7 Ways to Invest in Your Blog to Make It Grow

The freelancing industry, especially blogging, has contributed significantly to the country’s economy. As such, blogs need all the help they can get. Investing in your blogs can only lead to building financial independence over time. It’s a way to grow an asset that could earn more than just capital.

It goes without saying that time is a necessary investment. You must be disciplined enough to set aside time to understand and practice the best blogging tactics that will help you beyond just sustaining.

Apart from time, you must make ongoing monetary investments to build a profitable blog.

This article will discuss blogging investments that will pay themselves back. Let’s dive in.

1. Custom Domain and Self-Hosting

Purchasing a custom domain (www.bloggingexplained.com) was one of my best investments in building this blog and my brand online.

Here are the top benefits of owning a custom domain name:

• It connects with your target audience and sets expectations regarding what your blog has to offer.
• Develops an incredibly professional identity.
• Strengthen your SEO rankings and help you generate more traffic.
• Helps you compete even with the big players.

Let’s talk about web hosting.

When you use free hosted blogging platforms (such as .blogspot.com), you will be held to blog customization, functionality, and monetization limitations. Basically, it means that you own nothing. So investing your effort and money on a platform, you don’t own is mindless.

So I suggest people go self-hosted to completely control their blog. Without a second word, Bluehost is the name I’d suggest to start a self-hosted blog.

Price:

Usually, a custom domain would cost you $10-20 per year, depending on your chosen TLD extension.

The best part is that when you signup for Bluehost hosting ($2.95/month), you can register your domain name for free. Isn’t it cool?

Beyond all, Bluehost is cheap, reliable, and beginner-friendly hosting with which the blog setup process gets automated and easy, with no technical process involved.

2. Blog Design

A presentable blog appeal is essential to build authority and growing readership in the long haul.

Foremost, the theme plays a significant role in that. It should be well-designed, clean, easy to navigate, and SEO-friendly.

When I started out, my blog would look crap – full of colors and unnecessary elements. Not a pretty sight. I was using a free theme, and their customization was poor. One day, I decided to go with Kadence, one of the best WordPress themes recommended for bloggers. Now you can see the prettiness of my blog.

However, it doesn’t mean you should buy too.

It is just fine to design your blog with free versions of themes like Astra or GeneratePress while you launch the blog. You can upgrade to their premium version as you scale content marketing and SEO efforts.

If you find it hard to figure out the design part, you might want to hire a designer.

Price:

Most popular and premium WordPress themes cost you $50-150, depending on their design features and benefits.

3. Blogging Tools

The right blogging tools help you blog better and stand out from the crowd. Most of these come with free and paid versions, so it is your choice to pick the right ones that add value to your blog.

Here are some I already use, and you should too:

4. Outsourcing

At some point, you may feel overwhelmed with all the work you do alone – writing, designing, SEO, and networking.

That is when you will want to outsource some of the work and feel relief. You don’t have to be everything for everyone.

Consider outsourcing content writing work. You can simply hire help from reputed agencies like Igloo – view website or freelancers using websites like Freelancer.com, Upwork, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, etc. You will have quality outputs and safety throughout the process.

There’s so much competition for content marketing; it is hard to be SEO-rewarded with great content alone. You also need quality backlinks as upvotes to your content, so consider outsourcing the link-building job.

Your blog’s overall quality can go up if you hire quality freelancers. You will start to see better results, more traffic, signups, and better SEO rankings – simply because more work is getting done.

To scale your efforts and transform your blog into a business, you must think like an entrepreneur and start outsourcing.

Help has always been available at super affordable rates – just look around.

5. Learning Resources

As you scale your blogging efforts, you must invest in learning next-level growth strategies. They could be available in online courses, eBooks, etc.

I can speak from my experience. In months or even days, you can learn any new skill you want, master, and use it to generate money for you. There are hundreds of jam-packed resources full of actionable content to help you succeed as a blogger.

The best, most trusted online learning platform is Udemy. In fact, I recently purchased an Instagram course from Lisa Sicard of Inspiretothrive on Udemy.

See, it is that easy. So when you’re ready to learn a lucrative skill that you’ve been thinking of, Just input the name and get the topmost recommendations in no time – Bingo!

6. Paid Ads

Paying for ads can be one of the best investments you could make to grow your blog as a beginner.

“Depending on one’s budget, spending some money on ads to get your blog some early recognition can be wise. Use the money wisely and target the right spaces (social media ads are great), says Anthony Gaenzle.”

Some of the most effective ad network platforms are:

• Social media ads (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
• Display ads
• Google ads
• Ezoic
• AdThrive
• Mediavine
• Paid content discovery with platforms like Outbrain, Taboola, Zest.is, etc

Prepare paid traffic strategy that suits your goals – Do you just want to achieve traffic, or do you want to make affiliate money by drawing traffic to landing pages?

7. Influencer Marketing

You partner with (pay) famous bloggers and marketers of your niche who usually have a big, engaged audience to promote you.

As Pedro Okoro mentioned in a comment, collaborate with the right peers and influencers as much as possible to reach a massive audience, build trust for yourself, and get more conversions.

As a newbie, you don’t necessarily need to pay big money for an influencer with millions of followers. Start small, targeting smaller audience groups by partnering with entry or next-level influencers. You can expand the strategy anytime as you achieve decent R.O.I (Return on Investment).

Final Thoughts – Crucial Blog Investment To Make

Free has its limitation, and you don’t get everything for free. So be willing to invest in the abovementioned things and take your blog to the next level.

So who are you in the blogging industry?

Aspirant? Beginner? Mid-level blogger? Have you made the jump for blogging investments yet?

Drop me a comment if you enjoyed reading this post and have anything to say about it.