Blogging Tips I Have Learned: 5 Things to do if You Want to be Successful (Plus a Bonus at the End)

First, let me start by saying I’ve only been doing this about five months and am hardly an authority on the subject. That said, blogging is something you often learn as you go. Mistakes are part of the process. Failure is too. That’s how you figure out who you are as a person and what your true passion is. If you are willing to fail and persevere through the many inevitable mistakes, you know you’ve found your true passion. What follows is a list of five things I have learned in my short blogging journey that I hope can help you if you decide to follow my path. If not, these tips can also apply to any venture out there.

1. Don’t Try to Make Money Without a Following: Patience is Key

If I’m not guilty of this one, nobody is. If you want to make money from a blog, people have to see it first. Not everyone is going to go viral instantly. In fact, it almost never happens. In order to profit, you have to put yourself out there; the very reason I started my blog. I had trouble doing that at first. That Publish button was almost like one of those big red buttons that have the signs saying, “Do Not Press Button.” I soon realized however, that overcoming that fear, that anxiety, was exactly why I was doing this. I also made the mistake of trying to make money right away, haphazardly sticking Amazon links in my posts with very few if any people to read them. Blogging, as with anything creative for the most part, is a labor of love at first. If you can’t do it because you enjoy it, you’re in the wrong business.

2. Don’t Do It For the Money

The last part of the previous point was an unintentional segway, but a perfect one. If you want to make money with a blog, or with any type of content writing you have to do it for the love of it first. The money won’t come if you’re not enjoying yourself; it will show, believe me. If you’re doing it for the money, you might as well stick to that 9-5 job you can’t stand.

3. Don’t Seek Monetization Unless Your Blog Provides a Service or Advertises Products

Capitalism in a nutshell. If you provide a good or service people need, they will pay you for it. Personally, I’m in the business of entertaining people and inspiring them, a service that everyone needs at some point. I try to cover issues people have with anxiety and lack of self-confidence, whether that comes from having a disability like I do or not. I also attempt to inform and mostly entertain with my opinion pieces mostly centered on baseball, a sport I have loved from a young age. As I mentioned in the open, haphazardly plastering your posts with Amazon links will not make you money; a lesson I learned the hard way. Embrace the love for what you're doing and let the money come later.

4. Shorter Form Content is Not Always Better

This one hit me in the face like a brick through a window. When I first started this blog, I immediately applied to Google for ads, only to be denied for reasons of “Thin Content”. I was mortified. I couldn’t figure out why my content was considered low value. As I researched the topic, however, I discovered my logic regarding the blog post length I should aim for was completely backwards. You want people to know you know what you’re talking about, that you’ve done the research–which in my case mostly came from life itself–and you’ve put some effort into what you’re doing. Long story short (yes, I did that on purpose), less isn’t always more when creating content.

5. Find a Passion and Run with It

This one is pretty simple. If you’re passionate about something, chances are you know a lot about it or will do the research to increase your knowledge. It should be something you can’t stop talking about. For me, that is baseball. However, I started my blog as an inspirational expression to give myself something to put out there until I found my niche with baseball opinion pieces. With that, I now do both and I couldn’t be happier to do it.

Bonus: Don’t Ever be Afraid to Ask for Advice

This one probably should have been included in the original list, but I thought six was a weird number and I already have a piece out there with nine, so I decided to just add this one as a bonus for reading to the end. As professionals, we are never alone in today’s world. Social media has created so many avenues for people from all walks of life to connect and share ideas, there is no distance too great. You can find a group for just about anything on Facebook. These groups are full of like-minded people who will share their experiences. Any question you may have can be answered via the internet or social media. After all, that’s why we do what we do, isn’t it? If you’re in the business of helping people, you should never be afraid to ask for a little help yourself from time to time.

Thank you as always for reading. For those of you who made it to the end, I hope something in what I’ve written here resonated with you, even if you’re not a writer, blogger, or artist. I appreciate every one of you and thank you for supporting me in doing what I love.