Agonized for a long time whether to give this article such a sensationalist title. It seems that all readers will be attracted by some restless headline that says “a million dollars a year”. Since you’re here, I’m sure readers will want to know the answer. Can blogging make a million dollars a year? My answer is, maybe. Of course, this ambiguous answer, just like the question of cross-border e-commerce entrepreneurship, is tantamount to nothing.

Well, I really don’t want to brag about cross-border e-commerce like pyramid schemes. Don’t read these inspirational stories. In fact, most cross-border e-commerce sellers are small and medium-sized sellers. The same is true of blogs. In my last post, I included Building a personal blog in my list of 7 Low-cost and Reliable Cross-border online startups. You might ask that in these days of social media such as Weibo and wechat, most people ignore blogs and don’t take the time to write original blogs. Why should you start a personal blog and stick to blogging? Because blogs can help you get knowledge and master knowledge.

preface

Learn through blogging

To talk about my practical view, in my opinion, apart from the practical benefits, the most important thing is to help people learn and master new knowledge. Blogging is a great modern way to learn.

You may have heard of the learning pyramid. The “learning pyramid” was first proposed by Edgar Dale, an American educator, in 1946. Below is a learning pyramid based on this theory created by the National Training Laboratory in Maine.

Take language learning as an example. After two weeks of initial learning:

Remember 10 percent of what you learned when you read; Listening can remember 20% of what you learned; Remember 30% of the pictures; Watching videos, exhibitions, demonstrations, on-site observation can remember 50%; Participate in the discussion, the speech can remember 70%; Giving presentations, telling people, experiencing things, doing things remember 90% of the time.

The final form of learning at the base of the pyramid is “teaching” or “applying”, which are classified as active learning and retain 90 per cent of what is learned. The Learning Pyramid tells us why blogging is such a great way to learn, and notice that I’m talking about original blogging, not just copying and pasting. Original blog writing is the most effective way to learn because it is hands-on and teaches others.

Gain knowledge through blogging

Original blogging can help with learning. So where do we get our knowledge? I tried to find this answer from Google. The first entry in the search result, Google recommended a q&A on Zhihu.

Of course, you can also use Baidu. But unlike Google, which gives you what you want, Baidu gives you what it wants. Remember the core elements of Google SEO? Google likes to be original, and blogs are the place to be original.

Careful readers will notice that every slightly larger site has a blog of its own. The various business theme templates for independent sites also come with blog independence by default. For example, as we know Shopify, the Shopify blog delivers new articles to you at 10 p.m. every day. Then, you’ll notice that Shopify blog posts are always at the top of the search results when searching for keywords related to Shopify. Because Google loves blogs and Google loves originality.

Some basics of blogging

What is a blog

Simply put, it’s an online diary. The definition of a blog is becoming increasingly blurred. Because of the appearance of micro-blog, now it is rare to define a few words of information as a blog post, we call it micro-blog. Blogs, on the other hand, tend to share professional knowledge and personal experience, usually longer content. In fact, the nature of blogs is “long-winded”. According to an overseas study, the traffic of long-form blog is 9 times that of short blog. Long-form blog is easier to get backlinks, and the more backlinks, the higher ranking of search results.

2. Should you start your own blog?

To be honest, deciding to start a blog is a pain in the neck. Because that means you’ll have to spend a lot of time and energy writing original blog posts every week. Blogging is like a marathon without a finish line. At first, very excited, very anxious to write a 10 day, after a period of time, may be 1 article 10 days, and then, into the wall, and then, like a marathon, when you run a marathon for car constantly waved to you: “hey, brother, don’t run away, run on, eat drink, take you to the finish line.”

Marathoners feel it’s a shame to get on the bus. You can speed up, slow down, and take breaks in the long marathon of life, but never lose sight of your goals, stay stuck, or even go backwards! For me, horse racing and blog writing are very meaningful. I will get tired and want to give up in the middle of the journey, and I need perseverance to encourage myself to keep moving forward.

3. The benefits of blogging

Of course, if you are willing to share and have the tenacity to do something meaningful and create your own personal blog, you will come to see the benefits of writing an original blog. Here are some of the benefits of writing an original blog:

Interest in writing

Many people have been interested in writing since childhood and have the habit of keeping a diary. Frankly speaking, I don’t have the interest, let alone the habit. Therefore, at the beginning, I just took the blog as a note to record some code statements and commands easily forgotten by myself. Just like collecting party, WHEN I saw good articles, I habitually added them to my browser favorites and left them to read slowly later. In fact, I never read them from then on.

Slowly, life and work will also encounter a variety of things or setbacks, sometimes, will quietly sit in front of the computer, with words to record their thoughts, sorted out written. Over time, habitual want to write something, over time, like habitual want to check the micro blog, check the dynamics of friends circle, incidentally look at their own blog said. As time passed, I became interested in blogging and became more and more dependent on it.

Gain visibility

As you add more content to your blog, make a conscious effort to improve the quality of your posts. Gradually, Google search began to include blog content, and gradually brought in more and more views. People habitually refer to your blog when talking about certain topics in certain areas. Yeah, you’ve made a name for yourself in the community.

Of course, don’t expect to use blogging as a quick way to increase your popularity and wealth. Blogging is not social media and certainly not the preferred way to grow quickly.

Blogs rely heavily on search engines, on SEO, and it’s a long, slow process.

Make a good profit

When your blog gets some traffic and some awareness, you actually gain the trust of your readers and have a chance to make some money.

Blogs can be a gold mine for seasoned online marketers, who craft a lucrative blog theme, write about it, and then monetize the content with ads. In fact, the domestic many bloggers is a rare good opportunity, because this blog is very few, and the theme of the related content is very extensive, practice has proved that blog writing, can let you to reap benefits, this is my blog writing as seven and low cost of cross-border online one of entrepreneurial projects.

Get cooperation opportunities

Hardly a week goes by without me receiving requests or suggestions from companies, most of which are industry service providers. Of course, you can choose to cooperate with them to do some business promotion. Because of the risks and trust issues, I usually just say no. In fact, I didn’t have enough time and energy to communicate with affiliate details, so I just selectively looked for opportunities to cooperate with affiliate.

Make friends who have the same interests

Blogging helps bring people with similar ideas together, and you will become friends with the same ideas, helping and supporting each other.

Look for new job opportunities

The world’s best-selling Avada is the wordpress theme template. The Avada theme template is beautiful and comes with dozens of other templates built in for various industries, including a resume template. As shown below:

I don’t think there’s a better resume template than a blog that showcases your skills and work while also updating your blog. If you’re just looking for new job opportunities through your blog, Avada’s resume template can give you credit and help you make the most of yourself.

To help others

Many blogs are written to help people get through a stage or situation. Things like fighting illness, parenting, dealing with depression. It’s hard to talk to individuals about these topics, but you can help others by sharing your experiences with your blog. It also makes them feel like they’re the only one who’s gone through this phase, but there are a lot of other people who are going through the same thing.

4. How much money can you make writing an original blog?

In real life, you probably won’t make a dime.

In real life, you might make more than 1 million RMB a year.

As in the cross-border e-commerce industry, there are sellers who make money and sellers who leave at a loss. Some sellers can make millions of dollars in sales a month, while others may not make more than a few sales a month. Deep-seated problems we do not go to investigate, it seems that can not find a standard answer.

What I’m trying to say is that there is money to be made in writing original blogs, especially in English. Of course, if you started blogging purely to make money. You may not make any money for a long time at first. Seeking quick success and instant profits is not an option.

The vast majority of blog traffic comes from Google, so the key is to do Google SEO well. And Google SEO is determined by up to more than 200 factors, not many people can fully understand the more than 200 factors, but the formation of SEO thinking unconsciously, will do some SEO optimization work when writing blog content. For example, the paragraph structure of the article, such as frequent internal links, such as 7-minute standard long blog posts and so on, such as a word out of the original text; And so on.

5. Why must blogs be original?

In my opinion, originality is a kind of sincerity and the best gift to readers. Originality can narrow the distance between readers and increase trust. Also, originality is what Google values most. As a result, originality tends to get higher rankings in Google results and more traffic.

Since it is a blog, I would suggest you original, try not to do porters. For the three reasons mentioned above, originality is an effective way to learn and master knowledge. Google likes original, 3, original is a kind of sincerity and trust.

If you can, create your own blog.

If you’re not interested in setting up a blog and saving yourself some time, here are some practical tips that you probably won’t be either.

How to build your own personal blog

In our previous article, we shared a complete tutorial on how to build a wordpress WooCommerce site on Hostwinds.

If you have already purchased the Hostwinds Ultimate package as described in the previous article, you can take advantage of Ultimate’s ability to host unlimited websites without having to pay extra for a host. It’s very convenient.

1. Which way to build a blog?

Before we get started, I’d like to talk about WordPress.

The WordPress website has a live feed of events around the world. This GIF is taken from blogs registered on WordPress.com or standalone WordPress sites with the Jetpack plugin installed. Looking at the map data, the us, Europe, India, Japan and Singapore have the highest levels of activity. In the US in particular, the active display corroborates Builtwith’s statistics that there are 7.54 million wordpress sites in the US and only 15,000 in China. It’s no wonder that the White House website, the Swedish government website, and some of the world’s biggest brands like Disney are using WordPress to build their official websites.

WordPress is the world’s most used CMS content management system, and the most widely used blog program. As of June 16, 2019, WordPress’s share of the CMS market has increased from 51% in 2010 to 60.8% today, while The number two Joomla has dropped from 12% in 2010 to 5.1%.

This statistic already tells us which way to build a blog if you are building a personal blog. WordPress, of course.

2. Preparation

There is almost no income at the beginning of a personal blog, so don’t spend money that shouldn’t be spent, save what you can. But at the very least, you need to register a.com domain name and a host for your website files. Buying a host is one of the biggest costs of all, and Hostwinds itself has a cheaper host Basic package for just $3.29 a month. But you can only build one website, and you can’t use some optimized plugins. The Ultimate plan, at $5.17 a month, offers unlimited access to your website and is the most-used plan. For someone like me, who has built a number of independent sites in the cross-border e-commerce industry as well as a personal blog that runs its own mapbed application, taking advantage of the unlimited number of Hostwinds sites is worth the price.

2.1 Purchasing a Domain Name

** Buy domain name: ** Many service providers provide domain name registration services, try to choose overseas domain name service providers, moonlight blog tells you “Why not register a domain name in China”, some norms, some security. Also, I only recommend registering.com domain names. You can buy it at www.namecheap.com, like the company’s domain name, namecheap.

2.2 Purchasing a Host

The main reason why Hostwinds is recommended is because of the official WordPress recommendation. Hostwinds is highly integrated with WordPress because it has the best reputation in the industry for its speed and customer service. There are not so many tricks, there is no way to send domain name induction, annual fee as low as $39.53, 30 days unconditional refund, really give back, don’t cry.

Go to the HostWinds website and choose a package.

Basic: Only one website can be built.

Advanced: Can build 4 websites.

Ultimate: Build an unlimited number of websites.

Hostwinds offers for new users for a limited time

Then click On Order Now and, on the left below, enter your name, email address and password to register.

Fill in personal Information

Select the url

In the Domain field, enter a url of your choice to make sure no one else is using it. If the following picture appears, it means that the domain name has been registered, a new domain name.

Then click Add to Cart to Add to your Cart for free.

Payment options can be modified in Package Information. Hostwinds Monitoring and Web Hosting Cloud Backups are subject to your requirements. If you don’t want them, you can deselect them.

Finally choose Alipay to complete the purchase

2.3 Purchase business theme templates

Commercial templates are not an option and there are many free templates.

For theme template, my suggestion is that best buy a more professional business templates, best buy sales, higher evaluation, brand theme templates, because these templates have been a lot of professional bloggers and website owners, the use of feedback modification Suggestions, for site seo optimization, loading speed, mobile version of the adaptation and so on all have very good support. The Avada template here, for example, costs $60 a set and has sold more than half a million copies worldwide, which is somewhat surprising.

3. Basic Settings

3.1 Domain Name Resolution Settings

Perform the following operations to resolve the domain name without changing the DNS: Enter the Host name @ and WWW, and enter the value of the IP address of the Host you purchased from Hostwinds. The resolution takes between 1 hour and 24 hours, depending on the DNS service provider.

3.2 Enabling a Host

The cPanel management panel is displayed

After completing the purchase, you will receive an email containing cPanel’s url, username and password.

Click on the address of cPanel, then enter your user name and password to log in to cPanel.

Install WordPress in cPannel with one click

A: After logging in to cPanel, type Softaculous Apps Installer in the search box and click on it.

B: Find WordPress and click Install to install it.

C: Enter the url selected during the purchase phase below

D: Enter the user name and password in the Admin Account. This is the username and password for logging in to the WordPress background. Make sure you save it.

Then drag it to the bottom of the page and click Install. In about a dozen seconds, WordPress is installed.

3.3 Log in to the Background and install templates

At this point, the site is already set up, enter your url in the browser, the site is already accessible.

If your site is website.com, add /wp-admin and enter the WordPress backend username and password in step 3.2-d to enter the WordPress backend.

In the future, you can build your own content in the WordPress background.

conclusion

In China, it is hard to imagine anyone taking blogging as an entrepreneurial project. It seems impossible. Because the vast majority of people will say that traffic and attention only focus on wechat public accounts, Weibo and Douyin these media. Sure, I think so too, but for the quality of traffic, there seems to be no other channel that can beat blogs, especially original blogs.

Blogs are much higher than social media in terms of complexity and barriers to entry. As a result, there are far fewer blogs. At least the competition would be less bitter.

I think, whether you make money or not, you should consider starting a blog and use it to find and master new knowledge. If you are thoughtful, you can calm down and write some of your own life perception to release yourself. If you’re an expert or have a lot of experience in a particular field, don’t hesitate to write about it and share it. You’ll make a lot of friends and benefit.