If you want to succeed as a blogger, you’ll need to learn constantly to expand your skillsets and remain at the top of the game. One essential skill you’ll need to learn is coding, which refers to the process of using programming languages, such as CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, to create instructions for computers to execute.
But with content management platforms doing the job of filling descriptions with themes, widgets, plugins, visual text editors without needing any coding knowledge, is learning coding still necessary? The simple answer is yes, more so if you’re striving to become a blogging expert.
If you need further persuading, you’re in luck. Here’s a guide on why learning coding skills will boost your career as a blogger:
Have A Unique Brand
There are thousands of bloggers, and you should strive for your site to have unique attributes that can only be associated with your brand. It’s this uniqueness that acts as a selling point to your target audience. But standing out is hard if you don’t know how to code and instead use a pre-created theme from a blogging platform, which every other blogger can use. Many up-and-coming bloggers opt to do this and use the website themes of exceptional quality being used by the famous and more experienced bloggers.
You should avoid such a temptation if you want to stand out and be appealing to your target audience. This is where having a Salesforce developer certification and learning how to code will prove to be the difference.
As a result, you’ll learn how to add plugins, experiment with fonts and colors, and play around with the style of your site elements. Thanks to all this, you’ll know how best to personalize your website to ensure it suits your brand perfectly.
Get Control Over Your Site
Having complete control over your website is essential to avoid being overly dependent on others who might not have your best interest at heart. Learning to code enables you to achieve because it allows you to make several changes to your site, including;
- Changing the thumbnail size
- Adding advertising codes such as AdSense
- Editing your site’s footer
- Fixing bugs
- Changing your theme’s details
- Altering the width of your blog
These are examples of some of the changes you can make without needing any help from a third party. As a result, you’ll be able to confirm that your website’s performance is optimal at all times.
Save Time and Money
Your website will, from time to time, not work as expected. Whenever this happens and you don’t have the necessary programming skills, you’ll need to hire a coder whose services don’t come cheap. Other scenarios when you’ll need to hire a professional coder include;
- Mending the latest crash
- Helping with basic site personalization such as changing colors
- Dealing with a confusing plugin
These problems also apply even if you opt to get the ready-made themes as you don’t know how to change and personalize them. But with coding skills, you don’t have to worry about the need to hire a coder to fix these minor issues your site is having.
Other than saving you money, having coding skills saves you valuable time. This is because skilled developers usually have a lot on their hands. As a result, they won’t prioritize addressing your issue right away, meaning your website might end up being down the entire time.
In addition, a less experienced developer whose services are cheaper might cut corners to finish the job or have a hard resolving the issue, hence take longer than expected. But if you know how to code, all these shortcomings are avoided altogether as you can make the necessary changes.
Competitive Advantage
Blogging is very competitive. Therefore, you should be unique and give yourself a competitive edge over others who only know how to create and share content. The best way of achieving this is by learning coding skills rather than simply providing your potential clients with a standard blog post.
Knowing to code helps you create personalized micro-sites for your clients and host on subdomains that are great for campaigns. Through these micro-websites, you’ll be able to generate hundreds or thousands of dollars in one campaign.
As a result, your target audience will love your engaging content and unique design that provides your clients with greater value. This then translates to more revenue generated from every standard blog post.
Additional Income Sources
Coding skills are in great demand, which makes getting the services of a coder very expensive. Therefore, you can outsource your coding skills to local businesses or other bloggers who require your services.
Doing this increases your revenue stream rather than relying entirely on blogging to earn money. This means you still get to make money while your blog is simultaneously growing.
Which Programming Language Should You Learn for Blogging?
If you want to learn to code, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with a couple of programming languages. These include;
HTML
This is the most basic programming language you’ll need to learn to become a blogging expert. Once you understand HTML, it’ll be easier to do tasks, such as understanding basic HTML codes and placing ads in your blog widgets. It also helps you address issues that are linked to formatting and post-breaking. Learning HTML isn’t that hard, and you can understand the basics even after three hours.
JavaScript
This programming language allows you to make your webpage very interactive and engaging. As a result, you get to have control over every dynamic aspect of your sites, such as interactive forms, photo slideshows, and animated graphics, without needing to reload a web page.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)
This programing language is used when styling and editing HTML documents. Because it’s advanced compared to HTML, it enables you to change border styles, change texts, modify margins and paddings, and adjust background colors and border styles.
Takeaway
Content is king, so your success as a blogger greatly depends on how refined your skills are to share insights with your readers. But if you want to stand out from the rest and become an expert blogger, learning coding gives you an extra advantage that’ll ensure you indeed do succeed. Reading this guide has highlighted why you should start learning to code right away and how this will eventually increase the revenue your blog generates.
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