How to Start a Blog – the straight to the point version
There is no shortage of information out there teaching you how to start a blog. There are so many blogs out there that focus on teaching others how to blog. When I started blogging I struggled to find my calling or my niche. I loved learning about blogging so I just started blogging about what I have learned. Even though I knew it was a very saturated niched it is something I love to learn about.
I am no expert for sure but I do know more than the average Joe. When someone can confidently answer any blogging question that is thrown at them, I would consider that person to be an expert on blogging. I can not do that. But I do know someone who can!
She is the reason I have any blog at all, to be honest. See, I had come across this idea to blog from home back in 2008. It was all over my head so I pushed it away and actually got myself signed up for something else that was three times as expensive and three times as hard…I was young and naive.
Then I stumbled across blogging again in 2010. This time I decided to do it even though I was definitely broke (from the first flop). With no money I had no choice but to just read every blog post, I could find on blogging.
How to Start a Mom Blog
I tried and failed at blogging. Then fast forward to 2017 when I came across Suzi and all of her amazing blog posts and products! She was fairly new at the time so her only real product she had was her Blog by Number eBook and Course.
I purchased the course for $37 and it spoke straight to me! It was like she was right there guiding me through it all! Before finding Suzi I even purchased a membership to a different site that got me nowhere but watching very long and boring videos for months.
So needless to say I had tried my fair share of different avenues before finding Suzi.
Suzi now has a bunch of different courses and has really made a big name for herself! She has been featured on many big websites and has helped thousands of others start blogs as well!
She makes over $30,000 a month and was able to retire her husband and now they both blog from home with their three kids. Pretty cool! If you want to check out her course that has helped myself and so many others get started blogging, then click here to head on over to learn more!
But if you aren’t quite to that commitment level and you are looking for a straight to the point answer on getting started blogging then keep on reading!
Hosting
There are really only 3 things you need to start a blog. There is a bunch more to run a blog as a successful business but only three to get started. The first thing you need is hosting. There are free ways out there to start a blog but then you run into issues such as you don’t technically own your blog. If you don’t pay for your own hosting and you choose to go the free route then at any time that site can take your blog down.
I have heard horror stories about bloggers who have built their blogs up for years just for it to be taken down because they were using a free site instead of paying for hosting. Also with those free sites, they don’t usually allow you to monetize your blog which is why most people blog to begin with.
It is just much safer to pay the $3-$5 a month for your blog to be safely hosted and all yours. I use SiteGround to host my blog. It came highly recommended by not just Suzi but many other bloggers I follow and I have been using them since 2017 with no issues! They offer live chat and make life super easy when you need help setting up all the technical stuff for your blog.
Domain Name
Next, you will need a domain name for your blog. The domain name is the URL or web address of your blog. You will most likely what it to be the same as the name of your blog.
SiteGround offers domain name services too so you can bundle those all together or you can purchase it through NameCheap as I do. They seem to have better prices and less hassle at checkout then for example GoDaddy.
This is all completely up to you but either way, to have a blog you for sure have to get a domain name. They run on average about $8-$15. Nothing too crazy.
Install WordPress
Once you have your hosting and domain name all set up and connected (again use the live chat with SiteGround if you need any help) then the last step is to install WordPress. This is the platform bloggers use to actually build their blogs.
At first, WordPress can seem overwhelming but once you get the hang of it, it is really easy to navigate! If you need helping to install WordPress just use that fancy live chat with SiteGround and they can get you taken care of. Otherwise, just go to your cPanel and you can find from there where WordPress is and follow the steps.
That’s It
That’s it! You now officially have a blog! That is not all there is to blogging but that is, in a nutshell, all there is to start a blog. The rest of the process is much more detailed but you can learn as you go!
If you are like me and you like to know all the details there is to something right away then I can definitely help you out there. I have a ton of resources that I am more than willing to share with you! Some are mine and some are from other awesome bloggers!
I know that not everyone is going to learn everything they need to know about blogging from me. I follow many different bloggers and I resonate with each of them in different ways! We all learn differently and we all need more help in different areas. Trust me I get it!
Here are some more resources to help you rock your new blog!
Choosing the niche for your blog is a very important first step in blogging. This decision is hard to change later on without starting over. Maybe if your blog name is broad you might be able to. However, most likely you will want your blog name to be what your niche is so again it would be hard to change later on.
For example, my blog name is Mom Blog From Home and it’s about teaching moms how to blog from home. If I wanted to change my niche I could possibly spin it to where I am a mom blogging from home about a certain topic. But I wouldn’t be able to change my niche to teaching people how to care for puppies or something like that.
It just wouldn’t make sense with the name of my blog.
Personally, I have gone through deciding on a niche for my blog many times so I am speaking from experience. I have always wanted to blog but never knew what to blog about. I would change my mind too many times.
Then when I finally decided on a niche, I would buy the domain name and then panic and change my mind again but then it was too late.
I still have some of the domain names I have purchased in the past. It wasn’t until I finally went with my heart and chose to teach about blogging did it all come together.
Why Choosing Your Niche Is Important
Can’t change it later on
As I said it is not something you can easily change 6 months down the road if you change your mind. It is worth taking the time to really evaluate and find the perfect niche for your blog.
Needs to be something you are passionate about
One thing you will hear from other bloggers and you are going to hear it from me as well is that you need to be passionate about your niche. If you are knowledgeable about a subject but you aren’t passionate about it then that is probably not the one to go with.
Let me give you two personal examples.
First, I feel like I am pretty knowledgeable about children. My mother ran an in-home daycare for 20 years so I grew up in that daycare for 15+ years. Once out of college I had my daughter and I opened up my own daycare that I ran for two years. Since then I have worked on and off with the 1-3-year-olds at a private school in town for a total working time of a year.
I have taken many safety courses and training classes plus obviously years of hands-on work. However, though I love them all dearly, I don’t believe that is my calling and it is not my passion.
Maybe it is a skill I have to handle little children when many others can not but again it is not a passion. I had thought about all the different niches I could use that involved children that I would be able to blog about for a long time. But those times when you have had a long day and you just don’t feel like working on your blog, it will be way too easy to give into. If you are passionate about your niche then you will look forward to working on it. It won’t feel like work at all!. Also, then you will strive to learn more and grow in your niche market!
Second, I have some knowledge about health and weight loss. I have my own weight loss success story after finding these awesome products that I have been taking since 2012.
I started them after a friend had lost 30 pounds and looked amazing and was full of energy. I got on the products and the program and I ended up losing 20 pounds and I still am at that 125-pound mark I ended at years ago.
I learned so much along that journey that I would love to share with everyone. However, I quickly learned that people want to have their cake and eat it too….literally!
When it comes to weight loss no one wants to actually put in the work and most are quick to shut anything you say down (even if you have all kinds of proof). It is something I am passionate about for myself but I am not passionate about trying to convince people that it works. I know it does and so for me, that’s all that matters!
You will be blogging about that topic for years (hopefully right?)
If your blog goes well then you should be blogging for years, right? If you grow your blog and you are bringing in an income then that will be your source of income for….well ever! Make sure your niche in something you can stand to blog about forever. Of course, you can also start another blog later on once this one is successful. Although you wouldn’t want to close the first one either way so again back to being able to blog about that niche for a long time.
Investment
There is some investment in starting a blog so you once more want to make sure you know for sure what your niche for your blog is going to be before you make any purchases. The main one that you can’t take back is your domain name. Luckily, domain names are fairly inexpensive so you won’t be out much money if you do change your mind. Read more about how to choose your domain name here.
And as they say, time is money so if you get too deep into creating your blog around your niche and writing blog posts then you will have done that all for nothing.
Now take every topic you came up with and start narrowing it down. Here are some examples.
Health/Fitness
Exercises
Healthy Recipes
Supplements
Clothing
Pregnancy
Health
Clothes
Exercises
Baby room décor
Nursing
Narrow down your niche even more
So that you stand out even further you can narrow your niche down once more! The pool of people that will be searching for Health and Fitness is really large.
That is great but there is also a large number of people providing that information. If you narrow it down to just exercises then yes that narrows down the people looking but it also narrows down the number of people providing that information or your competition.
Then if you narrow it down once more and be very specific then odds are you will have even less competition. Yes, you will have fewer people searching but that is okay because you will have a very targeting audience. You are more likely to get a better turn out with a more targeted audience than to be lost in the crowd of every other website out there on the broader niche.
For example Mom Blog From Home: It is about teaching moms how to blog and how to use that money to pay off debt. I narrowed it down from not just about blogging but to teaching moms to blog, then to narrow it down once more to teach them how to use their blog to pay off debt.
Look for keywords
Keywords are another major part of picking out your niche. If there are keywords in your niche that you could use then that will help drive traffic to your blog. Keywords are words that are popular or searched for often. You can go to kwfinder.com to search for long-tailed keywords and see how popular they are.
If you can use a long-tailed keyword in your domain name then when people search that term you are more likely to pop up.
Competition
Of course, everyone wants to find a niche that has no competition but I once read that having competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That means that the niche is in high demand. It must be popular to have others in that same niche. That’s again where setting yourself apart from your competitors comes in by narrowing down your niche to be more specific for a more targeted audience.
Profitability
There needs to be a way to profit from your niche. Unless you are purely blogging for fun. If you are like me, you are looking to make an income and so you need to not only find something that you can make a profit from but something people are actually willing to purchase too.
For example, just because recipes are a popular niche doesn’t mean someone will buy your liver and onions recipes. Sorry for those that like liver and onions I was trying to think of something I wouldn’t (or most people wouldn’t) eat. So make sure that your niche isn’t all about something that no one wants.
To avoid that, a great suggestion is to do some market research yourself and see if there are others out there. Odds are if you can’t find any other sites that are like your targeted niche, then it probably isn’t a good one to go with. It is nearly impossible to be the first one in that niche. Search on Google, Pinterest, and even Etsy if it is a homemade product, to see if it is profitable.
Affiliate Marketing
If your niche is not a product you have made but rather someone else’s product(s) then you are probably looking to become an affiliate for that said product or service to receive a commission off of the sale.
You can be an affiliate for several products or services. Let’s go back to the recipe niche example, you could be an affiliate for a cookbook, cooking utensils, the ingredients, the paid cooking course someone offers, etc.
To become an affiliate either go to the website of the person or company you are interested in and scroll to the very bottom and most of the time there is a link to their affiliate program. Otherwise, you can Google search the product or service and add “+affiliate” to the end to get search results of companies that have affiliate programs within your niche.
Either way, it is a fairly simple and easy process! If you do not see a link on a certain website that you really want to become an affiliate for then find a way to contact them and just ask!
Many bloggers make all their money solely on affiliate marketing! Once you are an affiliate for someone you will receive a special link that you will add when appropriate into your blog posts and when someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase you will receive a commission! Easy peasy!
Sum It All Up
Choose something you are passionate about, something you can write about for a long time, and something that is profitable!
It is bound to happen, nowhere on the internet is safe from receiving mean comments from someone about something. For some people that is literally all they know how to do is to speak hate. And some say you have finally “made it” when you start getting haters.
First off, that is extremely sad. The fact that we have to just accept the mean comments and use them as a milestone of “making it”.
I usually receive nice comments or a lot of spam comments but I also haven’t been out in the spotlight much. I am the more laid back, stand in the back of the room kind of person. Which is hard to be and try and have a blog that brings in a lot of traffic.
Thousands of Page Views
Well, recently I had a pin go viral and it shot up to over 24k impressions in one day. I started to receive around 2,000 more page views a day from that one pin. Once I saw the spike in traffic I, of course, made a few more pins and two out of those three are taking off as well.
At first, it was just one big spike and then it started to trickle but then it picked back up again, thanks to Tailwind, and it has maintained for the last 5 days.
Random Blog Post
Sometimes we plan every detail of a blog post out and other times we just write something up quickly. I like to write as if I am talking to my audience. That can be good and bad.
I tend to ramble even though I feel like it is all relevant.
This blog post that took off was one of those that I just rambled on talking about a fun fact I had found.
Cue the Mean Comments
I didn’t realize it at first until I just happen to see on my pin that there were three comments. I read the comments and two of them were brutally honest about my blog post and how it was too long.
That hurt to read.
The third comment was someone saying “thanks now I don’t have to read this”. So based off of the two comments left that third person decided to not even read my post.
If they didn’t then I’m sure others weren’t either based on the opinion of two people that left a comment.
Take the High Road and Learn From Them
It took me a few minutes do decide not to delete the comments but to learn from them. I had just quickly put the post together. I had already planned on making changes so I went in and cut the fluffy, added a more relevant freebie, and moved around some other things.
I then went back to the pin and commented back thanking them for the constructive criticism (taking the high road). Hoping that would help show that I can handle things with my head held high.
I also hoped that would show anyone else that read the means comments and my reply, that it would still be worth reading to see how I fixed it. So far I have not received any more comments on that particular pin. And as of today, it has over 201k impressions for the month it has been up.
Just Hurtful
On my second popular pin for this blog post, I found three comments on it too. One was cutting to the chase on what my post was about. Another was just stating her opinion about something in my blog post. But the third was just mean.
This isn’t something you can hold your head up high and learn from. I could learn from the first two comments on the other pin saying my post was too long.
I can’t, however, change my freebie because one lady thinks it’s ugly. Her comment was only left to be hurtful. There was no other goal behind it, she was just trying to hurt me.
So how do you handle comments like this?
Delete Mean Comments and Move On
I posted in two different blogging Facebook Groups seeking the advice of other bloggers and I received at least 60 total comments and they all said to delete it and move on.
Almost all of them had been in a similar situation and most congratulated me on “making it” by receiving haters and hateful comments.
It is very sad but it is the reality of life.
People are mean and I’m not sure exactly why but you can’t let them get to you. Which is much easier said than done.
Look at The Facts
I had to stop and look at the facts and remind myself this was one person and one comment on how she didn’t like my freebie. On the other hand, I had over 300 people sign up for that “ugly” freebie. So the numbers show that they all liked it!
I haven’t received any mean comments on the blog post or any emails back after getting the freebie. No one who actually went in, read the post, and downloaded the freebie complained. It was only that one person commenting on how she didn’t like my freebie on one of the pins that had over 100k impressions on it.
I had four pins go viral in one month from this blog post with a total of over 490k impressions combined. So the facts were showing that A LOT of people saw this pin and A LOT of people read the post and over 300 people signed up for the freebie.
I couldn’t let one person’s opinion get to me. (again much easier said than done)
There is a time to learn and take the mean comments as constructive criticism, and then there are times to look at the facts and delete those mean comments and move on.
Don’t Let Mean Comments Stop You
I love blogging. I know that I am not perfect. No one is perfect. But I still love to blog and share my tips and tricks I learn with others looking to start a blog too.
I have got frustrated and wanted to quit so many times but I keep coming back because it is something that I love to do. Whether I am making a bunch of money or no money I will always blog.
However, those mean comments really shook me. I hadn’t had mean comments and to receive those it did make me feel like I should throw in the towel.
Then I took time and really thought it over and I can’t believe I let them get to me like that. This is something I truly enjoy doing and it is my outlet.
Have you heard of the bullet journal? I thought surely everyone had but I met someone the other day that had no idea what a bullet journal was. Maybe it is just popular for us mom bloggers and the crafty Pinterest moms? Isn’t it funny how something you see all the time seems like everyone else does too?
Well, I pinned my post on Pinterest and it took off! Traffic started rolling in!
It was wonderful, however, it was not my target audience. I am used to my audience being mom bloggers. I knew it wasn’t mom bloggers though because no one was signing up for my freebie that always gets sign-ups. That freebie is geared toward moms looking to start a blog.
However, I was also receiving some comments on my pin (again from loyal bullet journal folk) that nothing is better than the original bullet journal.
My Audience
Again, I am used to talking to bloggers. And I, a blogger, love my new alternative to the bullet journal! But I can see why maybe the loyal fans would not.
So I decided to write a different blog post (this one) that is tailored to my peeps specifically – Bloggers!
The Alternative
I will cut right to the chase. The new alternative bullet journal that is perfect for bloggers that I am talking about is a digital version. Now before you get all worked up, let me explain my reasoning.
Digital Bullet Journal Benefits:
1. Easy to erase and edit
I am a perfectionist when it comes to writing things out. I end up erasing and rewriting 100 times because I hate my handwriting. Yes, I know I could use a pencil but it still shows. Yes, there are erasable pens but they show too. Digital is 100% erasable, clean, and it is much faster too.
One of my favorite options with a digital version is that I can move my text around easily. The apps I use let’s you circle your text you just wrote or typed and then drag and drop it somewhere else.
This is perfect for a to-do list! If something needs to be moved to the next day I just circle it and move it over!
2.) You only need one pencil (or finger)
The point of the bullet journal is to create your own pages and customize every detail. Therefore you have to have a bunch of different colored pens, markers, pencils, and tapes. So that means you have to store all those and lug them around when you go anywhere.
It’s summer right now and we go to the pool, the park, or the library and I like to take my work with me. Well, I have to carry that all around with me to still be able to use my bullet journal. With the digital version, you can do all of that and more with just your iPhone or iPad.
And let’s face it you aren’t going to forget your phone so it is always accessible!
Note: You do not need to have Apple products to utilize a digital bullet journal. I am an Apple user so that is just what I refer to.
3.) No need to replace supplies
With the physical bullet journal, you are going to run out of pages and you will have to buy another bullet journal. Your pens and tape are going to run out and you will have to buy more of those as well. Our puppy chewed up half of my supplies that I never even got to use! With the digital version, you will never have to buy more supplies. You can purchase designs already made for you but you can also create your own for free.
Again, with the app that I use, there is an option to add more pages and to bookmark pages. This means I can add more pages to my bullet journal and bookmark where I have important pages to not get overwhelmed.
(The app I use is Goodnotes)
4.) Efficiency
We are bloggers. We like digital things. Turning anything digital is much more efficient so making your bullet journal digital makes it more efficient too!
You could track all of your blog posts, images, social media posts, pins and more! That is why I feel like it is the perfect bullet journal for bloggers.
5.) Endless customization
There are many different options. A physical bullet journal has endless options as well but with a digital bullet journal you can get free fonts, borders, premade layouts, stickers, designs, and images!
Adding images is perfect for tracking your blog posts, ebook progress, pins, and so much more!
You could even turn one section (or the whole journal) into a baby book or scrapbook and upload pictures and memories!
Grab a free digital bullet journal and give it a try for yourself!
If digital bullet journals are not your thing and you would rather have a physical version I completely understand! I myself have a physical version but it wasn’t working for me.
After I did some research and came across digital planning that’s when I realized the possibilities of a digital version of the bullet journal!
I would much rather have all of my work and notes be digital. It just makes more sense to me. Now again, I had some backlash from loyal bullet journal fans who did not like this option.
That is fine too! No big deal!
However, if you are like me then you may find this to be a wonderful idea! I hope you try out the free digital bullet journal and see how it works for you!
Here is a glimpse of how you can use this digital bullet journal for blogging!
Sorry about my horrible handwriting!
Yours will be much prettier I am sure! But as you can see you can still customize each page with the added benefits I talked about above.
This would be a great way to look back through your daily/weekly schedule and quickly at a glance see what posts you published, what images you created, which freebies you created, and what you posted to social media.
It would also be a great way to track your pins visually!
This is why I feel like the digital bullet journal is the perfect bullet journal for bloggers!
How will you use your digital bullet journal?
I would love to see how you could use this digital bullet journal for your blogging business! Send me a screenshot of your layouts on how you use it to track the process of your blogging business!
It is too easy to have an ambitious dream to start something but the follow through is really the true test. This could be as simple as deciding to paint your living room a different color. But this is what happens when you take a year off of your new blog.
Starting a Project
You can picture the end product of painting your living room. You know exactly what you want it to look like and it shouldn’t be too hard! Easy peasy!
The beginning part is also the fun part. It’s not hard work. It’s fun! You go to the store and buy all your supplies and then head home.
You are still be excited at this point to actually get started and change the whole look of your living room!
But after you move all the furniture and lay down all the drip cloths you are starting to lose steam. Then (for me anyways) you get to the least fun part of it where you have to tape it all off.
The Fun is Fading
By the time you finish taping everything off the fun has pretty much wore off of this project and you haven’t even started painting yet!
So you start painting and you gain some momentum in seeing it start to finally come together! But as you paint your arm starts to get tired and you keep dripping paint on the one tiny spot of wood floor that’s not covered by the cloth.
You keep trucking along and hours go by and you stop to look at your project to see that you are almost done with the walls but then you realize that you still have to paint another whole layer as well as paint the trim edging twice.
All of a sudden you feel tired and overwhelmed so you decide to finish this layer and take a break and finish up tomorrow.
Two weeks later your living room is still half done and every time you look at it you just get overwhelmed and you remember how tired you were last time so you keep pushing it off.
Can anyone relate to this story? Or is it just me?
I am the master project started but not so much the master project finisher. It sounds fun when you first start but then when it gets tough it becomes less of a priority.
Also there are only so many hours in the day and I run out of time doing the things that really are a priority.
However, being a project finisher has become my new thing. I see this as an area that I struggle with so I have been working on fixing that.
I have been able to do that by breaking things up into smaller tasks so I don’t feel overwhelmed.
This is What Happens if You Don’t Finish
(stay with me here)
We bought our house this past November and luckily for us the house we bought was across the street from the rental we were in and we purchased it in the middle of the month which gave us half a month to paint before we moved in.
I would go over everyday and paint. The goal was to paint the whole house before we moved in. I did most of the painting myself while my daughter was in school and my husband worked long hours.
I got it 90% done when my husband couldn’t wait any longer and started moving things over when he was off for Thanksgiving. Because we (him) jumped the gun and moved in before we were done painting it has never been finished…and it’s now May.
Everytime I think about getting out the paint I think of how long it’s going to take and the mess it’s going to make plus I have too many other things to do.
I know what you are thinking. Just take one weekend and whip it out! Well, my husband still works very long hard hours and runs a mowing company on the side.
We spend our weekends either mowing yards or trying to spend time together on the boat or doing something fun.
So what I have decided to do is to do one small section a day. Then I will be tackling the project without feeling like I am giving up a whole day of work to do it.
The same has to go for your blog.
Now if you have stuck with me this far this is where I am going to tie it all back into blogging. You are reading this because you too started a new project (blog) and put that project off but you are wanting to finish it!
I have done that myself with my own blog. Honestly I think we all have at some point!
There is a lot that goes into a new blog so it takes awhile to just master the concept of a blog and actually get it started.
Then once you start your new blog you have to maintain it. If you step away it could start to fall apart. It might float for a little while depending on how well it was doing beforehand but eventually it will sink without maintenance.
But don’t worry if you have started a new blog and let it sink you can still build it back up! That is what I am here to help you with!
I started my new blog in September of 2017. I let the holidays get the best of me and the next thing I knew it was January! In January of 2018 I regrouped and added a Tailwind strategy to bring in traffic and boy did it!
I had over 7,000 page views in 30 days when I normally had maybe 300!
Then February I was asked to help at the Church Preschool as a lead teacher and I took the position.
Working full time with 13 one year olds plus doing all the lesson plans was tiresome. My daughter was in 2nd grade (which turned out to be a very hard year compared to previous years) and juggling gymnastics, our dog got sick and passed away, my husband was never home, the house was a wreck, it was flu season so we were all always sick….I was exhausted.
As hard as I tried my blog went to the wayside and I told myself I will pick it back up in May.
May came and it was my first summer home with my daughter ever and for no other reason then being out of the loop and more focused on enjoying the break with her, my blog once again went to the wayside.
When she started school back up in August I tried to pick it back up. It didn’t come easy. I felt like I was starting completely over. I ended up watching videos and reading more than anything. Trying to get back into the game.
I watched neighborhood kids from home for some extra money so from 7:00am-6:00pm I had kids at my house so I was now running into a time crunch again as well.
For all of you full time working moms that rock a side business you are amazing!!
My husband loves a clean house so since I stay home (even though I watch kiddos) I work hard to keep the house clean and organized so that does take priority.
After we got all moved in to our new house and the holidays were all over it was now the spring of 2019 and I really thought about what was important to me.
As much as I love helping the neighbors with the kiddos its not my passion. And with summer coming most of them didn’t need help anymore so I needed to make my new blog priority to bring in money and replace that loss.
So at the beginning of the year I cut back on the amount of time I was watching kids and focused back on my blog.
April 2019
I drew a line in the sand at the end of March. I told myself I was going to solely focus on my blog.
My goal was to prioritize my day better and just put my head down and focus on my new blog only. Then I would see how things looked at the end of April.
This is what happened.
Since it has been a year since I had that spike in traffic from Pinterest and Tailwind I decided to focus on that and simply updating my blog as well as adding consistently to my new blog.
I implemented that same Tailwind strategy, consistently added one new blog post a week and sent out a weekly broadcast to my email list (after explaining why I was MIA previously).
Plus I updated my 30-Day Challenge Workbook to Start a Blog and my Free Pinterest Image Course. Then lastly I updated a few blog posts.
Results
Here are my results after 30 days of focus.
Besides feeling like I now have the confidence to keep going strong and being extremely proud of all my updates and accomplishments, I made $152.62!
My traffic didn’t spike like before but I feel like I am in “time out” with Pinterest and I have to earn my traffic back. They sent me a bunch before but then I didn’t do anything for a year!
So after only one month I think I still need to show them I am consistent and serious this time.
Now you may be thinking well $150 isn’t that much? And you are right. It isn’t that much. However, it is! That is my best month to date of starting my blog!
I made money with my new blog but if you followed along you see that I didn’t stay consistent at all! Since I started my new blog I have not been steadily consistent.
So the money that I made would be one or two sales here or there. Not 5 sales in one month and $150.00 in my pocket in one month!
Again, you may be thinking that is not much money at all and again I agree with you to an extend.
It isn’t anything to go brag about however it is very exciting and shows me the major progress I made this past month!
May 2019
Now here we are getting ready to start May this week. I had set a goal of $200 in April and I am very happy with my results so now I have a goal of $500 in May.
I would like to break through Tailwind and Pinterest again but instead of looking too far down the road and getting upset I have to remind myself that I pretty much started completely over in April. It’s only been one solid month.
I can’t look at it as if I have been for a year and a half because I haven’t honestly been consistently blogging that long.
My blog as been up for that long and I have wrote many blog posts but not like I should have been. So that is what I am focusing on now.
Sharing my experience (like I always have) even the less flatting ones like this blog post. But my hope is that it will speak to someone in a similar position.
As moms we are constantly putting everyone and everything before ourselves but sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand and rearrange your priority list so it benefits everyone.
With this new outlook I have been able to accomplish everything on my priority list.
Tips for Success
Rearrange To Do List
Sometimes just rearranging your to do list and doing it in a different order will help.
I break up my cleaning throughout the day so I can till work on my blog and keep the house clean at the same time. Before I would do all the cleaning first but then I was running out of blogging time.
So I switched and would blog first then the house ended up being a major task.
Now I clean for the first hour of the day and work on my blog throughout the morning. When I break for lunch, I switch the laundry and unload the dish washer. Then I work on my blog in the afternoon and when my daughter gets off the bus it’s homework and supper time.
This way when my husband comes home the house is all clean, supper is ready, and homework is done. This gives us family time together and I was able to work on my blog too.
Same exact things I normally do just in a different successful order.
Plan Ahead
I plan ahead if there are going to be busy days full of appointments. I make sure that I keep that in mind as I am working on my blog throughout the week. Before it seemed like I was running around to appointments and running out of time to work.
Just planning ahead and seeing what’s to come for the month helps give you a bird’s eye view of how your going to get everything done.
Those are simple tips but you would be surprised how you get stuck into a routine (even if it isn’t working the best) and just a few little tweaks could fix it all!
Goals
Everyone is always telling you to have goals and to write them down. I always did this but I think I shot too big. I would think right away there is no way I can get that all done so I was okay with it when I didn’t get it done.
This time I set realistic goals and I was very pleased with how I ended the month!
Now I have written out how May will go and I am so excited to look up at the end of the month and see how I did!
Your Turn
I am here to tell you that YOU CAN DO THIS! You may feel like you have let it go too long to bring it back to life. I don’t agree. Just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, call it like it is, and move forward!
I didn’t like sending out an email at the beginning of April telling everyone what I had done but I did it.
I don’t necessarily like sharing this all in a blog post but I am.
Mom Blog From Home was made to help moms like me start and grow their blogs.
I am far from perfect and I will never be perfect. Honestly, that is a scary thought trying to pretend or shoot for perfect.
That’s not me. I am just a normal mom trying to share my experience and knowledge on blogging with others in hopes to help them learn and grow from my mistakes and my successes!
Now get out there and kick butt with your blog momma!
