How to Become a Successful Blogger and Make Money Blogging

Anybody can start a blog as the majority believe.

What matters is following the right steps to start a blog and forming some habits that will make you successful.

As a result of this, becoming a successful blogger will be difficult without having some qualities of a great blogger.

In this post, we want to discuss what are the characteristics or traits that a blogger MUST have to become exceptionally different.

Whether you are from Nigeria or anywhere, if you want to know how to become a successful blogger and make money, this guide is for you.

Some of the questions we would be answering include how to write a successful blog post.

Mind you, becoming a successful blogger goes beyond having a very nice blog.

Even your super-fast computer and internet network and ability to write and publish many blog posts per day are not enough either.

There are some must-have blog features that you need aside from the material resources to become a great blogger.

This includes knowing:

• What does your audience want?
• How to create highly engaging content?
• How to promote your blog?

The difference between bloggers, however, is that some are successful and some aren’t.

Then the question is why do most bloggers fail?

From all indications, becoming a successful blogger lies in knowing how to start a blog and make money from it.

So, if you really want to become a successful blogger and stand out in the crowd, you have to get good strengths to blog.

Knowing what makes a good blog post is not far-fetched.

You would entice a large number of readers with these 11 qualities of a great blogger that I’m about to show you.

If you don’t know how to become a successful blogger and make money with your blog, seeing others making it can knock you out of the business!

But with some qualities of a great blogger, you can rule the game.

Irrespective of your niche, you can become highly successful in blogging with the following qualities:

What are the qualities of a great blogger?

The following characteristics depict what makes a good blogger.

Take for instance, what kept me going when I almost lost interest in blogging was to study some of the successful bloggers in my industry.

I realized that successful bloggers have many things in common.

Consequently, I tried to make standards out of the blogging techniques that make others successful.

And that formed the 11 qualities which I put down here for you.

I believe, that if you can adopt these qualities, it is possible you perform better in blogging than before.

The reason is that when you have more than one person’s success secrets, you have edge over those who don’t.

So, here is how to become a successful blogger and make money in Nigeria or any other part of the world:

Be a better blogger

Becoming a successful blogger is based on an individual’s good strengths to blog consistently and follow trends in the industry.

With such quality, we know who great bloggers are and what makes people want to read their blogs.

Before you can become a successful blogger, you need to know what it takes to make your blog relevant, authoritative, visible, accessible, and engaging to your audience.

Most people disregard bloggers because of how fake news, rumors and copyright violations have become the order of the day.

This might not be true in all cases.

But the fact is no one can become a successful blogger by misleading his audience with an unscrupulous blog post.

Today, the likes of Arianna Huffington, Pete Cashmore, Mario Lavendeira, Michael Arrington, Neil Patel, and Pat Flynn are famous because they’ve been able to demonstrate their strengths in their respective areas of interest.

Based on the standards this set of great bloggers has established in the blogging community, each has unique blogging techniques worth what you can learn to become a better blogger.

Love of wisdom

A successful blogger MUST always have answers to every why, where, how, and when questions which his target audience asks.

It might not be an easy task to know how to become a successful blogger and make money.

But if you’re the curious type who wants to have answers to every question, it can be very easy for you to become successful.

Hence knowledge is key if you want to remain relevant in your industry and you have to invest in it.

You should be able to develop your love and time for seeking knowledge in order to go forth in discovering and developing new ideas to help solve problems faced by your audience.

This quality would make you become vast in your niche and other related areas to command authority.

Passion for writing

Passion is one of the most common characteristics of a good blogger.

If you don’t have passion for what you do, there won’t be motivation which is your conviction to succeed in doing something.

Passion makes you enjoy doing something even if it’s difficult.

So, if you find blogging not easy sometimes but have the self-conviction to succeed, you won’t let anything stop you.

Passion for writing is a personal strength that successful bloggers use to create and publish great content on their blogs.

And that has been my own way for more than 20 years now.

My computer and I are so close that one day my daughter wanted to know why I’m always at my computer desk.

In fact, I deny myself sleep just to accomplish writing great content.

As a result of this, I would be on my system all the time.

My passion for writing is the connection between my interest in what I write and what I aim to gain from what I write.

If the connection doesn’t break, it would be very hard for me to stop blogging.

So, if you want to boost your passion for writing and becoming a successful blogger, you have to aim at your objectives and do whatever it takes to achieve those objectives.

However, to succeed as a blogger, you must be able to know how to write extensively and frequently.

It’s important your blog is always fresh to maintain great organic traffic and ranking position on search engines.

So, passion helps to blog just like motivation helps to shape behavior.

Know basic SEO

One of the qualities of a great blogger is knowing how to do SEO yourself.

Having a basic knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) is a part of what makes you a good blogger.

So, if you want to know how to become a successful blogger in Nigeria, you must develop the habit of optimizing your blog posts for both humans and search engines.

This technique can help you to boost the user experience of your blog content and at the same time enhance its visibility on the entire world wide web.

If you have a beautiful theme and super-fast hosting plan and users can’t find your blog on search engines, there won’t be much success.

The point is if your blog is not well optimized, there are chances it won’t be indexed by search engines.

And what that means is that its visibility level on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the like will be at zero level.

Be consistent

Your consistency shows your discipline level in your niche.

The moment you start blogging, your audience is aware of your blogging habits.

So, if you’re known for a particular strategy such as blogging frequency or style, you have to be consistent with that.

A good blogger should have a schedule for publishing his blog posts. You can decide to blog every day, weekly or monthly.

There is no law that goes against what you want to blog about or how and when to blog.

What matters is to ensure you’re consistent with your style.

If you decide to blog weekly, ensure you do what you have to do on the exact weekday and time to show you’re a serious blogger.

Sticking to whatever good standard you started with is highly impressive. And that can make your audience readily go along with your flow.

Being consistent with your niche, style, schedule, and audience is a good blogging quality to make you become a successful blogger.

Be open minded

 

Great bloggers need a lot of collaboration among themselves to compete with big guys in the community.

That shows blogging goes beyond writing and having great knowledge.

No matter how great your knowledge or skill is, you don’t help yourself if you can’t share it with others.

If you have an idea or knowledge about something and you keep it to yourself, it means you are blocking yourself from learning more.

Meanwhile, it’s a mature display to share valuable tips with others.

Most successful bloggers are open to others and even invest in helping those who are coming behind them to grow.

Neil Patel made his UberSuggest (a keyword research tool) completely free and that didn’t make him close shop but more popular and successful!

There are many successful bloggers like that who are committed to offering everything they know to help others.

Be that as it may, blogging gives you the opportunity to discover more, learn more, and know more.

So, what is in your brain won’t finish if you share your knowledge with your peers.

I’m in a blogging group on Facebook called The Bloggers’ Team [Let’s Grow Together].

The group was created by Santanu Debnath to make bloggers grow their blogs.

If you want to promote your blog, just share great tips in the group and help others learn more from you.

By so doing, you can build relationships with other members of the group who will visit your blog and also share your posts with their own audience.

Other advantages of sharing great tips with others include getting more social likes and shares, tweets, pins, and quality backlinks from them.

By so doing, I have personally benefited a lot from interacting with other great bloggers in different groups.

Blog what you know

 

You must have real knowledge of what you blog about if you want to become a successful blogger.

Blogging about what you know nothing about can piss off your audience and make your posts less engaging.

If after reading a book or a post you practical experience what you learn and offer a guide, you will make a good blog post that can convert.

Your empirical understanding of the subject can make you become a successful blogger and make a lot of money.

Writing about something you haven’t experienced will limit your thought leadership.

Without experiencing the issue in reality, your recommendations will be questionable. And such a blog can’t be successful.

As a great blogger, those who listen to you are aware of the fact that a red litmus paper would turn black if put in acid.

So, they don’t need you to tell them what happens to the litmus paper but “how acid turns the paper to black”.

They’re interested in “how the reaction takes place or how to get the result they want”.

The audience wants to hear your own view, of what you experienced during the experiment.

Network with industry big guys

In a situation where you want to write about something which you have not personally experienced or which you have no knowledge of, that doesn’t make the subject a no-go area.

If you think writing about that topic is very important to your growth and you can’t handle it, instead of misleading your audience, you can hire or interview other great bloggers who have the experience.

While that can help you build a very strong bond with other great bloggers, it will also make your audience trust you.

Be a good communicator

 

Blogging would be boring if bloggers use big grammar or technical jargon to intimidate their audience.

Blogs are built around search engine optimization (SEO) standards and that shows that bloggers who choose good communication skills over grammar perform better.

That quality can make a blogger successful since it will help the audience understand what you’re saying without the need to use a dictionary.

Mind you, using simple terms to capture all levels of the audience is a part of your optimization efforts to create user-friendly content.

Otherwise, your post won’t attract a good engagement rate as your audience will leave the page without completely reading the post.

And if that happens, your blog will have to deal with a high bounce rate.

You should understand clearly, that what makes a blog different from an article is its simplicity.

In style and tone, both are different.

To be grammatically sound can make you write a great article, but that won’t be necessary to write a great blog post.

Be creative

 

Creativity is an integral part of the qualities of a great blogger.

So, if you want to be successful in blogging, you have to be highly creative.

You need to be creative as much as a great blog needs to be frequently optimized.

That will give you the chance to always make your blog better in terms of design, configuration, performance, and content.

As a great blogger, your blog must be uniquely different.

Whenever there is a need to make a change, don’t find it difficult to make a difference.

Take for instance, if you find a theme or plugin that can improve the look, speed, and performance of your blog, don’t consider the cost or the stress of making the change.

Consider the great impact that the change will make on your blog in the long run.

The more creative you are, the more user-friendly your blog will be.

Be an entrepreneur

After investing so much in your blog, it will get to a stage where you need to monetize your blog and brand your image.

In that case, you need to make things happen by abiding by every business rule associated with your niche to succeed.

This includes having strong business ethics as discussed below:

Be objective

To become a great blogger, you must be able to stick to your business objectives.

Stay focused and don’t mix business with pleasure.

Ensure you go the extra mile to realize your business goals in order to make a big difference and stand out in the crowd.

Be self-motivated

Most of us own our blogs and get no pay for them.

Yet while looking for quality backlinks, we beg others to publish our guest posts on their websites and some would ask for money.

We also need to renew or upgrade our hosting plans, buy premium themes and plugins, pay for ads, and consult SEO agencies just because we want a good ranking position.

You need all the items to become a successful blogger and make money blogging.

So, you have no choice but to pay from your personal funds until your blog begins to pay.

This can be difficult if you’re not self-motivated.

Be yourself

Don’t pursue a business or niche because you read from somewhere that the business is profitable.

In fact, it will be a loss if the business is really profitable and you don’t have the capacity to run it successfully.

For you to be a good blogger, you have to be yourself.

Conduct your research before believing in the things you read. It’s when you have good knowledge of your circumstances that you can make a good business decision.

It would be a great mistake if you didn’t experiment with what you read on other blogs before banking on it.

As a great blogger, you need to be curious about finding the truth.

This will give you the confidence to approach your audience and make a recommendation.

Have what it takes to do a business

Starting a business is not an issue as anybody can but not having what it takes to profit in the business.

Hence not everybody that starts a business succeeds.

It takes a serious investment, finance, technical know-how, experience, human and material resources to run a business successfully.

So, ensure you have everything ready before you can start a business on your blog and make a profit.

Face the reality

No matter how zealous you are to develop a business idea, don’t ignore the reality.

If during your feasibility study, you realize that the business is not viable, the rule is to go for something else.

Conclusion on How to Become a Successful Blogger

Choosing a profitable blog idea is not what makes a good blog, but having the qualities of a great blogger.

If you choose a niche because it is a hot cake, your situation might be like that of a chicken that wants to pick corn from a bottle.

The corn is there, but the chicken can never reach it.

Any blogger in that state can easily identify an opportunity. But because of the surrounding barriers, he can’t reach the opportunity.

So, it would be a waste of time chasing a blogging fantasy. Rather, you should face the reality and create a great opportunity for yourself.

If you want to know how to become a successful blogger and make money in Nigeria or elsewhere, you don’t need much.

All you have to do is invest in your blog and demonstrate all the features of a great blogger as discussed above.

Finally, as blogging paves the way for you to move your small businesses online, this post will help you form the habits to become a successful blogger.

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