Last Updated on May 3, 2022
What is a blog and how does it work? You witness this all the time when you surf the web and when you check out a post on your hobbies and interests. It has been circulating the Internet during its early years. However, haven’t you ever thought about how these blogs work and why it comprises almost half the population of the Internet? I want to be the first to tell you all about blogs. Let me walk you through the world of blogging.
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How Far Blogging Has Come
Blogs didn’t exist not until two decades ago. During the early years of the Internet, people only had one option in creating websites – HTML. Yes, it’s all about the codes. I remember back in the days how frustrating it could get if you don’t know your codes and if you mess up at least a single time, you would have to take a look at it again every step of the way.
Thank God, in 1998, weblogs finally came into existence. Note, it was shortened to “blog” by Peter Merholz just a year after the term weblog was coined. Ever since then, you have the option to ditch the HTML and make your own blog as simple as 1, 2, and 3.
But of course, just like any humble beginning ever, it wasn’t as popular as it is today. During the year 1999, the volume of blogs was only less than thirty. As the years progressed, by 2006, already 50 million blogs were circulating on the web. Four years later, add a hundred million more, and today, the number of blogs is nearly half a billion! This is how far blogging has come all throughout the decades.
What is a Blog Anyway? Definition and Characteristics
Websites and blogs are two completely different things. Websites are much more complicated than the blogs we know of today. First off, websites have a homepage that has direct links to the webpages composing it. These pages can be composed of a thousand bits of information.
Blogs, on the other hand, are much simpler than websites due to the fact that most of the time they are only composed of a single webpage. This webpage consists of a list of entries that a single author has composed, all arranged in reverse-chronological order. By that, I mean, the most recent entries push down the least recent entries.
The entries composing the blog could be anything the author wants to write about. It could be something like an online journal in which you can update your readers about all the things happening in your life. Other blogs could be a medium for others to share their stand on political issues, give other insights on interesting topics, and talk about your hobbies. Of course, a proportion of these blogs dedicate their content as a marketing tool for online businesses and utilize their traffic as a means to earn money.
You could think of a blog as an online scrapbook. You can attach links to other news stories, websites, and other links that you find interesting that you want to remember later on and access whenever and wherever you are.
If you want further information on what is a blog and how does it work, you may want to refer to the video below.
How Does Blogging Really Work
Creating a Blog
Anyone in their right mind would consider creating a blog through HTML their last option. Heck, if it were you, is this even an option in the first place? Thankfully, throughout the years, a lot of tools enabling you to create your own blog has arisen the surface. Some of the blogging platforms I know of are Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Xanga, Joomla, and Drupal among others.
Of course, you’ve heard of WordPress, right? I’ll bet a thousand bucks that you already did. This is the biggest blogging platform out there with at least 59% of the market share of all the blogging platforms ever.
A significant number of these blogging platforms enable you to create your blog for free, while others require a fee depending on the additional features they offer and to what degree you want to customize your blog.
It’s relatively easy to piece out your blog. Blogging platforms offer a variety of their own standard templates which you could choose from to dress up your blog. Add blog entries according to your preferences, publish it online, and wait for it to have readers.
Moreover, you can interact with your readers through the comments section if you allow so. By these simple interactions and gaining their trust, you can garner yourself some loyal followers.
Writing Blog posts
You can write your blog however you want. What’s more important is how you write the introduction of your entries in a way that will hook your readers and have them wanting to read up until the last bit of your post. You have to capture your readers each time and pull them down the page for as long as you can. In other words, make it an entry worth reading.
I think it’s also worthy to take note of different kinds of blog entries, so you would have an idea of how you want to write your content.
- Link Roundups. You can aggregate links leading to different articles into one post through link roundups. Make sure that your links all have correlations to the topic you have assigned for that certain post or else it will look like a garbage dump.
- Interview Posts. Make some time to interview people who have a huge mass of followers. This puts you in an advantageous spot if ever your blog gets mentioned by the person you have interviewed to his army of loyalties. You can think of this as a source of the traffic to your blog.
- Listicles. This is one of the easiest entries because as the title insists, all you do is put together a list of the topics you want to discuss in your post. Plus, people love these types of posts because it’s structure makes people want to read it more.
- Definitive Guides. Blog entries like these are usually composed of a thousand words, and due to this, they tend to rank higher on different search engines, especially Google. Of course, out of anything, that’s what anyone would want the most.
- Expert Roundups. Just like the interview posts, basically, all you do is ask questions to a number of experts belonging in whatever niche your blog is a part of and aggregate their answers into your post. Chances are, once the post is live, these people may have the heart to mention your blog to their followers.
How To Monetize Your Blog
I have mentioned before that a blog is not just a medium in which you could express your life events or opinions. For some, it’s a source of income. Let me tell you how that works.
Blogs are a powerful marketing tool for your business. By creating a blog, you could write entries promoting your business. For instance, you’re launching your own independent makeup line. You could write blog posts all dedicated to the niche of makeup and the promotion of your own line. This is a great strategy of marketing your products because we are finally at the age where everyone’s always online.
But of course, for that to happen, you should know how to bring people to your website. You need to drive traffic towards your blog. Question is, how are you going to do that? One thing, you have to be serious. By serious I mean, you have to produce entries on a regular basis. Rush to your computer and stack up content every day. That way, you can rank your way up to the first page of Google!
You might be asking, “Why should I do all that work when I could just make use of paid advertising?” Well, because that’s just ain’t it, chief. Paid advertising is expensive, and if anything, it gives you a lot of traffic in just a short amount of time, but that dwindles as you go on. There’s also no assurance of receiving returns with paid advertising.
The best way to go is by creating high-quality content and driving organic traffic. Driving organic traffic from search engines means you would have to be familiar with strategies such as competitor keyword research, resource page link building, keyword research, building backlinks, weekly roundup link building, on-page SEO, building topical authority, off-page SEO.
Other ways to monetize your blog are through ads and affiliate links. In the case of ads, you can gain revenue for every click the ads generate. But of course, you’re going to need massive amounts of traffic or else you’re just wasting your time.
Now, affiliate marketing is one of the most viable choices if you want to monetize your blog and your audience. Basically, what you do is recommend affiliate products and programs to your readers and if a portion of the purchases or signs up with your help, you will earn a commission.
You can simply incorporate your unique affiliate links to each of your blog entries, and consider the deed done. It’s a passive source of income, that’s why it’s one of the best.
If you are interested in affiliate marketing, you may want to check out my Wealthy Affiliate review! But let me just give you a side note, this one is not easy to make money online opportunity. Yes, I mentioned it’s passive, but before you get to that point, you would first have to hustle every day. In fact, 24 hours a day wouldn’t even be enough. You need to have the will to learn about new things, strive harder every step of the way, and be passionate about building your own successful online business.
What Is a Blog and How Does it Work Conclusion
No matter what your motivation to start a blog is, you might want to share your journeys around the world, make your Grandma’s old apple pie recipe famous or trying to make money online. Just follow the guidelines on this article and you are set to go!
If you still have any doubts, if you want to add something to my “What is A Blog and How Does it Work” article, or simply share your thoughts, drop me a line on the comment section I’ll get back to you ASAP.
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