Blogs have taken over the internet as we know it. To succeed as an author, it’s important to start your own blog and build a community with your readers.
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As an author, it can be difficult—and sometimes very costly—to get your books promoted. Fortunately, we live in a day and age where you can easily access your readership online. To truly get your hard work out there, you should consider creating a blog that helps you to reach a wider audience.
There are many benefits for authors when they start a blog. It’s a way to connect with your readers, broaden your horizon, and even grow as a writer. When starting your own blog, it’s important to stay focused on your niche so you can portray and promote your books in the best way possible.
Appealing to The Right Audience
When you start an author blog, you should post content that’s related to your book content. This helps you to find an audience that is looking for the niche or genre you’ve written about. There is a dual benefit to this in that you’ll find your target audience online and they become more aware of your work.
The Content of Your Blog
The content that you post on your blog should always be related to the types of books you write. For example, if your book is about beating anxiety, you can start a mental health blog that helps people learn how to cope with struggles they might be facing with their own mental health.
If you’re an author of fictional books, you can make your blog related to your content in some way, such as with writing about your characters or posting tips for other writers in the genre. You could also choose to make a more personal blog where you post about your everyday life or update readers on the progress of any upcoming books.
Reaching a Wider Audience
Starting a blog helps you to reach more people. There are only so many people you can reach via word of mouth or paying for adverts, so starting a blog allows you to branch out into new territory. You can reach more people without having to spend a lot of money on advertising.
The only expenses you’ll have when starting a blog are paying for the domain and hosting the website. You may even want to pay for Google ads to promote some of your blog posts. However, you can organically promote your blog by effectively optimizing it. Optimizing your blog can include choosing the right keywords and knowing your target audience.
When you reach a wider audience through your blog, you’ll find it will positively impact your writing career in the following ways:
- You find the right readers. When people search for something related to your books, they’ll be able to find you. This allows you to find more readers who are interested in supporting your work.
- You get more purchases. If you promote your book through your blog, you may find that your sales increase drastically. Finding the right audience helps to get your books seen by people interested in reading them.
- People know about you. Although everyone who comes across your work may not purchase your book, they may still keep you in mind. This means they can buy your work at a later stage, or recommend your work to others.
You Grow As A Writer
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Being an author is rewarding, but you’ll have moments in your career where you’re not working on a project or you may not be earning a consistent source of income. This can be distressing, especially if you have a lot of bills to pay. These dry spells can also be depressing, as you feel demotivated when you’re out of work.
When you start writing for your blog, you may find a new passion for blog writing. This can help you grow as a writer because you become more versatile and open to different forms of writing.
If you decide to take your blog seriously, you can also make some good money from it. It takes time to make a blog lucrative, but once you put the time and effort into it, you could make a source of income from it in the following ways:
- Adverts. Anyone can put ads on their page, but getting money from this isn’t as easy. You can either get paid per click, which means you get a set amount for each person who clicks on the ad. Or, you can get paid per thousand views, meaning you get a set amount for every 1,000 views you get.
- Affiliate marketing. Through affiliate marketing, you can earn a commission by promoting a product through affiliate links. When you work with a business, they can give you a custom affiliate link, and whenever someone visits their page and purchases something through the link, you earn money!
- Sponsorships. Another way to make money with your blog is by engaging in sponsorships with businesses. You could collaborate with other businesses by promoting them through your blog.
- Sell digital products. You may find that starting your blog opens you up to a whole new digital world. It opens you to a world of creating other digital products that you can promote through your blog. For example, you can sell eBooks, online courses, and video tutorials.
Writing Blogs Connects You With Your Readers
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Readers love to have a more personal relationship with the author of the books they read. When they read your writing in blog form, they feel a more personal connection with you and your writing. They get to see another side of you that helps them to feel more intrigued to read your books.
Receiving Feedback
Another significant reason to start a blog is that you’re able to get feedback from your readers. Feedback is crucial as an author, as it helps you to improve your craft and provide your readers with even better material!
When you post frequently on your blog, mentioning your book provides readers with the opportunity to let you know how they feel about your book. They can comment on this under any of your posts. Not only will this help you develop as a writer, but other readers of your blog will see these comments, enticing them to read your book as well.
Getting To Know You and Your Writing Better
When your readers follow your blog, they get to know you and your writing better. They’re able to see you grow as a writer! And by getting to know you better as a writer, readers become more engaged with your books and brand. This increases the chance that they’ll continue to buy your books.
Establishes Credibility
Not only does a blog connect you to your readers more, but it also helps to establish credibility. Credibility is important for authors, as it convinces people to take interest in your books. Your credibility grows the more you post and when you gain more followers, as this shows people you post valuable content.
Being credible is especially important if you’re writing non-fiction books. Anyone can write a book with made-up facts and unreliable research, so your blog content can give them a taste of your knowledge and expertise. This makes you appear more reliable as an author and establishes you as an authority in your field.
Helps Self-Published Authors to Promote Their Books
As a self-published author, you don’t have the backing of a traditional publisher to sponsor your book launch and advertising costs can add up fast. Starting a blog is an affordable and effective way to promote your books organically.
Advertising To Your Target Audience
Advertising can be extremely costly for self-publishers, but it’s so important if you want to succeed as an author. Using your blog as a tool for advertising your books will save you as an author! You can also do collaborations with other authors and bloggers who are willing to promote your book.
Building Connections
You’re probably aware of the importance of networking and building valuable connections in your industry. This can be difficult as a self-publisher because you don’t most likely won't have an agent or publishing house that can link you to other well-established authors.
When you get into the blog writing world, it may surprise you to find so many other authors like yourself with their own blogs. You can easily connect with others in the industry and authors in the same genre, and these relationships will help you grow as a writer.
In Summary
Starting a blog comes with many benefits, especially as an author. It will not only help you reach a wider audience and build a relationship with them, but it will also help you grow as a writer.
Even writers need to continue to adapt to our frequently changing society, so you need to take advantage of resources online. A blog is a perfect way to achieve this, while still having fun with your writing!
