Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Blogging

You know how it goes. You get the idea of starting a blog and it all seems SO easy, right? I mean, there’s not much to it – choose a blog name, buy the domain, install WordPress and well you’re done.

WRONG.

All of the sudden, everything gets much more complicated. You have to learn HTML, you start making mistakes left and right and you realize shit, this is a lot more work than I anticipated.

Been there. Done that.

Let me be the first to tell you, figuring this out isn’t such a bad thing. To be honest, had I not been through the countless hurdles in my blogging career then I doubt I’d be where I am today. With that being said however, there are some blogging lessons that I’ve learned along the way that just would have been a lot more helpful had I known them prior. So here we go — a few things I wish I’d known when I started blogging:

MANY PEOPLE WILL NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU DO

Holy cow. The one question I am officially tired of explaining is that about “blogging.” Tell someone you are a “blogger” and they instantly look at you with a bizarre almost laughable look on their face. People will start to ask you questions like they get it but lets be honest – they really have no freaking clue what you do. Now that I’m at a point where my blog has turned into my career my family has caught onto it and understood what I do but in the beginning I think everyone was genuinely worried that I was going to end up a lost 25 year old soul clinging to a hope that was never going to happen. Hey, I can pretty much guarantee that when I go on some first dates here and there, people legit think I live out of a cardboard box and I just let them think that. What I’ve learned? You have to just be okay with it and and realize some people will just never get it.

BE PASSIONATE

Listen, I’m sure you’ve heard this one before but hey I’m going to repeat it. You will not, and I repeat will not make it as a blogger if you don’t have a passion about your niche. Blogging takes long ass hours (trust me) and gives you very little reward at the beginning of your career. I’ll be honest sometimes it will be DAMN hard to be inspired to keep up with the work load but truth be told — if you don’t care about what you are doing, what makes you think your readers will?

COMPANIES WILL NOT WANT YOU… YET

I know the dream. You start up your blog and now you want those big companies that you admire to not only find you, but also beg to work with you. Sorry people, that’s just not how it works. If you want to make a career out of your blog you will most likely have be ok with doing a lot of FREE shit. Not only that but you are going to get a whole lot of rejections and maybe even silence to your emails. Don’t do it for the money — nuff said.

PUBLISH, CREATE …NOW

I can’t tell you guys how many times I have people that talk to me about how they want to start a blog and want to get my advice etc.. Of course I LOVE hearing about it and always provide whatever advice I can BUT nine times out of ten the response from people I get is that it’s never perfect. Lets run down the things I hear:

I don’t have enough time. I’m not skinny enough yet. The edit wasn’t good enough. It didn’t match my instagram feed. I don’t like how this looks on the gram.

I mean,… sound familiar? What I’ve learned — there is NEVER going to be a good time to start something new so get to it.

ROME WASN’T BUILT IN A DAY

There are people in your niche that are at the top and you will find comparing yourself to them. It’s important however to realize they worked for it. I mean I did it — spent countless countless late nights after working my day job then spent the rest of the night on the computer only to fall asleep at my laptop just in time to get my latest blog post up. Overnight success is not ever going to happen however, if you put in the time, dedication, passion & effort – you can and you WILL make it.

At the end of the day, love what you do and realize that making a mistake isn’t the end of the world. It’s the learning experience that counts.

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