The world is changing at a fast pace. With all the pandemic chaos, the need for a side hustle or full-time career that can be done from home is more than ever. Blogging as a business is one such option where you can turn your passion into a venture to make money.
In this post, we will talk about what are simple steps you need to prepare yourself to take blogging as a business.
Like any other business, you need three Ms to run blogging as a business. These Ms are Mind, Motivation and Money. We all have the first two things with us and only we ourselves can increase or decrease it. But to fund a business is not easy and you need proper planning to set a proper financial plan.
Please note that I am not a money expert, but I have established my own online business and the tips I share in this blog are tested and tried by me. I have gone through a long journey of failure and discovery before setting up everything in place.
To convert blogging as a business, you do not need a huge investment. But the blogging world is full of shiny objects and new bloggers often wander to products which are not essential.
So, how to know where to invest? How much money I need to convert my blog into an online business? How to create a budget structure for a professional blog? Let’s get the answers to each of these questions!
5 Tips to prepare yourself before taking blogging as a business
Know your expenditure
Before you set your financial plan for blogging as a business, you must know your expenditures. The initial investment in a blog requires only two things,
Before you start a blog, research about what company to choose to buy domain and hosting. Read how to choose the perfect hosting company in this tutorial. I personally prefer Namecheap and Hostgator for my own blogs. My previous blog was hosted on Hostgator and I never had a single problem with them. Read my step-by-step tutorial on how to buy and set up a blog using Hostgator.
Except for the investment in a domain and hosting, you do not need any kind of investment. Concentrate on creating content for the initial 3 months. It can be written a blog post, video content or both.
You have to consider your time as money too. Consider your time as an investment too. It will help to keep yourself on track.
Invest your time in creating a content base to convert your blog into an online venture.
Another investment you can make during this period is to research and learn. You can take online courses offered by other online entrepreneurs and bloggers.
Check out my masterclass on affiliate marketing to make your first $100
Separate your expenses from personal to business
As they say, every penny you save is the penny you earn. Separating your personal expenses from your business one will organise your spending and help you set the finances for your business.
If possible, open a separate bank account for your business and list all of your business expenses and investment into it. Get a debit card for the account so that you can keep a tab on the spending.
Set monthly targets
This one thing will help you to make money blogging efficiently from the first month. I certainly am!
What I do is to set up a monthly income goal. Along with this, I also set an investment goal. Blogging as a business needs recurring investment like any other business.
After setting my investment goal, I do the maths to determine the income goal so that I make some profit.
Once I set the goals, I work accordingly to meet them. For example, if my investment goal is 10k for a month, I try to earn at least 30k that month. It covers my investment plus my personal expenditure and still I make a decent amount.
So, to earn 30k, I will take coaching sessions, do two SEO audit and 1-2 writing assignments. They easily make me minimum 30k. The other income from affiliate marketing, my book and masterclass, I consider them as bonus.
So, I hardly need to invest 8 hours a day to make money blogging. Setting up my goals help me to divide my time between work and family.
When you set up monthly goals, you need to stick to it. With little more hard work, you can surpass the income goal which is even better.
I love setting goals and fulfilling them. It gives me adrenaline rush but most importantly, it helps me to manage my time for my son.
It can be harder for the initial months, but once you stick to it, this practice will help you more than you imagine.
Prioritise your goals
Have a one-to-one talk with yourself. What you really want to do with your business in a long run?
Is your business going to die once your kids have grown up and you have time to resume a job elsewhere? Or you want to continue it and grow into a larger, profit generating business?
Work accordingly. There is no sense of spending all your money if you are going to scrap it after a few years.
But if you have larger dreams, work harder. Know your strength and invest after it.
Know your economic strength
There is a proverb in Assamese, ‘aay sai byoy’ which means spend according to your income. Before investing any amount of money, know how will cope with it.
It does not make any sense if you have to struggle after making a huge investment. It did happen with me when I invested a large sum of money in my business.
For three months, I need to run some side hustle just to meet my monthly office expenses. It not only ate up my time and hard work but also left me physically and psychologically drained.
Do not buy expensive plugins/themes when you can work with free ones. Do not invest in a social media scheduler, when you can schedule pins/tweets/posts on Facebook with their native scheduler. Do not buy expensive courses just because everyone is telling you about it.
Get the mental strength
Prepare yourself mentally and financially to take any risk. It will help you to cope up with the stress that comes with working hard online.
It is often a lonely job. Gluing to your laptop, writing, publishing, promoting simultaneously to make money is harder than we imagine.
You need to prepare yourself mentally to be able to work with calm mind amidst the chaos.
When you are online, there are hundreds of distractions. You may get lost in the rabbit hole of the social media spending hours but not doing anything solid.
As I said, time is the second investment you make when you take blogging as business. So, keep tab in your time and productivity. It will help you to work better.
Take breaks
As bloggers, the asset we sell is our skill and brain power. Naturally, we need to use it relentlessly.
But working without a break can cause more damage than productive work. Remember to take a break. Give some rest to your eyes and brains.
Go out. Talk to your friends. Jump, sing, exercise. Rejuvenate yourself and then come back to your desk. You would be amazed at your renewed energy!
Now, let’s get back to work. Prepare yourself with these awesome tips to take blogging as business and be economically independent.
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