What You Need To Know Before Starting A Blog
When I first decided to set up a blog I read a lot of posts called what you need to know before starting a blog. Some of them were really helpful because there is a lot to learn, especially if you don’t have any previous experience writing blog posts.
However, there is also a lot of outdated advice which might even hinder your progress so I wanted to put together the bits of advice that I would have found so helpful in the early days of setting up my first blog in 2020.
I was actually really fortunate to have a friend who had been blogging for a few years so she very patiently answered a lot of the questions I had. I know that not everyone will have somebody in their life who has knowledge about blogging and that’s ok, I got you!
1. Decide The Purpose Of The Blog
This is a very important one and that’s why I put it first. What I mean by this is decide if you want to use your blog as a sort of diary or to hold yourself accountable, or if you want it to be a business which will eventually provide you with an income.
If you decide that you want it to be a diary or more of a hobby, that’s fine of course but you”ll find that a lot of my advice in this article won’t be so helpful for you.
I will assume if you’re still reading, that you want this eventually to be a side hustle or business that you make money from. Deciding this right from the start will help because it’s important to approach everything from a business mindset. Think about who your ideal reader will be and how you will help them.
If you’re looking to earn money blogging, you can read my post how to make money blogging for five easy ways to turn your blog into a business.
2. Choose Your Niche
Next choosing your niche is another important consideration for what you need to know before starting a blog. I put it in this order because I think deciding what you want to write about should be thought about carefully before you choose your branding and even before you make your website.
In case you aren’t aware a niche is a term referring to the subject you will be writing about on your blog. A few examples of the category your blog might come under are; Finance, Lifestyle, Education, Recipes etc. If you niche down further you could write specifically about saving money, travel, homeschooling or vegan recipes as some examples.
The reason finding your niche is so important is because you need to know enough about the subject before you start writing and ideally you should also be passionate about the subject. If you decide you want to blog about gardening for example, but you don’t have a garden and you are not a gardener, then you will not only struggle to write about the subject but you may also lose motivation for your blog very quickly too.
If you were planning on moving house to somewhere with a garden and you wanted to blog about being a beginner gardener as you learn yourself, that would work much better.
I know from experience that setting up a blog within a niche that you are not passionate about is just a big waste of time. I have an abandoned blog about crafting with kids which I just don’t care enough about the subject to continue with. It has a handful of blog posts but I haven’t touched it in over a year. Writing this has reminded me I need to do something about that blog..
3. Choose Your Branding
Pick your brand colours, the name of your blog and logo very carefully. This is something that I wish I’d known when I was starting out, I chose a very dark theme when I first set up my website and the logo was very colourful and gareish 😕 What I hadn’t really considered was how that would appear to the reader. I was going for designs and colours that I liked, but design is not my favourite part of blogging and I didn’t think it through properly.
It helps to research the various designs that are already in your niche. For example if you have decided that your content will be primarily about sustainability and zero waste, this is within the lifestyle niche. Have a look on Pinterest and see the colours and logos that other blogs within that niche have gone with. You can either follow similar branding with your own flair or you can chose to go for a completely different style altogether in order to stand out.
If like me you aren’t as confident in your design abilities, luckily there are websites such as Canva where you can use their free logo templates to adapt and create your own logo very easily. You can even create other images and save your brand colours within Canva.
Failing that, if you have the money you can always pay somebody to create your logo for you. There are a lot of professionals online that can make you a beautiful logo for a small fee.
4. Go With A Self Hosted Website
Oh my goodness, I wish I had gone with a self hosted WordPress.org website right from the start! I went with GoDaddy and their own website builder which is definitely so easy to use as it’s user friendly but there’s not as much functionality with it.
I quickly realised that there were some things that I was unable to do with my website such as add a Pinterest Save Button to each blog post and because the website was built within their web builder I was unable to migrate it to WordPress. I had to manually save my written blog posts to my computer, set up a new website through Lyrical Host and copy and paste the content in. It was very longwinded and frustrating and I wish that I had gone with a WordPress.org website right from the start.
Although you have to do a lot of the coding tasks yourself with a WordPress website there are so many tutorials online and plugins that you can install to make things easier for you. A self-hosted website sounds a lot more intimidating than it actually is. It means that you have much better control of how your website functions and you are better equipped to deal with larger amounts of traffic in the future.
There’s actually a lot to learn when it comes to plugins for a wordpress site, that’s why I’ve written a few blog posts about WordPress specifically. How to create a WordPress blog and 13 essential free wordpress plugins for your blog.
5. Don’t Spend Too Long On Design
This could apply to your website and even your logo and branding in general. It’s so easy to get caught up with making everything perfect but remember that when you’re treating your blog like a business, the logo and branding will not bring in traffic to your website, creating helpful content will.
Definitely think about the design of your website of course, make it visually appealing and easy to navigate, however don’t get too stuck in the design process. It takes several months for Google to start indexing your content and with this in mind, you might benefit with getting everything published as soon as you can.
You can always go back and work on the design more another time, as long as you have the important pages such as a page for your blog posts (either front page or separate page), a privacy policy, cookie policy and an about section. Try not to get too caught up with the details..
6. Learn Seo Before You Start Writing
I certainly wish that I had learned SEO before I had even written my first blog post. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s the process Google uses to Index your content for search. Before you write your post you have to decide the main keyword or keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for on Google.
Whether you rank on the first page of Google will depend on whether your post is SEO optimised, the quality of the content and the competition. There are a lot of keyword research tools that you can use to help you do keyword research before you write. Such as Semrush, Keywords Everywhere, Keysearch.co and Moz. You can find free information about optimizing your content for SEO from people such as Neil Patel and Income School on YouTube.
You can also use free wordpress plugins like Yoast and Rankmath which give you pointers while you are writing your post. I have used both but I prefer Rankmath.
If you start writing in a more casual manner without considering SEO you will find it so much harder to rank on the front page of Google. Learn as much as you can about SEO straight away before you start writing and that will really help you out. I wish I hadn’t put it off for so long as I now consider my first written posts as trash(as my Son would say)!
7. Write Less About Yourself
This is something else you need to know before starting a blog and writing your posts. It really is a mindset shift to consider how your content will help others and really helpful blog posts are written with the reader in mind.
For example if you write a post about your morning skincare routine then you’re only talking about the products you use and why but that will not be appealing to the reader unless you’re already an influencer with a large following. If you use a title such as ‘5 Skincare Products You Need To Know About’ that is much more appealing and people will be more likely to want to read your blog post.
The same applies to the writing within your blog post, think about how you are helping the reader and write accordingly. Try to avoid saying ‘I’ and ‘Me’ throughout the post and write ‘you’ and ‘your’ much more.
It sounds so simple doesn’t it… but when you’re starting out this is such a big mistake that many bloggers make, myself included.
8. Write At Least 5 Posts Before You Publish
When to publish and with how many blog posts is a question that new bloggers ask quite a lot. I’ve seen various answers from bloggers online and it varies from publish straight away to have 5-10 posts ready before you publish.
The reason that I state 5 is because I think that when someone lands on your website to read a post whether that’s through Google, Social Media or Pinterest then you have other content that they can read straight away. It also helps you to get a little bit ahead with your writing.
If this is your side hustle and you have other commitments, you may only find the time to write a blog post a week or maybe even less than that. If you have a few already on your website then you can just keep adding to it as and when you can.
If you have more time and you know you’ll be able to write a few blog posts each week then this might not necessarily be a concern to you. In that case just do what you think would work best for you.
If you’re wondering how to write the perfect blog post every time, I’ve written a post how to write an engaging blog post which you can check out next.
9. Start Working On An Email List
What you need to know before starting a blog has to include thinking about an email list. You might have already heard this mentioned from others people online but an email list is really important and I wish I’d thought about this right from the start.
The problem with relying on traffic from other sources such as Google, Pinterest and Social media is that if that traffic stops due to algorithm changes or worse case scenario, the platform no longer exists then you will lose all of that traffic to your website.
When you give people a reason to subscribe to your blog such as a free guide or similar then you can start collecting email subscribers. The beauty with having your own list is that you own that personally, not another website and then you can use that to connect with your audience and even sell your own digital products or courses if you want.
If you’re curious about what a Virtual Assistant can do for you, you can read this Virtual Assistant case study where I help a client set up a blog and email marketing for her business.
10. Don’t Spend All Your Time On Social Media
Eek, calling myself out on this one! Social media is great for connecting with people, collaborating with other bloggers and just generally having another platform that people can get in contact with you. That-being-said it is also very easy to get lost in trying to gain followers and likes; and forgetting that it doesn’t always drive traffic to your blog.
Pinterest and YouTube has the potential to drive traffic to your blog for example. Instagram doesn’t for most people, even people that I know with 10,000+ followers have reported that only 1% of their traffic comes from Instagram.
Facebook and TikTok can be helpful to get traffic to your blog but it depends where your target audience are. Younger audiences are more likely to be on TikTok and older people on Facebook. This is just a general statement and I know might not necessarily matter and it depends on your niche. However, I thought it was worth mentioning because the biggest problem when you’re starting out as a blogger is getting people to view your blog.
11. Have Short And Long Term Goals
Something else to think about when you’re setting up your blog is to make sure you have long and short term goals but also be realistic about your goals.
Saying that you want to get 10,000 visitors to your blog within 6 months and saying you’ll write a blog post every day when you know you don’t have the time, would be examples of unrealistic goals.
Start small so if your ongoing goal is to create 1 or 2 blog posts each week then set yourself the goal of 1 a week, that way if you can do more than that, it’s a bonus.
In the early days you are probably not going to see much traffic to your site but that is quite normal, sometimes it’s not having enough blog posts in order for you to be found and sometimes it’s because a new site takes Google a little while to index the content. Don’t be disheartened, a lot of bloggers quit because they don’t see results but it really takes persistance. Just keep writing good quality and helpful content in the first few months.
Any goals that you set yourself should have a time limit on them. You can set goals for your blog writing, social media, guest posts and even learning goals.
12. Diversify Your Income Sources
This is important for your business, if you’re starting out a side hustle with the intention of leaving your job once you earn a full time wage – you could be missing out on leaving your job earlier by not diversifying your income.
You can have ads on your blog through Google Adsense and Ezoic even without much traffic. Other Ad networks require you to have a certain amount of page views before you can sign up to them, such as Mediavine.
If you’re likely to be reviewing products then signing up to the affiliate programs for the brands will make sense for your blog. That way when you recommend something to the reader and they click on your link and buy something, you’ll get a small commision from the brand. You’ll need to put a disclaimer on each blog post that you’ve included an affiliate link and the link will be marked as a sponsored, no-follow link.
The great thing about affiliate links is you can even include them on social media when you’re talking about a product as well. I’ve included them in the description box of all of my YouTube videos (when I talk about a product) because you never know when someone will find your video months later and decide they want to buy the product.
Depending on your niche as well you might want to make digital products to sell, a recipe ebook is a great idea for a recipe website and if you’re a coach then making a course might be something else you can sell.
Ebooks are generally going to be quite simple to create. A course however, will likely take a lot of work with filming short videos and tutorials, however once it’s done you should only have to update occasionally if anything changes within your industry. Both of these products are a good way of generating passive income, if it suits your niche.
13. Keep Learning And Be Wary Of Outdated Advice
Always keep learning, this applies to the niche of your website and about blogging in general. Even though I’ve been a blogger for over 2 years, quite often I will come across something related to my website or a piece of blogging advice that I’ve never heard before.
Learning as much as you can about your niche will help too, if you’re not an expert already… make it your mission to become an expert in the subject. This will make it so much easier for you to write your blog posts and be a great source of information for your readers.
Be wary of outdated advice when it comes to blogging. When I was first learnng about SEO I found a lot of articles which would really push the idea of keyword stuffing into your blog posts (this means putting your keyword or phrase many times throughout the post). The problem is this is not going to help you rank higher in the search. Google’s algorithm is actually really good at picking up variations of the keyword from your post.
This is just an example of advice for bloggers which doesn’t really apply anymore. Make sure you check the date when you are listening or reading the advice from a blogger.
14. You May End Up Editing Old Blog Posts
I would have loved to read this advice when I was reading posts about what you need to know before starting a blog. As someone who answered customer emails for years, I was used to writing a reply and sending and then moving onto the next email or task.
The thing with blogging is you might find yourself going back over your old blog posts for many reasons, either it wasn’t properly SEO optimised, you no longer like how it’s written or processes have changed within your industry.
II think it’s easy when you first start out to assume that blogging is writing a blog post, publish it, maybe promote on social media but there is actually a lot more to it. There’s a lot of things that you have to do behind the scenes to keep everything running smoothly. For example, making sure all of your posts have internal links to them, making sure your post has up-to-date information and checking your Google Analytics to see where you get your traffic and to which pages.
There’s a lot to learn when it comes to getting started with a blog but it is so worth it if you take the time to learn everything, you can save this post and refer back to it in the future.
If you’re wondering what the 5 daily habits of successful entreprenurs are, check out my post next.
Damaris
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