Your website with a blog is an excellent way to start making money online. Businesses that have websites online daily utilize the concept of a blog linked to their websites to attract visitors to their products or services. But having a blog does not mean having visitors or earning money immediately. Some businesses use the concept of SEO to generate visitors to their sites. A form of SEO or search engine optimization is writing keyword-rich articles and posting to your blog to get free organic traffic. This process can take time before you begin seeing traffic or making sales. As a potential business owner, you can also learn how to start an online blog and make money. 
Basic Blog Concepts
Before starting a blog, you must first understand the concept of blogging. Here is a quick overview of these concepts.
Even though some companies use a blog for their website, a blog is typically used to chronically record your thoughts on a specific topic as you progress through that process. As you post your progress, they are displayed in reverse order meaning that your most recent post will be displayed first. In other words, it is like an online journal. Anyone can manage and set up a blog without knowing how to write complicated programs like HTML. A blog utilizes WordPress software that eliminates the need to know any programming language to set up a website.
A blog will facilitate the process to help you understand your customer better while allowing your customer to understand you. It also allows you to keep in touch with your customers. One way is to initially capture their email information on their first visit to your site. You can use this information to communicate with them periodically. When a blog is updated regularly, you will be rewarded with free organic traffic to your website for your efforts.
An excellent example of a blog is the blog you are reading this article from now. This is my blog that was set up using the step-by-step training on how to set up a blog at Wealthy Affiliates. Wealthy Affiliates is free to join. Decide on a name for your site now and give it a test drive HERE at the Wealthy Affiliates. You can always start over if your initial choice of a domain name is not the one you want. Take a glance to the right of this article, and you will see how my posts are organized in chronicle order, with my latest post first. This proves that the blog concept works just because you read this post.
Tools Required to start a Blog.
There are several essential tools needed to start your blog. Before building your blog, you must decide on a topic or a niche. The focus of your blog will be on the niche topic you choose to write about. For example, the subject of my blog is the make money online niche with a sub-topic of starting an online business. Your best results will be achieved if you choose a topic you are interested in or a topic you know. Your success will be better if you choose something you know or are interested in. This will enable you to write consistently about your subject if you are interested in it. Your readers will quickly recognize that you are the authority on your subject when they see your passion in your writing.
Next, you must purchase a domain name or use a free domain from Wealthy Affiliate to start your blog. Once your blog is created, you can buy a .com or .net domain to continue building your blog. You will also need a hosting provider to host your domain. If you use the starter free services available at Wealthy Affiliates, your domain is automatically hosted free once you open your starter account. Furthermore, if you are new to blogging, you will learn all about blogs and affiliate marketing at Wealthy Affiliates. If you are new to blogging, you do not have to do this alone.
Setting up your Blog
If you decide not to use the free services at Wealthy Affiliates, you must purchase a domain from a domain registrar like Go Daddy or Host gator to set up your blog. Both providers also offer hosting services for your domain. If you decide to go with either of the two, step-by-step instructions will be provided to assist in installing your WordPress blog software.
Once your software is installed, you will need to decide on a theme for your blog. Many free themes are provided, but one is installed during the software installation process.
Making Money from Your Blog
Making money from your blog requires consistent writing and posting articles to your site. The advantage will be that if you know your niche topic well enough, producing content will be more straightforward. You can easily outsource the writing if you do not know your niche or topic well enough. I use Fiver sometime when I do not feel like writing. Or you can use another company called Upwork. Outsourcing is just another way to get continuous content on your site. 
As your produce and post new content regularly on your blog, you will begin to attract followers and visitors to your blog who will join your mailing list and even follow you on social media sites. The more you write and produce content you will begin to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise on the subject to your readers.
If you wonder how often you should write and post new content to your blog, the answer will be as much as you can produce. It will help if You strive to create content or articles with at least one thousand words. It has been proven that the longer your article, the more traffic you will attract.
Another aspect of your writing is to write SEO articles. SEO stands for search engine optimization, as was mentioned earlier. That is how your articles will be served to persons searching on google once they type a keyword into google that is in your article. The best way to achieve this is to write about content that persons are searching for but does not exist on Google or other search engines. Or write content that minimally exists but write it better and fresher.
Once your content starts producing traffic, you can monetize your website by promoting affiliate programs or other monetizing sources like Adsense.
Conclusion
If you are struggling to understand blogging, there is no need to worry. Help is available when you open your free starter account at the Wealthy Affiliates site. All of the ideas discussed in this article, including affiliate marketing, are thought at the Wealthy Affiliates community. Furthermore, millions of users, including myself, are on the platform that can assist you. Check out my review HERE to learn more about this beautiful community.