My second month of blogging just ended and I am excited with how far I have come. Looking back at the sleepless nights and stressful days I put into building my blog, I know I am making progress. It’s been three months of trying new strategies, hitting dead ends, chalking little successes and getting up each time I fall. This is a real post on blogging for beginners from a newbie blogger who has been actively blogging for two months.
After two months of actively blogging (at least I’m trying to be active), I have learned a few lessons I want to share with you, especially if you are a newbie blogger like myself.
If you are yet to start your blog, check out my step-by-step tutorial on how to start a money-making blog.
1. Setting up your Blog is just the beginning
If it only took paying for hosting and getting a domain name to start a blog, I bet I would be dancing in excitement right now. Sorry love, it doesn’t work that way. Taking time to put the blog together and making it look presentable is just the beginning. Nobody cares about how your blog looks if they cannot find information that helps them on your blog.
It is good to start your blog and make it attractive, but managing the blog properly is more important.
2. Nobody will read your blog if you do not have a content marketing strategy
This is the hard truth for us newbie bloggers. The content you write will not be read by anybody if you do not strategize to get it out there. Most bloggers use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media to market their content.
Currently, I use Pinterest to drive some traffic to my blog. Getting traffic to my site has been a lot of work. When I first started researching how to drive page views to my blog, lots of bloggers talked about how Pinterest was a major source of traffic to their various blogs.
They made it sound so easy; little did I know that it requires lots of time and commitment to build a good Pinterest presence and drive traffic to my blog.
It takes more than designing a Pinterest image and uploading it on Pinterest.
I knew I needed help, so I started looking around for good yet affordable courses and e-books on Pinterest. After days of digging, one e-book was recommended over and over by a good number of bloggers- so I decided to check it out. It’s an e-book by Carly Campbell called Pinteresting Strategies.
Currently, I’m implementing the strategies in the Pinteresting Strategies Ebook. It teaches manual pinning and how to effectively use Pinterest SEO. I particularly love the bit on SEO.
I understand Pinterest SEO better now and I am satisfied with how I use keywords on my Pinterest account including my boards, pins and descriptions.
The focus of the e-book, however, is on how to use manual pinning to increase page views on Pinterest without any schedulers. Check out Pinteresting Strategies here.
3. You can choose not to niche down, but niching down makes it easier.
If you just started or are yet to start your blog, you are probably thinking about whether to niche down (narrow down your blog’s focus/write on a specific subject) or not.
I have observed that even though blogs that do not niche down perform well, it is easier when you focus on a specific niche. This makes it easier to identify your audience, be identified by your audience and build a relationship with them.
I blog on personal development for women; and personal development cuts across different areas, so I have not really niched down. However, I think that blogs that focus on specific niches, easily build their tribe and may make money sooner, unlike people who have not niched down like me ☹.
4. Not Every Blogging Product will Give you results
As a new blogger, I need all the information and guidance I can get to build my blog the right way. After spending money to purchase a couple of e-books, I have noticed that blogging products do not perform magic. Some of them can guide you and give you maximum outcomes while others will just leave you biting your fingers.
I have invested in a few blogging products and some have been disappointing. When the strategies do not work for me, I count my losses and move on.
Some also work! Pinteresting strategies is one of the e-books I currently use, and implementing some of the strategies in the book have been great.
I also used the Blog Starter Workbook by Rosemarie Groner to start my blog and it was amazing. It helped me build my blog from start to launch day (I encourage you to check it out).
One of the e-books I purchased is ‘How to Make Your First Affiliate Sale in 24 hours’. I implemented the strategy the best way I understood it but I did not see results. I purchased this e-book because some newbie bloggers used it and they made affiliate sales even in less than 24 hours. It worked for them. I am considering going back to the e-book, checking what I probably missed and implementing the strategy all over again. If I do it the second time and it doesn’t work, I’ll give up ☹.
The first lesson here is: Do not to purchase every single blogging product out there. The second lesson is to invest in valuable products (some of them are amazing).
The best lesson for me is to recommend only products that have worked for me, and be as honest as possible about every single product I am an affiliate for.
Blogging takes a lot of time and energy, and nobody’s got money to spend on products that do not work.
5. Network with other bloggers.
The blogging community is supportive and it is super helpful when you make blogging friends.
Confession: I am quite poor at making blogging friends, but I have observed how helpful this can be. And since I want to make blogging friends, feel free to reach out to me via my contact page and join my fresh sparkling Facebook group for bloggers and let’s connect.
Facebook groups have been phenomenal in helping me engage with other bloggers. Check out five useful Facebook groups to join as a new blogger.
6. You Need Inspiration
To be honest, I get burned sometimes. You will get burned too and you will have to give up a lot of things to make time for your blog. If you’re working full time like me, you need to be strategic with how you spend your time.
I love my movie series but guess what; lately I feel guilty when I take time off to watch a movie knowing I need to work on my blog (me of all people, ha!). The point basically is, the road to becoming a successful blogger can get painful and lonely. I drive inspiration in reminding myself of where I want to go with my blog; I also read content from other bloggers including their success stories and income reports for inspiration.
Find what drives you and draw inspiration from it each time you feel down.
You don’t want to know the number of times I beat myself up thinking I am not making any significant improvement. But as I always say, never doubt yourself.
That’s it, my friend. Blogging is like a bumpy ride. Some of the lessons I have learned include: Setting up your blog is just the beginning; Nobody will read your blog if you do not have a content marketing strategy and you can choose not to niche down, but niching down makes it easier. Also, not every blogging product will give you results, network with other bloggers and try to find inspiration to keep yourself going.
Sometimes you never learn enough from reading from others until you start your own blog. Check out my step by step guide on how to start a successful blog here. As I said, I would love to keep in touch, so send me an email or leave a message in the comments section and I promise I will respond 😊.
Sign up for free blogging tips below.
