11 Lessons I Have Learned While Doing Blogging For Over 4 Years
#3 You gotta publish every single day. You make money because you produce content.
Blogging is a journey. Making money writing online is hard. In today’s modern age, everyone has the ability to produce content, still, according to a theory, just 1% of the users on the Internet produce content. If you are producing content online, congratulations, you are already at the top 1%
I started blogging during my college days, no it wasn’t my passion but in my opinion, it was the only way to make money and start something on the side. For over a year, I didn’t make anything and wasn’t consistent either.
Years have been passed, I always believed in not putting all the eggs in one basket and this is the reason, I have built over 3 passive income streams. When I said, Passive income, it means that I will not work on these streams for a month and it will still generate that much amount money for me.
You are interested to start blogging or already doing it. Following are some of the mistakes I did that I don’t want my younger self didn’t commit.
1. Not sticking with a niche:
This was one of my biggest mistakes up to date. In Blogging, I have made more money but I failed to recognize the importance of writing about a single topic. You do a mistake and learn but it hurt you so much that you waste all the resources on articles that don’t have a centralized purpose. Sticking with a niche and reaching to the top influencers could help you generate more money and build a loyal foundation of your readers.
2. Just relying on Google AdSense:
If you are Blogging, you might have known Google AdSense. There was a time I was making $100 a day on my Blog just because of Google AdSense. But, I failed to recognize two things;
- That adding Google AdSense ad units could affect your page loading speed. The more time does your page takes to load, the higher the chances that a user might click on the “Go back” option.
- That there are more ways to make even more money with a single source of traffic without using Google AdSense.
The Internet has been evolved so much. Now, there are hundreds of ways to make money through your blog. I have enlisted 15 ways to make money from your WordPress blog which you can explore for finding blog monetization ideas.
3. You gotta publish every single day
Your blog is your business.
You gotta wake up every day and publish every day on your blog or do some marketing. There are case studies that have shown that the more stories you publish, the higher the chances that you will get more traffic. Making money online is hard and when you want to make money through writing, it is the hardest.
That’s why you have to publish almost every single day. I was publishing one story a week and this totally makes my blog goes dead. Then, I started writing on my blog continuously things gotta change.
The lesson here is “When you publish more articles, the more search results in your stories get displayed and the higher the chances of getting readers”
Quora is a question and answer based platform. If you are an active Google search user, you might have encountered this website once. Why? because the users generate a lot of content there.
Till now, I am trying to publish over 4 articles a day on different writing platforms.
4. Blogging was changing but I didn’t get the Point
I was writing on my blog but totally missing the point of another writing platform. It was a mistake on my side by just focusing on one platform. Medium, Quora, Substack, YouTube, and Twitter were some of the amazing platforms that I have missed publishing my writing on.
If you are just new to Blogging, start writing on multiple platforms because this will help you reach a lot of your target audience and on the side, you will make more money.
5. Choosing WordPress
WordPress is Indeed a great content management system but with great things come great problems. When using a Plug-in on WordPress it might have problems related to page loading, the impact on how your posts look like and it might cause a security issue in some cases.
I choose WordPress and go to the rabid hole. Now, there are other great content management systems where you can start a blog and use it to manage your blog and the content. Some examples include; Wix, Ghost, etc.
6. Choosing that a blog hosting company that sucks:
A blogger might recommend you to use any *famous* hosting company but he will pay $500 a month for getting a VPS hosting. This is the problem with Internet hosting companies. They pay $65 per signup to Bloggers but give you very poor services. The best thing to do is to research everything about a hosting company before paying for that. Choose hosting companies based on two things; server uptime and server speed.
Don’t go for shared hosting as this is one of the worst ways to handle your blog content. Shared hosting is cheap but you have problems with server speed which is because they serve your site is hosted has also other sites.
7. Giving too much time to Blogging:
I was a student when I started blogging. I was making a good amount of money and the entrepreneurial thing impacted my studies. But, I was wrong. They say; once the time is gone, it is gone. My whole focus was on blogging and how I can grow my blog. The fun fact is; you can still blog and attend good grades.
Stop giving too much time to it. Do it as a side hustle.
8. Writing for just for the search engines:
It is good to write a title and subtitle that is optimized for the search engines but if you are writing for the search engine, that is not good for the long-term. Write as you are writing for your audience, deliver quality and wait for the results. Sometimes, you miss the biggest factor when you are writing for the search engines and that is “user experience”
9. Blogging isn’t a one-night stand
I have taught Blogging and marketing to over 30 people and they waste dozens of hours but just one of them was consistent and make money, the rest of them just leave it as it is. From that point onward; I learned one lesson “Never teach anything for free because people take it a something of no value”
The next lesson for you is; Blogging is a long-term game. It could take you months and in some cases, years to build something that generates substantial money for you.
10. Your Blog is a business
I never thought of my blog as Business. I taught it as a writing platform where I should publish content. Then, if you have a blog, you can hire a writer, manage the content, hire people who could market it, and do other stuff that could help you promote your blog.
In any business, there is a department for every activity. When your blog is making $1000 a month, you should then consider creating more content by hiring writers (Production), pay people to make backlinks, and market it in the right communities (Marketing)
11. The ability to relate with people
This is the hardest thing to conquer. You have to write so that people could relate to you. Some movies are way famous even they are low budget, the reason is; they write a better screenplay through which every individual could place himself. The same thing could be applied to writing. In Blogging, when people related to you, they share your content, they want to express their thoughts and help you succeed.
These are the 11 lessons I have learned during the course of my blogging journey.
What lessons you have learned while writing or blogging online? Share it in the response section.
