There are so many people out there that are still skeptical about blogging. They say blogging is not a job, you won’t be able to earn good money out of it and can discourage newbie bloggers like me.
When you keep on listening to negative people, you will never be able to move forward with your blogging career. You will be stuck and finally, start to accept what people say to you.
I am going to lay down some of the myths of blogging and then share with you my reasons for starting a blog. It started because I wanted to earn a living out of it but the true reasons are far better than that.
If you’re a newbie blogger, prepare to be empowered and to move forward with your blog!
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MYTHS THAT PEOPLE USUALLY TELL YOU
1. Blogging is not a real business
Hey now… perhaps you’re thinking like that also!
But you’ll be surprised after you read a post that I made about kickass mom bloggers who started their own personal blogs and end up building their own business! Never underestimate moms!
They started from small and now they are known for the successful business they own. I’m following these mom bloggers long time ago before starting my own blog and constantly inspired by them.
Read it HERE so you’ll be inspired also! One thing for sure, they work hard to make their blogs successful!
2. It’s going to take years to make money from blogging
No, it’s not true! I’ve seen so many successful bloggers like Rosemarie Groener from The Busy Budgeter who earn money in less than a year. This is also a list of bloggers who made money from their blogs in the same time period :
- Chasing Foxes – in 3 months, Grace made money from her lifestyle blog together with her husband, Silas and now they make more than $10.000++ / months!
- Reroute Lifestyle – at first, Krista started a lifestyle blog and it blew her mind that she actually made money from her lifestyle blog 6 months after. Now she has a blog about how to be a kickass Boss and build your own blogging business.
You won’t be able to make money from your blog just overnight. It’s how much work you put into making your blog known and successful.
The purpose of why you start a blog is what matters the most. I’ll talk about this more down below.
3. You need to be tech savvy to start a blog
Hmm… this is also not true! You are not a jack of all trades but if you are then good for you! If you’re not a tech-savvy, you can always ask for help through forums or groups that you join with.
I.e if you are too confused on how to set your own theme, you can buy a theme with 6-months support from Envato Market. They offer a great collection of themes that would definitely fit what you need.
To figure out small stuff, you can Google and read some websites that could provide information about your technical problem. And if it’s hard, you can pay for a service. It’s simple as that.
Don’t push yourself and be stressed about something that you don’t understand instead try to ask for help in your community. I’m sure they can help!
4. It is super expensive to start a blog
Money, money, money… It’s always the problem, which was mine as well. But you know what? There are 2 options for this. You can do it in a pricey way — a subscription to a web hosting of your choice, apps and then buy specific courses that you are interested in and can guide you in growing your blog. Or you can go with the affordable way — a subscription to a web hosting of your choice and find free resources/apps that are useful for your blog and the rest is you can figure it out by yourself.
There’s nothing wrong with choosing the affordable way. That’s what I’d chosen for my first blog but then you need to figure everything out by yourself. That’s why I recommend you to go with the pricey way. When you have the knowledge from the courses you’d taken, you’ll be able to save all those headaches trying to figure out what you need to do next for your blog. Knowledge is not cheap but it’s super helpful!
Other good things when you sign up for a course are you’ll get the whole course and an exclusive membership to the group affiliated to the course. This is what will benefit you especially if you’ve never started a blog before. You’ll get support from the group and knowledge that will help you to grow your blog.
My recommended course for beginners is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing and if you are interested, you can check out my full review HERE. This course helped me understand more about affiliate marketing and I highly recommend it for a newbie or seasoned blogger!
The reasons why I started blogging
You don’t need a lot of reasons to start a blog. Whatever your reason(s) is it’ll be the foundation of your blog. It’s what you believe in to keep you moving forward no matter what people say. Another thing that can help you moving forward is to surround yourself with like-minded people who’ll assist you throughout your blogging journey. This has helped me a lot and I’m sure it can help you also. Now without further talking, here are some reasons why I started a blog:
1. I love to speak my mind on things that I pay attention to.
If one day you meet me in person, maybe you will find me shy and introvert. But actually, I have lots of things going on in my mind and blogging helps me to release everything. And if it worked for me, then it should have worked for others as well. Sharing knowledge through a blog is a marvelous way for the betterment of our existence.
2. As a housewife and being far from my home country, I want to find a job that enables me to work at home.
I miss my home country a lot…like a lot… And since we’re planning to have a child, I always want to have a job that allows me to stay at home. That’s why I choose to blog. I know it’s not going to be successful in the blink of an eye but I really do enjoy the process of building my blog.
Besides, what other jobs that allow you to stay at home and working while you’re in pajamas?
3. I want to help people.
It’s already in my genetics to help people around me. Whenever my friends or family need help, I’ll do my best to help and be there for them.
And after giving some thoughts to it, I wanted to start a blog to help more people, on a wider scale, who usually have problems and I want to provide a solution for them. That’s why this has been the reason for my blog’s existence. This has been my driving force ever since.
If you have one of these reasons then I suggest you to try to start a blog. Especially when you have the driven to help others. Having a blog is not just about money, it’s about providing a solution to your audience or readers.
So, you want to start a blog now, what do you need to do next?
Now you know why you want to embark on the blogging journey but do you really have what it takes to become a blogger? And more importantly a successful one?
I remember the first time I decided to blog and before buying a web hosting, I took this test for fun and ultimately made me jump to the decision to blog right away.
Related post: 9 Inspiring Mom Bloggers that make me start a blog right away
So, you know that you want to start a blog but don’t know where to start?
Here is what you can do as a starter before investing in a course.
1. Sign up for a PAID web hosting and open an account with WordPress.com
Why a paid web hosting? Now I know deep in my heart that I want to channel out my creativity through a blog and also helping other people but I also want to earn income from my blog even just a little.
And I know you feel the same too. So, To be able to earn income from a blog is to monetize it and paid web hosting is what you need to have. The free web hosting won’t let you put ads and affiliate links which are how you monetize a blog.
My recommendation for web hosting is Siteground. It has great customer support and provides fast web loading time. The great part is when you first sign up with Siteground, you’ll get 60% off on your first invoice no matter how long you subscribe. Check out Siteground here for more information. And if you need a step by step guide on How to Start a Blog with Siteground, you can check out my post HERE.
2. Installing a theme for your blog.
Envato Market is a marketplace where you can find themes as low as $2. You can find a theme that’s fit for your niche and have a good navigation for your readers in Envato Market.
3. Making great content for your blog.
Content is the most precious part of your blog. This is the thing that could determine if your blog is gonna be a success or not.
Nah… I’m joking. Well, actually it’s not wrong.
Traffic comes from the readers, right? And how to attract the readers to a blog? With contents. If the readers thought that a blog’s contents are good, they’ll definitely share it and possibly relay it to other readers.
Writing a content is easy. But making a content that’s readable and good is not easy. You need to proofread it, put some shareable images, enable an easy social sharing button, and etc.
Here’s what I do to help me make a great content for my blog and I suggest you do it also:
- Proofread and check the flow of your post. After writing, you need to proofread and read it out to check if your post is readable or not. Is it sounds boring or not? Is this how you speak to your friend? Make it interesting to read and always remember to do a grammar check with Grammarly. This app helps you to save more time while writing your post because it will auto check your grammar directly.
- Shareable images. I make shareable images with PicMonkey because it’s so easy to use and it has lots of templates I can use as a guide. My favorite size for pinnable images is 800×1422 pixels because I prefer a big image and for featured image is 1024×800 pixels. Now you might wonder why I put 2 images. The pinnable image is for Pinterest and featured image is for Facebook or Twitter. This how I make my images easy to share, this also what you can do to make your content shareable.
- Easy social sharing button. My favorite plugins for this are Social Warfare and SumoMe. With Social Warfare, I put social share button before and after the post and then embed click to tweet button in between post. With SumoMe, I put a floating share button and mobile share button. I use two plugins because want to optimize the FREE version without buying the PAID version. But if you only want to use one plugin, I would suggest buying the Paid version of Social Warfare.
You’ll definitely face trials and errors in making a good content for your blog. What you can do is keep on upgrading the popular posts you have so you’ll be able to gain more readers from that posts.
4. Building your email list.
This has been the top blogger’s recommendation to do after launching a blog. You need to build an email list from Day 1.
Why? Email list meaning your audience or readers that sign up to your mailing list. If you keep on building your email list means you’re building your readers a.k.a traffic. There’ll be more traffic to your blog. That’s why it’s important.
Now you probably wondering what email marketing provider you need to choose? I say ConvertKit or Mailerlite. If you are on a budget then Mailerlite is perfect for you because it’s FREE for 1,000 subscribers.
But I can say that ConvertKit is the best choice that I ever made. It’s super easy on tagging my subscribers and embed forms into my post. I embedded a form in between the post and by the end of the post with ConvertKit plugin. So it’s super easy to apply.
With ConvertKit, you can make landing pages and forms to capture your subscribers and the best part is it can integrate with lots of apps like Shopify, Woocommerce, Contact Form 7, SumoMe, Teachable, SendOwl and many more. So you can convert your readers to your subscribers! Check out ConvertKit HERE and you can get a FREE trial for 14 days.
5. Monetize your blog
The simple things you can do to monetize your blog as a newbie are affiliate marketing and putting ads. If you’re a beginner and don’t know about affiliate marketing. Reading THIS POST will help you understand about affiliate marketing. Now move on to things you can do to monetize your blog:
- Putting Ads: As a newbie, I suggest you sign up for Google AdSense or Media.Net. So far this two is the best network for newbies to monetize their blog. Media.Net offers contextual ads (consist of text) which is perfect for a blog. You’ll also have your own account manager that’ll help you with better ad’s management and monetization. Check out Media.Net here.
- Affiliate Marketing: Two networks that you need to join are Shareasale and Viglink. Those two are by far my favorite and easy to work with. Shareasale and Viglink offer a great range of affiliate networks that you can choose as a newbie blogger. You can definitely find affiliate networks that you can join with. Check out Shareasale HERE and Viglink HERE.
6. Grow your traffic
After you created great contents for your blog, you need to attract readers by sharing it on social media platforms. The platforms that I love the most are on Pinterest and Facebook. Those two are by far where I get my referral traffic from.
Now you can either choose to pin manually or use an app for this. If you’re still a newbie, it’ll be better to use an app. Why? Because you will be hella busy making good contents and don’t really have time to do manual pinning.
The app that I use is Tailwind. Tailwind provides me with information on my Pinterest account’s performance and I can pin to the Tribes for more reach. This is the strategy that I used to drive traffic to my blog and you can apply this also to help you grow your traffic.
After you already get used to making good content then you can do manual pinning and an app. This will be the perfect combination to drive more traffic to your blog. Check out Tailwind to get FREE 100 pins to schedule and joined 5 Tribes. I say try the FREE trial first and see if it is good for you or not.
What I learned so far after 3 months of blogging now…
Building a blog is not only a one night job and sometimes could make you insane! Yeap that happen to me. But it’s has been fun for me so far!
When you have certain reasons before starting a blog, it could be the things that will keep you moving forward with your blog. That is what I think when I’m feeling down and not motivated to continue my blog. This will help you also!
Think about why you want to start a blog before you want to earn income out of it. And that could help you stay on your track to build a successful blog!
If you need some blogging resources, you can head out to my BLOG RESOURCES PAGE.
Need Inspirations? Check out my Blog Inspiration Series:
- 9 Top and Inspiring Mom Bloggers that make me start a blog right away
- Blogging Myths and Reasons Why I Start a Blog
Or you can check out my other Blog series:
What’s your reason before you start your own blog? Share your thoughts and leave a comment down below. 🙂
See ya on the other side!
Monica
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34 comments
The biggest myth that drives me bananas is when people think it’s SO EASY to make money via blogging. They think that the instance they set up a blog a revenue stream will be crowding their checking out – NOT SO MUCH. Ugh.
This is so true! After jumping into blogging for couple months now. Making money out of it isn’t just in a blink of an eye. So many people have lot’s of perspective that when you sign up to a blog then you’ll be making money from day 1 with no effort at all.
This is great! I’ll have to check out the EBA. My blog has been up since 2009 but I’m just now starting to get really serious. Switching to self hosting is the next thing on my list!
Great for you, Candice! I wish you luck on your blogging journey and keep up the spirit!
i love this post.How i wish i was able able to enroll into EBA this time but next time it opens i will be so in. Although they say it opens once an year but in October there is always another opening,so if it happens again this year am so in.I like that you highlighted about making money as a beginner,am a big fan of income reports and i have many new bloggers who have made money with their new blogs.
Great to hear that! Hopefully you can enroll to EBA next year!
Yes, I agree with you about the myths. Will check out the 9 bloggers who are your inspiration. 🙂 Glad you feel you’ve gained value from the EBA course.
There’s a lot of value that I haven’t get from EBA entirely. I’m still on lesson 7! Gotta keep up the spirit! Thanks for checking my other post!
I have yet to earn money from my blog, but hope to one day. It started as a hobby and extension of my fitness business. I have not heard of this EBA course but I will look into it.
Me too, Shannon! Gotta keep the spirit up! You should check out EBA, it’s a great investment for your blog.
I love this so much. I recently started a blog and the “blog myths” are definitely not true. Thank you for sharing 🙂
You’re welcome, Megan. Don’t hear all those myths instead try to work hard towards breaking it.
I love this! Although I think people should be more focused on the why they want to blog than the money aspect. The money will come, but you need to provide the quality content that you are inspired to write and not just for the money!
Definitely agree with you, Kristi! After launching my blog, I realize content is so much precious!
This is a great post and should inspire anyone on the fence to start a blog! It is much more than a monetary thing. For me, I enjoy having a place to share my creativity.
Me to, Margaret. I started this blog to share some of lifestyle tips but then I want to help others build their blog too!
Appreciate the inspiration and totally agree with you on your points! You can do anything you put your mind to provided that you take the action that is necessary and calling to you. I do believe that blogging is rewarding not simply for monetary reasons, it is also a beautiful and creative expression for what’s important to you.
Yep! Agree with you!
There is some really solid advice in this post. The blogging myths will help many new bloggers realise that you can achieve something great if you work hard.
Definitely true!
I started my blog in 2011 with the sole purpose of writing just because I love to write and I love to get my neurons working. It never occurred to me that blogging would be something lucrative, but I managed to earn money from my blog in less than a year. 🙂
Great for you!
I really appreciate this post as blogging is a lot of work and is a job. I loved how you described the myths as you talked about some very good points. And I love how you illustrated why you blog, as that is the beauty of blogging, it is an individuals passion and creativity. People blog for so many different reasons, some as a hobby others as their full time job 🙂
Thanks, Kelly. It’s so rewarding when someone actually love my writing. Definitely lots of reason behind building a blog.
While I did take a long time to start, an even longer time to monetize my blog I would generally agree with your myths. I think blogging is a tough, isolated, lonely gig potentially. One really has to be invested in communicating with an audience, one must have a mission, a passion to blog for any length of time.
I appreciate this post, thank you!
There’s always not enough time to finish everything when you’re blogging. Thanks for your appreciation!
There is a lot of time and effort that goes into a blog. Fortunately, there are many ways to monetize a blog with affiliates and sponsorships and offset costs and make money.
Blogging with the intent on making money is definitely a business. There are so many behind the scenes hours. The money doesn’t just flow in.
Yup! It take so much work that actually you need to build it by time.
Great article about blogging. For my blog, I enjoy providing readers with trending and helpful information they will find interesting. I definitely agree that blogging is a business.
Really good points here. For me, I’m just having a hard time being motivated. I always take a break. I have too many ideas, but I never had time. Because I was working full time plus a side business. Now I’m on mat leave and posted on my blog for the first time since last summer. I’m hoping I can keep up this time.
http://www.vancitynbeyond.com
A few answers of my own – yes blogging is a job and can be a great home business! I started because I was depressed and my daughter thought it was something fun we could do together. Fun, yes it can be. I started out knowing nothing about technology. When I went to college 30 some years ago the internet didn’t live in peoples home or anywhere for that matter. You are so on point with this post! Now I have to go back through and check out some links that look interesting.
Thanks Gladys! I am glad that this post could help you!
Thanks, Gladys! There’ll be more post in upcoming days!