12 Tips for Beginner Bloggers to Kickstart Your Blog Biz

If you’re thinking of starting a blogging business now, there might be many things standing in your way. Before we dive into the list of tips for beginner bloggers, let’s talk about them.

Why You Haven’t Started a Blog Yet

That includes the number of other blogs out there. If you look at that and consider it competition, you might think that there’s a website covering every topic under the sun already so a new one won’t make any difference and won’t get any attention.

If you look at how long it may take to rank high in Google, especially this year, you might not even start a blog.

If you read about all the things currently happening in the blogging space, how many bloggers lost almost all of their traffic overnight due to recent changes in the algorithm as well as the switch to AI-driven search online, you might lose any hope of ever getting a spot in the search engine results page, and thus never getting traffic to your blog, which means no profit either.

If you look at all the things you’ll need to do to actually set up a professional site, get it up and running, add functionality, build an email list, publish content constantly, optimize it, keep up to date with the latest trends, tools and algorithm changes, monetize in multiple ways and the possibility of waiting years till you turn this into a full-time business, you might never start a blog, let alone do the work consistently to grow and monetize it.

Things are different for bloggers today than they were a few years ago. And even one year ago. But that also has an advantage for you.

While others may have lost their traffic due to Google’s updates, while they may need to do massive content audits (like me) to update old content and give it another chance to rank higher so they can bring their traffic back, while they’ve tried a million things to grow their blog, while they are still fixing mistakes (such as errors on their site, bad content from years ago, overly optimized posts when different SEO practices were working, and so on), you don’t need to worry about any of this.

You can start with a clean slate, and grow a blog more strategically, the right way, and not rely on a single source of traffic or income.

Let’s dive into the blogging tips I have for you so you avoid some mistakes as a blogger and build a site and create content that both readers and search engines love and trust.

The tips are in no particular order, and the first category is all about your blog content.

Tips for Beginner Bloggers

1. Create original content.

AI is only going to become more popular, and maybe AI content will dominate the Internet one day. That will make it harder for people to trust sources, that will mean a lot of low-quality content and very bad advice being shared on websites.

In a world like that, original content becomes an asset. It’s something no one can take away from you. Search engines will know it’s original, and so will people if you keep publishing it consistently.

2. Create people-first content.

These tips are actually according to Google’s exact guidelines. Content sites are all about helpful content, that means original, quality and created for people, not for search engines.

While it’s still important to target keywords and optimize your blog posts, focus on people first.

3. Don’t overdo SEO.

SEO means search engine optimization, and it’s about the steps bloggers take to actually make a specific article rank in the search results for a keyword phrase it targets.

It involves things like:

finding a good keyword;
including it in the title;
in at least one subheading;
in the introduction and conclusion;
a couple times throughout the text;
also adding some synonyms of it naturally;
adding an image to the post and including the keyword in its alt text field;
linking from other posts on your blog to the new one (that’s called internal linking);
and also using the keyword in the text you link.

These are examples of on-page SEO, but the rules of the game are changing now. With Google prioritizing people-first content, and demoting unnatural content in the search results, you may want to slow down with your SEO.

That means not obsessing over keywords and how many times they are included in a post, not optimizing every single piece of content on your site, not writing just for the sake of covering a keyword or to make a piece longer so it can rank better.

Just keep it natural.

4. Write for your ideal readers.

Define your target reader and create content with them in mind. That means covering the topics they are interested in and want to know more about and providing tips that help with what they’re struggling with.

Once you do have readers and email subscribers, you can get feedback, see what content resonates with them the most and create more of it, listen to their requests or questions and create new articles based on that.

5. Start an email list early on.

The next one of my best tips for beginner bloggers is to not leave starting an email list for one day, but actually do it soon after starting the website.

Your list is the only thing you have actual control over. There you have direct access to your audience and can form relationships. They’ve given you their email address, they trust you, like you and want to hear from you.

So send them weekly newsletters, put effort into growing your email list, provide value to subscribers every week, get feedback, and – eventually – monetize your email list but without ruining people’s experience.

It could be by selling your paid offers, affiliate marketing, or – indirectly – getting traffic back to your site, which ultimately increases your ad revenue, and so on.

Email marketing takes time, and is not easy. But it’s something you need to get done soon, it’s part of building the foundation of your blogging business.

The next category of tips I want to share are about setting up your blog and doing it right from day one. Here’s what I mean.

6. Pick the right niche.

Back in the days, you could easily grow a website that covers multiple niches. Now, things online are more about topical authority.

Meaning that you cover one topic really well, build authority in it, search engines reward you for it, and readers actually stick around to learn from you. They trust you, can invest in your programs, or click your affiliate links, and will likely sign up to your email list and just consider you an expert and keep reading your future posts.

That’s engagement, and it’s a key metric for bloggers.

Instead of being all over the place and covering many topics and leaving some behind for a while, focus on what you know best, what you are truly passionate about, what you’ll never get bored of writing about.

Don’t forget to make sure that’s a profitable niche. If other sites exist online that are making real money, and you want to give this a go and are serious about it, then go for that blog niche.

7. Stick to it.

Picking your niche is one thing. Creating content on it for a few months is another step.

But after that? That’s when you’re really being tested to see if blogging is for you and if you’ve picked the right topic.

If you see no results whatsoever, will you keep going?

It takes time to build traffic and earn from your platform, but giving up early on is the surest way to never see any profit.

Consistency is the name of the game. Be dedicated to your goal, even be obsessed with it, I’d say.

You need to be learning all you can about blogging, to be getting better at it, to produce content consistently, grow your audience, optimize and monetize strategically, promote the content, build presence on other platforms too so you don’t rely just on Google traffic.

There will be moments when you feel down. There will be times when you leave your blog behind. But coming back to it is crucial. Even if no one is reading.

Pick a niche, start creating content, and stick to it.