How To Earn Money As A Weight Loss Blogger

Stud­ies show niche-spe­­cific blogs are far more suc­cess­ful that broad topic sites. But the ques­tion is…how do I pick a niche that will be successful?

Some niches will al­ways have a small band of loyal fol­low­ers – geek stuff, pop­u­lar TV shows, etc. How­ever, there are some niches that are grow­ing by leaps and bounds each day. Mak­ing money on­line, dat­ing, and weight loss are just a few of the most pop­u­lar niches.

If you are look­ing to break into the world of blog­ging, we en­cour­age you to grab weight loss by the horns and hang on tight. With the num­ber of obese Amer­i­can adults push­ing 80 mil­lion and more than 30% of the to­tal pop­u­la­tion be­ing over­weight, weight loss blog­ging has huge money-mak­ing potential.

If you are will­ing to give it a try, here is what you need to do:

1. Be a person.

Be­cause the weight loss in­dus­try has such a high earn­ing po­ten­tial, every­one seems to be jump­ing on board. That means you’ll have quite a bit of com­pe­ti­tion – from both hon­est blog­gers and spam­mers alike.

In or­der to be suc­cess­ful, you’ll need to stand out from the crowd. One of the eas­i­est and most ef­fec­tive ways to do that is to build trust. And to build trust, you’ll need to be a real hu­man being.

Read­ers won’t stick around if you are hid­ing be­hind a veil of mys­tery. Use your real name (or a be­liev­able pen name – noth­ing spammy like Al­ways Over­weight). Have an “about” page that high­lights your own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, ex­pec­ta­tions, and qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Post a pho­to­graph of your­self – some­thing that helps build cred­i­bil­ity but isn’t too pro­fes­sional looking.

2. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

It is easy to get caught up in the world of mar­ket­ing. Those pro­fes­sion­als make their prod­ucts sound so great!

But be­fore you put your stamp of ap­proval on a prod­uct or diet plan, make sure you know ex­actly what you are do­ing. Have you ac­tu­ally tried that prod­uct? Do you know it works? Do you have per­sonal, first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence to back up that endorsement?

Be care­ful of promis­ing things to your read­ers. Bro­ken promises can re­ally hurt your reputation.

3. Choose wisely.

Put a lot of thought into your do­main name. Af­ter all, first im­pres­sions are very im­por­tant. And your do­main name is one of the first things a vis­i­tor will see.

Right off the bat, you have one very im­por­tant de­ci­sion to make. Should you choose a free or paid domain?

You can pay for a cus­tom do­main through host­ing sites like GoDaddy.com. For about $80 a year, you can main­tain your do­main name of choice and host the site.

If you choose the free route, you can sim­ply grab your­self a wordpress.com site. You won’t have to pay any­thing at all – and your site will be up and run­ning in a mat­ter of minutes.

While both op­tions are ac­cept­able, you have to weigh the pros and cons. A paid site usu­ally ap­pears more cred­i­ble, au­thor­i­ta­tive, and professional.

Af­ter you choose your host­ing com­pany, you’ll need to se­lect an ac­tual name. Again, stay away from any­thing spammy – Lose10PoundsBeforeMorning is bad, My­Weight­LossJour­ney is better.

4. Don’t go over­board with the ads.

Usu­ally, ads are a good – and nec­es­sary – thing. We are all for squeez­ing every last penny out of blog­ging. Just make sure you don’t overdo it.

Af­fil­i­ate mar­ket­ing is fine – in mod­er­a­tion. Again, only en­dorse prod­ucts you have tried and found suc­cess­ful. Read­ers won’t ap­pre­ci­ate you ped­dling every weight loss su­per pill that hits the market.

5. Be realistic.

We all know life has ups and downs, good days and bad. Weight loss is no ex­cep­tion. Any­one who has tried to shed un­wanted pounds knows the process isn’t simple.

There­fore, it isn’t re­al­is­tic to only show­case the good days, the good prod­ucts or the good tech­niques. Give your read­ers every­thing. They’ll eat it up. They’ll ap­pre­ci­ate your hon­esty and feel bol­stered by the fact they aren’t the only ones suffering.

This prin­ci­ple ap­plies to re­views too. If you do re­views on your site (again, a great way to earn some ex­tra money), be honest.

There has to be some­thing you found un­ap­peal­ing about the prod­uct. Don’t be afraid to point that out. Go in depth with your analy­sis. Don’t just re­gur­gi­tate the in­for­ma­tion found on the product’s pack­ag­ing or web­site. And when pos­si­ble, share pic­tures of your­self us­ing the product.

6. Don’t be a one-hit-wonder.

Sure. Stan­dard, run-of-the-mill blog posts are fine. As long as you are pro­vid­ing in­sight­ful in­for­ma­tion and/or how-to tu­to­ri­als, your read­ers will al­ways have some qual­ity read­ing material.

But do­ing the same o’ thing over and over gets bor­ing. Spice things up a bit. Toss in some va­ri­ety. Here are some great ways to add dif­fer­ent types of con­tent to your site:

• Post rou­tine progress up­dates. If you are in the midst of your own weight loss jour­ney, share your highs and lows with the readers.
• Fea­ture a Meal of the Week. High­light a dif­fer­ent healthy recipe every few days. En­cour­age your read­ers to try it and share their im­pres­sion in the com­ment section.
• Set a Goal of the Week. Maybe you want to ex­er­cise 20 min­utes each day. Maybe you want to ride your bike to work at least twice dur­ing the work­week. What­ever your goal is, pub­li­cize it. Not only will you en­cour­age your read­ers to live health­ier, you’ll also make them ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in your blog. And ac­tive par­tic­i­pants are more valu­able readers.
• Con­duct in­ter­views of other in­dus­try lead­ers. Not only will you be boost­ing your cred­i­bil­ity amongst other in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als, you’ll give your read­ers more great sug­ges­tions with­out send­ing them to some­one else’s site.

Blog­ging – and niche blog­ging specif­i­cally – has great money-mak­ing po­ten­tial. If you are look­ing to join the bl­o­gos­phere, writ­ing about weight loss might be the way to go.