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I can now say after a year of blogging what I would do if I were to start fresh again. You learn so much in your first year blogging. A lot of this has been technical skills, but I have also learned what it takes to manage and run a blog. Which tasks need to be done in what order.
Starting a Blog
When you make the decision that you want to blog I want you to first focus on 3 things.
1. Niche Selection
2. SEO and Keywords
3. Monetization Strategy with a Product
I want you to spend time learning and researching these three things.
You obviously must first think about your niche because you need to know what you are going to share with your audience. How large or small will your focus be? Do you want to start with one main focus and slowly branch out into other areas?
Do you know anything about SEO and keywords? If not start learning. You need to search for keywords in your niche that you intend to write about. You want to find things that will rank well in search. A strong foundation in this area will pay off months and years from now.
If people can find your content vis search engines you don’t have to work for it. If you focus on Pinterest and other types of social media you will constantly be working. Pinterest and social media are hamster wheels of constant work.
The third area is monetization. You can monetize your blog in numerous ways. There is affiliate marketing, ads, sponsored posts, products, services, and even more beyond that.
I challenge you to focus on a digital product. I am not telling you to make a product on day one! You just need to have an idealist!
I do not believe it is wise to bank on affiliates or ads because they require a substantial amount of traffic.
Brand deals are cool, but you have to keep getting more to continue making money. A one-time brand deal is a one-time payment. It is more time on the hamster wheel of work.
Services are great but require you to trade time for money. You can only scale this so far. You only have so many hours in the day to provide the service.
A digit product that you can create once and resell over and over is your best option. Before you decide on a niche and launch a blog you should have a list of digital products you could create for your readers.
Content Production
If you made it through those first three steps and feel confident in your niche, the keywords you found, and your monetization plan it is time to start busting out content.
People will have different thoughts here. Some would launch their website and then as they write content immediately publish it.
My thoughts are to wait to pay for hosting and all that and instead start writing content before launching your website.
The other reason for this is your website launch can be overwhelming. If you are not a techy person having a stockpile of content will be reassuring.
Ok so back to writing content. You should have a list of article ideas based on the keywords you found. If you don’t, start creating rough titles that you can turn into articles.
Use these rough titles as a guide and then go back after completely the article to perfect the title.
Then it is up to you. You may find it easier to write ten outlines then later go back and write those ten articles.
Other writers prefer to write the outline and immediately write the articles following. This way their thoughts on the subject are fresh and on the surface.
After writing the article, make sure you included plenty of your keywords. Review the article, proofread, and edit.
Now go back and perfect the title. When you are a new blogger I recommend you take the time to write 10-20 titles for a single post. As you get higher in number your titles will become more interesting and improve. If you want to learn more click to read my article Steps to Create the Best Blog Post Title Every Time!
I use the free version of https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer
They score your title and provide some feedback on how it was scored. I have seen a huge improvement in my titles over time.
Remember people will never read you valuable information if they do not find your title click-worthy.
It is up to you exactly how much content you produce before launching your blog. I had around 30 articles ready to go.
In addition to the articles you have ready, have at least a list of keywords for the articles you will write in the future.
This section is dependent on if you intend to use Pinterest to promote your content. Pinterest is a fast way to get visitors to your site. However, Pinterest in my experience is a lot of work.
If you are interested in how much time I spend on the early months of my blog click to read How Much Time Commitment Do You Need to Launch a New Blog?
The reason I pushed SEO and keyword is so you do not have to use Pinterest if you do not want to.
SEO will however take longer to get you views. It is a long game.
If you do plan to go the Pinterest route I suggest you start creating pins. You can do so with free stock images or ones you have taken yourself. You can create the pins on Canva for free.
I made a ton of pins using the titles of the articles I already created before launching my blog. Your first few pins will probably look terrible. With some practice, you will see them start to improve.
I would also take this time before launch to start your Pinterest account.
All of this though is determined by whether or not you want to go the Pinterest route.
Creating Your Brand
This is what a lot of people want to do on day one. Create your brand!
Some things that go into your brand are your:
- Colors
- Fonts
- Logo
- Domain Name (URL)
- Mission Statement
- General Vibe
- Avatar of Target Customer
Now that you have written some content and played around on Pinterest you may naturally know what your brand is going to be and look like. You can also tweak all of these things and likely will over time.
I suggest you set very firm time limits on these decisions.
For example, Monday you get one hour. Then you have to just leave your ideas alone. Come back to it Friday for one hour.
Do you still like your ideas from Monday? Have you changed your mind? What are your thoughts?
Do not let yourself get sucked into spending hours in this area. Limit your time!!!
Launching Your Website
Ok time for the grand event purchase and set up your website.
I am not your tech support…trust me. This is not my strong suit.
I will say however the basic steps of getting through here.
You are going to purchase your domain and pay for hosting. I went with Bluehost and have not had any regrets. When I have hit bumps along the way they are been so incredibly helpful. You can use my Bluehost link so sign up for your own account which at no cost to you provides me with an affiliate commission.
You are going to want your site on WordPress. Once you get there you can start playing around with the set-up of your website.
I recommend working on your home page and then publishing an article. Once you have a live article it is much easier to alter things like fonts and colors. You will have something to view your changes on.
A huge part of your home page is your website navigation bar or menu. You need to think about the content you are going to be producing in the near future and how you plan to organize it into categories.
You will want to change certain settings in WordPress such as the time zone and your default permalink structure.
You can play around with your website before making it live. I wouldn’t stress though because nobody is going to randomly stumble upon it.
I made mine live, made stylist changes, logged out, and viewed it as a reader would. Sometimes when you are in the backend of WordPress you think everything looks great. Make sure you are looking at your website from the point of view a reader would. This means both on desktop and mobile!
If there were any stage I could have found a course helpful I think it would have been the launch phase. I got very overwhelmed during this time.
I was motivated though to push through and figure it out. After all, I paid for two years of hosting and I already invested hours into writing my first 30 articles.
Once your website is up and running schedule all those posts you previously wrote. Some people would schedule them to immediately publish. I would choose to schedule them every other or every third day. This shows that your website is consistently producing content. I think it helps get you set up on a routine.
In WordPress, you can modify what date and time articles will go live. I love scheduling posts well out into the future.
The idea here is that while these posts are going live throughout the next few weeks you are working on other tasks. We will hit on that next.
Bonus Tasks
While those articles are going out live you now have time to continue figuring out how to navigate WordPress. You are hopefully ironing out any major problems you are coming across. You are creating different pages on your website such as “About Me” “Disclosures” and anything else you find necessary.
This is also a time to work on interlinking your articles. You can do this within the body of your article or at the end. You can create a section at the bottom of each post with “related articles”.
Interlinking your articles is IMPORTANT. If a reader is interested in a topic you can direct them to another article that may find helpful to that subject. You want to keep people on your website as long as possible.
Interlinking can also be beneficial for Google to quickly crawl and index your web pages.
Interlink your articles!!!
The next thing I would challenge you to get started with is an email market platform such as Convertkit. Your goal is to start gaining email subscribers so down the line when you launch a product you have a list of potential buyers.
What you need to do is create something your reader can have for free by subscribing to your email list. You can create the freebie in Canva and then you attach it to an email signup form through Convertkit and embed that into a specific article.
This is something I greatly failed at in my first year and regret.
As each article goes live try to keep up on your linking and email opt-ins. If you get behind it will be overwhelming to go back and do so later.
And finally, if you are keeping up on all of these tasks and continuing to work on writing new content as well. Your stockpile will not last forever…you can move on to monetization.
I would recommend starting with affiliate marketing. You can go with the obvious option Amazon or try somewhere else. If you used any courses during the launch of your website see if you can become an affiliate by promoting them if it works with your niche.
Only promote items you recommend based on a positive personal experience.
As you start inserting affiliate links into your articles you MUST place a disclaimer at the beginning of the article letting your reader know that there are affiliate links where you may earn a commission. You can read up more on what the current regulations are in this area.
Conclusion
From here the lists of tasks or to-dos can go on forever.
Research keywords
Publish Pins on Pinterest
Write Outlines
Interlink Articles
You will never feel like you are caught up on your blog. There is always the next task you could be working on. This, however, is where I recommend you focus in the beginning. You can’t do and learn everything at once. Start with a specific task and complete it, then move on to the next.
Hopefully, this helped you find some guidance in how you could go about launching your blog.
Not everyone will agree with this strategy, but it is what I would do. It makes sense for my style of blogging and my goals.
Check Out My Articles
Steps to Take to Have a Successful First Month Blogging
My First 6 Months Blogging Income and Traffic Report
Steps to Take Before Launching Your Blog to Guarantee Success