Today we are featuring an interview with Jyoti Chauhan, founder of Updateland.com, who is one of the top female bloggers in India.
Jyoti Chauhan is a simple, helpful, and humble blogger, and she is an SEO expert and freelancer at Upwork, apart from being the owner and founder of Updateland.com.
I have been in regular touch with this awesome lady ever since I started my blog in August 2015. To know the best of her, the “GuruDigiBiz team” approached her and was fortunate to have her interview in this series. So let us know more about Jyothi Chauhan in her own words below:
Gurunath: You are a well-known blogger and an inspiration to many other new bloggers. Can you please tell us about yourself?
Jyoti Chauhan: First of all, I would like to say thanks to you for interviewing me on your blog and providing me a chance to share my knowledge with your readers. I hope they will enjoy it. I am Jyoti Chauhan, belonging to Sonipat, Haryana. I attended school in Ghaziabad and college in Meerut. After finishing my polytechnic, I came to Delhi for a job.
After six months of my job, I left it and started to work as a freelancer at Upwork (formerly Odesk). Currently, I am doing MCA and managing various blogs. My major blog is Update Land where I share blogging tips, software reviews, and important tools.
Gurunath: How did you start blogging, and what inspired you to do so?
Jyoti Chauhan: In the beginning, I created a blog just to collect all SEO website lists for myself so that I could easily get any required list from my blog. At that time, I had no idea about blogs or blogging.
After some time, I noticed people were providing their feedback on my blog through comments, and some of them were requesting to share more SEO tips like how they can increase their website traffic or what the best method is to create backlinks.
Meanwhile, blogger Sanjay Choubey circled me and said he circled me since I am a blogger and he is the blogger, so we can discuss problems related to blogging together. It was the first time for me when I heard the word “blogger.”. It sounds surprising, but it is true.
After this, I started to connect with bloggers and work on my blog passionately. Truly, no one inspired me to start blogging, I love to help people, and blogging offers me the best platform to solve lots of people’s problems in one place.
Gurunath: What makes your blog an interesting one, and what makes your blog popular?
Jyoti Chauhan: Mostly, I share problem-solving articles, as you know, for a blogger, solving everyone’s problem separately makes it very difficult due to workload. That’s why I always try to write articles on those topics, which are mostly asked about by newbie bloggers.
It makes them happy, and they like to check my blog when they face problems regarding blogging and SEO. I think this makes my blog interesting and popular. When people find some useful and interesting stuff, they like to share it with others.
Gurunath: What is your opinion on focusing on a single blog or niche or several blogs in various niches? How do I choose a niche?
Jyoti Chauhan: I will recommend focusing on a single blog in the beginning. Since blogging needs time and money,. If you are a newbie and struggling to make money from your first blog, it is very difficult for you to manage several blogs. So only focus on one blog until you start to earn good money from your first blog and learn the required SEO techniques.
There are lots of things that everyone should keep in mind while choosing a niche, like an audience, competition, monetization methods, and being comfortable with the niche.
Gurunath: What do you do to update yourself daily on the latest happenings and updates?
Jyoti Chauhan: To get updated with the latest happenings and updates in SEO, I check Moz’s blog and for normal updates, I use Facebook. Since what is trending is mostly shared by many bloggers,.
Gurunath: What’s your opinion on guest blogging and sponsored posts?
Jyoti Chauhan: Guest blogging and sponsored posts are different from my point of view. Guest blogging is the best way to gain trust and establish your name on already established sites. If you are doing guest blogging for link building, then forget that you are going to benefit from this.
But if you are doing it to build your online presence, it is a killer strategy. Imagine that no one knows you, but if you post a guest post on a very popular blog, you get lots of attention from that particular blog audience.
Now let’s discuss sponsored posts.
As we all know, a sponsored post is a good source to earn instant money. But here are some things that we should care about, like niche, link type, content, and product. Only accept sponsored posts if they are related to your niche, and only share the best product with your audience.
If you are sharing anything that is not worthy of a penny, you will lose your audience’s trust. I think, like me, you also know very well that building trust takes time, but only a single mistake can break trust in seconds.
Gurunath: What are your earnings from your blog, and any particular strategies do you suggest for the newbies who want to take you as inspiration?
Jyoti Chauhan: Sorry, but I don’t like to share my earnings publicly. Here are some tips for newbies to get success in blogging.
- Work passionately
- Always focus on quality and be unique.
- Keep in mind both search engines and audiences while writing an article. The audience should always be your priority.
- Keep patience, To establish a successful blog and earn passive income, you need to give time to your blog. It will not happen overnight.
- Choose niche wisely
Here is a complete guide for newbie bloggers>>how to start a blog and make money.
Gurunath: Do you use affiliate marketing to earn money? What is your advice on affiliate marketing?
Jyoti Chauhan: I don’t do affiliate marketing, I just started. If I get good results, surely I will share affiliate marketing tips in the future.
Gurunath: What are earning sources for bloggers apart from Google AdSense? Any tips for implementing them systematically?
Jyoti Chauhan: There are many earning sources for bloggers apart from Google AdSense. Some of them are the following:
- Sponsored Reviews
- Writing Services
- SEO Services
- Establish a blog and sell it
- Social Media Services
- Affiliate Marketing
You will be surprised by reading the next line, but it is true. I never made a single penny from AdSense, but that doesn’t mean I am not making money from my blog. I monetize my blog with other methods. A blogger can offer different services like article writing, SEO, and SMO.
Sponsored reviews are another great source to make huge money from the blog. Here are a few things that advertisers look for in a blog to offer sponsored reviews:
- Alexa Ranking
- Domain Authority
- Page Authority
- Blog Traffic
- Domain Age
- Page Rank (Not all but some advertisers)
- Domain social signal popularity
- Blog theme
Gurunath: Which social networking communities do you suggest our readers register for, and how effective are they?
Jyoti Chauhan: Social networking communities effectively connect with brands and popular bloggers. They even play an important role in driving massive traffic to your websites.
Below are some popular and most-used communities:
- Bizsuger
- Inbound
- Growth hacker
- Stumbleupon
- Delicious
- Blokube
- Klinkk
- Dosplash
- kingged
Gurunath: What are the SEO tools you are using, and are there any recommended tools according to you to improve one’s blog performance?
Jyoti Chauhan: Currently, I am using Ahrefs, Link Explorer, SEMrush, Google Webmaster, Google Analytics, Keyword Planner, and Keyword Inspector. I will recommend all the above SEO tools to you to improve your blog’s performance.
Gurunath: What is link building, backlinks, and all? How do they affect a blog’s performance?
Link building is the procedure of building backlinks. Backlinks are incoming links to your site from any other website. There are several methods to create backlinks like blog commenting, guest posting, social bookmarking, directory submission, etc. More quality backlinks help to improve the blog’s domain authority and domain authority helps to boost ranking and traffic. Here, quality backlinks mean links should be created from relevant niches and trusted domains.
Gurunath: Which WordPress plugins, in your opinion, must have ones? Also, list your favourite plugins.
Jyoti Chauhan: Here are some must-have WordPress plugins for any blogger.
- Akismet
- Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
- Jetpack by WordPress.com
- Pretty Link Lite
- W3 Total Cache
- WP External Links
- WP-Optimize
- Yoast SEO
- All-in-One WP Security
Gurunath: Themes play a role in SEO so which themes, in your opinion, are cost-effective and good for a beginner blogger?
Jyoti Chauhan: Yes, of course, themes play an important role in SEO and blogging. If our blog theme is not SEO-friendly and all browsers are supportive, you can lose traffic from search engines and your regular readers as well.
I will recommend Genesis themes. Genesis themes are simple and elegant. They are very well optimized and have a fast loading speed. I know Genesis is costly. But if you want to make money from your blog, you need to invest some money. Blogging has become a business, and every business needs some investment.
Gurunath: Finally, any tips, advice, or suggestions from you to our awesome readers?
Jyoti Chauhan: I think I have given all the necessary advice above in answer to question no. 6. Again, I want to say, never give up and work hard with passion. As we all know, “hard work never goes unrewarded.”.
Thanks to Jyoti Chauhan for this beautiful interview and for spending some time with us.
Recommended Read: Expert Interviews
Please watch Jyoti Chauhan’s latest online video interview on our YouTube channel to learn more insights into her blogging journey.
If any of you have any queries, please do ask in the comments below!
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Note: Stay tuned for interviews in this Expert Interview series, which will be published frequently!