An Almost Foolproof Ways for Building Profitable Blog (You Probably Don’t Know!)

If you’re reading this, chances are you don’t just want to be a typical blogger.

You’re tired of low traffic. You’re sick of seeing no comments.

You want avalanches of traffic, posts that pierce your readers immune systems and a close connection with influencers in your niche or industry.

You want to build a profitable blog

So here are 36 steps towards creating killer content, skyrocketing traffic, and building a profitable blog.

Let’s go.

Generate Killer Blog Post Ideas

1. Use polls to collect ideas

Polls are an excellent way to generate killer blog post ideas because they allow you to target your readers content needs quickly and accurately. They also give you an insight into what your readers wants to know about the most, which can be a huge advantage when creating opt-in offers and products.

2. See what’s trending on other blogs

Not sure what to write about?

Head over to the popular blogs in your niche. 

You’ll see what topics are trending and you’ll get fresh content ideas. The important thing to remember when doing so, is to not blatantly copy popular posts, but to attack them from a different and interesting perspective.

3. Use Google alerts

Set an alert with hot key words in your niche and have it deliver a couple of stories to you everyday. Pay special attention to the headlines and the topics you come across and you’ll have strong post ideas and attention-grabbing headlines in no time.

4. Scan through newspapers and magazines

You’ll most likely come across articles that connect with a topic you want to write about.

5. Scour blog directories

Sites like Alltop and Technorati are perfect for finding out what other bloggers are posting about your topic.

6. Ask your readers 

Send out a mass email or publish a post on your blog asking readers what problems or pains they’re having. Then create content around that.

7. Look at comments on your blog

How can comments help you?

Scanning through readers thoughts about your content will indicate what they like/dislike. 

Look out for comments where readers seem overwhelmed with joy or passion and make a note of the type of post and topic you wrote about.

You’ll eventually notice a trend about the specific tastes of your audience.

8. Fuse hot topics with your own experiences

Most of the information you read on any blog can be found elsewhere… so how do you distinguish yourself in the sea of sameness?

Easy. 

Connect your personal experiences with those topics.

Take these two posts on be a freelance blogger for example.

• “You Can’t Handle the Truth!” – 5 Freelance Blogging Lessons from a Former Trial Attorney
• How Nude Photos Convinced Clients to Hire a Blogger With a Shocking Past

These type of posts instantly make you more “human” to your reader and distinguish you from competing blogs whilst helping you create a raving audience.

 9. Invite guest bloggers

Producing killer content and thinking of innovative post ideas regularly can rob your energy and leave your brain limp.

The solution?

Invite guest bloggers to write content for you in return for back-links, traffic and exposure.

This will allow you to work on other things whilst maintaining frequent , high quality content and breaking the monotony by publishing posts that are stylistically different than yours.

10. Network with other bloggers 

Sites like BlogDash and BlogSynergy allow you to find other bloggers in the same niche as you and connect with them. 

You could end up finding a mentor, another site to guest post on or even a business partner.

You never know until you try.

Write Epic Shit!

11. Write from the heart

I’ll let Steven King handle this one.

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it anyway but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.”

 12. Write list posts

 Ahhhh, list posts… they’re easy to write, save time and energy and readers love them.

 And even though the internet is crammed with them, they are still effective for quick bursts of quality content.

 13. Make Your Posts Smooth and Scannable

Nobody wants to force down chunks of indigestible information.

They want to be spoon fed a tasty trickle of knowledge that slips past their eyes and melts into their brain.

• Use subheadings
• Use short sentences
• Have plenty of whitespace
• Eliminate fluff words
• Use vivid verbs instead of limp adjectives

 Your readers hands are always ready to click on that big “X” in the corner, don’t bore them into leaving.

 14. Read a lot and share what you’ve learned

Read blogs. Read books. Read reports.

To be a powerful blogger you have to be a voracious reader. Not only will reading help fine tune your writing skills, it’ll give you a fresh perspective on things and allow you to share new information with your readers.

15. Edit ruthlessly

No one ever turns in a perfect first draft. Editing is where all the magic happens.

16. Write conversationally

Imagine sitting in a lecture with hall with a pimple faced, speckled professor teaching business. Now imagine your best friend sitting across you at a local diner explaining the same thing.

Who are you most likely going to listen to and learn from? 

17. Have a pre-game ritual

Jon Morrow likes to read Stephen King out loud for 5-10 minutes.

French Novelist Honoré de Balzac would gulp down a ton of black coffee to ensure that he could write for longer, once allowing him to write for 48 hours straight.

Renowned copywriter John Carlton would slip into a separate set of “writing clothes” to get him in the zone.

Find your pre-game ritual to help you enter the writing zone at will and you’ll no longer be a victim of writers block.

18. Handwrite your favourite posts by hand

Yes. I mean physically write out posts word for word, by hand.

Sound weird? 

Truth is, most great writers started like this.

Journalist Hunter S. Thompson bloodied his nose in the writing world by copying the The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms on typewriter. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, author of classics like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Treasure Island, honed his chops by taking a passage from a great writer and reading it. Then turning over the passage and trying to re-write it again from memory.

 Dan Kennedy dived into the marketing world by copying out 500 winning sales letters by hand in order train his subconscious mind to absorb the rhythm of good copy.

I’ve used this technique myself. Believe me, it isn’t easy. But it is an effective way to whip your writing muscles into shape.

19. Write Faster by Outlining your Posts

Ever feel like the process of writing is messy and draining?

You’re probably not using outlines.

Many top bloggers like Neil Patel, Michael Hyatt and Carol Tice all swear by outlines allowing them to slice precious minutes and hours off their writing time.

20. Write badly ( before you can write good)

You won’t hear about this too often, but its certainly true.

You can’t write good unless you have written badly. No one is good at anything at the beginning. Its just a matter of consistently smoothing the edges until you are proficient. 

If your writing isn’t where you want it to be, don’t stress It’s okay.

Work on making small improvements over time and you’ll be shocked at what you can achieve.

Boost Your Traffic and Exposure

21. Host competitions/giveaways on your blog

Competitions and giveaways are a great way to generate more activity on your blog and break the monotony for your audience.

They increase traffic, raise more interest from your audience and can lead to new readers/customers. They also help create a sense of community and activity on the blog.

22. Go on a guest blogging spree

We all know the power of guest blogging right? 

Guest blogging empowers you to simultaneously generate traffic, increase subscribers, boost your credibility and most importantly, build relationships with other bloggers and readers.

If you aren’t already guest blogging, make sure you start now.

23. Use forums to generate interest

While forums aren’t hugely popularised in the blog traffic generating world they are a great way to consistently generate traffic to your site. 

However there is a right way and wrong way for generating traffic on forums. The right way breads traffic and respect and credibility, the wrong way will get you banned in a heartbeat.

When using forums for traffic remember to:

        1.  Focus on giving value. Help other people on the forum solve problems and you’ll build credibility and generate interest

        2.  Use your signature. If you’re giving value and people are starting to ask questions about you, it’s a good thing to have a signature linking to your site/blog so they have somewhere to go immediately.

All in all, be helpful positive and let people know where to find you.

24. Leave insightful comments on other posts

Comments?

Don’t you just spend a couple of seconds on them and move on?

No.

Comments are an underused tool in the blogging world and they have multiple benefits like increased traffic from clicks and visits, getting on a popular bloggers radar, to being invited to guest post for them.

But not just any comment makes the cut. So how do you create comments that draw attention and get you noticed by other bloggers and readers?

• Agree with what the blogger said and validate that the info was useful
• Build on and develop the advice given in the post
• Use personal examples and stories
• Talk about what was left out

25. Fine tune your SEO

SEO is a great long term strategy to help you build traffic. The excellent thing is that once you rank highly for a trending keyword, you can still generate traffic for a long time without breaking a sweat.

Check out this post by Blog Tyrant to learn more about SEO.

26. Interview other people in your niche

Interviews are a great way to improve your knowledge and enlighten your audience. They simultaneously expose you to your interviewee’s audience too and give your brain a break from creating content. Win Win.

27. Use Quora

Quora is a Q&A site where you can either answer questions from someone else or post questions of your own. You can even specify the type of questions you are interested in answering.

It’s an excellent way to boost traffic because of the huge audience it has.

One popular Quora user is Oliver Emberton. His articles have been read over 9 million times in the last year and featured in Forbes Huffington Post and Time. 

He started by writing answers on Quora and linking to his site. One of his answers went go viral and within a day, Oliver was contacted by publishers about book, movie and TV rights.

If you’re looking for a new way to boost your traffic give Quora a try.

28. Connect your blog to your email signature

A simple way to gain extra exposure but are you using it?

29.  Review an Influencers product and generate goodwill

Have you recently purchased a product from a respected influencer in your niche?

If the product has the potential to be useful to your readers in anyway, write up an honest review of the product.

This will help save your audience time and money and, depending on the review, can generate goodwill from the product creators themselves.

30. Make your posts easy to share

There’s no point sweating it out at your computer screen and creating content if no one is going to read it. To rack up the amount of views that your posts get, make them more shareable by: 

• Prominently displaying shareable buttons
• Making tweet-able comments in your posts
• Prompting readers to tweet those tweet-able comments

 31. Use Google analytics

Imagine if you found yourself a little lost while navigating a forest in the countryside…the first thing you’d do is check your map to find out where you are, and where you need to go, right?

Similarly, Google analytics is your “blogging map”.

It enables you to analyse raw data on visits, views, and traffic etc. So you know where you stand, and how far you are from achieving your blogging goals.

 32. Split Test Different Opt Ins 

When Brian Deen from Backlinko wasn’t happy with the conversion rates for an opt in offer of his, he made some simple changes and split tested it.

The test revealed a whopping 785% increase in conversions.

The only way he knew this is because he split tested the results and learnt what appeals to his audience. Split testing allows you to zero in on what your audience responds to best and craft more compelling offers and posts.

 33. Offer a bribe

Struggling to land subscribers?

Try offering something of value to your audience in exchange for their email addresses to shoot up your subscriber count. You could create an ebook, a report, or a checklist. Just be sure it’s something your audience will value.

34. Use Webinars

Webinars are an excellent way to share knowledge with your audience.

When marketed correctly they can lead to a ton of extra traffic and clients/customers.

They also make you more relatable and human to your audience and inspire interaction.

Be sure to email your list and invite people from other’s lists to join. Promote on other blogs and email lists to.

35. Hook Readers By Showing your Best Stuff

Every blog has posts that are more popular than others, and you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t showcase yours as soon as visitors land on your site.

This will immediately show your expertise and give new readers mega valuable content  straight off the bat, starting the relationship right and increasing the chances of them becoming regular readers.

 36. Create a podcast

Creating a podcast is a pretty powerful marketing tool because it allows you to reach a certain type of audience that you wouldn’t have reached before. 

This is because people don’t always want to read, and some prefer consuming content by listening instead of reading.Your readers can consume content while they drive to work, have a workout or go for a walk.

This increases your connection and relationship with your audience because they are no longer reading a bunch of words… but listening to a human voice. Its easier for them to visualise you as a person and relate to.

Did you find some great ways to build profitable blog above? How are you turning your blog into profitable money making machine?

Let us know in the comments.

<image source>