With the proliferation of social media influencers and YouTubers, you may be forgiven for thinking that blogging, the antecedents for these digital gigs, is dead. But you couldn’t be more wrong. In the United States alone, there are an estimated 31.7 million active bloggers. Approximately 77 percent of people say they read blogs on a regular basis.

Blogging is a numbers game, like most digital gigs and not all bloggers enjoy the massive readership of successful examples. If you want to make blogging one of your main sources of income, you need to know the secrets of making and maintaining a successful blog.

Below are seven tips you can employ to ensure your blog has a substantial readership.

1. Determine Your Goal

What is the goal of your blog? Are you just cataloging your daily activities, like an online diary? Or are you starting a blog to build an audience who want to independently publish a book? Or do you just want to make money from sponsors? Determining your goal will reveal how you should go about making your blog and what content you can put into it. Stick to these long-term goals and use them to guide your short-term goals.

2. Identify Niche

Dozens upon dozens of niches exist for blogs. For example, there are historical blogs where people want to know how much is a shilling or what historically accurate recipes are like. There are housekeeping blogs for people who want to explore zero-waste lifestyles. And there are blogs for book reviews and assorted book information. Your blog’s goal should mesh with your niche, which will also determine who your market and audience will be. Identifying niche and audience is essential for your next step.

3. Establish Identity

Your niche, despite the name, will have plenty of subtypes within it. If your niche is historical data, what kind? Are you more interested in medieval food or the fashions of the 1920s? How are you going to tackle this subject? If your blog focuses on historical fashion, will you be recreating these pieces and showing your readers how to do it themselves or will you simply explain the historical background of clothing and its meaning? Establishing this and being consistent in your approach will help you keep your target market interested.

4. Layout Properly

No matter how interesting your content is, you’ll have a hard time maintaining many readers if your layout is a mess. Common pitfalls when it comes to blog layout include the following:

  • Clutter your blog with too many add-ons
  • Use fancy but unreadable fonts
  • Glaring color schemes that make it difficult to read for a long time
  • Not enough whitespace around text and features

Avoid these common layout problems and you’ll enjoy more readers and subscribers, therefore ensuring your success. There are plenty of Webhosting sites such as WordPress that provide ready-made attractive blog layouts. These sites let you plug in images and text without altering the attractiveness.

5. Make Proper Content

On the flip side, even if your blog has an amazing layout and appealing design, you’ll have a hard time retaining any readers if your content isn’t engaging or related to your website. Too many blogs seek to make a profit by stuffing their content with articles unrelated to their blog’s identities and niche. Carefully curate your content to make sure it caters to your market. Don’t post anything without editing it properly. Typos and misinformation can be just as damaging to your blog as irrelevant content.

6. Use Mixed Media

Although plenty of blogs have articles with word counts that reach thousands of words, you’ll still need to mix things up if you want to keep readers interested. Few people online have the constitution to slog through an article over a thousand words without a picture or similar media to break the monotony. You should also leverage the power of video. Aside from long-form articles with plenty of relevant information, you should occasionally make and post videos on your blog to provide a different perspective for subscribers.

7. Respond to Readers

Finally, listen to your readers and subscribers when they come to you with comments and messages. Ensure that you have a reliable way to reach out to them such as a robust comment system or a contact page. Subscribers can give plenty of advice on what you can do to improve your blogs such as new topics, possible bugs, and other ideas. Acknowledging their comments and suggestion also fosters genuine trust and helps maintain a healthy relationship.

Blogging remains an excellent method of making a tidy profit over the internet, as long as you do so properly. With a combination of passion, determination, and dedication, you can turn a humble blog into your life’s work.