7 Valuable Lessons New Bloggers Can Learn From

I can’t believe it, but I already had my first blogversary a couple of days ago! 🙂 I think I can officially call myself a blogger now. There’s so much that I have learned in the past year. Amazing! I can’t believe my almost 35-year-old brain is still capable of learning so much in such a short amount of time. Even if I were to stop blogging someday – can’t imagine, I like it too much, but if… 😉 – I still built many new skills I can use for the rest of my life!

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission to fund my coffee drinking habit if you use these links to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra. So it’s a win for everyone! Please note that I won’t link any products I don’t believe in or don’t resonate with my blog site. Thank you!

When I started out as a blogger, I had absolutely no clue of what I was getting myself into. I knew it was going to be more than a get rich quick scheme, but I could never have imagined how much it would entail. So if you want to find out if blogging is something for you, and to spare you some of my beginner’s agony, I have compiled my most valuable blogging tips for you. I hope, this will inspire you to join this fantastic bloggers-universe as well

7 Blogging Tips I Wish I Knew Before Starting A Blog

Be eager to learn… like, a lot!

If you don’t have any prior blogging experience yet, and if you plan to run a serious, successful blog in the future, take into account that you’re probably going to feel a little overwhelmed in the beginning. Many beginning bloggers don’t have a clue about the amount of work that has to be done behind the scenes to create a blog that looks and runs like the pros!

There is a lot to learn when you would like to turn blogging into a career; from blog design to the basics of coding, blog promotion, improving your writing skills, and much more. Therefore, you should ask yourself these questions before you start: am I willing to learn a lot? Am I willing to invest my time and energy in it? Do I even have the time and energy for that? To be successful at blogging – and to be able to persevere in blogging – it requires a considerable amount of inquisitiveness and a burning passion for blogging!

Review your stats weekly

It’s needless to say that keeping track of your stats is essential for any blogger who wants to be successful. Google Analytics shows how frequently people visit your blog, the duration of the visits, the number of pages they visit, and more. The data you can extract from Analytics is incredibly valuable, and the best part of it is that it’s for free!

Same for the statistics of your affiliate programs/networks. It is great to track how many times your affiliate links have been viewed or clicked on or even resulted in a sale. You should definitely keep track of all those numbers! If I don’t put a limit on it, I’d be looking at my statistics all the time. 🙂 It may sound a bit pathetic, perhaps it is a bit… but when you think of it, it’s not so pathetic at all. This is what I’m doing it for. Every visit and every sale is special to me. The visitors and sales are the rewards for the amount of time and energy I spent on it. But in my case, checking my stats all the time was at the expense of the time I had to write more content. And content is what matters most at the beginning of your blogging journey.

You want to publish as much new high-quality content as possible on your website, and not spend your time checking your stats. Checking statistics is a useful and fun thing to do, but there really is no need to check them more than once a week, or once a day if you like. So, protect yourself from doing this too often, especially when you don’t have all the time in the world, like me.

Connect with other bloggers

This was perhaps my biggest lesson; to connect with other bloggers, and thus be social. Which is something I’m not by nature, but what I need to learn to succeed in this. ???? I’m a loner, and I have difficulties asking other people for help. But… For a little while, I’m a member of some Facebook groups for bloggers. And since I became a member, my understanding of the blog-o-sphere and blogging is expanding daily. I am learning so much from the other bloggers in those groups! Most bloggers are very friendly and willing to help one another.

As a result, I’m beginning to open up more and more, and I’m making much more progress with my blog because of what I learn from them. If you’re introverted, like me, I advise you to get over these feelings. You’ll see it’s actually quite fun once you overcome that barrier and start connecting with all those great bloggers out there.

Also read: How to start blogging in English as a non native speaker

The Golden Combination: Pinterest, Twitter, Canva

Pinterest

Sadly enough, I just learned about this combination a couple of months ago. I wish I had known this way before…! ???? So please, listen to my advice, you’ll thank me later for it. Believe me, you really will! … You’re welcome!???? Most of my blog traffic is generated by using this golden combination! Pinterest is a visual search engine where you can promote your posts with Pins. Although it may sound simple, you really should delve into Pinterest strategy first. Because in order to rank high on Pinterest and therefore, to be seen, you need an excellent strategy.

Twitter

One of the best ways to drive traffic from your blog when you’re a beginner is by using Twitter. Twitter has a great online community for beginning bloggers with very friendly, positive, and helpful bloggers. You can join share threads, where you’re allowed to leave a link to one of your latest blog posts, or you can join the “retweet for retweet” threads, which will give your tweets extra visibility. It’s also a great way to connect with other bloggers.

Canva

And you don’t need to be a professional graphic designer to make awesome pins nowadays. You can do this in a jiffy with Canva, like a pro! Plus, Canva is free!

Okay, let’s be honest… I mean free to a certain extent, but the free version of Canva offers everything you need to make gorgeous Pins. So no worries about spending hour-long Photoshop sessions to create 1 Pin, Canva has your back! Canva makes it really easy for you, has lots of options, and you can find many beautiful stock photos that you can use for your pins. And the last element of this golden combination: Canva! If you want your Pins to shine and stand out from the crowd, you have to design visually appealing Pins. 

>> Bring me to Canva! <<

Embrace Failure

At the beginning of your new blogging adventure, you’ll discover things that work for you, but also lots of things that don’t work for you, and your blog at all. I know many bloggers claim they had immediate success with their blogs, and earned an X-amount of $ in their first, second, and third month of blogging, but please keep in mind that this doesn’t apply to 99% of bloggers.

And as far as the ones that managed to have big successes from the very start, these are mostly experienced bloggers who started a new blog. And some of them were lucky enough that they knew how to do it right from the start. Just remember that this is not the case for the majority of bloggers. 

Like everything you want to learn in life, blogging is usually a process that involves a lot of trial and error. It’s all part of the game, and you learn and grow from it. The path is the goal! Try to embrace each new discovery and error you’ve made. Because this is the only mentality that will help you get through it. If you can’t embrace failure, I can tell you that you won’t last long in the blogger world. Embrace failure and remember that beautiful things take time. Your blog will slowly but surely become successful as well. 

Hopefully, this post has helped you to make it easier for you to decide whether you should start a blog or not, or has this post helped you to move your current blog forward! I would love to know if this has been helpful and what your best blogging tips are. Please leave a comment below!  

Angie