4 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Blogging

I would’ve found success much faster if I had known these 4 things

Blogging can potentially make you more money than an average day job. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and make a Google search right now. Better still, go to YouTube, and you’ll even find a bunch of bloggers giving a tour of the new mansion they just bought.

I’d like to believe their intention is to inspire people to take blogging seriously and give it a shot as a full-time career. Unfortunately, though, such stunts fail to offer an authentic picture of life as a blogger. Because it only tells you what the destination looks like, and not the things they should know about the journey itself.

So, let’s get one thing out in the open first. Blogging is not a “get rich quick scheme”. In fact, there’s a reasonable probability that you won’t make any serious money out of it in the first year.

I’m not trying to scare you off. It’s just a small effort of letting you know what to expect. I don’t want any of you taking the leap of faith for the money only. It’s a serious profession that demands years of hard work and commitment.

Nonetheless, there are things that you should know, to at least speed up the process a little.

It took me five years to start making a decent full-time income from my blog. Today, when I look back on my journey as a blogger, I see a bunch of things that wasted a lot of my time. Things that if I had known earlier, could have contracted the time it took for me to find success in blogging.

So, today I’ll talk about the top four things I wish I knew when I started blogging. I want you to know them upfront in hopes that these will help streamline your experience as an aspiring blogger.

1. Blogging Isn’t Free

When I started blogging back in 2012, I bought into the idea that it wouldn’t demand an investment other than my time. Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s true to some extent. Especially now, with platforms like Medium, you can surely start without putting your money on the line.

But it was only later that I realized if I wanted to make serious cash out of blogging, I’d have to loosen the purse strings a little.

Look, monetizing your blog will literally go down the gutter if you fail to generate consistent and sustainable traffic to it. And you can’t conjure traffic out of thin air. It’s a carefully orchestrated process of Search Engine Optimization that does it for you.

I understand that there’s a bunch of free SEO tools on the internet that you can use as a beginner. But the popular ones are usually offered as premium services. And for a good reason.

Take keyword research, for example. The amount of insight that premium tools offer — from keyword variations to monthly search volumes and the competition on each of your chosen keyword — is not only comprehensive but also more accurate as compared to the free tools.

Now, I’m not recommending buying a premium membership for a bunch of these tools on day 1. Stick to the free ones for the first few months and get a hold of how to use these tools to rank higher on Google.

But once you’ve got it, don’t be too afraid (like me) and take years to buy the premium services. Again, they cost you money for a reason. Sparing some cash for the premium SEO tools is the right decision to get better, more enhanced, and timely results from your blog.

2. It’s Not All About Writing

As a beginner, I thought of blogging as simply writing on the internet. A misconception that I clung to for well over a year — during which time two of my blogs turned to dust.

For effective monetization of your blog, it is crucial that your readers are genuinely interested in what you’ve written. Search Engine Optimization can only do so much. It can drive traffic to your blog, but they’ll stay on your page only if your blog post is reader-centric.

If they lose interest and navigate away from your website in a few seconds, it’ll result in a higher bounce rate for your blog. Consequently, Google will be reluctant in ranking your page higher on a relevant search the next time — because it knows that readers don’t usually find content on your blog any useful.

Point being, your readers land on your blog in hopes of finding something valuable, useful, or relatable. They’re not there to read your personal journal. Sure, you can write about your pet dog. As long as it has a takeaway that generally applies to dog owners.

If you’re writing a bland story on what you and your pet had for lunch today, you could summon the spirits of J. K. Rowling or J. R. R. Tolkien, and still, no one would be interested in it. Because neither you nor your dog is that important, I’m sorry.

In other words, blogging is not about putting words on the screen. If you wish to make money out of it, you’ll have to commit to providing value to your readers in return. Whatever you do, don’t treat your blog as a personal journal.

3. Google AdSense Isn’t Worth It

Much like an average beginner, the first thing that popped in my head when I was looking for ways to monetize my blog, was “Google AdSense”.

But the problem with AdSense is that its pay per click is so low that you could generate thousands of clicks per day via your blog, and yet won’t make anything more than a few pennies.

Unfortunately, though, since AdSense is backed by Google, I was confident for the first year and a half that it was the way to go. So confident that I didn’t even bother looking into alternatives.

To all the aspiring bloggers, my message is to remember that AdSense is old news. There was a time when it was the only way at your disposal to monetize your blog. But that time is long gone. Now, there’s an endless list of premium ad networks that can be used in place of Google AdSense to generate exponentially higher income from your blog every month.

For a rough estimate, premium ad networks can pay up to seven times as much as Google AdSense. If I had only explored such alternatives, I could have increased my income by several folds in the first 18 months.

But here’s the fun part. There’s an even better alternative for monetizing your blog than premium ad networks.

It’s called “Affiliate Marketing”. It’s how you start making big bucks as a blogger. In the past three years since I got into affiliate marketing, I have nearly tripled my monthly income from blogging.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to maximize your earnings from affiliate marketing as a blogger, you can read one of my older blog posts here:

Simply put, there are much better ways to monetize your blog and increase your income than Google AdSense.

4. You Don’t Have to Limit Yourself to a Niche

I understand that a lot of gurus recommend finding your niche in blogging and sticking to it until your last breath. But I beg to differ.

I started with a niche-focused blog in 2012 and committed to it for two years. Then I switched to an open blog that didn’t push me into staying within a niche — and here’s what I discovered.

Sticking to a single topic is usually more stressful. If you can write about a world of things, coming up with a title is not a big deal. But once you force yourself into thinking of a new title in the same niche every day, things get dramatically more challenging.

On top of that, running a personal blog is destined to get painstakingly monotonous and boring after a while, if you stick to a single niche. Ultimately, it starts to feel like a chore to produce quality content around the same topic. This is when procrastination comes knocking on your door.

The outcome? You were already struggling with quality, and now you’re going to take a hit on quantity as well.

When experts recommend finding your niche in blogging, the idea is to align your writing with your passion. But here’s the thing — passions change.

I might be thrilled about writing on freelancing today. But perhaps a year from now, I’d be more excited to explore the health and lifestyle niche instead. And then what am I going to do? Start over with a new, niche-focused blog?

Running an open blog is not only more convenient but also entertaining. It offers an avenue for you to write about whatever it is that popped in your head on any given day. Consequently, your blog posts flow more naturally, resulting in higher engagement from the readers.

Summon the Gods of Patience

Honestly, the first couple of years were quite frustrating for me as a blogger. I was clocking more hours than an average day job, for an income that didn’t even cover the monthly rent. The unsolicited advice from my friends and family to quit and get a “real” job didn’t help either.

It took me years to realize that blogging takes time to pick up. But once you’ve got it going on, your financial growth could potentially be much faster than what you’d expect out of a regular job.

In other words, hitting the milestone of $1000 monthly income from your blog is the real test of your patience. But jumping from $1000 to $2000 a month isn’t going to take nearly as long. If I had known that, I could’ve easily avoided fits of anxiety and frustration that stemmed from a comparison of how my friends were making more money at a regular job, despite clocking fewer hours than me.

So, there you go. The above-mentioned were my top picks of things that I wish I knew when I started blogging. I know you have the potential to succeed in blogging. I just wanted to share what I’ve learned over the years in hopes of helping you find success much quicker than I did.