According to Contently, a site that aggregates the latest content by freelance authors, I’ve written a little over 1.5 million words across over 1,000 blog posts on over 50 publications that have generated 700k social shares.
Those numbers, of course, does not include content I’ve ghostwritten.
It’s just blog posts with my byline.
So I think I’m in pretty good standing to give you some advice…
(See how to find your niche for blogging)
What You’ll Learn
In this post, I want to share with you some of the top lessons I have learned through blogging almost daily over the past seven years. In particular, you’ll learn.
- What you must have to write consistently about your niche and what happens if you don’t have it.
- How to get inspiration for your blog posts so you don’t run out of ideas to write about.
- The painful truth about creating “unique” content and what you should focus on instead.
- Why your best blog posts aren’t getting traffic, and how to fix it.
- How to identify and beat different manifestations of writer’s block.
1. You Must Love What You Write About.
If you plan on embarking upon an epic blogging journey in a specific niche, you must love it. You must be passionate about it. It should be something that you really can’t shut up about.
It’s that kind of excitement that will help ensure that you don’t get burnt out of writing about your niche over and over and over again.
It’s that kind of excitement that will lead you to opportunities beyond blogging such as getting interviewed about your niche, speaking about your niche, educating people about your niche, and much more.
If you don’t love your subject that much, be prepared to either hire someone who is passionate about it down the road to do your blogging for you or to eventually move on to a new niche.
To discover 200+ profitable niche markets click the image below now…
2. Reading Is A Requirement For Writing.
This is another reason you must love your niche. You have to read in order to write.
To keep up with my own niche, I use Feedly to subscribe to hundreds of blogs. Of course, I can’t read every single article, but I can check out the headlines to determine whether there is big news that I need to be aware of.
Reading will keep you up to date on the latest news in your niche so you don’t write something that is outdated. Reading will also keep up your inspiration level for generating great blog post ideas. Speaking of great topics…
3. Almost Everything Has Already Been Written About.
If you’re looking for a niche where you can be the first to write a unique piece of content that has never been written about before, good luck.
There are over 117 billion blog posts on Tumblr.
WordPress.com users publish over 41 million blog posts per month.
If you search for websites with blog subdomains, there are over 16 million results.
If you search for Blogspot blogs, there are over 245 million results.
What does that tell you? There’s a good chance that almost every great idea you think about has been covered in a blog post. Likely many of them.
You can’t be discouraged by this fact. You should be motivated by it instead.
Your goal isn’t to write about something no one has ever written about before, although if you find that topic, good for you.
Your goal is to write about it better. Your goal is to write the best post about that topic.
If you focus on writing the most up to date, accurate, and thorough blog post, you will create amazing content each and every time you blog.
4. Writing Great Blog Posts Takes More Time Than You Think.
You might have read blog posts about how you can write 1,500 words in half an hour if you put your mind to it. And if you can, that’s awesome.
But if you can’t, that’s not a bad thing, or a sign that you shouldn’t be blogging in the first place.
I can tell you that some days, I can blast out six blog posts. On others, I might get half of one post done.
The time it takes to write a blog post will depend a variety of factors. What the topic is about. How long you want the post to be. How much research you have to do. How many images you have to find or create.
Sometimes, it just depends on how you’re feeling on a particular day. You might be having a great writing day or a slow writing day.
If you’re not sure how long it takes you to write blog posts, and you’re curious, start writing your posts in Google Docs. Then use your Revision History to see the timeline.
While you should strive to write faster and increase your productivity, you shouldn’t do it if it sacrifices the quality of your writing or sucks the passion out of your blogging experience.
It’s more satisfying to spend a day writing the best blog post every than to crank out posts that you’re not enthusiastic to publish.
5. If You’re Struggling With Something, Write About It.
If you’re having a problem with something related to your niche, then there’s a good chance that someone out there has had that problem as well. More people will likely have the same problem in the future.
Therefore, your blog post about the problem and how you handled it will become a great reference for future people struggling with the same issue.
That makes for great topic inspiration and highly valuable content.
6. Even Your Greatest Content Has To Be Promoted.
If you want your blog post to be the best, you can’t just write awesome content and expect it people to find it on their own. You have to promote it.
This applies to everyone, from small blog owners to contributors to major online publications. Even if every post on Mashable gets a thousand tweets, there is still that one post that gets five thousand tweets and blows the rest out of the water.
You want your post to be that one on every site you write for, including your own. Each post should be better than the rest.
You can try tools like Impactana to see how your posts fare in terms of both social sharing, links, views, and much more.
This way, you know how your content performs beyond the vanity metrics like tweets and likes.
Remember that no matter what your blogging goals are, promotion leads to traffic, and traffic is what will help you achieve those goals.
Every monetization method you use: advertising, affiliate marketing, course creation, product sales, service sales, etc. depends on traffic.
The more you promote your content, the more traffic you get, and the more of your blogging goals you will achieve.
7. Guest Blogging Still Works.
I not saying that what Google has to say doesn’t matter, because it does, and you pay attention if you want to stay on Google’s good side.
I will say that despite them making a lot of people think guest blogging doesn’t work anymore, it still does. Not for crappy link building, but for quality link building with quality content.
If you want more exposure for yourself, more traffic to your blog, and to build more authority in your niche, guest blogging is the way to do it. It allows you to get in front of new audiences and build your credibility and reputation as someone who knows their stuff.
Along the way, you’ll even build some great links if you are submitting to quality publications.
Quality equals blogs that get traffic, that have subscribers, that receive engagement (comments), and that get shared by their readers on social media.
Quality does not equal blogs with a high PageRank, zero comments, zero social shares, and random backlinks in posts that you would never read for informational purposes.
8. Writer’s Block Isn’t Always What You Think It Is.
Most people envision writer’s block as staring at a blank screen for hours, waiting for inspiration to write to arrive, but it never does. And that is what most writers block looks like. But not all of it.
Sometimes, it comes in the form of procrastination.
Instead of sitting down to write something, you do a dozen other tasks at your desk or elsewhere. Or instead of writing, you watch a string of YouTube videos.
Effectively, it’s writer’s block in the form of avoidance.
Other times, it comes in the form of starting blog posts, but not finishing them. I can’t tell you how many drafts I have that sometimes go unfinished for weeks.
Writer’s block in this instance doesn’t stop me from starting. It stops me from finishing.
The best way to beat writer’s block in any form is to write something. If you can’t start or finish the thing you need to start writing, write something else.
It doesn’t have to be a blog post. It can be an email. A blog comment. A forum comment. An answer to a question on Quora.
Just get yourself in the flow of writing. Once you start getting words out of your fingers and onto your computer, that blog post you couldn’t start or finish will take shape.
To discover 200+ profitable niche markets click the image below now…
In Conclusion
I hope that some of the things I have learned in my blogging journey will help you become successful in yours.
What lessons have you learned through blogging?
Please share in the comments!
