I love blogging. But, as with everything else in life, sometimes it’s not easy, not easy at all. We get into it having certain expectations, and when those expectations aren’t met, we get nervous and worried, and can’t help but wonder, will we ever make it on the internet?
One of the keys to success is not to get discouraged when things aren’t going so well. Instead, you should analyze the problem, understand what is wrong, why it’s wrong, and what can be done to overcome it.
Today, I want to share with you my experience of trying to understand and overcome some of my beliefs regarding blogging. I want to talk about the 3 unexpected lessons I learned in 3 years of blogging.
Guest posting doesn’t work
The first unexpected lesson that I learned in three years of blogging is that guest posting does not work. Well, ok, I don’t really want to claim that guest posting does not work at all, but it definitely works a lot less than what most of us hope. Whether guest posting has always been ineffective or is it just something that has lost its effect in recent years, I also don’t know. But the fact is that guest posting requires a lot of time and effort, while the return on the “investment” is hardly worth it.
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Nevertheless, ever since I started blogging, I’ve heard over and over how I should be doing guest posting if I want my own blog authority to grow. Those that know the industry, give two main reasons for it.
First of all, by writing for an already well-established website, my blog will naturally get some exposure. For example, a reader of the website I am writing for will find my content, and if they like it, they will come over to my blog to get some more.
Secondly, by writing for another blog, I should be allowed to leave a “do-follow” link pointing back to my own blog (otherwise why do it, right?). Leaving such a link means that I will receive “link juice” or “SEO love”, depending on how you like to call it. If these terms don’t make any sense to you, then I suggest you check out Moz’s article on Link Equity.
To put it simply, if a big (popular) blog has a link pointing back to your small blog, Google will notice that and will begin to rank your blog a bit higher as well. The bigger that other blog is, the better.
Related: What Is SEO and How It Works – the Dos and Don’ts
So what’s wrong with guest posting?
Concerning the first argument, while it’s true that some readers do come over to your blog to learn more about you, most just don’t. Only a very insignificant amount of people will click on the link that you provided at the very bottom of your guest post.
Also, because guest posts are so rarely optimized for the search engines (i.e. Google), it means that once yours has been published, you have a very limited time of “fame”. A week later the post that you spent so much time working on will be lost forever amongst all of the other posts on that blog.
Now the link juice argument. While it’s true that Google does look at the quality and quantity of the links pointing back at your site, I haven’t noticed any difference in my blog’s overall ranking, despite having written plenty of guest posts on authority websites, including ones like HuffPost and Lifehack.
I am sure that at some point, it will help to have many links pointing back at your blog, but the question is then, how many does it take? Is it ten, twenty, or as many as Wikipedia or Facebook have? Either way, if your site becomes big and authoritative, you will get links pointing back at it regardless of how many guest posts you’ve done. So I suggest that you focus on writing quality content for your own blog instead.
You can’t and you shouldn’t please everyone..
The second lesson that learned in three years of blogging is that you cannot please everyone, even if you are in the cat-lover niche and you are a 100% politically correct.
People are people, which means that someone will dislike you because of what you say, how you talk, walk and breathe. But that’s ok. As long as you don’t care whether someone likes you or not, and you don’t get offended by someone random on the internet saying something mean to you, then you’re good.
For me, however, it wasn’t so easy at the beginning. I truly thought that if you don’t write anything offensive, no one will have anything nasty to say to you in return, but I was wrong. I also thought that if don’t care about the negativity, none of it will get to me, but I was wrong there as well.
Regardless of how thick your skin is, you will need time to make it foolproof. So the sooner you realize that you can’t please everyone, the better it will be for you. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but some people just need to be mean to express it. 🙂
Find your voice!
The moment I realized that I can’t please everyone and have all the traffic in the world, that is the moment I began to develop my own writing style.
99% of the content that you will create has already been made by someone else. But it is that style of yours that will make the difference. Your way of writing, that voice of yours, is what is going to attract some people to your blog instead of someone else’s.
The more you polarize, the more you express your own views and opinions, the more readers you will get. When a person can come to your blog and say “I can totally related to this person”, that is when they will become your subscriber.
Having my own style not only freed me from artificially created limitations in writing, but also made the writing itself so much more enjoyable.
Success comes when you least expect it
Just like many fresh bloggers out there, when I first started out, I was very much goal-oriented. I worked a lot and knew that it will take time to see results, but I nevertheless was very frustrated with the fact that I wasn’t having any success. I kept writing and writing and writing, but saw almost no traffic and, of course, nothing in return financially.
Obviously, with whatever you do, if you see no results for a long time, you start doubting the whole venture altogether. But as they say:
Click To TweetThe moment you’re about to quit is the moment right before the miracle happens. Don’t give up.
So I didn’t. I just kept working on my blog, creating new content and advertising it all around the web. I kept motivating myself with the results that other famous bloggers have achieved over time. And it worked.
I made a lot of researched blog posts on a variety of different topics. There were ones that I really thought I could rank for in Google. But then there were the others that were so similar to what you could already find on the internet, that I didn’t expect too much of them. But as it turned out, I started ranking in Google’s search engine results for some of the most saturated self-help subjects out there. I had no idea how or why, but I started to get some traction.
In addition, right after I began to see organic traffic on my blog, that was the moment I started making money from affiliate sales. I had almost given up on affiliate marketing by then. Sure, it wasn’t much, but going from 0 to a $100 makes a very big difference in your mind. It validates that whatever you are doing, it is working. My motivation grew exponentially.
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I remember the days when I wrote guest posts. I also had dreams that one day, my blog will become attractive enough for others, that someone will want to write a guest post for me, too. Today, I get a guest post request pretty much every single day. There are so many, that I turn most of them down. It’s just too much work. I didn’t even notice how fast my situation had changed.
But the best part about all of these sudden and unexpected changes is that my blog isn’t even big if you look at it globally. On the contrary, it’s actually still very small and hardly known. However, already now instead of begging for results in my mind, I am thinking of how to handle the growth as I keep moving forward. What tools to get? Whom to hire and what to teach them?
Things change so fast when you don’t expect anything. It’s happening to me, as it is has happened to so many other bloggers out there. But it doesn’t even have to be only about blogging. Rapid and unexpected change happens to us all of the time in different areas of life. Whether we like it or not, it affects our business, family, health, career, etc.
In conclusion, my main message to you is that try to enjoy the process of moving forward as much as possible. By focusing only on the end results, you are robbing your life of so many valuable experiences. Live in the present as much as possible and enjoy.
Thank you for stopping by and good luck!
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