How to become a successful blogger and grow your blog FAST

I love blogging and one year ago I decided that I wanted to create a special blog about fashion for women over 40. I wanted to write about a topic I love and be completely in control of my own business. In less than a year I’ve grown my blog 40plusstyle.com to an audience of over 85,000 visitors per month and am generating a 4 figure income from it. Here are my top 10 tips on how I achieved that.

1. Choose a specific niche

Even though your overall audience will be smaller, you will have more chance to reach them. There are now so many fashion blogs out there, that it is difficult to attract attention. So it’s better to try and become really good at covering one specific topic rather than trying to cover it all. That way it’s easier to know which realtionships to form and how to do your SEO. (more on that later). Since I loved fashion and was 45, I choose to write specifically about style and fashion for women over 40.

2. Make sure that you really love writing about the niche you choose

This is soooo important! Blogging takes a lot of time and effort, so when choosing your niche you need to make sure that you choose something you love. I made the mistake before to choose something that I thought would be popular, rather than to choose something I loved myself. That totally backfired, as I wasn’t proud of my blog, did not network in my niche and basically did not want to tell anyone about it. I knew I would never stop loving fashion and could always think of something to write about.

3. Choose the right domain name

Choosing the right domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make for your blog. A good domain name will have many of these components.

• short
• is a .com
• gives immediately clarity what your blog is all about
• specifies the niche
• is memorable
• will last a long time
• has some of your keywords in the name.

I loved 40plusstyle because it had 2 important words 40 and style in it. It was short, memorable and made it instantly clear was the blog was about.

4. Focus on SEO from day one

SEO or search engine optimisation is extremely important in getting attention for a new blog. And this is so much easier if you can do it for a targeted niche. Do some research as to which keywords in your niche get a lot of traffic. For me it was great to have the keywords 40 and style in the domain name. It helps a lot with any queries that relate to dressing over 40. Although your content should not be aimed at search engines, it certainly helps your traffic if you can write some articles every now and then that get a lot of searches. ‘How to’ articles for your niche always do well.

5. Make your blog look good and write amazing content

Now I’m not saying that all my content is brilliant but I put a lot of effort into the design, images and the articles to make sure that it all looks good. Every now and then I write pillar articles (long articles that go into more depth) about a certain topic, which are great for SEO but also are really appreciated by readers as it usually helps them with a specific problem.

6. Start building relationships from day 1

SEO can only take you sofar. You will never get a succesful blog if you don’t start getting to know the people in your same niche and make friends with them. Not only does it make your blogging so much more fun, it also helps a lot with getting a bigger audience and your SEO. Ultimately your articles will not get the attention they need, if noone sees them or shares them.

7. Promote your blog from day 1

Directly after registering your domain name, reserve your name immediately at all the major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Linked In, Youtube and Google Plus. It’s very important that your brand name is consistent across all these networks, which all help to spread the word about your brand. If you are serious about getting a succesful blog, then treat your blog as a brand and make sure that people know about it. So find out which websites matter in your niche and get to know the writers. Leave insightful comments and share your posts on the social media platforms that work best for your niche. I find that Facebook and Pinterest work much better for my niche for example than Twitter or Google Plus.

8. Appreciate your readers

I have made it a point to reply to each comment I receive. A comment reply is sent automatically to the commenter so they will know I have replied and get reminded of the blog again. Also find out what they want to read and which articles they appreciate most.

9. Build a community

I have started building a community on my site. I do this with my 40+ blogger list and I also have a style forum where readers can ask questions and upload their own photos. It helps to make your site sticky, so readers will come back time and time again.

10. Monitor your statistics

See what promotion methods and which articles work and adjust accordingly. Also find out what your readers are looking for. Which keywords did they use to find your site? If you can find the right mix of what your readers want and what’s popular in search engines, you will see faster growth.

Conclusion

All the above have helped me to grow 40PlusStyle.com to what it is today. This is only a small part of what you can do to grow your blog and I personally still have many items on my to do list (podcast, videos, more guest articles, ebook etc). But it proves that with passion and dedication you can still grow your website or blog really fast and either use it to generate income or provide leads for your business.

If you like to know more, then let me know! I can also be booked for consultations or workshops. Just fill in the contact form.