In our recent post, 5 Passive Income Strategies for Musicians, we mentioned that one of the ways you can earn passive income is through blogging. Blogging is a great way to share your thoughts on a certain topic, build a community, enrich other people’s lives, and earn money in the process. One of the great things about being a musician is that you can engage in all kinds of revenue-generating activities relating to music. Running a blog gives you the flexibility to discuss music-related topics on your own platform and discover ways to earn money that you may not have considered. In this post, we’ll show you how you can start a blog and generate extra money to supplement your music income.
Watch: 5 Passive Income Strategies For Musicians
Pick a topic.
The first thing you’ll need to do when starting a blog for income is to pick a good topic. If you’d like to earn money from this endeavor, you’ll need to put some thought into what you’d like your blog to cover. You may already have some ideas, however, you’ll need to weigh those ideas with whether or not you can monetize them and by how much. In order to earn money with blogging, you have to attract a certain amount of traffic daily. Therefore, you should pick a topic that not only interests you but is also interesting to others as well. You should pick a topic that has enough popularity to give you decent daily traffic. The other thing to consider is saturation. If you pick a topic that’s too popular, you could end up in competition with too many other people doing the same thing you’re doing and your content could get buried. For example, you wouldn’t want to pick a broad topic like finance right now because there are way too many people doing that already. But if you narrow it down and cover only finance tips for single mothers, then you have a much better chance of capturing an audience because you’re speaking to a very specific niche.
For musicians, easy topics to cover would be those centered around the music industry. You could do a blog about your local music scene, local music venues, local bands, and local concerts. People will be coming to your site looking for things to do in your town. This would give you lots of local traffic which can put you in a really nice position to earn money from direct advertising. You could also do a blog about music industry hot topics. You would never run out of things to talk about there. You could also simply catalog your experiences as a musician. There are tons of other topics you could cover such as instrument and equipment news and reviews. You could also run a teaching blog about being a musician or making music. The neat thing about blogging is that you can talk about anything. As a musician, talking about things related to music is a natural extension of your artistry, but you don’t have to limit it to just music! Whichever topic you choose, just make sure you find it interesting first and foremost. If you’re not interested in it, you’ll be hard-pressed to get others interested. You should also pick a topic that interests a large number of other people as well.
Discover your competitors.
Once you narrow down a topic, the next thing to do is research. Do a couple of online searches to figure out who your competitors are. Check out their blogs and make notes on what they’re doing. You’ll want to know what types of articles they post, how they build their mailing list, and how they’re earning money. Sign up for their mailing lists and learn from them first hand. This will help you create a plan of your own. It will help you map out a content strategy and give you an idea of what keyword terms to compete for. Do this for every competitor you find. You’ll learn a lot about your new topic by doing this.
Name your blog.
After doing lots of research, it’s time to decide on a name for your blog. This is the fun part! You can use your creative side to pick a witty name that people will remember. I recommend using a combination of two or three words that are easy to say and memorize. You’ll want to make it as easy as possible for people to think of your blog when they think about your topic. So obviously, it needs to relate to your topic of choice. Be sure to stick to letters and words. If you include numbers in your blog name, it gets confusing because it’s not always obvious whether a number is spelled out when written.
Write down a list of every blog name you can think of and narrow it down. Check the domain database to see if your preferred blog name is available as a .com. I also recommend going with a .com as opposed to a .org or .net because .com is more popular and memorable. You can get a domain name for free when you purchase web hosting with Bluehost. Find out more here.
Decide how you will generate revenue.
Generating revenue is a big factor in the success of your blog especially if you’re doing it to earn an income. Some people will try to tell you that the most important thing is that you help your readers solve a problem. But you can do that without earning one cent. I say focus on earning money from the very beginning. Otherwise, you’ll waste a lot of time and money helping. One of the first things I recommend doing after choosing a topic is deciding how you will earn money with that topic. There are many ways to earn an income with a blog, and some methods are more applicable than others depending on your topic. Here are a few of the most popular ways you can earn money with a blog…
- Ad networks
- Direct Advertising
- Affiliate Marketing
- Sponsored Posts
- Products/Merchandise
- Subscriptions
- Digital Products (eBooks, Courses, Printables)
- Personalized Services
- Speaking Opportunities
- Influencer Marketing
As a blogger, you could potentially make use of any, all, or a combination of the above revenue-generating strategies to earn a significant monthly income. I recommend looking at each strategy and picking 2 or 3 of the most practical methods for your blog. Knowing how you plan to earn money, will help you focus your efforts on those objectives saving you time and a ton of money.
Get hosting.
As I mentioned earlier, in order to run a blog, you’ll need web hosting. Web hosting is a service that holds all of the files that make up your website. When you visit a website, you’re looking at the result of thousands of data files and information. These files have to be stored somewhere. Bluehost is the most popular and reliable service available for blog hosting and they’re affordable too! With Bluehost, you can get hosting for as little as $3.95 per month. Plus, when you start a new account with them, you’ll get access to discounted supplemental services such as a dedicated email to match your shining new domain name, advertising credits, site security discounts, and more. Set up your web hosting with Bluehost here.
Install WordPress.
The great thing about Bluehost is that they have a one-click install feature with WordPress, the best engine for blogging hands down. With just one click you can set up WordPress for your blog. WordPress comes with lots of free themes you can choose from to design a blog that best fits your needs. Each theme has special features that allow you to create a great experience for your readers. There are free themes to choose from as well as premium themes. The premium themes provide extra features such as better SEO coding practices, more functionality, and uniqueness. However, if you’re just starting out, there’s nothing wrong with using a free WordPress theme. Be sure to read the reviews and make sure you’re using a theme that is well received.
Once you install WordPress and complete some basic design tasks such as your header and sidebar widgets, it’s time to include some content. I’d start with the basics such as your About and Contact pages as well as Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Policy. Next, you’ll need to start posting your content!
Create content that achieves your goals.
Content will be a driving force for earning income with your blog. Content is what attracts people to your blog. Without it, you’ve got nothing. So building an effective content strategy should be one of your first priorities when starting a blog. I recommend taking a look at your goals and objectives before you write anything. What kind of traffic do you want to attract? Who is your audience? And what are you trying to sell them? These are questions you’ll need to answer before writing a single piece of content. Additionally, you’ll need to be cognizant of your goals when you build your content strategy. For example, if your goal is to generate traffic, then you’ll need to find out what your audience wants the most when they go to search engines. What are they searching for? What do they need? What problems are they trying to solve? Be sure to answer these questions with your first bit of posts.
Also, it’s a good idea to visit your competitors to find out what they’ve written about on these same topics. Build your posts around the content that your competitors have posted but make it better. If they have a 2000 word post, make yours 3000 focusing on the things that they missed. Dive into the things they didn’t with your post and offer more value.
You can also use Google’s Keyword Planner to determine what keywords your target audience is searching for on search engines. This tool will tell you how many times a particular term is searched for in a month’s time and what the competition level is for that search term. This is helpful information to know when deciding which topics to write about on your blog, and which specific words or search terms to include in your posts.
The other factor for generating traffic is having a mailing list. If you can build an engaged community around your topic, then every time you post something new, the people on your mailing list will come to your site and read it. This is how you can generate reliable traffic week after week. In order to build a good mailing list, you’ll need to create sign-up and opt-in forms to capture emails from your website visitors as they browse through your site. Some bloggers even offer incentives to join their mailing lists such as free courses, printables, checklists, and other resources that their readers would find valuable.
Finally, you’ll need to include generating revenue as part of your content strategy. Plan on writing specific posts or creating specific content that drives sales or inquiries. For example, if you decide to run a blog about instruments and gear, then a great way to generate revenue is to write posts reviewing instruments and pieces of equipment. In this case, you’re probably aiming to earn income through affiliate marketing. These particular posts would include your affiliate links that would take your readers directly to the online store that you’re affiliated with to make a purchase. Whichever way you choose to earn money, you should plan your content strategy to address your specific income objectives.
Promote your content.
Creating great content is only half the battle. In order to get the most out of your great content, you should spend a considerable amount of time promoting it. Social media is a major way to promote your new blog. Create social media accounts for your blog and start connecting with people. Social media provides an effective way to promote your new blog posts and whatever else you’re selling.
You can also network with other blogs by offering to write guest blog posts. Being a guest blogger allows you to promote your blog and your brand to another blogger’s audience. It also gives you an opportunity to collect email addresses if you include an opt-in offer in your guest post. Plus, guest posting allows you to build quality links which is great for search engine optimization. Link building doesn’t have to be limited to guest blogging though. You can also network with other bloggers and ask them to include your link where their readers would find value. This is especially helpful if you’ve written a post that dives deeper into a topic that’s been touched on by another blogger. That other blogger can include a link to your post to help their reader learn more about that topic.
These are just a few ways to promote your blog. Advertising is another way to promote your content and it opens up a wide range of promotional opportunities to generate traffic and scale your income. Advertising should be considered after you’ve developed a strong content strategy and are already converting readers into subscribers. It doesn’t make sense to spend money on advertising if your systems aren’t yet working optimally.
To summarize, running a blog for income is another great way to earn money as an independent musician. The topic possibilities are endless whether you want to stay inside of the world of music or not. The key to running a successful blog is choosing a design that fits your blogging goals, having a solid content strategy along with effective SEO tactics, converting readers into subscribers, ensuring that your content will achieve income objectives, and generating traffic. If you can hit all of these benchmarks, it’s only a matter of time before you start seeing sizable results.
Even though blogging does require time, it’s worth it! We promise! If you’d like to test the waters before starting a blog, you can try your hand at freelance writing. Our buddy Caleb over at Musician With a Day Job wrote a really nice article about making money freelance writing. You can also intern with an established blogger to learn the ropes. We are thinking about offering an internship and maybe looking for a new team member. Let us know if you’re interested by contacting us here.
If you’re a musician looking for ways to earn extra income, starting a blog is a real possibility. If done right, a blog can provide extra funds to fill financial gaps or give you extra spending money to take your career to the next level. However, blogging for income is not easy. There is a time investment you’ll need to commit to in order to see real results. But if you follow and execute a proven revenue-generating strategy, you’ll begin to see a return on your investment in the form of a reliable income month after month. The tips in this guide can help you get started on your own. Now, I’d like to hear from you! Do you have a revenue-generating blog? What topics do you cover? If not, what topics would you cover and what are you waiting for? Drop a line in the comments section below and let’s chat!
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Who would have thought that blogging could provide supplemental income for musicians? This article explains how and also breaks down all the steps on setting one up. Thanks Anitra for sharing this great information!
Right! Blogging is a great way to earn income on your own time. It will take some time investment to get things rolling, but once it’s started, it can be a great stream of revenue.