As I’m going through my morning writing blog posts and building money making blogs for myself, it occurs to me that I have a very successful process that keeps my blogs moving forward every day. Remember, as a successful writer, I’m not about finding a single keyword and generating money off it by putting days (or more) into ranking it number one.
I make money writing online by building informative, interesting blogs that rank for numerous long-tail keyword searches, while also becoming go to resources. Doing that takes time, which is fine, because I like writing. But a few extra tips around writing daily blog posts supercharges my writing and allows it to generate more money faster. By building traffic to your blog your earnings increase faster as does your ability to connect with more readers.
Steps To Increase Blog Earnings Fast
Here is what I do each day in addition to writing as I log into a particular blog and generate new content.
- Update – I usually use WordPress. It works and it’s easy. Why mess with what works? The plugins I use, or WordPress itself, occasionally need updating. Some of it updates automatically, but others need a click. Some of the updates are for features, but more importantly, some updates are about stability and security. When you count on your blog being online to generate earnings, that’s important. So, the first thing I do after logging in is hit the update button on WordPress. Experience has taught me that updating plugins first, and WordPress second is the most successful so that’s what I do.
- Share Something – Every blog I have has an associated Twitter account, Instagram account, or Pinterest account. Sometimes, I just use my main ArcticLlama account. When a blog starts out, it doesn’t have many followers. The only way to grow is to share things. People don’t follow empty accounts, so building that timeline, even if you don’t have any followers yet, is important. One day, they’ll come, and when they do, you want them to find something worth following. Usually, I share a link to something I’ve already written. If there is something particularly relevant that day, I will share it. Otherwise, I share something else I’m thinking about, or just one of the cornerstone links. Even just a few quick words or advice, or a useful tip adds up to a solid timeline.
- Write – Alright, I said this post was about what I do other than writing to help build my online portfolio of websites, but I think it’s important to point out that this is where I write. Just doing the two little things above before writing keeps me from falling down a rabbit hole of “other work” I could be doing other than writing. So, #3 is to get writing. Otherwise, distraction awaits.
- Jot Down New Ideas – Inevitably, as I write I generate new ideas. There are two ways to handle this: jot it down or launch side writing. I keep a notebook open next to me on the page where I jot down new topic ideas. I can stop writing for two seconds and write down the idea. It’s important that the notebook is already there and already open to the correct page to avoid distractions. Otherwise, there’s a rabbit hole of reading other pages, and thinking of other tasks, or ideas and losing focus. Even worse is if the notebook isn’t there and I have to start looking for it, or otherwise get distracted. If the notebook is missing, I go for a Post-It note. Those are near me. Always. I keep post it notes next to me, or people die. Not really, but you get the drift. When you write with ADD, distraction lurks everywhere. I have to eliminate it. Even if you don’t have ADHD, writers are prone to distractions and getting lost in ideas. If you’re writing for money, you have to minimize those. Each minute getting lost with the procrastination monkey, is a minute of lost income generation. (By the way, I just jotted down: writing with ADD because I tried to link to an article of mine about writing with ADHD. It turns out I don’t have one if you can believe that. I will soon though, because the notebook was sitting right here, with the page open to blog post ideas.)
- Side Write – If you can’t multi-task, or if you can’t deal with any thoughts away from your writing when you are in the middle of it, skip this item. Seriously. Bail out now. — As a writer, I take advantage of my ADD. My brain likes to splinter off into different thoughts and directions. Properly harnessed, this is an asset that allows me to accomplish multiple things at once. For example, I’m actually writing an article for my finance blog right now. I’m “side writing” this article. The idea for this article popped into my head as I did steps 1 and 2 above. Rather than just jot down the idea, I started writing it, because writing it in parallel ensures I don’t forget any of the steps that I’m doing, which might be harder for me to come up with later. Side writing involves switching back and forth between articles. I usually only do it if there is some relation, or if the article I’m supposed to be writing isn’t currently fulfilling my brain for some reason. This allows me to stay on task while getting the advantage of writing some or all of another article. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of that Save Draft button if the side writing stops working or being productive enough to justify continuing. When you come back, you’ll still have a solid start waiting for you. — I already have 940 words on this article without even trying, and now I’m headed back to the article I planned to be writing about whether investing in gold is a good idea.
- Approve Comments – I’m not getting into the weeds with people who have nothing better to do than make unnecessary, unpleasant comments on other people’s blogs, so I manually approve all comments. It slows down the discussion, but most of my blogs are about me writing some knowledge and people reading it and getting what they want out of it. They aren’t really about public discourse or collecting opinions. Still, I find reader feedback refreshing, and I think a solid, well-curated, comment section is an asset. For me it is important to leave approving comments until AFTER I’m done writing, or I might not end up writing at all as I satisfy my curiosity about comments, or commenters on my sites.
- Link Stuff – Links are the lifeblood of SEO, and search engine rankings. As a writer I spend my time generating content and letting Google do its thing, but I still understand the power of a well-placed link. My quick advice on how to build links to your blog is to link them yourself. To make sure I get good links as quickly as possible I add all my portfolio of websites to a custom Google search. Then, I can search for keywords and find the ones that Google deems the most worthy and link appropriately. These quick links from my own blogs won’t get me the number one ranking for payday loans or anything like that, but they both drive instant traffic from users that click on the links, as well as deferred traffic from Google searches that occur with help from my links.
- Social Media – After you hit publish, it’s time to view your post. Then, use your own social media links to send it out into the world. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, whatever you use. Note this is different than #2 above where we shared out existing content.
Add these 8 quick tips to the informative and entertaining writing you are already doing, and your blogs will grow faster and earn more money quicker.