To sign up for our daily email newsletter, CLICK HERE
The name blog is short for weblog and there is no doubt you have visited a number of blogs while surfing the net. There are over 150 million blogs in the world and more than 30 million bloggers in the US alone. A new blog is created around every 0.5 seconds and nearly a quarter of all websites are classed as blogs.
As you can see this is a very popular form of website and millions of people enjoy creating and reading this form of content. A blog’s subject matter can be for virtually anything.
Why would you start a blog?
It could be that you have a message that you want to get out into the world. Perhaps you have had experiences that you would like to share and that could help other people. For example you may be a single mom who wants to help other single parents with tips for saving money and time. You might be a keen traveler and your blog is about all the wonderful, and not so wonderful, places you have visited. A popular, successful blog can make money for the author through advertising revenue.
The best way to start a blog is to choose a subject that you are excited about and keen to keep on learning about. If you enjoy TV shows and movies then an entertainment blog would be ideal. If you are into Star Wars, Tim Burton or period dramas then you can have a niche area on your blog or you could focus entirely on this. Whichever way you choose to go you will need to do a few things before you can start writing about movies and TV shows.
Choosing a name
It is important to get the name right. Not only do you want something easy to remember but it should be appropriate to the blog and catchy too if possible. Ideally the name will have something in it to make it obvious what your blog is about. For instance if your name was Quick Asian Food Recipes then it’s going to be very obvious what your site is about. If you called yourself Neil’s Great Blog then all anyone can see is that the owner is probably called Neil and he has a blog. Not very helpful. Perhaps something like www.bobsamericanmovieguide.com would be better for a movie blog.
Building the blog
Before moving on to purchasing the domain and hosting you should decide how you want to build your blog. If you are experienced in coding then perhaps you want to make your own site. If you have some knowledge then you could download a free or paid for Bootstrap blog theme and customize it to your needs.
For most bloggers they will use one of the online blogging resources such as Wix or WordPress. There are many options for blogging including, Ghost, Weebly and Medium. The one you choose will depend on your requirements. For instance Medium will bring you a ready made audience but your content is only available on Medium and you won’t have your own online presence. Wix is an easy way to build a blog with drag and drop functionality but the site must be hosted with Wix.
For most bloggers, WordPress is the resource they choose. You can host your blog for free on WordPress, pay for one of the plans with them or download the software and make your own blog with a host of your choice. There are many good wordpress alternatives that you can also choose from though, so don’t be intimidated comparing them!
Buying the domain and hosting
For this example assume you are going to use WordPress for your blog. You now have 3 options. You can take a free account with WordPress which will mean you have a generic WordPress name and your blog will have WP advertising on it. You can choose a paid for plan and host with WordPress; this will give you 4 more price plan options.
The last and best option is to go to wordpress.org and download the software from there. Now you have done that it’s time to visit FortuneLords or another company to buy your domain name and hosting.
You will type in your domain name first to check availability. As luck would have it www.bobsamericanmovieguide.com is available! Now you need to choose your hosting and how many years you would like it for. This will mostly depend on your confidence in your blog and your budget but you can start with one year and renew each 12 months. Also you are unlikely to need much more than a basic package to start. There is normally plenty of storage for text, images and video. You can always upgrade later.
Designing your blog
Luckily you don’t need to be a great website designer to build a beautiful movie blog. There are thousands of themes for you to download and alter. You can use a multitude of plug-ins to assist you. Before you know it you will be showing movie trailers and writing reviews of your favourite movies. Some templates and themes are free and some have a one off purchase fee.
Content
This is what the blog is all about. You love movies and TV shows and now is your chance to tell the world all about the great movies that people are missing out on. Articles for blogs work best if they are over 2000 words and they should stay relevant and contain appropriate keywords and phrases to help Google locate you. Make sure images are optimised. Set a publishing schedule and update the site regularly to keep bringing in visitors.
How do you monetize a blog?
Now you started off the movie or entertainment blog as a hobby but wouldn’t it be great if you could make some extra money out of it? After all the hosting and domain names aren’t paying for themselves. Yet.
Advertising
The main way to monetize a blog is to supply advertising. Once you have built up a strong fanbase and have a good volume of regular visitors you can use Google Adsense and place relevant adverts on your site. If you can get a high volume of traffic to visit you then you can make a lot more with advertising space for larger private companies. Keep concentrating on providing entertaining and informative content for movies and shows.
Selling physical products
Another way to bring in revenue would be to have a shop on your blog selling physical items. This could be movie merchandise, DVDs, movie posters, souvenirs or t-shirts. A shop is easy to add to your blog with all the tools available to WordPress.
Summary
Before planning to become rich you should just enjoy writing about your favourite movies or whatever form of entertainment you enjoy. Make it a hobby and with good content, word of mouth, Google searches and use of social media you can drive more traffic to your blog then you can think about making extra cash on the side.
