From Blog to Business: What You Need to Know?

Maybe you’ve been blogging for a while as a hobby, but in recent months have decided to try and take things to the next level?

Earning money doing something you love is the dream, and so turning your blog into a job is definitely worth considering once you’re more established.

There are some things to consider and get sorted to make this work, here are some examples.

Get a Domain

The first thing you’ll have done when creating your blog is deciding on the name.

We all know that this can be a lot harder than it seems, after all, many of the good names were snagged years ago. Maybe you chose a name you weren’t entirely happy with, or your blog no longer fits the name. If so, this is your chance to change it.

If you’re serious about blogging to earn money, you need a domain, this is because sponsors will generally only work with bloggers who have their own site domain. If you’re happy with your current blog’s name then go ahead and see if you can secure it as a domain. If not, choose something new.

You don’t want it to be too long or overcomplicated, and you definitely want to avoid misspellings, lots of punctuation or anything else that makes it too fussy to get what you want.

Spend a few days thinking up names, chat with friends and get some feedback. If you make a bad decision it will come back to haunt you, changing your blog’s name, later on, isn’t as easy as it seems as you’ll lose any domain authority you’ve already built up with that domain name.

Get a professional template installed

When it comes to a blog, of course, the content is important.

You need to be writing interesting articles that genuinely offer something to the reader, whether it’s humor and entertainment or interesting facts and advice. However, you’ll be surprised at how many people won’t stick around to read what you’ve written if your site looks poor quality.

You can buy very nice, professional looking templates from Etsy, they come with instructions for installation and once done look very clean and smart. They only cost a few pounds and are well worth the investment. Readers and sponsors can both be put off otherwise.

Register with HMRC

Once you start earning money from your blog, the ‘tax man’ will want to know about it.

What this means is that you’ll need to register with HMRC, that way you can pay the right amount of tax on your earnings. In most cases, bloggers register as sole traders but you also have the option to become a limited company if you want to- look into registering a UK company to find out more.

This can give you tax advantages and it can also make it easier to secure business loans if this is something you might need to do in the future. It’s very easy to register a business. You fill in a couple of forms online, and they will contact you to send over some more information if needed.

Get into the habit of saving twenty percent of your profits so you can pay your tax bill when it comes in.

Otherwise, you can set up a payment plan and start making advance payments.