Spud media

The blog: it’s the magazine’s lazy and unimaginative little brother. Unfortunately, it’s just too damn practical, so we can’t ignore this seemingly boring method of self-publishing. I’ve run blogs before- when I was a kid I had a blog where I wrote about the weird dreams I had. Before Spud Underground, I ran a cryptocurrency blog that was fairly successful. New this month, even Spud Underground has a blog page where you can read everything online.

Why did I do that? Isn’t it more fun to print everything off and keep it all as local as possible? You bet your boots it is, but it’s also very limiting. Print media is way harder to set up, and there’s only so much distribution/marketing/other shit that you can do with physical copies.

It is incredibly easy to start a blog. That’s why everyone and their cat has six. It takes five minutes to set up a WordPress account, about $100 to upgrade to the Premium plan and set up your own domain, and half an hour to design your webpage. Let’s get right into the steps, and then we’ll talk about the benefits of having a blog over being strictly old-school.

Pick a Hosting Service

There are a load of options for hosting your blog. WordPress is the gold standard, but I’ve found the website design tool to be awkward and counter-intuitive. Weebly is really easy to use. Blogger is even easier, but with zero customizability. Consider your hosting service well, because if you change your mind, you’ll run into legal and technical issues transfering your content and domain.

Create an account

Do I really need to hold your hand with this one? Haven’t you done this on a thousand sites by now, you troglodyte?

Build your website

Have fun with it. Try different templates, upload stupid pictures, write silly shit. You’ll be limited as far as customization goes unless your brother is a web designer and he’s willing to work for free. Play with the templates and try to make it as you as you can.

UPGRADE YOUR PLAN

If your URL ends in “.wordpress.com” then the whole world is going to think you’re a lazy piece of shit. Because you are. Pony up the $100 and get a big-boy domain.

SEO

When it comes to gaining viewers and monetizing your content, publishing online has more perks than your sister’s titties. First, let’s look at SEO- Search Engine Optimization. Think of it as free advertising. When people Google a certain phrase, if that phrase shows up in your writing, then your writing shows up in their search results. Obviously, this isn’t possible through print media. The more useful your content is, or the more people link back to your webpage, you get a higher search engine ranking. That pushes your content towards the top of the search results, which means more views.

When you publish content, think about how people will search for what you’re trying to say. Suppose you wrote an article about the best lotions to beat your meat with. Instead of just writing “Jergens’ viscosity allows for a firmer grip, but Dove makes your pecker smell better,” be sure to conclude with “making them some of the best lotion options to beat your meat.” People will most likely search something like:

By including that second phrase, your article now includes the words LOTION, BEAT, MEAT, and BEST in the same sentence. You’ll get a higher ranking, and when readers see all of that in the search results excerpt, they know that your article contains information the public desperately needs.

CONTENT MARKETING

Everybody wants to have advertisers, but advertisers don’t want YOU. They want established brands with a certain number of viewers every month to justify spending their money up front. Thankfully, there’s a fairly new form of advertising called content marketing, or affiliate marketing. Basically, you sign up for an advertising program with a company, they give you an affiliate link, and every time somebody uses that link to buy a product, you get a kickback. This is appealing to advertisers because there is no risk to them, and it’s appealing to you because you only have 50 readers so far.

Back to our lotion article example. Before you publish the article, you notice that you could sell lotion with this content! So you set up an affiliate account with Jergens and get your own personal link. When you publish the article to your site, you attach that link to the word JERGENS. Every time somebody clicks that link and buys a bottle, you’ll get a cut. You could even set up another account with Dove and play both teams.

People probably won’t click those links unless they have a reason to, so you could set up a banner ad for it and attach your affiliate link to the image:

It’s pretty easy to find companies with an affiliate program. I just made up the Jergens thing for the example, but you can Google search “[company name] affiliates,” and if they have a program, you’ll find it that way. Some companies require that you prove you have a certain readership before they affiliate themselves with you, some will let you walk right in and get to work. Amazon has a great affiliates program that any Joe Blow can sign up for- you can get a link for any product on the store and use your blog to market whatever the hell you want. The catch is that you’ll lose your account if you don’t make a sale every 180 days.

You know that gigantic concrete cube on Overland Road that says CLICKBANK on it? Clickbank is a company based right here in Boise that connects content marketers to affiliate marketing programs. One account with Clickbank can get you specialized links with all kinds of products and they all pay out to the same account. I’ve used it before, and 80% of the products listed are hot garbage, but that’s a handy option if your standards are low enough.

DON’T write for the sole purpose of selling something. If you do that, you aren’t an artist anymore. Write first, focus on your content, then sell something if it’s applicable. People can smell a cash grab from a mile away, and readers won’t come back for more if they think you’re just trying to make a buck.

Speaking of cash grabs…