6 Things I Wish I knew Before I Started Blogging

There are a few things I wish I knew before starting blogging. I can’t believe my blog has been live for a month! It seems like just yesterday I was working behind the scenes. Sometimes, I feel like I have been doing this forever. Other days, I’m trying to figure out how to make time to learn everything. I thought setting a blog up required work but that was really the easy part! Maintaining the content on the blog, social media marketing, and learning new skills after launching is the hard part!

Thankfully, setting up my blog was a breeze. I set up my hosting with Siteground and have loved it! You can also set up with them here for as little as 3.95 a month! I share my quick tips for starting a blog in this post here. 

1.Everything doesn’t have to be perfect to Launch–in fact, even if you think it is, it’s not!

I spent weeks going over all these little details and trying to learn things so that my blog would be top notch before launching. And even after that, I still changed and a ton of things after launching.That is the good thing, you can always go back and update!

2.Google is your best friend

I always use google for everyday things but you can literally learn how to do anything if you research how to do it. Chances are someone has faced your same challenges while also trying to figure out blogging! Pinterest and Youtube are also great resources to use. There is a tutorial or an ebook out there for everything!

3.Find support

Yes, your friends, family and significant other are amazing and will support whatever you do–but unless they are all also bloggers, they won’t understand your blogger struggles! I joined a few Facebook groups where I can ask questions and interact with other bloggers. These groups can also be great to get your content out there. You want to find your community to help you along the way.

4.You have got to step up your organization skills 

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

I thought I was an organized person–and sure for a person with just a 9-5, I was. But blogging as a side hustle requires adapting to a whole new schedule. Essentially, all of my time is accounted for. As the saying goes “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” I quickly realized I needed to plan when I would post content on my blog and social media. Thankfully, there are a lot of good tools and apps out there. A few that I use to keep my life together are Wunderlist, WordPress, Hootsuite, and Preview. I have a full list with more detail on the apps I use in this post here.

*The links used are affiliate links, meaning should you choose to use them I earn a percentage of the sales, so thank you in advance if you decide to make your purchase through them.

5.Don’t Obsess over the numbers, Perfect your content

Reading all of the blog posts from Pinterest on “How I made Six figures blogging in one year” can be tempting. In fact, I’ve read a few of those. And even the posts about how bloggers doubled or tripled their page views. But what’s the point of having all these visitors to your site if they don’t have good quality content to read? Now I’m focused on being consistent with my blog posts and producing quality content my audience can relate to. As long as I am operating in my purpose, the blessings will follow.

6.Blogging is hard work, but your hard work won’t go unnoticed

Creating each blog post takes more work than I imagined. But it is honestly so rewarding to know that people are enjoying my content. As long as just a few people benefit from my content I am more than happy.

Now that you have the inside scoop on starting a blog, what are you waiting for?! If you’re thinking about starting a blog, I highly recommend Siteground as a reliable host. It only takes a few minutes to set up and is really affordable!