What Does It Mean To Compress Images & Optimize Them?

Image compression reduces the file size of an image.  Typically, you might have an image an a JPEG or PNG format which will be a large file size.

Using JPEG and PNG files for images is therefore not optimal for web design or for use on a website.

Instead, compressing images is done for images on websites in one of the following three ways (Lossy vs Lossless vs Glossy compression):

1. Lossy Compression – The highest compression rate of images resulting in a more coarse looking image but still stays true to the original.
2. Glossy Compression – The middle compression rate between lossy and lossless that reduces the file size some but maintains a more fine texture to the image when compared to lossy.
3. Lossless Compression – The lowest compression rate with some reduction in image file size but focused on high quality images being maintained.  Site speed will only be minimally improved in comparison to using lossy compression.

Why are these three types of compression important?

Well, because when you go to choose a plugin to use for your own website or blog it’s important to choose the right type of compression and image optimization that fits your needs specifically.

If you’re a photography blogger, it’s probably best to go with lossless or glossy and steer clear of using lossy compression on all the images for your site.

Other than that, choosing the compression rate is usually a single setting that can be applied to all the images across your site when using a plugin for image compression and optimization.

How To Compress Images Automatically For Your Website (Optimize Images For The Web)

One of the great things about compressing images for online usage and for your website is that it doesn’t have to be done manually for every single image that you upload.

In fact, sites such as Facebook and Reddit have built-in compression of images to automatically optimize images.

Now, how do can you automatically compress images for your own blog or WordPress website?

I personally use a plugin called ShortPixel.

In fact here’s the latest stats on how much data storage and space I’ve saved across my website by compressing image with ShortPixel.

As you can see I’ve saved a ton of space and bandwidth.

In short, this means that every visitor to my site gets to view my pages faster, and I’ll get a lower bounce rate overall for my site as well.

Key Benefits Of Compressing Images & Formatting

I’ve already mentioned a few benefits of compressing and optimizing images, but wanted to share the full list of key benefits I’ve found.

Here’s the list of benefits of compressing images for a website:

• Page load speed improved – The number one benefit for image compression would be improvements with your page load speed.  An image heavy page can drag down a page load time especially if the images are not optimized properly.  Compressing your images that you upload to your website will therefore greatly improve page load speed.
• Potentially lower bounce rate – Any time you decrease the time it takes for a page to load on your site, you’re inevitably going to decrease your bounce rate.  For instance, if the site takes seemingly forever to load then a potential visitor might exit before even really giving a chance for you site to load fully.  This is something that you obviously want to avoid at all cost and image compression can help you do just that.
• Improved SEO – By decreasing bounce rate and improving page load speed, you’re also improving the SEO of your site.  Since more visitors are coming to your site and staying on it longer without bouncing, it’s likely that your pages will start to rank higher in Google all because of the image compression.
• Smaller storage required for backups of your site – Images can at times become huge file sizes nowadays.  With higher quality cameras being innovated at practically lightspeed, it’s important to know that by compressing images you’ll also get the added benefit of reducing site backup storage size.  
• Bandwidth reduction – The networks that are used to access your blog or website use up bandwidth every time a visitor comes to visit your site.  Compressing images is great in this case once again, since it reduces the bandwidth.
• Slower devices rejoice – If you’ve got a slow device, then you can probably relate.  There’s nothing more annoying than a super slow loading web page.  There’s a high likelihood you’ll simply hit the back button and choose the next best site in Google’s SERP if things are simply taking too long to load.  Thankfully, compressing images will make your visitors that much more happy and more likely to visit and stay on your site to view your content.

Best Image Optimization Tools & Software

There’s a lot of great image optimization tools out there. 

A lot of them work ok… but the one that I’ve found to be the best is TinyPNG.

Here’s a full list of the other tools I’ve found that work well for image optimization and compression:

• JPEG Mini
• Gifsicle
• FileOptimizer
• Kraken.io
• ImageRecycle
• CompressNow
• Trimage
• Compressor.io
• JPEG Optimizer

I recommend trying out a few of the image optimization software above and then settling on one to go with.  These tools are great for one-off quick tasks that need to be done fast.  So, it’s probably best to bookmark the one that you choose in your browser as well for fast access.

Best WordPress Image Optimization Plugins

Believe it or not, there’s a ton of different WordPress plugins that you can choose from to compress the images for your site.

The great part is that they work to automatically compress the images for your website so that you don’t have to every single image manually (talk about going crazy… ).

ShortPixel Image Optimizer

I personally use the ShortPixel WordPress image optimizer plugin, which automatically compresses images and tons of other additional features that many other plugins simply don’t have.

Here’s a look at the ShortPixel pricing for one-time fees.

The ShortPixel pricing plans are: 

• One Time 10K Images – Costs $9.99
  • priority support
  • easy to use
  • no file size limit
  • one API key for multiple sites
  • lossless, glossy, and lossy optimization
  • automatic and bulk optimization
  • WordPress plugin
  • PHP compression tools
• One Time 30K Images – Costs $19.99
  • 10,000 bonus images included
  • priority support
  • easy to use
  • no file size limit
  • one API key for multiple sites
  • lossless, glossy, and lossy optimization
  • automatic and bulk optimization
  • WordPress plugin
  • PHP compression tools
• One Time 50K Images – Costs $29.99
  • 20,000 bonus images included
  • priority support
  • easy to use
  • no file size limit
  • one API key for multiple sites
  • lossless, glossy, and lossy optimization
  • automatic and bulk optimization
  • WordPress plugin
  • PHP compression tools
• One Time 170K Images – Costs $99
  • 70,000 bonus images included
  • priority support
  • easy to use
  • no file size limit
  • one API key for multiple sites
  • lossless, glossy, and lossy optimization
  • automatic and bulk optimization
  • WordPress plugin
  • PHP compression tools

Optimole Image Optimizer

Optimole is a great image optimization plugin that actually is optimized to work well with the Elementor page builder.

• You can check out my Elementor review if you’re interested in learning more about it.

It includes a CDN for your images to be served from over 200 different locations worldwide using Cloudfront servers.  Lazy loading is also built in and retina images and WebP images are created automatically.

In terms of pricing for Optimole, there’s actually a free plan that I recommend you get started on to try out if you’re interested.

Here’s what’s included with the Optimole free plan:

• 5,000 visits monthly
• auto scaled images
• smart lazy-loading
• Cloudfront CDN (200+ locations)
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Email support within 48 hours

Imagify Image Optimizer

Imagify is a great WordPress plugin to compress and optimize your images.

You’ll be able to optimize your images in bulk and also switch between different levels of compression for all your images across the site once you download and install the WordPress plugin.

There’s both a free version and a premium version of the Imagify WordPress plugin.  The free version allows you to optimize up to 25 MB of images per month, which comes to about 250 images give or take.  Anything more and you’ll have to start paying for Imagify.

WP Smush

Smush is another highly recommended image optimization WordPress plugin that also allows you to bulk compress images and use lazy loading for your site.

Some of the additional features that Smush includes are:

• Bulk optimization
• Lazy loading
• image resizing
• No monthly limits on data for image optimization
• Compatible with multiple sites
• All types of image files can be processed
• Convert images to WebP

Best Practices When Optimizing Images On A Blog Or Website

When it comes to compressing images and optimizing them for your website, there’s a few main things that should be done.

By following the best practices for image optimization, you can start to see a decrease in your page load time site-wide and ultimately reap the SEO benefits.

You’ll likely get a lower bounce rate and start to see a slightly higher time on page.

So, here’s a list of the best practices for optimizing images on a website:

• Use Lossy compression for your images wherever possible
• Invest in a paid plugin to automate image optimization if needed
• Play around with settings inside the plugins to figure out what works best for your specific website
• PNG images should only be used if you need high detail and high resolution images
• Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to speed up the delivery of your images from web servers all around the world
• Remove any image data that is unnecessary
• Test your images to make sure they appear properly after publishing a blog post or page on your site
• Use web fonts instead of encoding text inside images
• Use vector images if you want them to be zoom independent (look the same when zoomed in instead of all blurry)
• Use raster images if you’ve got a complex image with intricate details

How To Write A Blog Post Fast Step-By-Step In 1 Hour

Being able to write blog posts quickly is key to consistently putting out content over time.

It’s true that as you write more posts, you’ll begin to understand what works well for you and how to write blog posts more efficiently.

However, the steps that I wanted to share with you should hopefully help you speed up this process and produce quality blog posts in the process.

Here’s an overview on how to write a blog post fast in 1 hour or less:

• Step #1: Keep A List Of Blog Posts On Keywords You Want To Rank For
• Step #2: Research The Topic To Present Opinion On Findings (15 minutes)
• Step #3: Write Intro With Keyword (5 minutes)
• Step #4: Create Outline Using Headings To Answer Questions (5 minutes)
• Step #5: Explain Each Subheading Topic/Question (25-30 minutes)
• Step #6: Add Feature Image & Supporting Images/Videos (5-10 minutes)  

Let’s get started with Step 1.

Step #1: Keep A List Of Blog Posts On Keywords You Want To Rank For

One of the things that helped me when starting out with my blog was creating a complete list of blog posts I wanted to write in a Google Sheets spreadsheet.

This helps to save time when you’re ready to start a new blog post and avoids the problem of searching for hours on end for new keywords.  

I’ve found that by doing the keyword research upfront for several articles in advance also helps to stay consistent long-term.

It’s fairly easy in the beginning with the first few blog posts to be fired up and ready to go write on a new topic, but after 4 months and likely still hardly any traffic to your site things can get a little disheartening.

At that point, having a solid list of at least the next 10 blog post titles that you’re going to write on should help a ton with staying focused on creating content.

Step #2: Research The Topic To Present Opinion On Findings (15 Minutes)

When you’re writing your first few blog posts, I recommend starting with topics that you’re hopefully already familiar with and have an affinity for.  

This will help you to hit the ground running and not have to spend nearly as much time researching the information for your blog posts.  Every little bit helps to save time when you’re just starting out with a new blog and a new online business to stay motivated and persistent.

The posts that you’ll want to focus on trying to get down to writing under one hour for should be right around 1,500 words long.  These should answer a specific question centered around a long-tail keyword that will be much easier to write faster and do research on.

The more lengthy pillar posts on your site will take more time, since you’ll likely be researching statistics and other data to put together into a longer post that’s typically 3,500 words on average taking several hours to a day or two to write.

Note that the word count for these blog posts that I’m mentioning are simply to help you gauge the length of content that you should be aiming for to be able to write within an hour or less.

Step #3: Write Intro With Keyword (5 Minutes)

The next step you’ll need to do is start to dive into writing the intro of your blog post.

The intro should be around two to three paragraphs or anywhere from 4-10 sentences typically.  

Additionally, you’ll want to include your keyword somewhere in your intro as a common SEO best practice.

By keeping your intro short and sweet, it allows you to get it done and out of the way to move on to the next step of creating the outline for your post.

Step #4: Create Outline Using Headings To Answer Questions (5 Minutes)

Next, you need to create an outline of headings based upon the research you conducted earlier for the blog post.

I like to lay out the main questions that users are searching for surrounding the topic/keyword and use those as subheadings.

You can do this by looking at the “People Also Ask” boxes in search results or taking a look at what comes up in Google autosuggest when you type in your main keyword for the post.

Step #5: Explain Each Subheading Topic/Question (25-30 Minutes)

Now that you’ve got an outline laid out with each of the subheadings, it should be much easier to write each portion of your blog post.

One way to think of it is like writing short couple hundred word blog posts for each subheading, which makes it much easier to not lose your train of thought or get distracted.

I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve gotten distracted when writing a blog post and ended up running out of time and having to finish the post another day because of it.

By having an outline ready to go and the research already done, all that’s left for you to do is fill in the gaps and write on each subheading.

Step #6: Add Feature Image & Supporting Images/Videos (5-10 Minutes)

The final step to completing your blog post is adding in images and videos.

The good news here is that you really don’t need to put in any other images besides the featured image if you don’t want to.

However, images help to break up the text a lot of times and can potentially better the user experience.

Additionally, if you add videos to your blog post then you have a good chance of increasing the time on page for the visitors to your website.

How I Made My First $1000 Blogging 

I started off just like everyone else.  I knew nothing about blogging and SEO or how to make money online.

I had tried several business models such as Amazon FBA, but it wasn’t until I finally came across blogging and monetizing my own website by converting traffic from SEO strategies that I found success.

I started the blog you’re on right now to share my journey and what I was learning along the way.

The first post I published was this one: Best One Funnel Away Challenge Bonus.

As a brand new blog on a newly purchased domain, I was happy in the first few weeks to get a single visitor to my site per day from Google.

It wasn’t until five weeks later that my first post made it to the first page of Google, and I actually made my first sale for $100 having had less than 100 visitors total come to my site up to that point.

I was ecstatic and knew then that I just needed to repeat the process of creating new blog posts, putting in relevant affiliate links, and waiting for my posts to rank in Google.

Ultimately, it took writing a total of 50 blog posts and 6 months of hard work before I made my first $1,000 blogging by getting traffic from Google using SEO.

If I’m being honest, getting $1,000 after just 6 months as a beginner with a brand new blog is probably on the fast end of the spectrum.

To put things into perspective, I didn’t have a single day where I got more than 20 visitors a day from Google to my blog during that entire 6 month timeframe of writing 50 blog posts.

Most people aren’t willing to put in the type of work that’s required to make $1,000 online, but I’m more than confident that you can do it and are committed to doing it if you’re reading this post right now.

You just need to have the belief and persistence that’s required to make it to the other side.

If you’re interested, here’s where you can find some update posts that I made when I was initially creating my blog.  I go over the traffic, analytics, and lessons learned.

• Blog Progress Updates: Analytics & Lessons Learned

Now, let’s talk about how you can actually make money from your blog.    

How Do Beginner Bloggers Make Money?

There’s actually a plethora of ways for beginner bloggers to make money online.

A lot of beginning bloggers though immediately start trying to monetize their website with Google Adsense.  However, I recommend against doing this with a new blog and waiting until your blog is more established. 

In fact, I wrote an entire post on how to monetize your blog without ads:

• 14 Best Ways To Monetize A Blog Without Ads For Beginners

Here’s a quick overview on the best ways to make money from your blog:

• Affiliate Marketing: Recommend another company’s products using your affiliate link to receive a commission percentage of the sale.
• Email Marketing: Collect email addresses of visitors to follow-up to promote affiliate products and future blog posts.
• Content Lock Certain Posts: You can lock certain blog posts that you’ve created in exchange for an email address or for a low cost.
• Free Training With Affiliate Links: If you’re wanting to go all in with a specific affiliate product or program, a great way to start getting sales from the traffic on your blog is by directing visitors to a free training you create with relevant affiliate links.

The best thing you can do when getting started is to focus on creating blog posts to bring in traffic first.  Once you’re getting more traffic, you can start to implement different monetization strategies.

How Soon Can You Make Money Blogging?

If you’re focusing on getting traffic purely through SEO, then the soonest you can realistically make money blogging is within a few weeks to have enough time for your posts to rank.

As a blogger with a new website, you need to gain E.A.T. (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) and authority in the eyes of Google which is only gained over time with backlinks.

Here’s a post I wrote on how to rank high in Google without backlinks:

• How To Rank High In Google Without Backlinks [For Complete Newbies]

A great way that I’ve found to get backlinks is using HARO (Help A Reporter Out).  You can sign up to get requests for quotes from reporters and other bloggers that will in turn link back to you.

It’s a great way to earn more backlinks with a new blog.

How Often Should You Blog?

As often as you can, you should write blog posts. 

I found that it helps to create an entire list of all the different blog posts with their titles that you want to create upfront.

From there, you can set a schedule for yourself for writing the blog posts.  The most important thing is to stay consistent. 

What Is A Good Blog Post Length?

The best way I’ve found to determine what a blog post length should be is by looking at the competition for that specific keyword.

With a new blog, you’ll want to focus on more long-tail keywords so you aren’t going after way too competitive of keywords that you’d be unable to rank for without any backlinks.

The best way to analyze the competition quickly is by looking at the top ten results for a keyword that you’re planning to write a blog post on and seeing how many words each post has.

From there, you can figure out how long you should write your blog post.

What Is The Best Way To Get Visitors To Your Blog?

The best way to get visitors to your blog for the long-term is by focusing on SEO.

Not only do you have a good chance of a blog post ranking in Google for years, but you’ll also be getting super-targeted traffic that can be converted into email subscribers or sales.

For the short-term, I’d recommend answering questions on Quora or using Pinterest to drive traffic back to your blog.

How Do You Convert Website Visitors Once You’re Getting Traffic?

One of the best way to convert website visitors once you’re getting traffic is by having them sign up to join your email newsletter.

To do this, you can create free lead magnets that give value to someone once they subscribe and put in their email address.

I’d recommend making one central lead magnet across your entire site that’s specific to your niche and also individual lead magnets specific to your posts that are receiving the most traffic.

Once you’ve got someone as a subscriber, you can send them back to your latest blog posts and also promote directly various products to start earning commissions and sales.

What Goals Should You Set To Stay Focused And Make My First $1000 Online With Blogging & SEO?

The best way I found to set goals when blogging is to set a goal to write a certain number of posts by a specific date.

Creating more content is something that’s under your control and is up to you to complete the goal.

The number of website visitors and corresponding sales will ultimately come as a byproduct of creating excellent content and promoting it to your email list and on social media.

Do You Need To Buy A Course To Learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

I personally have not taken a course to learn SEO, so it isn’t necessary to take one.

However, it can definitely help you to focus more clearly on your blog over time by having all the steps laid out for you in a course and could potentially save you time in the long run.

Best Ways To Monetize A Blog Without Ads

Let’s take a look now at the different ways to monetize a blog and start making money or scale up big. 

1. Affiliate Marketing

Take my advice and do affiliate marketing.  

It’s honestly one of the best ways to start earning money from a new blog because it’s so easy to do.

Here’s the steps on how to start affiliate marketing on your blog or website: 

1. Find a company or software that you enjoy and can support.
2. Sign up to be an affiliate – usually a link to sign up in the footer of the company’s website or just search for “[company name] affiliate program” in Google
3. Once approved, start creating both informational posts and review posts around the product with affiliate links inside the posts

2. Email Marketing (Build An Email List)

Email marketing is powerful because it’s an asset that you own.  

Whenever you want to send traffic to a new blog post you created, YouTube video, or sales funnel it’s simply a matter of writing up a quick email campaign to your email list.

Here are the main steps on how to build an email list for your blog:

1. Sign up for ActiveCampaign (my favorite email autoresponder)
2. Sign up for Thrive Leads (allows you to build opt-in forms to integrate with your email autoresponder and split-test different opt-in form ideas)
3. Create a lead magnet (free item for someone who subscribes)
4. Create the opt-in form and connect with your autoresponder – I recommend creating both an exit intent popup and several in-content popups across your entire blog or website
5. Create info posts to send traffic and a certain percentage will subscribe
6. Split-test opt-in forms to increase subscribers  
7. Build out email automations for new subscribers and send email campaigns to direct traffic back to new posts and occasionally direct link to affiliate offers  

3. Create An E-book

Creating an e-book doesn’t have to be difficult in the sense that your e-book doesn’t have to be at least 10,000 words long.

The main goal here is to create some that first and foremost provides value to your audience.

Here’s a few ideas for e-books to create that relate to your niche:

• Step-By-Step Guide To [fill in the blank]
• The 10 Must-Have Tools For More [fill in the blank]
• The Ultimate Guide To [fill in the blank]
• The Hidden Truth About [fill in the blank]
• [fill in the blank] Ways To Be More [fill in the blank]

4. Create A Course

A lot of people brush off creating a course… because let’s be honest… it seems like a ton of work!

Well, it actually doesn’t have to be and can bring in massive returns for years to come.

You can either create a free course or a paid course.

What I recommend is either making a free course sent by emails to your subscribers or a separate area that requires a login (I use DropFunnels for my courses).

From there you can gain email subscribers for people who opt-in to gain free access and also include affiliate links within the course.

By the way, you don’t need to create videos for a course.  It can simply be several emails over the course of a few weeks or a few blog posts.

5. Develop A Software

Developing a software is probably the one that requires the most time, money, and effort on this list.

Chances are that you’re not an amazing software developer and you’ll need to spend money to get your idea built.

You’ll then need to pay to host the files a server and tons of other logistical nuances that can get complicated and time-consuming pretty quick.

However, the end result is a software that you can sell to your audience for a monthly or yearly fee and can bring you recurring money.

I actually have a free link tracking software that I paid to have developed and you can get free access.

6. Free Tutorial Or Training With Affiliate Links

If you want to go all in with a specific affiliate program for your niche, then I highly recommend creating a training program or tutorial for your readers.

Inside the training you’ll want to include the use of the product you’re promoting with your affiliate link.

7. Allow Sponsored Posts On Your Blog

A sponsored post allows for someone else to promote their content on your blog.

These vary from traditional advertisements since they’re meant to blend in with your own blog posts but direct to an external website.

8. Private Forum/Membership Area

Creating your own forum or membership area is a really great way to start earning monthly recurring income from your blog.

I personally use DropFunnels to create my membership areas.

Here’s some ideas of what to include in your membership site or membership area:

• all of your lead magnets for readers who opt-in
• all of your courses
• software that you’ve developed

9. Offer Niche Specific Consulting

So… did you want to know the fastest way to earn money from a blog?

Well, I’d consider consulting to be the fastest way to start making money from your blog.

This is because a lot of people are looking for individual help on topics such as SEO and many more.

The main problem is that consulting is very difficult to scale in the long-term, which is why typically many sites have extremely high prices for their consulting to make it worth their time.

10. Content Lock Certain Posts For A Small Fee Or Email Address

A really easy way to start gaining subscribers is by content locking certain posts for someone to enter their email address and receive access.

I use Thrive Leads to easily do this.

11. Generate Leads For Other Companies

Generating leads for other companies is all about mastering converting traffic to your blog into email subscribers.

Here’s a few ideas to start generating leads from your blog:

• Run a giveaway
• Turn blog posts into guides to giveaway
• Create shareable content to draw in more visitors and eventual subscribers

12. Create A Specific Page Of Tools You Use With Affiliate Links

I do this particular strategy myself with my own tools the I use for my online business.

You can take a look at all of my favorite marketing tools for some ideas.

13. Create Your Own Affiliate Program

If you’re promoting any of your own digital products (courses, e-books, etc), then it’s a good idea to create an affiliate program around it.

By creating an affiliate program, you allow your audience to promote and do the marketing for you with their own audiences.

This dramatically increases the overall revenue for your business.

14. Embed Your YouTube Videos On Your Site

Embedding your YouTube videos on your site might seem simple.

However, there’s some pretty amazing benefits for your blog that you can get out of it.

Here’s a list of just some of the benefits of embedding YouTube videos on your blog or website:

• Increased time on page for visitors
• Higher ranking in Google due to time on page increasing
• Higher rankings in the YouTube search algorithm
• More views and ad revenue from YouTube when using your own videos
• Videos create more trust with your audience