The $250 Advice for New Bloggers
It’s not another clickbait. Two years ago, Ramsay Taplin of Blog Tyrant announced a $250 dollar prize for the comment suggesting best advice for new bloggers. I wrote a 2000+ word piece. I won that prize. What you’re going to read is the same comment, although slightly tuned. Hopefully, these tips still work.
Here’s everything I wish I knew back then, 4 years ago — because that taught me to deal with what’s coming. To prepare.
As a beginner, the advice you need doesn’t have to be much technical. You’ll learn the important aspects as you go on. So maybe what you need to know right now is simple, some truths.
I’ll sum up everything I know, based on which you can start and expand a brand new blog. Whatever I’ll share here is going to be genuine and based on my experiences.
As this post is more about “what advice would you give to those who are starting out,” I’d avoid going into the details.
Starting a new blog? Here’s what you need to know (or rather what I would tell myself if I were to start again from scratch)
▮1. START▮
This is what matters the most. I’m saying this because I know many of you won’t. I’ve been there and I might not have started. Hopefully, I did.
I started my current blog from my college library, wrote posts on a cellphone, and edited my posts at internet cafés because I didn’t have an Internet connection at home. I started with whatever I had and whatever I knew. Not starting made me uneasy.
I was the first blogger I knew.
Later on, I purchased my domain name with three months of my savings. I also purchased a laptop with the money I earned from blogging and started a couple of other self-hosted blogs.
What I’ve learned is that starting is the time when you can screw up — no one notices you. You can experiment. You can take time to figure out things. Starting early killed my assumptions and gave me enough time to learn and get my feet wet.
Start. Anyhow. You can migrate your site to your own-host later or find out ways to earn in the near future. But for now, start.
▮2. DO WHAT YOU FEEL YOU SHOULD DO▮
Some things work. Some don’t. Didn’t Google start Orkut and fail?
You find what works for you only by doing.
What matters ultimately is trying.
I started a personal blog. I tried affiliate marketing. I published a book. I did whatever I thought might bring a change. Most of whatever I did didn’t bring me any benefits, but it taught me. I got some experiences which I know paid-off.
What is it that you love doing? Do it often. Create videos. Start a podcast. Dare to be awful. Let it suck. You only get better as you go on creating more.
Don’t let your fear or hunger for perfection get into your way to creating something great, or something average.
▮3. DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS▮
I thought I would never get published on The Huffington Post. I sent a pitch. It got accepted. I got published on The Huffington Post.
That’s how online success works in most cases. You can only try. You won’t know whether your book or product will succeed unless you create it and sell it. Leave the rest, your first duty is to get over your assumptions and actually do things.
Will someone read your blog? You won’t know unless you start one. Will someone click on those ads? Try it to find out.
▮4. DON’T PANIC ABOUT THE STUFF EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT▮
Should you call-to-action button be green or orange? Is it really worth thinking while you’ve just begun? Not much.
The internet is overflowing with posts about blogging. Each one seems to make sense, but you don’t need to understand all of them. Follow a few blogs you love and work hard.
It’s quite easy to feel like a fool. Your site isn’t fast, you don’t own a premium theme, you don’t use the canonical tag — sure those things matter, but not much at this stage.
You’ve just begun. You’ll ultimately learn and get a chance to go big and actually need to do all those things. You have time.
You might soon own a premium theme, hire someone to do the SEO, or actually need to reconsider the color of that call-to-action button. But till then, go on, try your best and don’t panic about random things.
▮5. LEARN▮
You’ll suck. Everyone does. Don’t stress that — you can learn.
I didn’t know how to punctuate. I acted smart and pretended to be an expert. I don’t do that anymore. I deleted my first blog post a few months back because it embarrassed me.
I read and learn. Not due to some obligation — I love doing it. Now I’m better than what I used to be. I improved. It’s a simple rule that works equally for everyone.
Similarly, I’ve observed a lot of bloggers thrive and grow. They’ve learned their lessons. We all do. If your incompetency makes you feel worried, then learn as much as you can to overcome it.
Once you learn, you somehow become capable of gaining what you want. Increased traffic, better content or something else — you become capable of working on that.
▮6. IT’S NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU GAIN BUT WHAT YOU BECOME▮
Did I earn a six-figure income? Did I become an online thought leader? No, partly because I didn’t start with that intention. I didn’t know that blogging could be used to earn when I started.
You might land in the crowd that doesn’t earn much. So will that mean you had wasted your time on a useless attempt? No.
What I’ve realized that the word ‘blogging’ itself can give you lots of stories to tell. And when you do things in life that give you stories worth telling, you don’t regret them.
Blogging brought me my first paycheck. It got me my first job offer. It allowed me to have the courage to work on my passion for writing and helping businesses. It taught me the value of hard work and persistence.
I’ve been doing it with love for four years now without gaining much, and I can still admit that every bit of effort I’ve put in it has been worth it.
While doing all this — blogging and online stuff — I changed. I can’t explain in exact words, because you sort of need to live the thing, but it’s a feeling all bloggers share. I don’t fear to fail. I take my chances. I share more. I’m overcoming my insecurities, even if slowly.
I’m a better person. Now I understand what it means to take an initiative and work honestly. I’m glad that I wrote that first post about from my library. If your passion and love for the craft get you into blogging, you’ll be happy.
▮7. GIVE BACK▮
Serve however you can. Teach what you know. Hire some new bloggers to financially support them when they’re struggling.
If you ever start getting something out of your efforts, give back to your community. Spend your money on some noble causes. Be grateful!
★ SOME GENUINE ADVICE YOU CAN USE RIGHT AWAY ★
✔ Comment and guest post only where you’re valued. Don’t let yourself get lost in a place where no one cares about your existence.
✔ Do what you can. Ask others to help you out when you can’t do anything. If you cannot afford to make someone do it for you, learn it until you can do it.
✔ Be the first one to start a conversation. Be genuine, help others and focus on mutual growth. That’s your shortcut to having better relations.
✔ Don’t fear to ask people to help you out, but don’t be too pushy either. Do your hard work, share it, and leave the rest to your followers.
✔ Experiment and do more of what works. Quit putting efforts in what isn’t working for you. It’s a simple rule to reflect and grow faster.
✔ Occasionally invest your time in doing small things that bring bigger changes — such as, repurposing content, SEOing and connecting with people.
✔ Be where your followers are. Share where your followers are. Email, Facebook, LinkedIn — there’s always one platform that does the job better.
✔ Batch your tasks — do them all the small things at once. Give more time to writing and creating content. Don’t let small jobs become obstacles.
✔ Develop some rules and be honest with yourself. One post a week, five hundred words a day — whatever your rule is, be consistent while following it.
✔ Teach what you know. Share what you’ve learned. Create what you have fun creating. You’ll grow at a faster pace this way.
✔ Be authentic, have a perspective, express an opinion, show up your personality — this is the right way to share a story and make people fall for you.
✔ Be honest. Your self-esteem won’t get hurt, you’ll doubt yourself less if you’re honest, and you won’t become vulnerable to getting exposed. You’ll be able to be yourself.
✔ Listen to your instincts. They’ll guide you and remind you when you aren’t working hard enough or when the design of your site sucks. Act on them. It’s rare that you would go wrong when you follow your instincts.
★ WAYS TO CREATE BETTER CONTENT (AND SOME SIMPLIFIED SEO) ★
✔ Use versatile content forms — videos, graphics, and words. Length doesn’t matter as long as your content is easy to consume.
✔ Do a quick search about the topic you’re going to write about. Write something better than all the articles that show up on the first page.
✔ Make sure that you use alt tags, specify description and caption and compress images using optimization when uploading images.
✔ Before you post, add the read more tag, include relevant tags, specify a category, add the links, format the content, check for grammatical errors — only then hit publish.
✔ Use plugins to solve problems. Switch to alternative solutions when plugins cause trouble.
✔ Don’t plagiarize content. Don’t use images from Google in your posts. That’s an online offense and isn’t a right practice for your blog either.
✔ Avoid getting manipulated by the noise online. And dare to preserve your identity and style amid the chaos.
✔ Write for yourself. Write for your readers. Write for search engines. That’s the only perfect balance there is.
✔ Don’t edit the first draft while writing. Edit it several times after you’re done. Publish after you’ve polished it.
✔ Work hard, be productive and keep implementing ways to grow — if there’s something else you need to know, you’ll know it if you’re curious. This is important — be curious.
✔ Become an asset of importance. Your chances of growth are better when learning is a greater priority for you than gaining. Do useful work and become somebody people would want to work with.
★ TOOLS AND RESOURCES ★
✅ Image creation — Canva and PowerPoint.
✅ Icons and Vector Images — Flaticons.com and Freepik.com.
✅ Public domain images — Pexels.com and Pixabay.com.
✅ GIFs and Memes — Memegenerator.net, Giphy, and GifCam.
✅ Free Resources — Click here to see 300+ public domain resource sites.
✅Blogging platforms — See this list to know about all ways to start a blog.
★ FINAL TIP ★
Hold on.
Survive.
If your blog is really going to be important to you, start with a firm decision of not quitting. In the end, it’s only those who don’t give up who are likely to keep blogging and set an example (I know it sounds cheesy but it’s true).
Darren Rowse and Brian Clark blogged even when everyone else predicted that blogging was going to perish. John Saddington publishes a blog post every day since years (blogging wasn’t even a buzzword then). Ramsay Taplin worked as a cleaner before he started his business.
It takes time. It can be disappointing. Yet, it’s worth it. If you’re passionate, you’ll able to go on regardless of the outcomes.
★ tl;dr? ★
Focus on the fundamentals.
Fundamentals are the elements that are common among all types of blogs. They aren’t time-sensitive. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s 2019 or 2050, some things won’t change.
Being audience-centric, creating evergreen content and change itself is a part of those fundamentals. That stuff doesn’t go out of style.
★ STRATEGIES I’LL BE IMPLEMENTING ★
Who am I kidding? I’ve kept things simple for my blog. It a bare-bones site flashing some words, that’s all.
I haven’t ever earned directly from my blog. Rather, my blog served as my portfolio, an experiment to improve my writing, and as a platform to express myself. Whatever I’ve earned indirectly has been through writing and doing small jobs for businesses.
Although I implement a few tactics, creating content remains my priority over doing anything else. I know it’s not the right approach, but I’m unable to get over that (or maybe I don’t want to).
It’s doing well and I feel grateful each time I ship an article — that makes me happy. It isn’t a business thing. If yours is, you might actually want to get your hands on the hardcore side, like monetization tools, lead generation, and other things.
Phew.
Long story short: is blogging worth it? Absolutely yes.
And I’m not adding an affiliate link. But if this post has helped you, you can click here to buy me a coffee (this is the first time I’m doing this, so surprise me maybe). All the best and conquer it!
