Life Lessons From Blogging After 6 Months

Blogging has been a method for me to get my thoughts, actions and feelings out. It’s been a bit over 6 months now and thought this would be a good time to share what I’ve learned and how It’s affected me. When I first started, I didn’t really know where I’d be. I took the narrative from other blogs and decided to use that as my foundation.

The idea behind blogging as “Hungry Being” came from the concept of documenting versus creating content. Instead of trying to force a post happen, I’d simply just let it happen by writing about my working endeavors. I’d attempted blogging years past and gained no traction. After having created 4 separate domains with a few posts that gained none of the traction I was looking for, I gave up and decided that blogging wasn’t for me. A few months go by and I decide to try it one more time, but with more accountability and no giving up.

I initially got into blogging after seeing the success from other established bloggers. There’s plenty of stories from people making money from blogging and my thought at the time was if they could do it, so could I. Following my longing to make more money, I researched how these other people got to their levels and came up with a game plan of:

• Find a niche

• Make and publish a post

• Engage with the public by leaving comments on others posts

At the beginning, I didn’t understand understand how the money was going to start coming in, but I trusted that would come in time. I followed these steps and just kept looking forward.

The first few weeks of writing and letting the world know what I’ve done and continue to do was a great learning experience. I had a lot of enthusiasm so I wrote a lot of posts, engaged with other bloggers by leaving comments and networked with other contributors. Pretty much Immersing myself into other blogs and the entrepreneurial world as a whole.

Being money driven that I was, I thought if I wrote, readers would come, and the money would follow. At least that's the way I understood it, so I took all my enthusiasm into writing and strategizing around the blog. Trying to monetize the blog, I learned about 1000 unique visitors a month is ideal, so I made that my goal. I wrote about 5 posts, asked for google Adsense approval and started blasting ads on my page. I had 5 banners on my page and 3 on the actual blogs. That was the only monetization strategy that I could figure out at the time so I went with it. I learned very quickly that having too many ad banners on sites are a negative sometimes. People have been clicking on ads less and less so that strategy has not worked out well for me.

Another way people make money is with affiliate marketing links. Essential by driving traffic to someone else’s product and getting a portion of the sales if one happens. I applied to some affiliate programs and started posting links after getting approval. Just like the banner ads I posted, this strategy also did not work out well for me. Selling one’s own product such as books, courses and other consumer packaged goods are a way to monetize but I am not there yet. Maybe be one day, that will be an avenue I follow.

While getting my thoughts out and engaging with other bloggers and content creators, I’m now no longer money driven. I went from wanting to just make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time, to simply wanting to do more with my life and becoming a better. To me, that means exercising my ambitions as much as I can, day in and day out. That currency, to me, is a lot more valuable than any amount of money. Since the beginning of this blog, I’ve created a youtube page to document more of my journey and have began thinking about what other I can bring out my voice.

The traffic to my blog has decreased since I first started, which tells me that I’m not giving as much value as I’d like. This didn’t make me lost ambition or drive. If anything, it’s only made me more ambitious. I only want to put out valuable content that makes sense to people, so I have been working on that.

No matter what the reason why you started putting your voice out in written, audio or video form, keep going. It’s motivated me, and will continue to do so.