Mastering Blogging Success: Your Comprehensive Aussie Guide
20 years ago, bloggers started to take over cyberspace. Sports blogs, make up blogs movie blogs, whatever your passion, you could start up a blog and start sharing your views and wisdom with the world.
Over subsequent years, the world in general and Australia in particular has seen a shift in views about blogging. Why Australia in particular? Well, formally, the Land Down Under is ranked among the most tech savvy countries in the world. Informally, Aussies have a reputation for scenting BS a mile off.
20 years ago, there were thousands, possibly tens of thousands of young bloggers across Australia furiously working on content for their blogs and trying to monetize them. Today, there is a sense that all the best spots have been taken and trying to start a blog from scratch is going to be way more hassle than it could ever be worth.
That’s not entirely true. The fact is that more people use the internet than ever in 2023, with the total number of internet users worldwide now estimated at almost 5.5 billion. In Australia, internet penetration stands at more than 96 percent, further evidence of that tech savviness rating mentioned earlier.
If you blog it, they will come
There are plenty of opinions flying about that blogging is dead. Just try Googling the phrase and you will see. But here’s the fun part. When we say “opinions” what we really mean nine times out of 10 is blog posts. So no, blogging is not dead, even those who post that it is admit they only do so to be controversial and perhaps to post a blog that ranks for a way-out keyword.
The reason we can say blogging is alive and well, especially in Australia, is those numbers again. Practically everyone uses the internet. What for? Yes they check mail and social media and they buy groceries and do their banking. But what else?
To find out stuff.
It might be stuff about make up or cricket or classic cars, but in short, they will type a query into a search engine, 19 times out of 20 that search engine will be Google, they will get a load of sponsored results that they will scroll past and then what will they see? The answer depends on the nature of the search, but it will usually be blog posts from authoritative blogs that are relevant to the search.
We won’t get into the SEO stuff here, the point is that yes, blogging is relevant, especially in the Australian market, and it can even be profitable if you get off on the right foot.
Choosing a topic in a land obsessed with casinos, sport and tech
If you are a professional blogger for a business, then the scope of the blog, the nature of it, the style of articles and their frequency will all be laid out before you. That’s not really the scenario we are thinking about today. We are more interested in the traditional personal blog, the fan site or the thoughts board that is borne of personal opinion.
Here’s the thing, you could sit blogging about cricket or k-pop each day with zero personal knowledge or interest, but within a dozen articles, the content will be sounding dry and joyless, you’ll be bored to tears and your audience, if it exists, will notice.
Yes, you need a topic that will interest people and we mentioned a few that are trending in Australia right now. Casino is always a good choice for discussion. There are almost as many online pokies in Australia as there are real ones, and millions play pokies and other casino games each week. We could say the same about sport and video games.
As well as choosing a theme that you are interested in and know about, and one that is popular with your target audience, which at this point is simply “Australians” you should also try to be narrow rather than broad. A Pokies blog is likely better than one about casinos in general, a cricket blog is better than a sports blog and so on.
Set some goals
Once you’ve decided what to blog about, have a think about what you want to achieve from your blog. If you want to become the greatest in your niche and retire young, your aspirations are admirable but you have plenty of hard work ahead.
On the other hand, if you just want to share your thoughts for fun and have little interest in monetization, that’s another matter. Either way, you still need to think about ways to promote you blog, for example using social media, how you will stand out from other Australian blogs in your niche and so on.
Getting started – choosing domain and hosting
There are numerous sites where you can check the price and availability of a domain name. godaddy and namecheap are two popular ones, and a quick Google search will show more. Obviously some are more expensive than others but there are plenty around for less than $20.
As for hosting, there are free Australian hosts, but these are severely restrictive if you should decide to monetize your blog later on. Wordpress is by far the most popular host with good reason. It’s quick, it’s intuitive and it costs about the same as a cup of coffee per month.
With that in place, you are ready to launch your blog – and that’s when the fun really starts. Good luck!