Starting your own local blog is a wonderful way to help your community. Most local tourism sites are boring and promote shopping centres, zoos and aquariums (instead of local nature and indie shops). It’s also easier to get traffic for a local niche blog. For instance, an ethical fashion blog based in Yorkshire is much easier to become ‘top of your niche’ than a standard UK fashion blog.
It’s important to get the basics right. Choose a good domain that is easy to type and remember (changing it later on will cause you to lose all your traffic, and you’ll have to start from scratch). Make sure your site is properly hosted (Ionos is good and offers SSL security and free domain privacy). If you do encounter the odd techy issue, get it fixed at an hourly rate by Wildflowers & Pixels.
Where to Find Beautiful Blog Themes
Choose a beautiful theme as (like it or not), most people make up their minds about your site in seconds. In a world already overwhelmed, choose a simple theme (and don’t clutter it with pop-ups and banner ads). We love (and use) Code + Coconut which are beautifully designed, easy to customise and affordable (all themes easily look good on mobile devices, where most people surf these days.
Other nice themes are sold by:
- Pix & Hue (Elementor page-builder)
- 17th Avenue Designs (simple or premium)
- BluChic (good shops & services)
- Lovely Confetti (Divi child themes)
- StudioMommy (ShowIt templates)
- Station Seven (Squarespace templates)
How to Gain More Blog Traffic
Want more traffic? Write quality helpful posts, choose good titles and practice the art of patience! Google won’t pick up your blog for up to a year (but you’ll get there in the end!) Quicker if you run a local niche site. For expert advice, read See You On The Internet (a guide to digital marketing) and Optimize It (an e-book by the Queen of SEO!)
Turn Your Blog into a Business
To turn your blog into a business, find tips at Stray Curls (this blogger earns a good passive income, her posts are great fun with cartoons!) Her 50-page blog planner has space for income, ideas, business plan, passwords, contacts and affiliates. Her e-book Grow Your Blog to $1K shows how to niche down and rank with Google. Back up your business blog with Updraft (free), Jetpack or Vaultpress (both paid). And back up your site and secure passwords.
