Have you heard about James Clear or Zen Habits? What about reading personal experiences and stories online?
There are so many people who love following personal blogs online. Maybe this is because, they relate with the writer, are curious about his life, love the writer’s blogging style, or share some common interests with the author.
If you are somebody who wants to share his stories, opinions, experiences, or interests with people then you can definitely consider starting a Blog about it.
Starting a personal blog is an excellent way to earn money while sharing your stories, opinions, or hobbies with the world.
However, it is not as easy as it sounds! Sometimes it can be really overwhelming to get started. There are a lot of things you need to take into consideration while building a blog. Some of these include picking a blog focus, drafting a content strategy, setting up the technical infrastructure, and using various promotional strategies.
But, you don’t have to worry about any of these! We will help you with every step and even give you a guide to follow. In return, you only need to stick with us till the end!
In this article, we will take you through a variety of topics like:
- What is a Personal Blog?
- Popular Personal Blogs
- Steps to starting your Personal blog.
- How to monetize your Personal blogs.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
WHAT IS A PERSONAL BLOG?
A personal blog is concerned with the individual experiences and ideas of the author. Since they are typically written from the first-person perspective, personal blogs are close and intimate.
Personal blogs can cover any subject, from the author’s everyday activities to his opinions and hobbies.
People write personal blogs for a variety of reasons. Personal blogs can serve as a journal, a way to express your suppressed emotions, and a platform for you to share your hobbies and ideas with the world.
In addition, the blog helps you earn money and achieve your goals.
Personal blogging is a great way of developing an online audience and a community that enjoys your hobbies as much as you do.
TOP 5 PERSONAL BLOGS
Here are some top blogs for you to take inspiration:
1. James Clear
James Clear is a personal blog about habits, decision-making, health, happiness, creativity, productivity, life lessons, motivations, self-improvement, and more.
The blog also shares articles on science-based ways to help people live better. The book “Atomic Habits,” written by James Clear, has sold over 9 million copies globally, translated into more than 50 languages, and has been awarded the prestigious #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list.
We love the article about 7 Ways to Retain More of Every Book You Read.
2. Zen Habits
Zen Habits is a personal blog to help you find simplicity and mindfulness in daily life chaos. The blogger helps his readers clear the life clutter and focus on what is important and find happiness.
The author has various programs namely Fearless Habits, Fearless Purpose, Fearless Impact, Fearless Mastery, and many more to help you become the best version of yourself.
We absolutely love the article Moving From Desire to Action.
3. Riskology
Riskology is one of the top personal blogs for guidance on leadership for introverts. You should undoubtedly follow this personal blog to increase your productivity, accomplish more in less time, reduce your stress level, and enhance your health.
The blogger also offers some online professional development courses to help readers achieve their life goals.
There are a lot of articles on the website and we absolutely love all the articles, especially 13 Rules for Being Alone and Being Happy About It, and The Habit Ladder: How To Make A New Routine Stick.
4. Mr. Money Moustache
Mr Money Moustache is one of the best blogs about financial freedom. Are you aiming for an early retirement? Then you ought to read this site and adhere to the financial guidance given by the author.
Apart from financial advice the author also shares some other topics like education, truck pulling, and many more.
We absolutely love these articles: Why You’ll Probably Never Run Out Of Money and Getting Rich: from Zero to Hero in One Blog Post.
5. Chris Guillebeau
Chris Guillebeau started the blog “The Art of Non-Conformity” in 2008, where he wrote on things like travel, entrepreneurship, and independent work. It soon became a well-liked personal blog called ChrisGuillebeau.com. The creator is an awarded best-selling NYT author, businessman, and speaker.
Some popular topics you’ll discover while reading the blog include Life, Work, and Travel.
We love the blog The Man Who Worked 24 Hours a Day for a Year.
The author earns money through selling his books, affiliate marketing, and speaking at various gigs and public events.
Having gained an understanding of the different types of personal blogs that exist on the internet, we will now guide you through the process of creating your own
HOW TO START A PERSONAL BLOG?
1. CHOOSE A BLOG NICHE
The initial step towards creating your personal blog involves selecting a niche or genre. Would you like to establish a blog centered on financial freedom, self-love education, sharing personal stories, or something else entirely? It’s important to choose a niche that you can specialize in and become an authority. Attempting to cover multiple blog genres could potentially leave your audience feeling overwhelmed, so it’s essential to make a well-informed decision.
As you contemplate your blog niche, consider the following questions:
- What do you have the most experience in?
- Are you passionate about the topic in addition to having experience?
- What do you want to discuss with your audience?
- Which demographic are you targeting? Adults, youth, or another group?
- Are people interested in your chosen niche?
- Will it be easy for you to modify your niche in the long run if you decide to do so?
- What are your goals, and where do you see yourself in the future?
If you’re struggling to find a niche after answering these questions, don’t worry! We’re here to help. Below are some personal blog niche ideas to inspire you.
LIST OF PERSONAL BLOG NICHES
- Daily-life updates
- Travel Experiences
- Life Learnings
- Financial Freedom
- Motivation
- Self-love
- Real Life Stories
- Sports
- Opinion Blogs
- Hobby (Golf, Tennis, Art, etc)
- Multiple Hobbies
- Personal Cause ( Women Empowerment ) and many more
Are you all set with your Personal Blog Niche? Great! You have successfully started your blogging journey.
2 SELECT A BLOGGING PLATFORM
The subsequent step is to establish worldwide accessibility for your blog. It’s essential to expand your readership and engage with individuals from different parts of the globe.
This calls for choosing a blogging platform. A blogging platform is a platform to create and manage your blogging site content.
There are many platforms available online, some of which are free while others are paid. Whereas, self-hosted paid blogging platforms include WordPress.org, Joomla, and many more.
Even though you might not want to invest extra money, we nevertheless advise you to go with a paid self-hosted blogging platform.
Wondering why? Don’t worry! We got you informed.
SHORTCOMINGS OF HOSTED BLOGGING PLATFORMS
LIMITED SCOPE OF EARNING
When you work with a free blogging platform, you essentially give the service provider full access to your content.
This is because the platform can add advertisements to your content and make money through it very conveniently. Would you mind doing this? Since you invested a lot of time and effort while developing the content, you should ideally be reaping the benefits.
LESSER CONTROL OVER YOUR BLOG SITE
Your blog can suddenly disappear overnight if the blogging platform is sold or you violate any terms and conditions given by the company. Therefore, choosing a hosted blogging platform is hands down cheaper but does not give you full freedom over your content.
MINIMUM RESOURCES
With the free blogging platforms comes along limited bandwidth, memory, and video time. Moreover, if you work with a free platform, plugins, domains, or other free web hosting services for your blog site, will all be restricted. Therefore, it will be difficult for you to grow and earn in the long run.
NOT CHEAP IN ACTUALITY
Even if you select the free hosting option, the price will increase if you ultimately decide to give your website greater functionality. In other words, upgrading your free blog will cost you money.
After seeing all the limitations of the free blogging platforms, we recommend you opt for the paid ones to kick-start your blogging journey.
3. SELECT A HOSTING PROVIDER
After you have chosen a blogging platform another step is to choose a hosting service provider if you haven’t signed up for it already.
A hosting service is essentially in charge of connecting your website to the internet; hence, if there is no hosting service or hosting provider, there will undoubtedly be no connection between the website and the internet.
To help you with this, here is a list of things to keep in mind:
- Storage – From your website content to all your marketing resources, your hosting provider will host everything for you. This means you will require enough space to support this. Mostly you can do away with 5 MB of storage.
- Security: A malicious attack on your website can easily erase all your data within seconds. Therefore,while choosing your hosting provider you need to check on the security factor. The host needs to run frequent backups to save your data.
- Speed: Visitors are not going to stay for long if your website takes too much time to load. With so many options available, they will jump to another website, easily. This makes very important for you to choose a hosting provider with an efficient speed.
- Reviews and Ratings: When people are not satisfied with any service, they do not forget to leave a bad review online. Therefore, checking reviews and ratings online will give you a clear picture while buying.
- Consumer Support: Nothing is perfect, not even technology. There can be chances of hosting failure or other issues while your website is live. This means you will need prompt customer support to resolve all your queries.
Our Recommendation: If you have chosen WordPress as your blogging platform, you can use Bluehost as your hosting provider, this is the best bet.
4. SELECT THE RIGHT WEBSITE NAME
The next step is to choose a domain name that will attract visitors to your site. Your domain name should reflect your personal blog’s essence and have a unique element that differentiates it from others.
To help you pick the perfect name for your blog, consider these guidelines:
AN IDEAL DOMAIN NAME MUST-HAVES
- Free domain names come with branding it. Let’s say all the free domain names for WordPress have ”.Wordpress.com” at the end. This makes the domain name look unprofessional and can have a negative impact on your visitors. Therefore, go with paid domain names
- Most preferably, use a ‘.com’ extension since it is well-known and used widely
- To make it Google savvy add keywords that match your niche
- As you are aiming for Personal blogs, you can put your name to make it more relatable
- Make it unique
- Should be easy to understand
- Make your name eye-catchy
- The names must be accessible and unclaimed by competing brands
- Should fit your blog genre and target audience
- The name should be brandable
- To attract visitors make it short and sweet
Instead of wasting time looking for a domain name that fits your needs right away, we suggest working with average domain names. Spend your time and energy on activities that will be more fruitful, including branding and marketing. Do not let the name of your website deter you from starting a blog.
5. SET UP A THEME FOR YOUR WEBSITE
Until now, you’ve already selected a blogging platform and a hosting company. The next step is to design your website.
Nobody will even bother to read your postings if your website is not attractive. A poorly constructed website is the worst thing imaginable!
It is obvious that you need to update your designs if you want to offer your users a first-rate user experience.
It may be difficult to choose a theme from among the hundreds or even thousands of themes that are available online to meet your creative needs. As a result, we have created a list of suggestions to aid you in the process.
SELECT THE RIGHT THEME
NAVIGATION
When people visit your website, they will read the material. What transpires, though, once they finish reading? Do you want visitors to visit some of your other blogs, subscribe to your email list, contact you, or take some other action? The navigational structure of the website includes all of this. One of the keys to a great website is simple yet effective navigation.
COLOR
Consumers can be influenced by the psychological effects of different colors. Thus, it’s crucial to select colors that complement your brand and incorporate them into all of your branding materials. Thankfully, paid themes usually offer a wide range of color and design options, which simplifies this process for you.
FLEXIBLE
More than 50% of the users prefer using mobile to browse the web. So, pick a theme that is responsive or mobile-friendly.
DESIGN OPTIONS
A large customization library to meet your design needs is a must while searching for a website theme.
WEBSITE PERFORMANCE
Select themes that provide essential plugins to incorporate necessary features, such as SEO, into your website.
Go ahead, and choose a Personal Blog Theme that ticks off all the parameters given above.
6. EFFECTIVE BRANDING
After creating your website, now the question is- how can you set your brand apart from your competition?
The solution to this issue is to carry out efficient branding.
Why do people automatically think of McDonald’s when burgers are mentioned? this is because of the strong branding strategies used by the company.
Branding is a continuous process that is not only done at the start of a blogging career. An effective brand indeed is actually “perpetual” in nature.
Branding needs to be an ongoing process as long as the brand is being used, to accommodate varied societal advancements.
Do you know that a number of well-known businesses frequently switch up their logos in an effort to better serve their customers and go viral?
There are numerous elements that affect branding, some of which are listed here.
VARIOUS FACTORS OF BRANDING
LOGO
The significance of your company’s logo cannot be overstated as it conveys your brand identity, values, and principles. A good logo increases the likelihood that customers will remember it for a very long time after seeing it. Therefore, you need to design your logo carefully.
CREDO
Finding your brand’s USP is necessary after selecting your logo. What distinguishes you from the competition? Is it the way you post? Are they your stories? The images do you employ? or anything else? Determine your brand’s USP/ credo and promote it to your blog’s readers.
BRAND SIGNATURE LINE
A brand’s signature line is a condensed statement of its core principles. Examples include “Open happiness” for Coca-Cola and “Finger-Lickin’ Good” for KFC.
COLOR HUE
Different hues are intended to elicit different emotions in the human brain. For instance, the color red can make you feel eager, excited, paused, and a variety of other feelings. While green can promote serenity. A different colors make you feel differently, you should take particular attention when selecting the brand’s colors.
TYPEFACE
As with colors, picking the right font type for your business is also crucial when branding. Depending on your design requirements, you can either choose a typeface that is completely distinct from your logo or one that complements it.
Whatever you choose, make sure the typeface you select blends in well with the other elements of your design to convey the true identity of your blog.
STAY CONSISTENT
Do you notice differences between distinct brands on different online platforms? Of course not! To make it simple for users to recognize the businesses, they apply the same branding elements throughout all of the internet channels. You must strictly adhere to your branding elements. It’s always best to stay consistent!
Selecting your branding elements carefully is important since it will help you stand out from the crowd.
7. PREPARE YOUR BLOG CONTENT
By this point, we presume that your blogging website is completely operational and you’ve started developing your brand.
Working on your blog’s content is the next step you need to take. Your blogging site’s content will be its key selling point, therefore you need to be sure it is of the greatest caliber.
To achieve this we will offer you some tips to prepare your posts the correct way.
SUGGESTIONS FOR OUTLINING YOUR BLOGS
PREPARE A CONTENT SCHEDULER
To develop your content strategy, we recommend conducting web research to determine what topics your intended audience is looking for.
Using keyword research tools like Ubersuggest, Google searches, a variety of online discussion boards like Reddit, competition analysis, or even social media, might help you have a grasp of this.
To get the best results you must combine trending topics with those with little resistance.
SKIMMABLE CONTENT
If your content is lengthy and not segmented properly, sorry, nobody is going to read it. Therefore, you need to put in the effort to make your content skimmable. Most editors provide six subheadings, numbered from H1 to H6.
To divide your information into accessible and understandable chunks, you must include a variety of subheads in your posts.
This will not only make it easier for readers to skim through your material but will also enhance how Google understands it, helping it to rank higher.
Another important thing is, no matter what level of headline you employ, the objective is to persuade readers to read the rest of the blog post.
To accomplish this, you must use a headline that is clear-cut, unambiguous, preferably conveys a story, and serves as a summary.
A POWERFUL OPENING IS A MUST
To immediately pique readers’ interest, your blog’s start Or the opening paragraph—which comes right after your title and subheads—is essential.
The choice of the beginning sentence or introduction affects the decision of the reader. He will either continue reading, stop reading, or do something else.
As people nowadays have a relatively shorter attention span, you need to capture people’s interest as soon as you can.
You must be thinking –How?
To make your introduction concise and engaging, you can utilize a story, a quotation, or some stimulating questions.
ADD INTERESTING VISUALS
Making a dull piece of content appealing is another pro tip we would like to give.
Even if the content is excellent, people will surely leave if you don’t include any images to make it stand out.
Therefore, you must include captivating podcasts, eye-catching photos, and engaging videos in your blogs to make them visually appealing. You should strive to make your blogs as intriguing as possible.
We understand that you are a writer and not a graphic designer. If you feel this is not your cup of tea you may hire a professional to take over these things. This investment will actually reward you in the long run
Not everybody is interested in long texts. so, break up the monotony with some eye-catching graphics.
END IT WELL
To ensure that your readers are aware of the information you just presented, don’t forget to summarise your blogs in the end.
Try labeling it “Conclusion” rather than something fancy to make it apparent. You should be aware that some people choose not to read the blog further after reading the conclusion. As a result, you must make it as robust as you can ( highlight all the important points).
If you bear these points in mind, we’re confident you will be able to draft content that works as a lead magnet.
8. PROMOTE YOUR BLOGS
Simply said, all of your blogs are a waste of time if you don’t do any meaningful promotion!
That is, if you want to increase the amount of traffic to your website, you must effectively promote your blogs. You should use both free and paid promotion techniques to achieve this.
DIFFERENT PROMOTION STRATEGIES
- Utilize online groups
- Make content google-savvy
- Build email list
- Interviewing famous people
- Product offerings (physical and digital)
- Social media
- Present your testimonies
- Connect with the readers of your blog
- Link Building
- Blogger Outreach
Try out a few of the above-mentioned tactics to see which one suits you the best.
9. EARN MONEY
Once you’ve promoted your blogs, they can start to bring in money. If you haven’t already, what are you waiting for? Do it right now.
METHODS OF EARNING
- Sponsored posts
- Speaking at various colleges
- Affiliate Marketing (work with premium affiliates as it affects your brand image)
- Offline and online product offerings (T-shirts, mugs, ebooks, books, niche-related courses, organizing coaching, etc)
- Workshops or webinars on your blog genre
- Writing paid reviews for businesses that fit your niche
- Launching monthly, quarterly, or even annual subscriptions
- YouTube
- Paid Newsletters
- Paid collaborations
Would you be interested in a different blog about how to make money from personal blogging? If so, please let us know in the comments.
CONCLUSION
Starting a personal blog is an exciting venture that offers endless opportunities for self-expression, creativity, and personal growth. By following the steps we’ve outlined – from selecting your niche, to finding the perfect domain name and setting up your blogging platform – you’re well on your way to creating a successful blog. Remember that the most important aspect of starting a personal blog is to stay true to yourself and share your unique voice and perspective with the world. So go ahead, dive in, and create a blog that reflects your personality, interests, and passions. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
