15 Blogging Tips for New Bloggers

​​You have just started a new blog and want what almost every blogger out there wants, to have a successful blog and maybe even make some money from it. It is possible to make a full-time income from blogging but it takes a lot of hard work, we’ve all seen those blogger income reports that show bloggers that are making $10,000+ per month, but those are few and far between and have usually been around for quite a while and have a great system in place. The reality is that most blogs will fail! Be it from burnout, unrealistic goals or failing to plan ahead and getting frustrated with the whole process.
 
For myself, I’ve been blogging for nearly 2 years, with a year off in between. My first attempt at blogging was a bit of a disaster. I was getting lots of views and making a bit of money, but always felt like there was never enough time to get everything done. I ended up burning out and the few days off I was going to take turned into almost a year.
 
Then I decided to try again, but this time I did a little more researching and made a plan. It’s been about 6 months since I returned and thing are going great. I have way more views to my site, make more commissions and spend way less time working on my blog. Hopefully some of these tips can help out some new bloggers so they don’t make the common mistakes that I made when starting out.

​1. SEO Is King:
 
I didn’t know the first thing about SEO when I started. I had poor SEO and wasn’t getting any organic traffic to my site. I did a lot of reading about SEO (there is lots of free information out there, you don’t need to pay to learn things about blogging), and since I have started using the right formula for my site the organic traffic has gone from 2 or 3 a week to between 40 and 100 a day. It’s just free traffic for just a few minutes of work that I did.
 
2. Find A Blogging Community:
 
As a new blogger, you should try to connect with a community of bloggers, go and ask questions, make friends, these are the people that can help you improve your blog. You can usually find other bloggers that will willingly share information for free in places like Facebook groups, or even just send a message to a blogger who is in your niche and strike up a conversation.
 
3. Write Guest Posts:
 
Nothing can help out a new blog more than writing a post for an established blogger. They get a story and you get access to their established reader base and links to your sites in most cases. It can lead to a quick increase in your followers. We have had 6 guest posts on our sites and some have seen a huge jump in their followers from doing so. If you write in the Travel or Health and Fitness niche, we are always looking for people to write with us. I f you would like to know more about guest posting on our site then you can contact us at
 
4. Be Patient:
 
Success doesn’t come overnight. Give your blog time to grow and don’t be upset when something doesn’t work out, just scrap that idea and look for a new alternative until you find what works best for your blog.
 
5. Don’t Try to Master Every Social Media Platform At Once:
 
There are so many places to promote your blog. Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram…. The list can go on. Learn to master one form of social media then add on another. I started out trying to do all forms and just ended up spending too much time and not getting any results. Then I switched my attention to mainly Facebook and Pinterest and started to see better results since I had an idea of how to use them.

​6. You Still Need Facebook:
 
Even with Facebook changing their algorithms, which in turn made it harder to get views to your posts, it is still a great place to promote your new blog posts, be it blogging group boards or group boards that are specific to your niche.
 
Facebook has really changed, when I first started my blog I made a Facebook page and built it up to 12,000 followers. Every time I would post (about 4 times a day) I would get about 200 likes per post. With the algorithm changes I now see about 50. But it is still a great resource and the biggest benefit from it is that quite a few have become friends and have brought great value to my life.
 
7. Don’t Be Spammy:
 
You have your new blog post ready and want to get it out to everyone, everywhere now. Don’t do it, take it from me, release it slowly. Does it really matter if you get the views today/tomorrow/next week? If it’s not time sensitive material then you really don’t need to rush. Most of the most established bloggers get a large number of their views to a post well after the post has been released.
 
I went a little overboard when I first started blogging, posting my blog on a certain Facebook group multiple times a day. I was getting lots of views, or at least I thought I was, compared to now it was nothing. They ended up banning my posts which is really understandable, I didn’t take the time to connect with the people on the site and try and help them with what they were looking for. I could have just answered questions and left links to my posts instead of just doing self-promotion. I never got a chance to thank the admin who tried to tell me how to promote properly on sites, just know thanks so much for the lesson.

8. Learn To Comment:
 
This one kind of goes along with the last tip, It goes two ways. Always return comments as soon as possible, whether it be from your blog or social media. Learn to answer other people’s questions on sites, become an expert on that topic and people will see that you are and will want to read more about what you have written. You shouldn’t always leave a link, sometimes just answering their question can go a long way.
 
9. Make A Blogging Schedule:
 
From writing your blog post to when and where you are going to promote it. Having a schedule is key, you will know when you need to be doing certain aspects of your blog. I have found that making a schedule has kept me from being overwhelmed and a lot less frustrated.
 
10. Use Scheduling Tools:
 
No matter if you use Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest you should get some sort of scheduler to help ease some of the pressure from your schedule. I have only gotten one so far and that’s Tailwind. I used to spend hours posting to group boards and pinning other pins, but now with Tailwind I only spend about an hour a week scheduling and about 5 minutes a day manually pinning other people’s pins.
 
For Facebook, I decided not to get any type of scheduler because like I had said before I have made some great connections on there and it’s great to be able to correspond with them.
​

​11. Beware Of The Ups And Downs:

Let’s face it blogging success comes in waves. You can have one great post with a tremendous amount of views and then your next few posts just don’t get the views. Don’t get discouraged, that’s the way blogging is (peaks and valleys). Go back to the posts that gave you more views and see what you did, check your schedule and see if you posted it in a certain place or at a certain time (another great reason to keep a schedule), and try and copy that style for your next post.
 
12. Be Prepared For Change:
 
The world of blogging is forever changing. Spend some time each week learning about new trends or upcoming changes in social media so that you can stay ahead of others when these changes take place.

​13. Use Good Pictures And Graphics:
 
This one I can’t stress enough. Sometimes when you are promoting your blog all that people will see is the photo that you used while they are skimming through their social media (this is especially relevant to Pinterest). An eye-catching picture with great graphics can draw their attention to your post and result in a visit to your website.  Paying for photos is your best bet but I know as a new blogger you may not have the financial resources to do this. I personally use a lot of free stock photos in my blog. I even wrote a post after doing quite a bit of research, so if you are in need of some photos for your next post then you should check out 10 Great Sites For Free Stock Photos or click on the picture below.

​14. Use Internal Links:
 
Just like I did above. Try to link at least one of your previous blog posts in every new post that you put up. Make it relevant to the subject that you are talking about. The whole idea behind this is to keep your reader on your page as long as possible. This will help with analytics and your bounce rate.
 
15. Take A Break Once In A While:
 
Everyone needs some time away from their blog. I originally was doing different aspects of my blog 7 days a week and for multiple hours a day, all it did was burn me out. Now with all of these easy changes that I have made I spend about 2 hours a day from Monday to Friday (still work a regular job) promoting my posts and 3 to 4 hour on the weekend writing and scheduling for my blog. I found that when I was promoting on the weekends that I normally didn’t see that big of an increase In views, most people are busy on the weekends. I find that gives me enough time to recharge and get back into it on Monday morning before I go to my real job (hopefully not too much longer, I have seen a major increase in my income as of late from blogging).
 
Bonus Tip And Probably The Most Important:
 
Have Fun!!! The most successful bloggers have one thing in common, they really enjoy what they are doing and it shows. If I would have followed these tips from the time I started blogging then I more than likely wouldn’t have taken almost a year off and who knows how much bigger my blog could be or I could be doing this full-time now instead of working for someone else.
 
I hope you can find some value in these tips and hopefully you can implement some into your daily routine to make things easier. If you have any question about blogging then feel free to get in touch with us, we will always find time to help out a fellow blogger.

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​Thanks,

​Mark
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