How to Get Better Results, Faster, as a Beginner Mom Blogger
This Blogging for Beginners 101 guide is broken up into several parts. Here are the parts linked in case you need to find something fast.
The Truth About Blogging
How to Become a Mom Blogger: The Basics
What No One Told me about Blogging
10 Things I Wish I Knew about Mom Blogging
How to Make Money Blogging
How to Increase Your Blog Traffic
Your Blog and the Law
What You Should Do as Your Next Steps
If you are anything like me, you probably feel like you are in a whirlwind of #bloglife and need to backtrack a little. There is a definite path to blogging but it is not always straightforward. This post is meant to give you a clear outline so you won’t feel hurt nor hopeless.
As a mom you already feel overwhelmed, let’s not add blogging to that category.
So let’s go back for a bit because to understand the beginning of the journey enables us to improve upon it.
This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my Disclosures page in the About section for more information
Do you remember the time you thought blogging was easy (I mean you’re online anyway, might as well make some money)?
There was a time when you thought throwing your words on a website would somehow magically move people to, not just read it, but send you money for it. Perhaps you still think that.
As you get into it you find this is an insane path to consider for fast cash. Yet it’s hard to just move on from it.
At that stage I felt a bit frustrated, do you? It’s like no matter what you try or what you learn, you are left desperate for more answers.
Answers to,
“How do I get traffic?”,
“What do I write about day after day?”,
“Where do I find usable free images?”,
and not just that, but “How do I actually make money?”.
This is beyond the usual contents of a ‘how to start a blog’ blog post.
I’m going to be straight with you. There is a lot of deception on Pinterest and other places online that speak about becoming a 6- or 7-figure blogger. About blogging period!
And the lie being told?
This is hard to say but there is an untold fact about the blogging industry. This lie is mostly surrounding blog posts about starting a blog or getting better at blogging.
See these types of posts, not always but many times, are simply a path to get you to buy courses or affiliate products. They leave you with promises of BIG views and BIG bucks when the only reason they are making bank is that they keep reeling in new or want to be bloggers like you.
Yep. That’s the secret to many, not all, money-making blogs.
I thought I’d become a blogger and somehow money would come. It didn’t. Then I found out why…”
Now I’m not saying this post doesn’t have affiliate products, etc. The way bloggers make money is by selling (I’ll talk about this more below).
However, the purpose of my post is not to sell to you. I don’t blog about blogging, I blog about getting organized!
To be frank, I’m just putting together a resource for the ladies in my facebook mom blogger group.
I started this group to have a way to share, support and learn about blogging. So when ladies come, they come with questions and I am to the point where I need to have a way to share my knowledge and save time 🙂
But this “secret” really isn’t that unknown. You can read the best blog post (IMO) from a mommy blogger on the topic of the blogging deception. It’s by Candice from thebrowneyedmom.com
Why Your Mom Blog isn’t Making Thousands Every Month
Interested in this topic? You can check these out:
7 New Blogger Tips so You Can Focus and Actually Make Progress
How to Stay Motivated to Blog.
You may also find this infographic from Blog Tyrant very revealing. He’s describing the true state of blogging.
All this to say, it’s not just you!
There are real stats to let you know that in your first 3, 6, or 9 months of blogging you aren’t a failure if you still have low traffic and no income. The basic knowledge you find in the ‘How to Start a Blog‘ posts isn’t enough. Every nickel and dime blog has a post listing the 1,2,3s of:
- Choose a blogging platform, domain name, and hosting option.
- Design your blog using a simple theme.
- Modify your blog to get your desired look and feel.
- Select the best plugins for your blog.
- Write compelling content that adds value to readers. (Content is King, yadda yadda)
If you are reading this post, it’s not these basics you need, unless you are a complete and total newbie.
That’s nothing to be embarrassed about if you are!
If that’s you I won’t leave you hanging since this is about blogging for beginners. That means it’s likely you are super new. So before I go over the 10 Things I Wish I Knew as a new blogger, I’ll give a quick rundown of the basics.
[bctt tweet=”Do not listen to anyone that tells you blogging is simple or an easy side hustle. They just want your money, so be cautious.” username=”mRosebarnett”]
How to Become a Mom Blogger: The Basics
For those who don’t know these simple but less spoken of steps, let’s talk about how exactly do you become a blogger.
#1 Brainstorm your goals for blogging.
To help you with this, answer these questions: What is your reason for doing this? Who do you want to reach and where do you find them? What do you expect to get from your blog (readership, sponsorships, a platform for future products)?
If you’d like more help with this, read my post 5 PROVEN MARKETING TIPS TO GROUND YOUR NEW BUSINESS where I go into detail about your blog and business whys, branding and more.
#2 Figure out a topic for your blog.
Research other blogs out there, what topics they present, which niches are making money. See if these line up with your goals. Find some medium between what is necessary to write about to get to your goal and what you are interested in and tend to gravitate towards.
The main thing to ask yourself when picking your topic is,
“Will this topic allow me to solve my readers’ problem?”
Problems can range from how to pick the best summer outfit to how to stop your child from throwing a tantrum at naptime.
If your posts end up just relating stories from your own life without solving any specific problems, your results will be slow or non-existent.
Need to dig deeper? Check out Donnie’s post, What should I blog ?
#3 Set-up a self-hosted blog.
Usually, this is talked about as the first step in blogging for beginners. But alas, it’s more like the 3rd, 4th, or even 5th step (you could add getting an education about blogging before you actually create one, and other things).
If you start in the middle you’ll be stumbling around as I did.
That’s such a waste of time.
Make sure you thoroughly do step #1 and #2 before you even consider opening up your own web space.
When you are ready to create a blog I give you a visual step-by-step tutorial right here.
It takes only about 20 minutes for your blog to be up and running with Bluehost.
The best part is that through Bluehost, you don’t have to be tech savvy at all!
I have used Bluehost for a long time and since this seems to be a big debate, which web host to use, I list my reasons for only using Bluehost right here.
CLICK HERE FOR THE STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIAL
Once you are up and going, you can still bookmark that tutorial page for every single blog post about blogging that I have and some other resources.
Blogging is a journey that takes more than a month or two to get grounded. This is why I created an ongoing group where you can ask questions about blogging. The other mamas in the group will even help you promote your posts.
I’m providing you all of this info and these opportunities all for free. You don’t have to purchase anything from me (although a donation would be a great way to support my blog!)
Beyond Beginner Blogging Basics
So you’ve been there and done that. Great!
If you aren’t a complete blogging newbie you aren’t looking for how to start a blog, but instead how to BE a mom blogger. I’d say you are probably here because you are seeking how to be a successful blogger.
What are the steps AFTER the how to start a blog?
There are many details involved in blogging for income. You have to have a business mindset plus an understanding of how to market online and how to keep people coming back.
[bctt tweet=” get understanding and stop repeating history” username=”mRosebarnett”]
What No One Told Me about being a Mommy Blogger
You might be surprised to know that this isn’t my first, second or third blog. Actually, I’ve been blogging for more than a decade, on and off, but not for cash until 2018.
Do you love to write?
Then you know it doesn’t matter if it’s journaling, fiction or nonfiction works, writing is my beloved way of communication. Getting online to write just provided the opportunity for a larger audience.
I never thought of myself as a “blogger”. It wasn’t until I tried to make an income from it, that the thought of, “I’m a blogger” came to mind.
Like many beginning bloggers who don’t know how to make money blogging, I thought I’d become a blogger and somehow money would come. It didn’t.
See no one told me that being a blogger meant you were becoming a salesman, er, saleswoman.
Blogging for income means providing a service or product in exchange for money. You may be serving up products you made or some made by others, an actual service or access to services of others.
And folks, that’s basically it.
I am writing this to reveal these truths to you about blogging for income — in case you’ve never read an uncoated, non-persuasive explanation about blogging. I’m being 100% real here, so let’s get to the big 10.
10 Things I Wish I Knew about Mom Blogging
1. Blogging isn’t going to make you money right away.
There is a lot of information to learn, investigate, figure out about blogging. It can be overwhelming but also depressing. While you are researching you are hoping for traffic and money, but you aren’t doing the right things yet.
Probably because you don’t know what you are doing, you just jumped into having a blog.
But one of the things you need to figure out first is how you are going to make money. If you hadn’t thought of the idea that you need to actively do something to make money blogging, well that will take a while to sort out.
You need to investigate these:
What is the ‘how to make money blogging’ options?
Which ones mesh with your niche (category)?
How do you go about making it work (pitching, marketing, creating it)?
Now if you want the ins and outs of how to make money blogging you can go to no better place as a beginner blogger than Cate’s Becoming a Blogger course.
Her Becoming a Blogger 21-day course details the areas of how you can make money by blogging. It is very targeted to strategies of how to make money. She covers several areas including:
Affiliate Marketing
Making Money from Guest posting
Sponsored Posts and pitching brands
and Google Adsense
Cate walks you through several of the foundational things about blogging for beginners. I mean, she covers everything I can think I have needed to know, plus more.
How to create Content, Video on a blog, Vlogging, Photography, promoting on Social Media, Recordkeeping, Tax planning, Motivation, and all your blogging desires will be answered.
CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT HER COURSE
2. Blogging for beginners means learning how to sell.
As I said, pretty much every option to make money (directly or indirectly) will include selling. Learning a bit of copywriting, marketing, promoting ads and even creating them is a huge part that I never wanted to be involved in. However, it does become easier if you don’t like this part either.
3. When I was starting off blogging, I wish I knew that blogging is way more work than it appears to be.
You’ve probably already gathered this from reading this far. I’m not even going to mention the incomplete list of blogging tasks from my post How to Stay Motivated to blog.
There are so many things that bloggers do and need to be aware of. Trust me, it’s super easy to become overwhelmed before you even launch!
I’m not trying to discourage you, but if you aren’t all in, this is a good time to start analyzing if you want to do this, specifically if you want to do this for money.
No matter what you’ve been told,
not everyone can or should be a blogger.
We’d be seriously lacking in car mechanics, marketing agents and food scientists. I wouldn’t want to think of my surgeon. splitting her time with an in-depth study of surgical procedures and how to post the best Instagram images.
My caution to you: Do not listen to anyone that tells you blogging is simple, a quick-money side hustle or that a course will guarantee results. If you hear anything like that they either don’t know enough about blogging to be giving you advice or they just want your money.
4. Blogging can suck away your time with your kids.
Blogging, in the beginning, requires a lot of planning and scheduling in order to avoid being online when it’s time for those little ones. Especially if you are an at home mom, starting a blog demands discipline.
It’s so easy to lose sight of your children and that they are the reason you are blogging in the first place.
One way to avoid this from happening is to batch posts and social media content. That just means come up with a list of the content you’d like to post, then take time to create it ahead of time and then schedule it. Put it in a queue or schedule it using a scheduling tool.
I have used several tools for this that I’ll talk about in my next post (I’ll link it here when that post is live).
5. Beginner bloggers need to know their niche.
I talked about this already but it is really something I wish I could’ve started off knowing.
See I’m a creative-minded person who can easily be a jack of all trades, but as the saying goes, master of none. I ended up having to scale way down.
Because of that one thing, not knowing my niche early on, I have had to backtrack. Things that took me a long time to set up had to be reworked. Particularly, my blog design, layout, blog title, logo, branded images, even wording, like the summary of what I do on all my social media channels.
I had to if I wanted any type of engaged and committed audience. Need more convincing you can have a quick read of Christina’s post on how choosing a niche will grow your blog.
6. Learn as much as you can about SEO.
Tech stuff doesn’t stick in my brain well. It’s one of the reasons why I choose Bluehost for my blog.
Fortunately, SEO isn’t nearly as “techie” as it initially seemed.
The term is deceiving (I think) because Search Engine Optimization simply means being relevant to the audience you are targeting. You do this mainly by matching up with the keywords people search for on Google, Bing, Pinterest, etc.
I learned so much about SEO and increasing blog traffic from people who rank highly.
But one person that was touchable and understands the pressures of being a mom blogger, but also is a respected expert, is Elna Cain.
When I found her, it was literally a game changer.
She runs a fabulous facebook group, but that’s not how I found her. I was asking around, seeking an affordable course on how in the world to get traffic! There were a few suggestions but one that kept coming up was Elna’s Ready Set Blog for Traffic.
However, I was confused.
I went searching for her and came upon ElnaCain.com and I could not find the course.
Then someone informed me that Elna had another site that was just about learning how to blog. Oh, yeah, I thought, some people do have more than one site.
It wasn’t long after starting her course that I learned Elna actually had another blog besides those 2…and another. She mentioned to me recently that she has 5 blogs that she manages.
FIVE!
Through her course, Ready Set Blog for Traffic, I finally learned how to create pins that bring clicks, how to rank high on Pinterest, use social shares to get a higher rank, get noticed through guest posting, plus she’s also a wiz at SEO for Google.
She holds the number one spot on Google for several keywords! If you need to learn how to get traffic I do encourage you to buy this course. I love Elna, she’s such a normal person who is just smart online. I’m so glad I choose her course and have gotten to know her. If you just need Pinterest help, she’s a genius at it too.
CLICK FOR READY SET BLOG FOR TRAFFIC
CLICK TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PINTEREST MASTERCLASS
7. A 400-word post is almost never enough.
Okay, this one does depend on a few factors. However, if you are trying to rank, keep down bounce rates, get attention on Pinterest, and be a real resource for your readers (isn’t that the point?), writing a post that is only a handful paragraphs just won’t cut it.
I know, I know, blogging for beginners can be challenging to just eek out 400 words. But I promise the process becomes faster, easier.
For a long time, my blog posts were only about 400-500 words, taking me almost 2 hours to write! I pushed myself to bump it up to 750. Finally, I could push out 800 words in 45 minutes.
Since 2014 the standard recommendation has increased to 1000 words up to 3000. I’ve even heard recently it’s increasing up to 5000 words!
For reference, this post is a little over 3700.
8. Beginner bloggers should have a long-term plan
Thinking ahead doesn’t seem to be my forte. However, I will be an advocate that you treat your blog as a business. It’s not a side gig, it’s not a hobby, it’s a business venture.
Many bloggers go the whole nine yards and file their blog-business with the government. You may be able to get tax credit for all of those courses and blog tools you purchase to make this work.
I don’t know enough to tell you specifics about your blog and the law, but you can check out these if you want to know more:
From XeraSupport
3 Things You Need to Know about Blog Images
The 5 Pages You Need to Legally Protect Yourself
From Jade & Oak
7 Things Your Blog Needs to be Legal
Try to think ahead, not just for taxes, but for products, and the future of your endeavors. Where do you want to be in a year, 2 years, 5 years? How do you think you’ll grow your blog and business in those years? Where do you think these simple days will take you?
9. Blogging is about relationships.
Blogging is not a one-man band. If you want money from your blog, you aren’t doing it alone. If you are an introvert, this may be difficult but you have to reach out. Think beyond what you are doing and what you want.
Get out there and collaborate with other bloggers, tweet and conversate, PM and share your skills to help others. Try to include others in your blog posts (external linking is great for you and them). Guest post to get your name out, but also just to engage in a new audience and build blogging relationships.
If you feel alone in blogging, you don’t have to! Join blogger groups. My facebook group is specifically for mom bloggers who want to collaborate, share and support each other. You never know when you’ll find a new friend or business partner.
10. Most importantly – Create a Blog Framework
Maybe this should’ve been my #1 point because I certainly think you’ll fail without it. Out of this list, the top thing I wish I had known as a new blogger is to
build my blog framework before launching
That’s the number one thing for good traffic, higher search ranking and just people wanting to stick around.
Creating a blog framework means learning where to place things on your site, not just good navigation, but looking ahead and creating a pathway for your visitors to take.
Creating a foundation, or framework can be compared to a blueprint for a house or a city.
If you’ve ever played city-building games, like Sim City or Settlers, or even life-building games like The Sims you’ll quickly understand the depth and focus needed for this part.
It takes time. Some people will even devote a whole year to simply building their blog framework. This idea includes creating cornerstone articles, a keyword web, internal link-building, site-mapping, and even your social media posts and branding!
Next Steps
Now that you’ve seen all the parts of blogging no one told you about being a mommy blogger, do you still want to proceed?
I know you may immediately say you do, but truly take time to think through these. Reading this blogging for beginners 101 will take a lot of digesting.
However, if you already have thought it through and would like someone on one help, I’m your gal.
If you’ve already created a blog but aren’t sure if it’s up to par, or what to do next, let me save you some time. I can assess your particular blog and blogging journey with my Blog Audit and Blog Consultation services.
I’d love to speak to you and help you get started on the right foot. I want to help every single mom I can to get stumble and going forward, on the right path.
Check out my Blog Services page to see how I can help you get better results, faster.
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Great advice. I wish I knew that blogging would swallow so much time and was such hard work.
This is so informative! I wish I had this when I was starting out!
thanks for sharing. I am a new blogger and excited to learn from the more experienced bloggers.
Great advice. The blogging world is overwhelming and I am working hard to kick off my own blog.
Read the entire article and I am definitely bookmarking this for further reference! The links to the legal pages i found to be especially helpful since no one wants to be found uncompliant with the law! I also loved the infographic about the poll of bloggers. It puts into perspective just how much work blogging takes and that over time it CAN be profitable. I also agree that relationships are so important in blogging and networking with other bloggers is so important!
Thanks for the great post!
These are so helpful to me as a first time blogger. I think you are such a genuine and honest person from reading your posts. Thank you for all your help.
We’re mom bloggers too!! Love this content!
Wow! Thi s post gave me some wonderful tips and tricks and I love it! I will check out the SEO group! Also, Vanilla is definitely a flavor! 🙂
I wish I had all this when I was first starting out!