Starting a blog can feel like the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie premise. In that children’s book, the little boy innocently gives a mouse a cookie who then insists on a glass of milk and a napkin, and before long has decided it needs to clean the whole house, take a nap, and drink a glass a milk. Which means it probably needs yet another cookie to go along with it.
On the outset, blogging seems easy. After all, it’s just writing about what you love, right? Easy-peasy. I wrote on a couple of blogs for several years before I decided I wanted to start earning an income from blogging. It seemed that everywhere I looked, people were saying, “You can make money doing this!” and since I already had a blog, I thought I’d jump in and start earning that passive income.
If you’re one of the thousands of people who start a blog each year, you’ve probably noticed that there is a LOT of information out there on how to set up your blog for success. For a new blogger, this amount of information can actually be discouraging.
Where in the world are you supposed to start? What should be your focus? Is it smart to spend a lot of money on programs and resources to help you grow your blog when you haven’t made a penny from it yet? And as most newbie bloggers realize early on, the business of blogging involves much more than taking pretty pictures and writing about a subject they love.
Starting a Successful Blog (for a New Blogger)
In this series, I will share several resources (free and paid) I have used to not only get my blog off the ground and running, but to make it actually profitable within months of starting it.
My blog and business are in the relatively small “creativity” niche, and I still have managed to make a profit since year one. Better yet, I’ve been able to publish a couple of books and share my message of making creativity a priority with thousands of people around the world. I love my job! ❤️
Because there is SO much to cover, I will break up this information into bite-sized chunks so you can easily follow along. Here’s the outline of where we will be going so you can get an idea before we start:
Today’s post:
From Big Idea to Action!
The Secret Blueprint to Blogging Success
Blogging Assessment (Is Blogging Right for You?)
Additional Posts + Free Resources:
Starting a Craft or Creativity Blog (The Basics of Starting a Blog)
The Best WordPress Plug-ins to Install (freebie)
How to Come Up With Blog Post Ideas in Your Sleep
How to Brand Your Blog (freebie)
Got it? Okay, let’s do this!
From Big Idea to Action
What do you like to write about? Talk about? What is a subject you could chat about with your friends (or anyone who would listen) ad naseum? What are your passions? What are you particularly knowledgeable about?
Chances are, if you’re thinking about starting a blog, you already have a big idea. I recommend grabbing a notebook (a bullet journal works great here) and writing your blog’s subject in big, bold letters across the page. Now, put on your brainstorming cap and create a mind map off of that subject.
The goal of this exercise is to see how much content you potentially have to work with for your new blog. You want to have a specific niche or subject area, but you want to be careful to not niche down so far that you run out of ideas of what to write about in the first month.
Let’s say you want to write a blog about chocolate recipes. You would write Chocolate on the top of your sheet of paper and then branch out with ideas such as drinks, desserts, healthy recipes, etc. Then underneath those, you would go into more detail. Desserts could branch into everything from chocolate dipped fruit to cupcakes to chocolate chip cookies. (Hmmm, I’m liking this blog already!)
Don’t worry about coming up with actual blog post ideas quite yet. We’ll do that in a future post, and believe me, when you do the exercise in that post, you’ll get TONS of ideas.
I promised at the beginning of this post that I’d share some resources with you along the way. This free guide, The Secret Blueprint to Blogging Success is a great start and will help you wrap your head around what it takes to create a successful and profitable blog. (Click here to download this guide.)
If you’ve read this far and are now starting to wonder if you really have what it takes to be a blogger, take this free assessment. It will help you see if you are blogger material and also what areas you could work on if you are currently blogging and need some help taking it to the next level.
I’ll be back in a few days to share with you more resources and tips for when you’re starting your blog, so stay tuned.
Until then, remember that every one of us started out as a new blogger at one point. You really can do this!
I hope you have a lovely {and creative} day!
