9 Things You Need To Know About Blogging Before You Start (Updated)

#Life

I have received many mails as regards this topic and many requests to explain what blogging entails so I thought it will be great to publish a post about blogging for beginners in order to inspire as many people who may wish to venture into it.

There are over 15 million blogs all around the world and there are certain things you need to know before you start to blog atleast to make your blog stand out. Many make blogging their full time jobs, some a part time job while others make it a hobby depending on what they want from it. Blogging is fun but it also requires work, work and more work.

Below are the 9 things I feel you need or should know about blogging before you start:
1) Money-  When blogging is involved, money should actually be the last thing on your mind because blogging is not like those jobs that you can be certain of when income will start streaming in.

Money should also not be the reason why you want to start blogging because you will end up disappointed. Money will come but if that's the goal behind your blogging, then you need to quit now because you might end up frustrated and also discourage others who want to venture into it.

2) Time- With blogging you need to dedicate time to it just like the way you dedicate your time to your day job or anything that means so much to you.

3) Consistent- Consistency is key. It won't be advisable to publish a post today and the next time you will be publishing your next post is in 2 months time. No one will really take you serious except you have specified in the beginning that this is how you will be publishing your posts.

If you say you will be publishing a post once in every month, you have to let people know what date in that month and stick to it. For example: Posts will be published first Saturday of  every month.

4) Passion- You have to be passionate in what you are blogging about to be able to be consistent with it, create time for it and not let it be all about money.

You should choose a niche not because everyone is going into that particular niche. For example, Linda Ikeji is making money blogging about so and so, let me join her and others who do blog about this and that.

Your reason for choosing a niche has to be because you have passion in it. If you choose to do what everyone is doing because of the money they are making from it, like I mentioned earlier, you will get frustrated when you don't see money the way you excepted and you easily give it all up.

There are days that you will feel like not blogging at all maybe because of illness, stress,  a long day, discouragement, not in the mood to do so or personal issues however the passion you have for blogging coupled with dedication won't allow you rest till you publish a post.

5) Niche- You need to be identified with something. Linda Ikeji and Stella Dimoko Korkus amongst others are identified as entertainment bloggers. Chidinma Inspirations is an inspirational blogger. There are food bloggers. travel bloggers, visual (photo) bloggers, fashion bloggers, technology bloggers etc. There are some niche that limited people blog about but if that is what you want to do, do it because you really love it and with time, people will know you for that thing and you will grow with within that niche.

Don't focus on a niche because there are many people doing so. You may end up not being seen as a unique blogger because people can easily access whatever it is they want to access on other blogs.

In a nutshell, be unique in whatever it is you decide to focus your blogging on.

6)  Domain Name- Your domain name can be created using your own name or something totally different as long as it as something to do with what you are doing or a name that stands you out.

For a start, you can start with example.blogspot.com or example.wordpress.com etc or you can buy your own domain name at a very affordable rate. Buying your own domain name will now look like this: example.com so that in the future no one will buy your blog name and start blackmailing you to pay them certain amount of money inorder for them to give you that name. We all know what happened to Linda Ikeji a few years back. Thank God she came out stronger.

7) Traffic- When you first start, don't feel disappointed if you have few views. That shouldn't disturb you so much. Just focus on creating valuable contents which will make your posts easily come up on Google search and if you have enough money try advertising your blog.

Also use social media to get your blog posts accessible to others.

8) Read and Research- Read and research about blogging. Take out one hour of your time to read and research about it. This helps a whole lot. You will receive advice from bloggers who had started blogging years and years ago...their experiences etc.

The importance of reading and researching about blogging even months and years after you have started blogging cannot be overemphasized.

9) Enjoy! 

Be Inspired

I hope you were inspired by this post? If you have more things you would want us to know about blogging, please feel free to share with us. If you also have a question, please don't feel shy to ask for we are all here to inspire one another.  

To get inspired by more posts about life, please do search this blog on this blog's search engine with the hashtag life e.g #Life or #Inspiration I hope you love and get inspired by what you find.

Yours Truly,

Chidinma

Photo Credit-

oliviascuisine.com