CrazyLeaf Editorial Are you interested in starting a personal finance blog?
Maybe you found that you have personal or professional experience that you want to share to help people.
There are thousands of personal finance blogs online. Is it worth your time and effort? Will you be able to make a difference and get your message out there?
Absolutely!
Your experience is unique and it is possible to make your blog stand out from the crowd.
Keep reading to learn what it takes to start a dynamic personal finance blog and build your audience.
Decide Your Topic
The first step to creating a successful blog is to decide your topic. Obviously, it’s a personal finance blog, but you need to dig a little deeper.
If you look on Google, there are thousands of personal finance blogs. You want to focus on a niche within personal finance that isn’t as competitive and has enough demand to generate traffic.
A few examples can include credit card debt and how to arrange a debt arrangement scheme, saving money on a budget or wealth creation.
Just down a list of 5-10 ideas that you might want to have as your niche. In the next step, you’re going to see if it’s a viable topic or not.
Research Demand for that Topic
Now you’re going to have to do some research to see if the blog is going to generate the traffic you want to achieve your goals.
All you have to do is use a keyword research tool and do searches for your potential topics.
You’re looking for a topic that has a fair amount of search volume and low competition.
During this stage, you may find other keywords that pertain to your main topic. Keep a running list of those keywords, because they’re going to be the basis of your content calendar.
You also want to be sure that there’s enough to write about 2-3 times every week, and it’s a topic you’ll enjoy writing about a lot.
If you find a topic that fits all of those categories, it’s time to get to work.
The Goals of Your Blog
Now you’re going to set up goals for your personal finance blog. Do you want to make money off of your blog?
You can start by setting monthly traffic goals. For example, the first month you might be happy with 30 unique visitors. Then the next month, you shoot for 100. You can keep building these traffic goals until you really start to hit momentum.
If you plan to monetize your blog, you’ll also want to build an email list. This will be a great way to promote your content and products and services in the future. You can create benchmarks around how many subscribers you have every month.
Once you have a big audience, you can sell products, get into affiliate marketing, or create a membership site. The possibilities are endless.
When you’re first starting your personal finance blog, think of how much money you’d like to make from your blog. Also, think about what you’d do with that extra cash. Would you leave your job?
That’s your long-term goal. Keep that reason in front of you at all times because that is going to be the motivating factor to keep going on days when you’re too tired to blog.
The Technical Side of Blogging
There is a technical side to blogging. Fortunately, it’s not that intimidating.
The first thing you have to do it purchase the domain name.
You’ll then have to decide if you want the blog to be hosted or self-hosted.
Hosted means that you use a company like Squarespace or Wix to build the website. It’s a low-maintenance solution, but you don’t have a lot of functionality if you want to grow later on.
With self-hosted, you hire a hosting company to host the website, but you’re responsible for installing the site and building it.
Nowadays, you can do that in several clicks of a button with WordPress and there are templates available that give you outstanding functionality for little cost.
Just make sure you choose a template that has a clean look, is stylish and is fast.
No matter which way you go, you’re going to have to have a reporting tool like Google Analytics installed. This will help you track your traffic and see how you’re progressing towards your goals.
Create a Posting Schedule
You have built yourself a solid foundation to blog. You can finally start writing!
In this phase of starting your personal finance blog, you’ll want to revisit the sheet of keywords that you came across when researching topics.
Hopefully, you came across a bunch of keywords that would make great articles, like the top financial planning apps.
You’ll also need to decide how often you want to publish and when. Maybe you want to publish every Tuesday and Thursday, or Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Be sure it’s a schedule you can stick with.
Note that the more consistent you are, the faster you’ll see increases in traffic.
Promote Your Personal Finance Blog
The final piece to creating a successful blog is promoting it. These are the top ways to promote your blog.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO will probably be the main driver of traffic to your website. You’ll need to understand how Google works and how you can get your site to the top of search results.
Facebook Group
The one common ingredient among all of the top blogs is a community. Blog owners have managed to build a tribe of like-minded people who share an interest in a topic.
A Facebook group is a great way to build and interact with your community. That’s how you build trust and credibility with your audience. That will be incredibly valuable as you grow and monetize your site.
Ready to Start Your Personal Finance Blog?
Now that you know how to put your knowledge to use, are you ready to get started?
It may seem like there’s a lot to do and you’ll never get it all accomplished. However, if you take one step at a time and organize your content calendar and get to work, you’ll be generating traffic pretty quickly.
Remember that it does take consistent work and patience to build up your audience. Once you reach critical mass, you can start monetizing it.
If you’d like more tips on blogging or graphic design, check out our blog.
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