Should you even be blogging in 2022? That’s the question you should be asking yourself. After all, blogging is not the same it was in 2010.
Back then, you could pick an easy niche, target a few profitable keywords, and write a keyword optimized post around those keywords and expect to rank high on search pages with little effort.
However, a lot of water has flown under the bridge since then. Today, there are almost no niches left that are profitable and have low competition. Most of the low competition niches today are very hard to monetize, and the profitable niches have almost saturation level competition.
In such a scenario, does it make sense to start a blog in 2022, and if it does, how should you go about starting your blogging career or side job? I will provide answers to these pressing questions in this post.
Why do you wish to start a blog?
Before we get around the question of should you blog in 2022, let us first tackle the issue of why do you wish to blog in the first place.
Is it to:
- Pursue your hobby of blogging
- Earn money as a side income or a full-time occupation
- Run a non-profit blog based on donations from readers
- Attract customers to your products and services
- Build up your brand
These questions should be addressed before you even decide to pursue blogging in 2022 since your blogging success or failure is related in a significant way to your objective of blogging.
1. Start a hobby or personal blog in 2022
If you wish to pursue blogging as a hobby, where you share your random thoughts or daily life events, then go right ahead and start that blog of yours.
Because money does not come into play here and even if your blog does not attract a wide readership, you can at least count on the support of your family and friends to drop by to hear your views.
The best part about hobby blogging is that you can start a blog for free. All you need to do is register a free account on any one of the popular blogging platforms like WordPress.com, Blogger, Medium, Wix, Tumblr, etc. and you are good to go.
2. Blogging for money in 2022
But what if you wish to start a blog that earns money? The majority of the blogs launched have the objective of making money from the blog.
Earning income from your blog is not as easy as it sounds, though. If it were so easy, then most of the people bored with their 9 to 5 jobs would be sitting in front of their computer screens and making money from their blogs rather than going through the daily office grind.
However, earning money from blogging is not impossible, either. The only thing is, it requires patience, smart hard work, and perseverance.
Don’t Miss: The 50 Most Popular Blogs Right Now
There are hundreds of ways to make money from blogging in 2022. However, I will list only the most popular methods here:
- Earning money from display advertising on your blog. Google Adsense is the most prominent ad program in the world for online publishers.
- Earning money from affiliate commissions. You promote a product or service on your blog, and when someone buys from your affiliate link, you make a small commission. Amazon’s affiliate program is one of the most popular ones globally.
- Earning income from selling products and services. Are you selling something online? Then consider blogging about it so to attract the right buyers for your products and services. There is a whole industry of content marketing around this.
- Earning money from YouTube videos. I agree that making money from YouTube does not require a blog, but a blog provides an additional platform for your videos to multiply your views and earnings.
- Earning money from sponsored posts. Once you gain a big enough readership, you can approach interested parties to sponsor their content on your blog for some amount.
- Earning income from online courses. Did you know that online coaching is a multi-billion industry? If you have the skills to teach something, then a blog can be the channel to funnel interested students to your course.
If you want to earn money from your blog, I would advise against starting a free blog since you have to settle for a subdomain like www.yourname.wordpress.com that not only looks unprofessional but also you will face a hard time getting search visitors to your blog.
Instead, you can start your self-hosted WordPress domain for a small investment that you can quickly recover once you start earning from your blog.
Starting a blog in 2022 takes only 3 small steps:
- Get a domain name like www.myhotblog.com from Namecheap (one of the most popular domain name registrars and also the most reliable)
- Get hosting from SiteGround (the best features and the best support you can find online)
- Install WordPress on SiteGround with their 1-click wizard
That’s it! No complicated walkthroughs or need to hire an expert.
If you’re looking to earn income from your blog in 2022, then you better get started now since the competition is only going to increase in the future.
3. Start a non-profit blog based on reader support
You can also start a blog to draw attention to a cause that you strongly believe in, like climate change or child abuse. Understandably, you will not be earning money from your blog.
But you will still need donations from readers to fund your cause and manage your blog expenses. Although you can start a free blog for such purposes as I mentioned earlier, you will have a hard time getting readers to your blog. Additionally, many free blogging platforms do not allow to solicit donations using a free website.
That’s why you should aim to start a self-hosted blog using the steps I described above with SiteGround hosting, which is affordable and offers outstanding support.
4. Attract customers to your products and services
If you sell something, anything, then you should leverage the power of content marketing to attract targeted readers to your products and services to convert them into customers.
Every big and small brand runs an in-house blog where they publish engaging and useful posts that revolve around the products and services they offer.
Let’s say you sell personal hygiene products. Then you can create a blog on your website and publish useful content around the topic of personal hygiene to attract targeted traffic from search engines like Google.
This traffic can then be funneled to your product pages using banners, call to actions, and internal links.
As you are aware, sanitization products like hand wash, sprays, soaps, etc. are in huge demand in 2022 owing to COVID-19, so if you sell anything remotely connected to this, you should start your blog without further delay.
Again, WordPress would be the best way to power your website since you can operate a full-fledged storefront using the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress and also manage your regular blog.
Get SiteGround hosting to get started with your website and blog.
5. Start a blog to build your brand in 2022
A blog is a perfect tool to build your brand. Many bloggers use a .me domain extension to create their blogs. This way, your potential clients can know about you and your services better. BTW, if you wish to conceal your real identity, you can consider starting an anonymous blog.
You can also highlight your previous work and use it as a ready reference when prospecting new clients.
Again, a WordPress powered blog is the best and quickest way to create your blog.
Should you start a blog in 2022?
Now that we have addressed the reasons for starting a blog let us look at whether you should be blogging in 2022 or not.
At the start of this post, I had mentioned that the competition is getting stiffer by the day. Today everyone can acquire the same competitive intelligence as you can using a variety of SEO tools.
Nothing is hidden from anyone. So, when all new bloggers are on an equal footing, it makes gaining an edge in your blogging niche that much difficult.
But this should not discourage you from launching your blog. After, all competitive intelligence is no guarantee of blogging success or failure.
Instead, it is the smart hard work that you put into your blogging, and your consistency is what will ultimately determine your blogging success.
Are you ready for the grind?
Yes, I know what you’re thinking right now. Isn’t blogging some sort of heavenly experience where bloggers sit with laptops on a beach sipping their favorite cocktail?
Frankly speaking, such bloggers, even if they are real, are one in a hundred thousand. And they have reached that position by working their a**es off.
Can you do the same? After all, no blog, no matter the niche, is an overnight success. You will need to put in the hour’s day in and out for months and years before you experience some success.
Along the way, you will face many hurdles, disappointments, and dejections. If you’re ready to deal with this and are in for the long haul, then I heartily encourage you to start blogging this year.
Your lack of expertise does not matter much
You might have heard that you should be an expert on your blogging topic. Guess what? Expertise can be acquired, provided you’re willing to learn the stuff.
Let’s say you wish to start a blog on gardening in 2022 since you are passionate about plants. Now, you may not be a gardening expert but you can pick up new stuff by learning online, by reading books, and, most importantly, through your experience.
You can then distill this knowledge on your blog through your articles and videos. Sounds cool? Then get on with that blog of yours.
Summary of blogging in 2022
You’ve seen the reasons for starting a blog. You’ve also realized that blogging is not a child’s play, at least not in 2022. Even then, it is possible to achieve success in blogging with the right effort.
So, if you wanted to know whether or not to blog in 2022, the short answer is a resounding YES.
What are your thoughts on blogging in 2022? Let me know in the comments below.