If you’ve been following the tutorials and tips we’ve been sharing here on Mad Tomatoes, chances are you already have a personal blog. You may even already blog with friends and be attracting a lot of visitors. Although starting a personal blog and gaining traffic are very exciting, there are still ways to take your blog to the next level.
You can, for instance, start earning money from your blog. You can earn from ads, accept paid posts or reviews and utilize your blog for other commercial purposes. You can also expand the reach of your blog further through good SEO and general optimization. To push your blog one or two steps further, here are the things to keep in mind.
Good Design and User Experience
Providing a good user experience is always important. You can’t have returning visitors if your blog doesn’t offer a smooth and pleasant reading experience. If you’re still using a standard WordPress theme or a rather generic web design, now is the best time to consider creating a unique layout and design that suits your blog perfectly.
Start by determining a color scheme that works well with your branding or logo. You can then create your own blog layout depending on the content you are sharing; customizing the current theme you’re using to make it more personalized is a great way to start.
You can also choose to invest in a professional web design service. Work with the best freelance web designer Minneapolis has to offer – or one based near you – and create a web design that visitors will enjoy and – more importantly – remember.
Expand to Videos
Videos are big these days. Everyone is making videos about a wide range of subjects. Your blog can really benefit from video in several ways. For starters, videos posted on YouTube often do better SEO-wise. This means you can attract more traffic to your blog through these videos. YouTube also integrates well with AdSense for monetizing.
You can also reach new audience segments through your video content. Not everyone likes to read long-form posts and video is a great way to reach them.
Lastly, videos will complete your portfolio. Yes, your personal blog is a portfolio that potential clients – including brands and digital agencies – browse through before deciding to work with you. By adding videos to your blog, you’re offering more options to these potential clients.
Start Monetizing
Many blog owners start with ads when they want to monetize their blogs. Although ads are great sources of revenue, adding too many ads to the blog will only scare visitors away. If you do want to add advertisements and earn revenue from your blog, be sure to do it subtly.
What you need to be doing is connecting with agencies and brands. Create a profile that represents your blog and who you are. This can be a simple PDF document – similar to your CV – with insights and analytics data. Be personal and tell your side of the story on why you’re blogging and the goals you want to achieve.
Send the profile to well-known brands and agencies in your industry and you will get a lot of opportunities to collaborate and earn revenue in no time. This last tip, along with the previous ones we talked about in this article, will definitely help push your personal blog to a new level.