This is a sponsored guest post by Alex Berger. Thanks so much to Brittany for letting me take over your blog for the day!

Hey y’all! My name is Alex Berger and I blog over at The Berger Bungalow, which focuses primarily on travel and culinary adventures with some health, home, and married life scattered in there! I have been blogging for about four years now – three years at my own blog and one year as a guest blogger for a wedding website. When I first started my blogging journey, I was doing it for personal reasons – I wanted to keep up with everything that happened in my life. What better way that to document it all online?!

As time went on, I learned that you can actually make money from blogging. I was lost, to say the least. I had no idea where to start, so I researched as much as possible. Thankfully, I slowly caught on and I began to grow my blog and social channels. Now, I still consider myself a smaller(ish) blogger, but I typically bring in about 55,000-65,000 views each month and I can say that blogging and freelance writing brings in 90% of my monthly income. Pretty good for just starting this for fun! Because of all my research, I would say that I am relatively knowledgeable now when it comes to starting a blog, growing a blog, making money from your blog.

But, enough background information about myself! Let’s chat all things blogging now:

First and foremost when you are starting a blog, you need to figure out your why. Why are you doing thing? Do you love writing and want a way to express yourself? Do you want a space to document all of your recipes, do you want to make money from writing? Why? Once you figure that out, you can begin the process of starting your blog. Here is the order I suggest following:

Create a name
Consider your ‘why’ and what you are going to be talking about and choose a name that fits you. When you are choosing your name, make sure you check to make sure nobody else already has this name registered. For example, if you wanted to do ‘The Berger Bungalow,’ you wouldn’t be able to get a URL for it because I am have the registered domain. Does that make sense? When I created my blog name, I would type it in on Google to make sure that nobody else took it.

Choose a platform
There are many platforms to choose from. Do you research and check out Squarespace, Blogger, WordPress, and any others you want to look into. I currently use Blogger, which is fine, but word to the wise: go with WordPress. For about a year now, I have really been wanting to change over to WordPress, but it is just a lot of work and time and I’m nervous about the transfer. If you are even considering WordPress, take the jump and go for it – it will be worth it because there are so many pros to using the platform.

Purchase your domain and hosting
I purchased my domain from GoDaddy, but there are many places that you can choose from and there are so many deals out there, making it very affordable. Since I am on blogger, I don’t pay for hosting, but I know BlueHost is what a lot of people use and love. This is who I would use if I were on WordPress…and I will eventually switch over and use them! 🙂 It looks like they have a free domain purchase when you sign up for their hosting, so that is a great deal!

Purchase a web design
A web design is very important because it is what makes you stand out in the crowd. You can customize it to fit your own personality and fit your website. The biggest tip I have for this is be your own person and do not copy someone else! The reason for this is because like I said, this is what will make you stand out in the crowd (well, this and your content), so make it your own so that when people see your website, they say “Oh, I know who this is” instead of “Is this Amy or Brittany?” Ha!

There are so many deals out there when it comes to website design and you should look into them all, but definitely consider Search engine optimization NJ as an option! They are very passionate about website design and are ready to make a beautiful website for you and will work on making your website an asset, not an expense. In addition to making profitable websites, they also offer digital marketing services, which makes sense because they are actually the number one marketing agency in NJ! Some of the marketing services that NJ SEO provides are social media marketing, long-term organic search results, custom email
campaigns, advanced analytics, and more. They really do provide it all! I will talk more about SEO in just a minute.

Create content
Good content is the only way you will have a successful website. Sure, a great web design is important and having a paid domain is pretty essential for becoming ‘reliable,’ but content is always key. If you ask a lot of bloggers if they have a niche, they will swear by them, but for me, I post what I want to post. Yeah, I try my best to limit it to travel, food, health, home, and married life, but to be honest, married life = anything. Niches do not matter, in my opinion. So, post about whatever makes you happy and don’t worry about only posting about food, fashion, or business.

How do I create good content?
This is a pretty popular question that I hear from new bloggers: How do I create good content? Content that brings in readers? I have a few tips for those wanting to know the answer to that question!

First of all, make sure you proofread your articles. Don’t post articles that people can’t read. If they struggle reading them, they won’t read them. Pictures are also another essential – take time and create good graphics and good pictures. Try your best to steer clear from blurry pictures.

You need to have a good mix of articles on your website. For some people, staying with current trends and writing about them really works because people really want to read what is popular right now. This is great because a lot of people will be looking up the trend that you are posting about, but I have one issue with these posts: will they always be looking up the current trend? This is why a good mix of current trend articles and evergreen content is essential.

According to The Balance, evergreen content is “content that is always relevant—much like the way evergreen trees retain their leaves all year around.” This is smart because people are always going to be looking up this kind of content, no matter what.

Another important part of creating great content is by implementing SEO tactics into your posts and website in general. Search engine optimization is what allows people to find you on Bing, Google, Facebook, or other search engines, so it is very important. Unfortunately, there is a lot that goes into SEO and it needs its own separate post all about it. With a little bit of research, you should be on your way to learning all about SEO, or you can save time and energy by hiring a marketing agency, like NJ SEO to take over the heavy lifting and you can focus on what you love: creating content.

I mentioned a little bit about NJ SEO earlier, but what I didn’t tell you is that their mission is to help website increase their organic search score drastically in order to compete for the highest rankings – even when it comes to competitive keywords. Their team of 27, which is led by Matt and Dan Anton has spent 12 years in marketing, running 284 PPC campaigns, 436 SEO campaigns, and it has led to 1759 first positions. If you are interested in marketing services in New Jersey (they also serve outside of NJ), contact them for more information and get your free SEO report while you’re at it, which is worth $300.

Matt Anton, from NJ SEO, with his daughter

I hope you all have enjoyed this post and learned a little more about how to start a blog! Let me know in the comments below if this was helpful and also if you want to learn more about SEO tactics and how to make money from your blog/website! Have a great day everyone!