I am a lover of novels, but most times, I lack what to read. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who experiences this, as there are a few bloggers who carry the latest fictions and non-fictions in the industry.
Now take for instance, DJ Snake, Ozuna, Cardi B and Selena Gomez recently released their hit song, Taki Taki. The song isn't up to two weeks old but has already hit 100 million views on YouTube.
All the top entertainment and music blogs have the music on their featured but someone like Nora Roberts would publish stories, and they will only be available on Goodreads and Amazon.
Even the few book review bloggers find it hard to publish African writers, maybe because there is no one to tell them that we exist. I subscribed to BookBub.com's email list and I get my favorite authors' recent works from there, however African authors don't seem to be interested in creating their own profiles there. They rarely have LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram handles and are rarely seen on related forums. How else would we be able to know when they release new works?
What if you take up the challenge to start a book review blog today? In less than a year you will be smiling that you read this article! You know why? The competition for the niche is very little and you will not have to fight so hard to get to the top of Google's and other search engines' search results. However, starting it isn't as difficult as you think. That is why we're here today, we will teach you how to set up your own book review blog and start turning in good capital from today!
Setting up a book review blog isn't so different from the setting up of other types of blogs, except that is will have a different niche. A niche is the general topic your blog is about, and book review will be the niche you will begin.
I suggest WhogoHost.com for your domain name and host, except you want to host your website on the Blogger.com platform. We have written a detailed guide on how to set up your blog on blogspot here. You will need to pay for only a domain now and you can check for the prices and availability of the names here, then sign-up and get your blog rolling.
If you create your blog with WordPress and hosting with a host like BlueHost.com, then they can help you through with the creation. However, if you are hosting with Blogger, it is 100% free and the most secured. You can contact us to help you with the set up or see how to do that.
To be successful in the book review niche, you will need to have a good source of the latest books. It could be other blogs, related forums or even email subscriptions. As I have earlier said, I subscribed to Bookbub.com's email list and they are really helping me. They email me the latest books from my selected authors and also keep me up with discounts and freebies available.
You will want to be ranking high on the search engine results, so you need to improve your blog's ranking to do that. Your domain authority, page authority and MOZ rank will need to be considerably high. One of the major ways to do this is by building backlinks for yourself. There are a few other ways and we have written an article on them, kindly refer to it.
After that, you will need to start getting traffic, else you are in other words, just wasting your time. When you are writing and no one is reading, you will now write long because of the discouragements. You can build a mobile app, an email list, social media handles or even better still, work on your search engine rankings. We have an article on some of the best traffic sources you may never know, also check them out.
You can now start making your own money from your blog once you start getting traffic. One of the best ways to do that is by affiliate marketing, and one of the best is the Amazon affiliate, since it has a lot of books and almost all authors upload theirs there too.
You can also register for the Jumia and Konga affiliates, then make money by generating sales for other authors. You can as well write your own books, publish and sell. You can also use different ad networks and we have reviewed a few of them here. The best paying are Google AdSense and Media.net, but you will need good traffic to make money from them.
Earlier 2016, I started a book review bog which I sold off 2017 because I was too busy. It is a very lucrative niche and was drawing me 20,000 blog visitors then with a lot of money. If you manage it well, you too will be successful from that.
Kindly share your your friends can benefit too!