Let’s be honest – we’ve all spent way too much time reading mom blogs. And they can be a huge source of information, tips, pointers, and – ultimately – community. We find comfort in knowing that other mammas out there are going through the same things we are. It’s reassuring to know that we’re in this together, even when we’re separated by thousands of miles with different life backgrounds and experiences. That’s why mom blogs work.
But have you ever thought about starting your own? (Yeah, you!)
While it’s not exactly easy, it’s also not nearly as difficult as you might think. All it takes is a few simple tools, a little creativity, and you can have a blog up and running in a matter of hours. From there, it’s all about constant learning, disciplined action-taking, and a willingness to adapt and evolve as time goes on.
Nobody is promising you can launch a mom blog and make thousands of dollars per month, but it does happen (and would certainly be a nice added benefit, right?). There are plenty of mom bloggers who make $5,000, $10,000, and even $30,000 to $40,000 per month purely from blogging. So whether you’re looking to launch your own mom blog as a creative outlet or an entrepreneurial pursuit, there’s a case to be made.
4 Tips for Starting Your Mom Blog
On the one hand, starting a blog is super simple. Not easy, but simple. However, starting a blog, creating content, driving traffic to the blog, and then eventually monetizing clicks to create revenue is challenging. But if you’re willing to give it a go, the opportunity exists.
Here are several helpful tips for starting a mom blog and putting yourself on the road to success:
Identify a Niche and USP
It all starts with identifying what we call a niche and a USP. Your niche is already pretty well defined (moms), but you can drill into an even more focused group of moms, if you’d like. In fact, the more niche you go, the more likely it is that your blog will stand out from all of the others in the space. Examples of niches include disciplining children, breastfeeding, healthy eating and meal prep, raising boys, raising girls, homesteading and parenting, etc.
Next comes your USP, or unique sales proposition. This is the single sentence that describes what sets your blog apart from every other blog. Typically, it’s a statement that reads like this: “We help [niche] achieve [benefit they want to achieve] without [pain they want to avoid].”
Very few bloggers take the time to approach their blog like a business. As such, they don’t go through the effort of developing a niche and USP. This leaves them with a generic blog that nobody reads. By digging in and wrestling with these two issues upfront, you can give your blog a headstart from the beginning.
Set Up Your Blog
The next step is to set up your actual blog so that it lives on the internet. In other words, you need to select a domain name, hosting plan, and blogging platform. Without getting too much into the weeds on the step-by-step process of how to do this, here’s a useful guide. (While there are a lot of individual steps, it’s actually a pretty easy process.)
Develop a Content Strategy
Next comes your content strategy. This is where you create a plan for the content you’ll publish over the next several months.
While some bloggers map out an entire year’s worth of content, you’re probably better off going with a 12-week plan for now. You’ll learn a lot in your first several months of blogging (and will probably shift gears multiple times), so there’s no sense in creating a long-term strategy right off the bat.
Generally, it’s good to have three core topics or issues that you focus on. These become your pillar pieces of content. Then, after these posts get perfected, you can start creating spinoff posts that relate and link back to them.
Create a Plan for Traffic and Promotion
Without some sort of promotion strategy, your husband is the only person who will read your blog. So don’t forget about traffic!
While there are plenty of ways to attract organic traffic (and that’s the long-term goal), the reality is that it can take months and years to build up a steady stream of free traffic to your site. In the meantime, you can use PPC advertising to get the right people on your new blog.
The great thing about PPC advertising is that you only pay when someone clicks on the ad and lands on your blog. That means you never waste money on someone who doesn’t actually end up on your website. And because clicks can often be purchased for just a few cents or dollars, you can realistically drive hundreds of people to your blog each week for just a few dollars per day.
Let’s Get Ready to Blog
As you can see, the path to starting a blog is clear. The challenging part is figuring out your blog’s style, content strategy, traffic strategy, and overall plan for growth. But don’t let all of these decisions intimidate you. Just get started and learn as you go. The goal is to make progress little by little – not to be perfect right from the start.
So, what do you say? Is it time to get started?
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