5 tips from my blogging journey

Blogging is a business, and a difficult one too! Do you know how many bloggers are there in the US? Or the world? The good news is that the competition doesn’t matter and anyone with the right strategies can be a successful blogger. I’ve only been a blogger for five months and am writing this post to share five lessons I’ve learned from my blogging journey so far. So read on about five blogging tips!

Disclaimer: I am considered a brand new blogger and have no experience or affiliation with anyone. I am writing this post to inspire people who are looking into blogging and do not know where to start. This post is in no way a professional or experienced blogger’s advise. This post only includes tips I think anyone who wants to start as a blogger needs to know.

So my blogging journey began in January of this year. I had thought about it briefly in the December winter break and then went to our family trip to Disney World. After returning back, I started writing posts so I had bunch in hand before I published them. Everything went smoothly and I launched my website on January 12. It was an exciting moment: I had 8-10 posts, my blog was launched on BlueHost and my site was ready!

I have heard of successful bloggers making passive income and many more full time bloggers who have quit their 9-5 jobs to give their time to blogging. I work full time as an educator, and love it! I enjoy the summer holiday with kids, and the breaks in between when I get to be home with them. When they were younger, it was very helpful as we didn’t have to find a day care or nanny, since I could always be home with them when the school had a holiday or off day. So for me blogging is my new passion for 2020, and I will see where it takes me. As I mentioned I started my website on Jan 12, 2020 and have come a long way from nothing to something!

Here are my 5 learnings as a new blogger in the last 5 months of blogging-

1. Be ready before you launch your site

Be ready with your blog website name, tag line, theme, logo and few posts before you launch. I have used BlueHost for my website and have been so happy with it. I highly recommend it. Please click on this affiliate link if you want to use BlueHost for only 3.95$ per month at no extra cost to you. I have taken the WP fast launch course and it has helped me tremendously with setting up my blog. Make sure you are using the SSO and needed plug ins as well as widgets. There is so much information and I am still learning as I only use what I need.

You should have minimum of 8-10 posts before making your blog active. Chose your niches and category, after you have decided on a domain name and a tag line. As you may know, my website/ domain name is dawnandhope.com, with the tag line- everyday is a new beginning!

2. Increase your social media presence.

When I was just starting I had to open up two brand new accounts. Yes, I did have a Facebook account for friends and I have been quite active there, but I did not have a Facebook page for my blog. So I made a new page on FB and named it Hopeanddawn blog. You can find my page link here. Second was Pinterest. I had heard about it but never used it. So I opened that account also by the end of January. I can tell you a little secret here that the number of followers on Pinterest doesn’t really matter a lot but it is the number of pins, repins, impressions and the clicks that matter.

I can’t help but share here how my Pinterest statistics and analytics have changed over the last month or so! As of today I have 73K monthly viewers and 81K impressions. I have 73K audience, 2.8K engagements and my top pin (post: 18 reflections after 18 years of marriage) has around 15K impressions followed by the post: 10 ways to support BLM with around 6000 impressions. Please see below my trends changing over weeks, not months.

Aa far as other social media presence, I did have Instagram and Twitter but I was not that active on either one. In one month my Instagram followers increased from 125 to 303 ( May 18 to June 30) and from 50 to 135 in Twitter! The lesson is to post consistently and engage with your audience.

3. Have genuine and relevant content posts in your blog at least weekly.

I know bloggers who post regularly, varying from few times in a week to couple times in a month. But what works for me and I am able to do with ease is having a new post on a weekly basis.

My lifestyle blog has niches of family, self care, travel and educator tips. Since the COVID-19 pandemic most of my posts have been about family but I do love writing about self care, traveling experiences and reflections as an educator through the educator tip category.

It is a great idea to set up email subscriptions as soon as you can. I did mine the first week of launch and started with 25 subscribers. Now I have subscription box as well as pop up for any reader to subscribe when they visit my site.

Other tips include use of key words in your post, making it current and relevant, use of pictures and minimum 1000 words post.

4. Collaborate and connect with other bloggers.

This is a very important and crucial step in becoming a successful blogger! Of course you have your blogging email list and friends who connect with you; but being able to gain insights from other bloggers is pivotal and invaluable. I am part of couple FB blogger group and I connect with them on a daily basis on different social media platforms. Here I need to emphasize the balance- too much of social media interaction can be detrimental to your home/ work balance. So please remember to chose a middle way that works for you. For me since it is summer break and I am home, I am able to give 100% daily but I am sure in August when I start back at school I will have to pull myself out and may be make it 100% 3 times a week or 70% daily:) Will see how that goes, but as of now I am growing and developing so much as a blogger. I am still in the learning stages and just getting started:)

5. Use affiliations and advertisements as early as you can

You really don’t have to wait till you feel you are ready and you have more traffic. Start to monetize your site as early as you can. I learned it late, but you can start monetizing your site from Day 1. So this is my advise for new bloggers to start as soon as you launch. I have Google Adsense and Infolinks on my site, and I haven’t earned much from it but it is a good place to start. Affiliations include Amazon, Sharesale and HP as few examples.

The next step for me is to apply as influencers to show my interest to marketing companies. This will help me promote their products, write reviews and be able to give back to my community.

Summary

In summary blogging takes time, efforts, patience, good content, dedication and commitment. Since recently my blog Dawn and Hope was selected by Feedspot panelist as one of the Top 100 Lifestyle Blogs on the web, I wanted to reflect back on what brought me here:) Check it out here, I am #87!

I am still learning and in no way am I near where I want to be, but I am really excited about how far I have come. Hope my five blogging tips will be helpful to anyone thinking of starting to blog and any new bloggers too.

Dear readers, please share your tips as a blogger and if you have anything else to add to my learnings. I would love to learn and grow with you!