In this episode, I talk about what I’ve learned from blogging. I end up talking about 11 lessons that I hope you will benefit from!
Recommended Blogging Resources:
– Hostgator for hosting (code DNQ60 for 60% off)- https://partners.hostgator.com/aDZRb
– Bluehost if you want to use Bluehost for hosting: https://www.bluehost.com/track/digitalnomadquest
– Namecheap for domains: http://www.namecheap.com/?aff=110461
WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM BLOGGING! Tips for Beginner Bloggers
Transcription
Below is a transcription of the podcast. This transcription was taken from Otter.ai so it might not be completely accurate:
Sharon Tseung 0:00
Hey guys, it’s Sharon from digital nomad quest and today we’re going to talk about 11 things that I’ve learned from blogging. Now if you guys are new to the channel, welcome, I’m all about teaching on how to build passive income, become financially free and design your best lives. So if you guys are interested in that, make sure to subscribe and hit the bell button to be notified of my latest video. Now let’s just get right into it. So number one, blogging is not just writing now I made the mistake of just thinking that I could just type some words, types of posts, and that’d be it but really, you have to learn so many things like how to set up your website, how to design your website, how to write a good blog post, how to start monetizing your website, how to drive traffic through SEO, social media, how to get backlinks, like there’s so many different things that you have to think about. But the great thing about that is is that it kind of sets you up for success. If you wanted to build a business in the future, right? You learn all these ins and outs of marketing, how to produce content and all this stuff that’s really important for any type of business that you want to start blogging is a really great thing to start doing to kind of teach you all these skills that will work to your benefit in the future. Even if you don’t feel like starting In your own product or business in the future, it can set you up for success in terms of creating multiple income streams for you in the future. Like if you want it to be a freelancer, you can basically learn how to do copywriting through blogging, learn marketing, you learn design. So it’s like you learn all these skills that in the future, if anything happened, you could go on Upwork and you can offer your services and have a portfolio to show those clients that you can actually do those things for them. Number two, what I’ve learned is you have to be consistent. I know this is cliche, but like anything, you start blogging, YouTube podcasting, like you have to be consistent with weekly content or daily, like it depends on your pain points, you just have to decide what cadence works for you. So in the past, I would like write a little bit and then I just like drop off for months thinking and be okay, you will see a decrease in traffic, if you’re not really keeping up with it, especially if you’re building a personal brand. It’s really crucial to like keep engaged with your users. If you have a repository of valuable content. Yes, you can kind of leave it and set it there to get passive income by If you want to grow and you want to make sure you’re staying consistent, so number three branding and design do matter. But what I would say is don’t focus on that too much till you’re like way later in. Because if you focus too much on it, you’re gonna get overwhelmed and you’re gonna basically burn out if you’re thinking like, Oh, you do this perfectly in this perfectly like, don’t worry about perfection, just take action, just go for it, launch your blog, and then worry about branding and design later. But if you want a good overview around design, I did create a free course for you guys. So check below, I have a link to it. It’s called the money making blog Crash Course it’s a five day course we go into the setup design, writing your posts, monetizing and all that basically the basic Crash Course. So go ahead and sign up for that free course if you want to learn more about that. So number four, provide value in a specific niche. So you want to make sure you choose a specific topic because if you’re all over the place, it’s going to be really hard to get users because a lot of users want to go to you for a specific type of content like they want to find a thought leader in a specific Usually, so if you’re able to provide value in a certain area that they will be interested in, they’re going to follow you. And also, if you provide free value for them, they’re going to come back and they’re going to trust you. So you’re wanting to maintain and build that trust so that if you do offer services or products or whatever, they’re gonna trust you enough to buy those products and buy the products that you recommend. So it’s important to make sure that every blog post you create every free opt in provides value. So another thing is, you want to provide free printables and stuff like that, where they can sign up with their email to get it. So that brings me to my next point number five, collect emails, it’s very important to collect emails and grow your email list because you know, one day maybe something’s gonna happen, you might lose your whole website or lose your YouTube channel or whatever, right and you want to make sure that you are still collecting your email so that you still have a way to contact your users. So as you’re collecting these emails, you won’t have to worry as much if anything goes down because you have your user base and you can kind of grow your brand all over again. If you need too. So in order to collect those emails, you want to make sure you provide free opt ins for them so that they want to sign up for your email newsletter, it’s very hard to get people to sign up just to follow your updates. But it’s easier when you’re giving them something of value. They’re like, Oh, like she’s presenting a lot of great material. And I want to keep following along. So it’s like a little teaser of what they’re going to get. And then you can keep providing them good value. And that way you’ll have an engaged user base for when you have your course launch or whatever product launch, you will have them to kind of support you. Now if you want to do email marketing the right way, I definitely advise you to use ConvertKit. So I use ConvertKit to design all my email sequences and funnels and things like that. I’m excited to go over all of those things in future videos where we’re going to talk about email marketing, because it’s very crucial to build your business. So go ahead and check that link below for ConvertKit. Number six, it’s important to get backlinks so I didn’t really think about this before but the way SEO works is that the more backlinks you get the more it helps with your link juice to basically your site becomes more powerful. If you have really relevant links or powerful links that link back to you, so you get sources that are huge or if you get other blogs that are similar to your website, then basically those links will be very powerful for your website. They go like Google search as like a spider web type of thing where the more sites that are connected to you the more interconnected you are into like the spider web or Google will be able to crawl your website better sources are linking to you which basically means that you are a trusted source usually but when you’re building links make sure don’t you don’t game the system you’re not buying backlinks because that usually can penalize you and like screw you over so always do it the more organic way I’ll teach more ideas on how to build backlinks in a future video. Number seven, you want to be everywhere so so Pat Flynn talks about it where you know, you want to make sure you are everywhere with like YouTube, podcast, blogging or whatever or even social media you want to find some platforms that resonate with you that you are able to make consistent content on multiple platforms because people consume content in different ways I talked about this before, but like some people learn better with audio. Some people learn better with visuals. So you want to be everywhere and kind of link back to yourself. And for example, your blog post can include images, videos and audio clips for them so then they can absorb your content easier. I also feel like once I started my YouTube channel and my podcasts, I’ve been in contact with so many different people who have discovered me through so many different avenues like some people come through my blog, but definitely people have come through my YouTube podcast, my Instagram, it all works. So I would say like if you have the time, like consistently build those platforms Now again, along those lines, you don’t want to do it all at once because you’re going to get overwhelmed. So make sure you focus on one before you go to the next one. For example, my blog, I had been blogging for four years before I started doing the YouTube thing and everything like that, because I had already had a lot of experience in it and understood how blogging works so that I can move on to the next thing number eight, learn that it’s okay to learn monetize. I think a lot of people have this like guilt about monetizing their blog content. But like if you think about it, if you’re always helping others, and you’re not helping yourself, it’s not really healthy, you want to make sure that you do both, you’re helping yourself as well. So if that means monetizing your blog, then that’s great because I think people who get value from you will want to support you and want to help you continue to make content. So it’s okay to monetize. Number nine, it’s important to engage with your users. So when people comment on your blog post, reply back, and that means on every platform that you’re on, right, make sure you’re engaging with their users so that they want to come back to you yeah, think about it as you don’t want to one touch and then they leave type of thing. You want to make sure they keep coming back, because it’s important to have those customers that are like your super fans that are gonna keep following you and keep supporting you. So make sure to engage with your users. Number 10. I learned that you should write long posts because before I used to write kind of like a few hundred words and think that was okay, but usually honestly, it’s better to write over to that In words, actually, because the blogging world is very saturated, you need to figure out how to stand out. And that may mean writing more comprehensive posts and you know, delivering value where you go above and beyond. So if you’re talking about how to build a YouTube channel, you might not just like go into how to start one and just like sign up for an account, you’re going to go into like how to start it, how to design your banner image, how to do your YouTube thumbnails, how to create the best videos, how to do keyword research, like you might go into all those things as like a comprehensive guide. And usually, that’s going to do a lot better than kind of writing a little blurb about like, how to set up your account or something like that. So you want to go more in depth and go above and beyond where people are going to share your blog post multiple times. And then number 11. This is the last point Make sure to understand
that it is a long game. You want to go into it with that expectation in mind because a lot of people just go into it thinking oh my god, this is fun. And then they just drop off because they’re like, I don’t see any return. So if I don’t get any reward I’m gonna leave you have to stop thinking in a way where you’re going to get something back all the time. Like you got to make sure you think about this as a process and a long game, do it with fulfillment through process versus through a goal. So you’re gonna want to enjoy the process while you’re doing this or you’re really gonna burn out blogging. So make sure to think maybe in a five to 10 year timeframe like don’t go into it thinking you’re gonna like make a ton of money right away. If you guys liked this video, make sure to comment below and let me know if anything surprised you with any of the points I mentioned about what I’ve learned through blogging and make sure to subscribe hit that bell button to be notified of my latest videos and I’ll see you guys in the next one.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Resources for blogging:
- Hostgator: https://partners.hostgator.com/aDZRb (DNQ60 for 60% off)
- Bluehost: https://www.bluehost.com/track/digitalnomadquest
- Namecheap: http://www.namecheap.com/?aff=110461