’s to say your target audience is a small and specific group of people, so you’ll want to be precise and intentional when defining it. For this reason, a user persona is a helpful tool you can use to get a handle on your target audience.

So, what, exactly, does this tool look like? Well, a user persona is a detailed profile of your ideal audience or customer (or subscriber). When visualizing your user persona, it might be helpful to think of your target customers (or subscribers) as semi-fictional characters, and of your user persona profile as a “portrait” that includes information about their goals, behaviors, and needs.

Creating a user persona means writing a detailed narrative description of your user using the qualitative data you gathered during your competitor analysis. These descriptions will include extrapolations on your users’ personality traits, lifestyles, pain points, habits, attitudes, decision-making processes, and more.

This amount of specificity is key when it comes to writing your user personas and defining your target audience. That’s because a high level of granularity will help you adequately zone in on your audience’s needs and pain points, so you can create the blogging content they’ll want to subscribe to — and even the digital products they’ll want to pay for.

So, is one user persona sufficient to create a great blogging business plan? Typically not. Because a single user persona only represents a subset of your blog’s target audience, it’s recommended that bloggers create multiple user personas, with each representing a different segment of your ideal customer base.

Get Our Free User Persona Template

Create user personas that will boost your marketing efforts — and earn you more.

Step 3: Develop a content strategy

At this point, you’ve found your niche, defined your unique value, and identified your target audience. All of those steps required a lot of introspection and a ton of research.

So, now’s where the real fun begins! That means developing your blog’s content strategy. This process will see you getting creative and digging into the nitty-gritty of your dream blogging business:

Brainstorm content topics

Develop your content pillars, set a publishing schedule.

Creating a great content strategy starts with a great brainstorm.

Need some help getting those creative juices flowing? Your content ideation brainstorm always starts with your target audience. Revisit the data points you collected during your competitor analysis and reflect, specifically, on their needs, preferences, and pain points. What kinds of topics do they find interesting, entertaining, or valuable? What problems do they need solutions for or pain points do they want to alleviate? 

Example: Let’s say you’re a blogger in the career and professional development niche targeting single, university-educated women between the ages of 25 and 35. In this case, you’ll likely be looking at content topics like resume-building, job interviews, promotions, career growth, and work-life balance.

A solid content strategy is always propped up by a set content pillars. Essentially, content pillars are the main themes that your blog will focus on, and most successful blog content strategies rely on a combination of them . Not only does a set of well-defined content pillars help you manage and maintain your content strategy, it also enables you to build a strong and recognizable personal brand within your specific blogging niche.

To develop your blog’s pillars, revisit the content topics from your brainstorm, jot down any similarities between them, and then group them into broader content categories (aka your pillars). 

Example: Let’s return to our previous example of the work and career blogger. For a creator within this niche, a set of solid content pillars might include getting hired (i.e. resume-writing and job interview tutorials), navigating the workplace (i.e. tips on office etiquette, workplace communication, and asking for promotions), and career development (i.e. interviews with professionals about their career journeys).

Once you’ve established your content pillars, it’s time to puzzle out your blog’s posting schedule. This means deciding on how frequently you’ll publish new blog posts. 

When determining your posting frequency, you’ll need to keep both your audience’s preferences and your work schedule top of mind. While it might be tempting (and aspirational, even) to upload a blog post every day of the week, the fact is that if you’re not able to maintain that posting cadence, your content strategy will easily become derailed and your audience engagement will decline, fast.

Keep in mind that consistency is absolutely key when it comes to running a successful blog. Setting a reasonable, realistic posting cadence helps you create a consistent content calendar. And a consistent publishing schedule makes implementing your content strategy much easier and smoother, both now and in the long run. On top of that, posting consistently also keeps your readers interested and engaged in your content, and even generates hype for upcoming blog posts.

Step 4: Build a marketing plan

By now, you’ve decided on your content strategy and plotted out your content calendar. Now, it’s time to figure out how to promote your blogging business. And that means crafting a marketing strategy.

From sponsored posts to email newsletters, there are tons of ways to promote your blog online. Here are a few of the most popular tactics available to bloggers like you:

Create a social media marketing strategy

Build your email list, try paid advertising, develop a collaboration and partnership strategy.

As a content creator, the most intuitive way to promote your blog (and any potential products you have in the pipeline) is with, well, content! And you know what that means: developing a stellar social media marketing strategy.

If you already have a social media following, then congratulations: you already have a built-in audience and pool of prospective blog subscribers. If you don’t have a following just yet, then you’ll want to get on it by choosing a social media platform (or two!) so you can start growing one .

Choose your platform

So, which social media platform is right for you? That depends entirely on your target audience’s preferences and digital habits. In other words, you’ll want to choose the social platform (or platforms) where your audience hangs out and consumes content.

Speaking of platforms: the best social media strategies typically involve a combination of social platforms, with a focus being placed on one “main” platform and additional content being disseminated through secondary platforms . This strategy allows you to reach a larger portion of your given target audience, and provides you with more opportunities to engage them in different ways.

Keep it authentic

No matter the platform you choose, there are a number of things that every blogger should keep in mind while promoting their blog through content.

First, authenticity is of the utmost importance! Remember that your audience follows you for you — and that includes all the knowledge, expertise, and personal idiosyncrasies that make you unique as a creator. On top of that, online audiences can sniff out inauthenticity from a mile away — and once they smell it, it can be hard to win back their trust. That’s why it’s crucial that your promotional content doesn’t feel like an ad. Rather, quite the opposite: it should feel as compelling, entertaining, and educational as the rest of your content.

So, what’s the trick to producing authentic-feeling marketing content? We suggest creating content that’s similar in topic to the blog posts (or digital products ) you’re trying to promote. Have an “Investing 101” blog post behind a paywall? Consider creating a short-form video with an investing tip or two. From there, you can covertly insert a CTA informing your audience that they can access more of your expertise on the topic by subscribing to your blog . This method is effective because it gives prospective subscribers a taste of your blog’s value, which provides them with a ton of incentive to smash that “subscribe” button.

Sure, social media marketing works perfectly well, but did you know that ye olde e-newsletter remains one of the most effective digital marketing strategies out there? You heard us right: on average, email marketing generates a ROI of $36 for every dollar spent . With that in mind, you’ll want to leverage the power of email marketing in your blog business plan.

Email marketing is a powerful way to convert your audience into paying subscribers (and customers). On top of that, email marketing also gives you more control over your blogging business. While your social media following remains at the mercy of third-party platforms and their fickle algorithms , your email list is an audience (and a marketing tool) that you own, 100% . And that means nobody can take it away from you.

Before you can start sending out email blasts, you’ll need to build your email list , i.e. the list of subscribers who will receive your marketing emails.

To build out your list , you’ll need to capture your followers’ email addresses. That might seem like a tall order, however, in this day and age, there are tons of tools at a blogger’s disposal to do just that. These include opt-in forms, which can be added to your blog homepage or link-in-bio landing page , and lead magnets , which you can give away in exchange for your followers’ contact info.

Are you willing to invest a bit of money into your blogging business? Then you might want to try paid advertising to promote your blog (and any potential digital products you might create and sell). As a blogger, there are a couple of ways to approach your paid advertising strategy.

First, you can advertise your products on social media through sponsored ads. From Instagram to YouTube, every content platform has some way for you to promote your blog or digital products. And a single sponsored post can go a long way in terms of ROI. We suggest approaching your paid advertising strategy as an experiment. Start with a small budget, look into commissioning an ad or two , and see where it takes you!

Another option would be to try out Google Ads . These ads get displayed on Google search results pages, on websites and blogs, and in a ton of other places around the web. This means that Google Ads have the potential to give your blog (and your products) a ton of reach and visibility. Google also has some of the best targeted advertising tech on the market, which means that your ads have a better chance of landing in front of the right people (i.e. the people who will want to read and subscribe to your blog).

Partnering with other bloggers within your niche is a great way to grow your audience and boost your credibility. For these reasons, you’ll want to develop a partnership strategy for your blog.

To do this, reach out to other bloggers within your category and try securing guest posts on their blog . Rather than going the paid sponsorship route, you might be able to work out an exchange where you cross-promote each other’s content.

So, how do you find the right blogging partner? Be on the lookout for bloggers who share your audience and values, and who have a similar style or approach to creating content . This will make it a whole lot easier to create content that resonates with both of your audiences and helps you achieve your blogging goals.

Before starting a collaboration, plan out all the details of the partnership, including goals, content format, and timeline. You’ll want to make sure you’re both on the same page before and throughout the process. Remember: clear communication is the key to a successful collaboration!

In the end, collaborations are a great opportunity to create unique content that stands out from your regular blog posts and build your blog’s community. Treating your fellow bloggers as collaborators rather than competitors can open the doors to brand new audiences — and brand new subscribers.

Need help managing your partnership strategies and the rest of your marketing efforts? Our Blogger Business Plan Template helps you build and implement your blog’s marketing strategy quickly and easily.

Step 5: Develop your SEO strategy

Finally, it’s time to build your blog’s SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. This process involves a number of steps, including performing keyword research, optimizing your blog posts, and honing your thumbnail design, among others.

The first step in crafting your SEO plan is to conduct keyword research. To do this, you’ll be using tools like Google Keyword Planner to find keywords that are relevant to your niche. From there, you’ll optimize your blog posts with descriptive titles and informative descriptions containing your target keywords, along with using tools like Surfer to figure out your posts’ ideal word counts. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Want to learn more about creating a comprehensive SEO strategy for your blog? Our Blogger Business Plan Template helps you create, manage, and implement an effective SEO strategy for your blog.

Step 6: Create a monetization strategy

You’re not done with those strategic thinking skills just yet! Next, it’s time to build out your blog’s monetization strategy.

From subscriptions to digital products , there are lots of ways to generate revenue as a blogger. But, ultimately, the monetization tactics you choose depend entirely on your audience’s preferences and blog’s business needs.

Looking to max out your blogging income? (Trick question!) Then you’ll want to harness a combination of revenue streams . This might mean tapping into subscriptions in addition to selling digital products and partnering with brands. Here are a few of the most popular ways for bloggers to monetize:

Subscriptions

Digital products, brand partnerships.

Creating subscribers-only content is bloggers’ bread and butter when it comes to earning an income.

A blog subscription works just like any other subscription service (take Netflix or Amazon Prime, for example). In a nutshell, your subscribers pay a monthly fee for access to exclusive, paywalled blog content and any other perks you might want to provide . 

So, what does a blog subscription strategy look like? Well, there are actually quite a few approaches you can take.

One of the most popular strategies is placing entire blog posts behind a paywall. This tactic typically entails offering select blog posts for free, while offering the rest (aka “the good stuff”) only to paid subscribers. This strategy is effective because it provides potential subscribers with a taste of your blog’s value, which gives them incentive to subscribe (i.e. pay up) to gain access to more.

Additional subscription strategies might include placing the second half of each blog post (aka the juiciest or most informative parts of each post) behind a paywall or providing subscribers with early access to your blogging content.

Selling digital products — like mini-courses , tutorials, and guides — is one of the most lucrative and low-effort ways to earn money as a blogger. This is because digital products are an excellent source of passive income . Why? Well, because you only need to create a digital product once before copies of it can be purchased endlessly . That means you can allocate that time and energy saved towards other, more enjoyable business operations, like creating the content.

But wait, it gets better. The Leap makes creating digital products easier and faster than ever before! 

Powered by AI, The Leap helps you create profitable digital products in just minutes , while its link-in-bio storefront tool lets you sell them without ever leaving the platform. Once you’ve put your digital product up for sale, simply promote it on your blog to boost sales and max out your earnings.

Interested? Try The Leap for free today .

Create your lead magnets in minutes using The Leap!

Brand partnerships are some of the most popular ways for content creators to earn money online — and this counts for bloggers too.

When it comes to blogs, partnering brands will usually pay bloggers to promote their products and services via a sponsored blog post. These promotional posts could take any number of forms, depending on the terms of your partnership.

Example: If you’re a travel blogger, a sponsored post might take the form of a written review for one of the brand’s products or services, or it might be an account of a trip paid for by your partnering brand.

Before you jump into a brand partnership, you’ll need to do a little bit of research and outreach in order to find the right one. The trick to forging a great brand partnership is to partner only with brands that you yourself would use and support, and affiliating yourself with products that you truly believe in. Partnering with a brand just to earn a buck can rub your audience the wrong way and erode the trust you worked so hard to build.

Launch your blogging business today

So, there you have it: everything you need to launch a successful blogging business, all in one place. Now, it’s up to you to put our Blogger Business Plan Template to good use and begin plotting out your route to becoming a superstar blogger.

Follow The Leap on  TikTok ,  Instagram , and  YouTube  for more  monetization tips for creators.   We also make a  newsletter .

Further Reading

• How To Sell Digital Products Online: A 6-Step Launch Checklist
• How To Promote Your Digital Products: 10 Ways To Boost Sales
• 15 Profitable Digital Products To Sell Online (+ Real Examples)
• 12 of the Best Ways To Make Money Online as a Creator

How To Go Live on TikTok (And How To Make Money From It)

How to create a business plan for your digital product store (+ free template), how to start a blog in 2024 (tips + free template), get early access to our new product.

We're currently in a private beta phase 🤫. Fill out this form to receive product updates and the opportunity for early access!

The Leap uses cookies to display personalized content, appropriate advertising and store your preferences on your computer. By continuing to navigate our website, you acknowledge and agree to our use of cookies.

• The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Blog Business Plan…

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Blog Business Plan (Updated)

What sets apart the top-tier blogs in every industry and the blogs most people run? What's the difference between success and mediocrity? As often as anything, the answer is a business plan.

When many people start a blog, they don't have a goal, plan, or drive to succeed. They might know some of the basics of how a blog can be a business. They might know some of the elements of SEO, something about marketing, maybe they've read about maintaining a schedule, and an assortment of other tips and tricks for blogging success.

Few people realize that developing and adhering to a business plan is critical if you want your blog to succeed. You can't simply write some content every week and expect to compete on par with industry giants. Even if you keep at it for years, you might never make a break-even point, let alone a successful brand.

What is a business plan? It is many things.

• A business plan is a roadmap. It guides your business from A-B-C and beyond, with each milestone marked as a tangible goal or achievement.
• A business plan is a tangible document. It's something you can open up and reference to ensure that you're keeping your business on track.
• A business plan is for accountability. You have tangible goals and a roadmap to achieving them. If you fall behind or veer off track, your business plan holds you accountable.
• A business plan is priorities. It's a document that helps you guide your efforts to know what to do next and where to spend your energy.
• A business plan is a prediction. No business has smooth, even growth. There will always be ups and downs, challenges and problems to solve along the way. A business plan helps you predict what and when those challenges may occur.

How do you, a newcomer to blogging (and someone using a blog for their business), go about creating a business plan for a blog?

Business plans vary as widely as business owners do. Some businesses run on a single-page document of outlines and a bunch of information in the CEO's head. Others have comprehensive living documents filled to the brim with details, guiding every move the business makes. Most are somewhere in between.

Before you can start making a business plan, you need to know what goes into one. What I've done here is pared down many of the business plan examples I've seen online and added some missing steps to create something that is "middle of the road," so to speak. It's not the most comprehensive and detailed business plan, but neither is it the simplest. You can feel free to pick and choose what ends up being the most useful to you.

For example, if you're starting a blog, how important is setting up a members-only area, subscription service, or affiliate account? In your first month, it's not very important; your first goal is to get traffic because monetization strategies aren't actualized until you have some.

Blog/Brand/Executive Summary

First up, we have the executive summary. While this might sound fancy and over-the-top for a one-person operation like a new blog, it's a pretty critical part of a business plan.

What is it?

Simply put, it's your elevator pitch, your vision, your reminder to yourself of what your blog is and what purpose it serves. It can include elements such as:

• A mission statement.  Why did you make your blog? What is your goal? What do you want your blog to look like when it's successful?
• A growth summary.  If you're starting a blog from scratch, you don't have milestones yet - you can ignore this for now. If your site has been around for a while, this is where you chart out your existing growth milestones. When did you first start to see organic traffic? When did you make your first sale? You can use this as a motivating force, too.
• A monetization summary.  How do you want to monetize your blog? You don't need to go into great detail here; note down the methods you want to use. Display ads, affiliate links, sponsored content, product sales, services, consulting; there are tons of monetization options, and this is where you list what you want to use (and what you don't).
• A goals list.  Later on, you can talk about SMART goals, but you're just listing your pie-in-the-sky goals here. Do you want to make a living? Do you want to get links and citations from major publications? Do you want to network with your favorite bloggers in the industry? This list is where you outline the goals that make you think "I made it" when you achieve them.

Remember, none of this needs to go into great detail. It's an overview, a summary, and it doesn't need to be anything more. That's what your business plan is for; remember, this plan is for your blog.

Your Unique Value

Next up, you need to dig deep and consider what you have to offer to the world via your blog. What are you bringing to the table that makes people want to follow you, read your content, partake in your monetization strategies, and otherwise make your business a success?

Again, we're still thinking in more general terms, not deep specifics. You can dig into the specifics later when you do competitive analysis and take a look at the niche and industry you're entering. So, some ideas to get you started:

• You offer unique insight and information about your topic based on your own experience.
• You offer a look at a newcomer's journey from start to finish that others can use as an example.
• You have a new and innovative product you want to bring to market.
• You can offer an existing product presented in a new and exciting way or for a lower price or higher quality than what already exists.
• You have a unique perspective on your industry based on your demographics, past experiences, or situation.

These ideas exist to get you started as much as anything. Some of these apply more to businesses that want to sell a product and use a blog to do it. People who want to be bloggers and make a living on the side might not have goods in mind. There are many potential unique selling points, so feel free to dig deeper into the subject with posts like this:

Competitive Analysis

What is your niche? Are you starting a food blog? A marketing blog? A blog about sports? Music? Any topic you can imagine is something you can write a blog about, so long as you have the expertise to fuel it, or at the very least the interest to learn. Hobbies, careers, it's all viable. There are people with incredible, insightful, and fascinating blogs about organic chemistry, nitty-gritty marketing subjects, and other narrow niches.

The key isn't just knowing what your niche is; it's about knowing  who else is competing in your industry.  Performing detailed competitor analysis allows you to build an awareness of the field and figure out who you're competing with and aspiring to be.

Before I dig into how to do this, it's worth mentioning that this can change over time. Your focus and direction within your niche can change in response to your interests changing, the interests of your audience changing, and the industry as a whole changing. Your competitor analysis is, as I mentioned up above, a living document. Things change; you need to change with them.

The actual process for competitive analysis can be somewhat complicated. I'm going to simplify it a bit here under the assumption that you're just starting with a blog and business plan, so you might not have a lot of information when you first start. Once you grow and begin to find your feet, you'll be able to refine this. Competitive analysis is something you should often do because competitors come and go.

If you want a more refined look, HubSpot has a great guide here:

In short, you need to:

1. Figure out who your competitors are. Identify as many other blogs in your niche as you can, from other small-scale blogs to the giants in the industry.

2. Figure out the scale of your competitors. Rank them; ones who are smaller than you, ones on par with you, larger than you, and as many tiers larger as you feel like dividing them.

3. Pin down information about your closest competitors. What do they do to monetize? How often do they produce new content, and of what quality level? How do they advertise their blog and their products? What sort of holes in their strategy can you identify and potentially be able to exploit?

4. What kind of audience is the competitor targeting, and how engaged are they?

If you're starting with a brand new marketing blog, don't make the mistake of digging into analysis for "competitors" that aren't your competition. For example, you're more likely to analyze me than you are HubSpot, Neil Patel, or Moz.

We create blog content that converts - not just for ourselves, but for our clients, too.

We pick blog topics like hedge funds pick stocks. Then, we create articles that are 10x better to earn the top spot.

Content marketing has two ingredients - content and marketing. We've earned our black belts in both.

Audience Definition

Armed with information about your competitors, niche, and industry, you can now start to do audience definition. If possible, you're going to want to build up a list of  audience personas . These are sort of like "character sheets" for archetypal examples of a blog reader. Who are you going to try to target with your blog? The single mom, the college student, the theater performer, and so on.

What sort of information is helpful?

• Different age groups like other kinds of content and have different types of interests. Older people might like a more formalized language, for example, and might not get video game references.
• You want to relate to your audience, so knowing the kinds of careers they have can help. A food blog creating elaborate, time-consuming recipes won't resonate with an audience of people who have 10 minutes to cook dinner.
• Understand your visitor's goals. Why is this person visiting your site? Do they want to be educated, need a tutorial for a task, or are they just interested in the subject and want to read about it?
• Other demographics. Gender, sexual identity, general location, income level, marital status; again, all of these help you relate and resonate with your audience and fulfill your reader's needs in a way that keeps them coming back.

Your personas can be as elaborate or as simple as you want to make them. They're also just guesswork, at least initially. If you don't have traffic, you don't have an actual audience to measure, after all. These guesses are just examples of who you want to target. Then, once you have some traffic, you can see who you're attracting and adjust accordingly.

Content Production Pipeline

In my mind, the most critical part of a business plan is establishing a content production pipeline for your blog content. From start to finish, you should have a defined methodology for creating your content.

The number one most critical aspect of content production is topic ideation. You can spend a decade writing content in a niche, but if you're writing random topics that come to mind, you might never resonate with other people, never get picked up by Google, and never have any success.

Every good blog post needs to recognize three things. First, it needs to understand the topic it's covering. Second, it needs to know the audience it's targeting. Third, it needs to grasp the intent of the audience. All three of these combine to create a good blog post.

The audience and their intent can define one subject. For example, let's take a food blog's post about dinner. Your topic is, in general, dinner meals.

• An audience of nutritionists might have questions about the importance of eating dinner, what nutritional profiles it should fit, and how different diets compare.
• An audience of food lovers might be interested in elaborate recipes with stunning presentations that they can replicate or enjoy vicariously.
• An audience of busy working adults might be interested in quick and easy dinner recipes they can follow to make a quick family meal in under an hour.

Thus, by learning who the audience is and what they want, you can shape your content to improve engagement and user experience.

Should it be educational? Should it be deep or superficial? Should it be instructive? All of these have their roles, which is why you need to know what you're producing.

For your blog to perform, it's also necessary for you to focus on competitive topic analysis. You're not the only one covering this topic and probably not the only one targeting this audience with it. How do other blogs compare? Are they shorter, lower-quality posts or longer, high-quality posts? Are they deep or broad? Are the sites that are surfacing small or massive? Did they leave anything out, or can you expand on this topic and create a much better version?

You can also analyze the core keyword of the topic. Specifically, you're looking for subjects that strike the right balance between search volume and competition. A blog topic with too much competition will be impossible to rank for, and a blog post that doesn't get any organic traffic is a failure in my eyes. A topic with too little search volume will get you little or no traffic, even if you rank #1 for it. It would help if you found something in the middle.

From there, your content production pipeline gets into the actual details of production. Here's my general process:

• Begin with topic ideation, as mentioned above.
• Do the research and generate a compelling headline.
• Create an outline for the blog post .
• Flesh out the outline, rearrange sections into a logical order and write the post.
• Edit the post for spelling, grammar, factual information, consistency, and logical flow.
• Add formatting; headings , bold/italics/underlines, symbols, lists, etc.
• Create images. All good blog posts need solid pictures and preferably unique ones.
• Review the post for SEO factors, such as keyword usage, links to other blog posts internal and external, calls to action, and so on .
• Publish the post, or schedule it as part of a backlog for a consistent schedule.

At any given time, I have articles in nearly every stage of this pipeline. I can start and stop as necessary by establishing a defined calendar and maintaining a constant production flow.

A defined pipeline like this also allows you to offload some work to freelancers, contractors, or employees as you grow. For example, you might do your topic ideation and outlining and then hand off the actual writing to a writer, do the editing and formatting, hire someone for graphic design, and do your SEO review and publishing.

Promotion Strategy

Blogs don't work on their own. There's no Field of Dreams-Esque "If you build it, they will come" effect going on. No, the internet is far too packed with content for that to work these days. Today, you need to promote your blog, which means developing a promotion strategy. Your blog business plan should include your primary, secondary, and tertiary promotion strategies in organic and paid methods.

I'm not going to go too deep into specifics about promotion, but here are strategies you can use for ideas and research more into how to do them effectively.

• Paid marketing. Paid ads, sponsorships, paid promotion on social networks; spending money gets you results, as long as you have the money to spend.
• Attract the attention of Google. You want your articles to get ranked for their respective topics and keywords to earn some organic traffic. This one is essential for every blog and the real reason most people start a blog in the first place.
• Link building . One of the core pillars of SEO is links pointing to you from other relevant sites. Getting those links can be complicated and is an industry in and of itself.
• Influencer marketing. This strategy involves networking with influential content creators in your niche, particularly those with active social network audiences.
• Social media posting and sharing. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Imgur, YouTube; any relevant social network can be a source of traffic when you promote yourself using the site.
• Content repurposing. A blog post doesn't need to stay a blog post. You can use it as a basis for  other forms of content , including videos, podcasts, infographics, and more.
• Newsletter marketing. Building up a newsletter and actively using it is a powerful technique that many bloggers ignore for far too long.

Promoting your content is how you grow. Without it, you're just howling into the void.

Timeline Estimates

Another element of a blog business plan is establishing a timeline. Timelines are flexible, but you can estimate how your blog will grow and set goals to reach specific milestones with SMART goals.

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Sensitive. SMART goals mean that you can pin them down, measure them, and set them as specific goals with a success or failure attached to them.

A non-SMART goal would be :

"I want to grow my blog."

A SMART goal would be:

"I want to reach at least 100 monthly active users by January 1, 202x."

Developing a timeline helps you set goals and progress towards them, with the added benefit of allowing you to reevaluate and adjust your strategy if you achieve them much earlier than (or fail to achieve them by) the original estimated goal date.

Wrapping Up

While creating a business plan for a blog might sound like unnecessary work, it separates real bloggers from hobbyists. Don't get me wrong; if all you want to do is write about your life in a format you can share with friends and family, that's fine. But, if you're going to earn a living from your blog, you need to treat it like you would anything else you make a living through.

Take it seriously, and your blog will reward you for your effort.

James Parsons is the founder and CEO of Content Powered, a premier content marketing agency that leverages nearly two decades of his experience in content marketing to drive business growth. Renowned for founding and scaling multi-million dollar eCommerce businesses through strategic content marketing, James has become a trusted voice in the industry, sharing his insights in Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, and other leading publications. His background encompasses key roles across various agencies, contributing to the content strategies of major brands like eBay and Expedia. James's expertise spans SEO, conversion rate optimization, and effective content strategies, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.

Join Thousands of Marketers and Get Free Tips Weekly!

Related Posts

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Blog Content Strategy

How to Start a Blog Strategy for Your SaaS Business

Guide: How to Write Content for Your First Business Blog Post

March 09, 2022

Awesome guide! Extremely useful for a newbie like me.

March 10, 2022

Thanks Tom! Good luck with your new blog 🙂 feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

March 23, 2022

What other things should I keep in mind transitioning from writing on a personal blog to a business blog?

March 25, 2022

I think successful blog marketing can be broken down into two categories; research and execution. One falls flat without the other.

Here's an article I wrote on research: https://www.contentpowered.com/blog/blog-topic-ideas-tools/

Here's an article I wrote on execution: https://www.contentpowered.com/blog/blog-optimization-tips-seo/

These two should help you out quite a bit!

I wrote a great guide on this here, focused on business blogging: https://www.contentpowered.com/blog/write-first-blog-post/

The most significant shift between a personal blog and a business blog is the increased importance of choosing the correct blog post titles.

Traffic volume, pain points, and conversions aren't always as crucial with a journal or a for-fun blog. With a business blog, those things are essential.

Here's a guide that I wrote on how to find great blog post titles: https://www.contentpowered.com/blog/blog-topic-ideas-tools/

I hope this helps!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Name (required)

Email (will not be published) (required)

Your Comment

Let's Grow Your Business

Want some free consulting? Let’s hop on a call and talk about what we can do to help.

How to Create a Successful Blog Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide

Learn how to create and execute a successful blogging strategy that positively impacts your business's bottom line.

FEATURED RESOURCE: 6 FREE BLOG POST TEMPLATES

Save time creating blog posts with these free templates.

Updated: 09/16/22

Published: 01/12/21

Did you know that 55% of marketers say blogging is their top inbound marketing priority?

Did you also know that these marketers are 13x more likely to see positive ROI than marketers who don't invest in blogging?

Over the last decade or so, businesses have increased revenue, improved brand awareness, and boosted conversions with valuable written content published for their target audience and customers. The key here is that their blog content is valuable — it isn't enough to simply have a blog; there has to be a purpose or reason for its existence.

So, how can you create and maintain a successful blog that provides your target audience worthwhile, high-quality content — all while building your business's reputation as an industry thought-leader and expert?

The answer is with a blog marketing strategy .

How to Start a Successful Blog

Blog Marketing Strategy

How to maintain a blog.

Before we review the steps to your blog marketing strategy, let's take a look at how to start a successful blog. We'll also include examples of successful blog sites to illustrate some of these steps.

How to Start a Blog

• Choose your blog topic and purpose.
• Register and host your blog.
• Design your blog.
• Decide who will write and manage your blog.
• Determine how frequently you'll share blog posts.
• Write compelling and valuable content.
• Include CTAs.
• Launch your blog.
• Track and analyze your blog’s success.

1. Choose your blog topic and purpose.

The first part of developing your blogging strategy is to clearly define your blog's topic and purpose.

Your blog topic should be broad enough so you can write hundreds of articles about it but also specific enough to relate to your business niche and area(s) of expertise.

When thinking about your blog's purpose , ask yourself, "Why does this blog exist?"

You should be able to answer that question in one, straightforward, defining statement. (Document your blog's purpose to you can refer to it as you grow and your business evolves.)

If you need help defining your blog's purpose, take a moment to ask yourself these questions:

• What is the greater purpose your company is trying to fulfill?
• What story supports this purpose?
• Who shares your passion for this purpose?
• Is your team aligned with the meaning of this purpose?

6 Free Blog Post Templates

• "How-to" Post
• "What is" Post
• Listicle Post

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

HubSpot has four blog properties: Marketing , Sales , Service and Website . Each blog focuses on its respective industry and relates the content back to the appropriate HubSpot product.

2. Register and host your blog

This step is two-fold. First, ;let's talk about your blog's URL structure.

A domain name , also known as the root domain, is the text in a URL that identifies your website — and, therefore, your business — for a web browser. For example, HubSpot's domain name is hubspot.com .

Subdomains are part of your root domain — they appear before the domain in your URL like this: blog.hubspot.com . "Blog" is the subdomain. Subdomains are helpful for organizing a lot of content, including multiple content types. If you have a large blog operation, this structure can help you over time. However, it does pass less authority from your root domain in the short-term.

Subdirectories are divisions of your domain that live on your website, but represent specific pages on your website. For example, a subdirectory that'd take visitors to a specific blog post on a website would look something like this: hubspot.com/blog/article-name . Subdirectories often pass more authority from your root domain and subdomain. However, they can make it hard to scale your content strategy over time since you need more subdirectories to organize your content properly and protect your user experience (UX).

Subdirectories can also represent certain types of content within a subdomain. For example, blog.hubspot.com/marketing/article-name takes visitors to a marketing article on blog.hubspot.com.

The option you choose for your blog has the potential to impact your organic ranking, which is why it's important to choose wisely.

Next, you'll need to pick a host for your business's blog. The simplest way to host your blog is through the same software on which your website is run.

For example, HubSpot users can employ Content Hub and access their website creation and management tools alongside their blogging tools — all from a central location.

Another common way to host your business's blog is through WordPress — compare HubSpot vs. Wordpress here . Other popular options include Wix , Bluehost , and Squarespace .

3. Design your blog.

Design your blog in a way that entices your readers to regularly read (and hopefully, share) your content.

Your blog should be inviting and on-brand. It should be well-organized, clean, and easy to navigate. Within seconds of visiting your blog, readers should know it's published by your company.

To do this, choose a theme that's consistent across your blog properties and articles. Depending on the host you choose for your blog, you'll likely have several theme options that are both free and paid.

For example, HubSpot offers a marketplace of free and paid blog template options. Templates help you easily customize and edit your blog template to tailor it to your business.

The Help Scout blog is a wonderful example of beautiful blog design. Its minimalist design limits the use of copy and embraces negative space by promoting the latest posts with gorgeous feature images. The blog is aligned with the Help Scout brand and promotes readability and easy navigation.

4. Decide who will write and manage your blog.

Now it's time to think about who's writing, running, and managing your blog. Ask yourself (or your team): Who's accountable for each role within your blog strategy? There are lots of moving parts when it comes to your blog — if you don’t create ownership around each component, it'll be difficult to reap the benefits of a successful blog operation.

We've put together a list of some examples of the roles you need to fill to effectively implement a blogging strategy.

• Blog article topic ideation
• Search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword research
• Statistics, examples, personal stories, and thought leadership
• Strategy and editorial calendar governance
• Repurposing, updating, and historical optimization

Depending on your resources and the size of your marketing team, you may find one person holds responsibility for multiple roles.

An effective solution to this challenge is using AI tools like HubSpot's free AI blog writer . Using AI assistance can help streamline your content creation process and save you valuable time.

You'll also want to determine what the ideal blog post looks like for your publication. Consider using blog post templates to build an outline for posts to share with writers (or if you need an outline yourself). ;

5. Determine how frequently you’ll share blog posts.

How many blog posts can you commit to writing and publishing? How often are you planning on producing blog content for your audience? Consistency is the key to keeping your audience engaged and interested. This will also allow you to maintain your status as an active thought-leader and expert in your industry. Use a content calendar to consistently manage and schedule your blog posts.

Plan and optimize your marketing content with these free calendar templates.

The beauty of creating this type of blogging rhythm and sharing that information via an editorial calendar is that it creates a sense of accountability among your team of bloggers. It ensures all writers and contributors have optimized for keywords, added CTAs, and edited their pieces by a certain time and date. This way, you'll have a consistent stream of content your readers can get in sync with.

If you're a HubSpot CRM user, you already benefit from an editorial calendar built right into the COS.

6. Write compelling and valuable content.

It's important to reiterate just how critical it is for your blog content to be both compelling and valuable to your readers. This plays a large part in how you're viewed by your target audience, customers, competitors, and other industry leaders. It's also how you're going to keep readers engaged and loyal to your blog — and hopefully converting to customers, too.

Remember, it takes more time and energy to obtain new subscribers than to maintain current readers. Plus, your current readers have the potential of becoming your brand advocates faster than new subscribers do. So, focus on consistently producing content that captivates your audience all while providing them with useful and worthwhile information so they stick around for the long run.

150+ Free Content Creation Templates

Access ebook, blog post, CTA, case study, and more content templates.

• Ebook Templates
• CTA Templates
• Blog Post Templates

Patagonia's blog, The Cleanest Line , is a fascinating publication. It's not a generic brand blog that discusses Patagonia products or customers; it tells compelling stories written by some of the best writers on the web — yet it still resonates with Patagonia's target audience and those who share its core values . I've personally spent hours reading the articles on The Cleanest Line, and it's endeared me to Patagonia in the process.

7. Include CTAs.

Are any of the reasons you're developing your business's blog to drive organic traffic to your website, improve conversions, and boost sales?

That's great news — but to accomplish these goals, you'll need to include relevant calls-to-action (CTAs) throughout your blog posts.

CTAs can be paid or free for your audience members. Either way, effective CTAs provide readers with a level of value that they simply cannot pass up.

A CTA might share in-depth content and information with your audience on a specific topic. Or maybe it includes a discount code or special deal on your product or service. A CTA could also provide further training related to the subject of your blog article.

Check out this blog post if you're looking for some examples of clickable CTAs to insert in your content.

I f you're a HubSpot user, the CRM offers a CTA creation tool to help you develop relevant — and even personalized — offers to drive traffic to your landing pages and convert more leads.

For example, the Omniscient Digital blog naturally weaves CTAs into its posts, making the linked items part of the broader story or takeaway. The goal of CTAs should be to encourage readers to take action without deviating too far from the purpose of the post.

CTAs can also appear as visuals in your blog posts. For these, it's best to create uniquely-designed CTAs for your publication. If you're not design-savvy, you can use these free Call-to-Action Templates for your posts. ;

8. Launch your blog.

Now it's time to launch your blog !

This is the exciting part — you finally get to share the content you've been working so hard to develop. Put your blog content on it's corresponding landing page on your website and send your email list of recipients their blog article(s). Share it via social media and send it to members of your network as you see fit. ;

9. Track and analyze your blog’s success.

Remember to track and analyze the success of your blog over time. To do this, decide which metrics matter most to you and your business. Once you understand how a specific metric contributes to a positive outcome, then you'll be able to make your blogging strategy more targeted. Examples of blogging metrics you might track include:

• Number of readers and subscribers
• Number of page views per post
• Number of conversions
• Number of backlinks
• Number of referrals
• Overall traffic

When applying these metrics to the goals you're looking to set, consider the following questions to provide concrete targets that make sense for your business.

• Does this goal help you achieve your purpose, or is there something more relevant we can aspire to?
• Is this goal aligned with the initiatives of other parts of our business?
• Which metrics track the progress towards this goal? Are these metrics complementary or counterintuitive?

Once you determine which metrics you're going to use, start by setting goals for a 60-day period . This gives you enough time to see whether your strategy is working and then you can adapt your goals based on the results you see.

Next, let's dive into your blog strategy.

Your blog is an important component of your business marketing strategy and will hopefully market your products and services, but in order for it do this, you must market the blog itself.

A blog marketing strategy is how you share and promote the content on your blog. Unfortunately, "build it and they will come" doesn't apply to blogging as well as it does in Field of Dreams .

For your blog to do its intended job — drive traffic, convert visitors, increase revenue, and/or promote your brand as a thought-leader or expert — it must have a marketing strategy in itself. How will people locate your blog? What type of content will keep them reading? How can you use your other promotional channels to elevate your blog content?

Follow these blogging best practices to promote and market your blog content to your target audience.

Always keep your buyer personas top of mind.

When writing, managing, and scheduling your blog — or working on anything related to your blog, really — keep your buyer personas in mind. ;

Ask yourself, "Who are our ideal customers?" and "Why do they need our product or service?" Once you can answer these questions in detail, you'll be nail down your buyer persona(s).

Use this free template to create your business's buyer personas.

Once you create your buyer personas , document a detailed description of who this person is so you can reference it has your business and blog grow. You should be able to refer to this description every time you write a new blog post.

This way, you'll be able to create content specifically suited to your target customers' wants, needs, challenges, and/ or pain points. This will also help you turn your blog into a powerful lead conversion tool for your business (i.e. your blog will show your readers and target audience why they need your product or service).

To get a deeper understanding of the actions your buyer personas are likely going to take, research the behaviors of your target audience so you can adapt and tailor your blog content to meet their needs in a way that pushes them to convert in some way. To conduct this type of customer research, you can use:

• Q&A forums ( Quora , Yahoo! Answers , or Fluther )
• Social media ( LinkedIn Groups , Twitter Advanced Search , and Google+ Communities )
• Content creation tools within your industry or niche ( BuzzSumo or Topsy )
• Other blogs (comments and interactions on blogs similar to yours; your competitors' blogs)

Buyer Persona Templates

Organize your audience segments and make your marketing stronger.

• Learn about personas.
• Conduct persona research.
• Create targetted content.
• Build your own personas.

Keep an eye on your competition.

Speaking of your competitor's blogs, it's important to keep an eye on these other thought-leaders in your industry. Your competitors provide insight into what's working (or not working) in terms of blog content among your target audience.

It also tells you a little bit about what they're experimenting with and what you'll need to accomplish to stand out and provide your readers with valuable content they can't get anywhere else — something unique to your business and your business only.

Create a list of 5-10 of your closest competitors with blogs you could conduct a content audit on. Make conclusions about the type of content they share, unique techniques they've implemented in their blog, and how they're doing in terms of ranking for the keywords you hope to rank for.

Then, look for gaps in their content so you can capitalize on them. To help you do this, use tools like QuickSprout , Open Site Explorer by Moz , and SEMRush Competitor Research .

Perform SEO and keyword research.

When one of your customers searches a phrase on Google (or any search engine), you want them to find your blog (or web page), not a competitor’s. To make this happen, dedicate some time to researching which keywords and phrases your target audience is typing into search engines so you can include them in your blog posts where they naturally fit.

In other words, you'll significantly improve your chances of ranking on the search engine results page (SERP) by performing appropriate search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword research prior to writing your blog post, and then incorporating those findings in your content.

Start by creating a list of 5-10 keyword groups you want to rank for, along with their associated long-tail keywords, in the SERP.

Remember, ;Google's algorithms are constantly changing to become more intuitive — meaning, old tactics like keyword stuffing will hurt your ranking in the SERP. Instead, you're better off writing copy that engages audience members first and search engines second.

Note : HubSpot customers have access to a built-in keyword and SEO tool to help with this.

Focus on your blog's SEO and keyword research with HubSpot CRM's Content Strategy tool.

Decide where you'll distribute your blog content.

Strategically determine where you'll distribute your blog content. You chose a host for your blog already , meaning your content is likely already easily shareable on your website.

For example, if you use the HubSpot CRM and blogging software to host and manage your website and blog, it's simple to add your articles to their corresponding landing page on your site.

Other ways and platforms through which you might distribute your content include social media, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, and online publishing platforms, such as Medium . You might also work with industry leaders, experts, and influencers to share your content on their websites and social profiles.

Promote your blog content.

It's probably safe to assume you want your blog content to be as discoverable as possible. In terms of your blogging strategy, this refers to your ability to get your content out there so members of your target audience find, read, and (hopefully) share it.

There are many inbound tactics you can use to promote your blog . We touched on a few options above , but another common form of effective blog promotion involves an influencer marketing strategy .

Get started promoting your content with the help of a free influencer marketing guide.

To begin, identify the key influencers in your niche or industry you want to contact and work with. These should be people your current customers and target audience perceive as credible, trustworthy... and, yes, influential.

As you begin making and managing your influencer connections, remain in regular contact with the ones who are promoting your blog content. Be sure you know what they're doing to support, share, and promote your blog content and that their tactics meet your business's standards — you want to ensure they're representing your brand accurately. After all, you're likely paying them to promote your content among their audience members.

You can make your relationship with your influencers even stronger by interacting with their content regularly to show your support. For example, if you're working with an influencer who also has a blog, then go to their blog and read, comment on, and share it (even when the content they're publishing isn't necessarily related to your business). ;

Creating and marketing your blog is merely half the battle. As we mentioned above, consistency is key to a successful blog — which means maintenance is most of the hard work.

Creating blog content can be time-consuming, especially when you aim to command authority in your niche with researched, thoughtful, and planned posts.

This is why updating, repurposing, and republishing your existing blog content is so valuable — it saves you time and energy but it also allows you to efficiently achieve the results you're looking for.

What do I mean by this? Well, ranking in the SERP with a net new post takes significantly more time (I'm talking months) than an updated post. Meaning, you'll see a positive impact sooner if you start repurposing existing posts rather than solely creating new content.

Audit your existing blog posts to determine what you can repurpose and update . Outdated content to remove and/ or replace might include statistics, examples, infographics , quotes, product or service details, research, and irrelevant ideas. You can also add keywords you've determined are missing through your research.

(Check out this post if you're looking for more ideas on how you can effectively repurpose your blog content.)

The process of updating content also allows you to reinvigorate the brand new content you've worked so hard on. Updating allows you to maintain the quality and relevance of your blog without having to recreate blog posts from scratch.

Grow Better With An Effective Blogging Strategy

Growing an influential blog in your niche is a surefire way to nurture your potential customers. By creating regular content that solves the challenges of your readers and fulfills their biggest curiosities, you'll start to build a vault of trust and advocacy. This will inevitably contribute to the overall success of your business. Start with your purpose — the big why — and slowly unpack the individual levers that will contribute to your blog marketing performance through the steps and strategy we've reviewed above.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

How Much Does It Cost to Start a Blog in 2024? (A No-Fluff Breakdown From a Serial Blogger)

How HubSpot's Blog Team Comes Up With High-Performing Post Ideas

What Is Microblogging: A Start-to-Finish Guide for 2024

How Often Should You (or Your Company) Blog? [New Data]

19 Types of Blogs that Make Money in 2024 [+Examples]

The Top 3 Reasons Consumers Read Blogs & How to Attract Them in 2024 [New Data]

SEO For Pinterest: 20 Pinterest Tips To Drive Discovery and Clicks

Social Media for Nonprofits: Top Tips From BGCGW’s Director of Donor Relations

What's a Blog & Why You Need One

How to Monetize Your Brand's Blog in 2024, According to HubSpot's Blog Leaders

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

The Step-By-Step Guide To Creating A Blog Business Plan

Thinking about starting a blog?

Having a business plan is like your favorite GPS app (whichever you fancy, I’m not here to incite a Google Maps vs. Waze debate).

It guides you around the pot-holes, helps you steer clear of the congested lanes, and ensures you reach your destination most effectively.

You’re probably thinking, “But, I’m just starting a small blog, not Amazon 2.0. Do I really need a business plan?”

To that, I say, resoundingly, “YES!”

A business plan is like your secret weapon to side hustle success.

It keeps you on track, keeps the chaos at bay, and best of all, it’s customizable to you and your aspirations.

It’s not just about having blog ideas or setting goals but also about mapping the path to achieve them.

In this blog post, I’ll help you through the steps of creating a business plan tailored just for your blog.

Steps To Create A Killer Blog Business Plan

The first and foremost thing to consider when creating a blog business plan is to define your niche .

Identifying your niche means specifying the topic you want to write about and who your target audience is.

Choosing a topic that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about and resonates with your audience is crucial.

Once you’ve identified your niche, research your competition and identify what makes your blog unique.

The next step is to develop a content strategy that aligns with your niche and blog goals.

A content strategy involves planning for your blog posts, including the type of content you’ll write , the posting frequency, and how you’ll promote your content.

You should also consider the tone of voice you want to use, the length of your blog posts, and the format of your content.

Blogging is not just about writing content; it’s also about promoting it.

Social media is a powerful tool to drive traffic to your blog and grow your audience.

Thus, developing a social media strategy that supports your blog goals is essential.

Create social media profiles across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Additionally, consider the type of content you want to post, the timing, and relevant hashtags.

Once you’ve established your content and social media strategy, the next step is to consider how you’ll monetize your blog.

There are several ways to generate revenue from your blog, such as affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, advertising, and selling digital or physical products.

You should identify which monetization strategy aligns with your niche, audience, and blog goals.

Lastly, setting key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your progress and success is crucial when creating a blog business plan.

KPIs are specific metrics that you can track, such as traffic, engagement, revenue, and email subscribers.

You should monitor these metrics regularly and adjust your plan.

Tips For Establishing Long-Term Objectives

Creating achievable long-term objectives requires careful planning, strategic thinking, and an eye for detail.

Let’s explore some top tips for establishing and working towards these goals.

Clearly Define Your Objectives

The first step in establishing long-term objectives is understanding your goals.

Define your objectives in specific, measurable terms, and make sure they align with your business or blog’s mission.

Objectives should be not only financial but also qualitative.

How will you measure success?

What milestones will you need to achieve along the way?

Having clear objectives will help you make informed decisions and prioritize tasks.

Conduct A SWOT Analysis

Before creating a strategy, it’s crucial to understand your business or blog’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Conducting a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis will help you identify internal and external factors that can impact your long-term objectives.

By understanding your strengths, you can leverage them to achieve your goals.

You can develop contingency plans to overcome challenges by recognizing weaknesses and threats.

Create A Strategic Plan

Create a strategic plan once you have defined your objectives and conducted a SWOT analysis.

A strategic plan should identify your goals, tactics, timelines, and resources to achieve long-term objectives.

The plan should also anticipate potential challenges and include contingency business plans.

Ensure the plan is flexible enough to adapt to changes in the market or industry.

Include an executive summary as well to provide a clear plan overview.

Celebrate Small Victories

Achieving long-term objectives can be a lengthy process.

Remember to celebrate small victories along the way.

Celebrating small successes can boost morale and motivate you to keep moving forward.

Recognizing your team’s achievements can also help build a collaborative and positive work culture.

Persevere Through Challenges

Finally, it’s essential to persevere through challenges to achieve long-term objectives.

Creating a strategy does not guarantee success.

Challenges and setbacks will inevitably occur.

Focus on your objectives, and have the flexibility to pivot your tactics when necessary.

Use challenges as an opportunity to learn and improve.

Additional Blogging Business Plan Tips

Here are a few more tips to keep in mind when creating a blog business plan:

Craft Your Mission Statement

Before you begin blogging, determine what your mission statement for the blog is.

Your statement would summarize what your blog is about, what your goal is, and how you want to reach your goal.

This statement can keep you focused and motivated.

Pinpoint Your Niche

Finding your niche is crucial.

You can’t just write about everything and expect a high traffic flow.

The more specific your focus, the more likely your blog will be successful.

People interested in the topics you’re writing about will stay on the blog longer and engage with the content.

A strong understanding of your audience will lead to more advertising and product sales, generating more revenue for your business.

Create Engaging Content

Your blog’s success mainly depends on its content’s quality.

Create content to educate or entertain your target audience or inspire them with your eye-catching visuals.

Ensure the blog’s content is readable and user-friendly to create a fantastic experience for your readers.

You want your readers to keep coming back to see what’s new, so post and update your content regularly.

Determine Monetization Channels

You can earn through a blog business in various ways.

That is, through sponsorships, ad revenues, affiliate marketing, selling ebooks, merchandise, or courses, among others.

Monetization options depend on the niche and audience.

Consider all available options and select monetization channels that work best for your blog.

Set Specific Goals

Setting achievable and specific goals for the blog will help identify where to focus your effort.

A blog business plan should include the following:

• A rough timeline of how often you will post.
• The number of subscribers you expect.
• Your targeted income.

Goals can ensure that you stay on track, reach your milestones on time, and measure the blog’s success as it grows.

Analyzing Your Competitors For Blogging Success

Analyzing your competition provides valuable insights into your niche, audience, and potential opportunities to improve your blog.

One of the first steps in analyzing your competition is conducting keyword research.

It allows you to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for and what potential opportunities exist for you to create content that can rank higher.

Use free AI-powered tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest to identify valuable and high-ROI keywords you can focus on in your content.

You can discover their strengths and weaknesses by thoroughly analyzing your competitors’ blogs.

Are they producing engaging content that is shared on various social media platforms?

Do they have a strong email marketing strategy?

Are they involved in affiliate marketing?

Identifying these strengths can help you replicate their successes while recognizing their weaknesses.

You’ll then address potential gaps or opportunities.

It can be helpful to dive into your competition’s monetization techniques.

Do they rely heavily on advertising or affiliate marketing?

Are they selling their products or services?

Understanding what strategies have been successful for other bloggers in your field can be a valuable tool in shaping your business plan.

Knowing where your competitors’ traffic is coming from can offer insights into how to drive traffic to your blog.

Look at sources like social media, email marketing, search engines, and referrals to see where your competition is getting traffic.

You can then implement similar strategies to drive traffic to your blog.

One of the most important aspects of blogging is creating engaging and helpful content for your readers.

Analyzing your competitors’ content lets you understand what topics resonate with your target audience.

Look for ways to improve upon your competitors’ content by adding a unique perspective or delving deeper into a particular topic.

A Step-By-Step Guide to Launching Your Blog

Once you have your plan and content strategy sorted, it is time to create your blog.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

Choose Your Platform and Hosting Provider

Before starting your blog, choose your platform and hosting provider.

When selecting your platform, consider what kind of blog you want to run, your budget, and your technical skills.

WordPress is one of the most popular platforms that is easy to use and customizable.

Numerous hosting provider options are available, including Bluehost, SiteGround, and DreamHost.

Do your research to find a reliable, secure provider that aligns with your budget.

Plan Your Technical and Design Strategy

Plan your technical and design strategy once you have selected your platform and hosting provider.

The technical aspects of your blog include setting up your domain, installing necessary plugins, and optimizing your site’s performance.

In terms of design, this involves identifying your brand, creating a website layout, and designing your visual content (like your website banners or post images).

Planning these aspects will help streamline the building process and ensure your blog aligns with your vision.

Content Creation And Proofing

Creating quality content is essential to your blog’s success.

Use your blog’s mission statement and brand guidelines to develop a content strategy enticing your target audience.

Consider including evergreen and up-to-date information and incorporating your unique voice and perspective into your posts.

Be sure to proofread your posts before publishing them, or better yet, consider hiring a proofreader or editor to help ensure clarity, grammar, and accuracy in your content.

Consistency Is Key

Once your blog is up and running, maintaining momentum is the key to continued success.

Engaging your audience and building trust requires creating and sticking to a content calendar.

Ensure your content promotes your brand values and mission statement and provides value to your readers.

And remember to build your audience by promoting your blog posts through social media channels and relevant platforms where your target audience may be hanging out.

Create An Accounting Plan

While it’s important to focus on creating valuable content for your blog, you must also keep an eye on your finances.

Tracking your expenses and your revenue can give you a better idea of how your blog is performing.

Start by creating a budget that includes hosting fees, domain and design costs, and content creation fees.

Look into using reliable accounting software to help keep your records organized, and if necessary, consider hiring an external professional to assist you in overseeing your finances.

How To Increase Traffic To Your Blog For Profit

Creating high-quality content is key to attracting and retaining your audience.

Start by researching your target audience’s interests and pain points.

Find out what topics resonate with them and create unique, engaging, and informative content.

Remember that your content should reflect your brand’s voice and values.

Utilize a mix of text, images, and videos to capture your audience’s attention and provide value with each post.

Remember that quality always trumps quantity, so focus on creating fewer, comprehensive blog posts to build trust and credibility with your readers.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a strategy that helps your blog rank higher in search engines’ results pages.

Start by conducting keyword research to identify the keywords your target audience is searching for.

Then, optimize your blog post titles, meta descriptions, URLs, and content with those keywords.

Ensure your site’s navigation is simple and easy for readers to use.

Additionally, make sure your site is mobile-friendly and has a fast loading speed.

SEO takes time and effort, but the results can be profound.

You can also invest in paid search ads to bring targeted visitors to your blog.

Collaborating with other bloggers and websites can be an effective way to increase your reach.

Identify blogs and sites that cater to your target audience and reach out to them.

Offer to write a guest post, exchange links, or collaborate on a project.

Additionally, guest posting on other blogs gives you access to their audience and can help to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

Be selective in your partnerships and aim to maintain long-term relationships that will benefit your blog.

Understanding SEO For Your Blog

Understanding SEO for your blog is crucial for any blogger wanting to get noticed online.

Successful bloggers know that having a comprehensive understanding of SEO principles and the use of keywords is vital for ensuring your blog content gets the desired page views.

Google Analytics is an in-depth tool that helps bloggers keep track of their blog’s performance and identify areas that need improvement.

Competitive analysis and target market analysis are critical components of a successful blog business plan.

Luckily, free blog business plan templates incorporating SEO optimization tips for blogs are available online.

Incorporating these SEO optimization tips in your business plan can help you target the right audience, increase traffic, and monetize your blog.

Monitoring SEO performance helps bloggers identify what areas need tweaking and what works.

By implementing SEO optimization strategies in your blog business plan, you can ensure the longevity and success of your blog.

Social Media Promotion For Your Blog

When creating a successful business plan for a blog, one must consider a thorough marketing plan, especially social media promotion.

We cannot overstate the importance of social media marketing; it’s one of the most effective tools for reaching a broad audience.

Selecting the right social media platforms is crucial, as different demographics prefer different platforms.

By understanding the demographics of your target audience, you can select the appropriate social media platforms to focus your efforts on.

Influencers can also be a valuable asset in promoting your blog’s brand, as they have a large following and can boost your content to their audience.

However, selecting influencers that align with your blog’s brand and values is important.

As new bloggers, entrepreneurs, and even full-time business owners turn to social media as a platform to connect with their audience, there is a growing need to create social media content that reflects your blog.

Consider your blog’s look, tone, and feel when creating social media content.

Engaging your audience on social media is also crucial, as it builds a community of loyal followers and helps to increase your blog’s visibility.

Live streams, webinars, and even podcasts are all effective ways to engage with your audience on social media and provide value to your followers.

Building And Nurturing An Email List

Building and nurturing an email list is crucial for the success of any online business, including small businesses, beginners, and seasoned entrepreneurs.

An email list is a valuable asset that provides a direct line of communication to potential customers and clients.

To start building your email list, you’ll need to create a lead magnet, such as a free template or ebook, that encourages people to opt-in to your list.

This roadmap will help ensure that your email list grows naturally and effectively.

Once you’ve captured email addresses, nurture your subscribers and engage with them regularly.

One strategy is to send weekly or bi-weekly newsletters that share helpful resources, business ideas, and income reports.

You can also offer exclusive discounts, early access to your online courses, and other perks that show your subscribers you value their support.

Measuring the success of your email marketing efforts is critical.

You can use analytics tools to track open, click-through, and conversion rates to see how your subscribers engage with your content .

Using these strategies, you can turn your email list into a powerful tool for growing a successful business.

Planning For Blog Growth And Scalability

When planning for blog growth and scalability, several key considerations can help you become a successful blogger and turn your startup into a profitable online business.

Creating a blog business plan is essential, as this will help you to define your vision statement, market research, growth strategies, and monetization strategies.

Your blog can serve as a section of your business plan, and it is essential to consider the different stages of blog growth as you develop your content strategy.

Tutorials and guest posts can be valuable tools for attracting new readers to your site, while adapting your content strategy to meet the needs of your ideal reader is crucial for sustained growth.

Infrastructure considerations are also important, as you may need to upgrade your hosting, invest in a reliable blog name , or consider outsourcing some of your tasks as your traffic increases.

Long-term financial planning is also essential for blog growth, and you should constantly think about how to turn your blog into a profitable business.

With the right approach, a well-developed blog business plan template, and a focus on growth strategies that are both sustainable and scalable, you can build a successful online business that will stand the test of time.

A solid business plan and a comprehensive and targeted marketing strategy are essential for driving traffic to your blog.

Utilize SEO, social media, and collaboration with other bloggers to increase visibility and engagement.

Monitor your progress and adjust your tactics accordingly to optimize the results and get the most out of your efforts.

You can create an effective online presence for your blog with hard work and dedication.

Further reading on AdamEnfroy.com: As a business owner, you might choose various elements of your blog to outsource .

Knowing which components to outsource and which to keep in-house can remove a lot of the strain from building an online business.

Finally, check out these online blogging courses to learn more about how to start a successful blog.

Editorial Process:

Our reviews are made by a team of experts before being written and come from real-world experience. Read our editorial process here .

Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, which can provide compensation to us at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. These are products we’ve personally used and stand behind. This site is not intended to provide financial advice. You can read our affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy .

Adam Enfroy

Meet Adam Enfroy

Hey, I’m Adam. I launched this blog in 2019 and turned it into a $1M/year business within 2 years. I then launched my YouTube channel in 2021 and turned it into a $4M/year business. Today, I help over 6,000 students build profitable blogs and YouTube channels.

Check out my YouTube channel .

We test and review software products based on an independent, multi-point methodology. If you use our links to purchase something, we earn a commission. Read our editorial process and disclosures .

#ezw_tco-3 .ez-toc-title{ font-size: 120%; ; ; } #ezw_tco-3 .ez-toc-widget-container ul.ez-toc-list li.active{ background-color: #ededed; } Table of Contents

Related Articles

The Best Recurring Affiliate Programs For Small Businesses

Using Sales Copywriting For Business Success In 2024

The 257+ BEST YouTube Cooking Channel Name Ideas for 2024

15 Best Educational YouTube Channels You Didn’t Know You Needed

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

How to Create a Bangin’ Blog Business Plan (Workbook Included!)

Blogging tips , business tips.

November 18, 2015

Melyssa Griffin

We offer coaching programs designed to help you reconnect to your inner truth, self expression, and personal alignment as the pathway to a life of flow and freedom.

Hi, I'm Melyssa!

Founder of Future Current

POPULAR CATEGORIES

Business growth.

Grow, scale, and get the open book lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Personal Growth

Because the best way to grow your business is from the inside out.

You know, just the stuff from me to you.

Facts, numbers, behind the scenes, and income reports. I’m sharing it all!

Case Studies

Popular posts.

How Your Money Mindset is Sabotaging Your Business (And How to Fix It)

How to Let Go of the Status Quo to Live the Life You Were Meant For

Your Dream Life is on the Other Side of Your Scarcity Mindset

Why It’s So Damn Important to Heal Your Relationship With Money

Get this: I did a recent survey of my audience (hey, like you!) and almost 75% of the people who responded said that they would love to turn their blog into a full-time business. Awesome, right?

Well, kind of.

Of everyone who responded, only about 15% said that they were actually making a living from their blog right now. So, what gives? What’s with all the people who yearn to do it compared to the small amount of people actually making it happen? For one, if you want to turn your blog into a business, you need to have a solid and strategic plan in place. That’s where today’s post comes into play. I’m going to show you how to create a Blog Business Plan , which is one of the first things you should do if you’re interested in one-day earning a full-time income from your blog.

Also, if The Oprah Winfrey Show ever comes back for an encore, I’d love to see Oprah throw out blog businesses to her audience.  You get to earn a full-time income from your blog! And YOU get to earn a full-time income from your blog!  Make it happen, O.

Back to business here. 😉 Business plans, at their core, are used by nearly all profitable businesses in the world. Creating a business plan for your blog gives you the opportunity to nail down all of the specifics, do important research, and create strategies that will propel you forward. It is essentially a roadmap of your blog business, written with your audience in mind.

I’ve even got some free worksheets for you, that will guide you through this post and give you a free Blog Business Plan that you can download, print out, and keep forever. Sound good?

Download your free workbook here:

Now, we’re ready to dive in! Let’s do this, yo. Here are the key components of a Blog Business Plan:

Step 1: Executive Summary

“Executive Summary” sounds really fancy pants, doesn’t it? It’s the very first section of your business plan, which is often written last, after everything else comes together. Here’s what you will want to include in your executive summary:

1. Your Mission Statement

This briefly explains what your business is about. What purpose does it serve? Why did you create it?

2. Highlights of Your Growth

If your blog has been around for any span of time, then you can mention the growth that you’ve already received here. You can mention any sort of growth, from an increase in money earned from your blog, to an increase in social media followers or pageviews. All of your growth contributes to your overall blog business, so this section is important (and motivating, yeah?).

3. Your products or services.

You’ll have the chance to talk more about your products and services in a later section, but here, write a couple brief sentences about the monetization methods you are using or the ones you intend to use.

4. Finally, what are your goals?

Here, you get to do some planning for the future! Always exciting, yes? Where do you plan to take your blog business in the future? What are some holy-crap-I-want-to-accomplish-this-one-day goals you have?

HOLD UP. What if you’re brand new to blogging?

In that case, you may not be able to fill out some of the sections above as easily. Instead, focus on your experience and how YOU are able turn your blog into a business. You can think of it as almost like a cover letter — what kind of research have you done and experience do you have that will make your business succeed? After that, make sure to talk about your future goals. Anyone can plan for the future. 😀

Step 2: Blog Business Description

In this section, we’re going to tackle the organization and culture of your blog business. You may not feel like you have a “company culture” just yet, but you are certainly building a brand, which is nearly the same thing. *hair flip* Let’s do this.

1. What sets your blog apart from others?

Take some time to think about this one — why would someone read  your blog over another, similar blog? In Step 4, we’re going to do some serious competitor analysis, but for now, just think about how you’re different and what you can do to separate yourself from your competition.

2. Who do you serve?

Your Blog Business Plan basically revolves around your target market. Actually, just about everything that you do for your blog should revolve around them! Without an audience, it will be impossible to grow a community around your blog or turn it into a full-time business. So, get really clear about who you serve.

• How old are they?
• What do they do for a living?
• What brought them to your blog?
• How can you help them?
• What are their future goals or aspirations?
• What are their hobbies?

Keep in mind, even if you are new to blogging and don’t have much of an audience to analyze, you can absolutely still take part in this section. Truthfully, blogging is not about creating content and trying to figure out who is reading it. It’s the opposite — deciding who you want to serve and then creating content that helps that specific type of person. Get it? 😉

Related: How to Choose a Focus for Your Blog (And Why It’s the Most Important Thing You’ll Do As a Blogger)

3. What is your “company culture” or brand personality?

You may not be running a business casual office for your blog, but you still have a brand personality and culture to uphold.

• When people interact with you or your blog, what do you want them to feel?
• What words would you use to describe your blog’s personality?
• What purpose does your blog serve?

The answers to these questions will help to analyze what your brand personality is. Developing a true personality for your blog means that you are consistent. It’s okay to try on different hats at first, but the most successful blogs are ones that have a distinct personality (perhaps similar to your own personality, you little blog hustler, you!).

4. What is the organizational structure of your blog business?

This may not be a concern for you at the moment, but in the future you may want to turn your blog into a recognized “corporation,” like an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation). If you are currently running a blog and accepting money as a blogger, then you obviously need to file taxes on that income. However, as you work with more clients and customers, turning your blog biz into an LLC or Incorporation (Inc) can protect your income and business from things like lawsuits.

If you’re just getting started, I would recommend waiting to turn your blog into an LLC or Inc unless you are in some sort of high-risk blogging industry. *Casually puts on sunglasses like and walks off into the sunset.* When I started my first business through my blog, it took me about a year before I turned it into an LLC. If you are the only employee and choose not to create an LLC or Incorporation, then you are simply known as a “sole proprietor,” which is totally legal and fuss-free.

Related: How to File Taxes as a Blogger

Step 3: Competitor Analysis

Before launching your blog into a business, it’s important to research your competitors and similar blogs, so that you can try to stay ahead of the game. A little warning for you though: When doing your research, make sure of two things:

• You’re researching with analysis eyes, not copycat eyes. It can be easy to look at a competitor’s website and get a flood of ideas for your own blog. Don’t do that, k?
• If your competitors are farther along than you, don’t feel let down.  It’s okay if they have a larger following, earn more money, or have some other statistic that has got you feeling like a failure. Remember, you’re here. Right now. Putting in the work. This isn’t about looking at other people and playing the comparison game. This is about being analytical and doing your research so that you can build your own empire. You got this, yo. Promise.

Lastly, I just want to mention that analyzing your competitors is an important part of starting a business, but it doesn’t mean you have to operate from a “competition mindset.” In fact, I’d discourage it. You will get much farther in your blog business if you focus on collaboration and relationships than if you focus on competing with other people. This section is simply another important way for you to do research so that you can build a strong foundation for your future online biz. *fist bump*

Now, when doing your competitor analysis, you’ll want to take the following steps:

1. Identify who your competitors are.

Make a list of all of your competitors. Which other bloggers are in your niche, doing something similar to you or to what you want to do? Which other bloggers have potentially similar products or offerings? Write down who they are, with a link to their website.

Now, if you’re brand new to blogging, then you may not know who your competitors are. Here are a few ways to find them:

• By being active on social media.  The more active you are on social media (so long as you’re sharing content for your niche), the more you’ll naturally discover who your potential competitors are. Observe. See who people are talking about, sharing content from, and engaging with.
• By joining Facebook groups.  Facebook groups are a fabulous place to learn more about your market and competition. Again, observe in Facebook groups. You’re obviously welcomed (and encouraged) to participate, but make sure that you are also observing what people say. Who do they mention? You can also start a new thread in a Facebook group (so long as it’s not against the group rules) to ask who people’s inspirations are in _____ niche. That should deliver some stellar results!
• By searching for relevant keywords on Google and seeing what pops up.  This is one of the easiest strategies. Think of a few “keywords” to describe your blog or niche. For example, if you write about hand-lettering, then some of your keywords might be “hand-letting for beginners” or “best calligraphy tools.” If you type your keywords into Google or Pinterest, whose content pops up first? These may very well be some of your competitors.

2. Research your competitors’ strategies and goals.

Now that you know who your competition is, take some time to research their strategies and goals. Go through their websites and social media accounts.

• What do they promote and how do they promote it?
• Are there any strategies that many of your competitors seem to use (for example, are most of them hosting webinars)?
• What sets them apart from the other competitors on your list?
• What goals do they have? Of course, you may not know the answer to this, but based on your research, what do you feel they are trying to achieve?

3. Know your competitors’ price points and ranges for their products.

If your competition has any products for sale, then write down what the price ranges are for those products. This will give you an overview of how much is typical for a product you may create one day and what your target audience is used to paying.

4. Create a list of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, after reviewing their websites, strategies, and offerings, you’ll probably have a good idea about what exactly “exists” in your niche and how people are creating their businesses and blog communities. Now it’s time to dig a little deeper. Choose 3-5 of your competitors and make a list of some of their strengths and weaknesses. What do they excel at and what can they improve? And how can you use that knowledge to craft your own, well-rounded strategy?

Again, the competitor analysis is a great way to get more tuned in to the trends and strategies that are alive and kickin’ in your niche.

After you’ve done your competitor analysis? Don’t visit your competitors’ sites again.

Yup. Seriously serious. You will  not reach your goals if you spend your time checking in on what everyone else is doing and trying to replicate it. So, do your research, decide what works for you, and then create your own path.

Step 4: Audience Research

In Step 2, you identified who your target market is. Now, we’re going to dig in a little further!

1. Research your audience by doing a survey.

Surveys are a killer way to understand more about your audience without having to guess. You can use free sites like SurveyMonkey or Typeform  to create your survey, and then you just need to share it with your peeps. I recommend sharing it with your email list, on your blog, and on social media multiple times during a 1-2 week span of time.

• What will you use to create your survey?
• What are three of the most important questions you can ask that will help you learn more about your audience?
• How will you deliver your survey to your audience and get people to take it?

If your audience is small or currently non-existent, then rather than doing a survey, you can put on your observation glasses and pay attention on social media. Again, things like Facebook groups and Twitter chats are amazing ways to gain more information about your target audience. Just make sure to join groups and chats where your target market would be hangin’ out.

2. How can you help your audience specifically?

Going back to the Brand Personality that we talked about in Step 2 and the Competitor Analysis that we did in Step 3, how can YOU help your audience? What sets your blog apart from others and allows you to help your peeps in a different way? You don’t need to reinvent the wheel here! You can use many of the same strategies that others do, but it’s just about adding your own flair and personality to the things you create.

Step 5: Building Community

Before you launch a product through your blog, it’s essential to first grow your community and audience. If you want to grow a blog business, then you can buy all the e-courses and books you’d like. But if they only give you strategies for creating and launching product, without strategies for first building a strong audience and growing your traffic, then it’s just unlikely you’ll get the same results. For a successful blog, you totally need both: a community and a product.

1. Social media

One of the best ways to build community is by harnessing the power of social media. Social media is a ridiculously helpful space for growing your tribe and increasing your traffic. You can focus on Pinterest for traffic growth , and Twitter/Facebook/Instagram for finding your potential audience members and engaging with them.

So, for your blog business plan, it’s important to create your social media strategy.

• On which platforms will you put the most emphasis?
• Where does your target market hang out the most?
• What strategies will you use on each platform in order to grow your audience and community?
• How will you find your target audience on social media?

Related: 6 Ways to Create a More Engaged Audience on Instagram

2. Email list

In addition to partying on social media, you also want to put a large focus on your email list. Not only will your email list be essential for selling your products, but it will also be an incredible medium for connecting with your audience.

• Which strategies will you use to grow your email list?
• How often will you communicate with your list?
• Which types of things will you send your email list?
• What will you use for your email list’s lead magnet ?

Related:  8 Things You Can Send to Your Email List (For the Blogger Who Has No Idea What to Say)

3. Humanizing your brand

If you’re going to build a true blog business and community, you have to “humanize your brand.” In other words, what steps will you take so that your audience feels connected to you and can relate to you? Remember, people don’t buy from faceless corporations; they buy from people.

Related: How to Prime and Grow Your Audience for Your First Info Product

Step 6: Your Service or Product

Woop woop! It’s time to start planning your monetization strategies. Exciting, right? Now’s your chance to decide  how you will turn your blog into a biz. Will you launch services? Will you create an e-product? Here are some steps to get you started.

1. What do/will you sell?

What is a product or service that would help your target market or is something that you know they need (because you did a survey or observed them!)?

Don’t be afraid to get a little detailed here.

• Will it be an e-course?
• How many modules will it have?
• Which topics will it cover?
• How much do you plan to sell it for?
• When will you launch it?
• Will it be a set of services?
• What kind of service packages will you offer?

Related: How to Create and Prepare Your First E-Product

2. How does your product or service benefit your peeps?

Remember, your blog business plan is all about serving  your audience . They are the people who can turn your blog into a community and a business, so we want to serve them! Think critically about the monetization method you chose in the previous step…how will that product or service impact the lives of your tribe members? Why do they need or want it?

3. How is your product or service different from what your competitors are selling?

Lastly, go back to your competitor research and take a look at what your competitors are selling and promoting. How is your offering different, or how can you make it different? Is there anything you could add to your offering that would make it feel even more valuable than whatever else is out there?

Step 7: Marketing and Sales Strategy

Holy moly. You are such a trooper for making it this far. Who knew planning a business could be so much work? 😉 But really, you are putting in the effort right now and I am straight up impressed. Finally, we’re going to talk about your marketing and sales strategy, because once you create your products or services, you actually need to promote them! Let’s get started.

1. How will you market your products, services, and blog?

Take a moment to write down the methods that you will use to market your products, services, and blog. Will you use Facebook ads, schedule tweets, create a robust Pinterest strategy ? Write down all of the methods you’ll employ when promoting and marketing your content.

If you’re looking for ways to market your e-product or service, then check out this post where I share a variety of ways to market and launch your offerings.

2. How long will you spend on marketing and promotion per day?

We’re all busy, right? But turning your blog into a business does take some time. Make sure you analyze how much time you’ll realistically be able to spend on marketing and promotion each day and week. You may need to make some sacrifices or move your schedule around, but it will be worth it when you sell your first e-product and realize you’ve got what it takes to create your own business. 🙂

3. If you haven’t started your blog, what strategies will you use to launch it?

Now, if you’re a new blogger, you may need to start by creating a “launch” strategy specifically for your blog! How will your blog come into existence? What are some things you can do to launch your blog with a bang and get people excited about what you create and do?

One simple technique is to launch your blog with 5-10 pre-published (and freakin’ awesome) posts. If you only have one or two posts for your new visitors to browse during your launch, then they might not find anything that’s relevant to them. Creating multiple pieces of content gives them the chance to browse your site for a longer period of time, find something that interests them, and potentially subscribe and get hooked on your brand.

4. What is your growth strategy? In other words, what techniques will you use to continue growing your audience and income?

Finally (finally!), you want to come up with some strategies that you can use to  grow your brand. Imagine that your blog has been around for a few months or even years (maybe it has!) — what types of marketing and promotion strategies will you use to keep your growth on the up and up? Will you do monthly webinars? Biweekly guest posts on bigger sites? Hire an assistant? Launch a new course every quarter? Think about some things that you can add to your tool belt, which will keep your blog business growing and thriving.

MAJOR high five to you, friend. I can tell that you’re here because you’re truly ready to take your blog to a new level by turning it into a community and launching your very own blog business. Doing the same for my own blog (this one you’re reading!), was one of the absolute best decisions of my life.

What is something you struggle with in terms of turning your blog into a community and launching your own products? Let’s chat down below!

p.s. If you’re eager to turn your blog into a business, then I’ve got something BIG coming for you at the end of November. Make sure you sign up for the free Blog Business Plan Worksheets here so that you’re notified when more details are released!

Monetize Your Blog: 11 Ways to Successfully Turn Your Blog Into Your Job (Including Two to Avoid) »

« What Is LeadPages? 8 Ways It Can Grow Your Blog or Online Business.

Looking for something? Search all posts...

I’m Retiring

Business Tips

5 steps to hiring your first virtual assistant.

3 Ways To Set Goals That Actually Work

3 Reasons You’re Not Making More Money (And What to Do Instead)

The REAL Reason Why I Created an Email List 6 Years Ago

Email Marketing

How to make time to grow your email list.

Why NOT Being an Expert Can Help You Grow Your Email List

How She Grew an Email List of 5,000 Subscribers and Had a $20,000 Course Launch (In a Tiny Niche!)

What You Need to Know If You’re Trying to Grow Your Email List

5 Steps to Build Your Email List, Engage Your Subscribers, and Make Sales With Email Marketing

5 Reasons You Feel Unmotivated (and How to Get Your Passion Back)

5 Ways To Get Out of a Work-from-Home Rut

It's time to let go of limitations..

Ready to follow your flow instead of your fear?

Apply for 1-1 Coaching

Join the Waitlist for Group Coaching

JOIN THE EMAIL LIST

• Sample Business Plans
• Entertainment & Media

Blog Business Plan Template

Are you a fan of storytelling? If yes, then the decision to start a blog business is one of the wisest choices to spread your voice to a lot of people.

But, do you know, without a proper plan it might fail? If you want a successful blog with millions of readers and a lot of affiliate offers, then start it on the right foot.

Get assistance in crafting a business plan for your blog business with the help of our blog business plan template.

How to Write a Blog Business Plan?

Writing a blog business plan is a crucial step toward the success of your business. Here are the key steps to consider when writing a business plan:

1. Executive Summary

An executive summary is the first section planned to offer an overview of the entire business plan. However, it is written after the entire business plan is ready and summarizes each section of your plan.

Here are a few key components to include in your executive summary:

Introduce your Business

Start your executive summary by briefly introducing your business to your readers.

This section may include the name of your blog business, the website’s name, the type of blog business (E.g., fitness blog, educational blog), etc.

Highlight the blog niche you will work in. The USPs and differentiators you offer are always a plus. You may even include examples to show your work to the readers.

Marketing & Sales Strategies

Outline your sales and marketing strategies—what marketing platforms you use, how you plan on acquiring more viewers, etc.

Financial Highlights

Briefly summarize your financial projections for the initial years of business operations. Include any capital or investment requirements, associated startup costs, projected revenues, and profit forecasts.

Call to Action

Summarize your executive summary section with a clear CTA, for example, inviting other bloggers to work with you.

Ensure your executive summary is clear, concise, easy to understand, and jargon-free.

2. Business Overview

The business overview section of your business plan offers detailed information about your company. The details you add will depend on how important they are to your business. Yet, business name, location, business history, and future goals are some of the foundational elements you must consider adding to this section:

Business Description

Describe your business in this section by providing all the basic information like name, website domain authority, etc.

Describe what kind of blog business you run and the name of it. You may specialize in one of the following blog businesses:

• Personal blogs
• Niche blogs
• Finance blogs
• Photography blogs
• News media blogs
• Review blogs
• Educational blogs

List the names of your blog company’s founders or owners. Describe what shares they own and their responsibilities for efficiently managing the business.

Business History

If you’re an established blog service provider, briefly describe your business history, like—when it was founded, how it evolved over time, etc.

Additionally, If you have received any awards or recognition for excellent work, describe them.

Future Goals

It’s crucial to convey your aspirations and vision. Mention your short-term and long-term goals; they can be specific targets for revenue, market share, or expanding your niche.

This section should provide a thorough understanding of your business, its history, and its plans. Keep this section engaging, precise, and to the point.

3. Market Analysis

The market analysis section of your business plan should offer a thorough understanding of the industry with the target market, competitors, and growth opportunities. You should include the following components in this section.

Target market

Start this section by describing your target market. Define your ideal customer and explain what types of services they prefer. Creating a buyer persona will help you easily define your target market to your readers. For example:

The target market of TrendWave Insights

TrendWave Insights aims to capture the attention of a diverse and tech-savvy audience seeking valuable insights into emerging trends across various industries.

The target market likely includes professionals, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts interested in staying ahead of the curve in areas such as sustainability, remote work, wellness, technology, e-learning, health tech, cryptocurrency, diversity and inclusion, and digital marketing. With a focus on providing in-depth analyses and expert perspectives,

TrendWave Insights appeals to individuals and businesses looking for actionable insights and a nuanced understanding of the evolving landscape.

Market size and growth potential

Describe your market size and growth potential and whether you will target a niche or a much broader market.

For example, the number of bloggers in the United States alone was around 32 million in 2020, so you can imagine the competition and market size in the current times.

Competitive Analysis

Identify and analyze your direct and indirect competitors. Identify their strengths and weaknesses, and describe what differentiates your blog page from them. Point out how you have a competitive edge in the market.

Market Trends

Analyze emerging trends in the industry, such as technology, changes in audience behavior or preferences, etc. Explain how your business will cope with all the trends. For example:

Market trends for TrendWave Insights

TrendWave Insights navigates a dynamic market where trends spotlight sustainability, remote work, wellness, and tech innovations. E-learning, health tech, and diverse, equitable practices are on the rise.

E-commerce evolves with personalization and cryptocurrency gains traction. Post-pandemic, hybrid work and digital marketing innovations shape consumer behavior. The entertainment industry has shifted to streaming and niche content. Space exploration, cybersecurity, and privacy also make waves in TrendWave’s trend-spotting journey.

Regulatory Environment

List regulations and licensing requirements that may affect your blog business, such as business registration, insurance, copyright & intellectual property laws, privacy & data protection, etc.

Here are a few tips for writing the market analysis section of your blog business plan:

• Conduct market research, industry reports, and surveys to gather data.
• Provide specific and detailed information whenever possible.
• Illustrate your points with charts and graphs.
• Write your business plan keeping your target audience in mind.

4. Products And Services

The product and services section should describe the specific services and products that will be offered to customers. To write this section should include the following:

Describe your services

Mention the blog services your business will offer. This list may include services like:

• Content creation
• SEO services
• Social media management
• Email marketing
• Affiliate marketing

Additional Services

Mention if your blog business offers any additional services. You may include services like content marketing consultation, guest posting services, online courses, etc.

In short, this section of your blog plan must be informative, precise, and client-focused. By providing a clear and compelling description of your offerings, you can help potential investors and readers understand the value of your business.

5. Sales And Marketing Strategies

Writing the sales and marketing strategies section means a list of strategies you will use to attract and retain your clients. Here are some key elements to include in your sales & marketing plan:

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Define your business’s USPs depending on the market you serve, the equipment you use, and the unique services you provide. Identifying USPs will help you plan your marketing strategies. For example:

Unique Selling Proposition of TrendWave Insights

At TrendWave Insights, we ride the crest of innovation, bringing you a tidal wave of the latest trends across diverse industries. What sets us apart is our commitment to not just reporting trends but diving deep into their impact.

Our seasoned editorial team curates content that goes beyond the surface, providing you with insightful analyses, expert perspectives, and actionable insights. Whether you’re a trendsetter, business enthusiast, or simply curious about the world’s latest waves, TrendWave Insights is your beacon to stay ahead, understand the currents, and ride the trends with confidence.

Marketing Strategies

Discuss your marketing strategies to market your services. You may include some of these marketing strategies in your business plan—social media marketing, Google ads, email marketing, content marketing, and affiliate marketing.

Sales Strategies

Outline the strategies you’ll implement to maximize your sales. Your sales strategies may include loyalty programs, offers to repeat customers, referral programs, etc.

Customer Retention

Describe your customer retention strategies and how you plan to execute them. For instance, introducing loyalty programs, personalized service, etc.

Overall, this section of your blog business plan should focus on customer acquisition and retention.

Have a specific, realistic, and data-driven approach while planning sales and marketing strategies for your blog business, and be prepared to adapt or make strategic changes in your strategies based on feedback and results.

6. Operations Plan

The operations plan section of your business plan should outline the processes and procedures involved in your business operations, such as staffing requirements and operational processes. Here are a few components to add to your operations plan:

Staffing & Training

Mention your blog business’s staffing requirements, including the number of employees or writers needed. Include their qualifications, the training required, and the duties they will perform.

Operational Process

Outline the processes and procedures you will use to run your blog business. Your operational processes may include meeting clients, training employees, and blogging.

Adding these components to your operations plan will help you lay out your business operations, which will eventually help you manage your business effectively.

7. Management Team

The management team section provides an overview of your blog business’s management team. This section should provide a detailed description of each manager’s experience and qualifications, as well as their responsibilities and roles.

Founders/CEO

Mention the founders and CEO of your blog business, and describe their roles and responsibilities in successfully running the business.

Key managers

Introduce your management and key members of your team, and explain their roles and responsibilities.

Organizational structure

Explain the organizational structure of your management team. Include the reporting line and decision-making hierarchy.

Compensation Plan

Describe your compensation plan for the management and staff. Include their salaries, incentives, and other benefits.

Advisors/Consultants

Mentioning advisors or consultants in your business plans adds credibility to your business idea.

So, if you have any advisors or consultants, include them with their names and brief information consisting of roles and years of experience.

Here is an example of the management team:

The management team of TrendWave Insights

Founder and CEO – Jessica Reynolds

Jessica is the driving force behind TrendWave Insights. With a background in journalism and a keen interest in emerging trends, she founded the blog to provide readers with insightful content on the latest trends in various industries. Jessica sets the strategic vision for the blog, emphasizing the importance of staying ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of trends and innovation.

Editor-in-Chief – Benjamin Hayes

Benjamin is the editorial lead at TrendWave Insights. With a wealth of experience in journalism and content creation, he ensures that the blog produces high-quality and engaging content. Benjamin oversees the editorial team, guiding them in curating content that reflects the most relevant and impactful trends.

This section should describe the key personnel for your blog business, highlighting how you have the perfect team to succeed.

8. Financial Plan

Your financial plan section should provide a summary of your business’s financial projections for the first few years. Here are some key elements to include in your financial plan:

Profit & loss statement

Describe details such as projected revenue, operational costs, and service costs in your projected profit and loss statement. Make sure to include your business’s expected net profit or loss.

Cash flow statement

The cash flow for the first few years of your operation should be estimated and described in this section. This may include billing invoices, payment receipts, loan payments, and any other cash flow statements.

Balance Sheet

Create a projected balance sheet documenting your blog business’s assets, liabilities, and equity.

Break-even point

Determine and mention your business’s break-even point—the point at which your business costs and revenue will be equal.

This exercise will help you understand how much revenue you need to generate to sustain or be profitable.

Financing Needs

Calculate costs associated with starting a blog business, and estimate your financing needs and how much capital you need to raise to operate your business. Be specific about your short-term and long-term financing requirements, such as investment capital or loans.

Be realistic with your financial projections, and make sure you offer relevant information and evidence to support your estimates.

9. Appendix

The appendix section of your plan should include any additional information supporting your business plan’s main content, such as market research, legal documentation, financial statements, and other relevant information.

• Add a table of contents for the appendix section to help readers easily find specific information or sections.
• In addition to your financial statements, provide additional financial documents like tax returns, a list of assets within the business, credit history, and more. These statements must be the latest and offer financial projections for at least the first three or five years of business operations.
• Provide data derived from market research, including stats about the blog industry, user demographics, and industry trends.
• Include any legal documents such as permits, licenses, and contracts.
• Include any additional documentation related to your business plan, such as product brochures, marketing materials, operational procedures, etc.

Use clear headings and labels for each section of the appendix so that readers can easily find the necessary information.

Remember, the appendix section of your blog business plan should only include relevant and important information supporting your plan’s main content.

This sample blog business plan will provide an idea for writing a successful blog plan, including all the essential components of your business.

After this, if you still need clarification about writing an investment-ready business plan to impress your audience, download our blog business plan pdf .

Related Posts

SEO Business Plan

Guide on Business Plan for a Loan

How to do a Market Analysis for a Business Plan

Financial Plan for Startup Business

Proforma Business Plan

Best Time to Write a Business Plan

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do you need a blog business plan.

A business plan is an essential tool for anyone looking to start or run a successful blog business. It helps to get clarity in your business, secures funding, and identifies potential challenges while starting and growing your business.

Overall, a well-written plan can help you make informed decisions, which can contribute to the long-term success of your blog company.

How to get funding for your blog business?

There are several ways to get funding for your blog business, but self-funding is one of the most efficient and speedy funding options. Other options for funding are:

• Bank loan – You may apply for a loan in government or private banks.
• Small Business Administration (SBA) loan – SBA loans and schemes are available at affordable interest rates, so check the eligibility criteria before applying for it.
• Crowdfunding – The process of supporting a project or business by getting a lot of people to invest in your business, usually online.
• Angel investors – Getting funds from angel investors is one of the most sought-after startup options.

Apart from all these options, there are small business grants available, check for the same in your location, and you can apply for it.

What is the easiest way to write your blog business plan?

A lot of research is necessary for writing a business plan, but you can write your plan most efficiently with the help of any blog business plan example and edit it as per your need. You can also quickly finish your plan in just a few hours or less with the help of our business planning software .

How do I write a good market analysis in a blog business plan?

Market analysis is one of the key components of your business plan that requires deep research and a thorough understanding of your industry.

We can categorize the process of writing a good market analysis section into the following steps:

• Stating the objective of your market analysis—e.g., investor funding.
• Industry study—market size, growth potential, market trends, etc.
• Identifying target market—based on user behavior and demographics.
• Analyzing direct and indirect competitors.
• Calculating market share—understanding TAM, SAM, and SOM.
• Knowing regulations and restrictions
• Organizing data and writing the first draft.

Writing a marketing analysis section can be overwhelming, but using ChatGPT for market research can make things easier.

Can a good blog business plan help me secure funding?

Indeed. A well-crafted blog business plan will help your investors better understand your business domain, market trends, strategies, business financials, and growth potential—helping them make better financial decisions.

So, if you have a profitable and investable business, a comprehensive business plan can certainly help you secure your business funding.

About the Author

Vinay Kevadiya

Vinay Kevadiya is the founder and CEO of Upmetrics, the #1 business planning software. His ultimate goal with Upmetrics is to revolutionize how entrepreneurs create, manage, and execute their business plans. He enjoys sharing his insights on business planning and other relevant topics through his articles and blog posts. Read more

Turn your business idea into a solid business plan

Explore Plan Builder

Plan your business in the shortest time possible

No Risk – Cancel at Any Time – 15 Day Money Back Guarantee

Create a great Business Plan with great price.

• 400+ Business plan templates & examples
• AI Assistance & step by step guidance
• 4.8 Star rating on Trustpilot

Streamline your business planning process with Upmetrics .

Written by Casey Botticello

Disclosure : Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning that at no additional cost to you, I will receive a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Read our full affiliate disclosure here .

It’s all well and good to want to start a blog.

Perhaps it’s just a hobby, or a side hustle. However, if you’re looking to become a successful blogger and monetize, you’ll need to treat your blog like a business!

Behind any successful business is a business plan. If you’re a smart blogger, then you’ll want to create a blog business plan . This will help guide any decisions you make and grow your brand down the line.

To learn how to create a blog business plan effectively, read on to discover all the elements you need to consider!

What Is a Blog Business Plan?

In general, a business plan is a document that you, the business owner, creates in order to lay out your goals more efficiently.

Essentially, you can think of it as a “roadmap” for your business.

It functions as a guide to the core activities of your business, how you plan to move forward, what your goals are, ethos of the business, and any projections. 

A well-crafted business plan will contain the following:

• An executive summary
• Information about your services and products
• Plans for your marketing strategy
• Analysis of the market and competitors
• Budget and financial planning or considerations.

So how does this relate to your blog? 

Well, if you think about your blog as a business , then you can see how important it is to craft a blog business plan. How much better is it if you know what you’re aiming for with your blog, rather than stumbling around in the dark?

Making sure you have a blog business plan will enable you to:

• Be clear about what you’re trying to achieve with your blog
• Hold yourself accountable to your goals
• Be clear about your priorities in order to achieve your goals
• Be prepared for whatever comes your way.

Yes, putting together a business plan is a bit of an undertaking, but you’ll be relieved when you have it in place. Not only that, but you’ll set yourself on the path to success!

The Elements of a Blog Business Plan

So now you know the why , let’s get into the how . Here are all of the things you need to prepare:

The Executive Summary

This should always be the first section of your business plan. It’ll lay out exactly what your business — in this case your blog — is all about.

Your executive summary should be broken down into several sections:

• Your mission statement

What purpose does your blog serve and what is it about? Do you fit into a particular niche?

Really dig in and consider why you started your blog in the first place. This is your opportunity to evaluate your ethos and core values.

• Information about you

Who are you? What’s your background? Why should you be considered an authority on your topic?

• Who is your ideal target audience?

What kind of person is your perfect reader? What is their demographic?

• Any relevant blog growth highlights

If you’ve already been running your blog for some time, this is your opportunity to boast about your achievements thus far!

Have your followers increased? Were you able to monetize through affiliate partnerships, or otherwise? Have your unique views increased?

Don’t worry if you don’t have anything to put in this section yet — remember, your business plan can (and should) be updated!

• Any services or products you offer

You don’t need to go into excessive depth here, as you’ll be able to expand on this later in your business plan. However, you should mention in brief what you’re doing, or planning on doing, in order to monetize.

• What goals are you hoping to achieve?

The most exciting bit! Here’s where you get to lay out your dream goals and vision statement for the future.

Don’t scare yourself off, really think hard about what it is you want to achieve and put it down. Not only is it motivating, but once you’ve written it down, you can start to consider how to make those goals reality.

Brand Identification

The backbone of any business is the brand identity. This is what hooks customers, inspires brand loyalty, and brings a touch of humanity to a service.

For a blog, this is even more important, because what you’re selling is, well — you! As a blogger you’re putting yourself out there as the authority on your subject or topic, bringing value to your audience.

While it can be tempting to create a brand persona for your blog, what readers really love is authenticity and trustworthiness. Plus, how exhausting would it be to have to keep up a double life?!

Maybe your brand identity is a little more extra than you are in person, but at the core it’s still you. Lean into this and build off it in order to find what works for you, your blog, and your audience.

Ask yourself the following:

• Why does your blog exist?
• How do you want your audience to feel when they interact with your blog or you?
• What keywords would you use to describe your blog?

It’s also important to know what your “ definitely wouldn’t do” s as well as your “ would love to do” s are. That way you can refine the core values and ethos of your blog.

In this section you should note:

• Your blog details

What’s your blog called? What kind of vibe are you aiming for?

• What do you cover?

Here you’ll want to explain what topics and categories you cover on your blog, i.e. what’s your niche? Include what hashtags you use on your social media channels, too, as this will be relevant for your marketing strategy.

• What are your posting processes or practices?

Do you have a specific format or style guide to stick to? How about images? This is important to know not just for you but for any guest bloggers you may invite to your blog.

• How would you like to expand on your blog later down the line?

How could your blog and brand expand in the future? What opportunities exist?

Here you could think about publishing books, starting a video channel, doing live demonstrations and events — anything you can think of that you’d like to do!

Overall Business Strategy

Here’s where you’re going to talk about how you plan on executing your goals. You’ll want to include:

• Your posting schedule

Consistency is key! Blogging regularly not only helps you, but it lets your audience know when to expect content. Create a schedule and stay the course!

• Your marketing strategy

What methods are you planning on using for marketing yourself and your blog? Social media and email mailing lists are commonly used, but there are other forms of marketing out there, too.

What about using guest bloggers, or link exchanges? Known as outreach marketing, this can also be an extremely effective form of marketing for blogs.

• How you’ll monetize and what you offer

What techniques will you use to bring money in, while also offering value to your audience? Check back over your goals and future expansion ideas for help with this if you’re stuck.

Remember : There are lots of different ways to monetize your blog, but don’t stray too far from your mission statement, blog ethos, and brand identity.

• Analytics of your blog

Being able to analyze your blog performance and track unique views, keywords, and more, is essential to the success of your blog. While Google Analytics is an excellent choice here, it isn’t the only one.

Identify which analytics service(s) or tools you’ll use and how they can help drive your blog forward.

Market and Audience Analysis

As with any business, one of the most important steps is identifying who your audience are, the current market, and any competition.

Knowing who you’re trying to reach with your blog and how you can stand out from the crowd is essential to success.

In this section you should lay out:

• Who are your target readers?

How old are they? What demographic are you trying to reach?

It could be helpful to imagine your ideal reader here, as this can help you when writing your blog posts if you imagine that you are writing for that specific person.

• Who is your competition?

Who are the successful bloggers in your niche? What sets them apart and what tools or marketing strategies are they using?

It’s a good idea to profile your competition and include not just your main rivals but also smaller blogs. What are they doing right? How could you improve on what they’re doing?

• What networking opportunities exist?

No man is an island and blogging is all about community. That’s not just the community that you’re building, but the community that already exists around you.

There are plenty of opportunities to collaborate and work with others in your field. Identify these and use them to your advantage.

Financial Considerations

Of course, you can run a blog for free. However, in order to really level up, you’re going to want to spend a bit of money.

Even if you’re running your blog for free right now, it’s a good idea to be clear about what expenses you may need in the future.

• Domain and hosting costs
• Branding or logo design costs
• Any subscriptions you may need for themes, plugins, tools, or software
• Photography costs, whether that’s your own or licenses required
• Any promotional materials, eg, business cards and Facebook ads
• Office supplies
• Internet provider costs
• Any fees associated with starting a business (not necessarily required).

How Blogs Can Turn into a Business

As soon as you monetize your blog, it’s no longer a hobby but a business! On your blogging journey, somewhere along the line you may decide that doing it for no return isn’t worth the effort any more. 

After all, you’re putting time into creating a resource for others– so why shouldn’t you be compensated?

When you decide that your blog should be a business, you’ll want to make sure that you:

• Post consistently
• Market and promote your content in order to grow your audience
• Communicate with your followers though email mailing lists, social media, and more
• Find different ways to monetize your blog
• Keep going!

You may find that what works for other blogs doesn’t for yours. That’s okay! Just keep hustling, and you’ll eventually find a winning formula.

How to Create a Blog Business Plan

While we’ve already covered a lot of the steps you need to go through in order to create your blog business plan, let’s break it down even further.

1. Create a Blog Roadmap: Define Your Blog’s Goals, Mission, & Vision

What Is Your Niche?

Defining your niche is the most important step: what are you going to blog about? What sets you apart from your competitors as the authority on this subject? Niche vs. micro niche ?

You really could pick any topic you like, as long as there’s a demand!

Who Is Your Target Market?

Who is your ideal reader? What are their demographics and psychographics?

Research your target market — what are their pain points? How can you tap into this to create content that’s of value to them?

How Will You Monetize Your Blog?

There are a million and one ways to monetize your blog. Here are some ideas:

• Become an affiliate partner
• Sell advertising space
• Partner with brands
• Sell physical or online products or courses
• Write and sell e-books

Be sure to stay true to your blog’s ethos and brand when choosing monetizing opportunities , as not all will be a good fit.

What Do You Want Your Blog Business to Achieve? 

Perhaps you want to hit a certain unique visitor milestone, or email subscriptions? 

Maybe you want to earn a specific amount of money, or even spend a particular amount of time working on your blog.

Whatever it is, be reasonable and realistic with your timeframes. You want this to be a way to measure your success.

2. Do Competitive Research & Analysis

Who Are Your Main Competitors?

Use Google Alerts and keyword searches to figure out who your main competitors are. 

Knowing who your competitors are means that you’ll be better equipped to place yourself as the authority in your niche.

What Are Their Strengths, Weaknesses, and Keywords?

If you’re able to identify your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, and keywords, you’ll know what pitfalls to avoid and how you can better them.

Keyword research is vital here. When it comes to beating your competition, it’s all about placing higher in Google searches so that you become the top-ranked blog in your niche.

How Can You Differentiate Your Blog from Theirs?

Your USP (unique selling point) is what’s going to give you the edge over anyone else in your niche. What is it that makes you special and unique?

Make a list of all of the ways your blog is or could stand out from the crowd, then use this as a guide for your content and strategies.

Tools You Can Use for Competitive Analysis

There are many tools out there you can utilize when analyzing your competition. 

Some will be paid, and some will be free with the option to upgrade. We recommend starting with free versions first and seeing if you need to upgrade.

You may find that a combination of tools works best for you, as some will analyze particular social media whereas others will look at keywords and SEO-related analytics . 

You may want to check out tools such as:

• SproutSocial
• SocialBlade

3. Establish Website

Domain Name

This is what you’ll name your blog . Make sure it’s registered, fits with your brand and blog in some way, and that the domain has a clean history .

Blog Hosting

This is where your blog lives on the Internet. Make sure you choose a reliable and reputable blog web hosting service — a blog with a lot of downtime isn’t going to help you!

Website Elements 

What will you use to design your website? WordPress is one of the most used platforms for building a blog– and for good reason. It’s extremely user-friendly, and you don’t need to know code to get going.

However, there are plenty of other website building tools out there, so do your research and pick the best one for your blog.

You’ll want to think about the visual appeal and aesthetics of your blog as well as the personality and tone. Make sure it all ties into your blog’s ethos, message, and vision, too.

4. Make a Content Strategy

SEO and Keywords

SEO and keywords are, arguably, the most important part of getting your blog out there. If you aren’t ranking highly on search engines then how will anybody see your hard work?

Make sure you take the time to get your SEO up to scratch and do thorough keyword search. That way you can ensure that you’re giving yourself the best chance for your blog to be seen.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a great way to bring new traffic into your blog, whether you’re hosting another blogger or creating a post for someone else.

Be sure to align yourself with others in your niche to draw the right traffic into your blog. 

Building backlinks with other blogs is also a great way to improve your SEO. Guest blogging also helps to establish you as an expert in your niche and build awareness of your brand.

In other words: There’s no downside to guest blogging as long as it’s carried out legitimately and with reputable partners!

Email Marketing 

Email mailing lists are still a great way of keeping in touch with your existing audience, as well as helping to grow your readership.

Encourage people to sign up by having a great lead magnet. Don’t forget to be consistent and send out newsletters to your readership, directing them to where you want them to go.

Social Media 

Social media can be an excellent way to build community around your blog. Ideally, your blog’s community will be engaged, and social media is where you can really make that happen.

You can even use social media to drive more traffic to your blog. Just don’t forget to be authentic and engage with your audience in a genuine way!

5.  Develop Standard Operating Procedures

Content Calendars 

Creating content calendars can be extremely helpful as you continue to refine your blog posting processes and operating procedures. 

This lays out exactly what you’ll be posting and when, making it easier for you to create content regularly.

Your content should always be high quality and of value to your audience. Knowing what you’re going to post and when allows you to plan your content to make sure this is true every time!

Should You Outsource?

You may find at some point that the growth of your blog has exceeded your individual ability to fulfill its needs. At this point, you may want to consider outsourcing parts of your blog .

This is also why it’s important for you to lay out your business plan early on — what are the essential tasks that only you can do? 

What other menial tasks could you outsource, without affecting quality, value, or your bottom line?

Time Spent on Blog

There’s going to come a point when your blog side hustle is now your main hustle, and when that time comes you’ll need to be able to respect the commitment required.

How much time is reasonable for you to spend on your blog? Is it going to be financially sustainable? How will the time you spend on your blog affect its future valuation should you choose to sell it?

Try to define your time commitment to your blog and balance this with the rest of your life.

6. Sales & Marketing

There are so many different ways to market your blog, some of which we’ve already outlined in this article. Whatever you choose, just make sure that it remains true to your blog’s brand!

7. Performance Tracking

Don’t forget : Once you’ve put everything else in place, you’ll want to use various tools to track your performance. 

Google Analytics is a great place to start, but there are many free and paid-for tools available, too.

Only by tracking your performance will you be able to make positive changes for success.

8. Launch Your Blog

And, you’re off! Now that you’ve put in all the prep work, it’s time to get your blog off the paper and into the world. Start your blog today !

The Bottom Line

Anyone can have a blog, but to have a successful blog takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.

By creating a blog business plan, you can ensure that you’ve got a framework to work from, measure your progress, motivate you, and make sure that you stay true to your values.

If you’re ready to take your blog from a side hustle to a business, then following the above steps will ensure that you’re prepared to do so. 

Just remember to stay true to why you started your blog in the first place, as well as your values and blog ethos. Best of luck!

Related Articles

Latest Posts

• Journey by Mediavine Review
• Mediavine vs. Raptive
• March 2024 Niche Site Report
• How to Configure Your Mediavine Ad Settings to Optimize RPM
• Why Was My Blog Rejected by Mediavine?

How To Craft Your Blog Business Plan (Template Included!)

If you’re just starting out, chances are that you would want to create a blog business plan for your business.

If you want to create a successful blog + biz, you need a plan. You can’t just launch a website  (although that’s important) and hope that it would work out.

Yes – your blog business plan is your blog’s BLUEPRINT.

But first, if you have not started your blog yet, here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to start a blog .

You’re back? Great! I will share with you the exact blog business plan template I used… when I first started this blog.

Sounds good?

A blog business plan is great because you get real clear on the direction, goals and vision of your business, leaving no stone unturned. When you organize your thoughts and plans into one central place, it increases the chances of you starting a successful blog .

Clarity = better business!

Without further ado, here are the components of my blog business plan:

You should come up with a brand name. This is the same as your blog name. Don’t need to go over the top – keep it simple. Here’s a tutorial on how to pick a blog name , if you need help.

• Vision & mission of your brand

What’s the vision you have for your blog + business? Why are you doing what you are doing?

• Your brand style

Your branding has to look cohesive. Create a cohesive and attractive brand style. Decide on your brand colors, brand fonts and other aesthetic aspects of your brand. This will be incorporated uniformly across your website, social media platforms, and other collaterals.

• Brand vibes/ values

This is threading into the more intangible part of your brand: What vibe/ values do you want people to associate your brand with?

For instance, for me, its no-nonsense, smart, action-oriented, etc.

2. NICHE & TARGET AUDIENCE

• Target audience

Who are you targeting (specifically) with your website? Why? For more info, there’s a tutorial about defining your target audience on this blog as well.

• Competitors (VERY IMPORTANT)

Who are your competitors? Go scope out the situation. I always tell my 1:1 private clients: You don’t open an offline ice-cream store without checking out the other ice-cream stores down the street, do you?

The same applies to your online biz. One does not simply start a blog without knowing who else is in business.

• Points of difference

This is something I always like to do with all my businesses. How are you different from your competitors?

This could be your experience, your personality, certain things you cover, your brand positioning, better design, better service etc. There’s an article about how to make your brand stand out that could be helpful for you.

• Infrastructure

What host will you be on? What domain name provider will you use? Check out this tutorial on how to start a blog for more information about this.

I highly recommend that you use SiteGround as your host – their support is THE BEST, and my website runs perfectly with them. I have lost count of the number of times that SiteGround has saved me from losing sleep because something on my website messed up.

You also need a website theme – I recommend Divi (very customizable, great for beginners) or Genesis (for the more tech savvy ones).

The best option is my done-for-you website kit made with Divi where you can get an amazing website up by this week… all for a fraction of Divi’s website! Check out  Your Stunning Website 🙂

• Content Planning

What topics will you blog about? Having some idea of what your blog content will consist of. This will save you valuable time later. Make sure it is something that your target audience (that you’ve decided earlier) would want.

Also, how often will you post?

4. EMAIL LIST BUILDING

For my long-term readers you would know that I’m big on email marketing.

If you are new and don’t really know why you need an email list ASAP, check out this post:  Why Building an Email List is a MUST for Your Blog & Business

I highly recommend Convertkit . I love Convertkit so much because it’s just so easy to use, while giving me a ton of functions that my business needs at an affordable price. Click here to check out Convertkit  and get your email list started! Feel free to email me if you’ve any questions about using it.

With that out of the way, some things you need to think about:

• What will you be sending to your subscribers?

For more ideas, you can check out my post about newsletter content ideas  to send and engage your subscribers.

• How often will you send an email out to your subscribers?

Best to get this out of the way and decide once and for all. Once a week is a safe decision.

5. MARKETING: SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is a huge part of marketing your blog + business for most entrepreneurs.

• Facebook fan page strategy

Chances are you will want to create a Facebook business page. You need a plan for that! Some things you’ll have to decide and plan for include: What will you post on the page (make sure it is interesting to your target audience)? How often will you post on your Facebook page?

• Facebook group

Many people decide to create a Facebook group. You can check out mine here .

You don’t need to have a Facebook group. Feel free to skip this section (or any other section in the social media section, actually). Not every business has to be on every single social media platform.

So… do the same for every other social media platform you want to be on:

What’s your Pinterest strategy , if any?

What’s your Instagram strategy, if any?

What’s your Twitter strategy, if any?

Rinse and repeat for any other social media platform that you intend to use to market your online business . REMEMBER, only write a business plan out for social media platforms that you intend to use. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time. You don’t need to be everywhere.

6. MARKETING: OTHER STRATEGIES

Here, you plan for any other ways that you intend to market your business.

For instance, you could choose to collaborate with other businesses, or do networking events offline, etc. Whatever it is, be sure to include it in your blog business plan.

How will you be marketing your business via these channels? When will you start? Who will you be working with? Etc. [Tweet “Great post on how to craft your blog business plan, template included!”]

7. MONETIZATION

No money, no business. Simple as that. You can’t run a charity, trust me!

• Financial goals

What’s your income goal that you aim to reach for this blog + business? Make sure that it’s a specific income goal, and have a timeframe for it too.

• How do you intend to monetize?

What are some monetization channels that you intend to use for your blog? For extra help, you may find my post about having an online business model as well as my post about different online business ideas (where I explore different monetization methods) helpful.

Relevant posts:

• Why I Switched To Teachable To Host And Sell My Online Courses
• The Ultimate Guide: How to Become a Successful Infopreneur Online
• How to Create an Online Course in 72 Hours (With Guided Instructions!)
• How to Sell Online Courses 101
• 10 Highly Effective Tips To Get More Clients Online (From My Personal Experience!)

For me, I do 1:1 coaching (check out how you can work with me here – that’s hands-down the best way you can get success for your blog + biz, as you get personal attention and guidance from a coach that has been there before), courses (I provide step-by-step guidance and give my best tips in my quality courses), and affiliate marketing by recommending helpful blogging tools and resources that you can view  here .

(Update 2021: I no longer do 1:1 coaching. You can check out my programs instead!)

What about you? 🙂

8. ACTION PLAN

Break down what you have to do for your business week by week. I recommend that you have an action plan down for the next 3 months or so.

Having a deadline for certain activities will work wonders for your blog + biz. What will you do each week of your business?

No action, no results! 🙂

That’s all, folks!

I hope that you have found this helpful.

New pin design?

God bless, Raelyn

P.S. Want comprehensive guidance on how you can attract an online audience and get more traffic?

That’s exactly where my signature course, List Building Incubator will help. It’s my step-by-step system to grow & monetize your email list. Check it out here .

A tiny request: If you liked this post, please share this?

I know most people don’t share because they feel that us bloggers don’t need their “tiny” social share. But here’s the truth…

I built this blog piece by piece, one small share at a time, and will continue to do so. So thank you so much for your support, my reader.

A share from you would seriously help a lot with the growth of this blog.

Some great suggestions: –  Pin it!  (I even made a pretty pin for ya!) –  Share it to your favorite blog + biz Facebook group –  Tweet it!

It won’t take more than 10 seconds of your time. The share buttons are right here. 🙂

Thank you so much!

If you enjoyed this post, get updates from me. (it’s FREE)

You’re awesome for staying till the end.  Signup for my newsletter below.

I send email updates about new posts, and tips and tricks to build & monetize your online business.

Similar Posts

4 METRICS: How to Build a Profitable Email List With Affiliate Marketing

Hi friends, today we will learn all about how you can build an email list that will help you to get more affiliate income, AKA affiliate marketing. Over the years, I have made over five figures promoting other people’s products, basically (doing) affiliate marketing. Today, I will share with you some of my favorite strategies…

The 7 Types Of Online Sales Funnels That Work Really Well In 2019

This is part 2 of 3 of the Sales Funnels series.1. What is a Sales Funnel And How Does it Work?2. The 7 Types Of Online Sales Funnels That Work Really Well In 20193. How to Build an Automated Webinar Sales Funnel For Your Online Business In the previous post, I talked about what a sales…

A Personal Post + Biz Update: Setting Goals For May 2017

37 Sites Like Canva | Check Out These Great Canva Alternatives!

I’m not the most artistic person, but I respect and enjoy good design. I’ve had some requests from some of you to introduce y’all to other amazing alternatives that work like Canva. So, here are some sites like Canva for you to check out – i.e. amazing tools that will help you in your graphic…

Boring Brand? Here’s 9 Tips to Make Your Brand Stand Out from the Noise

Get More Subscribers: 6 Hotspots To Place Your Email Opt-in Boxes

• Start free trial

START YOUR BUSINESS WITH SHOPIFY

Whatever type of business you start, Shopify has the tools to help you sell, ship, and grow.

How To Start a Blog and Grow Your Audience in 2024

This step-by-step guide will take you through starting and growing a blog into a source of traffic and income. While it's meant for those who haven’t started a business yet, it’s also relevant for existing businesses that want to up their blogging game.

Businesses of all kinds start blogging as a way to build up a long-term audience. But the reverse is also happening, with more and more bloggers starting businesses as an extension of their blog. And it makes sense.

One of the biggest challenges new businesses face is building an audience for their products. New bloggers, on the other hand, often work backward: building an audience first by consistently putting out good content, then exploring ways to monetize their traffic.

Starting a blog is easy if you only want to have a side hustle . But if you’re thinking about creative ways to make money as a blogger, you’ll need to be strategic to set your blog up for success.

This step-by-step guide will take you through how to start and grow a blog into a source of traffic and income. While it's meant for those who haven’t started a business yet, it’s also relevant for existing businesses that want to up their blogging game.

What is a blog?

A blog is a website consisting of content, usually focused on a specific topic, that is regularly updated. Unlike news outlets and other publications, blogs tend to take on a personal tone, which helps as a tool for organizations (blog owners) to connect more deeply with their audiences.

People (and organizations) start blogs for all kinds of reasons, including:

• To share opinions, passions, or glimpses into their lives
• To teach others what they know
• To build an email list
• To develop their personal brand as an expert
• To make money online
• A combination of any or all of the above

For these reasons, blogging can be incredibly fulfilling—especially when complete strangers start consuming your content—but it’s also a commitment.

Whether you publish daily, weekly, or monthly, it’s important to be as consistent as possible, not just in how often you publish but also in the type of content you publish.

It’s very rare for bloggers to see results from their business or personal blog right away, so to stay motivated in the early stages, you’ll need to keep your eyes on the prize.

How to start a blog

• Find a way for your blog to make money
• Pick a niche for your blog
• Choose a blogging platform and template
• Choose a blog and domain name
• Plan your publishing strategy
• Get people to read your blog consistently

The hardest part about blogging is finding the time and ideas you’ll need to do it consistently. Getting started, however, is fairly straightforward.

If you’re wondering why we’re starting our guide for how to start a blog with the topic of monetization, it’s because you need to think more like an entrepreneur than just a blogger in order to make this a profitable venture.

1. Find a way for your blog to make money

This might sound counterintuitive, but if you’re looking to make money blogging, you should start with the money part first and the content part second. A solid monetization strategy comes before your first blog post because it determines what types of content you publish and how you grow long term. So to start, you want to think of your new blog as a business, rather than a creative outlet.

There are many ways to monetize your own blog, depending on the kind of blog you decide to start. For example, pairing a small business idea with a blog creates a sustainable way to grow for little cost other than time and energy.

Many people think using something like Google AdSense is the only way to start making money blogging. But while ads can help generate income, they require large amounts of traffic before they become economically viable. Thankfully, there are tons of other ways to start a blog and monetize it quickly, without the need to have a massive audience.

Here are six ways to monetize:

1. Selling a book

A great example of someone who has done this is James Clear. After writing a self-development blog, James wrote the book Atomic Habits to monetize his blog and capitalize on the knowledge he’d gained over years of writing posts.

This book, sold in digital and physical formats, not only made his blog economically viable: it also landed him on the New York Times bestsellers list.

2. Affiliate marketing

The affiliate marketing method allows you to gain a commission every time you sell a partner’s product. When done properly, affiliate commissions can add up and be a great way to make passive income.

Bases Loaded Softball , for example, writes gear reviews to attract readers, then promotes a product from Amazon in every new blog post. If a reader buys the product after clicking the link, the blog earns money.

3. Digital products

Digital products such as online courses are a natural way for bloggers to monetize. Successful bloggers are expert content creators, and courses capitalize on knowledge you already have. Just check out CopyHackers.com for inspiration from a blog that already made the jump.

4. Physical products

Depending on the topic and content of your blog, you can begin selling physical products that align with your brand and message. One example of this is Glossier , a makeup brand that grew out of Emily Weiss’s fashion blog, Into The Gloss.

5. Services

If you’re an aspiring blogger, chances are you’re an expert in a given area and are great with words. Services like consulting, coaching, and speaking engagements are great ways to monetize a blog.

6. Subscriptions

Patreon isn’t only for YouTubers. When people find value in the information you provide, they may be willing to pay a monthly fee to access exclusive blog content, making subscriptions a great way to monetize a blog.

The truth is, there are better and faster ways to make money with your blog that don’t require a massive volume of pageviews every day. That’s doubly true if you can build a loyal audience, not just a large one.

Of course, more than making money, your most important consideration will be who your audience is and how you’re going to serve them.

2. Pick a niche for your blog: What’s your “thing” going to be?

There’s no shortage of content on the web. It may seem hard to stand out, but there are two ways you can compete: by finding a niche to focus on and by creating content that has something about it that readers can’t easily find elsewhere.

It’s important to choose a niche that is an inch wide but a mile deep. This will ensure you can consistently create content without running out of ideas, and influence your blog name (which we’ll cover later).

You’ll also need to ensure that your chosen niche attracts an audience that aligns with your blog monetization strategy. What products or services would this audience be interested in buying?

You can do this in several ways:

• Focus your new blog on a specific location (e.g., New York)
• Focus your blog theme on a specific segment within a larger category (e.g., not just recipes, but vegan recipes)
• Deliver your blog posts in a different style or voice (e.g., humor)
• Compete with quality (e.g., in-depth posts on a topic that no one else is willing to do)

BlogTO , for example, covers a wide range of lifestyle topics but focuses specifically on the diverse city of Toronto.

The niche you choose will determine not only whether you can sustainably serve your audience with a steady flow of content, but also how you achieve monetization.

Ask yourself: What products or services would your blog audience want to buy? Whether you plan to monetize with display ads or the other strategies we’ll mention later, it’s a critical question to ask when choosing a niche for your blog.

You don’t want to skip this last step. A competitive analysis can help build your brand and create a unique voice in the space. The key to a successful blog is looking for a gap in perspectives and filling it.

3. Choose a blogging platform and template

Before you write your first blog post, you’ll need to set up your blog hosting and content management system. This is where many would-be bloggers get stuck if they’re not exactly sure which platform they should invest their time and money in.

The choice usually boils down either to a self-hosted or hosted blogging platform:

Self-hosted

These platforms generally offer more customization options, but you’ll need to host the site yourself by paying a hosting company a separate monthly fee. Apart from this cost, a web hosting plan requires some initial setup. WordPress is the go-to open source platform if you’re considering the self-hosted route.

A hosted site will allow you to set up your own blog faster. Shopify, for example, includes hosting in all its plans. However, unlike Shopify, some hosted sites, like Blogger or Wix, will limit customization options.

When choosing a platform, you will want to pick one that:

• Is easy to use
• Doesn’t require coding or HTML skills
• Will be able to grow with you

During your blogging journey there will come a time when you may want to change the look and functionality of your site as your brand matures, your traffic grows, and you have more posts to organize.

You’ll also want to ensure that your blogging platform offers a healthy ecosystem of plug-ins and apps—they can make a world of difference in optimizing your site’s performance, running site backups, marketing your new blog, and simplifying tasks.

4. Choose a blog and domain name

Companies like Bluehost will give you a free domain name if you sign up for a hosting plan. Bluehost also offers a 30-day money back guarantee if you’re unhappy with the service.

When choosing a domain name , think about what you’re going to call your website. Unless you’re trying to build a personal blog or a portfolio site, I would recommend against using your own name as your custom domain. You can still be the face of the blog, even if your personal name isn’t in the URL, and it’s a lot easier to build a sticky brand when you come up with a creative name that reflects your message.

Take a look at the Black Girls RUN! blog by Ashley Hicks-Rocha and Toni Carey. The blog, though a collection of Ashley and Toni’s personal experiences as Black female runners, falls under their brand name, Black Girls RUN!

When choosing a domain name, aim to make it:

• Easy to spell

Choosing a name for your blog can be tedious, but a good brand name makes a memorable impression on readers and allows them to know what to expect from your company.

Building a blog on Shopify

Shopify is a hosted platform that includes both an ecommerce website builder and a blogging platform, with add-ons such as hundreds of plug-ins and apps to help you grow and sell physical/digital products or services right away. You can start your free trial today.

Once that’s settled, you’ll need to pick a blog theme.

A “theme” is just a template for the blog design, layout, and features of your website. There are plenty of great Shopify themes available for free that you can set up with one click, whatever platform you choose. You can pick a theme in the Online Store tab in your Shopify dashboard, under Themes .

But if you’re not happy with those options, consider paying the one-time fee for a premium theme, as it will have a big impact on the overall user experience.

The design of your site can also affect your search engine optimization (SEO) and the engagement metrics on your blog content. Readers make a snap judgment on a site’s trustworthiness based on how it looks and feels.

Take The House That Lars Built . One glance at this interior-design-and-crafts blog and you know it’s going to be a fun experience.

From the quick load time to the soft colors and playful illustrations, The House That Lars Built is bound to appeal to readers who are into arts and crafts and design.

Most of us can also remember landing on a poorly designed website and bouncing when it became hard to find what we were looking for. Take some time when choosing a new theme, as it can make a world of difference in how your blog performs.

Some Shopify apps that can extend the functionality of your blog include:

• Blog Studio , to spruce up your blog posts with a drag-and-drop article builder
• Yoast SEO for Shopify , to improve your website’s SEO

Building on WordPress

A self-hosted WordPress blog is a great place to start for new bloggers. Note that WordPress is only free if you’re using WordPress.com: if you use WordPress.org, you’ll need to pay for hosting and your own domain name (all which you can do with Shopify).

If you sign up for a Bluehost account, you can automatically install WordPress from your hosting dashboard. If you want to start a free WordPress blog, you can pick a theme on WordPress.com. There are many free WordPress themes you can choose from, including ones for blogging.

If you don’t want to pick a theme right away, click “Skip for now” and the top of the page. You’ll be redirected to a new page where you can start building your blog.

Click Name your site, then fill your information and click Save settings.

Next you’ll want to choose your WordPress theme, either a free theme or a paid one if you have some money to spend. Find a free theme in your WordPress dashboard under the Appearance tab in your sidebar, seen in the screenshot below.

Or find great WordPress themes for blogging on marketplaces like ThemeIsle or ThemeForest. To install an external theme from a site like ThemeIsle, go to Appearance , then Themes , and click > Install theme. There are also many WordPress blog plug-ins you can install to help market your blog pages. 

Want to turn your WordPress blog into a mini ecommerce site? The Shopify Buy Button lets you sell on any WordPress site or blog—all you need is a product to sell and you’re ready to launch in just a few clicks.

5. Plan your publishing strategy

Every blogger needs to keep a healthy supply of ideas , and it helps if you plan ahead to ensure you never run out. Create a content calendar to help you keep track of your ideas (and keep yourself on track, too). Your content calendar should include:

• What content you’re creating
• What audiences you’re targeting
• Which distribution channels you will be releasing on and on what date

You can use a simple spreadsheet to plan out your content calendar. However there are a lot more effective tools available. Trello, Airtable, or Asana are good options because they make organizing content more intuitive.

Thinking about your content mix is also important to get a sense of the scope of your blog and what categories/tags you might use to organize it all as you add more great content in the future.

Some types of blog posts to include are:

Evergreen content

Evergreen content gets its moniker because it's relevant without much modification over time. It often takes the form of educational, informative articles about topics that are not news-cycle dependent.

Topical content

Topical blog posts capitalize on currently trending events or topics. Topical content is that it can fuel quick growth on social channels when it's addressing topics with a lot of public interest in a distinctive way. Use topical content strategically, but don’t lean on it for steady traffic as it can be more unpredictable and go stale more quickly.

Curated content

Curated content, or content that was generated elsewhere but is linked to and contextualized by you, can be a great way to augment your original content strategy. The web is a big place, and readers appreciate thoughtfully curated content that aligns with their values and interests.

Feature pieces

Interviews can be a great way to build rich content in an editorial style. Feature stories tell a story and take readers into the minds and lives of extraordinary people. Interviews with notable people can be a great way to build authority as you gain some credibility by association.

Visual content

Visual content is something that all bloggers should have in their strategy. Search engines reward blog posts that incorporate videos, original images, and graphics.

Interactive content

Quizzes can be a great way to increase engagement like time on page and unearth deeper insights about your audience.

Try to plan out each blog post at least one month in advance, and publish on a consistent schedule so your audience has an idea of how often to expect new blog posts. You can always tweak the calendar if a feature story pops up and needs to get published fast.

Before writing blog posts, start with an outline. While this is a step that some bloggers might opt to skip, writing an outline is an effective way to hit all the points you need to hit. It’ll help make sure you include any relevant keywords and liberate your mind from the destination so you can focus on the journey.

When you have finished writing your blog post, before hitting Publish, here are some simple things you should do:

Edit your work

While coming back with fresh eyes and using a tool like Grammarly can help to catch syntax and grammar errors, having a human editor to bounce ideas off of can help take your blog posts to the next level.

Organize your blog post with headings

Subheadings make your posts more scannable and approachable for readers.

Workshop headlines and social sharing images

A headline and image can make or break your blog post distribution. While we wouldn’t advise creating clickbait, successful blog headlines and images that stand out on social feeds and inspire curiosity are vital to getting people to read your work.

Keep in mind that you won’t grow your audience overnight. You’ll have some hits and some misses, but you need to keep going to keep growing.

6. Get people to read your blog consistently

We usually talk about growing an audience after publishing. But if you want to start a blog and build momentum quickly, you need to consider your strategy before you launch.

Many bloggers struggle with distribution for two main reasons:

• They don’t have a concrete, repeatable distribution strategy within their publishing process.
• Publishing a new blog is already a nerve-wracking experience, and amplifying your reach makes it that much scarier.

The latter is something you eventually get over, but the former requires some initial thought and investment of time before you launch.

So let’s walk through some of the ways you can plan for growth and get the most out of every blog post you create.

Start collecting emails as soon as possible

Regardless of what platform you’re blogging on, you should be focused on getting email subscribers. Every new subscriber is a sign that you’re doing something right, and is a potential repeat reader you can easily reach.

Even if you switch platforms down the road or decide to start something new, your email list remains with you. But it’s not enough to just have a subscriber list. You need to capture these emails at every turn and you do that with contact forms.

A good habit to get into is embedding contact forms directly into your content or homepage with a call to action to subscribe. You can even embed one in an exit pop-up to convert abandoning visitors into subscribers.

Many email marketing solutions allow you to create and use these forms easily. You can even generate a link that directs to a separate contact page you can link out to in your blog posts, social media, and email signature.

Remember that people aren’t going to subscribe to your blog if you don’t ask and if you don’t make it easy for them. Every time you hit the Publish button, you should email it to your list—a process you can automate down the road once you get into the swing of things.

Brainstorm opportunities to go after search engine traffic

Using keyword research , you can get an idea of how much search volume there is for particular search queries in your blog niche. The higher the number, the more demand there is for a topic and the more traffic you can potentially generate long term.

The easiest way to do this is using Ubersuggest and entering search terms from your audience’s perspective to try to unearth interesting blog post ideas. Queries that start with “how to” or “best” are a good place to start.

Even if you don’t land a spot on the first page of the search engine results, you’ll have a content idea with proven demand. But if you want to aim high, you can learn more about SEO . And if you’re on Shopify, consider the free SEO checker app for optimizing each blog post.

Set up your social media strategy

While it might seem like a smart move to market your new blog on every social media platform, this can be difficult to manage and isn’t always effective. Instead, focus on the channels where your audience spends the most time. Do they join specific communities or forums? Are they on TikTok versus Facebook? Depending on your niche and your resources, your choice of channels will vary.

For example, Oh Happy Day , an online party-goods shop, taps into its growing list of more than 1.7 million followers every time it publishes a new blog post.

Don’t neglect your personal networks either—your friends and family make a great early audience as you start a blog.

Reduce, reuse, and resurface your content

You can’t put up an extensive and unique blog post every day. A good blogger knows how to reuse and repurpose their content to get the most mileage out of it. Here are some blog post ideas to keep in mind:

• Post a roundup of past blog posts with a common theme (e.g., “Our Best Posts of [YEAR]”).
• Recreate blog posts as other types of content, such as infographics or quizzes.
• Occasionally update and republish old content after a good amount of time has passed to boost ranking in Google Search. This works great with seasonal content (e.g., “10 Lazy Halloween Costume Ideas”).
• Consider accepting guest blog posts once you’ve started to amass a following. Guest authors will likely share this content with their own audiences, too.
• Add links to related content within and at the end of your posts. (If you’re on Shopify, install the free Related Blog Posts app. )
• Become a podcast guest and discuss a few blog topics you already wrote about.

When time is money and you’re in the business of blogging, you need to constantly squeeze more value out of your efforts.

Understand analytics to understand your audience

The best opportunities are hidden in your data, waiting to be discovered.

Whether you’re using a WordPress blog or the Shopify platform, take the time to set up Google Analytics on your site (it’s free). With a Google Analytics account, you can get deeper insights on your new blog, like the average amount of time people spent reading your posts, the quality of readers coming from different sources, and even the number of readers in real time.

Data can also be used as leverage for bloggers. The ability to prove how much traffic you bring in is a huge asset that makes others more likely to want to work with you or gain access to your audience.

How much money do bloggers make?

Full-time bloggers can earn a healthy living writing online content. In fact, according to finance blog Millennial Money , people who start a blog can earn up to $50,000 even in their first year, while bloggers who have built traffic and subscribers earn more than $100,000 the following year.

Get started now and make money blogging

Whether it’s your first time or you’ve done this a million times, it’s your audience that ultimately makes for a successful blog. If you want to grow your traffic and make money blogging, focus on growing this audience as you add new content on a regular basis.

You can learn more about how to make money blogging by checking out the following resources and success stories:

• Blog to Business: How Black Girls RUN! Began a Community-Powered Movement
• An interview with the co-founder of Wait But Why about monetizing content
• Free stock photography sites
• How to Make Money On YouTube (Without a Million Subscribers)

Blogging isn’t just fun and fulfilling—it’s also one of many paths to entrepreneurship . If you think like an entrepreneur and aim high when it comes to growth, you can start a blog with a valuable audience that powers your business for a long time to come.

Illustration by Alice Mollon

How to start a blog FAQ

How do bloggers get paid.

• Selling digital products
• Selling physical products
• Publishing an ebook 
• Affiliate marketing
• Subscriptions
• Online courses

How do I start blogging with no money?

• Choose a blog name.
• Register your blog through a hosting provider.
• Choose a free Shopify or WordPress theme.
• Start writing and publish your first post.
• Promote your blog.
• Monetize your blog.

What are the best blogging tips?

• Start collecting emails as soon as possible.
• Brainstorm opportunities to get more organic traffic.
• Set up a social media strategy.
• Repurpose your content.
• Understand your analytics and audience. 

How much does it cost to start a blog?

Depending on the blog you want to create and your hosting plan, your costs could be between $65 and $240 in the first year. 

Keep up with the latest from Shopify

Get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.

By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.

popular posts

The point of sale for every sale.

Subscribe to our blog and get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.

Unsubscribe anytime. By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.

Learn on the go. Try Shopify for free, and explore all the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business.

Try Shopify for free, no credit card required.

• English (EN)
• Português (BR)
• Deutsch (DE)
• Español (ES)
• Italiano (IT)
• Nederlands (NL)
• Français (FR)

How to Start a Blog That Makes You Money

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Anyone can start a blog that makes money. Seriously.

Some of you can even generate enough money from your blog to quit your job.

Don’t believe me?

My blog gets over 2,436,100 visitors annually and generates more than one million dollars in revenue.

Above is an example of a 30-day earning period from a previous year. I earned over $381,000 in one month that year!

While you’re probably not going to reach that amount right now, I can teach you how to start a blog that makes over $3,000 per month.

I started from scratch just like you. But after more than a decade of trial and error, I’ve finally figured out the secret to running a successful blog that makes money.

You can avoid these mistakes and generate profits much quicker by following the blueprint outlined in this guide.

Your 2-Minute Quick Start Cheat Sheet

Looking for a barebones, quick start guide to get started as fast as possible? In this section, we won’t cover everything, only the essential steps. Everything is covered in way more detail later, so jump down if you hit a snag.

Before you begin, it’s important to understand the principles behind starting a blog.

• Pick a big enough niche. Make sure to pick a niche that is bigger than “vegan Caribbean recipes” but smaller than “nutrition.”
• Don’t stick with one platform. I know I’ve told you that you need to use WordPress as your blogging platform, but it shouldn’t stop there. Why not also use Medium, Tumblr, or even LinkedIn?
• Control your destiny. Post in multiple places and always link back to your site so you can better control traffic to your site.
• Blogging is both about “you” and “I.” People want to read stories. They want to be involved in a conversation, and the easiest way to do this is to use the words “you” and “I” within your blog posts.
• Always ask questions. At the end of every blog post, always ask a question. If you don’t ask a question, people won’t know what to do next.
• You have to stand out. You have to go above and beyond. Sadly, there is no single answer as every industry is different, but typically, infographics, visuals, and branching off from everyone else in your space will help you stand out.
• Your content needs to be portable and easy to digest. For example, creating video-based content or audio-based content (podcasts) are simple ways to make your content portable.
• Content isn’t king unless it’s good. Writing mediocre content isn’t good enough. It won’t do well, and you will just be wasting time. So, don’t write content unless it is really, really, really good.
• You have to produce quality and quantity. To increase your odds of success, you need to be willing to produce amazing content in quantity.
• Your blog isn’t always the best place to blog. From industry blogs to large sites like Entrepreneur and Business Insider, consider placing your best content on places with more visibility and higher domain authority, especially in the beginning.
• Useful content beats viral content. Instead of focusing on creating viral content (when you have less than a 1% chance of producing it), focus on creating useful content. Useful content tends to be evergreen, which means it can generate steady traffic over time.
• It’s easier to build a personal blog than a corporate one. People connect with people more than they connect with corporate brands.
• A blog won’t work without a community. Blogging is about creating conversations. But without readers and community, there is no conversation.
• No man is an island. Make sure you respond to each and every comment. Not just on your blog, but even when people comment on your social profiles, make sure you respond back.
• People don’t read; they skim, so write your content with that in mind. From leveraging headings to even writing a conclusion at the end of each post, this will help your readers get value out of your content even when they don’t fully read it.
• It’s all about the headline. 8 out of 10 people will read your headline, but only 2 out of 10 will click through and read the rest. So focus on creating amazing headlines, or else you won’t get tons of traffic.
• Reveal your cards, all of them. When making a point and having something to back it up, make sure you do it early on in each blog post. It is a great way to hook your readers and get them to read the rest of your content.
• Consistency will make or break you. Don’t start a blog unless you are willing to be consistent. Not just for a few months or a year, but I am talking years (3 plus).
• Don’t ever rely on 1 traffic channel. You need to have an omnichannel approach in which you are leveraging all of the feasible channels out there that work for your niche.
• Don’t forget about Google. You should always write for humans and not search engines. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore Google. Be sure to include keyword research from Ubersuggest and blend them into your content.
• Understand not all content is meant to last forever. As your blog gets older, your responsibilities will grow. One of them is the willingness to kill some of your content. Not all of your content will be relevant a year or two from now.
• You can’t set it and forget it. As your content gets outdated, you’ll want to keep it fresh, or people will find that it’s useless and bounce away.
• People won’t come back to your blog unless you ask them to. No matter how good your content is, people won’t just come back unless you ask them to. The easiest way to do this is through emails and push notifications.
• Don’t wait too long to monetize. If you go years before trying to monetize, people will assume everything on your blog is free.
• Have multiple monetization strategies. Not only is it a safer strategy to have multiple monetization methods, but you’ll also make more money.
• Be willing to pay the price. If you want to succeed, you have to be willing to put in the time and energy. And if you can’t, then you have to be willing to put in money. If you don’t. then you won’t do well, no matter how brilliant of a writer or marketer you are.

Now that you know the jist for starting a blog, it’s time to break it down into actionable steps so you can be on your way to making money.

Here are the next steps to take:

• Unleash Ideas Within You
• Choose a Name For Your New Blog
• Get Web Hosting From Bluehost
• Get Familiar With WordPress
• Install a WordPress Theme
• Customize Your Blog
• Brainstorm Blog Topics
• Write Your First Masterpiece
• Create an Editorial Calendar
• Monetize Your Blog

Step 1. Unleash Ideas Within You

Stop. Don’t get overwhelmed about this whole thing. Just breathe. You got this. You don’t need to reinvent blogging to be successful.

You just need to be specific about what you want to talk about.

The best way to do that is to get inspired by someone you admire in the same niche or industry. Do they have a blog?

If yes, read it. Then begin to let your ideas form. If you have no one specific, find someone you admire. Then let the ideas form.

Take your unique experiences and speak about them in your voice. Use your vocabulary and personality, and don’t think about it too much. Let it flow.

Your tribe will follow if you stay consistent.

When it comes to choosing your blog’s niche, there are two key questions to ask yourself.

1. Do I Enjoy Learning About This Topic?

If you don’t love the topic, it’ll show in your writing. You shouldn’t even start a blog if you don’t love what you’re blogging about.

Whatever topic you pick, you need to love it and be naturally curious about it.

If not, you’ll run out of ideas quickly . You’ll lose any momentum you built up at the start.

Most importantly, you won’t be able to consistently create content that will build your audience.

If you are still lost, think about the items about which people come to you for advice. Do friends or family ask you for fitness tips? Recipe ideas? Career advice? With just a little thought, you’ll quickly determine where your areas of expertise exist.

2. Are Others Interested in The Same Things?

You might feel like the only 20-something who’s obsessed with knitting. But there are others out there.

Do a quick Google search, and you’ll find over 1 million results aimed at people just like you.

You might be wondering if your idea is too quirky. Or, is it too broad? My advice is to get as focused as you can on something you’re genuinely interested in.

If you want to start a travel blog, for example, stay away from generic words like “travel.” Choose a more specific topic, like “backpacking.”

Step 2. Choose a Name For Your New Blog

Now for the fun part: naming your blog.

This is your brand. It’s how people will remember you.

But don’t overthink it. The magic of a brand gets built over time. Even if you feel stuck, keep moving forward.

The best way to land on the perfect name is to start with brainstorming. In the last step, we talked about unleashing all of your ideas and nailing down your niche.

Now, it’s time to take those ideas and turn them into a name.

So, open up a new spreadsheet or grab a pen and paper. Then spend about ten minutes writing down every word that comes to mind.

From there, start combining words and phrases until something stands out to you. Aim for 5 – 10 potential names and write them down.

Now, it’s time to see if those names are available as domains. A domain is where your blog lives on the internet.

As an example, neilpatel.com is my domain.

Neil Patel is who I am, but it’s also my brand and what you type into the address bar to find me. But that also means you can’t use the domain because I already own it.

You could do what I did and use your personal name as your domain.

But in most cases, I recommend choosing a different name for your blog. That’ll make it a lot easier to sell the site if you ever want to.

Once you have your list, you can go to Bluehost’s domain name checker to see if any of them are available.

If none of your preferred site names are available as a .com, head back to the beginning and keep brainstorming .

Here are some extra tips for choosing an excellent domain name:

• Always choose a .com when possible
• Avoid using numbers, hyphens, and homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)
• Keep it as short and concise as possible
• Should be easy to say and understand
• Avoid complicated and commonly misspelled words

When you land on an available domain name, don’t buy it yet. I’ll show you how to get it for free in the next step.

Step 3. Get Web Hosting with Bluehost

Now it’s time to get your blog live.

It may seem complicated at first, but don’t worry. It’s much easier than it sounds.

To get started, you need web hosting (where your blog lives) and a domain name (your blog’s address). The good news is that Bluehost , my favorite web hosting company, offers both as a package deal.

It’s also an incredibly affordable option to host your new blog.

To get started, head over to Bluehost and scroll down until you see a breakdown of the hosting plans.

You’ll see four different options—I recommend the Choice Plus plan because it’s the cheapest plan that includes a free domain name and domain privacy for the first year. It also includes a free SSL certificate, a free CDN, 40 GB of storage, daily backups, and malware scanning. I like this plan because it gives you everything you need and offers you plenty of room to grow.

If you don’t want to pay that much, you can choose the Basic plan to save a few dollars per month. However, it doesn’t come with a free domain name so you’ll need to purchase one. If you buy one through Bluehost, a .com will cost $12.99 for the first year.

If you want the best deal in the long-term, you’ll need to pay for three years in advance. You’ll pay slightly more per month for the first year, but you’ll get a better deal on years two and three, so it pays off in the long-run.

With that said, the 12-month plan is a good deal, too, if you don’t want to commit to three years up front.

Once you’ve chosen a plan and contract length, click the blue “Select” button under the appropriate plan to start the sign up process.

The first step is adding the domain name you came up with in step two. If you haven’t decided on a name yet, that’s okay. You can click “I’ll create my domain later”.

Next, you’ll enter all your basic account details, including your name, country, address, and email. Below that, you’ll see all of your package details. Double check that everything here is correct.

From there, you’ll see a list of add-ons. You get a free SSL with your plan—the paid SSL add-on is an upgrade from the free version, which you don’t need at this stage. You can get similar SiteLock Essentials features for free with a WordPress Plugin, Yoast’s free SEO version is more than enough, and you can purchase Google Workspace directly from Google if you decide you want it later.

So, unless you’re creating an ecommerce store alongside your blog, you don’t need any of them.

All that’s left of the checkout process is entering your payment information and clicking “Submit”. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be taken to a guided setup wizard that walks you through every step. The only thing you need to make sure you do is choose WordPress when asked how you want to build your site.

After that, you’re done with the hardest part! Congrats on your new blog!

Step 4. Get Familiar with WordPress, Your Blogging Software

You can’t start a blog without blogging software. I run all of my blogs on WordPress because it’s user-friendly, free, and powerful.

If you decide to make a blog that’s not on WordPress, you’ll find that it is much more costly. WordPress offers a ton of free plugins that allow you to modify your blog in any way, shape, or form.

What’s nice is that Bluehost takes care of WordPress installation for you during setup. You don’t have to do anything to get it ready to use.

Once you’ve finished the guided setup process and logged into your Bluehost dashboard, Click My Sites on the left side, hover over the website you created, and click “Manage Site”. From there, you’ll see a button to Login to WordPress.

This will take you to your WordPress backend where you’ll be able to add pages, make new blog posts, edit the look and feel of your site, install plugins, and more.

Spend a few minutes clicking around to get comfortable with where everything’s at.

Step 5. Design Your Blog With a WordPress Theme

In the blogging world, pre-built WordPress site designs are called themes .

Out of the box, your WordPress blog will look something like this:

That’s the simple foundation you start with. But you’re going to want to find something that fits with your name, brand, and the experience you want readers to have.

There are thousands of themes to choose from. But it can be easy to get trapped in “shiny object syndrome,” browsing through tons of pretty pictures and templates but not walking away with a theme that fits your needs.

You can swap out your theme any time, so choose something that’s good enough for now rather than stressing over the perfect option. Like your brand, your WordPress blog’s theme will probably evolve over time as you figure out what works and looks best in practice.

Let’s go through selecting a theme step by step.

First, you need to log into your WordPress admin. You can access this by going to [yourdomain].com/wp-admin.

Enter your user credentials to log in.

If you’re new to WordPress, the dashboard might look a little daunting at first, but you’ll be an expert with a little practice.

To install a new theme, hover over the “Appearance” menu in the sidebar and click “Themes.”

WordPress comes with a few themes ready to go, but we’re going to search for the flashier premium themes that will make your eyes twinkle.

Click the “Add New” button at the top to get access to thousands of WordPress themes.

Your tastes and mine may be different. Fortunately, WordPress has a “Feature Filter” that lets you search for something that will fit your style.

The three categories are “layout,” “features,” and “subject.” You can look for themes that closely hew to what your blog is going to be about or ones that have features you’re already sure your blog will need.

Here’s what your filter requests might look like.

After applying the filters, you’ll see amazing themes that would otherwise cost thousands of dollars in design fees.

If you click on the theme’s thumbnail, you can get an instant preview of what your blog will look like. Evaluate if it fits both your personal style and the topic that you’ll be covering.

Once you’re satisfied with the sneak peek, click the “Install” button.

Once the installation is complete, click the “Activate” button, and you’re all set.

If you can’t find a theme that you like, there are premium themes that you can purchase from sites like:

• Themeforest
• Elegant Themes
• StudioPress
• Thrive Themes

By now, your theme should be activated and ready to go. Let’s move on to customizing your theme.

Step 6. Customize and Optimize Your WordPress Blog

There are endless customization choices that you can make on a WordPress blog. We’ll stick with the essentials.

Themes are the foundation of your design and include the core functionalities. WordPress also has plugins that can add to or extend the functionality of your blog in impressive ways.

There are WordPress plugins for everything from adding e-commerce functionality or contact forms to your site to analyzing your content for SEO improvements (more on that in a bit) or boosting site security and performance.

The first step is to click the “Customize” button on your active theme.

Menu options in the sidebar will vary depending on the theme you choose. The main category to edit is “Site Identity.”

Here, you can add the name of your blog and a tagline if you wish. When you’re done, click the “Save and Publish” button.

Optimize for Search Engine Traffic

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a multi-billion dollar industry.

SEO is the process of optimizing your website to be found in search engines for particular keywords and phrases.

I attribute a good portion of my success to being easily discoverable for relevant search terms, which has helped me build my networks and net worth.

If you’re new to SEO, then this may seem daunting.

With that said, WordPress makes it insanely simple to optimize the technical aspects of your blog.

The majority of your SEO efforts will be focused on creating engaging content for real people . Whether that’s through text, videos , or images, your job as a blogger is to spark a relationship with your readers.

And, what better way is there than through relatable and informative conversation?

You can get started by downloading a plugin called Yoast SEO .

Hover over the plugins menu on the side and click “Add New.”

Search for “Yoast SEO” in the search bar, and it will be the first result that comes up.

Click the “Install Now” button. Then, hit the “Activate” button once the installation is complete.

You can access the plugin’s settings from the new SEO menu in the sidebar or by clicking the icon at the top.

From the dashboard, go to “Your Info” and set the foundations for your blog.

Make sure that your website name and tagline are correct. Then, identify yourself as a company or person.

Click the “Save Changes,” button and we’ll move on to the next step.

Next, go to the “Webmaster Tools” tab and click “Google Search Console.” Google Search Console is a webmaster tool that allows you to submit your site to their search index and optimize visibility.

Sign into your Google account, whether that’s your Gmail or Drive account.

Once you’ve logged in, click the “Alternate methods” tab and select “HTML tag.”

A new drop-down will appear with your search console meta code. Copy the alphanumeric string without the quotation marks.

Next, paste your meta code into the Google Search Console text box and click “Save Changes.”

Finally, click the “Verify” button.

As you tinker around in Webmaster Central, you’ll gain a wealth of data-driven insight, such as keyword phrases you rank for, errors on your blog, and the ability to give Google a nudge when you publish a new post.

Next, go to the “General” tab and start the installation wizard.

Yoast will take you through a series of 10 quick steps to optimize your WordPress blog.

The first step is a welcome screen that you can skip.

In the second step, select the environment that best suits your site. Most likely, you’ll choose the production environment, which means that it is a real website that you intend to drive traffic to.

Step 3 is the website type. Choose blog and click next.

The next step is to set yourself up as a company or person. We already set this up before, so you can skip this step.

In step 5, you can add any social profiles that are associated with your blog. Click “Next” when complete.

Step 6 is about post visibility. The default settings are fine to use. Set your “Posts” and “Pages” to visible and “Media” to hidden.

Next, you’ll have to decide whether you’ll have multiple authors or a solo blogger. If you choose to add another writer in the future, you can change these settings later.

If you wish to have the Yoast SEO plugin pull in data from Google’s search console, step 8 is the place to do it.

Click on the “Get Google Authorization Code” button.

A new pop-up will appear where you can allow Yoast to access your search console data. Click the “Allow” button to confirm access.

In step 9, you can verify your website name and choose a title separator.

The title separator is a symbol used to separate your blog post’s title and your website’s name in the meta title information . This is what Google searchers will see when finding your blog through a search query.

For instance, if you found this post on Google, you might have seen “How to Start a Blog – Neil Patel.”

The symbol is a matter of personal preference. Click “Next” when you’re ready to move on.

The final step is no step at all. It’s a congratulatory message confirming that you have successfully optimized your SEO settings for your budding WordPress blog.

XML Sitemaps

The last Yoast SEO setting worth configuring is an XML sitemap . An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs for your website.

It helps Google and other search engines crawl your site for new posts and pages. Fortunately, Yoast has a built-in feature that automatically updates your sitemap, so you can click it and forget it.

In the “Features” tab, set the “Advanced settings pages” to “Enabled” and save the changes.

A new group of menus will appear in the sidebar, under “SEO.” Select the “XML Sitemaps” menu.

Select the “User Sitemap” tab and toggle “Author/user sitemap” to enabled. Don’t forget to save your changes.

You can play around with these settings endlessly, but everything that we’ve set up to this point will get you started on the right track.

Set Up Permalinks

Permalinks are static hyperlinks that lead to a particular blog post or page. By default, WordPress automatically generates permalinks when you create a post, with the post ID number coming after your domain.

The permalink “/p=1213” isn’t appealing and it doesn’t help anyone understand what the page is about before viewing it.

The simple fix is to set a permalink structure.

In the left sidebar, mouse over “Settings” and choose “Permalinks.”

There are a few options to choose from. I use the “Post name” structure on my blog, which uses keywords from my title to create a unique permalink.

Save the settings after you’ve selected it. You’ll see this in action a bit later.

If you’re still with me, you’ve purchased your domain and web hosting, installed a theme, and optimized your website to be crawled and found by search engines.

Now, we get to the bread and butter of blogging . What are you going to write about in your blog?

Let’s find out.

Step 7. Brainstorm Blog Topics

On the technical side, your blog is all set up and ready to go. When it comes to topic generation , the world is your oyster.

The majority of your blog posts will come from personal experiences, passions, successes, failures, and new learnings.

People use questions as search queries, like:

• What should I write about?
• What to blog about?
• Should I start blogging?

So naturally, you should start off with some questions of your own. I use a series of questions and a systematic process to come up with my blog topic ideas.

No need to worry. It’s not complicated and it won’t take very much time.

By following this process, you should be able to come up with about 50 working topics within a half hour of distraction-free time.

Pull out a pen and paper or open up your favorite word processing tool.

The goal of this exercise is to get 10 answers for each question. If you can think of more, note them all.

It’s time to look through the lens of your readers with these 5 questions.

1. “What Excites, Intrigues, or Stirs Passion in My Readers?”

• As a golfer, I get excited by hitting my driver farther. I’m fascinated by mental performance. I’m passionate about healthy living.
• As a new stay-at-home mom, I get excited by budget-friendly ideas for the family. I’m intrigued by sleep training. I’m passionate about homeschooling.
• As an avid camper, I get excited about finding undervalued camping sites. I’m intrigued by survival tactics. I’m passionate about minimalist living.

2. “What Common Challenges Do My Readers Face?”

• Golfers might struggle with slicing the ball.
• Stay-at-home moms may find meal planning challenging.
• Campers might struggle with packing light.

3. “What Character Traits Do My Readers Possess?

• Serious golfers have emotional stability.
• Moms are patient and have a sense of humor.
• Campers are adventurous and resourceful.

4. “What Do My Readers Love About My Niche?”

• Golfers love the challenge of perfection.
• Stay-at-home moms love being a part of their child’s mental, physical, and emotional development.
• Campers love time away from the busy city life.

5. “What Do My Readers Hate About My Niche?”

• Golfers hate playing with partners who complain all day long.
• Stay-at-home moms hate being looked down on by others.
• Campers hate getting eaten alive.

You get the point. Now that you have about 50 answers, you can begin dissecting blog post ideas from each answer. The sky’s the limit.

Here are a few examples you can extract from one answer in your list:

• Cure Your Slice: The Foolproof Guide To Hit The Fairway Every Time
• 3 Reasons Why You’re Slicing The Ball And One Stupid Simple Fix
• Never Slice Again: 9 Drills To Play Like The Pros
• 7 Training Aids For Dead Straight Ball Flight
• How To Shoot Even Par With A Nasty Slice.

Try to come up with a catchy headline that will draw your readers in and then throw them a one-two punch in the rest of your content.

7 Blogging Tips That Will Make Your Blog Successful (Storytelling Techniques)

Step 8. Write Your First Masterpiece

WordPress uses an intuitive editor, similar to your favorite word processing tools. New blog entries can be created directly from your WordPress admin dashboard.

Click on “Posts” in the left sidebar.

This will populate a list of your blog entries in descending order. Since we’re working with a fresh install, you won’t see anything here.

To create a new entry, click the “Add New” button at the top or in the sidebar.

You’ll be brought to the editor, and you can begin blogging.

Click on the + in the right corner to see WordPress’s Gutenberg blocks, which allow you to add headings, media, quotes, and tons of other features to your blog.

First things first, add one of the titles that you developed in your brainstorming session in the title text box.

Once you save this post as a draft, WordPress will create a permalink based on the keywords used in your title.

You can start typing the body of your article in the large text area and write until you feel happy with your content.

You’ll want to add visual assets to your blog posts as well. Images help engage readers and can often illustrate concepts better than words.

To add new images, ensure that your text cursor is in the place where you want your image to appear. Click the blue + sign, then select the “Image” block.

Choose “upload” or select the image from your Media Library if it’s already uploaded to your site.

After your image has been uploaded, you can resize it, and add links using the icons at the top of the image.

Your image will automatically insert into your post.

After you’ve completed your article, you’ll need to make a few last-minute optimizations using the Yoast SEO plugin.

Yoast has post-specific settings that can be at the bottom of the main text area.

The four main settings are “SEO title,”“slug,” “meta description,” and “focus keyphrases.”

Completing these settings will generate a preview of what your post will look like when it is discovered in Google’s search engine results.

Create SEO titles that are attractive to click and meta descriptions that explain what your post is about.

The Yoast SEO plugin will provide real-time feedback, as you begin to optimize your title and description.

Aim for as many green lights as possible, but don’t stress if you’re unable to get a perfect score. If you can get 80% green lights, then you’re on the right track.

Before you publish your post, you can view what your blog post will look like by clicking the “preview” button at the top of the page.

Before you hit that publish button, you want to make sure that your entry looks and feels the way that you want it to.

Here’s a quick checklist to consider before you hit the publish button:

• Speak in a conversational tone.
• Be sure the content flows naturally.
• Use adequate white space for easier readability.
• Use headings to separate sections.
• Break up content with bullet points and lists.
• Check for typos and grammatical errors.

If everything checks out, you’re ready to publish your first blog post.

Scroll to the top of the page and click the publish button that’s just to the right of the preview button to have your post go live immediately.

And here’s what my final post looks like.

Congratulations. You’ve successfully set up a blog that looks great and is optimized for search engine traffic. Feels good, right?

Step 9. Create an Editorial Calendar

One of the fatal mistakes I see bloggers make is to blog only when they “feel like it.”

They forget that new fans want more content and fail to deliver.

Unforeseen circumstances will arise. You’ll let a new Netflix series take over the time that you could have spent blogging.

Life will continue to throw curveballs at you, whether you start blogging or not.

Consistency is undervalued and it needs to be something you prioritize.

I’ve written over a thousand articles and it’s not because I type 7,000 words per minute.

It’s because I follow an editorial calendar without compromise.

Schedules aren’t just for big publications like The New York Times and the Huffington Post. They’re for regular people like you and me.

Think about it like this.

If you have a doctor’s appointment on your calendar or even a lunch date with a friend, you’re going to honor it. Worst case scenario, you’ll reschedule for the next available timeslot.

Editorial calendars work in a similar fashion.

They make aggressive goals reachable in micro-steps. They keep you organized. They streamline your social media and email marketing efforts .

Also, you’ll be surprised at how an editorial calendar can even help you grow in character and integrity.

We are creatures of habit.

The better you keep your dates, the faster you’ll grow your audience.

So, how do you get started and how much will it cost?

Just open up a new Excel spreadsheet. If you have multiple writers, you can share the sheet using Google Drive.

Start with four columns – Publishing Date, Title, Keyword, and Notes. Below is an example of one of my editorial calendars from a previous year. I still set up my excel spreadsheet the same way even today.

Your needs might be different than mine, so feel free to add additional columns as needed. Common additions might include “Author,””Category” and “Persona.”

The simpler you keep it, the easier it will be to digest and follow.

Look through your calendar on your iPhone, Android, or the one hanging on your fridge. How often can you post?

Monthly? Weekly? Daily?

Be conservative with your goals because consistently missing deadlines can lead to quitting altogether.

Next, go through the answers that you came up with in your brainstorming session and add them under the “Title” column.

Your titles don’t need to be perfect yet. Throw in a working headline that you can spruce up before publishing.

Sometimes, the best headlines come after you’ve written your article. You’ll have a crystal clear picture of what your story is about and who it is for.

The “Keyword” column is intended for SEO purposes. If you’re targeting specific keyword phrases that you’d like to rank for, add those in there.

If nothing comes to mind, you can do some keyword research later on.

Finally, there’s the “Notes” column.

This section is a perfect place to write down brilliant ideas that come to mind. Notes also act as a great tool to stay focused on the topic at hand and tackle it coherently.

You should be able to write up a set of 25 blog post topics with deadlines that you’re confident about keeping.

That’s almost half a year’s worth of blog posts for a weekly writer.

Okay. You have the editorial, but you’re still missing the calendar.

Go to Google Calendars and set up a new calendar. You can do this by clicking the down arrow to the right of “My Calendars.”

Click “Create New Calendar” and add a name, description, and time zone. You can share this calendar with other participants on your team.

If you don’t have team members, share it with your spouse or a good friend who is willing to keep you accountable for your goals.

After you’ve filled out the essential information, click “Create Calendar” and get acquainted with your new best friend.

Make sure that your calendar is selected in the left sidebar and change your schedule view to weekly.

Click on a time slot under a day and add your blog post title as the “Event Title.” I recommend that you set a notification for a couple of days before the publishing date.

If you only write whenever it’s convenient, you’re heading down a dangerous road.

You’ll eventually run out of ideas, lose motivation and forget about the drive you once had to start your own blog.

Editorial calendars are a quick fix for a blogger’s procrastination.

Step 10. Monetize Your Blog

The last step is to monetize your blog .

You may not start your blog with the intention to monetize it immediately. If that’s you, then it’s a good thing.

Hear me out.

The conventional style of selling used to look something like this:

• Think of an idea
• Create a product
• Try and sell the product
• File for bankruptcy

This method has been unsuccessful for so many individuals and businesses because they didn’t build an audience before selling.

They based market demand off gut feelings.

That’s why blogging is the perfect channel for monetization. You’ll build an audience through your blog posts, email newsletters, interaction in the comments, and social media channels.

Want some pointers for how to turn your blog into a money-making device? Read on.

Ask Your Audience

Blogging brings people into your life through interaction. If you think of your favorite bloggers, you might feel like you know them on a somewhat personal level.

Better still, your market research becomes significantly easier. I ask questions at the end of my blog posts that generate hundreds of comments.

Alternatively, you can also send email blasts with a survey, using something like Google Forms, to gain valuable information on what your target audience wants.

By building a blog, you open doors to talk with potential customers. People who will give you honest feedback on what they want from you.

If 90% of your survey respondents tell you that they want a formal course on digital marketing , then what do you think they want?

A digital marketing course that they will happily pay for.

Sell Physical Products

Another avenue I’ve explored is in the nutrition niche.

Mike and I built a blog from scratch and transformed it into a $100,000/month blog selling a private-label fish oil supplement on Amazon.

Our success was mainly due to our blog. We published great content, understood our audience’s needs , and directed them to our Amazon sales page.

You don’t need to go down the same fish oil-peddling road I did, but trust me when I say your blog can be one of the best ways to get more people buying your physical products.

Make Money With Advertisements

If you don’t want to sell a physical product or service, you can do what other publishers are doing: sell advertising space.

Anyone can put an ad on their blog using Google Ads . But, the real money comes from private sales of ad placements on your site.

If you build a high traffic blog, you can make a full-time income selling ad spots on your website.

Talk about passive income!

The only thing that you need to do is to add their banner and keep doing what you do best: write about your passion or expertise.

The reason why monetizing is the last step in creating a profitable blog is because money shouldn’t be the driving factor in your early efforts.

As you build meaningful relationships and community, your audience will steer you in the right direction by sharing their needs.

If you want to make money blogging, then it will be your job to fulfill those needs.

Offer Premium Content Like E-Books

One more direct option to get more money out of your blog is providing additional content beyond what you already offer at a price.

As an example, let’s take a look at Make A Living Writing , a site for freelance writing education. The site offers regular blogs, freelance job listings, and other resources for writers. One of the first things you’ll see on the homepage, as of this writing, is an offer for a free e-book.

So where’s the premium content if the book is free? Scroll further down, and you’ll see information about the paid Freelance Writers Den community:

In this case, the appearance of premium content (an e-book) leads to paid premium content (the Writers Den). This is smart because it creates a little mini-sales funnel.

People may come to the site for the blogs, see the free e-book, download and read it (getting onto the email list, I might add). A

After they read all the content, the Writers Den suddenly looks like a lot more appealing of a concept.

Affiliate Marketing

What if you don’t want to sell a physical product or service, but still want to monetize?

Leverage your presence to sell products for someone else. Affiliate marketing is the most straightforward way to do this. This is when you promote other products on your blog and get a commission off of each sale that can be traced to your blog.

So how does this work?

It all starts with finding an affiliate network or program you like. These cover different products and process payment differently, so pick the best fit for you.

After that, all you have to do is create content that uses the custom links provided by your affiliate program.

You don’t necessarily have to do product reviews to get involved in affiliate marketing. Let’s take a look at cooking blog Corrie Cooks:

This is primarily a recipe blog, but still earns affiliate commission via links to different products. Any blog can work for affiliate marketing if you find the right merchants to work with.

Influencer Marketing/Sponsored Content

Once your blog becomes more established in its niche and you begin to promote yourself, you may find yourself becoming an influencer. In the marketing world, an influencer is anyone who collaborates with a brand to promote products or services to their audience.

Most people think of social media influencers, but you can also build a following as a blogger as well, and turn that into a monetization opportunity. This is generally done through sponsored content.

In this case, a blogger partners with a company to create a blog that promotes the company. There’s also an affiliate link in many cases, but in this case, the entire piece of content is built as a collaboration between blogger and company. See this example from Buzzfeed:

Sponsored content isn’t limited to blogs, either. Companies can invest in paid tweets, infographics, premium content, whatever makes sense for your audience.

This may seem a bit strange at first, and some people call the practice deceptive. Not necessarily.

Sponsored content may be sponsored, but it can still have value to the reader. In fact, this is the key principle to being effective with this tactic.

Consider Crowdfunding

In some cases, you may want to monetize a blog to keep it running, but may not necessarily be looking to make a huge profit off of it. In other cases, you might want to monetize the blog and make as much money as possible, but use it towards a cause. This is where crowdfunding is a great idea.

Crowdfunding is something I know a bit about from my startup experience . But it also has value in the blogging world as well.

Transparency is essential here. You can use the same major crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo or Kickstarter, and the CTAs (calls to action) for your blogs would be links to said platform.

People have had success with this method. One blogger was able to raise 37,000 AUD for sustainable initiatives primarily through their blog. However, just like if you were selling a product, you need to keep the following things in mind:

• Be ready to explain and show how the money is being used to keep the trust of your readers.
• Focus on targeting audiences with your content who are more likely to support the cause you are crowdfunding for.
• When the crowdfunding period is over, have a plan for how your content is going to change.

Note that if you go this route, your cash flow is going to be dependent on the following you create and how much money they can give in a certain period. So it may be difficult if your blog is your only source of revenue.

Have Your Blog Sell Your Main Business

Lastly, and arguably the simplest option on this list, is having a blog that gives you the opportunity to sell your main business.

On paper, this sounds pretty easy. Write your blogs, then plug your other content at the end, right? Not necessarily.

Readers aren’t going to go to a company’s blog to be sold to. If they wanted to purchase, they would likely be headed straight to your product pages. If you write your blogs like your sales pages, people are going to be turned off and leave.

So, what are these readers looking for? Most of the time, they have some sort of informational query that they want a blog to solve. Where a business’s blog comes in is providing that information, and building trust with a reader while doing so. Take a look at online used car seller Carvana’s blog:

All of these topics are relevant to car owners or people thinking about buying a car. Over time, a follower of this blog may read several topics and grow to trust Carvana. When the time comes for them to buy a used car, Carvana is already top of mind, and they can move to a sale through CTAs on the blogs.

These same principles can apply to your business.

How do I create a successful blog?

The first step in creating a successful blog is picking a niche topic for your blog. Do market research and see what other blogs are already out there; you don’t want your blog to cover an area that is already dense with similar blogs. Also, try to pick a topic that has natural ties to money-making blog techniques, like a partnership or sponsored posts, or affiliate links. Then set up a CMS (like WordPress), choose a design, write and publish your first post, and stick to a regular publishing schedule.

What are some options for CMS to use on a blog?

WordPress, Wix, Shopify (for e-commerce sites). When looking for a CMS, be sure they offer usability, flexible digital marketing tools, cross-channel publishing, extensibility, and integrations.

How do I choose a name for my blog?

Use free name generator tools, check for available domains, check business records and social media to make sure others don’t have that name already.

How do I optimize my blog for search engines (SEO)?

Use a reputable SEO plugin if you’re on WordPress like Yoast, set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, make sure your XML sitemap is set up properly (Yoast can do this automatically), and set up permalinks.

How do I come up with blog post topics?

Ask yourself:

• What excites my readers?
• What are common challenges for my readers?
• What are the character traits of my readers?
• What do readers love about my niche?
• What do readers hate about my niche?

How do I monetize my blog?

Through affiliate sales, ad revenue, product sales, and courses.

How much do successful bloggers make?

As of 2020, successful bloggers can make up to 7 figures per year. But that’s only the very top bloggers in successful and popular industries, like marketing or parenting.

How long can I expect it to take for my blog to start making money?

Your blog may be able to earn money in as little as six months from when you start it. This will depend on your ability to incorporate SEO, using affiliate links, and writing about popular topics.

Starting a blog is easy. But creating a successful blog that makes money takes hard work and dedication.

Have some patience as you begin your blogging journey. You can’t expect to make hundreds or thousands of dollars overnight.

Fortunately, running a blog is affordable and it won’t be long before you break even.

If you follow my steps, tips, and best practices for success you can make more than $3,000 per month from your blog in no time.

Everything that you need to get started is here. You can begin right now by getting your free domain and web hosting at Bluehost in just minutes.

As you begin your blogging journey, remember that you’re speaking to humans.

Be you. Be adventurous. Be honest and transparent.

As you continue to consistently create great content , your tribe will flock to you, listen, and convert.

Have you started your blog yet? What is holding you back?

source: https://neilpatel.com/how-to-start-a-blog/

30% of the world’s marketers visit Neil Patel’s blog every month for insights, strategies, and the latest trends in the dynamic realm of marketing..

Fill out the form below to download this blog

Monthly Marketing Budget Under $750 $750 to $1,500 $1,500 to $5,000 $5,000 to $10,000 $10,000 to $25,000 $25,000 to $50,000 $50,000 to $100,000 Above $100,000

Marketing team size I don’t have a marketing team 1 person 2-5 people 6-10 people 10+ people

Business type Ecommerce Professional Services SaaS Other

Industry Animal & Pet Apparel, Fashion & Jewelry Arts & Entertainment Attorneys, Law & Legal Automotive (Sales & Rental) Beauty, Cosmetics & Personal Care Career & Employment Education, Coaching & Instruction Farming, Agriculture & Sustainability Finance, Banks, Investments & Accounting Fitness, Supplements & Vitamins Health-Related, Wellness & Medical Heavy Industry, Energy & Manufacturing Home Improvement, HVAC, Roofing, Furniture, Decor Insurance Logistics & Transportation Marketing, Advertising, PR & Digital Services Pharma Real Estate Restaurants, Foods & Beverages Travel, Hotel & Tourism Other

Challenges Need more awareness and traffic Not enough leads Leads not converting into sales The current strategy is not working A mix of the above

Number of employees 1 - 5 6 - 25 26 - 100 100+

Your urgency for hiring help I need help IMMEDIATELY I need to start working on it THIS QUARTER I have 6 MONTHS to decide I have more than A YEAR Gathering information for DIY Not a priority

By clicking the button below, you consent for NP Digital and partners to use automated technology, including pre-recorded messages, cell phones and texts, and email to contact you at the number and email address provided. This includes if the number is currently on any Do Not Call Lists. This consent is not required to make a purchase. Privacy Policy .

Thank you for providing your information

Preparing the file. Please wait...

Your download will automatically start in a few seconds. If your download does not start, please click here .

If you want my team to do your marketing for you, just click the button below and schedule a call with us:

Book a call

4+ SAMPLE Blog Business Plan in PDF

Blog business plan, 4+ sample blog business plan, what is a blog business plan, different types of blogs, reasons to make a blog, how to write a blog business plan, what are the advantages of having a blog, what is a blog exit strategy, can a blog become a business.

Blog Business Plan Template

Blog Business Plan Worksheet

Basic Blog Business Plan

Advanced Blog Business Planning

Blog Business Plan Example

Step 1: create an executive summary, step 2: brand identity overview, step 3: blog content overview, step 4: blog marketing and promotion strategies, step 5: develop a thorough competitor analysis, step 6: blog monetization plan, share this post on your network, you may also like these articles.

In this comprehensive guide, we explore the essentials of creating an effective Floor Plan. Whether you are designing a new home, renovating an existing space, or planning an office…

Nursing Care Plan

In this comprehensive guide, we explore the essentials of creating an effective Nursing Care Plan. Whether you are a nursing student, a new graduate, or an experienced nurse, this…

browse by categories

• Questionnaire
• Description
• Reconciliation
• Certificate
• Spreadsheet

Information

• privacy policy
• Terms & Conditions

Learn to Build a Better Business Plan

Sample Business Plan Gallery

Browse our library of over 550 free business plan examples to kickstart your own plan.

Browse our library of over 550 free business plan examples.

How to Write a Business Plan

Step-by-step guide to establish the foundation of your business quickly and efficiently.

Step-by-step guide to establish the foundation of your business.

Business Plan Template

Build your business using the proven planning template designed by the experts at Bplans.

Use the planning template designed by the experts at Bplans.

Subscribe to business insights

Stay up to date with the latest business planning, management, growth, and funding trends..

We care about your privacy. See our Privacy Policy .

Popular Downloads

SWOT Analysis

Easily evaluate your competitive position and develop effective growth strategies.

Refine your competitive strategy using a SWOT analysis.

Cash Flow Forecast

Improve the health of your business by easily estimating your business’s financial future.

Estimate and improve the financial health of your business.

Lean Business Plan Template

Fast, simple, and shareable. Start with a one-page plan to grow alongside your business.

Start with a simple one-page plan to grow alongside your business…

Start Your Business

Business Startup Guide

Get everything in order to start your business and write your business plan.

Get everything in order to start your business.

How to start a business with no money

Is it possible to start a business with no money? Check out this proven process to get your business…

Is it possible to start a business with no money? Check out this.…

Startup Checklist

Break down the startup process and check all the necessary boxes.

Estimating Startup Costs

What will it cost to start your business? These are the expenses you will need to consider.

Do you know what it will cost to start your business?

Write Your Business Plan

Business Planning in Under an Hour

Learn how to write your business plan in under an hour.

1-Page Business Plan Template

A faster, more efficient way to develop your business strategy.

Perfect Your Elevator Pitch

Pitch Guide

Learn how to create a winning elevator pitch deck and speech that will impress investors.

Impress investors with a winning pitch deck and elevator pitch.

Elements of the Elevator Pitch

If you're pitching to investors or building a pitch deck, here are the 7 things you need.

Here are the 7 things you need to include in your elevator pitch.

Components of a Pitch Deck

Here are the 11 slides you must have in your pitch deck.

Investor Pitch Template

Start your pitch off right with a proven pitch deck template.

Get Your Business Funded

Funding Guide

Learn how to prepare your business plan and pitch to secure funding for your business.

Prepare your plan and pitch to secure funding for your business.

Ways to Fund Your Business

When it comes to funding, there isn't a one-size-fits-all method. Here are your options.

Find out what funding options are available for your business.

Grow Your Business

How to Grow Your Business

Growing your business can be just as difficult as starting. Here are proven ways to grow.

Try these proven methods to continue growing your business.

Grow Using Your Business Plan

Turn your business plan into a growth-oriented business strategy.

Set Clear and Actionable Goals

Grow your business by setting clear goals and establishing key metrics for success.

Learn to set clear and actionable goals to grow your business.

How to Forecast Cash Flow

Create a cash flow forecast to help keep your business healthy and plan for the future.

Keep your business healthy using a cash flow forecast.

Tim Berry Blog

Learn from renowned business planning expert and founder of Bplans, Tim Berry.

Business Glossary

Definitions for common terminology and acronyms that every small business owner should know.

The quickest way to turn a business idea into a business plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

No thanks, I prefer writing 40-page documents.

Discover the world’s #1 plan building software

• WordPress Hosting
• WordPress for Agencies
• Domain Names
• Website Builder
• Create a Blog
• Professional Email
• Website Design Services
• Course Maker
• Enterprise WordPress  
• WordPress Themes
• WordPress Plugins
• WordPress Patterns
• Google Apps
• WordPress.com Support
• WordPress News
• Website Building Tips
• Business Name Generator
• Discover New Posts
• Popular Tags
• Blog Search
• Daily Webinars
• Learn WordPress
• Plans & Pricing

There is a plan for you

Choose a plan today and unlock a powerful bundle of features. Or start with our free plan .

WordPress.com Plans

• Pay every 2 years
• Pay every 3 years
• Pay monthly

Free domain for one year

• Free domain for one year Free domain for one year Get a custom domain – like yourgroovydomain.com – free for the first year.
• Dozens of premium themes Dozens of premium themes Switch between all of our Personal design themes.
• Ad-free experience Ad-free experience Unlock a clean, ad-free browsing experience for your visitors.
• Extremely fast DNS with SSL Extremely fast DNS with SSL Tap into fast, reliable domain management with secure SSL.
• 8% transaction fee for payments (+ standard processing fee) 8% transaction fee for payments (+ standard processing fee) Credit card fees are applied in addition to commission fees for payments.
• Security, performance, and growth tools—powered by Jetpack.
• Everything in Personal, plus:
• Fast support from our expert team Fast support from our expert team Prompt support from our expert, friendly Happiness team.
• Unlimited premium themes Unlimited premium themes Switch between a collection of premium design themes.
• Earn with WordAds Earn with WordAds Display ads and earn from premium networks via the WordAds program.
• Customize fonts and colors Customize fonts and colors Take control of every font, color, and detail of your site’s design.
• 4% transaction fee for payments (+ standard processing fee) 4% transaction fee for payments (+ standard processing fee) Credit card fees are applied in addition to commission fees for payments.
• Upload 4K videos with VideoPress Upload 4K videos with VideoPress Showcase your video beautifully with the 4K VideoPress player.
• Unlimited automatic shares in social media Unlimited automatic shares in social media Share your latest posts to your social channels, without limits.
• Site activity log Site activity log Keep an administrative eye on activity across your site.
• In-depth site analytics dashboard In-depth site analytics dashboard Deep-dive analytics and conversion data to help you make decisions to grow your site.
• Everything in Premium, plus:
• Priority 24/7 support from our expert team Priority 24/7 support from our expert team The fastest 24/7 support from our expert, friendly Happiness team.
• Install plugins and themes Install plugins and themes Unlock access to 50,000+ plugins, design templates, and integrations.
• Unrestricted bandwidth Unrestricted bandwidth Never fret about getting too much traffic or paying overage charges.
• No limitations on site visitors No limitations on site visitors Grow your site traffic without worrying about limitations.
• Global edge caching Global edge caching Ensure your cached content is always served from the data center closest to your site visitor.
• High-burst capacity High-burst capacity Lean on integrated resource management and instant scaling.
• Web application firewall (WAF) Web application firewall (WAF) Block out malicious activity like SQL injection and XSS attacks.
• Global CDN with 28+ locations Global CDN with 28+ locations Rely on ultra-fast site speeds, just about anywhere on Earth.
• High-frequency CPUs High-frequency CPUs Get the extra site performance of high-frequency CPUs, as standard.
• Automated datacenter failover Automated datacenter failover Count on your site being replicated in real-time to a second data center.
• Isolated site infrastructure Isolated site infrastructure Rest easy knowing that your site is isolated from others for added security and performance.
• Malware detection & removal Malware detection & removal Stay safe with automated malware scanning and removal.
• Tiered storage plans available Tiered storage plans available Find the storage plan that works for your site’s needs.
• Real-time security scans Real-time security scans Our dedicated security team works round-the-clock to identify and combat vulnerabilities so that you don’t have to.
• Spam protection with Akismet Spam protection with Akismet Never worry about spam with Akismet, which is included at no additional cost.
• DDoS protection and mitigation DDoS protection and mitigation Breeze past DDoS attacks thanks to real time monitoring and mitigation.
• SFTP/SSH, WP-CLI, Git tools SFTP/SSH, WP-CLI, Git tools Use familiar developer tools to manage and deploy your site.
• Free staging site Free staging site Test product and design changes in a staging site.
• Seamless staging and production syncing Seamless staging and production syncing Iterate faster and deploy confidently by synchronizing staging and production environments in a few short steps.
• Automated WordPress updates Automated WordPress updates Get every WordPress update. And every patch. Automatically.
• Centralized site management Centralized site management Seamlessly switch between 2, 20, or 200 sites. All from one place.
• Vulnerability notifications for core and plugins Vulnerability notifications for core and plugins Stress less knowing there’s a dedicated team identifying potential vulnerabilities for WordPress and plugins, ensuring early detection and preventing future attacks.
• 0% transaction fee for standard WooCommerce payment features (+ standard processing fee) 0% transaction fee for standard WooCommerce payment features (+ standard processing fee) Credit card fees are applied in addition to commission fees for payments.
• 2% transaction fee for standard payments (+ standard processing fee) 2% transaction fee for standard payments (+ standard processing fee) Credit card fees are applied in addition to commission fees for payments.
• Real-time backups Real-time backups Count on multi-redundancy, real-time backups of all your data.
• One-click restores One-click restores Revert back to a point-in-time in your site’s history, with a single click.
• Uptime monitor Uptime monitor Stay up-to-date with continuous uptime monitoring, with alerts the minute downtime is detected.
• Built-in Elasticsearch Built-in Elasticsearch Make surfacing your content simple with built-in premium site search.
• Plugin auto-updates Plugin auto-updates Forget about time-consuming plugin updates and update nags.
• SEO and analytics tools SEO and analytics tools Rank well in search with built-in search engine optimization tools.
• Everything in Business, plus:
• Optimized WooCommerce hosting Optimized WooCommerce hosting Enjoy a hosting solution tailored to enhance the performance and security of sites running WooCommerce.
• Premium store themes Premium store themes Jumpstart your store’s design with a professionally designed theme.
• Powerful store design tools Powerful store design tools Fine-tune your store’s design with on-brand styles and drag and drop layout editing.
• Unlimited products Unlimited products Grow your store as big as you want with the ability to add unlimited products and services.
• Display products by brand Display products by brand Create, assign and list brands for products, and allow customers to view by brand.
• Product add-ons Product add-ons Increase your revenue with add-ons like gift wrapping or personalizations like engraving.
• Assembled products and kits Assembled products and kits Give customers the freedom to build their own products utilizing your existing items.
• Min/max order quantities Min/max order quantities Specify the minimum and maximum allowed product quantities for orders.
• Back-in-stock notifications Back-in-stock notifications Automatically notify customers when your products are restocked.
• Dynamic product upsells Dynamic product upsells Earn more revenue with automated upsell and cross-sell product recommendations.
• Custom marketing automation Custom marketing automation Advanced email marketing functionality, including subscriber segmentation, advanced analytics, and automation.
• Offer bulk discounts Offer bulk discounts Offer personalized packages and bulk discounts.
• Inventory management Inventory management Keep inventory up-to-date with POS integrations and real-time tracking.
• Streamlined, extendable checkout Streamlined, extendable checkout Remove the friction from checkout by giving your customers multiple ways to pay.
• Sell in 60+ countries Sell in 60+ countries Grow globally by accepting 135+ currencies.
• Integrations with top shipping carriers Integrations with top shipping carriers Get real-time shipping prices, print labels and give your customers tracking codes.
• 0% transaction fee for payments (+ standard processing fee) 0% transaction fee for payments (+ standard processing fee) Credit card fees are applied in addition to commission fees for payments.
• High performance platform, with:
• Multifaceted security Multifaceted security
• Generative AI Generative AI
• Integrated content analytics Integrated content analytics
• 24/7 support 24/7 support
• Professional services Professional services
• API mesh and node hosting API mesh and node hosting
• Containerized environment Containerized environment
• Global infrastructure Global infrastructure
• Dynamic autoscaling Dynamic autoscaling
• Integrated CDN Integrated CDN
• Integrated code repository Integrated code repository
• Staging environments Staging environments
• Management dashboard Management dashboard
• Command line interface (CLI) Command line interface (CLI)
• Efficient multi-site management Efficient multi-site management
• Advanced access controls Advanced access controls
• Single sign-on (SSO) Single sign-on (SSO)
• DDoS protection and mitigation DDoS protection and mitigation
• Plugin and theme vulnerability scanning Plugin and theme vulnerability scanning
• Automated plugin upgrade Automated plugin upgrade
• Integrated enterprise search Integrated enterprise search
• Integrated APM Integrated APM

Compare our plans and find yours

Billing cycle, free free personal premium business commerce, personal free personal premium business commerce, premium free personal premium business commerce, business free personal premium business commerce, commerce free personal premium business commerce.

Hosting partner

Agency Hosting by Pressable

Looking to manage multiple sites with ease? Discover Pressable’s powerful and intuitive platform that goes beyond traditional WordPress hosting. Ideal for agencies and web professionals.

Building sites for customers? Here’s how to earn more

Earn up to 50% revenue share and get volume discounts on WordPress.com hosting when you migrate sites to our platform and promote Automattic’s products to clients.

Your site. Built by us.

Let our team of experts build your WordPress.com site. Whether you need a landing page or a full ecommerce site, we can build it for you.

The best way to WordPress.

From the free plan on up, when you build with WordPress.com you get all of the benefits of fast, secure managed WordPress hosting.

Stress‑free refund policy

If you change your mind, our no‑questions‑asked refund policy has your back.

Superlative support

Get free, expert help in our community forums, or upgrade to any plan for expert support.

End-to-end security

Superior security comes with every plan, keeping your site safe and protected around the clock.

The speed you need

Your site runs lightning fast, wherever in the world it’s accessed from. 

There’s beauty in everything.

Make your website look stunning with our custom‑made patterns and themes. Transform your design with a click, then magically drag and drop breathtaking layouts.

Easily create a mobile friendly website, optimized for every device, so your visitors can access your content from anywhere.

Bring your online store to life with our selection of customizable themes. Choose from a variety of designs that match your brand’s unique style and start selling in no time.

Personalize the blank canvas of any page with Patterns – a range of flexible, intuitive, instant layouts.

Your audience is out there.

Your site is the start of something. Connect with your audience and reach new people by meeting them where they are.

Say it with a Newsletter.

Write directly to your audience. Every WordPress.com site is a newsletter waiting to happen.

Spread the word.

Reach more people across your socials and promote your posts with Blaze.

Meet the Reader.

With the Reader, you can keep up with what’s new and find your people.

Keep them up to date.

RSS makes it simple for your audience to subscribe to your latest updates and never miss a beat.

Frequently asked questions

No worries, we get your questions answered.

Yes, you can easily move your content to WordPress.com from other platforms such as Blogger, GoDaddy, Wix, Medium, Squarespace, and many more. Additionally, our import tool allows you to transfer your content seamlessly from a self‑hosted WordPress site.

If you have an active subscription on WordPress.com, you have the flexibility to switch to a different plan at any time. Any remaining funds from your current plan will be applied towards your new plan as a discount.

We have many domain extensions available, including popular ones like .com, .net, and .org. If you sign up for a yearly or two-year plan, you’ll get a free domain included for the first year. You can also use a domain you already own by connecting it to your WordPress.com site or transferring it to us for easy management.

Yes, we provide free hosting for all WordPress.com sites with all plans.

WordPress plugins are tools that you can add to your site to give it additional features and functionalities. With plugins, you can easily add a contact form, social media icons, a slideshow, an e‑commerce store, and much more, without needing to know how to code. You can access over 50,000 WordPress plugins, starting with the Business plan.

Yes, there are many ways to monetize your WordPress.com site, such as charging for premium content, selling products, creating memberships, and more. You can also publish sponsored posts or use affiliate links in your content. Additionally, you can apply to join WordAds, our advertising program.

Yes, you can create your site in any language you prefer, as WordPress.com supports a wide range of languages. For more information, please visit our support page all about setting up multilingual sites.

Yes, WordPress.com offers several email solutions to choose from. Our own Professional Email service – for custom domains registered on our platform – brings your inbox to your site’s dashboard. You can also set up free email forwarding or, alternatively, use our Google Workspace integration to manage your emails. For more information about these options, take a look at our dedicated support page.

You can cancel anytime within the refund period and get 100% of your money back, no questions asked.

You can pay for your WordPress.com plan, add‑ons, or domains using any major credit card, debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal. In addition to these, we also support a number of  local payment methods  in select countries.

Rooted in the Automattic family and WordPress, WordPress VIP is the ideal fit for these companies. It marries the ease and flexibility of WordPress with unmatched scalability, security, and data-driven capabilities they require. It powers many of the web’s largest websites, businesses, and government agencies, helping them produce content without barriers, and at scale.

WordPress.com

• WordPress Hosting
• WordPress for Agencies
• Domain Names
• Website Builder
• Create a Blog
• Professional Email
• P2: WordPress for Teams
• Website Design Services
• Enterprise WordPress
• WordPress Themes
• WordPress Plugins
• WordPress Patterns
• Google Apps
• WordPress.com Support
• WordPress Forums
• WordPress News
• Website Building Tips
• Business Name Generator
• Logo Maker
• Discover New Posts
• Popular Tags
• Blog Search
• Daily Webinars
• Learn WordPress
• Developer Resources
• Remove Subscriptions
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
• Privacy Notice for California Users

Mobile Apps

• Download on the App Store
• Get it on Google Play

Social Media

• WordPress.com on Facebook
• WordPress.com on X (Twitter)
• WordPress.com on Instagram
• WordPress.com on YouTube

Create a blog worth sharing

Get a full suite of intuitive design features and powerful marketing tools to create a unique blog that leaves a lasting impression.

Try it for free for an unlimited time and upgrade when you need.

Blog templates that set you up for success

Choose from 900+ free customizable templates built with everything you need.

Build your blog your way

Design a unique blog.

Capture your brand’s personality with a complete suite of advanced design features in our blog maker.

Establish your site’s domain name

Get a custom domain to build your credibility. For inspiration, check out the Blog Name Generator .

Create with content in mind

Start publishing your unique content with a rich text editor and video and audio add-ons.

The powerful infrastructure behind your blog

Secure platform.

Our world class experts and enterprise-grade security system work 24/7 so your audiences' information will always be kept safe and secure.

Reliable hosting

With free website hosting on a worldwide CDN, your site is automatically backed up and will be able to handle any situation - from traffic spikes to outages - so you’ll always be up and running.

Faster loading

We have a performance-first culture, meaning our priority is providing the best user experience for you and your visitors, with faster loading sites that perform great on any device.

Drive traffic to your blog

Grow your organic traffic.

Get a full suite of advanced SEO tools to increase traffic from search engines and grow your global audience.

Engage your online community

Set up automatic emails, send newsletters and create social posts to share new content with your readers.

Reach the right people

Promote your blog posts on social media and translate your content into multiple languages to reach a wider audience.

Keep them coming back

Invite your followers to become members and start discussions to increase engagement with your blog.

Monetize your blog

Display ads.

Use services like Google AdSense to show ads on your site and earn money with every click.

Sell online 

Add a store to your site and sell branded merchandise with our complete eCommerce platform .

Offer subscriptions

Give visitors access to exclusive content with paid subscriptions that automatically renew.

Offer courses and events

Offer webinars, pre-recorded online courses, and in-person meetups for your audience.

Run your blog more efficiently

Write when you feel inspired and schedule posts to go live at the best time for you.

Collaborate

Give multiple writers and editors access to your blog platform so they can help manage your content.

Blog anywhere

Download the Wix app to write content and manage your blog anytime, anywhere.

Plan ahead with built-in analytics

Get insights from analytics reports , like which content best engages your audience, so you can strategically plan for the future.

How to create a blog for free

Follow these 5 steps to start building your blog today.

Sign up for a free blog maker. Choose what kind of blog you want to create.

Pick a blog name. Let people know what your blog is all about.

Choose your blog template. Customize its design to match your style.

Write and publish your first post. Launch with posts you're passionate about.

Share your blog. Gain new readers and promote your blog on social media.

Learn how to grow your blog from the experts

The ultimate guide to starting a blog

Unique tips for promoting your blog

Profitable strategies for monetizing your blog

24/7 support.

Find answers to all your questions in our Help Center or request a callback to speak with an expert.

Hire a professional

Get matched with vetted agencies and freelancers to help you create, design or enhance your website.

1. Is it free to start a blog?

It’s completely free to start a blog with Wix. Plus, you’ll get access to a complete suite of blogging features including; blog title generator , SEO tools, design capabilities, managing and collaboration tools, and analytics.

2. How do blogs make money?

There are lots of ways to make money from blogging. Bloggers can supplement their incomes by offering paid subscriptions to followers for exclusive access to content or features. You can use third-party services like Google AdSense to show ads on your blog and earn commission whenever someone clicks on them. Plus, with Wix Stores, you can sell merchandise and products related to your blog.

3. Can you import blog posts from WordPress?

Yes, you can import your blog posts from a WordPress.com or a WordPress.org site in just a few steps. Check out this article from the Wix Help Center for a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

4. Is Wix only for beginner bloggers?

The Wix Blog platform is built for bloggers with any level of expertise. Every blog website comes with a suite of features like Wix Analytics and built-in SEO and marketing tools designed to help drive more traffic to your blog, grow your community, monetize your content, and so much more.

5. What should you blog about?

You can create a blog about almost anything. Some of the most popular blog types include: lifestyle, travel, food and fashion. The important thing is to be passionate about your topic. Whether it’s a personal blog or a business blog the first step is to get started and be consistent.

Create a blog that inspires.

• Building Your Site
• Promote Your Site
• Entrepreneurship
• Design & Inspiration
• Tips & Tricks

Creating a Small Business Marketing Strategy: A Comprehensive Guide for Success

In the competitive world of small business marketing, standing out is key. With the right strategies, even the smallest businesses can make a big impact. This guide will show you how to market a small business effectively, from understanding your target audience to setting SMART goals for your marketing strategy.

The Important Ways to Market Small Business

Small business marketing is essential for attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. It's a way to showcase your unique offerings and build brand recognition in a crowded marketplace. By implementing effective marketing for small business, you can increase sales and grow your customer base.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Knowing your target audience is crucial for any small business marketing strategy. Understanding their needs, preferences, and behaviors will help you tailor your messaging and offerings to better resonate with them. By identifying who your ideal customers are, you can create more targeted and impactful marketing campaigns.

Setting SMART Goals for Your Marketing Strategy

To achieve success in business marketing, it's important to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. Whether it's increasing website traffic or improving conversion rates, having clear objectives will guide your efforts and keep you on track towards achieving tangible results.

Researching Your Market

Minimal Template from Strikingly

When it comes to small business marketing, conducting a thorough market analysis is crucial. This involves gathering data on your target audience, preferences, and buying behavior. By understanding the needs and wants of your potential customers, you can tailor your marketing efforts to reach and engage with them effectively.

Conducting Market Analysis

Market analysis for small business marketing entails studying demographic information, such as age, gender, income level, and location. It also involves analyzing psychographic factors like lifestyle choices and values that influence purchasing decisions. This data helps you create customer personas that guide your marketing strategy in addressing the specific needs of your audience.

Identifying Competitors

In the world of business marketing for small enterprises, knowing who you're up against is essential. Identify direct and indirect competitors in your industry to gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses. This knowledge allows you to differentiate your brand and develop unique selling propositions that set you apart from the competition.

Understanding Industry Trends

Staying updated on industry trends is vital for small business marketing success. By keeping an eye on emerging trends in your niche, you can adapt your marketing strategies to align with current consumer preferences. Whether it's changes in technology or shifts in consumer behavior, being aware of industry trends helps you stay ahead of the curve.

Building Your Brand

Brandify Template from Strikingly

Building a strong brand is crucial for small business marketing . Crafting a unique value proposition is essential to differentiate your business from competitors. Highlight what sets your products or services apart and why customers should choose you. This will help you create a compelling message that resonates with your target audience.

Crafting a Unique Value Proposition

Crafting a unique value proposition involves identifying the specific benefits and solutions your business offers to meet the needs of your target market . By clearly articulating what makes your business unique, you can effectively communicate the value you bring to customers. This will help you stand out in a crowded marketplace and attract potential customers.

Creating a Memorable Brand Identity

Creating a memorable brand identity involves designing a visual representation of your brand that resonates with your target audience. This includes choosing colors, fonts, and imagery that reflect your brand's personality and values. Consistency in branding across all platforms helps build brand recognition and trust among consumers.

Establishing Brand Guidelines

Establishing brand guidelines ensures that all marketing materials, from social media posts to printed materials, adhere to the same visual standards and messaging. Consistent branding helps reinforce the image of your business in the minds of consumers, making it easier for them to recognize and connect with your brand across different channels.

Choosing the Right Marketing Channels

Strikingly Social Feeds Section

When it comes to small business marketing, choosing the right marketing channels is crucial for reaching your target audience effectively. Digital marketing options such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and content marketing can help increase your online visibility and attract potential customers to your website.

Exploring Digital Marketing Options

Exploring digital marketing options is essential for small business marketing success. By optimizing your website for search engines and creating valuable content, you can improve your online presence and attract organic traffic from potential customers searching for products or services related to your business.

Leveraging Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms offer a powerful way to engage with your audience and build brand awareness . By leveraging platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can connect with potential customers, share valuable content, and drive traffic to your website.

Utilizing Email Marketing Strategies

Utilizing email marketing strategies is an effective way to nurture relationships with existing customers and reach out to potential leads. By crafting compelling email campaigns that provide value and personalized offers, you can keep your audience engaged and drive conversions for your small business.

Remember that each of these channels requires a unique approach tailored to the preferences of your target audience. By understanding how to leverage digital marketing options, social media platforms, and email marketing strategies effectively, you can maximize the impact of your small business marketing efforts.

Developing Compelling Content

When it comes to small business marketing, developing compelling content is essential for engaging with your target audience. One way to do this is by writing engaging blog posts that provide valuable information related to your industry. By creating content that addresses the pain points of your potential customers, you can position your business as a trusted source of information and build credibility in your niche.

Writing Engaging Blog Posts

To effectively market a small business through blog posts, it's important to understand the needs and interests of your target audience. By conducting thorough research on the topics that resonate with them, you can tailor your blog content to address their specific challenges and provide solutions that showcase your expertise in the field. This not only helps in attracting new visitors to your website but also keeps them engaged and coming back for more.

Creating Captivating Visuals

In addition to written content, captivating visuals play a crucial role in small business marketing strategies. High-quality images, infographics, and videos can help convey your brand's message in a visually appealing manner, making it easier for potential customers to understand what sets you apart from competitors. Visual content also tends to be more shareable on social media platforms, helping you reach a wider audience and increase brand visibility.

Producing Informative Videos

Another effective way to market a small business is by producing informative videos that showcase your products or services in action or provide valuable insights into industry trends. With the rise of video consumption on platforms like YouTube and social media, creating engaging video content has become an integral part of any small business marketing strategy. By leveraging this medium, you can connect with potential customers on a more personal level and establish a stronger emotional connection with them.

By incorporating these compelling content strategies into your small business marketing plan, you can effectively engage with your target audience and differentiate yourself from competitors while building brand awareness and driving customer engagement.

Implementing Your Marketing Strategy

Marketing Webinar Template from Strikingly

Now that you have your small business marketing plan in place, it's time to put it into action. Setting a realistic budget is crucial to ensure that you have the resources needed to execute your marketing strategies effectively. Allocate funds for various marketing channels such as digital advertising, social media campaigns, and content creation. By setting a budget that aligns with your goals, you can maximize the impact of your marketing efforts without overspending.

Setting a Realistic Budget

When determining your small business marketing budget, consider factors such as the size of your target audience, the cost of advertising on different platforms, and the overall financial health of your business. It's essential to strike a balance between affordability and effectiveness. By analyzing past marketing expenses and forecasting future needs, you can establish a budget that allows for flexibility while staying within reasonable limits.

Executing Your Plan

With a clear budget in place, it's time to execute your marketing plan. This involves creating and scheduling content, launching ad campaigns, and engaging with your audience on social media platforms . Be consistent in implementing your strategies across different channels to maintain brand visibility and attract new customers. Keep an eye on industry trends and adjust your tactics as needed to stay ahead of the competition.

Monitoring and Measuring Results

As you implement your small business marketing strategies, it's important to monitor their performance closely. Use analytics tools to track website traffic, engagement metrics on social media, and conversions from email campaigns. By regularly measuring results against predefined goals, you can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions for future marketing initiatives.

Remember that successful small business marketing requires ongoing refinement based on consumer behavior changes and market dynamics. Stay adaptable in order to sustain long-term success in promoting your products or services effectively.

Leveraging Strikingly Features for Small Business Marketing

Strikingly landing page, website optimization for business marketing.

When it comes to small business marketing, having a strong online presence is crucial. With Strikingly's user-friendly website builder, you can easily optimize your site for search engines, ensuring that your business gets noticed by potential customers. By incorporating relevant keywords and creating engaging content, you can attract more traffic to your website and increase your chances of converting visitors into loyal customers .

Small Business Marketing Tools and Resources

Strikingly offers a variety of tools and resources specifically designed to help small businesses succeed in their marketing efforts. From customizable templates to intuitive analytics tools, you'll have everything you need to create a professional-looking website and track the performance of your marketing campaigns. With these resources at your disposal, you can effectively manage your online presence and make informed decisions about how to market your small business.

Utilizing Strikingly's E-commerce Capabilities

In today's competitive business landscape, having a strong online presence is essential for success. A well-designed e-commerce website can serve as a powerful marketing tool, allowing you to reach a wider audience, showcase your products or services, and drive sales. Strikingly offers a range of customizable features that make it easy to create and manage an effective e-commerce website for your small business. Here's how Strikingly can help you develop a winning marketing strategy.

• Create a Professional Online Store. Use Strikingly's templates to design a visually appealing and user-friendly online store that reflects your brand's identity. Showcase your products or services with high-quality images and detailed descriptions.
• Optimize Your Product Listings. Use relevant keywords in your product titles and descriptions to improve your search engine ranking. Strikingly's SEO tools can help you optimize your product pages for maximum visibility.
• Offer Secure Payment Options. Reassure customers by offering a variety of secure payment options, including credit cards, PayPal, and digital wallets. Strikingly integrates with popular payment gateways to provide a seamless checkout experience.
• Leverage Email Marketing. Build an email list and send targeted marketing campaigns to your customers. Strikingly integrates with popular email marketing platforms, making it easy to create and send professional emails.
• Utilize Social Media Integration. Connect your Strikingly website to your social media profiles to expand your reach and engage with customers. Share your products, promotions, and behind-the-scenes content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
• Offer Excellent Customer Service. Provide exceptional customer support to build trust and loyalty. Respond promptly to customer inquiries and address any issues that arise. Strikingly's live chat and contact form features make it easy to communicate with your customers.
• Analyze Your Website Performance. Track your website's traffic, sales, and customer behavior using Strikingly's analytics tools. This data can help you identify areas for improvement and optimize your marketing efforts.
• Run Targeted Advertising Campaigns. Use Strikingly's integration with advertising platforms to run targeted ads on social media and search engines. Reach your ideal customers and drive traffic to your online store.
• Offer Promotions and Discounts. Attract customers with limited-time offers, discounts, and loyalty programs. Strikingly's e-commerce features make it easy to set up and manage promotions.
• Continuously Improve. Regularly review and update your marketing strategy based on your website's performance and customer feedback . Strikingly's flexibility allows you to make changes and adapt to evolving trends.

By leveraging Strikingly's e-commerce capabilities and implementing these marketing strategies, you can create a successful online store for your small business. Strikingly empowers you to reach a wider audience, drive sales, and build a strong brand presence.

Refine Your Small Business Marketing Strategy

Refining your small business marketing strategy is crucial for staying ahead in today's competitive market. By continuously analyzing your target audience and industry trends, you can adapt to changing consumer behavior and ensure the long-term success of your business marketing efforts. It's important to stay agile and open to new marketing channels and content strategies to reach your audience and stand out from the competition effectively.

Refining your small business marketing strategy involves constantly evaluating the effectiveness of your current tactics and making necessary adjustments to optimize results. By regularly reviewing your goals, analyzing performance metrics, and seeking feedback from customers, you can refine your approach to better meet the evolving needs of your audience.

Adapting to Changing Consumer Behavior

Adapting to changing consumer behavior is essential for small business marketing success. With the rise of digital technology and social media, consumer behavior is constantly evolving. By staying informed about these changes and adjusting your marketing strategies accordingly, you can effectively engage with your target audience and maintain a competitive edge in the market.

Sustaining Long-Term Success in Business Marketing

Sustaining long-term success in business marketing requires a commitment to ongoing improvement and innovation. By consistently refining your strategies, adapting to changing consumer behavior, and leveraging new technologies and platforms, you can sustain long-term success in small business marketing while continuing to grow your brand presence.

Trusted by millions of entrepreneurs & creatives.

• 10 Reasons To Use Divi Dash For Your WordPress Maintenance Business

Maintaining multiple WordPress websites requires more than occasional updates in today’s digital environment. A site management tool is necessary to ensure that your sites are secure and performing optimally. There’s where Divi Dash can help. This powerful tool is designed for WordPress maintenance professionals who want to streamline the task of updating software across all sites by increasing efficiency and client satisfaction.

In this post, we’ll explore the top 10 reasons why Divi Dash is an invaluable tool for improving your WordPress maintenance business.

Let’s dive in.

• 1 What Is A Site Management Tool?
• 2.1 1. Time-Saving Automation
• 2.2 2. Enhanced Security
• 2.3 3. Improved Performance
• 2.4 4. Simplified Client Management
• 2.5 5. User-Friendly Interface
• 2.6 6. Comprehensive Support
• 2.7 7. Enhanced Collaboration
• 2.8 8. It’s Web-Based
• 2.9 9. It’s Free With A Divi License
• 2.10 10. It’s The Ultimate Growth Engine For Your Business
• 3 Streamline WordPress Maintenance With Divi Dash

What Is A Site Management Tool?

A site management tool is software designed to help you manage and maintain multiple websites. It typically offers a wide range of features that streamline WordPress maintenance, including plugin, theme, and WordPress core updates, client management, and security within one centralized dashboard. Site management tools also allow you to log into individual websites with one click, negating the need to store login credentials separately.

Site management tools often enable you to monitor important statistics about your website, including PHP and MySQL. This will give you up-to-date stats on how your website is set up and allow you to stay on top of potential problems.

Divi Dash is a game-changer for WordPress maintenance businesses. It provides a centralized dashboard to streamline your workflow and keep your client’s websites running smoothly. Imagine managing multiple websites from a single, user-friendly interface. Divi Dash lets you do just that, allowing you to update plugins, themes, and WordPress core files across all your websites with just a few clicks. This eliminates the need to manually log into WordPress sites to perform updates.

Divi Dash isn’t just about software updates. It empowers you to stay on top of your website’s health and security by offering features like database optimization, 2FA for secure login, and in-depth activity logs. Additionally, you can track maintenance tasks and updates for each website, add and manage clients, and collaborate with others with Divi Teams integration. With Divi Dash, you can confidently manage your WordPress maintenance business, knowing you’re providing your clients with the best possible service.

The best part? Divi Dash allows you to manage unlimited websites. It is also completely free with the purchase of a Divi license .

Get Divi Dash

1. Time-Saving Automation

One of the biggest advantages of Divi Dash is the amount of time it saves you. Imagine having several more hours a month to create new content, build another Divi website, or attract new clients. Without having to manage updates for dozens of sites, you will. Divi Dash allows you to update all the plugins, themes, and WordPress files across all your sites – at once. Simply click a button, and Divi Dash will update every plugin and theme on your site. If WordPress needs an update, it’ll handle that too.

Another way Divi Dash saves time is by allowing you to schedule updates. You can choose the frequency, time of day, and timezone for your updates, which is an incredible feature for those who manage international websites. Determining when updates will occur allows you to perform them during low-traffic time periods, avoiding potential visitors’ loss due to downtime.

2. Enhanced Security

Elegant Themes takes your account seriously. To help keep your account and your websites safe, we offer two-factor authentication (2FA). This allows you to add an extra layer of security to keep bad actors away from your WordPress website credentials and sensitive client information.

Beyond 2FA, Divi Dash is your security watchdog. Its System Status Report provides a real-time snapshot of your website’s core infrastructure. Outdated PHP, MySQL, or WordPress are noted with orange color-coded dots that indicate you need an update. When you leave these crucial components outdated, the consequences can be damaging. Exposed vulnerabilities, stolen data, and malicious attacks can render your site inoperable, leading to client dissatisfaction and inevitable downtime. Thanks to Divi Dash, you can stay ahead of the cover with proactive security monitoring.

Divi Dash also provides an activity log to help you diagnose issues on your site after updates. Located under the history tab in Divi Dash, you can view which plugins and themes were updated and when. When you encounter a problem on your website, you can easily refer to this information to help you diagnose what went wrong.

3. Improved Performance

One factor that can have a huge impact on your website’s speed and performance is the size and health of your database. Over time, a site’s database can become cluttered with unnecessary discarded posts and pages, post and page revisions, and spam comments. Just one click is all it takes to purge your database of unnecessary junk and boost your website’s performance.

Sure, plugins and themes are essential for adding new functionality to your sites, but accumulating them can slow your site down over time. With a single click, you can easily remove inactive themes and plugins you aren’t using. This can help improve your website’s performance and reduce the risk of security vulnerabilities. With Divi Dash ‘s streamlined approach, you don’t have to log in to individual websites to perform these tasks.

4. Simplified Client Management

Managing multiple clients can be time-consuming. Divi Dash simplifies your life by providing a central location for managing clients and their websites. With just a few clicks, you can add a client and their websites, store essential contact information, and even jot down important notes for future reference.

Divi Dash also helps you keep up with your clients’ updates. Color-coded dots highlight websites that require attention, so there will be no more missed updates or unhappy clients. With the tools to stay organized and efficient, you can build long-lasting client relationships.

5. User-Friendly Interface

Designed with simplicity, Divi Dash is a breeze to navigate, even if you’re new to website management tools. One click is all it takes to update plugins, themes, or WordPress core across your entire network. When adding a new site, it’s as simple as adding the name and pasting the login credentials, and Divi Dash does the rest—in seconds. As each website is added, Divi Dash analyzes it and offers expert recommendations without headache.

6. Comprehensive Support

When you discover a problem within the history log or the system maintenance report in Divi Dash , it’s easy to get the help you need. You can access the support center and submit a support ticket with just a single click. The Divi Support Center button, located next to the system status report, takes you directly to the support area of that Divi website. From there, you can review the status of your system, grant remote access to Elegant Themes’ support team, or chat directly with a support professional.

For added support, Divi users can upgrade to Divi VIP , which provides white-glove support in under 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This enterprise-level support suite ensures you’ll get the quality support you need, regardless of when your problem occurs.

7. Enhanced Collaboration

Divi Dash integrates with Divi Teams , a powerful collaboration tool that allows you to work seamlessly with team members and clients. By leveraging Divi Teams, you can create, manage, and organize team members into different groups based on their roles and responsibilities. For example, you can grant access to specific websites, giving team members permission to manage those sites.

Divi Dash also allows you to easily create new users for individual websites. Thanks to integration with Divi Dash, there’s no need to log in to a site’s admin dashboard. Simply click on the site to which you want to add a user, enter their information, and assign a role. This allows team members to easily edit pages, posts, and other website content, manage plugins and themes, and access crucial information about each website and its system structure.

8. It’s Web-Based

Divi Dash ‘s web-based platform offers a significant advantage for those managing multiple WordPress websites. Providing centralized access, automation features, and collaboration tools simplifies website maintenance and frees up time for other things, like designing engaging websites, adding new content, and securing more clients.

Unlike self-hosted solutions like MainWP, which requires users to set up and maintain a separate WordPress site to manage their other sites, Divi Dash eliminates this overhead. By hosting the platform itself, Divi Dash ensures a more secure experience. Users can focus on making updates and managing their sites without the added burden of server maintenance or the risk of security breaches.

9. It’s Free With A Divi License

Divi Dash is an exceptional value, especially considering it’s included at no extra cost with the purchase of a Divi License . This means that users who invest in the Divi theme automatically gain access to a robust platform for managing their WordPress websites. Combining Divi Dash with the Divi theme presents  huge cost savings  compared to some of its competitors, which charge up to $25 per month for its services without factoring in the cost of a premium theme.

If you still need a Divi License, now is the time to sign up . For just $89 per year , you’ll have access to the most powerful WordPress theme on the market. With features like a no-code drag-and-drop page builder , 200+ design modules , a powerful Theme Builder for creating dynamic page templates, and thousands of premade layouts , you can build WordPress websites quickly and manage them all with Divi Dash.

Create Professional Websites In Minutes

Additional features of Divi include Divi Quick Sites , which allows you to create a complete website with all core pages, content, and global styles in under two minutes . Divi is also ecommerce-ready with built-in support for WooCommerce. Over 20 modules are included with Divi, which allows you to create beautiful product and shop pages with ease. Those familiar with Woo understand the pain of creating custom templates for the checkout process. With Divi, you can throw those worries out the window because combining the Theme Builder and Woo modules allows you to create beautiful templates to make these often overlooked pages match your branding.

Divi is also highly customizable. From hover effects and scrolling animations to parallax effects and video integration, you can add depth and personality to your site. With keyboard shortcuts, global color palettes, and presets, you’ll streamline your workflow to build sites faster.

Sign Up For Divi!

10. It’s The Ultimate Growth Engine For Your Business

Divi + Divi Dash gives you the power to create and manage unlimited websites without breaking a sweat. More than just a theme, Divi is a scalable platform designed to grow with your business. And with Divi Dash, you’ve got a site management tool that’s as powerful as it is intuitive. Together, they form the perfect duo for building a thriving online presence.

But Divi and Divi Dash are just the beginning. The Divi ecosystem offers tools to streamline your workflow and supercharge your productivity. Need to store and reuse your favorite layouts? Divi Cloud has you covered. Want to create stunning websites with minimal effort? Divi AI is your AI-powered design assistant. Working on collaborative projects? Divi Teams ensures seamless teamwork. And when you need expert help, Divi VIP is just a click away.

No matter how many sites you want to create and manage, the Divi ecosystem offers a complete solution that can handle your business now and in the future.

Streamline WordPress Maintenance With Divi Dash

Divi Dash is a powerful site management tool that is perfect for staying on top of WordPress maintenance tasks. It offers an intuitive, centralized dashboard to automatically update plugins, themes, and WordPress, streamline client management, and encourage team collaboration. Divi Dash can save you time by automating updates, enhancing security, and improving website performance. The best part? You can use Divi Dash on unlimited websites, and it is completely free with a Divi License , making it a tremendous value. If you want to grow your WordPress maintenance business, Divi Dash is the perfect solution, with scalability and seamless integration with the entire Divi ecosystem.

Get Started With Divi Dash!

Explore plans, pricing and features. Click here to get started. 👇

Explore plans, pricing and features here. 👇

By deanna mclean.

Deanna McLean is a blog author, and web developer. She studied graphic design at the University of Mississippi and loves all things, Hotty Toddy. (If you know, you know.) As an adventurous creative, there is nothing Deanna loves more than taking her son and two dogs on excursions in her Jeep or 4Runner.

Explore Divi, The Most Popular WordPress Theme In The World And The Ultimate Page Builder

Check Out These Related Posts

• How to Create a Stunning Restaurant Website in Under an Hour

Posted on September 21, 2024 in Marketing

Every chef knows their unique touch makes their dishes memorable. However, only experienced restaurant owners understand how crucial a website is for showcasing their culinary identity and attracting new customers. Are you preserving your uniqueness online? If not, don’t worry! This guide will...

• How To Streamline Your WordPress Site Management Tasks

Posted on September 20, 2024 in WordPress

Managing WordPress sites can be quite a challenge. You might not know what tasks it may include and the best way to handle them. Luckily, there are simplified options available for managing your WordPress site management tasks. Whether you’re a website owner or designer, new to this, or have...

• How Long Does it Take to Build a Website?

Posted on September 19, 2024 in WordPress

Want to build a website but worried about time and complexity? Whether you choose hardcoding, a website builder, or a flexible platform like Divi, choosing the right tool can save you weeks of work. Making a website is a big commitment, especially considering the time and effort involved. You want...

Leave A Reply Cancel reply

• Recent Posts
• How To Offer WordPress Website Management Services
• Divi Resources
• Theme Releases
• Tips & Tricks

974,872 Customers Are Already Building Amazing Websites With Divi. Join The Most Empowered WordPress Community On The Web

We offer a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee, so joining is Risk-Free!

Divi Features

• All Features Explore Divi
• Divi Modules
• Divi Layouts
• Quick Sites Brand New!
• No-Code Builder
• Ecommerce Websites
• Theme Builder
• Marketing Platform
• Speed & Performance
• Premium Support
• Divi Marketplace
• Divi Hosting
• Extra Theme
• Bloom Plugin
• Monarch Plugin
• Plans & Pricing Get Divi Today
• Documentation
• Help Articles & FAQ
• 24/7 Support
• Developer Docs
• System Status
• Product Updates
• Best Plugins
• Best Hosting
• Divi Meetups
• Divi Facebook Group
• Divi Examples
• Divi Integrations
• Divi Reviews
• Community Forum
• Affiliate Program
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2024 Elegant Themes ®

Toutes les ressources pour ouvrir sa brocante 🛍️

Mettez toutes les chances de votre côté pour monter un projet rentable.

Voici le Business Model Canvas pour votre brocante

Cet article a été écrit par un expert qui a étudié l’industrie et a confectionné le business plan pour une brocante

Vous retrouverez une analyse PESTEL complète, modifiable et sans copyright dans notre modèle de business plan

Nous avons rédigé de nombreux business plans pour des brocantes .

Bien trop souvent, les gérants de ces établissements ne prennent pas le temps de structurer leur projet de manière claire et efficace.

Pourquoi? Parce qu'ils n'ont pas les bons outils et les bonnes structures. Parmi ceux-là, il y a le Business Model Canvas.

Qu'est-ce qu'un Business Model Canvas ? Est-ce que j'en ai besoin pour ma brocante ?

Soyons honnêtes avec vous.

Ce n’est pas un remède miracle, mais le Business Model Canvas est un outil précieux pour structurer votre projet de manière stratégique.

Il permet de visualiser l'ensemble des éléments clés de votre entreprise.

Si vous êtes sur le point d'ouvrir une brocante , utiliser un Business Model Canvas n’est pas juste utile, c’est indispensable.

Il vous aidera à :

• définir clairement votre proposition de valeur, comme une sélection unique d'objets vintage ou un service de restauration de meubles anciens
• identifier vos segments de clientèle, qu'il s'agisse de collectionneurs passionnés, de décorateurs d'intérieur ou de simples curieux en quête de trésors cachés
• structurer vos canaux de distribution, qu'il s'agisse de votre boutique physique, de votre présence en ligne via un site e-commerce ou de marchés et foires spécialisés
• cerner vos principales sources de revenus, que ce soit la vente d'objets, les services de restauration ou des événements thématiques
• mettre en lumière vos ressources clés, telles qu'un réseau de fournisseurs d'objets rares, des artisans spécialisés ou un emplacement stratégique dans une zone fréquentée

Bien sûr, le Business Model Canvas ne garantit pas le succès à lui seul, mais il vous offre une vue d'ensemble claire et une feuille de route pour votre brocante.

Et si vous rédigez un business plan pour votre brocante , le Business Model Canvas est un excellent outil pour vous guider tout au long du processus.

Notre business plan pour une brocante vous aidera à réussir votre projet.

Des exemples pour chaque partie du Business Model Canvas d'une brocante

- Collectionneurs d'antiquités et d'objets vintage - Amateurs de décoration intérieure unique - Familles et individus à la recherche de bonnes affaires et d'objets rares

- Large sélection d'objets anciens et vintage à des prix compétitifs - Ambiance nostalgique et accueillante avec des conseils d'experts en antiquités - Événements spéciaux et ateliers de restauration d'objets anciens

- Brocante physique - Présence en ligne via un site web et les réseaux sociaux (Instagram, Facebook) pour attirer et engager la clientèle - Participation à des marchés et foires locales

- Service personnalisé et conseils sur l'achat et la restauration d'objets - Programmes de fidélité pour clients réguliers - Organisation d'événements exclusifs (ventes privées, ateliers de restauration)

- Vente d'objets anciens et vintage - Frais pour des ateliers de restauration et événements privés - Vente de services de restauration d'objets

- Large inventaire d'objets anciens et vintage - Personnel formé en antiquités et restauration - Local bien situé avec une ambiance accueillante

- Sélection et achat d'objets auprès de particuliers et de fournisseurs - Organisation d'événements et d'ateliers de restauration - Gestion de l'expérience client en magasin (service, ambiance)

- Fournisseurs d'antiquités et d'objets vintage - Artisans locaux spécialisés en restauration - Influenceurs et critiques dans le domaine des antiquités

- Achat d'objets anciens et vintage - Coût du personnel (experts en antiquités, restaurateurs) - Frais d'exploitation (loyer, licences, marketing)

Nous avons également un article dédié à l'analyse SWOT pour ce projet

Ne confondez pas Business Model Canvas, Business Model et Business Plan

Vous êtes nombreux à vous tromper entre ces trois concepts : le business model, le business model canvas, et le business plan.

Le business model canvas, comme on vient de le voir, est un outil pratique pour résumer votre concept sur une seule page.

Vous y mettez vos segments de clientèle (collectionneurs, amateurs de vintage, décorateurs), votre proposition de valeur (objets rares, pièces uniques, conseils d'experts), et vos flux de revenus (vente d'objets, services de restauration, événements thématiques).

C'est visuel, rapide à remplir, et ça vous permet de voir en un coup d'œil si tout se tient.

Le business model, c'est simplement la manière dont votre brocante va gagner de l'argent.

Par exemple, allez-vous vendre uniquement des objets sur place, proposer des services de restauration d'antiquités, ou peut-être organiser des marchés aux puces mensuels ou des ateliers de bricolage vintage ? C'est l'idée centrale de votre activité.

Enfin, le business plan, c'est un document beaucoup plus détaillé. Il inclut tout : votre stratégie marketing (comment attirer des clients dans votre brocante), vos prévisions financières (ce que vous allez dépenser et gagner), et votre plan opérationnel (comment vous allez gérer les stocks d'objets, le personnel, etc.). C'est celui que vous présenterez à un investisseur ou une banque.

En résumé : le business model, c'est le concept ; le canvas, c'est un outil de synthèse ; et le business plan, c'est votre feuille de route complète.

Des exemples de Business Model Canvas complétés pour des brocantes

Un business model canvas pour une brocante vintage.

Fournisseurs d'objets vintage, collectionneurs, antiquaires, associations de passionnés de vintage.

Sélection et acquisition d'objets vintage, restauration et entretien des articles, organisation d'événements thématiques vintage.

Offrir une collection unique d'objets vintage authentiques, permettant aux clients de redécouvrir des pièces d'histoire et de nostalgie.

Fidélisation par des événements exclusifs, newsletters sur les nouvelles acquisitions, programme de fidélité pour les collectionneurs.

Site web, réseaux sociaux, marchés vintage, collaborations avec des influenceurs spécialisés dans le vintage.

Amateurs de vintage, collectionneurs, décorateurs d'intérieur, consommateurs à la recherche d'authenticité.

Achat et restauration d'objets vintage, coûts de logistique, frais de marketing digital, organisation d'événements thématiques.

Vente d'objets vintage, organisation d'événements, services de restauration d'objets, abonnements à des newsletters premium.

Un Business Model Canvas pour une brocante en ligne

Fournisseurs d'objets d'occasion, plateformes de paiement en ligne, services de livraison, influenceurs spécialisés dans la déco et le lifestyle.

Acquisition et mise en ligne d'objets d'occasion, gestion de la plateforme e-commerce, marketing digital, service client en ligne.

Offrir une large sélection d'objets d'occasion de qualité, accessibles en ligne, avec un service de livraison rapide et fiable.

Support client en ligne, newsletters sur les nouvelles acquisitions, programme de fidélité pour les acheteurs réguliers.

Site web, réseaux sociaux, publicités en ligne, partenariats avec des influenceurs.

Consommateurs à la recherche de bonnes affaires, amateurs de déco, jeunes adultes adeptes de l'achat en ligne, collectionneurs.

Coûts de la plateforme e-commerce, frais de marketing digital, coûts de logistique et de livraison, acquisition d'objets d'occasion.

Vente d'objets d'occasion, frais de livraison, abonnements premium pour des offres exclusives, publicités sur la plateforme.

Un Business Model Canvas pour une brocante éphémère

Propriétaires de lieux éphémères, fournisseurs d'objets d'occasion, artisans locaux, agences événementielles.

Organisation de brocantes éphémères, sélection et mise en place des objets, promotion des événements, gestion des ventes sur place.

Créer des événements uniques où les clients peuvent découvrir et acheter des objets d'occasion dans une ambiance conviviale et festive.

Création d'une communauté autour des événements, newsletters sur les prochaines brocantes, fidélisation par des offres exclusives lors des événements.

Réseaux sociaux, publicités locales, partenariats avec des influenceurs et des médias locaux, affichage publicitaire.

Amateurs de brocantes, familles, touristes, consommateurs à la recherche d'expériences uniques et de bonnes affaires.

Location de lieux éphémères, acquisition et transport des objets, frais de promotion et de publicité, coûts logistiques.

Vente d'objets d'occasion, billetterie pour l'accès aux événements, partenariats avec des sponsors locaux, services de restauration sur place.

Un Business Model Canvas vierge à télécharger gratuitement

Si vous ne souhaitez pas modifier le Business Model Canvas de notre business plan, vous pouvez télécharger celui-ci et la remplir avec vos propres éléments.

Bonne utilisation du Business Model Canvas et bon business plan !

Articles complémentaires

• le choix d'une sélection entraîne une actualisation complète de la page