Imagine if you could turn a little bit of money into a lot more, simply by making a few small investments into your blog. Whether you think about it or not, your blog is a business. I’d hope you would want to make this business as profitable as possible. By making a few small investments for your blog, you can rake in even more money for the long term.
Here are five things you can invest in to make your blog even better than it already is now.
1. Get A Fast, Reliable Web Host
If you’re serious about your website, and hope to pull in a lot of traffic to it, it’s absolutely vital that you get a proper web host. Resellers, although cheaper, simply won’t do. Not only is their space limited, their bandwidth also only allows a limited amount of people to visit at one time. Instead of waiting for problems to arise, it’s better to just get a bigger, better web host right from the get go.
And if you’re currently using a free host like Webs.com or Blogspot… it’s important to switch right away if you want people to actually take you seriously as a business.
I highly recommend checking out my article, Four Crucial Things To Look For When Choosing A Web Host. In that article, I go over what makes a great web host great, as well as my personal suggestions for web hosting. It’s definitely worth a read.
2. A Premium Theme
Think of the theme and framework for your website as the building materials and interior design of your house. It’s important that these are strong and presentable, which is why I highly recommended getting a premium theme and framework, such as Genesis. Free themes are often buggy and often result in massive security issues that can allow hackers to completely compromise your website. Not to mention, they are often poorly optimized, meaning that they take a long time to load which results in lower rankings in search engines.
I recommend Genesis for a few reasons. First of all, it’s one of the cleanest frameworks available for WordPress, period. The team behind Genesis are professional programmers who know what they are doing. There are never any security issues, and the theme loads extremely quickly. There are also so many different designs to choose from, and even then the themes are highly customizable. There’s a reason so many top websites are powered by Genesis – not to mention, one purchase and you can use it on ALL of your websites. Genesis was one of the best purchases I’ve ever made, and I can say with utmost certainty that all the benefits of the framework have made me far more than what it had cost me.
3. SEMRush
Ranking in search engines these days isn’t easy. It seems like most of the search engine results are dominated by big players, who have seemingly unlimited marketing budget and can rank for almost anything with no effort.
These days, we have to go after long tail keywords. These are keywords that don’t have nearly as many searches as shorter keywords, but are significantly easier to rank for. SEMRush is a bit pricy at $97, but the fact of the matter is that you will make far more than that due to the insane increase in search engine traffic you’ll get to your articles.
4. Boost Your E-Mail Newsletter
For most niches, your e-mail newsletter will likely be your number one income generator. Not only does an e-mail newsletter keep people coming back to your site consistently, it also is the number one way for promoting products, and has the highest conversion rate. If you aren’t building your email list right now, you’re making a mistake. Start doing it now. Period.
Of course, you’ll want to get as many people subscribed to it as possible. The best way to go about this is to use a service like ActiveCampaign, which offers a ton of great opt-in templates, which comes free with a subscription. ActiveCampaign is currently offering a free trial, so you’ve got no excuse not to sign up and test it out. I’m using ActiveCampaign on all of my sites, and the results have been phenomenal.
5. Video Equipment
If you’re not on YouTube, you’re making a huge mistake. Not only is it another revenue source ($6.2 average per 1000 monetized views), it’s also an amazing traffic source to your website. YouTube videos rank a lot easier than a lot of articles do on the same subjects. If you’re on YouTube and your competitors aren’t, you already have a huge advantage over them.
It’s important to have the right equipment to make professional looking videos. I’m personally using the Shure SM7b, Panasonic G85 Camera, and Chromakey Green Screen. Again, it’s important to invest in top-of-the-line equipment early on, so you don’t have to spend extra money upgrading later.
Conclusion
Although there are a lot of other investments you can make into your blog, these are my personal top 5 recommendations. If you want to invest money into your blog for a good ROI in the long run, there are few better options than those listed above.
In what ways have you invested in your blog, and how has it turned out? I’d love to hear your stories.
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