Things I’ve Learned Since Starting a Blog

I have been blogging for a whole 2 months now, so I’m obviously an expert…. OK, really not an expert. But I have learned a few things so far that I think are worth sharing with other people who are thinking about starting a blog.

Starting a blog really isn’t as hard as you think

I thought about starting a blog for years before I actually did it (read about why I started blogging here). But I assumed all the techy stuff would go right over my head. I was wrong! Only some of the techy stuff went over my head! Seriously though, if this is something that’s holding you back, just do it! I went self hosted with SiteGround and they made everything so easy. When the techy stuff really went over my head and I nearly flubbed my whole blog… they fixed it! Really quickly and completely painlessly. Otherwise, it’s all fairly simple. And there are lots of resources online to help if you really need it.

Just don’t let fear stop you from starting a blog. You’ll kick yourself when you realise how easy it is to figure it all out (or to find someone who can figure it out for you).

It’s not as expensive as you think, either

When I was thinking about starting a blog, I assumed that going self hosted would be really expensive. It wasn’t. SiteGround is really reasonable for the first year, although I understand their prices increase after that, so I might look at moving when that happens. Buying my domain name was about a tenner and hosting costs me a couple of pounds per month. So if you’re putting off going self hosted because you think you can’t afford it, make sure you’ve shopped around to see how much it will really cost you, before giving up.

Domain Authority is really freaking important. Sometimes.

At least, it is if you want to monetise your blog. If you just want to write awesome blog posts and put them out there for people to read, it’s less important. But brands you want to work with will usually look at your DA (among other things) before they decide whether they want to work with you and how much they’re willing to pay you. So, it makes sense to take steps to build your DA right from the beginning. I have built my DA up from 1 to 16 in just over 2 months, which I think is pretty good going. But getting it over 20 seems to be the magic number when it comes to working with brands. 25 is even better. And 30… So, I’m working on it.

Getting backlinks from other bloggers with higher DAs than yours really helps with this. So get networking. Think about contacting bloggers in your niche and offering to write guest posts for them (assuming they accept guest posts). Hang out in crowdsourcing groups on Facebook (or just turn notifications on, if you’ve got better things to do with your time…) to see if you can contribute to posts other bloggers are working on. There are lots of other things you can do to boost your DA, but that’s a whole other blog post.

Pinterest is King

I didn’t know anything about Pinterest before I started blogging. I mean, I’d used it to look at pretty crafty things, but I never really thought of it as a social media platform. And I definitely didn’t think about using it to drive traffic to my blog. Now it’s my biggest social media referrer! And I only spend about 10 minutes or so a day on it. Sometimes, even less than that. It’s worth getting to grips with Pinterest at the very beginning. I don’t use Tailwind or anything like that, but my traffic from Pinterest is growing every day.

Other bloggers are awesome

I was never one of the cool kids. I have a few very wonderful friends, but I’ve never had lots of friends and my anxiety makes it difficult for me to make new ones. But the blogging community has been awesome. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some Twitter drama since starting a blog, but on the whole, everyone supports each other and everyone has been very welcoming to me. I finally feel a bit like I’m part of the cool gang, just hoping they don’t figure out that I’m not cool.

What have you learned since starting a blog? Or what’s putting you off starting? Leave a comment to let me know!