As I am an independent professional blogger, I thought it is valuable that share the knowledge and tips on how I became an independent professional blogger as well as a web marketing consultant.
However, if you look at the blog articles spread all around the Internet, I think you will realize that there are thousands of articles already talking about SEO skills or the path to becoming a professional blogger.
Hence, I would rather focus on writing tips and information on how to make your blogging sustainable as an independent business than writing something ordinary to get the page view for my articles.
Being an independent professional blogger is a wonderful job so I seriously want to reveal the concrete path to becoming a blogger.
The articles with the tag “blogging” on my blog website will teach you the basic mindset and approach to becoming an independent professional blogger.
I have written in the title, the very first article that I’m going to write about blogging is about how to become a blogger and make money in three steps; three steps that you will not see in other people's articles and those are…
- Get SEO skills by doing the internship
- Start your blog ( +make money)
- Get your first own contract
Also, I would like to share tips on the financial side of being an independent professional blogger in the fourth paragraph as a piece of bonus information, please stay tuned until you finish reading the last bonus paragraph.
Get SEO skills by doing the internship
The very first step you can take to achieve the goal to become an independent blogger is getting the skill, especially something called SEO.
There are so many articles already explaining beautifully what SEO is, so if you have not heard of the word SEO please research by yourself because I’m going to skip the explanation of itself.
Some people may think about taking some classes on Udemy and watching some YouTube videos about blogging or SEO, but I do not recommend that.
Doesn’t matter if you’re working full-time or a student, the first thing you can do is search for the companies or organizations looking for SEO writers.
At this moment, you shall not look for a paycheck because you are going to learn by doing the internship, and a company needs to spend time with you to teach you how things are working.
If you are lucky enough to encounter a company that can offer you an SEO writer position, you want to dedicate yourself to learning everything about SEO.
Being an independent professional blogger also means being an entrepreneur, so you should think in a way that you can get the money only if you make value.
SEO skill includes an understanding of long-tail SEO strategy, monetization and all other general skills of blogging.
Related posts
How to monetize my blog on google blogger?
What is a long-tail SEO strategy and why it's so important?
People never pay for anything.
Start your blog ( +make money)
The second action you can take to become an independent blogger is to start your blog and ideally make small money with it.
You may wonder why I have not recommended starting the blog immediately but going for the internship to get the knowledge and experience.
The reason is very obvious; to build a successful blog, especially for monetization, you want to be smart and efficient.
To be smart and efficient, you have to know the language of the field.
Same as a carpenter who is not trained to brew a good cup of coffee, at the moment you decide to build your professional blog you are still without any experience and knowledge.
Let’s go back to the mainstream.
I suggest you start your blog after writing at least 100 articles at the company because the moment I saw a clear picture of the entire field was when I published more than 100 articles.
If you want to know the concrete step to "build" a blog site, please refer to the article "How to start your own blog with no money in 3 steps?"
If you don’t know the right path and if you keep putting your effort in the wrong way, you will never be able to succeed in the blogging field, so learning the languages is the first step and starting your blog is the second step.
It is very dangerous to expect a decent amount of income at the first stage without any contract base job from the companies.
You may want to calculate how many page views you need to make your blog a cash machine to feed you every single month before expecting it.
Although expecting a decent income at the first stage only from your domain is very difficult, there are things you have to do such as applying for Google AdSense or applying for the Amazon affiliate program to start the affiliate marketing.
If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is, please also research yourself because there are so many articles on the Internet explaining what affiliate marketing is.
I would like to talk about how to write blog articles fast and accurately in different articles, so my articles which will be published shortly will definitely help you to take a path to become a professional blogger.
The summary of this paragraph is as below
- Write at least 100 articles at the company you are doing an internship
- Start your own blog
- Apply for the various monetization programs
Get your first own contract
The third step is to get your first contract from a company.
At this point, you have a very good résumé of sales writing and SEO skills, so while operating your blog, you want to look for a contract from a company.
What you can offer to a company can be from various options.
For example, the most common case is that a company has a website but they don’t have the writer to keep publishing the articles, so you may go for the contract for the article publishing.
Or if a company wants to start the service website from scratch, you can help them by buying a domain, hosting server, and writing articles periodically.
The reason why having a contract with a company is important is that the income from display ad service or affiliate marketing can be very different from month to month, so it is very difficult to even plan a household financial strategy.
On the other hand, if you contract with the company with a monthly paycheck, if you honestly conduct the promised work, the company will pay you the same amount of paycheck doesn’t matter what happens.
This is why a fixed-rate payment contract with the company as an independent blogger is very important.
I of course have a fixed-rate contract with one Japanese company and one British company at this moment.
I only suggest things which I have experienced, so don’t worry.
How to construct a strategy for getting a contract will be explained in a different article so I would like to share it later on.
One caution, at this moment you are still working full-time, and doing the internship so I think not so many people will even reach this point because writing blog articles is very physically hard work.
Do not quit your job till your income exceeds your current salary
Last but not least, the bonus information here is when to quit your full-time job, and you can tell it yourself obviously because what I recommend is to quit the full-time job only if your blogging income exceeds your full-time job salary.
You can calculate monthly basis, for example, if your full-time job salary is €3,000, quit the full-time job if your blogging income ( Contract-based income + your blogging income ) exceeds €3,000.
This looks difficult to achieve but if you break it down like below, it’s achievable.
€500 contract with four companies + approximately €10,000 income from your blog
Becoming an independent blogger also means becoming an entrepreneur so you have to be very smart and sharp in finance.
Now I want to summarize this article and the 3 steps to becoming an independent professional blogger are…
- Get SEO skills by doing the internship
- Start your own blog ( +make money)
- Get your first own contract
I would like to keep publishing tips about blogging so please read the articles about blogging as well as other articles that I am really passionate about.
By the way, I offer SEO & blogging consultation so if you are interested in taking my courses or consultation, please take a look at the below article.
Thank you in advance.