Before you start a blog you need to know why you should start a blog now or not. Most importantly answer the necessary questions to starting a blog.You may probably have heard the phrase “look before you leap” or one similar. This could be true when you’re thinking of starting a blog. Taking the time to answer these 3 drastic questions before starting a blog will save you tons of frustration later on down the road.
The 3 Drastic Questions To KNOW Before Starting A Blog
1. How Much Time Can You Realistically Commit When Starting a Blog?The time and effort that you put into your blog and writing a piece of content worth it. Precisely, How much time do you really have that you can commit to blogging every day? It’s important to be realistic.
This is the single biggest point of failure for new bloggers! They commit to 5 hours per day thinking they will be successful in 2 weeks… When in reality, they’ll be lucky to get in 5 hours per week – and becoming a successful blogger takes months, maybe even years for some.
Don’t be that guy! Before you start blogging, take a serious look at your schedule – work, family, exercise, all of it. How much time do you really have to dedicate to your blog?
Set Reasonable Expectations For Yourself And Your Blog
If it’s only 4 hours per week, that’s great, but it’s unreasonable to expect that you’ll publish 3 posts per week within that 4 hours.I recommend giving yourself 3-4 hours per blog post, at least in the beginning. You’ll also need time to get your site looking the way you want and time to learn new skills. Don’t expect to know it all right out of the gates – that’s a recipe for frustration and disaster.
Schedule Your Time To Create Quality Blog Posts
Set the goal of writing one high-quality post per week and if you and that’s too easy, then try for 2 posts per week. Depending on your topic, that may be more than enough.If you’re like me, you can also batch write your posts. I love to sit down on Weekends and just write until my brain hurts, then I’m done for the week.
Dedicate at least 1 hour per week learning a new skill related to blogging. SEO is my best choice, but Social Media, working with images, and learning how to become an amazing writer is also very important.
Limit yourself to no more than 3 hours to get your site looking the way you want. It’s far too easy to spend hours, days, weeks, even months tweaking the way your blog looks, and honestly, as long as your blog is well organized with a clean design, that’s all you need.
Focus another 3 hours on defining your categories and setting up your menus. Those are the keys to your success.
It’s critical when you start blogging to create habits and be consistent with your posting schedule, so don’t over schedule yourself. That’s just going to stress you out.
2. "Why" Do You Want To Start a Blog?
Don’t skip this question… Before you start a blog, you need to know why you’re doing it.Your why is what’s going to keep you going when you get frustrated and want to give up. Knowing why you want to start a blog BEFORE you start blogging is critical to your success.
You don’t need to know all of the “how to” details up front, but you must know WHY you’re doing it.
Here Are the Most Common Reasons for Starting a Blog:
- Start a blog to share your personal story and experiences.
- Start a blog to educate, teach, or show someone how to do something.
- Start a blog to grow your business or build your personal brand.
- Start a blog to sell something and make money online.
Let's DIVE in and talk about each one of these in more detail.
Sure!
Start A Blog To Educate Or Show Someone How To Do Something
This is the most popular kind of blog. Blogging is to teach, train, educate and help others, simply give back.When you start blogging to teach, your thought process is around problems and solutions. Your readers have a problem and you have a solution. The solution that you provide can be casual like an advice blog or more formal like an online course.
People who start these types of blogs love to learn and share knowledge. They enjoy helping others and watching them succeed.
This is me. I ENJOYING helping other people succeed and my willpower is to absorb tons of knowledge and break it down so that others can understand it.
Before starting an educational blog, ask yourself these questions and how you can provide value:
- What are you truly good at - and I mean better than everyone else you know?
- What is the one topic that you continuously love to research and learn about?
- What is the one thing that you can talk about for hours and hours and never get bored?
- What skills have you acquired over your life through work or hobbies?
Here are just a few examples of educational blogs:
- How to Build Muscle
- How to Gain Confidence
- How to LOOSE Weight Fast
- How to Master Google Docs
- How to create a beautiful garden
- Home improvement instructional videos
- Makeup instructions
- Online cooking course
- Teach Yoga
- etc...
Start A Blog To Share Your Personal Story And Experiences
An experience based blog is less about teaching and more about sharing. Regardless of your history, you have something to share....This type of blog tends to be less structured and more creative.
Are you one of those people who have lived a crazy, weird, or totally fun life? Have you survived a tragedy, illness, or escaped from an abusive relationship? Are you a huge success in your industry? Or maybe, your life has been a total failure and you can tell people what NOT to do.
IF YES, then creating a this type of blog is for you..
Here are a few examples of blogging about life:
- Travel blog
- Surviving divorce / or stories about marriage or kids
- A blog about living with diabetes
- What not to do at work
- Your journey to health and fitness
- etc...
3. What Will You Blog About?
You don’t have to know everything up front, but before you start blogging you should give some thought to what you will blog about and how you will present yourself to the world.
Sometimes you’ll hear this referred to as your niche. It’s your primary focus, what you will blog about the most. Your niche/topic will drive everything you write about and share on your blog.
Pick A Blogging Topic – Passions Vs. Money Makers
There are two schools of thought on picking a good blogging niche...1. Blog About Your Passions
Some people say that you should choose something you are passionate about because that’s what gets you out of bed every morning and motivates you to write high-quality content.
While that is a great thought, if your passion is underwater basket weaving, you are unlikely to make a great income blogging about it. One often overlooked component in blogging is that you need to be able to find related products to promote to your customer base in order to make money.
2. Blog For Money
There are those who say you should ONLY pick topics that are known money makers whether you are passionate about them or not. That will only work if your true passion is making money! Otherwise, you’re going to find yourself bored and uninspired – that’s no way to live…
I personally believe that it should be BOTH. You want to be certain that thousands (if not millions) of other people share your enthusiasm and interest in the topic and will pay money for products and/or services that you have to offer in the niche from time to time. Even if you’re not interested in making money from your blog, I am assuming that you at least want other people to read it – yes? Then the same rules apply.
Write down your top 3 ideas that you are passionate about and think you want to blog about. And then, do at least some research up front to make sure there are at least 1000’s (hopefully millions) of other people interested in your topic and are willing to pay money for products and services. If no one else is searching for your topic, cross that one off. (We’ll get into how to do this research in another article.)
Even if you currently don’t want to make money from your blog, I am still assuming that you at least want people to read it – yes?
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