What is amateur blogging?
Amateur blogging is when a passionate individual who loves writing starts publishing articles online consistently about a specific topic.
The term "amateur blogging" should not be confused with a lack of experience or knowledge on the topic. It simply means someone is "just starting out" and is on their way to becoming a professional blogger.
In other words, there's nothing amateur about amateur blogging.
A blogger is a blogger. Period.
Should you start amateur blogging?
One statistic, according to OptinMonster, that will convince you to start the highly rewarding journey of amateur blogging is that 77% of internet users still read blogs.
As of 2022, according to Statista, there are an estimated 5.3 billion internet users globally.
So, the answer to the question "if you should start an amateur blog" is a big resounding YES!
What are the benefits of amateur blogging?
There are many benefits to running an amateur blog.
One of the biggest benefits of amateur blogging is traveling while blogging. Meaning that you don't have to be stuck in one place and amateur blog. You can do it all while seeing the world.
Specific benefits to amateur blogging:
- More people learn about you, which makes it easier to be hired and partnered with in business deals.
- Growing your online network and making friends.
- Becoming great at writing the more articles you publish in your amateur blog.
- You don't have to write full-time for your amateur blog to become successful over time.
- Gaining extra income while still keeping your day job.
The best part about amateur blogging is that English does not have to be your native language to succeed.
Tools like Hemingway and Grammarly can help correct your grammar and suggest better phrasing, so you can sound like a native English speaker in no time.
And now, with ChatGPT, your amateur blogging efforts can be taken to a whole another level. ChatGPT cannot write the entire post for you, nor should it, but it can help you explore and elaborate on ideas.
Signs amateur blogging is for you:
- You love the freedom "amateur blogging" can give you.
- You love helping others through your writing.
- You genuinely love the process of researching, writing, and editing your articles.
- You enjoy creating a personal brand as a byproduct of amateur blogging.
Signs amateur blogging is not for you
- You give up too quickly.
- You don't enjoy writing and reading.
- You want to do it just for the money.
Sidenote: There is nothing wrong with using amateur blogging to generate additional income that can help you live a better life. But, if it's the only reason, and you don't genuinely enjoy writing in general, then amateur blogging might not be for you.
How to make money with amateur blogging?
Glad you asked!
For any journey to be worthwhile, we must find ways to make it sustainable so we can continue doing it for a long time.
While we may love writing and sharing our knowledge with the world, there comes the point where the time we invest in an activity, in this particular case, amateur blogging, that activity must sustain itself.
With that said, here are some of the basic ways how to make money with amateur blogging and actually enjoy the process:
- Google Ads
- Sponsored posts
- Affiliate marketing
- Selling your own products: ebooks
- Premium content
- Coaching
We have written an extensive article on "How to make money blogging online as a solo blogger" and invite you to read it in depth so you can employ any methods that fit you best.
What to write about in your new amateur blog?
"Write what you know" advice is as old as writing, and it makes sense when starting your amateur blogging journey.
The idea is that if you write about a topic that you know best, you will never run out of material of what to write about.
However, if you want to turn your amateur blogging into a profession down the line, it's best to combine what you're interested in with what readers want to read about.
The most popular topics to write about when amateur blogging are:
- Business: Finance, markets, investing.
- Technology: Gadgets, applications, cars.
- Travel: Best places to visit and stay in.
- Fashion: Latest fashion trends.
- Lifestyle: Health, beauty, well-being.
However, just looking at these broad topics, it can quickly get overwhelming, and you can burn out before even starting out.
Here's a 3-step exercise on how to find your topic:
- List everything you know to write about.
- Notice a recurring theme in your topics.
- Look at the most popular topics from the list above and see where your recurring theme fits in.
A real-life example of what to write about on your new amateur blog
Let's say you like fashion, and you would enjoy your amateur blogging efforts the most when writing about it.
Now, it wouldn't be wise to write everything in and around fashion because bigger media outlets do this well, and competing with them on every fashion topic would be hard.
However, writing about "sports shoes of the 90s" might create a brand and a niche that others will know you as.
This way, your amateur blogging journey can take a professional turn and start generating the income necessary for you to keep turning this into a profession. Big brands could choose your blog to advertise in their latest replicas and vintage releases. Just one of the many ways you could monetize your amateur blog.
How to research the topic of your amateur blog?
One way to find out if your topic is worth writing about is using Google Trends , which tells you the popularity of a topic over time.
Let's try our "sports vintage" fashion idea.
In the image above, we see that the "vintage nike" term has been steady over the last year, with a bigger uptick towards Christmas.
This also tells me that there's a commercial intent to this keyword.
In other words, people want to buy "vintage nike".
The idea will be that if I keep writing about it, "vintage" sports fashion enthusiasts will read my blog, which will increase my visits. Visits that I can potentially translate into advertising money.
An advanced step in researching amateur blogging keywords using Ahrefs
A more advanced step in researching our topics would be to use something like Ahrefs and find out how difficult these keywords are.
Our Ahrefs dashboard shows that the monthly search volume for the "vintage nike" keyword is roughly 7K.
This means that if we write about this topic and do a good job at covering the topic — we may rank on the first page of Google since the "keyword difficulty" is very low.
As you can see — the top-10 results share the overall monthly traffic. And you don't need a ton of backlinks to rank for this topic.
As a basic rule of thumb, Google ranks your post based on its quality and your domain authority. In other words: How trustworthy is your domain which is increased over time with consistent writing and other credible domains linking back to you.
What are the basics of SEO for amateur blogging?
SEO, which is short for Search Engine Optimization — is crucial when it comes to the success of your blog.
SEO is how people will find and read your blog.
Focusing on SEO best practices will ensure that your content is easily indexed by Google and potentially shown to people who are searching for the topic you are writing about in your blog.
There are two types of SEO to worry about:
- On-site SEO is how your blog is structured. Luckily when you run your amateur blog with blogstatic.io, you don't have to worry about this. Everything is taken care of right out of the box.
- Off-site SEO (also referred to as Off-page SEO) involves activities that happen around your amateur blog, such as other domains linking to it.
How to actually start your amateur blog?
The old way of starting a blog was to hire a web developer and pay them a decent sum of money so they could code it for you.
Those days are long gone, and now we luckily have something like blogstatic.io, which makes everything easy for you.
With blogstatic, all you have to worry about is your writing, and you can literally start your amateur blog in minutes, and it's all for just $19/year.
Yes! That is not a typo.
You can have your custom blog for just $19 per year, and here's how.
Register on blogstatic.io
After confirming your email, create your amateur blog.
And, Voila! Your new blog has been created.
The benefits of running your blog using blogstatic
blogstatic makes it super simple to run and maintain a blog. There is nothing to install, and everything is ready for you to start writing.
Among numerous features, here are some of the most important ones:
- Nothing to install
- Fast hosting
- Free SSL Certificate
- Free subdomain
- Sitemap
- robots.txt
- Twitter Cards and Facebook Cards
- Translations
The best part is that blogstatic has a built-in Newsletter capability, so you can start growing your audience and sending out Newsletters from the blogstatic dashboard.
How to write a post in your amateur blog?
Writing an article for a blog is different than writing an essay.
Most experts recommend that the reading level of an amateur blog post should that of a 6th grader.
However, as far as the structure goes, these are some key elements that should go into your amateur blogging post:
- Title
- Description
- Post Photo
- Body Text
As far as the body text goes it should be written in short concise sentences, short paragraphs, headers, lists, bullet-points, quotes, photos, graphs.
People don't read entire articles, they mostly skim through them looking for the section they're most interested in.
Where to promote your amateur blog?
Writing and publishing articles as part of your amateur blogging efforts is only half the battle. You should constantly share and promote it wherever you see fit.
Social media
Having an active account in at least one of the big social media (Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook) — depending on the nature of your content, is a surefire way to get a few quick readers right after publishing.
Communities and groups
Sharing your articles in closed communities you belong to is one way to get genuine feedback and improve your content. Also, your friends could be the first to share it with their network. Helping you further amplify your message.
Newsletter
Running a newsletter is a must for any amateur blogger. By having a signup field at the end of every post in your blog, gives you a chance to build an audience of raving fans who look forward to read your articles. Running a newsletter in blogstatic is a breeze alongside your blog.
Networking
Making friends with readers and other bloggers so you can manually share your latest posts with them.
Soft skills that are useful for amateur blogging
Producing the best content for your amateur blog can be further amplified when paired with your well throughout gestures.
Engaging with your readers is one way to create a memorable personal brand that comes to mind every time someone may think about the topic you are covering in your amateur blog.
Being respectful to other blogger is another way of showing your professionalism. Again, there's nothing amateurish about your amateur blog, unless you don't engage with your peers.
Blogging resources
When running your amateur blog, you will need a ton of resources that will further enhance your presence on the web.
Here we have put together a long list of helpful links, products, and services ranging from Photography, to Learning, and all the way to Email Marketing and Monetization.
Visit Blogging Resources.
Mistakes to avoid
Up to here, we've been talking about everything you should do to support your success towards amateur blogging.
However, there are pitfall to avoid when running your amateur blog, so you can increase your chances of looking more professional.
These pitfalls are:
- Overthinking what to write about
- Not investing the time necessary to produce the best content you possibly can
- Not monetizing your blog
- Ignoring SEO best practices
- Being inconsistent in your publishing cadence
- Not building an email list
- Not using Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
- Making it your blog too personal
There is a time and place to reveal a personal story that will help your readers connect with you, but too much of it and you're risk sounding unprofessional to the detriment of your amateur blog's success.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best benefit of amateur blogging? —You can do it in your spare time and while traveling.
- Which topics should I write about? —Write what you know best, but see if it's something people want to read.
- How can I monetize my amateur blog? —Ads, sponsored articles, affiliate marketing, are just a few. Here's an entire article we have written dedicated to monetization.
- How do I create my blog? —You can hire a developer or use blogstatic.io to start in minutes.
- Where do I promote my blog? —Maintaining an active social media presence is highly recommended.
Conclusion
In this article we have learned about all the benefits of amateur blogging. As a conclusion we can all agree that even if amateur blogging is not your primary career choice, it is a great way in amplifying your personal brand and advancing your professional career.
Through your well written amateur blogging content you will give yourself a bigger chance to being discovered.
As you start in this journey, let us know here at blogstatic.io how we can further help you reach your amateur blogging goals.
