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

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Here are the four main ways you can benefit from creating a blog business plan, especially for beginners:

• A business plan for a blog gives you a clear picture of what you want to achieve
• Helps you create a greater sense of responsibility
• Forces you to set clear priorities (which add up to your overall goals)
• Shows you some of the challenges you can expect along the way

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

Now, let’s talk about creating a plan blog business plans that can guide you to where you want to be in the coming weeks, months, and years.

We’ll start by diving into developing your own blog business plans that will set you on the path to generating income as quickly as possible. as quickly as possible.

1. Define your blog business plans and set meaningful goals

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

That means laying the groundwork for everything from what niche you’ll be blogging in, who your target audience will be, what (tangible) blogging goals are most important to you. and at least a vague idea of ​​how you plan to make money from your blog in the near future.

Choosing a niche

Choosing a niche blogging is one of the the most important steps you can take on your path to generating income from your blog.

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

• Photography
• Crafts
• Design
• Parenting
• Marketing
• Personal Finance
• Career Development

When it comes to choosing a niche, the sky truly is the limit. If there’s a subject area that’s in enough demand, and you’re really interested in building a blogging business around it, then it has the makings of a potentially profitable niche. See my guide for more information: Choosing a Niche to Blog About (Examples).

The reason why choosing a niche comes first when designing your blog business plans is that the way your blog works as a business will be heavily influenced by the niche you are operating in. Only after you’ve landed in a clear niche can you move on to 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 engaging to learn 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 what you sell. when you finally start monetizing your content.

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

Think of your readers in terms of of demographic and psychographic data that define them:

• Demographics: The quantitative traits of your readers. Such as age, gender, location, job title.
• Psychographics: More immeasurable traits such as values, interests, attitudes, and belief systems.

In summary, who are your target readers and what problems will you solve for them?

Answering that fundamental question will also help you determine the type of content you will create, as well as the best channels to monetize that content. content.

Determine how you will monetize your blog

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

Still, it’s helpful to plan today how you’d like to monetize your blog (ideally in a way that involves your own unique strengths).

This will help you break down overall goals into small tasks that won’t overwhelm you on a daily basis.

When you enter a keyword you’re considering blogging about, you’ll get dozens of research-backed keyword ideas.

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

If you’re not sure what the best name for your blog is, dig a little deeper in this guide: How to name a blog (Examples). And if you want to shop around your hosting options, check out these comparison guides that I keep regularly updated here on my blog:

• The Best Monthly Hosting Plans on the Market Today
• 9 of the Best Cheap Hosting Plans for Blogging on a Budget
• My List of the Best Free Hosting Plans to Get Started on a Budget

Design Your Blog With Branding in Mind

Another advantage of using Bluehost to power your blog is that they offer an easy one-click installation of WordPress immediately after signing up. .

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

The fact that WordPress is also free makes it a no-brainer, as it means lowering your expenses (a bonus in any blogging business plan).

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

A thing to define 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 is all about the visual appeal of your blog. Craft your blog design in such a way that it is attractive to your ideal audience and easy to navigate.
• Blog Personality: Your blog personality encompasses your writing tone, style, color palettes, and the vibe you want your readers to capture.
• Your vision and mission: This will help determine the type of content you produce. For example, my blog is about helping other bloggers (like you) to be more successful at turning their interests into a profitable online business.

For more information, be sure to read my step-by-step guide: How to Start a Blog (and Make Money) to get all the basics on your blog, before moving on to the traffic and income generation aspects of your blog business plan. And be sure to take a look at these blog examples to see how successful blogs work today.

4. Plan your traffic generation strategy

Traffic is the currency of the Internet and one of the main objectives to work on the business plans of your blog. Without traffic, you won’t be able to monetize your blog.

In the past year alone, my blog has attracted over 4.4 million readers, and it’s the useful content I provided for those readers that helped me generate more of $50,000/month for a few months of the year (through a combination of the different ways I make money blogging).

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

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

Find out how to match your traffic sources to the types of readers you want to attract, and your blogging business is sure to thrive.

So how do you drive traffic to your blog?

Taken from my (larger) guide: How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog, we’re going to break down some of the top-hitting strategies for driving readers to your blog.

Build niche-specific SEO optimized content

The most important factor that will drive more people to your blog is to create extremely valuable content within your niche.

If you can create content that is share-worthy by your readers, then more people who come across your article, whether from social media sites, search engines, online communities, or otherwise, will want to spread the word to others they know . .

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

No matter how great your content is, however, it still has to be discoverable on search engines. of the Internet (mostly Google, nowadays).

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:

• Refining 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 compatibility and reducing page load times
• Promoting Your Content (Where Your Audience Spends Their Time Online)

For a deeper dive into how to quickly optimize your blog content, read my guide: 10 SEO Strategies for Blogs to get more readers today.

Use guest blogging to increase your reach

Guest blogging is hands down the #1 way to attract r top quality, highly targeted traffic to your blog (from the websites where your ideal readers already spend their time).

Look at the spike in t traffic I got from my first guest post in 2014 on Buffer’s blog:

So what is a guest blog? It’s really quite simple.

Guest blogging is the act of writing a blog post that you publish on a website other than your own, presumably one that has the right kind of audience you’re trying to take advantage in. It’s beneficial to the blog or publication that accepts your (high-quality) guest post, because they get the free content they want for their readers, and you get the opportunity to tastefully link to your own blog within the guest post. .

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

• Relevant traffic. This is extremely important, so make sure you guest blog on sites frequented by your target 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 to your blog (which is a positive sign that search engines look for when assessing the trust and credibility of a website). This, in turn, will help improve your organic search ranking 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 the opportunity to connect with new readers.
• Establish his 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 need to be of the highest standards if you expect your campaign to really pay off in that Aim to attract readers who want more of your content. So far on his blog business plan though, I have no doubt he’s committed.

Build and grow an email list

Another reliable way to drive (return) traffic to your blog is by building an email list of readers who have already consumed your content and want to come back for more.

Grow Your email list (over time) is one of the best ways to consistently drive more people to your blog. And blog email marketing is not as daunting a task as it may seem, it can even help you monetize faster with affiliate marketing.

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

If you can generate traffic to your website (i.e. the right traffic), then turning your blog into a money 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 the working process of your blog

Formulating an actual process by which you will take your blog’s business plan from paper to the real world is a fundamental step.

Your work process will be the roadmap that will direct the activities in which you dedicate your time (create content, promote it, monetize it) to propel you forward and achieve the business objectives of your blog. Some of the processes you’ll need to develop a clear game plan for include:

Decide how often you’ll create and post content

Content, whether it’s written , audio or video, is the backbone of any successful blog.

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

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

As well as the editorial calendar that dictates when you should publish new articles (and what those topics/should be the titles) Other aspects of content creation you’ll need to decide on include answering questions like:

• What do you think about your blog titles? Use my free blog title generator tool for help.
• Will you write everything yourself? If not, can you afford to hire writing help?
• What is a realistic goal for how often you can expect to publish a new article?
• How will you promote your content?

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• Are you going to get custom designs or images for your content? Who will be in charge of your designs?

The bottom line when it comes to content creation is that you need to create high-quality content that positively impacts results for your readers (of consistently).

When and why you should outsource

As with all businesses, growth eventually leads to one thing: work overload.

While it may not be today, you should anticipate and prepare for this stage in your blogging 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 get much faster results on your blog if you can afford to help from time to time. Also, on the plus side, hiring contractors to help with your blog tasks can be a nice deduction when it comes to doing your bloggers taxes at the end of the year.

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

Try to do everything on your own account can lead to quality issues or worse, result in burnout that can lead to complete abandonment of your blog.

How much time will you spend on your blogging 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 want.

Just because it’s a side business, however, doesn’t mean you can neglect your blog and expect it to continue to grow despite your lack of attention.

You have to decide up front:

• How many hours each day (and w eek) can you safely commit to your blogging business
• Find the exact blocks of time you will use during the day and place placeholders on your calendar
• Respect the commitment you’ve made to growing your blog
• Know that how much time you can invest determines how much bloggers earn

All the planning in the world is worthless if you don’t stick to the times you’ve allotted to work on your blog. As a side note, if you’re having trouble with your content planning efforts, you can grab my free blog planner pack and kick things up a notch today.

Set aside as much time as you can realistically spare — and Naturally, the more, the better. Not only will it help you grow your blog (and your income) faster, but it will also help you see and value it as a serious business.

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

It will require the formation of new habits and a level of discipline on your part, but it also requires everything in life worth striving for.

6.Start (and Optimize) Your Blog

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

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

If you get this far in your blog business plan, launch your blog, and go on to work hard to grow it, then congratulations! You need to reward yourself.

At this point, you will have:

• Established business goals for your blog
• Carved out a clear niche for yourself
• You researched your audience
• Designed and created your blog (optimizing it for SEO)

And you probably discovered an article or two, you’re all set to start writing.

So… once you officially launch your blog, it’s time to raise awareness and start attracting readers.

Tap into communities The Right Online Readers

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

My best advice for blogging is to experiment with these platforms too:

• Start answering questions on Quora (and gladly link to your blog when be appropriate). )
• Engage in thoughtful discussions on sites like Reddit and carefully test the waters by promoting your blog after building your credibility in a space
• Find niche communities on Slack, Facebook groups, forums on LinkedIn and look for independently owned community sites that focus on your vertical

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

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

Promote your content on social media social media

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

Ask for support, create contact us to get you closer to the day of your launch and see how involved your social network can get into your pr content creation process.

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

Check out my detailed guide on how to promote your blog for several proven strategies that have helped thousands of my readers. create more profitable blogs.

Ask your network to help you get the word out

One of the biggest benefits of blogging is that it helps you build a network of like-minded people… and chances are you already have at least a small network of people you connect with well, from friends to family, coworkers, former classmates, industry partners, or others.

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. Some ways to do this are by asking them to:

• Announce your release by sharing your posts on social media
• Receive a blog post from you. (if it’s a relevant destination)
• Be a featured guest on your podcast, or request a presentation from a more relevant show host

There are many other ways You can take advantage of your network, but this gives you a good idea of ​​where to start.

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

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

But to grow your site to that stage, a strategic blog business plan is required. I recommend downloading my free blog business plan template today.

Want my free blog business plan template?

Get my free blog business plan template. free blog business plan in both Google Doc and PDF (that 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, however, you can increase your chances of escaping the world of work by 9 to 5 and give yourself the freedom to live life. on their own terms. as a full-time blogger with a real business model that fuels your long-term growth.

So, if you haven’t already, start writing your own blogging business plan using the framework I’ve provided. broken down in this guide.

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

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