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You have finally set up your blog. You have chosen your niche and started to fill your blog with useful and relevant content. Much to your excitement, traffic is starting to come in. From the content that you have been putting up to the search engine optimization efforts you have been implementing, looks like things are going in the right direction.
For those who blog for blogging’s sake, they would probably be content with the idea that they have an audience, and nothing more. Many bloggers, however, want more out of their blogs. They want to grow their blog and cash in on it (maybe using Adsense). If you’re more like the latter and you already have a functioning blog, it’s time to scale things up and start to make some serious money.
1. Keep doing what you’ve been doing
The fact that you have some serious traffic makes it safe to assume that you have been implementing strategies designed to help you build it. Defining your target audience, creating the right type of content for them, guest-posting, and even developing a social media presence are likely to have contributed to the initial success of your blog.
Now that you’re taking things up a notch, it would still be beneficial for your blog to continue implementing those traffic-building strategies. Then again, at this stage, your primary goal is to grow your blog’s reach, and focusing more of your energies on coming up with great content on a regular basis is a significant step towards achieving that goal.
2. Make every blog post awesome
Not every single blog post would make it to be a hit. That, however, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to make your blog as incredible.
When you publish a blog post with an interesting and intriguing idea behind it, your existing readers will find it engaging, and will likely share it with others. If that blog post is really up there when it comes to awesomeness, it may even go viral. That means a swarm of traffic to the post—and to your website—which would eventually boost your organic search rankings.
The surge in traffic also means more visitors, and therefore opportunities, to convert them into leads and customers. Of course, it goes without saying that your blog should be optimized for conversion with calls-to-action or CTAs on your blog that lead to a form for collecting your reader’s information.
One great blog post going viral also means your blog will be exposed to new readers not only on the day it was posted but also for months or even years after.
One awesome blog post can do all of the above. Imagine what dozens of interesting, intriguing, and engaging blog posts can do for your blog.
Related: Learn how to easily do SEO and constantly get free organic traffic
3. Make a content schedule
Creating hit blog posts is fun, but it can also get overwhelming, especially if you post more frequently than ever before. To keep your head from exploding from all the chaos that could ensue as you scale your blog, it would be best if you create a content schedule.
With a content calendar, you would be able to plan out your blog posts as far in advance as you’d prefer. However, if you are still struggling to come up with ideas for hit blog posts, it would be smart to plan your content for a few months or even weeks into the future. In any case, you’re still probably waiting for feedback from your readers so you can adjust your calendar promptly. A short-term schedule would be ideal at the onset.
4. Monetize
Technically, you can start monetizing your blog from Day 1, but you can’t really expect serious money to come in until your traffic has gone nuclear. OK, so nuclear may be too optimistic, but once traffic to your blog has increased significantly with all the remarkable content you have been churning out lately, monetization opportunities abound. Your options may include:
- Affiliate marketing
- Ads and sponsorships
- Selling e-books
- Donations
- Tutorials and guides
- Offering services like this digital marketing agency
- Product reviews
- Hosting webinars
- Offering consultancies
The options listed above are just a few of the money-making opportunities that your widely-read blog can offer. It also needs to be said that each method has its pros and cons. Explore them, and see which method would suit your blog best. Here are some solid Adsense niches.
Reality check: Growing your traffic takes time
Before you go into overdrive on your blog-scaling efforts, always keep in mind that it takes some time to grow your traffic. Even highly skilled and experienced bloggers take months and even years to get their blogs to a certain amount of popularity. Growing your traffic takes patience. Lots of it.
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