Advice for New Bloggers: Growing from Failure

Six Pieces of Advice for New Bloggers From My First Three Months Blogging

Launching a blog in 2021 was always going to be interesting. In a world where video content reigns supreme and everything imaginable is a google search away, can a small independent blog still attract the attention it needs to build a community? Through all the frustrations, the missteps, and the very few successes here are six pieces of advice for new bloggers from the first three months of my journey. 

Advice for New Bloggers #1– Quick Successes Are Scarce

Other bloggers had warned me. 

“Blogging is a long-term game”

“It can take two to three years to rank on google” 

Yet here I am, less than three months after launching my blog, and I’ve spent most of that time wondering where I am going wrong. I check search traffic through Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console. I look for an uptrend in traffic through google analytics and I want to fix everything, most of which is not broken. Some things simply take time. 

Time… I’ve lost all perspective of it. The insanity caused by the Coronavirus surely accounts for some of that . Time has been different this year. 

Part of it is being used to being in control. Given a goal, I typically find a way to progress towards it. I make mistakes all the time, that’s part of taking chances, but I inherently want to fix things. 

I want to:

• make google index my posts. 
• yell on Twitter and Facebook, “Hey! You really should follow me!”

But it’s not so simple. While there are steps you can take, when you are brand new sometimes you simply need to give it time. 

Advice for new bloggers- Successes Are Rarely Sprints. Attempt to Take Both Progress and Setbacks in Stride.

You might write something so insightful that you get published at the very start. Perhaps you are so passionate and driven that you can publish 30 high-quality posts in your first month. You might be in the right place at the right time and go viral on social media. More likely you’ll find yourself facing many of the same questions and frustrations thousands of others have run into before you. You will either burn yourself out trying to ‘fix’ everything or conclude that blogging is an investment which pays off over time. Fix what you are able. Strive to improve every day. Realize that some things will take time. 

Google Does Not Hate Your Blog

Sometimes it truly feels like google hates me. When I first launched on Jan 1st, google indexed my core pages and my first post in under a week. I published my second post on Jan 6th and… I waited. Two weeks turned into a month and I was trying everything to figure out what I was doing so wrong that Google would not even recognize my efforts. Google was aware of my content, it just didn’t deem it worth indexing and would only tell me it “was not due to error”.

I:

• submitted a site map and Google didn’t care. 
• linked from the one post Google had already indexed – Google didn’t care. 
• edited each post until the Yoast SEO traffic lights turned green for both SEO and readability. Google DID NOT CARE. 

Then one day it happened, I requested a post to be indexed, the exact page I had requested many times before and… google indexed it. Ten minutes later I had requested indexing on each post and google accepted them all. 

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, things are simply outside of your control. Google’s algorithm does not hate you, it simply applies its rules when deciding if it will index a page or not. I don’t know exactly how heavily Google weighs domain age or threshold of posts, but they do seem to value credibility built up over time. Link backs also validate you to google, something that takes time to build up. 

Advice for New Bloggers #3–You Are Providing Value to Someone Out There

I thought I had it all figured out, having found an in demand niche I am passionate about. I already invested thousands of hours of my life into personal finance and have been fairly successful on my journey. Sharing it with others, helping them avoid the mistakes I have learned only in reflection, would surely come naturally. Writing had always been easy growing up, a way to work out my thoughts and express myself. Yet when I sat down to write, I found myself paralyzed. 

That nagging voice that prays upon your subconscious doubts, emerged asking “what could I possibly bring to the community that others hadn’t said a million times before?” even if I could, “why should anyone care?”. These questions combined with the doubts spurred by google ignoring my content and lack of traffic sent me spiraling down a rabbit hole of attempting to fix issues that most likely did not exist. I’ve since realized that in trying to “fix” these issues that

It’s easy to lose your voice, to lose what makes you worth following

Sometimes you simply need to take a step back. Maybe you’ve gotten too close to your current post by the hundredth time you’ve read through it. Maybe that last pass through the grammar checker, revision by an editor, or change just to make the SEO light turn green took away the nuance that set you apart. 

I was once told that I “Break all the rules, but understand how and when to break them.” I lost that voice somewhere in these first few months, I suspect that finding it will be a key part of making this blog worthwhile.

Advice for New Bloggers- Don’t Lose What Makes Your Voice One Worth Listening To

Content is king, but there are thousands of voices touching upon the same basic elements you are. Your voice, your individual style makes it valuable. Maybe you’re relatable, or have a sense of humor which vibes with the reader. Maybe you’re concise and able to make complicated topics digestible. Whatever makes your content yours, don’t lose sacrifice it just to meet some suggested standard. 

Advice for New Bloggers #5-It’s More Work Than You Expect

This final one is universal across any new project. We take for granted what we know, and most endeavors outside of that bubble involve far more work than is apparent from the outside. 

Bonus tip: appreciate your coworkers/those around you, they work harder than you realize. If they make it look easy, it’s most likely because they are good at what they do. 

Running a blog is not just writing content. In my first three months I’ve split my time between writing new posts, relearning web design in order to fix site issues, attempt to stand out(I should be able to launch a homepage I built within the month!), and to make the site load ever so slightly faster for a better user experience.

I’ve had to put on a marketing hat and promote my work, something I am not used to (and currently am bad at) doing. Marketing plays a large role as you try to reach new audiences across sites and social media. Each audience is unique and you must differentiate your approach to meet their needs. 

Advice for New Bloggers- Pace Yourself. It’s ok for Progress to Come in Stages.

Everyone hits the realization early on that a blog is more work than they had imagined. If you attempt to do everything at once, to be perfect, it will wear you down. Take it one step at a time. Set short-term goals and iterate upon them. When you feel you are doing everything so much worse than anyone has ever done before, take a break and revisit. You will not have all the answers. All you can do is constantly strive to improve and appreciate the journey. 

You Are Not Alone on This Journey

The best part of launching a blog in 2021 has been meeting the community. No matter your topic, you will find a wonderful community of passionate individuals who are walking the same path you are. Reach out. Every doubt you have, ever frustration you encounter, every mistake you make others have experienced before. It’s an easy trap to fall into, to be conditioned to believe that you have to have all the answers. The belief that to reach out to others is a weakness when it is the exact opposite. The financial community, and those who chose to place their faith in you, to say you are worth following, will support you. There is strength in the community and your voice adds to it.

Advice for Growing Bloggers– As you grow, remember how much a kind word, a retweet, or a follow meant in those early days. If you see a new blog you feel is worthwhile, let them know. If you read a post that brings something to your life, share and help bring it to others. Blogging is not a zero-sum game, by helping other voices grow and encouraging each other we only strengthen the overall community. I need to do better at playing an active role in this, going forward we all can together. 

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