20 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Blog | Things No One Tells You About Blogging Tips

When I first started blogging, there was a lot of stuff that I didn’t consider and a ton of things I wish I knew before starting a blog. There are a lot of things that should be focused on when it comes to blogging. There are things that people don’t tell you about blogging that are overlooked and crucial to know if you want to be a successful blogger.

So today I am going to share with you guys a couple of things that I wish I knew before starting a blog and I hope that this will benefit you guys!

This post contains affiliate links. See Disclaimer here.

 

You need to know the reason why you are starting a blog.

Are you starting a blog to make money? Create a plan of action. Are you starting a blog to share your ideas or to help others? Start researching keywords related to your ideas so they can be seen. You need to set goals for your blog and do as much research as possible to reach those goals.

Related :  16 Reasons Why You Should Start A Blog

Blogging involves a lot of research.

As I just mentioned, you have to stay learning and researching when it comes to being a blogger. Things are steadily growing and changing. You need to stay knowledgeable if you want to grow as a blogger. I probably read at least 50 different articles a day as I search for information to help me blog better. It becomes natural overtime to read and do research. You can even invest in books or online courses to help you grow as well. Learn about SEO, social media marketing, writing methods, and blogging tools. You need to stay learning about the ways you can better your blog and your process of blogging. Remember to work smarter so you don’t have to work harder. It’s all about being beneficial and efficient without stressing yourself out.

If you want to make money blogging, you need an actual plan of how to make consistent money.

I feel like so many people go into blogging with the thought of “I’m going to make money from Google Adsense.” It’s just how a lot of people viewed becoming a Youtuber at one point, but Adsense doesn’t pay that much. A blogger could have 50,000 people coming to their blog every month and only make $200 from Adsense. It all depends on the keywords you use, the articles you receive traffic from, the advertisers, and the interactions with the ads.

When you’re a blogger, you need to assess that there is a lot of different ways you can make money online. There are blog networks that offer sponsorship programs. You can sell your own products. You can make money through social media as well. You can use affiliate networks to make money. You can become a virtual assistant. You could become a freelance writer. There are different ad companies you can use. Honestly you could even offer direct advertising on your blog to other bloggers or brands. You need to come up with multiple streams of income if you’re a blogger so that you can consistently have income coming in. So create a plan of action. Set goals and work towards them.

 

You need to schedule your blog posts months in advance.

If you don’t schedule your blog posts in advance, you will struggle trying to figure out what to post next. You also will probably go weeks or even months without updating your blog. Make a list of blog posts to create and how often you’ll post. Try to keep up with it. I personally will schedule an alarm in my phone the night before and the day that I am supposed to post so that I know what I should be posting or what I should be working on that day. You have to always be aware of what blog post ideas you want to work on for the month so you know what content to create. Try to schedule out blog posts at least 3 months in advance.

Related : 7 Ways to Find Inspiration for Blog Post Ideas

 

You need to create a separate email for your blog and you need to check it regularly.

This is absolutely necessary. I didn’t make a separate email for a blog in the past and I ended up overlooking important emails which made me miss out on opportunities. When you buy your domain, create a similar named Gmail account for it and make that the primary account for anything blog related.

 

You miss out on a TON of traffic, consistent views, and money if you don’t have a mailing list.

If you don’t have a mailing list, you are messing up.  A mailing list is your number one way to keep up consistent traffic to your website. A mailing list is also for the dedicated readers who will most likely end up either buying items or just genuinely connecting with you. Create a mailing list now!

 

You are going to have to spend some money to run your blog legitimately and to make money from it.

I am all about saving as much money as possible. I went 5 years without paying money for a blog and how much did I make? Almost $100 from ads from running a blog on blogspot aka blogger. I also did get some sponsorships, but not too many. A self-hosted blog is better than running a free blog. I used both Blogger and WordPress for free at different points of time. I used blogger for 5 years and there was always the concern of whether Blogger would delete my blog without notice as well as Blogger itself being closed down at some point since Google doesn’t really pay it too much attention. Blogger also has a lot of spammers so you would definitely have to be careful of that.

As for WordPress . com, you can’t use a lot of the Plugin tools that are beneficial for growth as an actual blogger. I did gain more traffic with WordPress from real people, but you also can’t add ads on WordPress .com. So Google Adsense and any other ad service is out unless you’re paying for the most expensive WordPress . com plan which you could pay for, but you don’t really own your blog. You can’t connect to Google Analytics either which a lot of blog networks and brands who do sponsorships need in order to work with you.

I would suggest buying hosting and then setting up your blog through WordPress.org. I recently did this and it is the best decision I ever made because I am full control of my blog now.

I think the only way you could probably make money with running a free blog is by offering multiple products that you have for sale online, but you do run the risk of having your website deleted since you don’t actually own your website.

You can’t just share a blog post only 3 times and expect to gain a lot of traffic from it.

I remember when I first started blogging. I used to promote my content for maybe 2 days and then not promote it again. I have seen a lot of new bloggers do this where they don’t consistently promote. You need to be consistently promoting your content everywhere. Because this is a newer blog, I try to promote at least 3 of my posts daily. However, as I grow my content I would like to market at least 30 times a day. I set a scheduler in my phone for times to promote on my Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I am doing this until I invest in an actual social media scheduler for all of my social media.

The only social media marketing tool that I use right now is Tailwind for Pinterest which I have been using for almost a year now. I started using it for my other blog and I was able to acquire at least 13,000 unique views monthly from Pinterest alone through scheduling images and blog links through Tailwind. I am hoping to do the same thing for this blog.

If you’re interested in Tailwind, try it for free for 30 days!

 

Commenting on different blogs and websites regularly is a must.

This was honestly my main way to obtain backlinks because it honestly is very hard to obtain backlinks to your website. I try to make a couple of comments every week if possible on websites that discuss relevant content that I am interested in and is relatable to my blog.

 

Keyword research along with SEO is EXTREMELY important if you want people to find you on Google and Pinterest.

When I started off blogging, I didn’t care about keyword research. I eventually learned that it is necessary if you want people to find your content organically. If you don’t use keywords, then it will be extremely hard for your content to show up on Google or any other search engine. Try to also learn as much as possible about SEO and apply what you learn to every blog post you create.

I recommend using Google Keyword and downloading the Keywords Everywhere – Keyword Tool to your browser bar. The both of them make things so much easier and they’re free!

 

You will compare yourself to other bloggers.

This isn’t a surprise, but I didn’t notice how much of a deal this would be. I would see people writing income reports, getting sponsorships, and getting a ton of traffic. I would wonder how they did it and when they would share their tips, I would feel frustrated. You know how someone can share their tips and tricks for something, but you either do it and you don’t receive the same results or you just feel overwhelmed? That was me a lot of times. I eventually learned that if I keep up with promoting myself, creating content that legit benefits others, and engaging with others in general, there is a ton of growth. You can receive that growth too. You just have to be consistent with it.

 

Read and learn as much as possible about Pinterest as well as Tailwind.

So I didn’t start really using Pinterest for my blog until around March last year. I honestly kind of ignored Pinterest because I didn’t see how beneficial it was and I didn’t know how to actually use it to my advantage. I read a few articles about how a lot of bloggers were getting thousands of viewers from Pinterest which was boosting their traffic and I started trying to learn as much as possible about it. Eventually I was able to grow my other blog that was only receiving 1000+ views a month to 13000+ views every month with not too much effort and the help of the scheduler Tailwind. Pinterest was definitely underrated to me and I feel like it can be underrated to a lot of bloggers. As I mentioned before Tailwind helped me schedule content to Pinterest without having to constantly be on it.

I grew my blog traffic rather quickly with Tailwind, in addition to the application of my keyword knowledge. I also grew my Pinterest following from 500 followers to now 8000+ followers in a year and I didn’t have to do follow for follow to reach it (which you would probably have to do with other social media site to gain a following). I would definitely suggest investing in Tailwind if you’re interested in more blog traffic or a following on Pinterest.

Get a free month of Tailwind by signing up using my link here.

I am in the process of creating some Pinterest & Tailwind related content that you guys can check out so that you can also grow your blog’s traffic as well. So stay tuned for that.

 

Reaching out to other bloggers is pretty important.

I am an introvert and I didn’t become actually social online until last year. That is when I noticed a big change. When you converse with others and start conversations with others, you will see an increase in engagement on social media and even your blog. Try to always reach out to bloggers to ask questions or to share content that you think they might like. Just try not to spam them. Spam is never good.

 

Self hosting is one of the best things you can invest in for your blog.

I recall reading a decent amount of blogs and I would try to avoid investing in hosting or any money in my blog because I wanted to save money. I ran a few blogs on blogger for free with just a domain that I purchased, but I came to the realization that I honestly didn’t own my website. Even if you own a domain, you do not own your website completely. This means that Google can easily delete your page. There have been a decent amount of people that have had their blogs deleted. With having a self-hosted site, you are able to dedicate a specific space that you own to your blog and you won’t have to worry about it being in jeopardy. Also with a self-hosted website you can customize it however you want to and it can become as functional as you would like for it to be. You can customize your blog with a high quality responsive theme that is ideal for mobile users as well as computer users. Plus you can use beneficial plug-ins and tools to help your blogging experience and your readers’ experience so much better.

I would suggest using Siteground hosting if you want to make your blog self-hosted. You can get it for as low as $3.95 a month which is an awesome investment considering they will even help you setup your hosting to your blog. If you’re just starting a blog, create a domain and make sure you create it with WordPress.org and not WordPress.com. I made that mistake and it was a hassle for me to fix on my own, but Siteground helped me set it up without any issues.

 

Blog series do much better than independent posts and they interlink better.

What I mean by blog series is let’s say you are writing a review about a specific concealer you are using. You could turn that into a series and write about every concealer you’ve used. Then you could write one other blog posts entitled the best and the worst concealers to spend your money on or you could even split it into two posts. After you post a blog related to another blog you should link back to it within the blog and even go back and link to the newer blog posts in the older ones. Content that connects to each other is the best content in my opinion. Interlinking helps you SEO improve and it can help you rank on search engines.

 

Your family and friends might not support you…or at least not consistently.

When I first started my blog, people thought it was great. They probably looked at my website once and never again. They didn’t really share my blog posts unless they related to them or they were really relevant at the time. They might have shared one post or none at all. The thing you have to understand is that not everyone is going to be interested in the same things and not everyone is going to be pushing your content to promote it for you. It would be nice, but it isn’t something that would naturally happen consistently. However, there are a lot of people all over the world who would be interested in what you have to say. You just have to keep pushing your content out there to social media until you find them and when you find them…. Continue to keep creating more content and marketing it. When you start a blog, you are starting a community when you connect a mailing list and your social media. You are creating a tribe of people to share your content with. It’s okay if your family and friends don’t consistently support you. There are other people who will all over the internet. Never forget that!

 

Write about things people need and care about, but not only what you care about.

I started off blogging about whatever I wanted for years which was fine don’t get me wrong, but it was much harder for me to make money from. I feel like this was mainly because I was blogging about clothes, televisions shows, and making wish lists. However, I do think it was because of the lack of promotion as well. However, blogs with more written content with keywords do tend to do much better in my personal opinion. I should have focused on creating content that people were actually searching for and interested in versus content I was interested in creating that didn’t really have an interesting angle.

 

It takes time to become successful.

I have had a couple of blogs fail in the past and it was mainly because of my perception of everything. I used to feel like I could just start off blogging with doing minimal promotion and that everything will fall into place. When you’re running a blog your success rate depends on a lot of things. Does the topic of your blog have a lot of competition? Do you use keywords? Do you apply SEO techniques? Do you promote it multiple times a week? Do you promote your older posts consistently? What types of methods are you using to make money? Do you diversify the ways in which you will make money? Are you taking online courses or reading up on ways to make your money making methods increase in profits? Do you engage with other bloggers? Is your website responsive? Does your blog look neat? Does it look spammy? Do you spam other people’s websites with your links? There are a lot of things that you need to think about when it comes to running a successful blog and you have to keep all of these things in mind.

 

Blogging can take up a lot of your time.

I have had days where I would start blogging around 7 pm and then I would look up and realize it was 2 am in the morning. Blogging is like playing The Sims sometimes for me. Time goes by super fast once I get really into it and I am focused on it. I also have to mention that when I say blogging I also mean marketing. A lot of my time goes majority to creating images and marketing those images that connect to my blog posts. Actually creating the writing for the blog posts usually doesn’t take too long unless I am doing research or writing something that is super detailed.

 

You don’t need a lot of traffic to make money from your blog.

I have seen some bloggers with only 3000 views a month making a full time income from their blog. It is definitely possible to make money from your blog even if you have don’t have a substantial following. A lot of small bloggers who make money from their websites usually have their own products or services that they sell or they make money based on local sponsorships in their area. Some even just make money from their social media (i. e. Instagram) even if they have only just under 1500 followers.

 

 

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So that concludes this post on things that you should know about blogging. I hope that you guys found this helpful! If you enjoyed this post, then share it on social media.

I hope you guys have a great day!