What I Learned About Blogging as a New Blogger

Modern day blogging is a sophisticated network of busy machine with mechanical work so flawless, you’ll be in awe of its beauty just by admiring it from afar.

In less than four short months of blogging, I have already discovered a whole new territory unbeknownst to me after I shyly knocked on its esoteric door.

Upon entering this magical e-kingdom, I thought I was no stranger because I have fleetingly blogged some two decades ago. 

No longer relevant, but not completely foreign either.

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Once Upon A Time I, Too, Had A Blog

It was in the early 2000s when every high schooler who was a cool schooler had a blog, on a platform called Xanga.

I blurted out some words here and there but these words were often brief and shallow (mostly about hanging out with friends in case you wonder).

Then life happened while social media popped its head and blogging became a subject of the past.

Boy, was I wrong!

Jumping back into the bandwagon, I felt like I wore an awkward Spice Girls T-shirt to a Billie Eilish concert. 

Blogging has now become sensational, lucrative and viral. I felted a bit outdated and out of place.

Soon I’d realize that it’s no longer like playing dress-ups and pillow fights, but a giant beehive of busy bees at work making the best honey in town.

If you’re just as curious as I am about what this mechanism looks like, then come along as I walk you through some of my lessons learned in the eyes of a “new” entrant.

5 Lessons Learned From Four Months of Blogging

After reflecting on why I blog, I decided to share my progress via a quarterly update. This will be the first one where I’ve documented my lessons learned.

As a newly minted blogger, I have the eyes of a baby where everything fascinates me as I exhaust all of my energy to soak up as much as possible.

The benefit of being new is that we see things through different angles which allows us to bring fresh perspectives.

Hopefully you will find this information insightful as you ponder what modern day blogging is like.

Here we go!

Lesson #1: You just got a boss and its name is SEO

Just when I thought starting a blog means that I get to be my own boss, think again!

If I want to become a successful blogger and attract millions and gazillions of readers (sarcastically speaking), I must submit myself to my new boss called SEO.

No, not the CEO, SEO which stands for search engine optimization.

It’s basically a way to hack an algorithm that determines how highly your content will be ranked in the search engine and the biggest one out there is undoubtedly Google.

If you’re a blogger or you own a business website, you can benefit a lot through SEO by using it to its fullest capacity.

SEO is the most effective way of getting clicks to your website because it’s TARGETED to the audience’s need.

This is important because your content will DIRECTLY answer the question of the person who searched for it. So by paying attention to SEO, you will increase the probability of your content being found (and CLICKED).

After all, great contents mean very little if they aren’t being consumed. (Sort of like a jar of yummy honey hidden beneath the basement floor, what good does that do?)

What I learned from my SEO boss

At first the boss and I didn’t jive.

“It” was demanding and relentless with all sorts of requests about keywords, placement of phrases and such, while I just want to write to my heart’s content.

“Its” expectations were high up in the sky rendering me very little wiggle room to exercise my creativity.

So for the first few months, I did what an employee should never do, I didn’t follow the boss’ order.

Instead, I wrote freely like a butterfly until I faced the sorrow fact that I’m not a unicorn blogger. (See Lesson #2.)

Because my results were suboptimal and I needed to get that raise (i.e. higher ranking in the search engine), I steadily positioned myself to be in the boss’ good grace.

Little by little, I began to understand this boss more and more.

Then effectively this year, in my first blog post of the new decade, I successfully complied with SEO’s demands.

Phew… finally! *wipes away sweat*

While this blog post didn’t make it on the front page of Google, I remain patiently waiting for it to age like a première classe red wine.

Choosing the winning SEO strategies

SEO is a giant beast and you don’t get to walk up to a beast and expect to tame it overnight.

Nay, you must observe it from afar, study its every move, and wait for the golden chance to strike.

Similarly, you should do so with your boss before negotiating for a raise!

And once you worked up the courage to challenge the beast, you must choose your best winning moves. Just because there are millions of ways to swing a sword doesn’t mean you should bust them all out at once.

Nay, young grasshopper. Learn the best moves that work for you and run with them!

Here are my chosen SEO strategies:

• Publish CONSISTENTLY: Consistency means relevancy and Google’s algorithms love fresh contents. This means that it’s best to churn out new material actively and consistently overtime.
• Focus on keywords/key phrase: The keywords of this post are “blogging for new bloggers.” Noticed how these words were sprinkled throughout the post? This is key to SEO.
• Ensure readability: There’s a lot going into what is “readable.” For this blog, I generally follow the guidelines of using headings and subheadings, transition words, active voice, and simple sentences.
• Put keywords on pictures: Some people opt to look for images on Google, so putting relevant keywords in the “alt text” will help boost the content in the search result.
• Be relevant: Having backlinks is an important consideration for SEO. One can do so by writing quality contents that other sites would want to link to.
• Stay social: Social media indirectly contributes to SEO. The more share counts*, for example, the higher chance of increased pageviews and readership.
• Produce quality contents: “Quality” is a broad term and what is of quality to me may not be so for you. But generally I aim my contents to be:
  • rich in texts (1000 – 2000 words per post)
  • storytelling
  • research-based using reputable sources

(*If you like what you read, please support me by SHARING this post!)

Lesson #2: How to manage your blog like a business and promote your blog post like a product (the secret to become a UNICORN blogger)

A ‘unicorn blog’ is one that exudes rarity, attractiveness, and desirability – basically one that every other blogger wishes to create.

It’s got headline that screams, “How I earned $30,000 per month in my first year of blogging,” or “How I got over 10,000 pageviews after two months of blogging.” 

In essence, you can say that a ‘unicorn blogger’ is one who can successfully turn her/his blog into a lucrative business or obtain a sizeable readership in the get-go.

The biggest lesson I learned from these unicorn blogs is to simply treat a blog like a business right from the start!

This means that you must BUILD your blog up like a brand and MARKET each of your blog post like a product.

If that doesn’t sound like it’s your cup of tea, that’s because it’s not for everyone.

Understand what type of blogger you are

What I learned in the blogging world is that there’s a spectrum of blogs, so it’s important to know where you stand.

In the extreme end on the left, you’ll find blogs that are very business driven and commerce-focused.

They have a product or a range of products ready to be SOLD to you. And, you will noticed that every one of their blog posts screams, “Buy me, buy me, buy me now!”

These are strictly business websites disguised as blogs. There is very little blogging involved, and their contents are aimed to sell rather than to inform, inspire, or entertain.

On the other end of the spectrum (on the right) are bloggers who blog for fun.

Their blogs are usually not self-hosted and they might not own a domain name. They opt for publishing their work on a free platform because they have very little desire to grow.

They are considered the O.G. bloggers and ones that I reminisce when I blogged a long, long time ago. (O.G. stands for ‘original gangsta’ in my teenage years.)

Finally, in the wider middle spectrum you’ll find bloggers who blog with a mixture of passion and entrepreneurship spirit. These are targeted content creators, because they write contents specific to their audience.

The majority of the blogs on the web resides in this middle spectrum including mine. While some blogs may be more business oriented than others, many focus on the passion side while earning a side income.

This can be aided by the use of affiliate marketing, advertisement and sponsorship posts, among others.

By far, many of the business oriented blogs make money through selling their own products. This could be a viable avenue to explore if one wants to turn a blog into a full-time gig.

How to run a blog like a business

But first, a note to some bloggers (and myself):

Please don’t kid yourself when you’ve paid for self-hosting, owned a domain, and even created a logo then claim that you don’t care about the numbers (i.e. size of your readership, share counts, pageviews and/or $ sign).

This type of claim is not only self-limiting, but they are also untrue.

While it may prevent your feelings from getting hurt, dismissing the importance of these measuring sticks could sidetrack you into the wrong direction.

It’s only when you can admit to the truth that you intend to grow your blog like a business can you run it like one.

So the question remains: Which type of blogger are you?

If your answer is to be a targeted content creator or strictly business owner, then here are some valuable lessons you can learn from unicorn blogs:

• Craft a strategic business plan
• Deliver value by offering a product or products to sell
• Diversify income streams through sponsorship, affiliate marketing, paid advertisements, etc.
• Aim to be published in large media sites
• Expand network and reach through guest posting and building partnerships with other bloggers
• Nurture the brand by promoting the blog and each blog post
• Know the audience and engage with them via the blog and social media
• Become the authority figure or expert within the niche
• Be just as good of a marketer as a content creator
• Be knowledgeable about SEO and know how to leverage it
• Invest in the business

Note that you don’t have to do ALL of these things to become a unicorn blogger. You only need to do a few that suits your blog.

The blindside of running a blog like a business

On the other hand, the culprit of operating a blog like a business is that you may lose your audience’s interest overtime.

Even though the blog can be highly profitable by attracting a never-ending flow of new clicks, the contents within can become too business oriented that it may alienate existing audience.

Case in point:

• A blog that promotes relentlessly making it hard to escape product links at every turn.
• An article that is so SEO’d that it sapped out of all of its own creativity.
• A blog post that focused too much on selling and less towards connecting with the audience and/or storytelling.

As an avid reader of blogs, I can quickly tell which end of the spectrum a blogger stands.

For my blog, I want to maneuver the delicate balance of blogging for fun and turning it into a side income. After all, I do want to achieve financial independence while building something that I love.

Lesson #3: Don’t be fooled! Setting up a blog is NOT just a few clicks away!

I got fooled and I’ll admit it.

I read all these “How to set up a blog in 15 minutes” and I tricked myself into doing it.

It’s my fault and I take full responsiblity.

What I learned is that setting up a blog via self-hosting may take 15 minutes. However, building a blog takes… 2,000 times that! (That’s 30,000 minutes or 500 hours or approximately 62 business days – I’m guesstimating here, of course.)

But once again, this is under the pretence that one wants to make a successful blog in the get-go.

After building a blog from the ground up, I learned that blogging is NOT that easy.

Blogging is seriously hard work

What I learned in just four months of blogging is that it requires a lot of dedication, focus and hard work.

Even though blogging brings great rewards, it might not be right for YOU.

Do you have a brilliant idea? No, not good enough.

Do you have the drive to make it work? Okay, I’m listening.

Do you get discouraged easily? Yeah, don’t do it.

Do you have the persistent of a busy bee who passionately works to make the best honey in town? Well, it’s a requirement!

And finally, can you afford to fail? Because there are approximately 500 million blogs on the web, so the chance of failure is exceptionally high.

So I started this blog blissfully and unknowingly of all the blindsides.

But hopefully, this may deter you from making that same ignorant mistake as I did.

…Despite how glad I am to have started this blog.

Yes, I’m full of irony sometimes.

Related: Why I Blog: Reflections of My First 3 Months of Happily Blogging

Continue Reading for More Lessons Learned

This post has gone much longer than I thought and my SEO boss is telling me to wrap it up.

So if you want to discover further lessons learned, then let’s go!

A Quick Preview:

• The upfront (and hidden) costs one should expect to start a lucrative blogging business (and how to do so legally)
• All about MARKETING: Digital marketing, affiliate marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and the ’80/20 marketing rule.’

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Have you ever blogged before? If you’re currently a blogger, what are some of your lessons learned? If you’re not a blogger, why not?

Hey DJ, play my PIN