Something all of us busy bloggers have in common is we do not have a lot of time to spare!

Which is why Canva is our modern day superhero tool for all of us! Allowing us to save countless hours on designing and also saving us tons of money on hiring professional graphic designers and developers.

And take my word for it, my art grade in secondary school was horrible, yet with Canva I can easily produce a design that is worthy of beating my art teachers work.

Which is why I have created a simple post on 8 tips and tricks for Canva!

1. Transparency Tool

There is a cool little trick I have done for to make my pins POP. The transparency tool allows you to make images more see through. What I personally like to do, is get a blank element from Canva and cover it with my text/image and giving the transparent element a white background with about 40 to 50% transparency.

This allows your images to stand out more.

2. Grouping

Canva have honestly thought of everything. When creating a custom design, you can group multiple items together, to transform them to one whole image!

This is especially useful if you don’t want to tweak each individual element everytime you change it.

3. Templates

This is my personal favorite tool when all of my creativity has vanished.

When visiting Canva.com and choosing a design type, Canva will automatically show you cool templates for you to use.

4. Font Family

Canva has a wide range of fonts for you to use. These fonts are a game changer if you choose the right combination. Many graphic designers in Canva use different font styles to capture a users’ attention.

When in doubt of your design, be sure to tweak your texts font!

5. Canva Elements

Canva’s elements are amazing graphics to enhance your images. Most of these elements you can change it’s color to suit your needs.

6. Lock Elements

Want to avoid making unintentional changes to elements while you edit other parts of your design?

This is where Canvas lock elements come into play. You can lock an element by selecting on the image and clicking the lock or padlock icon, located at the top of the editor.

7. Trending Style

Trending styles show you the most popular colors other Canva users are adding to their graphics. This can be used for you to gauge what colors people find most appealing.

This section can be found at the styles section, once you have created a design.

8. Canvas Text Style

Canva gives you the ability to change the style of your text. By giving it a cool effect like its text curved feature. You can find this option by selecting your text and clicking on effects.

Conclusion

Well these are my top tricks for any Canva user to use. If you enjoyed this post be sure to sign up for my newsletter, to keep up to date for any new upcoming posts! 🙂

I sometimes feel, these blogging posts are unnecessary, due to the sheer amount of them being available online.

However, I want to give the people what they want regardless of the amount of info there is on this topic.

Yes, you can make a full-time income blogging

In any niche, you can make a full time income from it. BUT! You must understand that the money alone, will not equate to your happiness nor keep you consistently motivated.

Blogging is a long term game. Where you hardly make anything at the start, even with all the effort you muster to put.

Which is why I want to say, DO NOT DO IT FOR THE MONEY!

Instead, you should pursue your passion. For example, if you enjoy talking about music, you can create a blog revolving around that, or any other subjects you love.

This will allow you to work harder and to never quit.

In essence blogging is good as you can literally talk about anything. But with blogging there is a MASSIVE learning curve that you will need to prepare for.

If you want to skip this learning curve, check out my post 10 Important Blogging Lessons I Have Learned.

Blogging Income Streams

There are multiple income streams when creating a blog.

Ranging from…

• Private ad sales
• Affiliate marketing
• Your own products
• Sponsored posts
• Ad networks
• Subscription Services
• Newsletter Ad Lists

To make a full time income, it consists of a few different income streams, some of these can be more profitable than others.

Keep in mind, once you have a good amount of traffic, you can start generating revenue a lot easier.

Private ad sales

Private ad sales are spots on your website that you sell to advertisers. You can find these advertisers on websites like indiehackes.com.

But, this depends on your monthly traffic, and if the niche is related to the advertiser.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of my favorite ways to create an income. There are ones which give you a recurring income like SEMRUSH. And others that have a one time sale. The benefit of these one time sales, is the payout are sometimes larger.

You can find these offers from websites like MaxBounty, clickbank and googling top affiliate products for your niche.

Creating your own product

Creating your own product can be VERY lucrative. Though its time-consuming, the benefit of it is the following…

You can set your own price, which could increase your revenue. And you can allow affiliates to promote your product, which will reduce the time you spend on marketing the product.

Sponsored posts

Sponsored posts, are pages that are dedicated to a company or a product. Sponsorships are at times very lucrative, if you the right amount of traffic.

You can seek sponsorship deals by contacting companies directly. And list on your blog that you are willing to accept sponsored posts.

Ad networks

Ad networks is the most popular way a blogger generates revenue. Depending on the niche, it can pay you really well or quite badly.

But for the most part, ads do not pay you that well. You can apply for them by searching on google top ad networks.

Some ad networks have a list of requirements before you can join, but these ad networks generally pay a lot more than Googles AdSense.

Subscription services

If your blogs purpose is to inform or educate. You can create a subscription to allow users to gain some information or latest post for a monthly fee.

One of my personal favorite ways is to create a mentorship group.

By hiring an expert, you can instruct them to help your members in the industry he/she has experience in.

You can then advertise the group to your traffic, by allowing them to join for £9.99 per month.

Experts can be found on websites like…

Fiverr.com, and upwork.com

Newsletter ad lists

If you have a large newsletter list, you can sell ad spaces on your newsletter for certain companies. You can do this by talking to members of indiehackers.com.

1 – Blogging is only 20% content creation

In my experience blogging has only been about 20% content creation and 80% promoting and learning. Early on you must spend more time promoting your blog to increase your position rankings in SEO. If you spend the majority of your time in making posts, how will people not know about it if you hardly even market it?

This is why, I find it important to experiment different marketing strategies, then gradually change from 80% of my time on marketing to 80% on content once I have a following.

2 – A good designed theme is a must!

I have invested quite a lot with WordPress themes. I have learned that good themes not only improve the loading speed of your website, but it also increases the length of time a user stays on your website.

In the blogging industry, you must do better than your competitors, from your pages design, writing and creation of pins. Following this path also improves the trust your readers will have with you.

3 – Having a Pinterest Strategy is vital!

I always thought a few pins from my latest posts was sufficient to get repins. But, that was purely hopeful thinking. A couple of months ago I decided to read every blog post for Pinterest strategies, and create one strategy that works for me, which greatly improved my Pinterest traffic.

4 – You Don’t Need Huge Traffic To Earn Money

Quite a few amount of bloggers talk about how it takes a few years to earn an income through blogging. This is not true, a large amount of traffic does make it easier, but you can always earn money in a few different ways.

Ranging from consulting calls, affiliate sales and revenue from ads.

5 – Taking criticism is important

If you don’t take criticism then you can never grow your blog past a certain point. Now, I am not saying to take EVERY criticism, but take ones that you personally feel that you can work on.

Not only will you improve your knowledge, but you will also improve the relationship you have with your community.

6 – Invest in education to improve your blog

Similar to point 3 but with a slight twist. In the blogging industry you must be up to date with everything! As this can present new opportunities that you can take, and allows you to avoid a few mistakes along your blogging journey.

7 – Not growing an email list is a huge mistake

Let’s say your Pinterest strategy is bringing you a large amount of traffic. But what’s the point on bringing this traffic if you can not reach them on a regular basis?

If you go with the approach to not create an email list, you are pretty much hoping that your Pinterest strategy will always work, which is quite impossible as Pinterest algorithm changes quite frequently.

8 – Your site speed score does not matter

I was obsessed with improving my websites speed score for SEO purposes. But from a few case studies I have watched, it seems your page speed does not affect your websites position on Google.

However! Do not mix this with the actual loading speed of your website, since a loading speed of 4 seconds or longer will cause users to leave your website before the page even loads.

9 – Networking with other bloggers is important

In life, you need to network with others due to the opportunity they may bring you. With networking, it will be easier for you to write guest posts on other bloggers websites and to potentially calibrate with each other.

10 – Knowing your audience is critical

At first, I never saw the point to understand who my audience is, but I can now see its importance.

Understanding your audience allows you to better understand their weak points and provide a solution. Which can provide some monetary benefits. It will also create trust, which you can use to increase your network.

Conclusion

Well, this is everything that I have learned from my blogging journey. Also, if you enjoyed this post join my newsletter for more tips and tricks 🙂

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