Working online is a growing opportunity. Many companies are outsourcing their work to remote workers, and freelancers can even build up a dependable base on the web.
Another type of online work is entertainment. YouTube personalities and bloggers are great examples of this. Should you try this form of online work out for yourself as a source of income, though? Is blogging during college a good source of income?
Do You Have a Good Topic?
The first thing you need to consider when you are starting a blog is whether or not you have a topic or theme that is interesting to potential readers.
As a college student, there are a lot of options. For example, you could have an educational blog with school tips and essay help. A more popular choice, though, is to write about your travels in college. It is a particularly good option for students who like to explore in their free time or are in study abroad programs.
Travel blogs are a somewhat popular theme anymore. After all, not everyone has the means to travel, but they do want to know more about the world around them. Travel blog readers would both read your blog to learn about the places you’re visiting as well as for the pure enjoyment of reading about your experiences.
However, you need to remember that you are one of the hundreds of travel blogs on the internet today. As such, you need to think about what you can do to set yourself apart from the pack.
Attracting Readers
Most bloggers don’t get revenue from merely writing their posts. However, this isn’t to say that your content attracting readers isn’t essential – it’s absolutely crucial.
Your best bet to attract readers is to look into SEO techniques. SEO stands for “search engine optimisation” and the idea behind it is to make your content friendly to search engine algorithms to help your content rank higher. You want to get your content as close to and as high up on the first page of a search engine as possible. Think about it this way – how many times have you gone past the first page of your Google search?
Some of the basics of SEO are simple. For one, you should use keywords in your posts, titles, and description. Keywords are words or phrases that relate to your topic. In other words, you should insert keywords that someone might search related to your topic that would lead them to your post. Don’t sacrifice your content for stuffing these keywords, though, because this will have the opposite effect of what you want.
There are other aspects of SEO that you should look into as well. If you run a website rather than using a platform, for instance, you will want to make sure your site is user-friendly. For most new bloggers, running their website isn’t too much of a concern.
How Do Bloggers Make Money?
As noted, it isn’t the process of creating a post that generates income. Instead, bloggers use methods revolving around their blog to make money.
One such way that bloggers do this is to run ads. It is particularly useful to bloggers who have their websites as they can offer companies real estate on their website because they control everything that goes on there. These are typically done in the form of banner ads.
Another route for revenue is ads in the form of a blogger making a post about or incorporating a particular product or service. In these cases, bloggers might get the chance to use affiliate links. Affiliate links are specific links that take the reader to the sponsor’s product or service. If the reader purchases with this link, the blogger earns a small percentage of sales.
Final Thoughts
So, with this information in mind, should you start a blog as a source of income?
Well, in short, probably not. Yes, blogging can be a good source of revenue if you do it right, but even skilled bloggers need to work to build up an audience and earn advertisers and sponsors. This process can take years. It means that while you are in college, you shouldn’t depend on a blog in its infancy as a primary source of income.
