Alright, hands up if you’re a newbie blogger! If you are, this is for you. I’m about to share 5 things I wish I knew before starting my blog with the hopes that you can avoid some of the pain and frustration I felt in the beginning.
WHY START A BLOG?
I remember scrolling madly through Pinterest and seeing so many pins with a title like “monthly income report – how I made $15,000 on my blog.”
What!? $15,000 in a single month?! Why does the dollar value always seem to be so insane?
So, I thought to myself, “there are lots of people doing this, so why can’t I?” There’s no way, I could work a regular 9-5 and pull in massive amounts of money like that until I’m 50! And even then, it still sounded crazy. I’m 29 by the way.
As I kept reading more and more of these income reports, I remember feeling more and more envious each and every time. I was making a mere fraction of what these bloggers were pulling in on a yearly basis and on top of that, they’re posting pictures of themselves working on a beach in Bali while I’m reading this from my cubicle. I don’t even have a window and they’re working on a beach… Good for them!
That was absolute full on sarcasm by the way…
5 THINGS I WISH I KNEW BEFORE STARTING MY BLOG
Okay, so let’s get this straight. These bloggers are PASSIVELY pulling in $15,000 or more per month, diving into those crystal blue waters to go swimming with turtles, maybe putting in a few hours of work here and there but basically making money while they sleep.
Wonderful, I wanted that too! The thing was, everyone was so bold about how much money they were making but didn’t want to share any tips on how to get started. I could always find bits and pieces of information, but never enough to get the ball rolling.
This is what I want to share with you today. 5 things I wish I knew before starting my blog, with the hopes that you can just avoid the pain and frustration I felt so many times altogether!
#1
Expect that it Will Cost Money
I know, this sucks, but the saying “in order to make money, you must invest” truly does apply. If you want to make money blogging, then you have to expect to pay for a good hosting site, your domain name, email marketing and so on. The reason why is because free hosting sites will be much slower, they won’t have good technical support (no one wants to work for free!) and some hosting sites even don’t allow you to link affiliate products. If you can’t link affiliate products, how is a beginner ever supposed to start? So start yourself off on the right foot to avoid frustration with things like switching hosting sites down the road. It’s not fun.
To give you an idea, these were my blogging startup costs:
Hosting: $106.20
Blog Theme: $129.95
Courses: $320
Akismet Site Protection: $80
TOTAL: $636.15
And this is all just to start. I’ve spent much more since then on things like plug-ins, e-mail service providers, schedulers and additional courses to help my blog grow. And it’s worth it! I know it’s a tough one to swallow but honestly, if you want to make money with this, you must invest.
#2
Don’t Spin Your Wheels
Instead of wasting your precious time searching online for free information on how to start a blog, you’re so much better off to start with the pros rather than re-invent the wheel (because it will feel like that if you try to go it alone – believe me, I tried, and failed miserably.)
Before investing into some quality courses, I wasted 3 full months just scouring through Google for anything I could find on “How to Start a Blog.”
Don’t be like me. Start things off on the right foot so that you can set things up quickly and efficiently and then focus on what we all want to get out of blogging – making an income right away!
I have two suggestions to help with this:
- The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog – This is offered by ProBlogger, a wonderful blogging community full of blogging tips and tricks. And guess what? This is a free resource! Yes that’s awesome, but I caution you, it’s not nearly as comprehensive as option 2.
- Launch Your Blog Biz – This course is offered by a couple of regular people (Alex and Lauren) who have nailed this blogging thing! To give you an idea, they’ve made over $150,000 in the month of July ALONE. Insane right? So the reason I’d suggest this over option one is that it goes way more in-depth.
They cover everything from starting with the basics of selecting a hosting company, how to set up your domain, selecting the right theme, even how to design a beautiful blog. But most importantly, Alex and Lauren share their secrets on how to create amazing content that people love and share. This is the difference between option 1 and 2. With option 2, you’ll understand how to write about things that your viewers would love to hear to get that traffic ball rolling!
In addition to this, Alex and Lauren even cover a bit of affiliate marketing, social media tips, email marketing and the list goes on! Lots of goodies here to help a newbie successfully launch a blog. I think I’ve made my point.
#3
Don’t Freeze
In the wise words of Okoye from Black Panther (if you haven’t seen it yet, watch it) “don’t freeze.”
What I’m trying to say here is don’t waste your time on things that won’t benefit your blog.
For example, after I wrote my first blog post, I repeatedly refreshed the ‘Site Stats’ page in the hopes that someone one would just come read my blog! It’s almost as if I was trying to will it to happen. (If you’ve done this too, here’s a hug for you. I know what that disappointment is like.) But get ready for the tough love… stop checking!
Think about it. What good is refreshing the site stats page going to do for your blog? Yes, checking it once in a while is okay to get an understanding of what posts are doing well and what aren’t but if you’re just refreshing that page, wishing for someone to come by and read your blog, stop. It’s not going to make them come any faster.
Instead, spend your time researching what you should write next with the tips that Alex and Lauren share in Launch Your Blog Biz, and get typing!
#4
They Don’t Just Come
This one hit me hard when I first started blogging.
Okay so here’s what happened. I had my website on the “coming soon” feature for waaayy too long. See, I wanted to make sure everything was perfect before sharing my blog with the world. The thing is, it doesn’t work like that.
After about two weeks of initially setting up my blog, I had about 5 blog posts ready to go. I was so proud! I turned off the “coming soon” feature and posted my first blog post and then waited… and waited… and waited… After two more weeks I had all five of my blog posts up but yet no one was coming… AT ALL.
This is actually how I felt… Hopefully it made you chuckle a bit too.
Literally, the only person reading my blog was my mom. Shout out to my mom!
So the lesson here is, don’t expect people to come right away. It’s not going to happen (sorry for the tough love again but it’s true).
Google takes time to recognize your blog as a trusted source. I’ve been blogging for a few months now and my posts still don’t show up in Google. I think my best post is on page two. The rest are lost in the Google nothingness, well at least until I gain more recognition.
If you do want the traffic to come right away though, there are some wonderful resources that can help. My absolute favourite is the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche Course. Guess who it’s by? Yup, those lovely people who made over $150,000 in July. This is the tool they used to start exploding their blog traffic and now that I’ve completed the course, I can honestly say it works.
I’ve had some pins go viral because of what I’ve learned in this course and I’ve been able to drive thousands of people to my blog because of it. Just like this pin:
I think this mistake is pretty clear. Don’t expect people to come right off the bat. But if you want to start getting traffic right away, give Pinterest Traffic Avalanche a try. It’s what I used to go from 0 to 5,000 monthly views within the first couple months of finishing the course. It’s only been month four since then and I expect this month to be over 10,000 views!
#5
Don’t Slow Down!
Okay, I’m going to share a little bit more than I should here but the trick to starting out with blogging is to keep up the pace! A lot of pro bloggers suggest writing at least one post per week. Don’t. Write two instead and continue to write two for as long as you can.
My mistake was that I was writing two posts per week for the first little while and then dropped down to one and then a couple of weeks with none at all.
I was on vacation! I didn’t want to be working! But, the thing is, I should have written few posts ahead of time and set up the scheduler to post these as well as my Pinterest Pins while I was away.
As a result of me just dropping the blog for two weeks, I lost almost all the traffic I had worked so hard to gain the month before.
See what June looks like? So sad… But, now that I’ve shared my tip with you on how to avoid it completely, we’re good to finish up!
SUMMARY
Blogging isn’t all that difficult if you take these mistakes and turn them into tools. The key things we covered here today are:
- Expect that it will cost money to start a blog if you intend to make money.
- Don’t spin your wheels trying to re-invent the wheel. Trust in the pros because they’re making that money for a reason. Courses like Launch Your Blog Biz really help you do just that.
- Don’t waste your time just checking the stats – it won’t make the visitors come any faster.
- People won’t just magically appear and read your blog. You have to work for the traffic and resources like Pinterest Traffic Avalanche can help achieve that much faster than the time it will take for Google to recognize you.
- Don’t think you can just write a few posts and then kick back and relax. It doesn’t work that way. In order to keep things moving forward, try to post at least twice a week.
I hope these 5 things I wish I knew before starting my blog can help you in your blogging journey. It really is a lot of fun when you start to see the traffic and money coming in. Honestly though, it took me way too long. I didn’t see my first $10 until my fourth month blogging. But there’s no reason your blog has to start off that way! Here’s to your blogging success and thanks so much for stopping by.