u/ProBlo
Here are some things that I wish people would have told me when I was first starting out…
JUST SIT THE f*ck DOWN AND WRITE YOUR f*ckING BLOG POST
Nobody cares whether or not you have some random obscure plugin installed. Nobody is vising your site so this cool new plugin you found doesn't matter anyways. Making content is what matters.
Nobody cares if you pick this theme over that theme because you won't be getting meaningful traffic for a while anyways. Just pick a fast, secure theme.
Stop worrying about ad networks and getting approved for AdSense. Your blog is new, stressing out about the $0.34 you stand to earn this month doesn't f*cking matter.
Close down those idiotic YouTube videos by professional marketers who are filling your head with bullshit (ie: making blogging seem like an easy way to get rich) solely so they can push whatever affiliate product or service they're getting paid to push.
Stop spending so much time on Reddit. Sure, there are a lot of really great people on these subreddits, but there are also plenty of idiots. Learn the basics, pick up some tips here and there, but more importantly you need to get your ass kicked through trial and error.
Shortcuts only work temporarily. Sure, you can get a big jump in traffic by scraping a bunch of articles, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to re-write them, and then purchasing some Private Blog Network (PBN) backlinks on Fiverr. But you're also going to get your ass handed to you 3-6 months down the line.
Stop reading this post. Don't even take the time to reply to it. Close Reddit down, open up wp-admin or Google Docs or whatever you use, and just start writing. Just write and write and write. Even if you're not feeling it, just shut the f*ck up and write. You can always go back and edit/delete/etc.. but if you sit down and write enough then you're bound to eventually churn out some good content.
Seriously, stop reading this and go write a damn blog post.
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ricket
This might be the best post ever in this subreddit… but I don't think the majority of people will listen to it… and that sucks.
People love to spend all their time asking about "what theme is best", "what niche is best", bla bla bla.
People are lazy and they (for some reason, thank you "Gurus") thinks that blogging is 100% passive, so they spend all their time asking for the "perfect" things instead of just start putting the work in.
You can be successful in every niche. No theme is "best". No keyword is the best keyword. You don't need backlinks when you have 3 posts on your 2 week old site.
You need to spend hundreds of hours on your content. That is the only thing that is important. Start now and stop asking questions that does not matter.
I'm gonna reach 150k monthly visitors this month. My site is almost 3 years old and I don't even have a freaking logo (and I didn't build any backlinks at all).
I spent maybe 1-2 hours setting up my theme (GeneratePress), installed an SEO plugin (Rank Math) and since then I've spent all my time on my content.
I wrote in another post that I'm gonna reach $2000 this month. I got a bunch of Direct Messages (DM)s asking "what niche", "what theme", etc… It does not matter!
Pick a niche you know things about, buy a domain and cheap hosting, learn a little bit about keyword research and search intent, then get to work.
You will learn along the way what works for your site in your niche that you picked.
No one can give you an answer what "is best" because that answer is totally different from site to site. You have to create your own site and learn what works for you and your niche/audience.
Is generate press better than the WordPress themes?
I haven't used the default WordPress themes for maybe 10 years so I don't know about them, but I think GeneratePress is really good.
It's easy to work with, clean looking, and great page speed.
I started out with the free version and upgraded to Premium when my site started to earn money.
GuyDanger
I am the opposite. I am a php developer and work with WordPress 90 percent of the time. Basically out of the box WordPress is ok. But if you have some programming chops, it's freakin amazing. The core is solid and theming is actually pretty simple. Started blogging about a month ago and am enjoying every minute of it. Granted, I enjoy adding code bits to enhance the user experience. So it may be a little different for me than it is for others. As an example, my mascot will pop up randomly over a post. I expect to use this in the future for contests. You'll need to find him, click on him to enter the contest. I figured it would keep visitors engaged a little longer. But that's my enjoyment. Doing stupid shit like this and seeing if it works. 😀
Ranga
I am 1 month and 4 posts old into blogging. What you are talking about is 100pc true.
I've spent the whole of my first month in building what I thought was the perfect website and now I'm realising I don't even have the mental capacity to sit down, focus and write, and write.
Any advice relating to my site https://healthips.com/ and my writing would be of great help to me.
Looks like I have a very long way to go.
I read a couple articles and it was pretty interesting. The prostate bph article was good but I found towards the end, the more technical stuff I skipped through.. although that's just me personally.
I liked on your posts the reasoning things and how to fix, as well as your point of importance of exercise. Which is why I think a good topic would be all the health benefits from exercise, especially Cardiovascular and details on how that improves over time with exercise. Just a couple thoughts.
The writing was engaging and kept me interested. Good job man. Wish you the best of luck!
This is the kind of feedback that can get a beginner out of bed to go and write more articles 💯
Thank you so much, just this comment will fuel me for a very long time in my blogging journey.
One of the things newbies have to deal with is the imposter syndrome, and such comments are the the only effective treatment for that syndrome.
Thank you so much for your time and feedback, I'll work on everything you've recommended.
CBRChris
You are welcome! I'm glad it helped fuel you and keep you going!
I forgot to mention but I also liked the diagrams/pics you had, as they were helpful to understand the issue and also a good frequency.
The only other thing I'd mention is remember that most people reading don't have a lot of medical background so just remember your audience. For example in the prostate post when you start talking about the process of testosterone, it goes into such a level of detail that it went over my head – and I've gotten A+ in anatomy and physiology previously!
But yeah just keep writing because I would have read more of it was there! And you did set up a very nice website.
Wishing you the best!
Ranga
Thank you once more.
I guess I could easily solve the issue of being so technical by trying as much to use simple general terms and if it can not be simpler I'll just srape that part off.
I'll write more and more and consider adding in an image where appropriate if it helps readers understand better.
Those are good grades you got 💯 Congratulations.
I wish you the best too and more luck in everything you do.
Scholes
"using AI to re-write them"
Please don't use Artificial Intelligence (AI) for your blog posts. They're garbage compared to what an actual human being can produce.
They're good for generating titles, key points and headings, but not much else.
I generated some test articles while working on a review for one of my freelance writing clients (the irony of writing about tools that are designed to replace me).
One of them was about ways to promote your small business. Under a heading about marketing at community events, the article went off on this mad, rambling tangent about grandparents being too busy to see their grandkids (see screenshot.)
PS: Read all this post because it's easier to read while eating my morning toast than it is to write! 😀
I tried it, too. Not for my website, but for something else. I found that it was faster and easier just to write it myself that it was to get Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do it.
Precisely. AI writing tools may crank out 1,000+ word pieces in a matter of minutes, but when you consider the amount of time you have to spend editing them to make them any good for your readers and your growth strategy, you could've done the whole thing yourself and still done a better job.
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walker
I find some of this advice misleading or better yet, it's just wrong (its bad advice), I get the feeling it was written by someone trying to give advice to help others but they lack something extremely important.
The actual experience and knowledge that can only be gained by having succeeded in this business. This person isn't making an actual consistent income from blogging, if he was, this wouldn't be his advice.
I'm assuming this and don't know it to be factual but I'm giving him the benefit, since the other option is he is purposely trying to mislead and deceive you.
I'd like to believe that's not the case.
ne, my first site has 140 articles (1,000-6,000 words each) it ranks for almost 3,800 keywords and I have almost 1,300 do-follow backlinks.
Even though Adsense isn't going to provide you a steady income that you can support yourself with, I make over $200 each month from this
When I started, I'm not going to say I didn't know Search Engine Optimization (SEO), to say this would assume that I even knew such a thing even existed.
I wasn't concerned with making money & I really didn't know how it was made. This was 3.5 years ago.
Now I can rank first page of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) with keyword difficulty of 45-80 about 50% of the time. I don't really aim at 80% but I have a couple as secondary keywords that I'm ranking for.
I feel very comfortable that I will rank with difficulty in the 60's though.
Anything lower than 45, I'm shocked if I don't rank 1st page or within range to optimize my content to move up into 1st page.
I learned how to properly optimize my site and individual articles (right outline) that makes it possible for me to rank along with billion dollar companies as I am.
I mean no disrespect but it doesnt seem that you've had much monetary success yet but the way you describe to everyone what they should do.
It doesn't matter at all if you write content that can't get ranked 1st page.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is what you need to learn and keyword research is probably the most important thing you can have knowledge in.
Without a clear plan, that executes keyword research, you're just wasting your time writing content.
I could go on about all the things I accomplished with my first site, things like being the main source of research in a Harvard-Yale debate.
It's not useless, because I learned many different aspects of running a successful content site, but all this content with all its success and views doesn't also equal BIG $$$
I've done almost 25,000 views in a month (Feb < year >) JUST in Facebook groups.
I sold my first affiliate products on this site too but in one afternoon I made more money than I made from that first site in 3 years time.
I had been studying marketing since last fall. I've created multiple new sites over the past 2-3 months.
These are 2-5 page sites, glorified sales pages (opt-in) with the product right on the static page. Depending what I'm selling, I might have a couple content articles too (hence 2-5 pages)
With my keyword research knowledge, I then find keywords with buyers intent with low Cost Per Click (CPC).
IF YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE REAL MONEY WITHOUT BUYING ADS, YOU CAN BUT YOU WON'T.
NOT A CONSISTENT INCOME THAT DOES MUCH MORE THAN PAY YOUR BILLS & EXPENSES.
There are people on Instagram that are influencers and they make great money (sometimes), you're more likely to be become one of these influencers with millions of followers than to have a blog that makes you real money consistently without buying ads
It's not luck, if you can create something that no one has done before, then this is possible, if not, the idea is a pipe dream
Nothing is for free.
That first site, I never bought ads and I sold products and got tens of thousands of views a month and it didn't bring in much money, not really
I could have done better, if my niche (sports) had more buyer intent keywords and then I would've purchased ads for it.
Even though the Sports niche can sell a lot of products (I'm a Fanatics affiliate, among others in the industry) when you are writing knowledgeable content that has more expertise than what billion dollar companies like ESPN can write my evaluation skills are world class, (I've been offered jobs as a Dolphins scout on several occasions)
The people reading these articles aren't trying to buy anything. They are just looking up facts or searching for content
Or looking to argue a take with a person (me) that they lack the knowledge to argue with.
Some people don't know, what they don't know, ya know.
Anyway, I can't stress the importance of keyword research and finding offers with buyers intent.
YOU HAVE TO SELL THINGS THAT YOUR TRAFFIC WANTS TO BUY.
People HAVE BEEN SELLING THINGS USING THIS SIMPLE STRATEGY TO SELL PRODUCTS LONG BEFORE THE INTERNET WAS A THING
YOU NEED THE RIGHT TRAFFIC (sell to the people that want what you have)
If you try to sell hotdogs, you wouldn't go and try to sell them to a line of people waiting to get into a nightclub
Try the same thing out front of a baseball game and you will have a completely different outcome.
HAS TO BE A TARGETED PLAN, TARGETED TRAFFIC TO A KEYWORD WITH BUYERS INTENT
If you purchased a McDonald's, would you advertise to vegans?? I hope not.
You can research and plan a campaign around a keyword that nobody is ever going to type in useless they are looking to purchase something in particular
It has to be the right traffic, you can have 258 people come to your site and you could make thousands from those people with conversion rates at 70-95%, don't plan on it being that high but it happens, when it is thought out and planned correctly
Point is you will convert at a very high clip.
Don't do this and you can have 8,000 people come to your site and not sell a thing.
If I advertise Big Mac's to vegans, I won't make one sale.
You have to know who your audience is and you can do a mixture of paid ads and organic traffic but you must really know your niche to do this.
Not just the information, what's, more important to making money than the knowledge (should have this too) is understanding the people in this niche.
If you understand your audience, if you take the time to do this, you will know what they want before they do, you will clean up when you do this.
There are advanced tactics too like flipping the market but the essentials are know SEO for organic traffic and for organic or paid traffic, you must have knowledge in keyword research.
Knowing this can even make your entrance point into a niche much more targeted, giving you an advantage, simply because you're not starting at the same spot as everyone else.
If you go for a job interview and you're up against 100 other people, your chances aren't as good.
Making money online is a skill, there is hardly anything lucky about it.
Its hard work to gain this skillset but it can be very lucrative once you do.
Don't forget (or learn it for the first time) that a niche is a hole in the market.
You can write content but this won't make you money alone. It's not the most important part.
It's not second either. It doesn't matter how good your content is if they aren't for the right keywords and if you want organic traffic, same thing but add SEO to that too.
Blogging is online marketing. (Continued)
(Continued) If you want to just make content for people to read and don't mind spending some money out of your pocket to do this, (hosting, plugins, etc) no problem with that, do you.
But if you want to make a living from blogging, you need to learn these things( & more) then buy paid ads to get the right traffic that is targeted with intent.
I'd tell anyone that doesn't want to buy ads or can't afford them, they might want to consider something other than this as a way to make a living.
Because they likely won't be making a living blogging or through affiliate marketing.
Nothing is free, not unless you have a Facebook, Twitter. Amazon idea of your own.
Even then, you'd still buy ads. Coca Cola doesn't really need to advertise but they spend billions doing so, why do you think this is???
This goes for every major company out there, these companies are known, you're not, why wouldn't you need to do this??
ACat
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), here. I can also tell anyone reading this: You need to stick with it formonths, writing consistently!
Be patient. It'll take at least six months, even a year, for your site to index enough (get noticed by search engines and users) to start ranking for even just one or two of the topics you write about. That's after you've written at least 12, 15, even 20 posts on the same broad topic.
GuyDanger
I may be naive, and I agree with most of what you say, but coming from a developer background most of my efforts was put towards making blogging as painless as possible. This also entails post sharing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and audience building. It would suck writing posts every day and getting little to no traction because no one knows you're there.
My advice, build a solid foundation. Then write, write and write some more.
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How To Write More With Fewer Distractions
To Write Articles or Publish Content Fast
