Tuesday, 5 July 2022

How to Make Money Blogging in 2022

How to Make Money Blogging in 2022


Blogging can be a great way to make money.

Not only does it allow you to flex your creative muscles, but it also gives you a chance to generate cash on the side (or full-time).

The best part: A TON of people make money from their blogs already. That means you can use their proven methods to turn your blog into a money-generating machine.

With so many bloggers out there, it’s hard to figure out how they did it.

Luckily, we’ve created this list of 23 bloggers who run successful blogs—and how you can too.

Top Web Hosting Companies to Make Money Blogging

If you want to make money blogging, you’ll need a web hosting company. Here are the best options.

  • Hostinger – Most Affordable Hosting Plans Overall
  • Bluehost – Best Web Host for Beginners
  • Dreamhost – Most Affordable Month-to-Month Plan
  • Hostgator – Best for Lean/Minimal Needs
  • GreenGeeks – Best Eco-Friendly Hosting
  • SiteGround – Best for Making Your WordPress Site Speedy & Secure
  • A2 Hosting – Fast & Reliable Shared Hosting
  • InMotion – Best VPS Hosting
  • WPEngine – Best Managed WordPress Hosting
  • Nexcess – Best for scaling and growth

You can read our full reviews of each web hosting company here.

23 People Who Make Money Blogging (and How You Can Too)

You can follow the lead of these top bloggers to turn your blog into a money-making machine:

  1. Marie Forleo
  2. Steve Kamb
  3. Ramit Sethi
  4. Amy Porterfield
  5. Jon Morrow
  6. Darren Rowse
  7. Seth Godin
  8. Neil Patel
  9. Selena Soo
  10. Sam Dogen
  11. Brian Dean
  12. James Dahle
  13. Tim Ferris
  14. Timothy Sykes
  15. Josh Axe
  16. Peter Adeney
  17. AJ Harbiner and Johnny Dzubak
  18. Patt Flynn
  19. John Lee Dumas
  20. Navid Moazzez
  21. Tim Urban
  22. Noah Kagan
  23. Shane Parrish

I have a major disclaimer before we begin: I’ve worked with a few people on this list.

In fact, I was personally responsible for setting annual revenue goals and hitting those goals while I was the Senior Director of Growth and Product at I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

In that case, I’m extremely familiar with revenue totals and what drove that revenue.

Not to mention the affiliate commissions paid out to some of the people on this list, numbers that were shared in confidence after a few too many drinks, and second-hand rumours that I picked up along the way.

I’ve got a sad news: I’m not going to share any of that insider knowledge. Sorry.

I take the trust and confidence people have put in me very seriously. So I’m only going to be sharing revenue numbers that have been shared publicly.

There are some common rules of thumb for figuring out revenue, though. They’re not perfect rules but they do tend to get the right number of digits. And after a while, you get a general sense of people’s revenue based on the size of their audience.

Keep reading to see what the big names in blogging have done, or check out the rest of our site to find tons more information on blogging, making money with a blog, and growing your audience.


1. Marie Forleo — marieforleo.com

Revenue = Roughly several million per year

Marieforleo.com

Marie has been writing online for nearly 20 years now.

She also put a lot of work into her YouTube channel.

Her content has a great reputation and her copy is world-class. I assume most of her revenue comes from info products, particularly her flagship program B-School, which is sold out every time I check on it.

B-School info product page.

She’s an amazing person to study if you want to learn how to produce high-quality positive content.

She’s also brilliant at balancing valuable content with going for the sale authentically.

2. Steve Kamb — Nerd Fitness

Revenue = Over $1 million per year

Nerd Fitness homepage.

According to a report from Forbes, Steve makes more than seven figures from Nerd Fitness. The business offers info products, coaching, and boot camps. Steve also wrote a book called Level Up Your Life.

The best part about Steve’s blog is how he’s using a broad, competitive category (fitness) but targeting a very specific audience (nerds). The fitness space is crazy competitive but by branding his entire business around fitness for nerds, he clearly separates himself from that competition. Even in the most competitive categories, there are still opportunities to target a niche with your blog and make real money with it.

3. Ramit Sethi — I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Revenue = Can’t tell you

I will teach you to be rich homepage.

Ramit Sethi is the author of NYT best seller I Will Teach You to Be Rich. His website of the same name delivers info products (ebooks, online courses, webinars, etc) about personal finance, entrepreneurship, and personal development.

Ramit is absolutely at the top of his game when it comes to info products. This is a great site to follow and research if you’re considering monetizing your own blog with info products.

Make sure to sign up for his email list—you’ll start getting the launch funnels and you’ll be able to see how it all works.

Products are available for purchase from the products page. That’s a great source for inspiration to see what an amazing info products sales page looks like.

4. Amy Porterfield — amyporterfield.com

Revenue = At least $2–3 million per year (maybe more)

Amy’s about page states that she’s built a multi-million dollar business. That’s not hard to believe with more than 250,000 loyal email subscribers.

amyporterfield.com about page.

I’m assuming that the vast majority of her revenue is from her info products, but it looks like she does some affiliate promotion too. Her affiliate page is pretty classy and well done. It’s a great example of how to promote products in an authentic and non-pushy way.

She also has a podcast that she can use to draw in more customers as well as leverage podcasting ad revenue. This is a great example of using multiple revenue streams to great effect.

5. Jon Morrow — Smart Blogger

Revenue = Over $1.2 million per year

In this post, Jon states that he’s doing over $100K per month in affiliate revenue which is pretty impressive. It’s not surprising, though, given that Smart Blogger has 300K subscribers and more than 4 million readers.

He also has several info products in the form of courses, ebooks, and videos available for purchase on his site. I bet these do about $30–50K per year on their own.

Smart Blogger homepage.

If you want a master's class in offering value to your readers, SmartBlogger is a great place to start.

I’m not sure what Jon’s email funnels look like but if he’s pushing launch funnels aggressively, he could easily have another few million in revenue from info products on top of his affiliate revenue.

6. Darren Rowse — Problogger

Revenue = My guess is about $10 million per year

Problogger has been around since 2004. That’s an eternity in online marketing. It’s one of the original “how to blog” blogs. Darren also owns Digital Photography School which has 8X as much traffic and revenue as Problogger.

Darren did do an income report on the first half of 2016. At that time, 46% of his revenue from both sites came from affiliates, 31% came from info products, and the rest from a smattering of different categories.

7. Seth Godin — seths.blog

Revenue = My guess is over $2 million per year

Seth Godin had plenty of success before his blog: he’s written 18 books, built and sold a company to Yahoo, and then was a VP at Yahoo. And his blog has cemented him as the leading marketing thought leader. If you were trying to come up with an ideal example of a thought leader, you’d have a hard time finding a better example than Seth Godin.

Seth’s blog is the original, longest-running, and possibly highest-value blog in marketing. He’s posted every day for like 20 years or something.

For a long time, he never monetized it—but he did use it to feature his books occasionally. More recently, he has done a few info products including the altMBA and The Marketing Seminar. I went through The Marketing Seminar myself and quite a few people were in the community, so it sold well. Seth’s site says that over 5,000 people took the course in total. At $800 per sale, that’s about $4 million in total spread over several years. Plus all the revenue from altMBA.

8. Neil Patel — neilpatel.com

Revenue = I’m not even going to guess

I worked for Neil when he was a co-founder of KISSmetrics. I also worked with him on some other projects after that. I’m not going to even hazard a revenue guess here since I don’t want to reveal anything that Neil would prefer to keep private.

That said, there are a few things you could look to figure out. He has stated publicly that his main site, neilpatel.com, generates over 2.5 million visitors per month. I’ll let you figure out the revenue from there.

Neil is passionate about helping people start their own businesses. If you visit his site, you’ll find a wealth of knowledge about how to use social media and blogging to drive traffic to your site. He’s constantly updating his posts, so you can find out the latest tools and strategies.

Given his success, taking a page out of Neil’s book is not a bad idea.

9. Selena Soo — selenasoo.com

Revenue = Over $1.6 million per year

In this article, Selena reported that she made $1.6 million in 2017. I assume the majority of her revenue comes from info products that she launches to her email list periodically.

She’s built out a pretty impressive info product portfolio along with some higher ticket mastermind offers. Overall, very impressive.

10. Sam Dogen — Financial Samurai

Revenue = My guess is about $1 million per year

Sam gives a few hints on what he makes with his site. First, he does give the revenue of his info product ebook which is $36,000 per year.

Funny enough, he chooses not to include his Adsense revenue or affiliate revenue as “passive” income within any of his passive income reports. Most folks in the industry would consider these revenue sources to be passive (though there’s no question it takes a lot of upfront and maintenance work).

Sam does break down some hypothetical revenue amounts of blogs of different sizes here. One example includes a personal finance blog that’s generating about one million visitors per month.

I remember Sam stating somewhere along the line that he has about that much traffic. The traffic estimation tools like Ahrefs also put his site in the range. So, the example that he gives should be close to his actuals.

Using his projections as a guide and knowing that he has plenty of affiliate links along with Adsense on his site, a $1 million per year estimate should be close.

11. Brian Dean — Backlinko

Revenue = Over $1 million per year

Brian offers info products to his newsletter subscribers. He also has a course on SEO and one on YouTube.

He gets plenty of traffic. So each launch should be doing somewhere in the upper six figures, possibly $1 million per launch.

He has stated in a few interviews like this one that he’s doing seven figures per year.

Backlinko homepage.

This is a great example of a business that’s focused really heavily on generating traffic, turning that traffic into email subscribers, and then monetizing via a few info product launches per year.

It can seem magical to have a business with ridiculous profit margins at this stage. Most of us would love to have a $1 million per year business with a super small team and a handful of moving pieces.

12. James Dahle — White Coat Investor

Revenue = Over $1 million per year

James used to publish his annual revenue in his annual state of the blog posts but stopped as his blog became more well known. Here’s his 2019 state of the blog. His last reported income was $187,862 in 2014. He does mention multiple times that he’s now running a seven-figure business, so his current revenue is at least $1 million per year.

He does have a book by the same name. Looking through his site, the majority of his revenue comes from affiliates, ads, and sponsorships.

His email list is extremely small for the size of his blog — it’s only 21,725 subscribers. And with a small email list, any info product launch is going to be limited to five figures.

He does have an info product on creating your own financial plan for $499. If he focused on conversion to email and got good at info products, he could add another $1–2 million in revenue to his business.

13. Tim Ferriss — Tim. blog

Revenue = My guess is about $10 million per year

Tim has a massive and incredibly popular blog that’s been around for a long time.

He started it before he even launched his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek.

Currently, I assume that the majority of Tim’s income comes from his podcast sponsorships. I have seen ads on his blog in the past but it doesn’t look like there are any right now. I don’t think he’s ever done an info product or pursued affiliate ads aggressively.

According to this form, his podcast sponsorships go for $36K per slot. At 4–5 slots per episode, that’s $144,000 per episode at least. Tim averages about six podcasts per month, which would produce $864,000 per month or $10,368,000 per year.

The reason I’m not going to even guess is that I don’t have any experience buying or selling podcast sponsorships which I assume are his main source of income right now. Also, sites with Tim’s reach break standard revenue rules.

Having one of the largest and highest-rated podcasts can give you a lot of leverage, allowing you to charge more than normal on each sponsorship slot.

Otherwise, Tim has used his blog to promote his books heavily over the years. They include The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans, and Tribe of Mentors. By combining his blog, podcast, and books he’s created a three-part engine to drive his revenue — a very smart and intentional move.

14. Timothy Sykes — timothysykes.com

Revenue = Over $25 million per year

Timothy sells info products on how to invest in penny stocks. According to this interview with Nathan Latka, Timothy was on track to do $25–27 million in revenue in 2016, $20 million of which came from info products.

Timothy Sykes Blog

Timothy is a great person to follow if you want to see how an info product business looks at scale.

It’s also important to keep in mind that he’s been at this for a while — so it’s not worthwhile for beginners to compare themselves one-to-one with him.

That goes for everyone else on this list. But it’s a good reminder to keep in mind.

15. Josh Axe — Dr Axe

Revenue = Did $11 million per year in 2015, could be as high as $50–70 million per year now

Dr Axe is a massive site with a huge audience. According to this press release, it has 17 million visitors per month, which is insane. They also push products pretty hard via their email list. They know what they’re doing. Their revenue is a mix of info products, affiliates, and supplements.

Supplements are a great category with nice margins. I only have a little experience in the health and fitness category but the advice I always get from the health and fitness experts is to go hard on supplements.

Dr Axe homepage with top sellers images.

I did hear that they have a solid paid marketing engine going for their funnels. If that’s true, they could be doing easily $50–70 million per year by now.

I consider Dr Axe to be a great example of what a health and fitness blog looks like when taken to its absolute height. If you’re considering a health and fitness blog, I’d study Dr Axe closely

16. Peter Adeney — Mr Money Mustache

Revenue = About $400,000 per year

According to this article from the New Yorker, Peter pulled in about $400,000 per year as of 2016. Ahrefs reports that Peter’s traffic has been static since the 2016 period. If that’s true, I would expect his current revenue to be around $400,000. Sounds like the majority of the revenue, possibly even all of it, comes from affiliates.

17. AJ Harbinger and Johnny Dzubak — Art of Charm

Revenue = My guess is $5–10 million per year

Jordan Harbinger didn’t reveal exact revenue but did say that it’s multiple seven figures per year. Based on the fact that the revenue is mostly info products and the overall size of the audience, my guess is that Art of Charm does $5–10 million per year in revenue.

In 2018, Jordan Harbinger split from the Art of Charm and started his own podcast.

18. Pat Flynn — Smart Passive Income

Revenue = $2,171,652 per year

Pat Flynn posts all his income reports here, going back all the way to 2008.

Not sure if Pat decided to stop but it doesn’t look like he’s posted any new income reports since 2017. Regardless, I highly recommend reading through the first few years of income reports from Pat. That’ll give you a strong sense of what it takes to start making money with a blog.

Smart Passive Income

The majority of Pat’s revenue comes from affiliate offers and his own info products, about 50/50 between the two. He also has a few books published, How to Be Better at Almost Everything and Will it Fly? Other than the months he received the advance from the publisher, I bet these books have a negligible direct impact on revenue.

19. John Lee Dumas — Entrepreneur on Fire

Revenue = $2,029,744 per year

No one really needs to guess at John Lee Dumas’ revenue, he posts monthly income reports directly to his site.

Entrepeneur On Fire


He also put together a nifty revenue breakdown by source:

Top Revenue Streams

Sponsorships are slightly larger than everything else. Otherwise, it’s a pretty even split between info products, affiliates, and his journals (The Freedom Journal, The Mastery Journal, and The Podcast Journal).

To get a sense of how blogs really make money, I highly recommend you read through the monthly income reports from the last 12 months for Entrepreneur on Fire. You’ll get an excellent feel for what a seven-figure blog looks like.

I also recommend you read through the income reports from 2012 and 2013, which will show you what revenue looks like at the beginning and how it changes over time on the path to $1 million per year.

20. Navid Moazzez — navidmoazzez.com

Revenue = My guess is $300–500K per year

Navid is in the online marketing space and offers info products on virtual summits. According to his About page, he’s earned over 1 million dollars in “a few years.” Safe to say he’s easily doing six figures off his blog. Hence my guess above.

21. Tim Urban — Wait But Why

Revenue = At least $100,000, possibly $1+ million per year

Tim Urban became VERY popular with his posts being shared all over the internet.

This is probably an example of what most people dream of when they start a blog. They plan to write a bunch of stuff, a rabid fan base will appear out of nowhere, and they’ll offer some t-shirts, posters, and a Patreon account to make tons of passive income. They’ll finish by riding into the sunset of eternal blogging glory.

Wait But Why Blog

For Tim Urban, that’s basically what happened. And he absolutely deserves it. His content is phenomenal. It’s so good that people have been angry because he hasn’t posted in a while.

Very few of us can write content that good. I can promise you no one gets upset when I stop blogging. So for us mortals, we should look to some of the other examples on this list for how to monetize our blogs.

I know that I gave a really broad range of revenue here. Blogs like this are really tough to guess. Tim clearly has a massive, adoring audience. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s swimming in gold. Although he might be.

Blogs with massive audiences like this sometimes make a ton of money, and sometimes they make very little. It also looks like his main source of revenue is his eCommerce store. Unlike consulting, speaking, info products, or affiliates, the margins on eCommerce products are much smaller.

He may be making a ton of top-line revenue but only enough profit to live a decent lifestyle.

That’s pretty common with eCommerce entrepreneurs. They claim that they’re making millions of dollars with their business but only take home $50–100K per year. Once you factor in the costs of goods sold and overhead, there isn’t a ton leftover. I have no idea if Tim Urban falls into this bucket. I simply don’t know.

22. Noah Kagan — OkDork, Sumo, and AppSumo

Revenue: $10M last year and growing

Noah’s business is based around four complementary sites:   

  • Sumo.com: Free marketing tools to grow your business
  • AppSumo: Groupon for geeks
  • KingSumo: Giveaway web app or WordPress plugin
  • BriefcaseHQ: Netflix for business software

This system of related businesses is one of his tips for growing a successful business. He thinks of these businesses like a pyramid — KingSumo helps grow your business with giveaways, Sumo (which is the core product) arms those businesses with the tools they need for marketing, and BriefcaseHQ and AppSumo provide the rest of the tools. Creating a system of interlocking tools means you don’t need to find new customers; you can simply market to the customers you already have.

This reminds me of Target adding in groceries. They increased their revenue by asking, What are our existing customers buying that they aren’t buying from us? What do they need that I could sell them?

Noah has an even better analogy: it’s like buying another book from an author you already love. If you love a book an author’s written, of course, you’re going to buy their next book and their next book.

He’s also got a lot of thoughts on setting the right pricing structure, leveraging recurring revenue, and bundling that’s all worth studying as well.

23. Shane Parrish — Farnam Street

Revenue: It’s all been reinvested into the business, plus speaker fees

Shane started his blog to track his own personal learning and development — he didn’t have any grand ambitions for the project, and the original URL, 68131.blogger.com, shows it. Today his newsletter has 200,000 subscribers and Farnam Street gets 1M page views a month.

How does he make money? Well, “earn money” vs. “make money” is a good distinction here. Shane says he’s reinvested most of the money back into the business, “In 2014, I think we actually lost money. In 2015, we didn’t lose money, which was good. … I will say that I’ve never actually personally made a penny off Farnam Street. It’s all been reinvested back into content, experience, trying new things, and that’s the way that hopefully, I foresee the future.”

He makes money in a variety of ways: he first paid his expenses with Amazon affiliate links, then in 2014 he started his first 9-month partnership deal, newsletter sponsorships, conferences, speaker fees, info products, a podcast, a forthcoming book, and a membership plan for his site that you can choose what you pay, currently either $149 or $249.

His model is based on providing free content to many and creating a base of super fans who’ll pay for more of that content, subsidize the free content to give back, and gain access to even more: a book club, a discussion group, and private Ask Me Anythings. If 5% of his 200,000 newsletter subscribers convert (that’d be 10,000 members), and each of them signed up at the $149 level, that’d be $1.5M a year. 

Shane regularly turns down speaking engagements for $20,000 because it’s not how he wants to make money, and he doesn’t optimize his in-person workshops for revenue. He’s always asking what’s in the best interest of the business. That means the bulk of the revenue comes from memberships.

I agree with his advice: “The audience will grow if you put out good content.” And, “I know how easy it is for people to copy our content and even our business model. So that drives a lot of what we do. We want to do things that are hard to copy and that means we can’t cherry-pick what’s easy, because there is a lot of competition in easy.”


Monday, 4 July 2022

5 Easy Steps to Creating a Sitemap For a Website

 

5 Easy Steps to Creating a Sitemap For a Website

When it comes to getting your website ranked, you need to take advantage of as many SEO hacks as possible. Creating a sitemap is one technique that will definitely help improve your SEO strategy.

Quick tip for WordPress users: A quick and easy way to create your sitemap is by using the All In One SEO Plugin. It will automatically create your sitemap, and much more, for your WordPress site.

What is a sitemap?

Some of you may be more familiar with this than others. I’ll give you a quick crash course on the basics of sitemaps before I show you how to build a website sitemap on your own.

Simply put, a sitemap, or XML sitemap, is a list of different pages on a website. XML is short for “extensible markup language,” which is a way to display information on a site.

I’ve consulted with so many website owners who are intimidated by this concept because sitemaps are considered a technical component of SEO. But in all reality, you don’t need to be a tech wizard or have a tech background to create a sitemap. As you’ll learn shortly, it’s really not that difficult.

Why do you need a sitemap?

Search engines like Google are committed to displaying the most relevant results to people for any given search query. To do this effectively, they use site crawlers to read, organize, and index information on the Internet.

XML sitemaps make it easier for search engine crawlers to read the content on your site and index the pages accordingly. As a result, this increases your chances of boosting the SEO ranking of your website.

Your sitemap will tell search engines the location of a page on your website, when it was updated, the updating frequency, and the importance of the page as it’s related to other pages on your site. Without a proper sitemap, Google bots might think that your site has duplicate content, which will actually hurt your SEO ranking.

If you’re ready for your website to get indexed faster by search engines, just follow these five easy steps to create a sitemap.

Step 1: Review the structure of your pages

The first thing you need to do is look at the existing content on your website and see how everything is structured.

Look at a sitemap template and figure out how your pages would be displayed on the table.

website sitemap template

This is a very basic example that’s easy to follow.

It all starts from the homepage. Then you have to ask yourself where your homepage links to. You likely already have this figured out based on the menu options on your site.

But when it comes to SEO, not all pages are created equal. You have to keep the depth of your website in mind when you’re doing this. Recognize that the pages further away from your site’s homepage will be harder to rank for.

According to Search Engine Journal, you should aim to create a sitemap that has a shallow depth, meaning it only takes three clicks to navigate to any page on your website. That’s much better for SEO purposes.

So you need to create a hierarchy of pages based on importance and how you want them to be indexed. Prioritize your content into tiers that follow a logical hierarchy. Here’s an example to show you what I’m talking about.

page hierarchy

As you can see, the About page links to Our Team as well as Mission & Values. Then the Our Team page links to Management and Contact Us.

The About Us page is the most important, which is why it’s part of the top-level navigation. It wouldn’t make sense to have the management page be prioritized at the same level as Products, Pricing, and Blogs, which is why it falls under third-level content.

Similarly, if the Basic pricing package was positioned above the Compare Packages page, it would throw the logical structure out of whack.

So use these visual sitemap templates to determine the organization of your pages. Some of you may already have a structure that makes sense but just needs some slight tweaking.

Remember, you want to try to set it up so every page can be reached in three clicks.

Step 2: Code your URLs

Now that you’ve gone through and identified the importance of each page and matched that importance in your site structure, it’s time to code those URLs.

The way to do this is by formatting each URL with XML tags. If you have any experience with HTML coding, this will be a breeze for you. As I said earlier, the “ML” in XML stands for the markup language, which is the same as HTML.

Even if this is new to you, it’s not that tough to figure it out. Start by getting a text editor where you can create an XML file.

Sublime Text is a great option for you to consider.

sublime text editor

Then add the corresponding code for each URL.

  • location
  • last changed
  • changed frequency
  • priority of page

Here are some examples of how the code will look for each one.

  • http://www.examplesite.com/page1
  • 2019-1-10
  • weekly
  • 2

Take your time and make sure you go through this properly. The text editor makes your life much easier when it comes to adding this code, but it still requires you to be sharp.

Step 3: Validate the code

Any time you code manually, human error is possible. But, for your sitemap to function properly, you can’t have any mistakes in the coding.

Fortunately, some tools will help validate your code to ensure the syntax is correct. There’s software available online that can help you do this. Just run a quick Google search for sitemap validation, and you’ll find something.

I like to use the XML Sitemap Validator tool.

xml sitemap generator

This will point out any errors in your code.

For example, if you forget to add an end-tag or something like that, it can quickly be identified and fixed.

Step 4: Add your sitemap to the root and robots.txt

Locate the root folder of your website and add the sitemap file to this folder.

Doing this will actually add the page to your site as well. This is not a problem at all. As a matter of fact, lots of websites have this. Just type in a website and add “/sitemap/” to the URL and see what pops up.

Here’s an example from the Apple website.

apple sitemap

Notice the structure and logical hierarchy of each section. This relates back to what we discussed in the first step.

Now, this can be taken one step further. You can even look at the code on different websites by adding “/sitemap.xml” to the URL.

Here’s what that looks like on the HubSpot website.

hubspot sitemap

In addition to adding the sitemap file to your root folder, you’ll also want to add it to the robots.txt file. You’ll find this in the roots folder as well.

Basically, this is to give instructions for any crawlers indexing your website.

There are a couple of different uses for the robots.txt folder. You can set this up to show search engines URLs that you don’t want them to index when they’re crawling on your site.

Let’s go back to Apple and see what their robots.txt page looks like.

robots.txt

As you can see, they have “disallow” several pages on their site. So crawlers ignore these.

apple sitemap files

However, Apple also includes their sitemap files on here as well.

Not everyone you ask will tell you to add your sitemaps to the robots.txt file. So I’ll let you decide that for yourself.

With that said, I’m definitely a firm believer in following the best practices of successful websites and businesses. If a giant like Apple uses this, it can’t be too bad of an idea for you to consider.

Step 5: Submit your sitemap

Now that your sitemap has been created and added to your site files, it’s time to submit them to search engines.

To do this, you need to go through Google Search Console. Some of you may already have this setup. If not, you can get started very easily.

Once you’re on the search console dashboard, navigate to Crawl > Sitemaps.

Google search console

Next, click on Add/Test Sitemap on the top right corner of the screen.

This is a chance for you to test your sitemap again for any errors before you continue. Obviously, you’ll want to fix any mistakes found. Once your sitemap is free of errors, click submit and that’s it.

Google will handle everything else from here. Now crawlers will index your site with ease, which will boost your SEO ranking.

Alternative options

While these five steps are pretty simple and straightforward, some of you might be a little uncomfortable manually changing the code on your website. That’s perfectly understandable.

Fortunately for you, there are plenty of other solutions that can create a sitemap for you, without having to edit the code yourself.

I’ll go through some of the top options for you to consider.

All In One SEO plugin

If you have a WordPress website, you can install the All In One SEO Plugin to create a sitemap for your website.

AIOS gives you the option to turn your sitemap on and off with a simple toggle switch.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is desktop software that offers a wide range of SEO tools. It’s free to use and generate a sitemap as long as the website has fewer than 500 pages. For those of you with larger websites, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version.

Screaming Frog allows you to make all of the coding changes that we talked about earlier, but without actually changing the code yourself.

Instead, you follow a prompt that’s much more user-friendly and written in plain English. Then the code for the sitemap file will be changed automatically. Here’s a screenshot to show you what I mean.

screaming frog configuration

Just navigate through the tabs, change your settings, and the sitemap file will be adjusted accordingly.

Slickplan

I really like Slickplan because of the visual sitemap builder feature. You’ll have the opportunity to use a sitemap template, similar to the ones we looked at earlier.

From here, you can drag and drop different pages into the template to organize the structure of your website. Once you’re done, and you’re happy with the way your visual sitemap looks, you can export it as an XML file.

Slickplan is paid software, but they offer a free trial. It’s at least worth trying if you’re on the fence about purchasing a plan.

Conclusion

If you’re ready to take your SEO strategy to the next level, you need to create a sitemap for your website.

There is no reason to be intimidated by this anymore. As you can see from this guide, it’s easy to create a sitemap in just five steps.

  1. Review your pages
  2. Code the URLs
  3. Validate your code
  4. Add the sitemap to the root and robots.txt
  5. Submit the sitemap

That’s it!

For those of you who are still on the fence about manually changing code on your website, there are other options for you to consider. The Internet is full of sitemap resources, but the Yoast plugin, Screaming Frog, and Slickplan are all great choices to start.

Food Recipe Hacks.

 

Delicious Escapes: Monsoon Food Recipe Hacks!

The delicious breakfast recipes. Soon going to be the heart and show stealer.

The great monsoon is already here!

Before we tell you how we will help you on this blog, are you the sole decision-maker of what goes inside the stomach of your family members? Then, you are at the right place. Here, we are with the suggestions to make healthy food recipes in under 10 minutes. Are you excited to know how even the green veggies can turn out to be an amazing alternative, especially when the entire family is holidaying….

Tasty food

Universal rule for all the below listed recipes-

Time took: 10 minutes

Quantity: Depends on the number of members

Avocado toast

Goodness of health and taste

Delicious Avocado toast

Avocado might be a favourite and might not but it comes loaded with goodness and health benefits. Teaming it up with exciting and savoury ingredients is a great idea always. And yes, how can we forget the fast-food effect for your kids when the toast is added. I think you can do a toast for this toast (just kidding…). We have got the recipe for this wonder food sorted for you in a much better way than you can imagine:

Master this process:

  1. Toast the slices Of the bread you prefer (whole wheat/Brown bread/ Multigrain).
  2. While it is still in the process, scoop out the flesh of the Avocado, and mash it with a spoon or fork. You may go ahead and use ingredients like pepper, mint leaves, Lemon juice etc, whatever suits your/ your family’s taste buds.
  3. Once the toasts are ready, top It up with the avocado mash and serve with juice or a warm cup of milk.
  4. You will feel like a winner when you get it right and everyone loves the taste with the twist of health added to it.  

Breakfast Cookies

Delicious escapes with cookies

Spread health and love through cookies.

What is a better way to start your day than with a recipe which spreads the love? And obviously when, as the title talks, we are talking about cookies here. But wait, this is with a twist. Why don’t you give it a try?

Master this process:

  1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line up the baking sheet.
  2. In a bowl beat peanut butter, vanilla extract (a nearby grocery store is a place you need to go to), mashed bananas, cinnamon, and salt together.
  3. Add oats and dried nuts to the beaten mixture.
  4. Scoop little mounds of the cookies and place them evenly on the baking sheet. (*Tip: flatten each cookie slightly and bake for 14 to 16 minutes until they are golden and soft. Take it out and let it cool).
  5. Serve with a glass of juice, milk, and a cup of tea/ coffee.
  6. Wave at your family like a champion when you come out with the love in the tray.

Beetroot pav bhaji

Food Recipe Hacks.

Really? Yes. Beetroot can be fun as well as the healthiest bite of the day. This recipe gives you the freedom to hide as many veggies as possible, which makes it an excellent dish. This will be the most awesome dose of health for you and your family. And when it is in the form of a pav bhaji, nobody will dare to reject this recipe of yours.

Master this process:

  1. Cook the vegetables you want to put in a pressure cooker for 7 minutes(3-4 whistles).
  2. Mash cooked vegetables in a bowl and keep them aside. Heat oil in a shallow pan
  3. Add cumin seeds (jeera) and let it crackle(½ – 1 minute). Some chopped onion and let it turn translucent (slight white)
  4. Top it up with capsicum and fry for 2 minutes. Add peas and fry for 2 minutes
  5. Now add tomatoes and fry for two minutes. Put salt and pav bhaji masala and let it cook on medium flame.
  6. Keep mashing the ingredients in the pan into a fine paste
  7. Once you find the oil separates from the gravy, you can pat yourself on the back because it’s going to taste wonderful

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

AS A MATTER OF FACT, DO NOT PUT CAPSICUM AND PEAS IN THE PRESSURE COOKER. 


Peanut Butter Sandwich:

Delicious breakfast recipe

Mouthwatering peanut butter sandwich.

Oh my my! Peanut butter is heaven and marrying it with cheese. Do you have a word to describe this heavenly dish? Of course, you will be able to while gulping it in in the form of a sandwich. It is an experience that can only be felt once the heavenly cheese and peanut butter melt together in your mouth creating a cosmic affair.

Here is how to cook a delicious peanut butter sandwich:

  1. Place the griller or tawa over medium heat. Place the slices of bread (Whole Wheat, Multigrain, Brown) on the griller or Tawa.
  2. Spread peanut butter on the sky-facing side of the bread. In like manner, top it with a slice of cheese. Add the ingredients which you love like: tomatoes, oregano, other herbs, pepper etc. etc. Cover it with the other slice of bread and close the griller or put the lid on the Tawa.
  3. Grill/ Cook until golden and delicious cheese melts.

Bread pizza

Food Recipe Hacks.

Fascinating? Ever had burgerizza in Dominos? Yes, a little brother of the burger pizza made with bread. So Bread+ Pizza= Breadizza! Whoohoo..what do you think about this cool name? Do not forget to tell us in the comment section below. By the way, here is the way to make this too simple recipe that no one can deny on their plate.

Master this recipe:

  1. Heat a Tawa or a pan. Make sure the base of the utensil is heavy (Thick). Using a heavy base will keep your bread pizza from being extra cooked or in some cases, burnt.
  2. Use Olive oil/ Butter(according to your preference). Place the slices of bread (two-three slices at once). Heating or toasting of the bread a little (Just golden from the base). Turn it over.
  3. On the toasted side of the slices, spread pizza sauce. Mozzarella/ Pizza cheese and the ingredients which you want to see on your bread pizza (Oregano, dried basil leaves, chopped tomatoes, Steamed corn kernels, chopped olives, chopped onion, chopped capsicum, sauteed mushrooms, sauteed spinach etc)

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