12 Tips for Beginner Bloggers to Kickstart Your Blogging Journey
If you’re thinking of starting a blogging business now, there might be many things standing in your way. Before we dive into the list of tips for beginner bloggers, let’s talk about them.
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Why You Haven’t Started a Blog Yet
That includes the number of other blogs out there. If you look at that and consider it competition, you might think that there’s a website covering every topic under the sun already so a new one won’t make any difference and won’t get any attention.
If you look at how long it may take to rank high in Google, especially this year, you might not even start a blog.
If you read about all the things currently happening in the blogging space, how many bloggers lost almost all of their traffic overnight due to recent changes in the algorithm as well as the switch to AI-driven search online, you might lose any hope of ever getting a spot in the search engine results page, and thus never getting traffic to your blog, which means no profit either.
If you look at all the things you’ll need to do to actually set up a professional site, get it up and running, add functionality, build an email list, publish content constantly, optimize it, keep up to date with the latest trends, tools and algorithm changes, monetize in multiple ways and the possibility of waiting years till you turn this into a full-time business, you might never start a blog, let alone do the work consistently to grow and monetize it.
Things are different for bloggers today than they were a few years ago. And even one year ago. But that also has an advantage for you.
While others may have lost their traffic due to Google’s updates, while they may need to do massive content audits (like me) to update old content and give it another chance to rank higher so they can bring their traffic back, while they’ve tried a million things to grow their blog, while they are still fixing mistakes (such as errors on their site, bad content from years ago, overly optimized posts when different SEO practices were working, and so on), you don’t need to worry about any of this.
You can start with a clean slate, and grow a blog more strategically, the right way, and not rely on a single source of traffic or income.
So, if you’re serious about this and want to do it the right way, I now want to share with you my best tips for beginner bloggers.
If you want support along the way, join us inside our membership and community – Fearless Bloggers.
We have a free plan, where you can read blogger interviews and get access to some freebies as well as a discussion forum.
But the paid plan is where the real deal is, because in there I post actual traffic and monetization strategies, update you on what’s going on in the industry, create monthly mini trainings and PDFs, write a monthly income report for you so you can take a look behind the scenes of my business, and you can ask any question you’ve ever had about blogging, and get my thoughts and advice on anything you need help with.
Now, let’s dive into the blogging tips I have for you so you avoid some mistakes as a blogger and build a site and create content that both readers and search engines love and trust.
The tips are in no particular order, and the first category is all about your blog content.
Tips for Beginner Bloggers
1. Create original content.
AI is only going to become more popular, and maybe AI content will dominate the Internet one day. That will make it harder for people to trust sources, that will mean a lot of low-quality content and very bad advice being shared on websites.
In a world like that, original content becomes an asset. It’s something no one can take away from you. Search engines will know it’s original, and so will people if you keep publishing it consistently.
2. Create people-first content.
These tips are actually according to Google’s exact guidelines. Content sites are all about helpful content, that means original, quality and created for people, not for search engines.
While it’s still important to target keywords and optimize your blog posts, focus on people first.
3. Don’t overdo SEO.
SEO means search engine optimization, and it’s about the steps bloggers take to actually make a specific article rank in the search results for a keyword phrase it targets.
It involves things like:
- finding a good keyword;
- including it in the title;
- in at least one subheading;
- in the introduction and conclusion;
- a couple times throughout the text;
- also adding some synonyms of it naturally;
- adding an image to the post and including the keyword in its alt text field;
- linking from other posts on your blog to the new one (that’s called internal linking);
- and also using the keyword in the text you link.
These are examples of on-page SEO, but the rules of the game are changing now. With Google prioritizing people-first content, and demoting unnatural content in the search results, you may want to slow down with your SEO.
That means not obsessing over keywords and how many times they are included in a post, not optimizing every single piece of content on your site, not writing just for the sake of covering a keyword or to make a piece longer so it can rank better.
Just keep it natural.
4. Write for your ideal readers.
Define your target reader and create content with them in mind. That means covering the topics they are interested in and want to know more about and providing tips that help with what they’re struggling with.
Once you do have readers and email subscribers, you can get feedback, see what content resonates with them the most and create more of it, listen to their requests or questions and create new articles based on that.
5. Start an email list early on.
The next one of my best tips for beginner bloggers is to not leave starting an email list for one day, but actually do it soon after starting the website.
Your list is the only thing you have actual control over. There you have direct access to your audience and can form relationships. They’ve given you their email address, they trust you, like you and want to hear from you.
So send them weekly newsletters, put effort into growing your email list, provide value to subscribers every week, get feedback, and – eventually – monetize your email list but without ruining people’s experience.
It could be by selling your paid offers, affiliate marketing, or – indirectly – getting traffic back to your site, which ultimately increases your ad revenue, and so on.
Email marketing takes time, and is not easy. But it’s something you need to get done soon, it’s part of building the foundation of your blogging business.
One of the bonuses for paid members of Fearless Bloggers is The Email List Bundle. It includes swipe copy, done-for-you templates, tips and examples to help you start and grow your email list as a blogger. So you might find it helpful if you join.
The next category of tips I want to share are about setting up your blog and doing it right from day one. Here’s what I mean.
6. Pick the right niche.
Back in the days, you could easily grow a website that covers multiple niches. Now, things online are more about topical authority.
Meaning that you cover one topic really well, build authority in it, search engines reward you for it, and readers actually stick around to learn from you. They trust you, can invest in your programs, or click your affiliate links, and will likely sign up to your email list and just consider you an expert and keep reading your future posts.
That’s engagement, and it’s a key metric for bloggers.
Instead of being all over the place and covering many topics and leaving some behind for a while, focus on what you know best, what you are truly passionate about, what you’ll never get bored of writing about.
Don’t forget to make sure that’s a profitable niche. If other sites exist online that are making real money, and you want to give this a go and are serious about it, then go for that blog niche.
7. Stick to it.
Picking your niche is one thing. Creating content on it for a few months is another step.
But after that? That’s when you’re really being tested to see if blogging is for you and if you’ve picked the right topic.
If you see no results whatsoever, will you keep going?
It takes time to build traffic and earn from your platform, but giving up early on is the surest way to never see any profit.
Consistency is the name of the game. Be dedicated to your goal, even be obsessed with it, I’d say.
You need to be learning all you can about blogging, to be getting better at it, to produce content consistently, grow your audience, optimize and monetize strategically, promote the content, build presence on other platforms too so you don’t rely just on Google traffic.
There will be moments when you feel down. There will be times when you leave your blog behind. But coming back to it is crucial. Even if no one is reading.
Pick a niche, start creating content, and stick to it.
8. Use the right tools.
The next one of my tips for beginner bloggers is to use the right tools.
Build your blog using a solid platform. I use and recommend WordPress.
Same goes for your web host, email marketing tool, and anything else you need to set up your business.
Invest in quality platforms, tools and services. Here’s a list of 102 blogging tools and resources that I trust and recommend.
Then, don’t forget to use the stats they give you access to. It’s important to also connect your site to Google Analytics and track your metrics, such as page views, as well as know what content performs best, where else you’re getting traffic from, where that audience is from and how they interact with your site.
Same goes for Google Search Console – another tool you need as a blogger. There you can spot issues with indexing and any major errors on your site. You can also analyze your content there.
9. Make your blog professional.
That means having the basics in place, such as a well-designed website.
For WordPress, that can happen with a paid WordPress theme. I just got a new one, by the way. It’s this one by Blossom Themes.
Having a detailed About page (here’s mine), a Contact page with a contact form in it as well as other ways for people to contact you such as directly via email.
Add to that the legal pages every site needs, such as Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Disclaimer. You can display these in your blog footer – the section at the bottom of every page on your site.
Speaking of which, design that well and include the right elements in it. It can be helpful for user experience, branding and building trust with search engines.
Think about your menu well too. Create your blog categories and display that there, or your About and Contact pages, a shop page if you have that, a podcast or services page, or anything else that you want readers to know about. Or you can do all of that together.
10. Get on Pinterest early on.
Diversify your blog traffic from day one. Think about what other platforms you’d like to be on and where you want to build an audience online.
Pinterest is one great place for bloggers as simply creating Pinterest graphics for your blog posts, optimizing and pinning them (which means saving them to one of the boards in your Pinterest account), can lead to a lot of traffic.
That can also happen to a new blog, and you can pin old posts too and bring more traffic to them without changing anything else about them.
11. Learn about the different ways to make money blogging.
The 4 main ones include ads, affiliate marketing, sponsored content, and creating and selling your own products or offering services.
Learn more about each, and decide what you’re open to and how you want to monetize as well as when.
For ads, you’ll need to have traffic first.
If you have a digital product idea, you can plan that for your first months of blogging.
Affiliate marketing is possible from the moment you start creating content and building your email list.
You might need to test some things and see what you like, what works best, and what you’re good at.
Each blog income stream takes time to build. Some might go down due to different things happening in the industry, so it’s best to diversify your income, just like you should do for your blog traffic and not rely just on search engine traffic, for example.
If you’re curious what bloggers earn, check out this blogging survey.
12. Create your blogging schedule.
Many bloggers start their website, do a lot of work on it in the beginning, but then slowly leave it behind. And they wonder why they aren’t seeing any growth.
To prevent this from happening, make sure you plan for this. For when motivation goes away and discipline is hard to find.
Create a schedule and stick to it. Decide when you’ll work on your blogging business, what days of the week, whether mornings or evenings, for how many hours, and what blogging tasks you’ll tackle exactly.
Add that to your calendar or to-do list, and actually get down to business when it’s time for it.
This might be the hardest part for some of you, especially when life happens. But it’s about putting your business above other things, before it has even turned into a full-time business.
Bonus blogging tip: Prioritize Security
To protect your blog, make sure you keep your blogging platform, themes, and plugins updated. Use strong passwords and have an SSL certificate installed (that’s the https in your blog URL). The last one is also a trust signal for search engines.
Final words
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I hope you enjoyed this list of tips for beginner bloggers, and I wish you the best on your blogging journey.