How Students can Earn Money Online from Blogging

Have you always thought about blogging and how bloggers make money from a blog? As a continuation from our recent Do It Yourself post on how students can make money on campus, we bring to you a step by step guide on how to make money as a student blogger.

Introduction To Blogging.

What is a blog all about? A blog (which is an abbreviated version of weblog or web log) simply refers to a regularly updated website or web page typically run by an individual or small group and mostly written in an informal or conversational style. It is a website consisting of entries (also called posts) appearing in reverse chronological order (I.e. most recent posts appearing first and then going backwards to older posts).

Blogging is the act of writing a post for a blog while a person who writes content for a blog is referred to as a blogger.

Difference between Website & Blog.

Whats Is The Difference Between A Blog And A Website? These days, a website and a blog are almost the same as they are built almost the same way, however the fundamental difference between them is that a website usually has a static homepage while the homepage of a blog periodically changes with contents (posts) arranged in reverse-chronological (latest to oldest) order.
Websites are usually used by organizations and corporate bodies to showcase their portfolio (e.g. JAMB official website, Forums, Social media networks, Ecommerce sites etc.) while Blogs are usually used by news agencies and bloggers (e.g. CNN.com, Vanguardngr.com, Techcrunch.com, goal.com, unn-edu.info etc). A website can also have a blog attached to it (e.g. University of Nigeria official website; www.unn.edu.ng).

How do you make money from a blog?

You must have heard about linda Ikeji, a popular Nigerian blogger who makes millions from her blog. You may have also met other bloggers including students who make tens and hundreds of thousand from blogging. However, the truth is, you will need a large number of people visiting your blog before you could start making reasonable money from it.
As soon as you have many visitors (traffic) to your blog, you can make money through the following;

1. Advertising – Direct / Third Party:Direct Advertising involves you reaching out or getting requests directly from companies/business owners to promote their products on your blog while Third Party Advertising involves you signing up with Advertising agencies who serve as middlemen between you and advertisers. These Advertising agencies already have many business owners signed up to their services as advertisers which makes it easier for you as a publisher to get advert placements and get paid. Popular third party advertising services you could sign up to include; Google Adsense, Media.net, Content.ad, Infolinks, BuySellAds etc. The most popular and best paying among them is Google Adsense. Getting into the google adsense program can be tough these days but following their guidelines religiously will definitely get you an approved account. You can do more research on that.
2. Affiliate Links: Affiliate links are links to a business website you place on your blog (mostly under a text) which you make a commission from every time a reader clicks through to the site and pays for what they offer there. Most business websites including Ecommerce sites like Amazon, Konga etc. offer Affiliate programs. Be sure to research more on each of these sub topics here as we will only be giving you a quick guide.
3. Selling Exclusive Contents in the Form of Newsletter: You can sell a write up/guide on any topic you are very knowledgeable about and which you are sure your readers will be willing to pay for. Example, one of the biggest challenge of new bloggers is how to get visitors to their blog, so one can write on “How To Drive Massive High Paying Traffic To Your New Blog” and deliver it to the mail box of only those who paid for it.
   Please, only sell contents you are certain will add value to your readers.
4. Sponsored Posts: Sponsored posts or promoted posts are like the normal posts you create on your blog to educate your audience but are created with a major intention of promoting a particular product or business. Sponsored posts are usually written by or on behalf of the business being promoted but may be edited by the publishing blogger to maintain set standards before publication.
5. Guest Blogging: When your blog becomes very popular and an authority in a particular niche, you will get several requests from other bloggers for guest blogging for exposure and backlinks. You can charge them certain amount of money for guest blogging opportunity on your blog.
6. Brand Ambassador: Blogging is fast becoming part of mainstream media that bloggers are now signing endorsement deals and being made brand ambassadors. Nigerian bloggers like Noble Igwe of 360nobs.com, Ladun Liadi of ladunliadinews.com, Uche Pedro of BellaNaija.com etc. had been made ambassadors of various brands. You too can become a brand ambassador when your blog becomes very influential.
7. Sell digital products: Ebooks, Video tutorials etc.
8. Your Blog with good reputation can actually help you land a high paying job with corporate bodies among others.

Where is the best place to start a blog?

There are many blogging platforms out there which includes Blogger, Tumblr, Medium, Typepad, Wix, WordPress.com, WordPress.org etc. Google’s Blogger (blogspot) platform is the best for newbie bloggers trying to learn the in and outs of blogging without fear of breaking anything, it is also cheap/free to use since you won’t be paying anything to host a blog on Google’s blogger platform. However, if you are looking and ready to build a standard, well structured and search engine optimized blog that will fetch you money real quick, then you should move to the overall best blogging platform, WordPress (Self hosted).
Note that there are two different wordpress types, the less popular wordpress.com which is almost the same as Google’s blogger.com platform and the popular platform at wordpress.org. WordPress.org is referred to as self hosted because you are required to only download the software from the website then modify to your test and upload to a hosting account you must have purchased. The platform at wordpress.org has limitless possibilities because it is extendable and also has a large community of volunteers maintaining it.
From here henceforth, we will be referring to the self hosted wordpress as we discuss further on blog and blogging.

How do you create a blog?

First of all let us talk about what you need to succeed in blogging.
– First and foremost is Patience. Blogging success doesn’t happen instantly, it takes a little time. To make sure you have that patience, you need to blog on something you have passion for, something you find joy in doing even when you are not yet making money from it.
– Secondly, you need to have a Promotional Strategy. Like we said earlier, you need to have people visiting your blog before you could make money from it. So learn how to drive traffic to your site.
– Have a good SEO strategy from Day 1. You need to do a lot of research on search engine optimization because a well optimized site will surely bring in massive traffic from search engines. Note that search engine (google) traffic pays better than social media traffic. Therefore as soon as your blog starts ranking on google for various keyword searches, your earning will increase significantly.
– Plan your Contents from Day 1. What topics and subtopics you will be writing on, what categories and tags you will have etc.
– Carefully Choose a Niche. Choose a particular Niche and blog on it. Check the following link for ideas; https://www.quicksprout.com/2016/08/31/top-35-blogging-ideas-that-are-guaranteed-to-be-popular/. Entertainment is a very popular niche but an almost saturated one as almost everyone now has an entertainment blog where they just do copy and paste. It is now very difficult for newbies to make it in the entertainment niche. Also, don’t be a jack of all trade. Established blogs can successfully blog on various niche but not newbies. You won’t even be approved for google adsense program when you blog on just about anything.
– Don’t Be a Copy and Paste Blogger. This is simple. When people visit your new blog and always see what they ‘ve already seen on bigger established blogs, they will stop visiting your blog. Too many lifting of contents hurts your site’s SEO and Google won’t approve you for the adsense program when you have unoriginal posts on your blog.
– Choose Your Domain Name Carefully. Consider SEO, Readability, Branding, Long term goals etc. while choosing your domain name. Be sure to register a top level domain (e.g. a .com) and not a subdomain like .blogspot.com.
– Learn from other’s mistake. Keep tabs with blogs in the same niche as yours. Carefully analyse and find out what they do, especially the successful ones and research how you can improve on that.

Now, to learn how to set up a self hosted wordpress blog, WpBeginner is a good place to start. Check out their their step by step video tutorials on http://videos.wpbeginner.com/.

The major things you need to set up the blog includes;

• Domain Name: This will be the name of your blog and can be got from Godaddy, Namecheap or any of the many other ICANN approved domain name registrars. Godaddy can be very cheap for the first year of registration when a coupon is used but expensive in subsequent years, especially when using Addons like Private Registration but Namecheap, just as the name says, is really cheaper in the long run.
• Web Hosting: This is where your website live on the internet. It is therefore very important you choose a good webhosting company to avoid your site going offline at anytime.
  Newbies can use any of the cheap Nigerian webhosts especially now that Naira to Dollar exchange rates has been very unstable. However, if you are looking for a 100% reliable webhost where you will get support instantly when you need it, you should go for foreign hosts. Here are some of the hosts we have used that you may consider; Hostgator – At a point we had a regular problem of our site being shut off for using too much system resources. Bluehost – Now owned by the same company that owns Hostgator, InMotion – Also had Resource usage issue as the site grew, Flywheel – This is where this blog is presently hosted. It is a scalable managed wordpress hosting platform where sudden traffic spikes does not shut off your site. Unn Info had been hosted on the cheap Tiny package for over 3 years now and had never gone offline due to traffic spikes which we periodically have, especially during admission period.