Advice for New Bloggers To Grow Your Blog

I can still remember the day back in 2008 that I sat down and wrote my very first post for this blog.  In blogging years, I’m a senior citizen.  Back then, making money on your blog was not a thing.  If it was, I was blissfully unaware of it.  I blogged because I liked writing.  I also liked connecting to other women sharing the same experiences I was. In the spirit of learning from my experiences, I thought I’d share some advice for new bloggers from a veteran.

Advice for New Bloggers

Be prepared for a slow start

I can long remember the days of checking my blog stats every day when I just started out and seeing that I had 25 visitors, and that was on a good day.   Other bloggers had number in the thousands and I had 10.  Or 20.  But I kept plugging along and it suddenly started to climb to 50 visitors, then 100….then on and on.  And your traffic will, too.  It just takes time and that’s a hard thing to deal with if you are impatient like I was.

Find some other bloggers to learn from

This is my number one piece of advice for new bloggers.  There are literally thousands of blogging groups to join on Facebook and all over the internet.  Back when I first started, Facebook wasn’t a big deal.  You had to actually search online for blogger forums and you would be lucky if you really found one where people were helpful.  I did eventually find a wonderful blogging tribe and I have learned so much from these people.  You might feel like you need to invest in expensive blogging courses to learn the tricks of the trade, but all you really need is some seasoned bloggers to learn from.

Don’t play the comparison game

This is such a hard one to do.  I can promise you that comparing yourself to other bloggers you admire is such a waste of time.  There will always be bloggers with a better way with words, a better blog design, better traffic, better income from their blog, better better better.  But guess what?  The reason people find and read YOUR blog is that YOU had something different and of value to offer them.

Be Easy on Yourself

I can remember many years of thinking I had to keep up with the latest blog theme and the latest way to write a post and do other things.  It was exhausting.  It’s perfectly fine to keep up with what’s new in blogging, but when it just makes you feel bad because you don’t have the time or the budget to keep up, then that’s a problem.  Blogging should be something you enjoy, not something that makes you crazy.  As long as you enjoy it, just do YOUR thing and keep your head down and work.  People will start to notice, I promise.

The money will come and the money will go

So back when bloggers did start making money with their blog from ads, of course this got me all excited!  I slapped up some Adsense ads and just waited for the money to come rolling in.  And then it didn’t.  And a couple of years after that, brands started figuring out that real people made the best influencers, and so they started paying bloggers for sponsored posts and social media shares.

Earning Money

I had some very lucky breaks.  2013 was my biggest year blogging, and I earned $13,000.  It also REALLY sucked at tax time because I worked a full time job as well.  In the past couple of years, I have only done a handful of sponsored posts and social media shares and this is mainly due to time and health constraints, but also because there are so many blogs now that sponsored posts have become highly targeted to certain demographics. The money will come and probably very slowly at first, if that’s what you want.  You will have good months, great months, and terrible months with your blog income.  It’s very unpredictable I guess is what I’m trying to say.

Work smarter, not harder

I can remember writing a post, then spending a long time trying to share those posts all over the place.  And then one day I took a hard look at my traffic and realized that only one of those social networks really sends me any traffic besides regular search traffic.  Now, I certainly didn’t stop sharing my posts to those other places, but I did stop wasting so much time trying to entertain and engage others in conversation in those places where I was not seeing any results.

Advice for New Bloggers

I know it’s hard starting out.  I can imagine it’s even tougher starting out now compared to when I first started.  It’s also easy to get discouraged when you see post after post from people claiming they’ve made $10,000 their first month blogging.  My advice for new bloggers?  Learn all you can.  Read all you can about earning money through blogging.  Keep writing.  I know some very influential bloggers in my blogging niche and have learned from watching and having conversations with them and one thing I can tell you for absolute sure is that building a blog as big as you want it takes time, and sometimes years.  If you can stay in it for the long haul, you’ll get there.

Photo: Plush Design Studio