There may be affiliate links in this article on questions for bloggers to answer, read the full disclaimer here.

Picture yourself five years from now… 

You’ve been blogging and publishing at least 2 articles every week.

You’re recognised as one of the leading people within your niche. 

The income you make from your website has replaced your full-time income (AND SOME!) 

You look back to how you started out and realise how important it was reading the following 6 questions for bloggers to answer.

The more and more you review this page, the more you begin to find yourself prepared for the journey ahead. 

1. Should I pay for Hosting?

Does a fat dog fart?

If you’re like me you probably don’t really understand what hosting is.

It’s one of those things that you know you probably should have but you don’t really understand why.

Wel,l good news pumpkin!

I’ve just been researching the techie part so let me try to explain in good ol’ non-techie language (or as I like to call it… English)

Hosting is basically a server that stores the files of your website.

Your website is really just a bunch of files… yeah, like you have on your computer.

So the hosting is kind’ve like the storage space you have on your computer… Apart from it’s “in the cloud”

Fun fact: Did you know there are actually these like mega warehouses that have huge computer systems that stores all the things “in the cloud”… yeah, me neither!

You can get hosting for free with basic WordPress packages and the likes.

However, if you would like to monetise your blog at some point it is 100% worth paying for a hosting package.

Here’s why:

• It makes it easier for people to find your website
• You can do a lot more to your website if you “own the hosting” (you don’t really own it you’re renting it, but whatever!)

For example, you can put in opt-in pages (to get email addresses, which helps to build a relationship with your reader) and use more plugins and things that helps to improve your website speed.

And do you begin to notice that “should I pay for hosting” is one of the most important questions for bloggers to answer?

2. Will People Care what I Write About? 

Does Pamela Anderson have trouble seeing her belly button? 

In case you hadn’t noticed I’m not very funny (but I do have my Hypnotic cheatsheet & analogy book on hand to help!… You can get yours for free below… so get on it like shit on velcro!)

Want to Write Like the Best Online Writers?

Get these 2 must have resources for FREE:

1. Hypnotic Cheatsheet

2. Simile & analogy book

 

 

 

Yes Please

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Here’s the thing Billy Bob…

You may not think you have much to write about right now.

But I guarantee the more you write the more you will think this…

“I wish I had a blog post about this I could link to right now!”

In fact, that’s just given me another idea for a post…

100 blog posts ideas!

If you can think of something that will (or would have) help(ed) you, there’s a very strong chance it will help someone else.

That, my friend, is quality content!

Related Articles:

• Why Make Time Online? Financial Independence Retire Early Blog
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• The Secret to Earn Passive Income
• Why do People Create Blogs? These 28 Bloggers Explain Their Story
• How we Save £30,000 a Year and Travel as Teachers

3. How do I Get More Traffic to my Blog?

You probably know there are loads of ways to promote your blog post.

And of course, you’ve heard that not all of them are free.

Now, I can almost hear your mind saying this is possibly the most imporant of questions for bloggers to answer!

So let’s break down the difference…

Paid targeted website traffic

There’s really only 3 main ways to pay for traffic (visitors):

1. 1. Facebook Ads (or other social media… Google ads are very similar)
2. 2. Email Media (also called solo ads)
3. 3. Sponsored posts

So let’s think about what the benefits and negatives are for each approach.

1. Facebook Ads

Running ads on social media or Google can be a great way to get specific people to look at your website or sign up to your email list.

Facebook ads still stands out compared to other social media platforms because:

Positives

• Over 1 billion users
• Can be inexpensive to advertise (starting from as little at $20 or less)
• Targeting the “right crowd” can be very specific
• No matter what niche, Facebook has paid targeted website traffic
• Has the potential to go “viral” without having to pay loads of money if people interact with the ad.

Negatives

• Easy to waste money without getting results
• Becoming harder to make an impact with Facebook ads (it’s become more popular)
• Easy to get people on a list that are not the correct target audience
• Uncertain about how much engagement you will get from the ad

This is an affordable way to pay for getting good quality eyes on your page. There is an art to it though so more research is needed before diving in!

2. Email Media (solo ads)

This is when you write an email and pay someone with a list already to send this to his or her email list.

Within this email, you will put a link to your opt-in page or a specific website and you will usually pay in one of 2 ways:

1.  A fee “per click” generated by the email
2.  A set price, or a flat fee.

Positives:

• Paid targeted website traffic for a very specific niche
• Traffic can be VERY fast
• You can be specific about how many “clicks” you want for your ad
• If your opt-in or website page generates income it can grow exponentially (the ad would pay for itself AND some!)

Negatives:

• Can be quite expensive (often pay $0.5-$2+ per click… so 100 clicks would cost at least $50)
• Emails can be sent to poor quality email lists

Use Udimi.com if you want to find people that offer this.

Equally, if you have a large email list of 5,000+ you can offer this as a monetary service!

3. Sponsored posts

This is when you pay someone to write a blog post on his or her website.

Positives:

• Get exposure to potentially unlimited people
• You can choose specific blogs that are related to your niche
• You are likely to reach targeted and specific people who will like what you write
• Can be cheap or you can even barter (they do a sponsored post on yours in return for free or offer something else, like an email to your list/ adding to a group board on Pinterest etc.)

Negatives:

• Very unsure about how many people will read it (some readers won’t read these types of posts as they want to only read content by the owner of the website)
• Requires more time and effort to create a post
• Can be hard to do if someone is in the exact same niche as you are technically competition!

The best part about this is it will help to build your network and you may end up with other opportunities out of it.

How to Get Free Website Traffic

Now let me ask you this…

Did you even bother reading the paid traffic part, eh??

If you didn’t then it’s definitely worth a skim just to know the basics but here is the JUICY Lucy section right here.

Buckle up sweet cheeks, you’re gonna love this…

1. Forum commenting

This method is loooong and I don’t even really know if it still works for 2 reasons:

1. I couldn’t be bothered to keep doing it
2. I couldn’t be bothered to keep doing it

Supposedly you can comment on different forums such as:

• Warrior forum
• Any other blog related forum

You can put your link to your website or an opt-in page as your signature on your comments in these forums.

If you end up getting in quick on a post that gets a heap of interest you can supposedly get a load of traffic for free.

To me, it seemed like there was VERY little progress and you kind’ve need to be lucky to get in early enough to be one of the first to comment on a BIG comment thread. 

So after commenting every day in different threads for a month, I stopped.

Note- I did get the odd person to check out my link so it definitely does work, but I felt I was taking a lot of time for very little reward.

But this was when I discovered…

2. Pinterest

This is without a doubt the BIGGEST thing I have learnt since starting this website.

This is what I used to think:

• I had no idea why ANYONE used Pinterest.
• I thought it was for girls.
• It looked like it was just pretty pictures of weddings and barns.

However, here’s what makes Pinterest stands out like a white man in China compared to other social media platforms:

• Pinterest is the Google of social media- people ONLY use it to find content i.e. blogs!
• A good group board is a gold mine
• Most other BIG social media platforms are built for user to user interaction (people go on there to see what other people are doing… Pinterest is different)

So, it turns out Pinterest is the biggest traffic source for my website and is starting to grow at a frightening speed.

There is WAAAYYY too much to go into here in this post so if you want more info, here it is…

Related Articles:

• How to Use Pinterest for Beginners
• The Top 4 Secret Pinterest Hacks

Become a Pinterest Master

Get the 7 day Pinterest course to make the most of this free traffic source!

*Includes email template to join Group Boards*

 

 

 

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3. SEO

You probably know this but improving your search engine optimisation is the golden ticket to getting free traffic!

If you can get your website onto page one of certain search engines then you are guaranteed to get FREE traffic EVERY month to your website.

The challenge is:

1. 1. To get your website onto page one (when was the last time you clicked on a link on page 2 in Google?)
2. 2. To do this using a keyword that people actually search for!

If you get onto page one for a search for a keyword like:

“Banana and travel investment tips”

You can guarantee that nobody in his or her right mind would search for that… EVER!

So getting onto page one is not the only challenge here.

This is where doing keyword research before you write posts will give you the cutting edge over 90% of people that own a website.

You can tactically manoeuvre your website onto page one in Google searches to get traffic by doing two things:

1. 1. Choosing a keyword that people search for
2. 2. Choosing a keyword that few competing websites are ranking on

There’s no accident in finding these magical keywords.

But you will need a keyword research tool to help.

If I go into too much detail here you will end up with an epic 5,000+ word blog post. So…

Related articles:

• Who Else Wants Free Traffic?
• Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool Review

These posts will show you how to get free website traffic. 

And are you beginning to see the solutions to the question “how to get more traffic to my blog?”

Pin this page so you can come back to it.

Wrapping up Part One – Questions for Bloggers to Answer

Oh sweet beJesus this is turning into one huge mofo post. Word count is close to 2,000 already!

I’m gonna call this the end of part one.

Check out part 2 next week to find out:

1. How do I make money blogging?
2. What plugins should I use on My blog?
3. Do I need to pay for training courses?

Little by little you begin to realise the importance of these questions for bloggers to answer.

Keep changing for the better,

Mike

P.S. If you have any questions or thoughts please feel free to drop a comment below… or send me a message on WA here