1. Low start-up costs
You can start your blog for less than $25/month. Imagine the costs if you had to build an offline business. Below are few things you need to start your business:
Domain Name – $10 /year
Hosting – $5 /month
Email marketing – $10 /month
2. Very fast and easy to set up
- Most blog hosts offer One click word press installation
- Using which you can set Up your blog in less than 5 minutes
- Without any knowledge of technical languages
- Deliver value in content
- Once you start delivering value in content people will subscribe to get more
- Offering a free incentive in the form of eBook, report, auto responder series, video or audio series for people to subscribe to your list is a great way to increase subscribers list
4. Gives you exposure
- Exposes your blog to Search Engines
- Exposes your blog Social Media
- Exposes you to your Target Market
5. Builds Contacts And Relationships
- Builds contact and relationships with other bloggers, marketers and companies on your topic niche
6. Gives You An Expert Status
- Since you delivering valuable content that help people, you will be seen as an expert
- Other bloggers, marketers and companies start recognizing your work and start sharing it with their subscribers
- If you start conducting interviews with other experts, people start seeing you as an expert because you are interviewing an expert, that’s borrowed credibility. People start associating you with experts. On the flip side, if you are interviewed, you are definitely an expert then
7. Opportunity To Experiment
- You can experiment using different methods to create and deliver content
- You also can experiment to learn different aspects of online business which will help in further expansion
8. Helps you to come up with different product ideas and find your USP ( Unique Selling Point)
- When people start reading your posts, they will ask you to answer several questions, create certain kind of posts which would help then in solving a problem. This is when you will know what are the problems most people are facing in your industry and what you would have to solve this problem. This is where you will get your products ideas from
- You can also create a survey for your readers about the problems they are facing, what they would like to read more or what products would help them more. This is a very powerful method because you have your target market speaking to you about what they want.
- When your readers start telling you that you are good in creating videos, podcasts, conducting interviews those are things you need to focus more about and help you come up with your unique selling point
9. Sets Up A Base To Launch Your Product
- Blogging builds your list and credibility. Since you already have a list of people who are interested in your content, it is far easier to market your products and services to them. You have a ready-made market in front of to market your products.
- Your content is out there already on Search engines, social media and on people’s minds. This a great way to get exposure and to constantly generate fresh leads who are interested in what you have to offer.
10. Multiple Monetization Strategies
- I personally don’t know any other platform which offers such a wide range of monetization methods.
- Below are few monetization strategies that we have been using on our sites:
a. Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is nothing but promoting and selling other people’s products. This is one of the best ways to monetize your blog. The bottom line here is not to sell but to recommend. Affiliate marketing can be done by adding links, banners on the side bar of your blog or write a detailed review of the product so that people know what are benefits and demerits of the product. These are some really powerful ways to do affiliate marketing and get conversions
b. Donations – Donations is another great way to monetize your blog. We have personally used two methods. One is “Buy A Cup Of Coffee” where people can donate $5-$10 dollars to buy you a cup of coffee. And the other is “Amazon Whishlist” where you can have list of products you would like to buy. You readers will definitely take time and donate if your content is really helping them.
c. Advertising – Advertising is another great way to monetize your blog. This is the most easy and passive method of generating revenue. But in order to implement this method you blog should be really popular and should have many visits per day to get a decent amount of cash rolling in. There are many ways to offer advertising on your blog like Google Adsense, Banner Advertising, Selling Ad space on your blog etc…
d. Your Own Products – The last and the most powerful in this list would be creating your own set of products and services that will generate profits for you. You have to create your own products if you want to build a successful business online. You can create online products like ebooks, audio series, video series, membership sites, newsletters etc… or offline products like merchandise, DVD’s, CD’s etc…
Information packaged in the right way is the key to fame, success and money today. Thanks to the internet, delivering information has never been so easy. With smartphone, tablets, portable computers becoming common today, access to information is just a click away. This has brought in so many opportunities to common people to turn their knowledge into serious business. Today building businesses doesn’t require huge investments and inventory. All it requires is an idea and action to turn that idea into information. And this information can be delivered to any part of the world in lightning speeds.
