Blog Talk - Month 1
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So this month has been very interesting to say the least. March 15,2020 I got the news that I was “temporarily terminated” from my job. I was a cocktail waitress at the same restaurant that I have been working at for the past ten years. That’s right, TEN years. I remember reading the text from my phone and thinking – this is it. I can either take this and get severely down on myself and wait until the isolation lifts to go back to that same.old.job. … or I try. I try and really do what I’ve always wanted to do. Give it a real shot – a REAL chance. I breathed. I talked it over with my best friend/boyfriend and came to the conclusion – I had to do this. For myself. That same night, I went on my computer – watched a bunch of videos about owning my own blog – and I dove right in. This is my beginning.
Investments
To start everything off, I knew I had to make initial purchases to get the ball rolling. I had nothing to go off of. I had to make the first leap and purchase my website. I did some digging, and found out that I needed two things. A host and a domain.
I knew I wanted to own 100% of my website. If I was going to have a website, I wanted to make sure that I had total freedom to customize it however I wanted to, and also monetize it – which was the end goal. I dug around and in the end, I ended up going with Host Gator. They offered me $55 for the year to host my blog AND supply me with a FREE domain. This was big for me. The setup process was pretty hands-on, and I’m still learning but I’m happy with my overall decision.
Even though I am hosted through HostGator, it still allows me to organize and construct my website under WordPress. Pretty cool!
Networking
I admit, I pretty much am walking into this knowing absolutely nothing about blogging. I knew that it has been something I wanted to do for a very long time – But I still had absolutely no knowledge about making it a reality.
However, I took this as an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and asked questions.
I began by joining a group on facebook dedicated towards helping new bloggers. This group helped me right off the bat by sharing tips and answering questions left right and centre. It’s a strong network that provided me with instant answers to blogging specific questions.
Also, I hopped on twitter I realized very quickly that there was an immense amount of people on twitter that was in the same boat, or willing on helping me. I found these people and my support group grew greatly. I am very very lucky to say that my twitter community is very strong in the fact that they want to help each other grow. I encourage all bloggers to find where your community is. Find out where those people are that will help you no matter what. I had nights where my website was giving me such troubles and I was close to a mental breakdown – but my twitter friends were right there to have my back. Networking has never felt so good.
Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest!
After spending all this time networking through twitter, and facebook – I realized I wasn’t getting too much traffic towards my blog. I was getting a lot of good help and feedback – but I have been missing the traffic needed.
So I kept searching. It is said in the blogging community that pinterest is where the traffic is – so pinterest is where I shall go.
I currently LOVE pinterest as it is. I often pin lots of things from, ideas about what to do with my hair, inspirational quotes, home decor inspo, and even other blogs that I often read! I’ve been on Pinterest for so long and I have never thought about just how many blogs I read daily!
That’s when it hit me – I need to connect myself to Pinterest.
I had come across a facebook group for bloggers that were kind and welcoming. They shared tips on how to grow your blog. All the information seemed to point back to a pinterest expert named Ell Duclos. She crafted a course called ,Pinterest With Ell, built on how to grow your pinterest. This course was full of tips and tricks and was a fair price so I knew I had to have it. I am determined to run through these ideas and really put my foot to the pedal to see the growth begin.
Quality Posts
Last but certainly, not least – this is what its all about at the end of the day. The Posts. I really wanted to sit and really work at every single post to the best of my abilities. This past month, I’ve been going on a little rollercoaster on feelings. I want to post what I want to post about. Having all these terms being thrown around all over the blogosphere about “SEO” and making sure that my posts stayed google friendly which frankly, really got me overwhelmed -fast.
I realized pretty quickly that looking at my posts like a business itself really took away from the fact of why I wanted to do this in the first place. I want to showcase myself, my thoughts, my feelings, and write about things that I want to write about for people who WANT to hear them. This is between me and you and I hope to goodness that it’s good enough to keep people reading, because I do not want to stop.
That being said, my goal is definitely to keep making quality posts about life, love, and finances and I hope to showcase it to the best of my abilities.
Goals for next month:
- Focus on my Pinterest Game.
I am currently at 4.9k Monthly viewers and I want to push that number up to 8k by the end of next month. This. is. POSSIBLE. - Push Blog Traffic. The goal is to get on to medivine, which needs 25k blog viewers in one month. I am a good chunk away but, never say never!
- Learn about SEO. I really find it complicated so in order for me to get better at it, I must learn at it. Practice makes perfect!
Are you a blogger as well? What are your goals for the upcoming months? What do you want to see done with your blog or website? Comment below!
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