Blogging is a great way to spend valuable time and also make money. While it is common knowledge that you need great content and excellent writing skills to start and run a blog, the question of whether or not you need coding skills as a blogger always comes up. So is coding a necessary skill for bloggers? The answer is no. However, possessing coding skills gives you an added advantage for a variety of reasons that we will cover in this article.

If you want to excel at it, you should consider getting into a coding boot camp to help you build and hone your coding skills. Read on to find out the benefits of coding for bloggers, as well as the best programming languages to learn that will help spur your blogging career.

What Is the Importance of Coding Skills for Bloggers?

While it may not be necessary to have coding skills as a blogger, the ability to code comes with its perks. Below are some of the benefits that come with the ability to code.

1) Money and Time Savings

As a blogger, you may have to pay professionals to set up your website and tweak it to suit your brand. This means spending extra money because coding can be expensive. Without coding skills, it will take you much longer to discern problems that come with custom themes. What’s more, while you may download ready-made themes for your blogs, you won’t be able to adjust and personalize it. Programming skills, therefore, save you the time and money you would spend hiring someone else to fix simple website issues that you can do with basic coding skills.

2) Total Control over Your Website

If you know your way around programming, you don’t have to put your website at the mercy of third parties. You can fix bugs, edit your website’s footer, add advertising codes like AdSense, change your thumbnail size, and adjust your blog width. Whatever change you want for your blog, you can implement it without someone else taking charge. Additionally, the ability to code means you can change the details of your theme and make it unique instead of opting for a complete rebuild of the site. This way, you end up with a site that functions exactly how you want it to.

3) Competitive Advantage

 With coding skills, you can offer to create micro websites for your clients’ campaigns which brings in more revenue to whatever campaign you are running. This sets you apart from other bloggers who only focus on creating and sharing content and only have blog posts to offer. Coding boosts your blogging by enabling you to offer more value, earn more clients, and upsell your services.

4) Extra Source of Income

As a new blogger with coding skills, your skills give you the ability to explore other lucrative avenues other than blogging. If you have coding skills, you can offer coding services on the side to supplement your blogging while it grows. This gives you flexibility in terms of multiple streams of income as it may take time before you attain the traffic you are aiming for

Programming Languages You Should Consider Learning as a Blogger

There are numerous ways to learn programming if you want to add value to your blogging, ranging from videos and books to online classes and coding bootcamps. You don’t have to know everything about programming. However, consider learning the programming languages below if you are interested in learning how to code for your blogging needs.

(i) HTML. This is the most basic and simple programming language you can learn in as little as three hours.HTML helps in defining the structure as well as the content of your page and comes in handy when you are facing issues like post formatting and breaking. HTML also enables you to include ads in your theme code or blog widgets.

(ii) CSS (Cascading Style Sheet). CSS refers to a programming language used to style and edit HTML documents. It is more advanced than HTML and will allow you to modify texts, change border styles and background colors, and modify paddings and margins. With skills in CSS, you can also change your web page's elements.

(iii) JavaScript. When blogging, you want your page to be as engaging and interactive as possible. JavaScript allows you to control any dynamic aspect of your website such as animated graphics, interactive forms, and photo slideshows without necessarily having to reload the page. If you are interested in learning JavaScript, you can consider attending a coding boot camp as it is more advanced compared to programming languages like HTML.

If you have no coding background, the above languages are more than enough to advance your blogging career. What’s more, you don’t have to learn everything at once as you can always keep building on your skills.

If you have no coding skills and you want to be a blogger, you have nothing to worry about as they are not necessary. However, if you wish to grow in your blogging career and earn more from it, you should consider learning how to code so you can enjoy the benefits that come with the ability to code.