Today everyone uses social media or blog to express their deepest thoughts and feelings. If you’re currently using a blog as a hobby and noticing that there are more views on your website than ever before you may be considering turning your small hobby blog into a full-time career.
We understand that you already have a full-time job, and the switch to blogging as a career may seem daunting at first. Today, we are going to look at some tips that you should keep in mind if you’re thinking about making the transition to full-time blogger.
Let’s start with a simple thought — You need to find a balance between your interests, and the things that keep your readers engaged. Here’s how you can get started.
Find Your Content Niche
If you want to turn your hobby blog into a career, you’re first going to have to do a deep analysis of your content and Google Analytic stats to discover your most popular blog posts. If you have a hobby blog about pets and notice that cat and dog posts tend to get attention from your audience, but your reptile and rodent posts are getting zero engagement, it’s obvious what kind of content your audience prefers.
Once you’ve narrowed down your niche, you could survey your audience on your website and personal social media platforms to discover what kind of content they want to see. If you want to generate leads for your blog, you have to understand your content niche and what your audience expects when they land on your website.
Update Your Blog Design
When operating a blog that you update for fun, it’s easy to forget core design elements that go into creating a website. If you are thinking about turning your blog into a full-time job, you’re going to have to revamp your website design so that it’s more user-friendly and approachable to a wide audience.
There’s an easy way to update your blog design while still boosting the interest of your audience. We suggest using a maintenance mode or coming soon page as a way to let readers know that you are currently working on giving your website a facelift.
Instead of landing on your homepage, they will land on a page — which you can quickly design — that tells users that you’re there, working on the site, and the blog will be up again shortly. You can use this opportunity to ask for email addresses if users want an update when the blog goes live. This tactic will also help your blog expand by adding more interested customers to your growing email list.
Add a Contact Page
Contact pages are vital if you want to make blogging your full-time job. Your hobby blog likely has an about page, your content, and perhaps an FAQ, but a contact page is what will make your website stand out from similar blogs.
Readers can use your contact page to give you feedback on your content, ask you questions that are not available on your FAQ page, or even suggest ideas for future content. You can take all of this information and use it to improve your transparency and create new content.
You could also consider adding a chatbot to help readers find the content they are looking for on your site. Instead of browsing through your blog they can just go to your chatbot at the bottom of the page, type in their search query, and get custom results featuring the articles most relevant to their search.
Conclusion
One of the toughest challenges you’ll face when transitioning from a hobby blog to a website designed to make money is limited time. Odds are, you already have another full-time job and maybe a family. If you’re currently working, the change on your website may take a little longer than you would prefer.
You don’t want to rush and put out a product that doesn’t reflect your interests, or worse, is dull and lifeless in the eyes of your audience. Take your time and think carefully about the decisions you make when updating your website and content. Before you know it, you’ll have a full-time blogging career that you created from a simple hobby website.