How to Start a Blog Business (Make Money Online)

If you’re looking for a way to make money online in Nigeria, starting a blogging business might just be the best way out. The good thing about starting a blog is that you don’t need an expensive budget or capital to get started.

Join us as we dig deep into how to start a successful blog business that generates revenue. This post will teach you great tips on how to start a blog business, how to set up a free blog and also how to monetize your blog in other to start making money.

How to setup your own blog in 5 steps.

Let’s dive into the step-by-step process of starting a blog.

Step 1: Know What You Want To Blog About

Try as much as possible to create your blog around something that interests you or something you’re passionate about. You could even be an expert in that field!

This will make your blogging journey more fun rather than being a task that you have to do.

Below are some possible ideas of what to blog about, though not limited.

  • Home
  • Money
  • Business
  • Entrepreneur
  • Fashion
  • Parenting
  • Family
  • Crafts
  • Finance
  • Fitness & health
  • Food
  • Inspiration and advice
  • Travel
  • Games
  • Relationships
  • Electronics
  • Music
  • Photography
  • Painting
  • Sewing/knitting
  • Politics
  • Animal
  • TV shows
  • Robotics
  • Astronomy
  • And many more!

When it comes to choosing what you want to blog about, there are 2 certain questions you need to ask yourself.

#1: Will I Enjoy Learning More About This Topic?

If you know that you know you don’t love the topic you want to blog about, is better not to start it in the first instance.

If you don’t love a topic and you’re trying hard to create content around that topic, it’s going to show in your writing. Which can be a turn off to your readers.

Whichever topic you decided to choose, make sure you’re naturally passionate about it and most importantly willing to learn more about it.

If you’re passionate and curious about your chosen field you won’t find it difficult to come up with content around the topic.

If you still don’t know what to choose, you can look inward and think about something you know you have an edge on.

Or probably something people tends to ask your opinion on etc. It could be a relationship, politics, soccer etc.

#2: Is It Competitive?

You may think you’re very passionate about soccer and football and you feel you can quickly create a blog around that.

You may be surprised at the size of the competition you’ll get. A quick Google search will tell you what I’m talking about.

starting a soccer blog niche as an example

The result from that is over 2.4 billion, do I still need to tell you that it’s already saturated? If you want to choose a niche like this, stay from the term “soccer”

Go for longer tail keywords with less competition like a broad term like “soccer”.

narrowing down the soccer niche blog to england u23 league table

From the screenshot above, you’ll notice that the keyword “England Under23 development league” has lesser competition compared to “soccer”.

The same thing goes for topics around health and other competitive ones.

Step 2: Choose Your Blogging Platform

Once you’ve understood what you want to blog about you need to choose the platform at which your blog will be established.

There are several platforms online to choose from (Blogger, Tumblr etc.). But don’t be carried away WordPress is still the best.

blogging platform

All have pros and cons, but WordPress is by far the most popular (we use WordPress for our blog), and for good reason. It’s flexible, functional and has a large community of users with free themes, plugins, and resources.

Why You Should Avoid Creating Your blog on a Free Blogging Platform

It’s not like you can’t create a free blog. You can, but it will be limited in terms of what you can do with it; in fact, you can count professionalism out of it.

These are the major reason you shouldn’t go for free blogging platform:

  • You won’t have 100% ownership of your blog
  • Unattractive URL
  • Difficult to make money
  • Can’t be easily customize
  • Limited in terms of capacity
  • Inefficient
  • Not user-friendly etc.

It will be wise not to create a free blog, especially when you plan on making money with it. Most times people think they can start from the free platform then migrate to self-host account later.

Doing this could cost you a lot, not only can it cost you your follower it’s also time-consuming and a difficult task. So it’s always better to start the right way.

Step 3: Get a Domain Name and a Web host

Two things you need to create a blog – domain name and a web host. These are actually the only thing you’ll have to pay for while creating a blog.

Domain Name

Your domain name will be your unique blog address where people can easily find you online. For example, Facebook domain name is www.Facebook.com. Your own domain name will be (www.yournewblogname.com). A dot com domain name costs like N4,500 while dot com.ng example (www.yourblogname.com.ng) cost like N1,500.

Your domain name is very important because:

  • It defines your brand
  • Like the popular saying goes… the first impression matter a lot. It’s your first impression on your readers.

So it’s always good to put some thought into choosing your domain name but not too much thought though.

I’ll advise you go for a branded name, catchy and easy to pronounce domain name. This will make your blog stand out.

You also need to get a web host for your blog. If you don’t have a web host, you won’t be able to make use of your domain name or set up your blog. A web host is a service provider that keeps your blog accessible on the internet for everyone. It stores all the files, images and content that your blog has and displays it to the visitors.

4. Create & launch your blog.

This step depends on which blogging platform you choose to use. If you are to use WordPress as your blogging platform, you need to know how to install WordPress on your web hosting services.

Everyone has a different idea of how they want their blog to look. One of the great things about a WordPress blog is that you can customize your blog to fit the design and purpose you want it to few.

5. Write & publish your first post.

Now that your blog is up and running it’s time to actually do some blogging. Your first post can simply be a paragraph announcing the birth of your new blog. If you’re a bit more ambitious, you can craft a longer post with a nifty image or two.

Creating a well-designed blog and writing great content is just the start. In order to get readers to your blog, you will need to spend some time promoting it.

How to make money from your blog.

Once you’ve completely set up your blog and you acquired a pretty decent audience of followers that are interested in your blog, then you are ready to start making money from it.

There are couples of ways to monetize your blog, below is a list of 3 popular to make money from blogging.

1. Google Adsense.

Google AdSense is a revenue-sharing opportunity for publishers in the Google network. Google place ads for goods and services that are relevant to the content of your site, targeted to the people who frequent your pages. In turn, you get paid a small amount when the ad is either displayed on your page or clicked on.

2. Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate marketing is when you recommend a product or service to your audience using special tracking links, and then get a referral commission for every time someone buys after clicking your link. You can find a list of popular affiliate marketing programs in Nigeria here.

3. Sponsored post & banner ads.

When you have a good amount of traffic and terrific influence over your audience, other companies will pay to sponsor a blog post or your website. They can sponsor your entire site, which would cost them more, or a single page. Some just have advertising.

Let me hear your thought on this. Which of the steps is giving you a hard time or what do you think about all this in general?

About the Author

Israel Eke

Hi, my name is Israel and I'm the creator of iTechnology. They say the best way to learn something is to teach it to others. And this is ultimately what this website is all about. I am more than happy to share with you the knowledge and experiences I have accumulated (and still accumulating) in my online journey, In the hope of somehow helping you in yours. If you need a Blogsite, Personal or Business Website, or further assistance, feel free to call or write me.09054795854, itechnology.ng@gmail.com

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