Skills are important, but learning skills from a more experienced tradesman is a much valuable Investment. What you learn from such Apprenticeship program is too precious than what the academic world can offer.

A lot of cultures use apprenticeship program to groom young men and women into transferring skills that are relevant to their tribe.

This same model is now being used affectively to train people faster than modern schools can produce. The concept is now being studied worldwide and applied in most country in areas that requires technical skills and discipline.

Most Apprenticeship program pay you to learn. Unlike the traditional degree training that cost a lot on fees.

What’s Apprenticeship Program?

Apprenticeship gives students or apprentice an opportunity to learn by way of doing it. The model is a transfer of skill from a more experienced tradesman, often associated with vocational training, and the Apprentice attempt to follow the program while the tutor provides necessary feedback.

This model has been in practice for centuries even before modern educational system was introduced.

And the benefits of Apprenticeship Program includes:

• Earn while you learn
• Develop your skills
• Receive recognised qualifications
• Gain real work experience
• Improve your employability
• Gain independence and respect
• Discover your earning potential
• Benefit from ongoing and personalised support

Qualities Of A Good Apprentice

But your desire to learn through an Apprenticeship program must be matched with the right commitment and dedication required for such non curricula learning.

Your training success can only be measured by the processes and your internal system to endure, focus and emulate the tradesmanship of your trainer. Here are the qualities you should posses as a good Apprentice to benefit more from the program.

• Be Willing to learn
• Have a sincere interest in the job
• Be punctuality
• You should have a good work ethic
• And have a fervent desire to learn

Soft Skills To Acquire Through Apprentice

You gain much through an apprenticeship program than the actual skills you acquire. The program is more effective in molding you into a perfect tradesman that jus giving you the basic skills from the job.

And without tuition fee, Apprenticeship is the best way to transfer real life experience with qualification that match the experience. Apart from the responsibility to complete contributory tasks to real situations, an Apprenticeship program helps to develop certain soft skills that accelerate your career.

Below are some the soft skills that is consciously transferred through apprenticeship program.

{1} Communication Skill

There are three engaging parts to communication. It includes, listening, speaking and writing. Apprenticeship engages through these three levels.

An apprentice gains better communication skills through the program. First, you learn by listening to the tradesman as he or she teaches. This molds you into a great listener, which is the best gift of communication.

Also, you get to speak when giving the chance to either explain or to show other apprentice what you learned or how you did what was assigned to you to do. While writing may come in different forms. Some Apprenticeship in Africa doesn’t involve physical writing, as most of the apprentice don’t know how to write.

{2} Organizational Skill

You also learn organizational skills, which is one of the soft skills for success in an apprenticeship program. Having organizational skills is one of the most important Soft skills you gain from a good Apprenticeship program.

{3} Teamwork

Being a team player is part of learning as an apprentice. Teamwork makes sure that every member of the Apprenticeship group gets equal contributions during learning. It also enhances the leadership skills in them, while giving the quiet members opportunities to express their ideas.

{4} Problem-solving Skill

As an apprentice, you get the opportunity to learn what’s like to fail and to overcome the fear of failure. You get the chance to deal with real life problems, and within a watchful eyes of the tradesman you get to learn solving problems with confidence.

{5} Adaptability Skill

You will learn an evaluable skill of adaptability during your Apprenticeship program. This will equip you on how to cope with ever changing work place environment. You also gain the resilient nature to adapt to different situations in order to succeed.

{6} Leadership Skill

Leadership is one skill that you must acquire during an Apprenticeship program. The tradesman greatest desire is to prepare you to lead a team even while you learn under an apprentice program. Usually the oldest students in the group gets to lead others while still under Apprenticeship.

The Apprenticeship program would seek to breed in you some leadership skills like:

• Commitment and passion
• Honesty and integrity
• Good communication
• Creative and innovative
• Inspirational

You are either learning these soft skills along side your trade or you are ignoring these skill transfer from the tradesman. Although, they are not skills that are not consciously included in the Apprenticeship skills transfer. But they are given in the process of molding you as a great apprentice.

Conclusion

In an Apprenticeship program the main purpose is to learn. And what you learn from what you came to learn as an apprentice will either help you succeed or become the barrier to your success.

While you pay close attention to learning from the tradesman the job that brought you there, observe every other skills that is being transferred to you on the job.

It’s important to beware of what you shouldn’t learn. Most of what could be transferred is the character of the tradesman as well. Identify the ones that are not good for you or are below moral compass and avoid getting influenced.

The Internet is the fastest growing marketplace in the world. It’s the only market you can access from a single platform (company blog ideas) – on your website. If you are already running an online business, then you have an idea of this huge potential.

I’m preaching for you to have a company blog. I’m not saying you should start another website. If you know the power of the news media, you will understand why you need a blog. A company blog ideas is all you need.

I just want you to have your own power. Already, the internet is decentralizing the news media. Anybody can break news. It’s no longer a privilege for CNN, BBC, TIME, and all the other major news sources.

Someone with as simple as a Facebook profile can be a news breaker. If you are familiar with the phrase, social media influencers. I wonder what you think it means.

Pixless.com defined Social Media Influencer as a user on social media who have established credibility in a specific industry. A social media influencer has access to a large audience and can persuade others by virtue of their authenticity and reach.

But I’m not asking you to become a social influencer. I’m only saying, you should be a major influencer in your target market. And company  blog ideas gives such power, not just to influence, but also to generate free organic website traffic.

What is an online business?

Wikipedia describes an Online Business or e-business as a term which can be used for any kind of business or commercial transaction that includes sharing information across the internet. I don’t know if that describes your business. If it does then, you are the one I write to. That means your online business needs a blog. And I can show you how to get one.

Don’t feel like it’s strange for you. I felt the SME way too. The first time I wanted to start a blog. In fact, I could start one. And it wasn’t because it was strange. But because I didn’t know anything about blogging.

Nothing is really strange on the internet. All you need is knowledge. And there are several how to do it blogs online. But for your internet business blog, you are already on our blog. But if you are reading this article somewhere else outside of MyBlog.com.ng, just navigate back to our blog.

We have so many articles and information for startup blog. It’s like a free school on blogging. If you are smart, you can read through all our articles. We have covered extensively all areas a startup blogger needs to set up a blog.

What is Company Blog Ideas

This time, I will be taking two different definitions of a blog. One is for firstsiteguide.com and the other is from Wikipedia. I just wanted to stress it the definition bit with Wikipedia. But they both are a perfect definition of a blog. Wiki merely stretched it.

Firstsiteguide.com gave us a simple definition of a blog. As an online journal or informational website displaying information in the reverse chronological order, with latest ontop.

According to Wikipedia: A blog (a truncation of the expression “weblog”) is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (“posts”). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page.

But to define company blog ideas, its those ideas and strategies you can implement with a blog to inform, educate, promote and market your comoany products and services to both existing and potential customers.

What is World Wide Web?

Sorry, this may sound foolish. But I just want to be clear that you understand the web. It’s not really a definition. Even though I will still give you one. I’m just looking for the easiest way to communicate the essence of having a blog for your internet business.

Techopedia explains that the World Wide Web (WWW) is a network of online content that is formatted in HTML. And accessed via HTTP. The term refers to all the interlinked HTML pages that can be accessed over the Internet. The World Wide Web was originally designed in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee while he was a contractor at CERN.

The World Wide Web is most often referred to simply as “the Web.” I have given you several definitions of Internet terms. But let me answer why every internet business needs to have to blog.

Why Your Company Need A Blog

To me, a blog is a marketing tool for building powerful organic free website traffic. As the internet grows, the cost of operating e-business also grows with it.

There are more websites on the internet now than there was some years ago. The more website the more difficult to generate profit online. And that means more advertising cost. But finding a way to generate free organic traffic is an advantage you shouldn’t take lightly. And the time to start is now.

Even if you don’t know how to implement company blog ideas to your website, outsource it.

Promote Your Online Business

How much of your business do you think potential customers know? I can tell you it’s little. You cannot Successful cramp all information about your business on a website. But a blog gives you the right avenue. It helps you to keep sharing information about your business.

You can promote any aspect of your business or service. And more customers will see what more you can do. How you can do them. And most importantly, how they can access your services.

Engage with Potential Customers:

Yes, it’s an opportunity to engage more with potential customers. Sometimes, customers need to know more. But if there is no information about you they go elsewhere.

It’s not every time customers want to call your customer line. Even support services are being handled online. Online customers like to transact online.

You can give out more information that would engage your customers.

It will increase sales and win new customers. Well-Explained product details can improve customer understanding. Online buyers like to research about products before they purchase. If you give more details it helps them make a fast purchase decision.

Opportunity to Brand Your Online Business

Repetition is the law of deep and lasting impression. A blog gives you branding advantage. Customers get to see and read about you all the time. The more engaged the more they are becoming fans of your brand.

A blog gives your customers opportunity to comment on your product or service. They can even ask questions. Or read about answers you gave to others. Sometimes, it’s even another customers comment that would convince a potential buyer.

A Good Place to Give Stuff Away:

Here is another big one. You can use your blog to give away stuff. Share your huge discounts. And free bonuses. Customers love free stuff. You can manage a great give away page with your blog. That will attract new customers.

Show Off Your Expertise

Imagine how much you can do with a blog. As a successful online business, you have the experience to share. Your customers would like to know they can trust your business. They need to know that you are experienced in your field.

Most of what customers know about businesses is what they are advertising. But with a blog, you can give your adverts a human face.

People love to buy from someone they know and trust. You can build such familiarity. And build confidence with your customers. If they know you handle their services personally, it gives more confidence to your business.

That’s the kind of power a blog can give you. You are not only selling to customers. You are also their friend. They can relate to you. Ask your questions. And even disagree with you on some issues.

But at the end, they trust you. That trust is redirected to your product or service.

Imagine if you can interact with the CEO of Coca-Cola. That’s the power you are giving to potential customers. They can be sure to buy from you. As though you are family they can trust.

Other Reasons To Consider

Here are my 10 identified needs for companies to start a blog. You can add yours and see if it also is another reason for companies to start a blog.

1. If a company is looking to market its products or service
2. If a company has technical products that require a user manual
3. If a company is offering customer support
4. If a company wants to keep its customers informed about its operations and achievements
5. If a company is constantly launching new products
6. If the company is newsworthy
7. If it’s an innovative company
8. If the company is new
9. If the company is targeting young customers
10. If the company wants to plan for the future

Starting Company Blog Ideas On  Your Website

The easiest way to start a blog is to use WordPress. At it can be implemented on almost every server today. Just download WordPress into your server.

Setup a subdomain like (blog.your-domain-name.com) to install WordPress software on the subdomain. And add a menu on your site to link back to your main website page. Read how to start a blog to follow a step by step tutorial.

You can see how simple it is.

However, you will need a blog theme. You can download one from WordPress theme. But if you need a more professional theme, I recommend you try the theme shop. It’ offers one of the best catalogues of great themes for your business blog.

Like I promised, to show you the basic ways to start and grow a blog. Hope the article is helpful? I like to get paid for my work. So, tell me all about it in the comment box. And I will consider it as payment for my help. Thank you and cheers!

Conclusion

A company blog promotes the interests of the business on the web.. It puts your company with search parameters, making it easier for potential customers to find you easily.

A company blog ideas also gives you more advantage to keep your customers updated regularly about new products or changes in your business.

Most importantly, you have your customers attention to educate them yourself about the uses and benefits of your products. You help to build bond with them and distract them from what your competitors maybe promoting.

If you are going to succeed in the job economy you need a new set of high demand skills. I’m sharing just 14 of these skills with you in this post. The list of these high demand skills are growing by the day.

Acquiring these skills will change your financial status. They are not only high in demand, you also get paidmore for your skill.

And according to LinkedIn, skills are classified into 6 categories. So, each of these 14 skills falls within any of these categories. Also, under each category there are multiple skill sets. Below is the categories provided by LinkedIn:

1. Analytical
2. Business
3. Communication
4. Information Technology (IT)
5. Management
6. And Marketing

Where to Learn High Demand Skills

The need to Improving oneself and diversifying your skill set has never been easier. There are online courses, webinars, video tutorials and guides that are available online to help you achieve your dream. It doesn’t matter if you only needed a new skill for your own business or that you are looking to get hired with better monthly pay.

High Demand Skills are defining the way businesses make hiring decisions. And it’s not only that we need to learn new skills, their demand is higher and if you want more pay or revenue from your business, learning them would help you increase your earnings.

So, for each High Demand skill there will be a link to a course content online or a website where you can find such skills to learn.

High Demand Skills To Learn Now

I have compiled these 14 high Demand Skills for you. It’s just a starting point to get you started. There are hundreds of high Demand Skills available now. And more are being discovered everyday.

These skills will help you become better equipped and knowledgeable in these fields. You also gain the opportunity to become better employable, earning higher pay and resisting the job laying off Trends in a changing world.

Here are the high demand skills I recommend you acquire now. You may specialize in anyone you choose. Or learn as many of them as you are inclined to do. But whatever you do, make sure you have one of these high Demand Skills in your resume.

{1} Copywriting

Copywriting is a form of marketing communicated through written text for the purpose of advertising. It’s a branch of content marketing. The product, which is called copy, is a written content, which is aimed at increasing brand awareness and to persuade a person or group to take a particular action that could result to sales.

This is perhaps the most important skill in this list, as well as the most fundamental.

No matter what business or field you work in, being able to write well is always an asset. You can brush up on your writing through SkillShare and even learn new writing skills along the way. This is a sure high demand skill to get this year.

{2} Public Speaking

Public speaking must first be understood as speaking in public. That’s the best layman definition. However, when you want to polish the act you can now define it as the process or act of performing a speech to a live audience. But public speaking is commonly understood as formal, face-to-face speaking of a single person to a group of listeners.

Almost everyone needs this high Demand Skills of public Speaking. As it’s often said, one of most people’s greatest fears is public speaking. It’s a skill that takes a lot of practice to perfect, and doing so can pay dividends. Being able to speak to a crowd with confidence is invaluable, wherever you may go.

The public Speaking Course I recommend is this Introduction to Public Speaking on Coursera.

{3} Project Managment

Project management involves initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals within specific success criteria at the specified time. However, the primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals within the given constraints.

Project Management is one of the high demand skills which can help you apply leadership in an organized and productive manner.

You should be able to manage every aspect of a project to completion despite the challenging situation. And you must know how to keep everyone involved in the project organized, productive, engaged and motivated at all times.

If you need where to acquire skills in project management try the project management course from Edx.

{4} Graphic Design

Graphic design is visualizing communication and problem-solving through the use of typography, photography, and illustration. It’s also considered a subset of visual communication and communication design.

You may also need it for your own graphics. Having the knowledge to make your own business graphic will be an added advantage and would save you cost as well.

Things you can make includes your own logo, images to go with your social media posts, and so on. Lynda.com for LinkedIn offers a course on graphic design. You can get a solid foundation in typography, color, layout and more, and practicing with InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop.

{5} App Development

Mobile app development involves a process by which a mobile app is developed for mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones. If you want to become a mobile app developer, learning to code is your first option.

It’s not required for everyone, but for some of you, this will be the best route. To become a mobile app developer is much easier than it sounds. A lot of things have been much simplified now with drag and drop softwares.

And depending on your situation, there are lots of options you can choose from. By deciding on your reason for learning app development, it shortens your learning curve.

Here are few reasons people are Learning how to build mobile apps.

• Want to build their own startup company
• Are trying to create apps for other businesses
• Own a business and can’t afford to outsource development Virtually everyone today has a smart phone in their pocket.

{6} UX Design

UX is a fascinating, varied and satisfying career path which could take you in many directions. A UX design course gives a really solid grounding for any sort of career in UX.

UX design involves a varied range of tasks, and requires you to have a very diverse skillset. Besides technical and design skills like wireframing, prototyping and interpreting data and feedback, UX designers also need certain “soft” skills.

The ability to Adapt, communicate, solve problems and collaborate in teamwork are all essential soft skills. As a UX designer, it’s important that you can collaborate effectively with the team, especially from clients and stakeholders to developers and fellow designers, all the way through to the end user.

However, you can also specialize in any of the 4 main disciplines of UX designs:

1. Experience Strategy (ExS)
2. User Research (UR)
3. Information Architecture (IA)
4. Interaction Design (IxD)

{7} Excel Knowledge

Spreadsheets has become the staple of any business process both online and offline. Learning how to use formulas and other features to organize and process data in Excel can help save tons of time. And is one of the most sort after Skills today. It’s not difficult to learn either.

You can choose to learn on your own using tones of training videos on YouTube for free. Or you can choose to learn advanced Excel skills through Data Monkey.

There are certain excel skills that are essential to have if you want to proficient in excel knowledge.

• Vlookup
• PivotTables
• PivotChart
• Flash Fill
• Quick Analysis
• Power View
• Essential keyboard shortcuts
• IF formulas
• Creating Charts
• Conditional Formatting.
• Transposing columns into rows or rows into columns

{8} Web Development

Web developer is responsible for how a website looks. His job is to create the site’s layout and integrate graphics, applications (such as a retail checkout tool), and other content.

He also write webdesign programs, mostly in a variety of computer languages, such as HTML or JavaScript. The 3 kinds of web development specialization are: front-end developer, back-end developer, and full-stack developer.

You can learn a complete web development course on Udemy.

{9} Coding

Coding is the use of programming language to get a computer to behave how you want it to. The lines of code tells the computer exactly what to do. While a document full of lines of code is called a script.

And each script is designed to execute a programmed job. Whether you’re launching an app, working on AI, optimizing a site for search, creating content, etc., basic coding skills can go a long way.

If you are not aiming to become a full-time programmer, you can get the fundamental knowledge of coding to add to your major asset. You can learn coding through Codeacademy. They offer great courses for both beginners and coders looking to learn more and to improve on existing knowledge.

{10} SEO/Google Analytics

There is literally no business in the world that can’t benefit from more web traffic. Anybody looking to gain visibility and more exposure online needs to learn search engine optimization.

You can just learn the fundamentals of SEO using the Google Webmaster Central Blog. Or you can also visit Search Engine Journalfor a huge library of guides and how-to articles on SEO.

{11} Social Media Marketing

Marketing on social media is an ever-changing field. To stay on top of social media marketing is important any other digital marketing. Even if you just want to learn only the basics, there’s no shortage of online courses for social media marketing.

But here is an indepth guide that covers all major social media platforms like How to Dominate Social Media, or this niche course by Mari Smith’s Fast Facebook Results.

{12} Photoshop

Knowing how to edit images can let you do things from making memes to designing graphics for websites, brand logos, and marketing materials.

The best photoshop software is Adobe. It offers users expert tutorials that are more than enough for introducing Photoshop fundamentals to beginners, as well as advanced courses for experienced Photoshop users.

This high demand skill could be the best investment you make this year.

{13} Selling

Selling refers to a transaction between the seller and the prospective buyer or buyers. And it involves a target market, where money or something considered to have monetary value can be exchanged for goods or services.

If there is one very important of all the high demand skills, it’s selling. This skill will set you apart. Virtually every business in this world can’t do without selling.

Selling skills are critical in every organization that rely on ongoing buying from customers or clients. This requires the ability to build transactional relationships with customers, able to persuade them to make purchases and generate repeat business is at the heart of selling.

You begin acquiring this high demand skill by taking Alison free course on selling.

{14} Consulting/Coaching

Consulting and coaching are similar but not necessarily the same. While a consultant can equally be a coach, on the other hand, a coach may not necessarily be a consultant. Because a coach may not necessarily be the subject matter expert in order to help develop the client.

But a consultant is an expert who is called on for professional or technical advice or opinions. But both high demand skills are top on the radar for skills you may need to acquire this year.

You can take this profession coaching and consulting course from Langevin.

Conclusion

Although the list is quite endless when searching for high demand skills to add to your resume, these 14 skills are top on the radar this year. You can even find multiple skills that complement each other to boast your relevance in an industry you are interested in.

For example, you can acquire the combination of these high demand skills like consulting or coaching with selling and social media marketing. High demand skills that compliments each other can boast your relevance and resume.

Whatever you do, just take advantage of these skills to either improve on your employability or competence in your current job or business.

In the world of information, a blog is the weapon of online marketing. Blogs have become an essential tool for online business. The right description of what is a Blog in today’s internet is a marketing tool. But it’s also proactive and persuasive.

According to an internet data, over 12 million posts shared daily. Most of these post are marketing contents. And every day more people buy products sold through a blog.

Blog marketing is not another term for internet marketing; it’s now the term for internet marketing.

And if you are thinking of starting your blog, see it a business in a blog. You can begin any idea as a blog. And can turn it into one of the most influential companies in the world.

However, I’m looking at different things that provide in-depth knowledge of the question – what a blog is?

What Is A Blog Definition?

According to Wikipedia, it’s a discussion or informational website. That is the best definition of a blog. It’s for discussing issues that people want to know. It also provides relevant information on issues that affect people.

That is why people read blogs. But you can also liken it to a newspaper. The regular paper publishes  daily, weekly, or monthly.

They send you information people want to discuss. A blog is like that too. It’s an information source depending on the blog niche.

What Is A Blog Use For?

From the definition of a blog, you already have an idea what are the uses of a blog. Let us dig further into it.

A blog serves several purposes. I can outline a few of them in tables. This list is limited, you can only add to it as you read.

1.  It provides help
2. Solve problems
3. Sell products
4. Promote ideas
5. Encourage or mobilise for a cause
6. Provide useful information
7. Teach do it yourself tips
8. Discuss important issues
9. Provide customer support
10. Influence people’s opinion

How Does Blogs Work?

Unlike how the internet works, how Blogs Work is so simple. It’s this simplicity that made Blogs the fastest growing websites on the internet.

They work as a content platform. It’s a platform to share information that is beneficial to someone you may not even know. It’s in the class as any other platform like Facebook, Instagram, Google, television, Radio, Newspaper, etc.

If you blog stands for something that is helpful to others, it will always attract people to visit.

How Popular Are Blogs?

According to QuickSprout, there are Over 150,000,000 blogs on the internet. A new blog finds a home on the web every second of the day.

That means, if you can calculate how many seconds are in the minutes you have spent reading this blog. That’s how many new blogs created since you started.

And likewise, the internet celebrates more than 175,000 new blogs. When you start yours, it will count for that day. So, if you start your blog today, you would have added one more blog to the statistics.

Over 12,000,000 of these blog posts hits the web every day. That’s a lot of information floating on the internet every day. Someone can badge a degree in any course online, without seeing the four walls of a university.

Difference Between A Blog And Website

In the first place, to differentiate between a blog and website is like asking who is male and who is female. They are both humans. You can only define them further by their sexes.

And it’s like saying, it’s a blog while a website is a website.

Besides, the only thing that is different in both is their usage. A website can do the same stuff a blog does. And it’s vis-a-vis. But you can choose not to have a blog on a website. That doesn’t make much difference either.

From our definition of a blog, we mentioned it’s a discussion or information website. That doesn’t give much room for differences. A blog is a website, period!

Examples Of A Blog

I can give you 150 million instances of blogs. But that would make this post uninteresting. There are  high-profile examples I can list out for you.

• Medium.com
• Quora.com
• Huffingtonpost.com
• Cnet.com
• Blog.cnn.com
• Neilpatel.com
• Rankxl.com
• Eminem.com
• MikeTyson.com

What Are Popular Blogs:

There is no better way to measure favourite blogs than by the net worth. Otherwise how else can we measure their popularity? Even if we go by traffic, we will be talking about the same thing. Web traffic means money for blogs. And blogs that have the most of it makes more money.

in addition, I can also follow the Forbes listing of the most popular blogs on the internet. You can read Forbes details of them here. I’m only listing them with their monthly value for you.

• 10 — Tuts+: $175,000 per month
• 9 — Smashing Magazine: $215,000 per month
• 8 — Gizmodo: $325,000 per month
• 7 — Perez Hilton: $575,000 per month
• 6 — CopyBlogger: $1,000,000 per month
• 5 — TechCrunch: $2,500,000 per month
• 4 — Mashable: $2,000,000 per month
• 3 — Moz: $4,250,000 per month
• 2 — Engadget: $5,500,000 per month
• 1 — Huffington Post: $14,000,000 per month

How To Create A Blog:

The most interesting discovery on the internet is a blog. It gives anyone a voice and a place on the web. It has also simplified the process of starting a website. Many blogging software allows bloggers  setup for free.

You have learnt so much already about blogs. It’s time you create your blog. You can learn much more by blogging than by reading other people explaining a blog.
Here are my simple steps you can follow now to create a blog and start blogging like me. To start a blog, you only need the following.

1. A domain name
2. Hosting account
3. Blog theme

I also wrote a picture Tutorial that would guide you to set up a blog now. Click here for How To Start A Blog: Do-It-Yourself Guide

What Is Blogging?

Blogging is networking your thoughts, ideas and information with others who can benefit from them. It’s a form of electronic publishing from the word blog.

Anyone can start a blog. Thanks to Blog engines that removes the complexities. We will still look at how to set up a blog in another subheading. But Blogs Work in the same way a newspaper does.

What did differentiates the two is their platforms. A blogger gathers information for the blog. Researches and verifies its sources. Write the content in the most easily understood format. And then publish it on the blog.

Who Is A Blogger?

A blogger is an author of a blog. He is no different from a writer, author or owner. But in the world of blogging, anyone can blog. There is no defined qualification.

Moreover, even if you can’t write, you can still blog. There are groups of freelancers who can write on any topic for a blogger. I purposely used the word author to describe a blogger. That’s to mean the inability to write is not a barrier.

But a blogger is a writer, an author or owner of a blog. They all apply to the status of a blogger. The bottom-line is, your association with a blog.

What Do You Write About In A Blog?

They say the thought of a writer is broader than an ocean. There are no defined topics to blog. What you can blog about, solely depends on your imagination and the information available to you.

However, most people pick topics or niche to write for specific reasons. It’s either they want to specialise, or they consider it lucrative.

In the world of blog marketing, picking a niche is advisable. You choose your niche with two things in mind. It must be a topic you would like writing about, or you have enough insight to share.

Secondly, it should be a marketable niche. That means, it does have enough audience for market value. And more people interested in the topic, for room to grow your blog.

Here are also my tips on Niches you can blog:

So, as I have already explained in what you should blog about, I want to help.  See practical blog ideas you can start equally. I have put together ten of these useful blog niche ideas for you.

• How to make money
• Tech and Gamin
• Food
• Health and Fitness
• Lifestyle
• Personal development
• Travel
• E-learning
• Personal finance
• Beauty and fashion

How Do Blogs Make Money?

We can merely define blog revenue in three models. We have  advertisement, affiliate and products. But each blog may still find specific revenue strategy for its niche.
For example, let us look at revenue sources for a fashion blog. Where can it make money?

• From makeup tutorials
• Best shoe reviews
• Trendy fashion items

These three strategies are all affiliate related. Every blog niche will find its revenue sources. And that’s what makes each blog both different from another.

Finally, What Is A Blog SEO Traffic?

SEO traffic is an essential part of a successful blog story. A new blogger may not understand all about SEO traffic, but it’s the most vital part of blogging. I have also written an entire  free course modules for it. You can read it all starting with Search Engine Traffic Optimization – What Is SEO?

The result of SEO traffic is how your blog makes money. As more people visit your blog, you make money from advertising to them. And by selling products to them as an affiliate of other businesses, or selling your own products.

However, online web traffic is a competitive subject. While we create new blogs, the more competitive the traffic that goes around. And the more competitive it becomes to get regular blog visitors. Yet, more blogs are getting tons of web traffic using proven SEO techniques.

When you create a blog using WordPress, you can access several SEO plugins. And these tools can assist you in combating the SEO war. That’s how new bloggers find their success in the competitive space of web blogging.

Finally, you can pick any tool you find interesting to use. I can also recommend Squirrly SEO Plugin for you. It has important SEO tools every blogger should use. That’s what I use to optimize this blog post.

You will find this post useful: Search Engine Traffic Optimization Simplified – What Is SEO?

Do you need a proven secret on making money unstoppably? Do you know you can create consistent cash flow using blog platform? Do you have any idea that can make you money if you expose it to millions of people?

If you answer these correctly, you have found your own money-making business strategy. But frankly, many already do have everything else but blog Ideas.

The problem is not knowing the solution you can provide. It’s in finding the right platform to attract the right number of people that need your solution. And that’s what I want to help you discover now.

Think about the following organizations I will list them out for you below:

• 
GSM networks
• TV Stations
• Newspapers
• Social Media
• The Church
• The School
• Political Parties
• FIFA
• WordPress
• Amazon
• Google

These are just a few. And there is one thing those listed above have in common. It’s called platform. Even though they all do different things. They are related in one thing – people. They reach-out to people in their large numbers.

They are platforms for people. And they provide solutions. That means people have problems, and they have their solutions. That’s exactly what every business seeks to provide. The only problem is most businesses depend on existing platforms to build their business.

Although, there is nothing wrong with that but it’s not as full-proof as having your own platform. Do you know why churches are getting richer? It’s because church is its own platform.

What Is A Blog Platform?

Platforms are avenues for providing solutions that people need in exchange for favors, cash, gifts, etcetera. But the biggest part of a platform is that it grows its own customer base in a way that makes them repeat users or customers without necessarily promoting the same things to them.

That brings us to a blog platform. A blog could be described as a book or a newspaper, or even television like vlogs. The primary role of a blog is to share information.

So, a blog platform is an avenue to share information to a target audience, with the intention of retaining them for repeat broadcast and in return favors, likes, shares, clicks, and cash.

How to Make Money With A Blog Platform

If you think, okay I know about television, newspaper and books but how do I really Make Money from a blog?

Blogs make money from several ways, which includes, revenue from advertisements, affiliate marketing income, and selling of products and services. Once you have a vibrant blog that people love to visit, monetizing your blog is one of the easiest thing to do.

Blogs don’t make money on its own. You make money from the traffic generated by your blog. The whole idea of writing good contents and sharing it for free is to attract traffic to your blog. The same information you give away for free is being sold as a book by another person.

So, a blog platform must offer value in exchange for the traffic it hopes to Monetize for profit. While creating a blog is easier, what matters is what keep the traffic flowing. It’s the blog and the content that makes it a blog platform.

Take Your Chances

If there is anything you know now, it’s that you are not ignorant anymore. You know what to do to make money. And also how to do it.

But I know what most of you are thinking now. IF ONLY I HAVE THE MONEY.
That is the problem. The same way you are planning to provide a solution to the problems of other people. You also have a problem.

Think like the people whose problems you want to solve. Do they want it solved? Are they going to look for the easiest way to get their problems solved?

Start With What Comes Easy

When I was in that same situation. I thought of what to do. And what comes easy for me was writing. I know the solution to a problem. I have the answer. But I didn’t have the platform.

But I know how to write. So, what comes easy for me was starting a blog platform. Now you know. And I can tell you all about it. Only if you think you can use the same kind of blog platform to reach people with the solution to problems you can solve.

Believe me, it’s one of the fastest ways to build a blog platform. If you are willing to wait for the time it could take for blog platform to grow into a viable financial investment. And you can, if you are passionate about reaching your target.

Blog Ideas to Get You Started

If you are thinking about doing blog platform, here are a few blog Ideas to get you thinking. There is no idea that you won’t find somebody already doing. Just bring in your uniqueness into it. Nobody is exactly like you. That’s why you stand a great chance for success in this world.

There are a thousand and one blog ideas. I can only post little from this large pull. Here is my pick.

• Self-improvement blogs
• Health & Fitness for executives
• Local Language Learning Blogs
• Traveling on a Budget
• Writing Style for beginners
• Rescued Animals care
• Personal Development Goals
8. Social Communication Skills
• Working in Women
10. Self Defense skills
• Recipes for couples looking for children
• Male guide to communication
• Using technology in small business
• Blogging about special kinds of foods
• cyberbullying
• children Behavioral disorders
• Body-weight loss training
• Entrepreneurial guide for young children & adults

Things You Should Know About Blog

One thing about Blog is that it can be used for different things. You can start a church with a blog. There are several online schools like Udemy. You can even start a political movement. Or you can simply use it to promote your business.

It’s up to you want you to want to use it for.

Also, you can get started now. Setting up a blog is not complex. And can be free. There are platforms where you can start a free blog. Or pay just as little $2.75 monthly to set up your own blog.

The choice is yours. But the option you choose may also determine how you can maximize the potentials of your blog.

However, I strongly recommend the $2.75 monthly startup plan. It gives you all the flexibility and control you would need over your blog. And it’s available here now. Just click this link and you will be on your way to making the rejoice to start your blog with a hosting plan and free domain name with Bluehost.

But if you want to go all free, here is my suggestion. Go with WordPress. You can click here now to redirect you to their website where you can register for free and start your blog.

You can also make the choice of upgrading to the $2.75 monthly later. The only problem is the cost of migrating your entire blog content from a free service to a paid hosting platform.

Blog Are a Good Platform for Your Ideas

There are several reasons why I choose a blog as my platform. Apart from being the easiest and cost-effective option for me at that time, it’s prone to attracting free organic online traffic.

Without even paying money for advertising, I started getting visitors to my blog. The money articles I post on my blog the more traffic it attracts daily.

That is just one part of the huge benefits of my blog.

Also, I could add anything to it. I can add a video, an audio, online store, online training, etc. it’s virtually unlimited in what I can do now with my blog.

It only started with writing a post. But it doesn’t end there. A blog gives you a start and it doesn’t give you a finish line. You can go on and on. It’s unlimited.

In Conclusion: Get More from My Blog

Yes, I think you should. If you plan on starting your own blog. There are several articles that would help you get started. I have also shared some of my experience over time.

You can learn from me what worked and what you can do without the fluffs.

Don’t take my word for it. Blogging is not about a merry go round. It needs work. Neil Patel wrote how he wrote over 800 blogs that are now ranking his blog. It didn’t happen overnight.

Start with this article, How Blog Works: The Whole Truth.

P.S: Share with my audience what you think makes this post useful to you. I will love to hear from you in the comment box. And if you have questions I will be glad to answer them.

One of the major concerns for bloggers is search engine optimization. The advantage of organic traffic is enormous for any blogger to ignore. And that is also one of ‘holy grail’ for most online blogs.

The majority of blogs fighting over the top page for search traffic are those who have mastered the SEO strategy. But there is room to overtake a top-ranked blog on Google.

All you need is to explore the known strategies of on-page and off-page optimization. Although, this strategy is not alien to the experts. But on Google, anything can happen. Anyone can outsmart on the SEO platform.

What Bloggers Do For SEO Traffic:

Let’s start with the known to the unknown. There are necessary things bloggers do to attract online traffic. It’s generally known and used by all bloggers.

It’s categorized into two:

1. On-Page SEO
2. Off-Page SEO

It has been the strategy since Google began changing its algorithm. And it’s still the strategy to date. You can read more about On-Page search engine optimization Techniques – A Do-It-Yourself Guide.

Here are the suggestions to follow and optimize your blog search results.

1. Publish Relevant Content. Quality content is the accurate number one driver of your search engine rankings. And there is no substitute for great content. There will never be.

2. Update Your Content Regularly. You can’t beat fresh content with Google. It will always value new materials above old and obsolete information. A little twist to an existing story refreshes it with Google and can rank better than it ranked before.

3. Metadata: Google is still checking your blog post metadata. Keep it relevant to your keywords and post content. You are helping Google class your content and index it correctly.

4. Have a link-worthy site. This one is huge but mostly a challenge for new bloggers. But if you work on growing your blog, you will soon be a blog others want to link to – and especially Authority sites.

5. Use alt tags: optimizing even the images you used on your post will impact your traffic results. So, always tag your post pictures with your focus keyword.

What is Most Important to Google:

There are open secret search engine optimization details that are most important to Google. And it’s what forms most of its search ranking. Apart from building proper on-page optimization, the smart bloggers explore these Google secrets.

You need to know these things and use them as well. Checking your google analytical, you will see the indexes of your traffic report. Those indexes are essential to Google.

They are what Google is checking on your site. They should matter to you. Don’t just view them as a report. See them as what you are either doing right or doing wrong. Google is showing them to you so you can improve them.

1. Search Engine Optimization & Content Readability
2. Daily traffic and unique traffic
3. Bounce Rate management
4. Average Time spent on Blog Page
5. Countries that are driving much traffic to your site
6. The device that people are using to access you mostly
7. Social media traffic of your blog
8. Media endorsements or referencing

Search Engine Optimization & Content Readability:

You cannot ignore content that is both Search engine optimization compliant and also readable. I always test my posts with Flesch readability test. Flesch measures the readability of your content from 0% to 100% score.

That gives you an idea of how explicit your content can be before you post it on your blog. The method used is usually to assess the material for errors, arrangements, grammatical usage, writing style, vocabulary, phrases and structure.

The bottom line is that it checks to ensure that humans can read your content. I aim for 85 per cent and above. That makes me sure that my content is good enough.

You can use specific software and plugins to help you achieve this. Microsoft word has an inbuilt editor that can help. You can also subscribe to Grammarly for a more advanced editing tool.

WordPress also has its proofreading tool. It’s it’s also useful. But above all, I use my SEO Plugin to check the readability score of my content. Two main plugins are good for this – Yoast SEO and Squirrly Live Assistant. Both plugins work magic for content search engine optimization.

Daily Visitors and Unique traffic:

Google measures your blog authority by the number of visitors it gets daily. And if you check the analytics for your blog you would users visit and new users. It separates users from new users for a reason.

You may be getting a lot of traffic, but Google wants to know out of that traffic how many have visited before. Getting new visitors are good, but getting those new visitors to visit again is vital to SEO Ranking.

You must know that Google priority is not sending traffic to you. It’s looking for websites that people love to visit. And if the repeat visitors are not up to certain percentage it may signal something is not right.

Bounce Rate management:

It helps Google to measure Visitors behaviour on your blog. How long do they stay? What is making them wait? That’s the page they are visiting on your blog. It also tracks how they leave your blog.

Bounce rate is measuring those who never went further than just the home page. When they landed on your blog, what else did they do? Or did they just zoomed off again?

Google wants to know if your blog is useful and offering visitors value for their time. And if it doesn’t it rates your blog below those blogs that are keeping visitors.

Make your homepage resourceful. If you notice an increase in bounce rate, don’t overlook it. Investigate what could be causing it and fix it. Make your website hospitable. Plan home to optimize it for keeping your visitors much longer. And always keep it fresh by changing the information on your page.

Average Time spent on blog Page:

That another behaviour measurement for Google. How long Visitors spent on your blog is essential. You should find a way to keep them longer. You can add relevant videos and target only visitors that are likely to be interested in your blog content.

Offer more incentives, like free download and date bound specific offers. You can use date offer on your homepage to keep visitors coming back again.

Note that if you are targeting mobile users, they spend less time on sites than desktop and tablet users. But they quickly click on links and can return to your site more frequently than desktop user. 

Countries that are driving traffic to your site:

Anything Google is tracking is essential. When it comes to nations, Google wants to know which country your information is more relevant. Also, countries where there is less competitive content for your blog.

That means there are few of such content available for that country. Google can push your content ahead of the ranks following its algorithm pattern.

But it means the countries that your traffic is coming from are where you are most needed.

If you want traffic from a particular country, you should target that country in your search engine Optimization.

Device Platforms Accessing Your Blog:

The device used in accessing your blog is also one of the things Google assess. It checks for device types like mobile, desktop or tablet. It also monitors the browser used to access the internet.

But most importantly, it’s the device that matters. Google wants to know the kind of users that are interested in your content.

However, you can see the most used device and optimize your blog for it. Like mobile searches are growing. You can see how much traffic is coming from mobile. Sometimes that can also be the reason for the high bounce rate.

If your blog is not optimized for mobile browsers, it can result in a higher bounce rate.

Social Media Traffic of Your Blog:

Your social media is now more important than ever. You should pay close attention to what you are doing on socials.

How many users you got following can affect your rank on search engine searches. And sharing is the most vital area Google is looking at. It’s not about the user base in particular, even though that is important.

Google is interested in how your social followers are interacting with your content. Since social media is for sharing content, Google is looking at how much of your content is being shared by others.

That in itself validates the contents. It gives Google the impression that your content is good enough to make that many people share it with their family and friends.

Media endorsements or referencing:

This one rarely gets mentioned in most SEO strategy. But it’s a vital piece of SEO trick. Google thinks that anything that is newsworthy is good enough for its users.

So, when you get mentioned in the news, Google takes that content seriously.

And you know that major news media won’t carry any content if it’s not worth sharing with their readers or viewership. Google is using their authority to measure the relevance to your content.

One of the strategies being advocated by experts is connecting with authority sites and creating newsworthy contents.

It’s another form of attracting backlinks. But, this time you are getting mentioned, quoted, maybe by a writer on a news media platform.

It might even be a republishing on one of your blog post. Just anything that validates your blog is important to Google and it ranks your blog in searrch results.

Conclusion

While Google will always update and make changes to its algorithm, some things will always stay true about Google ranking. And like many experts have revealed, the best content will always win with Google.

But the idea of a good content may be conflicting based on region and target audience. What may resonate with audience in one country may not resonate with audience from another country.

However, the best content will be the right content that represents the needs and issues related to your target audience. And if you know why people go on Google search, you will know that no matter how good your content can be, if it doesn’t provide a solution to the problems your target audience have, it will not rank better no matter how good your search engine optimization might be.

P.S: Let’s hear what you have to say about this post. And if you have a question, be free to ask me. I will be glad to reply quickly to your comment. 

100 blog visitors don’t seem like much, right? But it was necessary to me. It wasn’t like I have built a successful blog before. And it feels so good to see that much number of blog visitors daily.

If you are startup blogger, this may interest you as well. But if you are already seasoned, it’s like child’s play.

You might probably be doing tens of thousands monthly. So, a guy with just 100 blog visitors doesn’t feel like much of a deal. But it was a deal for me. In fact, it was a big deal. I had finally broken the code. And it didn’t come cheap.

For me at that time, I would have loved CNN, BBC, or MSNBC to interview me. I wanted to tell the whole world how I Started getting 100 blog visitors daily. But that wouldn’t make such news headline.

There are many ‘idiot’ blogs making a substantial income online. Why should I trouble the whole world with 100 blog visitors?

The Value of 100 Daily Blog Visitors

For those of you who are just starting your blog, it’s for you. Don’t mind my ranting earlier. I was proving a point – that 100 blog visitors may not be a big deal for some. But it should be for you.

Many blogs died because they never made it to the 100 visits per day. So, don’t let me trivialize it for you. It’s indeed a bid deal.i

When Amazon sold its first book, it was a big deal for Bezos. The question is, how much profit was there in one book? You can see the point, but it made so much sense for Bezos to launch Amazon. Of course, looking at Amazon now, anyone would merely see the big deal then.

So, let me help you make your first big deal in blogging. You are a startup blogger. Nothing should be as important as growing your blog visitors.

Take it from me, the faster you can grow the better for you. Not many people have the patience to wait long for success. That’s the reason we have many failed projects all over the world.

People won’t couldn’t wait to see their efforts turned to gold.

How Long Before A Blog Succeeds

When I started my blog, I wanted to know how long it can take. I needed to start earning income. My last business just suddenly went flat in revenue. My bills have started piling up.

So, knowing how long it would take me was important.

I searched online looking for who knows. And I have seen different opinions. Some said within 4 to 6 months your blog posts will start showing in search traffic.

That felt both good and bad at the same time. I can wait for six months. But how do I earn income to sustain my bills in that six months?

You might even be in that same situation right now. And wondering how long or short is six months.

Well, that is even the most comfortable option. It never said you could start generating revenue. Your blog will index on searches.

So, with all your effort now in your blog, you can only start seeing little results from 4 to 6 months time.

However, Neil Patel wrote about how his long tail keywords started generating good traffic years after. And he went on to say, SEO strategy is for the long term.

You can mix the two information and rest your mind. That’s if you want a sustainable online blog. But if you are looking for a quick return on investment, I advise you think Facebook ads.

How Much Can 100 Visitors Generate?

Let me start with the good news. It would depend on your revenue models. And your target niche. It’s not certified 100 per cent. But it’s possible under normal circumstances.

100 daily visitors are 3,000 visitors in a month. Assuming you have a product priced at &100 you are selling. 3,000 visitors can translate to one per cent purchase. Which are 30 sales per month? You are already earning $3,000 monthly.

What I told you is not all that bad with just 100 visitors daily.
It can also scale up with advert revenue. And affiliate products. So you can even be looking at more than $3,000 monthly.

However, the bad news is that it can also be a no sale situation.
One thing you must settle as a startup blogger is that you don’t have 100 per cent control of its outcome. You can only do what you have to do.

It’s not even about all the tricks the gurus teach you. Even the gurus depend on platforms they don’t control. That is why I advocate starting with the basics. And then scale things up as you make progress.

Don’t jump into massive investment in your startup blog. Just invest in the basics. They will give you the thumbs up you need to access the direction your blog may take adequately.

When I first started my blog, it was a news blog. As I scale things, I realized I should be helping and not just taking. So, I moved to startup blog training. Now you are a beneficiary of that decision I made. And it’s because I used only the basics and still do.

How to Get Visitors to Your Blog

There is one key strategy to blog optimization, to drive visitors to your blog. But not every traffic is your traffic. The work of optimization is not only to drive traffic but to ensure that just the right kind of traffic gets to your blog.

It’s the reason bloggers invest a reasonable amount of time and resources to optimize for traffic.

Google ranks your site authority on visitors. And if they are not the right visitors, it can leave the wrong report to the search engine.

Your blog bounce rate and time visitors spent on your blog are tracked by Google, including the kind of visitors your keyword is sending to your blog. If you optimize for the wrong keyword for your content, Google cannot index the post.

Optimize correctly and drive only the right visitors for your content.

How to Grow Your WordPress Blog

WordPress gives you the massive advantage of plugins that can help you optimize your blog. It’s easier to grow a blog on WordPress than on any other blog engine.

The vast utility plugins WordPress provides gives any new blogger the power of a pro in optimizing for traffic. All you need to do is install the right plugins that can help you maximize appropriately for the right search engine traffic.

An excellent SEO plugin should help out with keyword search, assist in optimizing your tags and content. It should also help you place the new content or its revision on the sitemap.

There is so much one needs to do about traffic optimization that you can’t afford to dwell on every day doing them. A plugin should be able to assist with these complex tasks.

How to Get 1000 Blog Visitors a Day

If you are going to drive traffic to your blog, you have to rank for more keyword with substantial daily traffic volume.

Driving 1000 blog visitors is not the hard part. But you have to wait for it to happen. It will not happen overnight.

Blog traffic is has a growing pattern that it follows. There are periods of the building before the visitors would start coming.

The strategy for 1000 daily visitors is not different for the plan for 100,000 or 1,000,000 visitors. The more contents and keywords you optimize for the more traffic your blogs get daily.

You will need keywords and contents with estimated traffic volume. If you rank for keywords that generate up to 100,000 traffic daily, there is no way you won’t get 1000 of those juice.

You have to drive for more content and keywords. And if your blog is new, wait for the traffic to arrive. It can take from 3 months to 6 months before your blog visitors start coming.

Strategy to Grow Blog Visitors

Your best strategy would be to package the most trending content in your niche that has high volume keywords you can rank on Search Engines.

I made critical points in the above statement, which I want you to consider seriously. We don’t just target high volume keywords; it must be keywords you can rank for in search engine.

Some keywords may be difficult to rank your content. The question now is, how do you know which keywords to list or not to rank?
Now, coming back to growing your blog visitors, you have to build your blog systemically.

Your concern for more visitors should inspire you to plan for it. You will need strategy and not just the willingness to see more traffic.

The first plan should be to decide how many Traffic you need now. That will help you choose the content and the keywords that can generate them. And if your current materials are not anywhere near your target, it’s time to increase your content portfolio to achieve your objective.

How to Get Traffic to Your Blog for Free

If you want free traffic, invest in SEO technique now. Let me illustrate with my plan. I have a one-year strategic traffic plan. I’m looking at driving 100,000 free traffic from search engines in the next one year.

To achieve that I have already outlined my content strategy, keyword plan and cost implication. Don’t forget, if you want free traffic you must invest in it first.

You can copy my strategy it’s simple. I’m using the age-long SEO strategy. The only thing I have changed is the manual approach. I have automated things a bit with my Squirrly SEO Plugin.

I’m setting out for 365 blog posts this year. I’m targeting an equal amount of keyword rankings. But here is the secret I’m using to drive traffic.

The more keywords I can rank for the more traffic I can generate. I may not list for all of them, but I can surely rank for most of them.

That brings me back to high volume keywords. I pick my keywords based on how possible to rank for it. If a keyword is not possible to rank, I leave it and rank for a similar keyword that’s possible.

Finally, I weight each keyword Traffic estimate to judge if it’s reasonably okay with my Squirrly SEO plugin.

The best investment you can ever make is to invest in yourself. Although many know about this idea of self investment, but not many know exactly things that could be considered investment in oneself. The common idea is to get a degree education. Even though that’s good, there are more ways to do that more better.

Getting a degree is a great idea if your ultimate goal is to be better employable. But if the goal is to invest in yourself, a degree can’t give you the best. So, in determining the right ways to invest in yourself should be by defining your reason for the investment.

Think of it this way, why would you want to live? It may surprise you that a lot of people don’t even know why they want to live. Of course, that’s the reason some commit suicide because they don’t understand why they should live.

However, your primary drive in wanting to invest in yourself should be your reason for the investment. Why do you want to have your own house? Why do you want to have a car? Why do you even want to get up this morning?

Do you know why? Find the reason the suits your desire to invest in yourself. If you don’t have a reason, you will not be committed to ensuring that the investment is worth your effort. Also, you will not value the price you may have to pay for it.

How To Invest In Yourself

And if you have your compelling reasons to start investing in yourself, then I will guiding you on simple ways to achieve that effortlessly. Remember, it’s an investment to improve in yourself for a reason best known to you.

But whatever the reason might be, I believe its because you really need to be better so you can achieve more for yourself. Just like you buy a house so that you can have shelter and save on high recurrent cost of rental fees.

The primary reason is high recurrent rent fees, because you can rent a house without buying one. The same way you can get a degree to be employable without actually improving on yourself.

So, I’m going to guide you in these 12 ways you can invest in yourself this year.

{1} Read Books

Books contain more knowledge than you can ever imagine. However, reading every book you find may not be a proper way to Invest in yourself. An investment should have a focus. Your focus should be the reason you are investing in yourself. That should also help you form the choice of books to read.

For example, if your investment is to improve the essence of your life, then a book on life itself should be what fits better. The best book ever written on life is the Holy Bible. Although, you can find several other literatures derived from the Bible but this book remains the first choice when you want to discover the essence of life.

And this example guides every choice you have to make. Focus on your reason and pick the books that helps to address it.

However, the idea of what a book is may also need explanation here. We have left the age of paper books. And most of what you find online may not be in book format. So, the definition of a book will be a body of knowledge in a particular field that addresses a particular need or issue.

A blog is an example of a book. In fact, it’s a more comprehensive and freshly shared body of knowledge. What you are learning here from this blog post is coming fresh to you and tomorrow you will also find a new knowledge or thoughts that would help your startup business ideas.

{2} Take Up Courses

But not everyone may like the idea of reading or get enough motivation to read. That’s where taking Up Courses may come in. A course helps you learn under a kind of supervision. This way you can invest in yourself under the rightful supervision of qualified instructors.

It helps you keep pace with timelines, learn faster and get the opportunity to also test your knowledge on the course.

And in today’s global village, you can take any course from the comfort of your home or office at your own pace. That could also give you the advantage to cover many courses within a short period of time.

There are many online learning sites where you can buy courses of interest, like Udemy, Udacity, MIT, Cousera, etcetera.

{3} Watch YouTube

What is there to watch on YouTube? The power of YouTube has been expanded over the years. It will amaze you to realize that most of the course people pay hundreds of dollars to study are available for free on YouTube. Yes, completely free of charge (FOC).

The question is why would someone make those courses available for free on YouTube? YouTube users enjoys a different kind of monetization that warrants them to offer video courses for free and still earn money.

I have also explained this in one of the blog post: 5 Ways To Make Money In Your Sleep. You will find this very interesting. But the concept is even better than charging for the course. And while they may not even brand them free courses, so much is being taught for free on YouTube.

If you love watching videos, you can explore the free video course Contents on YouTube to invest in yourself.

{4} Watch Educational Shows

You can also expand your love for videos to watching educational shows. If you are on Amazon prime or you subscribe to Netflix or other on-demand video streaming channels, you can take advantage of that to also invest in yourself.

There are many educational shows on TV that will address your kind of skill acquisition or training. Once you know what you want to learn, search for shows that are packaged in that direction.

{5} Find A Mentor

A mentor is a guide with the kind of experience you require. Finding one might be very helpful for you to scale up your learning process. However, the challenge used to be how to find the right mentors who are also willing and available to help.

But in today’s digital age you can approach a mentor online. The barriers that made it difficult to reach them has been bridged by the internet. You can find your mentor on LinkedIn by following them or contacting them for mentoring. You can also find a mentor on Quora platform.

Moreover, picking a mentor should be guided by the kind of investment you seek to make in yourself. For example, if you seek to understand better ways to sell, then, you need a mentor who is a sales expert. Someone with good track record and successful selling career.

The whole idea of investing in yourself is to acquire better skills or knowledge in areas of your business or life that you want to improve.

Really, the best way to describe mentorship is with the idea of apprenticeship. Another way is pastoral relationship with church members. By choosing a mentor you become his or her apprentice. You are there to learn and your mentor is there to teach.

{6} Choose Your Circle Wisely

Now that brings me to the choice of people you keep around you. What you may not know is that those around you are either directly or directly mentoring and shaping your life choices, decisions and actions.

So, the right kind of circle would mean the right kind of investment in yourself. But the wrong crowd could be very dangerous to what you invest in yourself.

Think about this, Jesus taught his disciples , that it’s not what goes into a man that defiles him but what comes out of him. In essence, if something didn’t go in, something wouldn’t come out. Even though you have a choice to determine what you do with what you learn, if you learn the wrong things, you will produce only the wrong results.

Think about what you could be investing in yourself when you hang around some people. What’s coming out of them? Good or bad is going into you. And that could be what next you bring out of you.

{7} Start A Side Hustle

I can’t help but laugh about this one. How could a side hustle help you to invest in yourself? Well, let’s look at side hustle as a kind of mentoring program.

Imagine you are thinking of quitting your job to start a business. Starting a side hustle could mean practicing on your business idea while you are still employed on a job. This gives you the needed time to learn on the business before you finally quit to run the business full time.

{8} Look For A New Hobby

What if you are the type that likes challenges, then, a new hobby could help you a lot. Learning a new hobby would require you to make changes even in your regular routine. Maybe you are dealing with some habits you would like to change.

A new hobby might take you off a particular path to a whole new path.

Think of a new hobby as a child learning to walk. At first everything may seem so strange and unachievable. But you have to keep trying till you could get along much easier.

Even you will be amazed by so much you could learn from trying a new hobby. But it’s even more interesting when the reason is to replace a habit you want to stop. Try this idea to invest in yourself this period.

{9} Workout

A lot of you like the idea of workout. It’s one investment you must give yourself. The benefits of working out is both for the soul and the body. It rejuvenates your entire being in a way nothing else could.

Think of a workout as a bonus investment on yourself. While you could learn how to improve your skills and be a better entrepreneur or team player in your workplace, workout gives you some deep inside you experience nothing else would.

However, the challenge most people have with workout is the consistency it demands. It’s not a one-off investment. You have to create a workout routine, probably your entire life.

{10} Eat Healthy

Food is as important as the air you breath. You should plan your meal in the same way you plan your schedule each day. Something as easily overlooked as breakfast meal can affect the result you can achieve each day.

Take your meals seriously. But importantly eat healthy meals. The reason is that meals helps to power organs in your body. And when they are healthy it impacts on your overall wellbeing, which in turn affect your overall output each day.

The primary function of food is to give you energy. And you need energy to power your brain to think, in your body to lift your hands, legs, open your mouth and even blink your eyes. The lack of energy may affect the function of any or all parts of your body.

{11} Fasting

That’s not to conclude that there won’t be room for fasting. The best art of life is balance. You need to know how to balance everything. Too much or too little of anything is bad. So, in order to find a balance you require at sometimes to go in either directions.

How do you invest in yourself through fasting? It’s by abstaining from food or substances that could give you energy. The big benefit is that when you deny your body required energy for sometime, it turn on its defense mechanism to protect itself. And it increases your brain power to think, analyses and assimilate things.

However, the real essence of fasting it not just to increase your brain power but to unleashed you hidden power which is the power of your human spirit. The Hunan spirit in unlimited. When you unleashed this power, you are exposing your mind to information that’s not within the purview of the physical senses.

{12} Sleep Early And Wake Up Earlier

The natural tendency for humans to sleep and wake is in itself an advantage you can explore to invest in yourself. Even though we can all sleep and wake up, it’s important how early you do that.

Sleeping and waking can be an asset in your success story. I know the norm is for you to wake up early. That’s because most of these mentors who emphasis on waking up early don’t sleep early. They believe so much in hard work.

However, the trends for hard work is giving up for smart work. Most of what we do today are automated. And nothing is really new in today’s world. What makes the difference is how you do what you do from how everyone else does theirs.

So, if you want to get ahead of others, think of working more when your body, soul and spirit are fully rejuvenated. And that’s possible earlier in the mornings. But to even get that kind of rejuvenation would require that you also sleep early.

Conclusion

There is so much to share on everyone of the subhead in this blog post. An investment is a conscious plan to improve the value of yourself or venture for a return on the investment. So, if you invest in yourself it’s for your good.

You need to have a plan on how to you intend to invest in yourself this year. In the same way you plan your business, or new year resolution or even having a meal plan. You also need to have a properly laid out plan on how you are going to invest in yourself.