The Easy Path to a Successful Blog - A Full Step-by-Step Guide - Introduction
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Remote Jobs > Online Businesses > The Easy Path to a Successful Blog
The Free Nomad Guide was designed to help people become successful as a blogger, podcaster, YouTuber, influencer, or other type of digital nomad. In this section of the Free Nomad Guide, we focus our attention on making the path to becoming a successful blogger as easy as possible. We remove all of the mystery by providing a clear and logical step-by-step process that both increases engagement and maximizes your revenue much quicker than the average blogger. So, congratulations on choosing this path and welcome to the blogging community!
What to Expect
When starting your journey to becoming a successful blogger, there are a few important things to understand before getting started. Understand that you will be writing - a lot of writing. So, you will need to have at least some ambition, and drive, to write things down in helpful ways for other people. That is most important.
Additionally, you should also know what to expect in terms of website traffic and monthly income, what to do when you have negative feedback, and how to overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Traffic and Income
One thing that you are probably wondering is how much money you might earn on a monthly basis as a blogger.
“A beginner blogger can usually make between $1,000 & $4,000 per month after the first year of starting their blog. Some blogs go on to make in excess of $100,000 per month. But it really depends on how hard you work. As they say, you get out what you put in and committed bloggers can make decent money.” - Matthew Woodward
Here are some examples of bloggers who have been around for awhile:
Pinch of Yum – November 2016 Income Report – 4,245,565 monthly page-views – $95,197 monthly income ($28,505 in expenses, net income = $66,691 per month).
Just a Girl and Her Blog – December 2016 Income Report – 450,000+ monthly page-views - $41,700 monthly income ($6,340 in expenses, net income = $35,360 per month).
Matthew Woodward – December 2017 Income Report - 137,513 monthly page-views- $28,429 monthly income ($2,711 in expenses, net income = $25,718 per month).
Our Small Hours – April 2016 Income Report– 92,929 monthly page-views – $1,844.03 monthly income ($345 in expenses, net income = $1,499 per month).
You might notice that the number of monthly page views that these blogs have are quite different, except for the last two. Keep in mind that it could take quite some time to get the amount of page views that these bloggers have.
Additionally, getting page views is only half of the battle. Skill is required to earn income from your blog, and that is evident in the last two blogs listed here. Notice how the incomes for the last two are substantially different. While they both are in the same range of page views, one is making over 11 times as much as the other, per viewer! ($0.187 per viewer compared to $0.016 per viewer). One blogger has more skill in converting sales than the other.
A blogger that is working hard at growing their blog can get around 5,000-25,000 monthly viewers in the course of the first year. You really have to know what you are doing to reach this volume - it doesn't just come naturally. While some experienced bloggers have been able to grow 20,000 viewers in 6 months, that is an unrealistic number to expect if you aren't already an expert blogger. With hard work and determination, it is more realistic to be able to attain around 15,000 monthly viewers by the end of your first full year.
It generally takes between 2-6 years, depending on your level of commitment and skill, to get a blog to produce a sufficient amount of income. However, some people have been able to make it happen in less than 1 year!
Once you know what works, your monthly viewership can double, triple, or better in a very short period of time. It took us twice as long to reach these levels because we didn't know what we were doing in the beginning. See our secrets in the “Growing Your Traffic” section to make sure it doesn't take you as long as it took us!
Negative Feedback
Another thing that you will encounter is people who don’t like what you have to say and/or disagree with your posts. The short response is that you will have to learn to take everything with a grain of salt - meaning, that no blogger can ever please everyone, no matter how hard you try. However, sometimes we just can’t shake the negative feedback and a dose of “Thanks for the Feedback, I Think” is necessary. If they say that your information is inaccurate, you can do a bit more research to determine if they are correct. If so, simply update your blog article. If not, what more can you do?
Ultimately, all that can be done is to give your best effort and passionately keep writing and sharing. If some people don’t like you because of it, you have to be able to take into account how many people actually do appreciate what you are sharing. You ARE helping people, so focus on those people!
To be a successful blogger, you need to know in advance that IT WILL HAPPEN and that it’s ALWAYS just another part of the deal. If this really isn’t your strong suit, we recommend picking up a copy of “The Disease To Please: Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome”. This book should really help you re-wire your brain and stop letting these comments get to you. The truth is that any time you put yourself out there publicly, it means that you will also sometimes be disliked by a few people. Be strong, push through it, and you’ll make a fine blogger!
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” - Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States
Getting Overwhelmed
Lastly, you will at some point feel overwhelmed. As a blogger, you are essentially running your own company. You are doing everything - you have every single job at your company! The simple truth is that no one person can do everything, and either can you. Everyone will eventually end up having a huge list of things that need to get done because there is simply too much work for one single person - especially all at once.
So, how do you do it all? The simple answer is that you cannot do everything. If it appears like some other blogger is able to do it all at once, it is simply because you see them succeeding at one thing at a time - and when you see them succeeding at one thing, that means that they are almost certainly failing at something else at the same exact time - something you simply don’t see.
Having so many things to do may even be paralyzing - where you get less, or nothing, done simply because you have too much to think about and every individual thing that needs to get done is constantly on your mind at the same time.
“Remember: Roadblocks happen to everyone - getting overwhelmed is normal. But, never forget that you do not need to be all things to all people.”
Why it appears as though the other bloggers are constantly succeeding is because they do something differently. They write down each of these things on a piece of paper - or put them in their notes app on their phone. If you do the same, you’ll be able to sort through them and put them in order of what is most important to least important (like they do). We know each of the things on the list are super important, but some things are more important than others.
Prioritizing your to-do list is critically important! You can’t do everything, but you can at least do the most important tasks. Focus on those - they should be the ones that will make the biggest impact to your blog/business. Additionally, they will also end up making you feel like you are making progress - which is very important for your motivation!
Next, plan for success by answering this question each morning: “Which one thing needs to get done today?” Then, work on that one thing until you’ve accomplished it - and reward yourself in some way once you’ve finished. This is exactly how you see the other bloggers succeeding. They did one thing really well each day and put the other things on the back-burner until tomorrow. Having a daily plan will help you reach every single one of your goals.
For example: If your goal is 6 months away, set another goal at month 3 which describes where you’ll need to be, or what you’ll have to have accomplished by that point, to make it to the final point at month 6. Then, set another goal at 1 ½ months. Eventually, you’ll have a full plan that’ll get you to where you want to be. Just follow that plan - make sure you accomplish the work that needs to get done on that day - and you will make it there!
Here’s how to get that done without being overwhelmed. Take a day each week to:
Relax in the morning and write down anything that is on your mind
Make a list of priorities, organized with the highest priority first
Make a schedule for what needs to get done each day of the week
Give yourself a break
If these quick tips aren’t helping you feel less overwhelmed, try taking a break and reading “Overwhelmed: How to Quiet the Chaos and Restore Your Sanity”. It just might be the book that saves your life!
In Conclusion
Helping other people through blogging can be a very exciting and rewarding career. You'll be creating content that is interesting to read, helps people learn new things, and helps them find the answers that they have been looking for. We think that this is an amazing thing - and were inspired to help other people ourselves with the book “How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas”. We believe that your ideas will help change the world too - in your own way through your blog (even if just a little bit!). So, thank you for helping other people!
To help more people quicker than we did, simply learn from our mistakes. Use the strategies that we've learned - first hand - work the best and in the correct order. Our journey to becoming successful bloggers only took a couple of years, but we'll teach you the secrets that'll help you get there in half the time, or less!
The first thing that'll you'll need to do to get started is to get your very own website!
If you haven’t looked at them yet, check out the other sections of this “Easy Path to a Successful Blog”:
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