How To Start Your Own Blog — Series — Part 1
Note: This article is part of a 6 part series. The series is structured in such a way that from Part 1 to Part 6, you get all the information you need to get off to an ideal start with your first blog. The following topics are covered:
- Research
- Setting up the blog correctly
- Writing blog articles
- Promoting the blog
- Monetizing the blog
- Growth strategies
Welcome to the first part of this series. In this article, we’re going to look at the topic of research.
What do I need research for anyway?
This part is very important. Because it decides whether you can build a readership in the future or not. With research, you try to perform appropriate methods to find out whether there is a corresponding demand for the particular blog topic.
However, before we go into the methods in more detail, we will first deal with the topic of “finding a blog topic”. Because first you need an idea or a topic to analyze the demand correctly.
How do you get blog ideas?
Right off the bat, I’d like to ask that you block out your previous knowledge on the topic as much as possible. Just read through my approach and only then compare whether this approach sounds conclusive to you or not.
We have to be aware of one thing when running a blog: A blog, if you want to run it seriously, is like a 2nd job. We have to invest a lot of time and make sure that the quality of our articles doesn’t decrease over time. Therefore, always keep this fact in mind. If you are looking for a get-rich-quick scheme at this point, you might be wrong in this series and should look elsewhere — even if I think that this “looking elsewhere” will probably never stop. Because such schemes sound, and in most cases are, too good to be true.
Some opinions on blog topic finding are “pick what has the most demand” or “write only in areas where you can subsequently make high profits through affiliate products or the like”. In my opinion, these approaches are a guarantee that the “blog” project is doomed to fail in the foreseeable future.
Now why do I think these approaches are wrong?
Let’s assume that we decide on a blog topic that has a correspondingly high demand. We decide on the finance sector.
But what if you have little to no interest in this sector? Do you think you can fill a blog about this topic with content for the next few months?
I think there is little chance that you will actually continue writing on your blog if you don’t like the topic in and of itself.
So the correct way from my point of view would be: Pick a topic you like and in the best case even enjoy. This can be many things. Only in the next step, the analysis of the demand, it could be the case that we have to discard our topic again. You’ll find out later why that is.
With this approach, you can, for example, write down all your hobbies or areas of interest in a list. After that, you should have a more or less large list in front of you, which you can then use to do the actual research. When creating your list, I recommend that you include everything that interests you in the slightest. That said, you should casually ask yourself the question, “Could I write about this topic for several months straight?”. Even if you think that you don’t have enough knowledge about a topic, that’s not a big problem. If you are interested and interested enough, you will not have a hard time learning.
At this point, you should have a list of possible blog topics. Now it’s time for the second part of this article.
The research:
We will now investigate whether your blog topic has a corresponding demand. We do this because we don’t want to make the mistake of setting up a blog that no one reads. It may be that one of your topics has a very low or almost non-existent demand. In this case, we would own a blog and provide it with plenty of content. But that doesn’t do us much good if this blog is never read. This is exactly why the research part is so important. We want to be able to rule out this presented scenario in advance.
How do I conduct the research for my blog topic?
Let’s assume that you’re passionate about e-bikes. You’ve already been riding your own e-bike for several years, but you’re so enthusiastic about the technology that you’re still looking for more information to continually expand your knowledge of this subject area. Ideal conditions for your own blog. But what about research?
The keyword research approach:
I have described this approach before in an article. Here is the link:
Essentially, this approach is about analyzing demand based on corresponding keywords.
In the example of our e-bike, we can already start with this keyword. We use a tool called Keyword Planner. A software solution from Google within Google Ads. If we work with this tool, then we can insert any keywords and then get the search volume. This means that Google tells us how many people search for the keyword, for example e-bike, per month. We can also set certain filters here. Assuming we want to write in Spanish, countries where Spanish is primarily spoken would be suitable. This can be done with a few clicks.
But usually a single keyword is not enough. We want several keywords that fit the theme of the blog. There are other tools for this. At this point I would like to introduce Answerthepublic (https://answerthepublic.com/).
We use the tool by entering our main keyword “e-bike”, selecting our target country as well as the language and start the query.
After that, we get more ideas. For example, this one:
Spanish is not my native language. But these would be further keyword ideas. The special thing about Answerthepublic is that the algorithm behind it is designed to show almost only results that correspond to the actual search behavior of a person in that country. In the future, this could be exactly the readers of your blog!
Afterwards, we can check these and many more keyword ideas through the Keyword Planner and analyze how the search volume looks like for the respective keyword.
Another very crude, yet effective tool, would be the keyword hitter (https://keywordshitter.com/). Here you can also enter your main keyword and then generate further keyword ideas. You should pay attention to the extent to which the search results still make sense. You can also analyze these additional keyword ideas with the Keyword Planner.
What should we have at this point?
At this point we should have a list of some keywords and their search volume per month. This is the basis for our further demand analysis. After all, that’s what this article is about.
So now we have our list in front of us and we see some keywords as well as numbers. The next thing to do would be to sum them up. To do this, you simply add up all the search volumes and then get the sum of the total search volume of all the keywords that you have entered in the list. This value should help you with the demand analysis. The lower it is, the less demand there is. Conversely, a higher value corresponds to a higher demand. However, this interpretation is only partially correct. Because it also always depends on how many keywords you use in the list. With this approach you should rather use more than less keywords to get a better overview of your market. So don’t skimp on keywords and fill the list as much as possible. However, if at the end of your research work you still find only about 5,000 search queries (cumulated) per month, then you can rather assume a low demand and at this point you should reconsider the respective blog topic. After all, as already described, you don’t want to write for a market that, in the worst case, is non-existent or very low.
You can then carry out the previously described process with several blog ideas from your list. Yes, this approach takes a corresponding amount of time. But I see it as a very important time investment. If you consider this point only half-heartedly or not at all, the next months of work can be in vain. An output you want to avoid at all costs.
Summary
Before you can perform a demand analysis, you first need a blog topic. Suitable for this are topics that already interest you. This can be hobbies or other leisure activities. It is only important that you can answer the question “Can I write about this topic for several months” with a clear “Yes”. Because if you can’t muster enough interest in the topic, writing your blog will turn out to be very tedious. Moreover, the quality of your content will most likely suffer as well.
Once you’ve found some ideas, we’ll move on to demand analysis. We use Google’s Keyword Planner tool for this. It allows you to find out how often a person searches for a certain keyword (usually per month). After one keyword, for example the main topic of your blog, is not enough, you need additional keyword ideas. These additional keywords should, in the best case, be strongly related to your main keyword. Two other tools are particularly suitable for this purpose:
- Answerthepublic
- Keywordshitter
Both tools have their advantages and disadvantages. A combination of both is usually useful. By using these tools, we then get several keyword ideas, which we can in turn analyze using the Keyword Planner. We then enter all our data in an Excel list and accumulate the search volume of all keywords. This final sum gives us a first guideline about how high the demand for the topic actually is. The higher the value, the higher the demand. The lower, the lower the demand.
