today I’m sharing all my top tips for starting a blog
I’ve been blogging for so long coming up four and a half years of blogging I get so many questions about how to start a blog and I try to remind people that I started my blog in 2014 and things were a little bit different back then but there’s still some stuff that I have learned over the years that would be helpful for starting a blog right now okay so
the first tip it’s gonna sound so dumb when I say it but I hope you guys just hear me out on this and that is to just start if you want to get a blog off the ground the best thing and the only thing that you can really do is to just get going I know a lot of people like want things to be just right and just perfect but the reality is that you need to get going and you’re gonna learn things along the way and the only way to get started is to actually sit down and just go for it don’t worry about things being perfect
frankly there’s going to be no one reading your blog at the beginning which is amazing because that means you have a lot of time to just sort through and work out the details and really just get in the habit of writing it I think I see a lot of people starting blogs and the biggest thing that I see happening over and over again is that they get super excited the first two weeks and then they lose steam and they can’t keep it up and by not putting a lot of pressure on yourself at the beginning for things to be perfect that’s gonna help you just sit down and just get in that habit of writing your blog maybe once a week twice a week three times a week whatever you decide is the right amount for you people always ask me, okay well I want to start a blog what should I do and I really do just respond you just have to start you know figure out what platform you want to be on it doesn’t mean you have to stick with that forever you can always transfer a move down the road I started my blog
blogger which is a free platform through Google and I was on there from a seven and a half years and then I ultimately switched to WordPress but WordPress isn’t free so that might not be the best option for you but look into Wix Squarespace Tumblr blogger WordPress
anyway pick a platform and just sit down and start pouring your heart out okay so the second tip that I have is that everyone should go into blogging with the right intention you know I think when you start anything in life you should try to sit down and figure out like why you’re doing this and what you want your end goals to be I think a lot of people look at bloggers or Instagram of YouTubers or whomever and say oh that’s what I want to do they get to travel they get to work from home they get all this free stuff they get to work with all these amazing companies and yes it’s incredible and that’s such a blessing and I’m so fortunate and grateful that I get to do that but the number of bloggers who actually hit that level it’s so small and a lot of the people that you’re seeing who are experiencing that level have been doing this for so many years and that means that for years and years beforehand none of that was actually coming their way
so if you’re starting with that is your intention you’re probably going to get frustrated and feel down on yourself for not hitting those goals when in reality it’s just like a long-term game I think when you set your intention to say I want to start a blog because I want to have a creative outlet that’s why I started my blog in the first place or you want to start an online portfolio of all your photographs or you want to place with all your writing samples so that you can share that with other people or maybe it’s just for your own self and no one’s gonna see it so just start with an intention that will lead you to success
what I recommend saying is that this is just something that you want to enjoy it and explore and no matter what happens and what opportunities come down the line as long as you’re always enjoying the writing process or photographing or anything to do with blogging as long as you’re enjoying it you’re actually successful and you won’t feel frustrated
if you don’t become a full-time blogger in a month or six months or a year I didn’t start full-time blogging until I had done it for I think five years five or six years
and I never intended on becoming a full-time blogger so that’s just kind of like a cherry on the cake I’ve just always enjoyed the process of blogging regardless of whether I’m getting paid for it or sponsored or free stuff or traveling I’ve just always loved blogging even without all those things and I’ve always felt successful because of that once you start blogging one of the things that I struggle with and that I hear a lot of other people struggling with is that you might have a hard time coming up with things to write about I always say you know to come up with what your niche is gonna be and what you’re going to be blogging about trying to keep it narrows so that you have a specific take on something and that people know when they come to your blog that that’s what you’re going to be talking about but also broad enough so that you still have things to talk about overtime you don’t want to keep things super specific whereafter blogging for six weeks you’ve just completely exhausted the list of things to blog about but you also don’t want to be so broad that you could blog about absolutely anything and your readers are gonna be so confused when they come to your blog because of they don’t really get what you’re about so I always recommend that when you’re getting your blog off the ground to sit down and try to come up with 50 blog posts ideas if you’re starting a successful blog you’re going to have more than 50 blog posts over time but I feel like that 50 number is such a sweet spot of knowing that you have tons of stuff to write about and if you can get to 50 you can get to 100 you can get to 500 and you can get to a thousand but if you’re writing that list of things and this, by the way, is just a list of topics it’s not that you’re actually going to sit down and write those 50 posts all at once you’re just coming up with ideas if you get to number 25 and you realize that you really have exhausted that list maybe your blog is a little too narrow and you need to broaden the horizon just a little bit so you can get to that 50 mark people always ask me like how do I keep coming up with ideas guys I’ve been doing this every day a blog post every single day for years and there are times
when I start to think to myself, okay that’s it I’ve got to quit my blog I don’t have any more ideas and then all of a sudden, an idea will come out of nowhere so keep that running list of things and when you hit 50 you know you’re in the sweet spot of having a niche topic without being too broad and also without being too narrow so one way that I try to come up with ideas is just to look around me and try to get inspired by everything that is I doing what if I’d done the past week what’s something that’s worrying me what are my girlfriends and I talk about where am I shopping did I read something new in the news that I thought was interesting I try to keep my blog as a conversation with my reader like a conversation with my friends because of I think of my reader as a friend so looking at what my friends and I are doing and talking about and interested in actually helps me come up with tons and almost nearly I guess I would say endless ideas okay so this next tip is something that I wouldn’t recommend 4 years ago when I was starting my blog because the blogging world it was so different but it’s something that I think you really have to focus on now in 2018 and that is quality you need to make sure that even if you’re just starting out and you’re still figuring things out that you’re putting out the best content that you can put out it means the best writing the best photography no obviously you’re going to get better over time and you will continue to perfect things and figure out what works for you but don’t just try to like whip something up and think
that it’s okay because it’s the bare minimum you know really put in the effort to make your content great that’s what’s gonna really help you stand out among other people who have been doing it for nine years or eight years I see people starting blogs they’re taking photographs like at night and it’s dark and it’s grainy and you can’t really get a good clear idea of what they are what their personality is and there’s a striking difference between that which just looks kind of like lackluster versus someone who has been doing it for a long time, it has a much more polished
look so go through some of the accounts that you are really inspired by or that you think are really amazing even if it’s not the same niche as you and then try to figure out how to get your content to be that great
here are some pro tips you don’t need a fancy camera you can take incredible photos and videos with your iPhone and the key is that you just need to focus on lighting try to get as much natural light as possible if natural light is impossible try to you know to find a light source in the room that’s going to help brighten things up and play around with it this is supposed to be fun and it should be an experiment and I get – you’re gonna learn as you go and that’s part of the fun of it but make sure you are trying to get the best content that you can when you’re starting because you’re just gonna get ahead of the game that way okay so yes my last tip was about the quality of content but then my next and final tip is going to be about the quantity and I know people often say that its quality over quantity but it’s quality in a consistent quantities so figure out what’s gonna work for you now don’t try to go overboard if you can’t commit to putting up a blog post every single day don’t put up a blog post every single day sit down and say I know that I can guarantee blog posts twice a week and that’s gonna be on Sundays and Wednesdays and stick to that so that’s gonna be your quantity it’s just being consistent with how often you’re posting you don’t want to go you know 60 miles an hour right at the start and then all of a sudden after two weeks of doing that you completely burnt yourself out and you have to take two weeks off that’s not gonna make someone that feel enthusiastic or excited to follow you if they feel like they’re not gonna get a specific amount of content you know let people know what to expect from you and as long as you’re meeting those expectations that are gonna be enough and then going off of that you know obviously blogging is on a platform where you’re gonna be able to write and share a lot of things like that but there’s also that social media component and try to be on as many platforms as you can without losing the quality of your content so that might mean saying I want a blog and a YouTube channel but I don’t have time for Instagram and Twitter or that saying I definitely don’t have time for YouTube so I’m just gonna focus on my blog and Instagram and try to keep one tweet a day so figure out like what’s gonna work for you where you’re not losing the quality of your content but that your readers know exactly what to expect from you and that you are you know keeping that hamster real moving and you’re not burning yourself out but you’re also not just disappearing and only coming in sporadically like commit to a schedule and figure out what works for you even if that’s just once a week that’s totally fine and your readers might be like so excited that you’re going to post I Monday morning and that’s how they’re gonna start your week you don’t have to be blogging every day so don’t think that you know quantity just completely overrides everything else it’s a balance and it’s more of an art than a science and figuring out what works for you so your readers are happy at the end of the day so if you liked these tips share it with your friend.
