I remember the day I started blogging online. I was excited and scared at the same time. I even thought of myself as having a lot of loyal readers. I thought to myself, “This is the time to start building my online presence while making money online.”
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But the reality hits me fast.
The first few months were difficult for me. I wrote a very long blog post, hit the publish button, and waited for it to be read.
A day passed, and I checked my stats, and I’ve never seen a single view from it. This challenge hit me, and I felt discouraged and even asked myself, “Will it be worth it?” I started to question myself, and then I knew to myself that it would be a tough journey to start a blog. But looking back, I realized that there are so many things that I wish I had known before I started blogging.
I started blogging because I wanted to share my thoughts, ideas, and knowledge on a certain topic. At the same time, I want to upskill and learn so many things while sharing it with everyone and making some progress.
Of course, I would be a hypocrite if I said that I never thought of earning money from it. I watched a YouTube video from one of my favorite YouTube content creators, Ali Abdaal — he said that he made a million from just writing online and taught me how to stop imposter syndrome by showing my work online.
I had a thought — if others can make money online from writing, why can’t I?
At first, I did not have clear goals, structure, or a plan, I just wrote and shared it online whatever I learned on the internet. It was also the thing that Ali said, forget about SEO and just start writing.
But through my journey, I realized that blogging is just more than about writing, it isn’t about writing your thoughts, or your ideas, but it needs to be valuable for your readers too to be seen.
The mistakes I made early on and what I wish I had known earlier
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When I look back and read my old blogs, it feels cringe and just laugh at my mistakes, here are a few of them:
Just writing what I want
Having a niche is real, you need to have a niche when starting your blogging journey. It is also a way to grow easily on the internet. If you want to feel seen, you need to choose the topics that you want to talk to on your blog.
List all of the topics that you are interested in, then choose at least 3 of them — then you can start writing about them. I opted to choose 1–3 topics of my interest to start with so I won’t have limited ideas to write.
But if you can do one, do it, it is better to have one topic than to create content ideas from one of those topics. The more specific you are, the better, it means you can target your audience specifically and then rank on Google quickly.
I wrote a blog about choosing your niche topic so you can read more about it and get deeper into choosing a niche to grow your blog.
Writing without a content strategy
I only write what I want, I do not plan or anything, I just write and then push the publish button once done. I thought I could write whatever came into my mind.
But I was wrong.
You have to plan ahead to write your content effectively.
Now, I have an effective workflow that works really well in my content creation. I can now generate more content ideas without sacrificing their quality.
At first, I write every topic and ideas that I have, then brainstorm, and write my content. I also use AI to create outlines for my blog posts and generate ideas — but I never use AI to write my content.
Using AI as a tool in my content creation is an effective way to write and generate ideas quickly.
Ignoring SEO
Picture this: You write something, then wait for it to be seen on the internet without doing actual marketing.
I remember when I wrote a very long post, covering all the topics that I could cover so my readers would get every information that they needed, and then I started posting it.
I was excited.
But weeks passed, and the views didn’t even reach 20.
You see, writing a quality blog post won’t give you reads if you only do the same thing.
One thing that you can do is to optimize your blog post with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), so you can target your readers.
Sharing to social media is not enough, you also have to do some tweaks to make your content stay on top of Google and find it relevant. If you do this effectively, you can get more traffic over time.
I have some blog posts that are ranking on Google for top 1 and here’s how you can do the same.
Related blog post: How I Increased Blog Traffic by 556.25%: My Proven Strategies To Boost My Client’s Website
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Not sharing my content
Okay, when you are just starting a blog, I know that you will hear some quotes from “cringe gurus” about “If you write something, readers will come”.
Believe me, I heard this so many times, and here’s the spoiler: they never came.
When you are just starting, Google will still process everything to index your blog posts on Google and appear on their pages. So, the best thing that you can do is to market it by yourself by sharing it on your social media.
I thought posting was enough, but marketing is also part of blogging and that’s the harsh truth.
If you want to maximize and share your blog posts on social media without exerting much effort, here’s the complete strategy that I use to share everything in less than 10 minutes.
No email list or call-to-action
I told myself that building an email list is not important to me and I will only do it once I am popular and gain more traffic.
But I was wrong.
According to WPBeginner, building an email list is important because “it allows you to directly communicate with subscribers who have shown interest in your content or product.”
I even read some blog posts of successful writers where it is also a mistake that they made of not starting having an email list — some said they lost an opportunity to earn at least $10,000 for not starting.
So, I told myself that I should also start my own. And it actually helped me to at least get initial traffic when I publish my post.
Soon, I plan to monetize my content through a subscription model and get more leads from my content.
Plan your monetization early
My website has been running since 2022 but I never made any money from it. The reason is that I never planned monetizing it when I started blogging and I feel that I lost some time, energy, and money for not doing it.
Now, I run ads to my website and generate a few cents a day which I know will be accumulated over time until I reach the minimum threshold of Google Adsense.
Some bloggers said that having ads will just increase your risk of losing your readers, while I agree at some point, I know that you can handle ads well if you place it on your site where a reader won’t be disturbed while reading your content.
I am still experimenting with this ad thing and will make a progress report once I learn how to monetize your site effectively using Google Adsense.
I am also eyeing for different ways to monetize my website such as affiliate marketing and selling digital products. If you are just starting, focus more on getting a lot of traffic then plan ahead for monetizing your website.
If you want to start monetizing your website with Google Adsense, I wrote a blog on how to set up your Google Adsense account and start earning money from ads.
Start connecting with other bloggers
I did not start writing with my website. I started writing on different platforms until I made some friends. Having friends online is your first step to getting your initial traffic on your website.
When I launched my website, they were the ones who saw it and became a supporter to grow my blog. It is always best to connect with people who have the same mindset as you and then help each other to grow.
You can also start engaging with your readers — if you turn on the comment section to your blog and they are commenting and connecting with you, never ignore them — start replying to them and make a connection, this means that they are reading your blog and they find it valuable.
There are some debates about turning on or not your comment section to your blog but I would say that you should — it is for your loyal readers who have follow-up questions or just purely want to connect with you. And if they do, please talk to them!
Lessons that helped me improve
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Despite having a rough start, I figured things out based on my experience and I know that some of this will also help you through your journey. Here are some of them:
Learning SEO and keyword research
This is the best marketing way for me, when I always optimize my blog posts with SEO, I start getting consistent traffic even without sharing it to any other social media.
The best part is that I also learned keyword research and write a blog post based on search intent and what my readers need so it reaches my target readers.
I even took and bought an online course to do this well and correctly. If you are just starting, do not fully rely on sharing your blog posts on social media. You have to optimize them with SEO and get more traffic.
In hindsight, SEO is a long-term process so you need to wait before your blogs get indexed to Google especially if your website is fresh and newly created. Sometimes, I also submit my posts to Google Search Console to speed up the indexing process.
Write for my readers
Do not write for yourself, write for your readers.
You have to solve their problems to be able to get traffic. You can also share your personal experiences like what I am doing right now, but make sure to balance it by creating actionable steps for them to follow.
Repurpose your content
This is what I recently discovered. Repurposing your content is one of the best ways to widen your reach and get more traffic from different websites.
I share my blog posts on other social media platforms such as Medium and Quora to reach more people in my niche. This way, I get more traffic on my website and I am building more credibility under my name.
It is important to note that you have to do it in moderation to avoid getting banned and muted from these channels — make sure that you always follow their rules and policies to avoid these instances.
My conclusion and Why I keep blogging?
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Despite the challenges that I faced, I never regretted starting a blog. I have taught me skills and helped me to connect with amazing people, it helped me to understand different perspectives, and widen my vocabulary.
It doesn’t only help me to build my writing skills but also my reading skills and comprehension. It also opened me a lot of opportunities that I never expected.
If you are thinking of starting a blog or you are struggling with growing it, you should never give up. Try new things, experiment, or just apply these tips. It might also help you. Keep learning, writing, and of course, enjoy the process.
Blogging is more than getting traffic, it is about growth, creativity, and opportunity that you are building on your journey.
Oh, by the way, I share this blog post for free, and if you are wondering why, here’s the reason.
Originally published at https://marklaurence.net on February 22, 2025.