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Blogging is NOT EASY!!!!

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How many pins and blog posts have you seen that tell you how EASY it is to start a blog? These posts make it sound so quick and so simple that everyone should be doing it, but is it really that easy? There are lots of bloggers who only blog about blogging and they all claim to be sharing their ‘secrets’.   Some will ask you to sign up for courses or pay for resources that turn you into an overnight blogging success.  In my view there really is no need to spend any money until you have started on your blogging journey and have done all the things that you can do without paying out!

The bloggers telling you how easy it is, are making good money by selling the dream of an easier lifestyle. A lifestyle where you have passive income and you don’t have to leave your house. They give the impression that blogging is all about creativity.   For the vast majority this will only ever be just a dream.   Like anything blogging requires hard work and quite a lot of skill and knowledge!  The dream sounds less attractive when described honestly but it is till a dream!!

Find out whether blogging is really for you!

Following the advice so many bloggers push out can get you to the point where you have paid out for services to support your blog but have no blog because (sorry I am going to say it again!) Blogging really isn’t easy!

There is some good news though.  If you are really serious about starting a blog, there is so  much you can do to validate your ideas before spending any money at all.   This is the tough love bit here – are you really serious about starting a blog and why do you want to do it?  I produced a short decision tree and workbook to help you decide whether blogging is for you and whether you are ready to spend money and launch your blog…..  you can see the decision tree in the picture below and download the workbook as a free printable below.

Is blogging for you – Letter (322 downloads) Is blogging for you – A4 (250 downloads)

Learn from my mistakes!

My own blog journey started a few years ago when I first began reading all the pins on Pinterest talking about how easy it was to start a blog and make a fortune. Despite loving my day job I was interested in starting a blog as a hobby that could eventually provide an income stream.   I have also always harboured dreams of being a writer 😊

After spending a year or so with ‘start a blog’ on my do list I had made NO PROGRESS other than to collect pins and read more blogs on how EASY it was. 

Finally getting started……

After about a year I bought myself a domain name and entered into a hosting contract. One of the things I did learn was that getting a domain is the safest route to protecting your work. I didn’t even look at pure blogging solutions like blogger or blogspot.   These might have been an easier route to get started.   The reasons I went for my own domain were:

  • I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny and not be bound by rules set down by the platform – rules that are subject to change.   I own my own website and control everything about the content myself
  • I wanted to be able to ‘monetise’ my blog.  I will put up a separate post on how this is not easy either but for now suffice to say that this means I wanted to be able to generate an income from my blog.

Besides all that, it is so much fun thinking of names for your site and the deals the hosting companies offer seem such bargains. I bought my domain and started paying for hosting waaaay too early in the process. There was a lot I could have done before investing.

Hosting – only pay for what you need

Pretty much all the blogs I read seemed to recommend Blue Host. However, after doing my own research at the time, I went with 1&1 IONOS and they have been great.  It is always worth checking out a number of hosting providers and picking the best deal for you.  It is also worth checking for reviews of the services provided as quality of service can change over time.

When you start to set your own blog up, whoever you choose to host your blog, check out their offers and plans. You probably only need to go for the basic level and watch out for lock in type deals. If you find blogging is not for you then you will want to be able to end the commitment.

A lot of the ‘advice’ and ‘secrets’ shared by bloggers suggest hosting plans that have a two-year lock in.  This means that low price you are quoted will need to be paid montly for 24 months or more before you can end the contract.   Not such a low commitment after all!    There is also sometimes a statement on the ‘start a blog’ blogs to the effect that special pricing for hosting is only available through links from someone’s blog. In my experience that has not been true. If you go straight to the hosting company via google the same pricing is often available.

Affiliate Links

Links from blogs do two things…. firstly, for you they are an easy way to find the businesses that can help you set up.  Secondly, they can provide payment to the blogger who publishes the link. These payments are called affiliate payments and range in value from zero through a few pennies but can also be very lucrative for the blogger if someone (like you) follows a link and then makes a purchase. It doesn’t cost you anything more and bloggers usually recommend services that they value themselves.

I am an affiliate for a number of products and businesses but so far (just over two years in) have not had any affiliate income. That said, I have not pushed that side of my blog. My motivation in publishing this blog post is to ‘tell it like it is’ warts and all. I would be delighted to generate some affiliate income but only from people buying products and services they really need, with their eyes open!

WordPress – the best and the worst

Anyway, climbing down from my soap box……So far, so easy but …. so far no blog! The next stage was to upgrade my hosting contract to include WordPress. Again, an easy step and then to download and set up my blog using WordPress. Downloading WordPress is very easy. Setting up my blog using WordPress – not so easy!! WordPress is an amazing tool but NOT EASY!  

In fact this is the point at which it became really hard!! Everyone skips over this bit in their instructions on blog set up but the set-up is NOT straight forward. There are default settings you need to change. Everything is written using terms that make no sense unless you have A LOT of knowledge.   

Getting to grips with WordPress! 

I finally cracked this stage of the process when I found some genuinely free resources. The link below will take you to a vlog about setting up WordPress blogs and I cannot recommend these tutorials highly enough. I hope they continue to be available – at the time of writing they are still there! I found them with a simple but quite specific google search. Here is a link http://imarkinteractive.teachable.com/p/understanding-wordpress

You need to set aside a reasonable amount of time (I am talking a few days) for this education and set up. I also found I needed two screens on the go so that I could work on WordPress on my laptop and watch the tutorial at the same time on an iPad. There is A LOT to learn and to be honest I skimmed a bit and now regret that. I would like to be better at the ‘nuts and bolts’ than I am. Time spent learning would definitely have paid back in saved time later.  

Don’t Expect this to be quick!!

As you work your way through the technical set up you have to make all sorts of decisions on appearance and layout. It becomes a strange mix of technical and creative. I think the guy behind the tutorials also offers a service to create your blog for you and those services are readily available elsewhere. If you are purely creative rather than technical and have the money to spend then paying for set up might be an option you want to consider. I think pricing can be ‘reasonable’ but still not something I could have afforded to do!  

Sticking with the tutorials and technical learning I managed to get through and once you are through this set up stage you do actually have a blog!! Woo hoo!!! Now…. what are you going to say/write?    

I remember getting to this stage and wishing that I had spent time creating more content before getting bogged down with the technical side and starting to pay for hosting! Here is my suggested list in the order I wish I had worked when I started.   Some of these overlap with the free workbook above that will help you decide whether blogging is for you.

8 tips to get you into great shape for blogging BEFORE you spend any money!

  • Decide on the subject you want to blog about.   Wisdom out there says pick a niche and stick to it.   I haven’t been able to do that very well – which could be one of the reasons for my lack of success!   I blog about around at least three different themes – crochet, planners and blogging.  I am not (nor do I claim to be) an expert in any of these.
  • Research other blogs in the areas you have selected.  
  • Make lots of google searches in the areas you have picked and note which blogs come up in the searches – these are your competition. 
  • Work out which key words in google searches return these blogs as the search results.   See if you can find searches in your subject areas that do not return many blogs or other resources.  You will need this list of key words later!

All this and no money invested yet!!…..

  • Next….decide on a name and branding – themes, colours, picture styles.   Write down what your fonts and colour schemes will be
  • Write some content – this could be in Word, in an email, in a notebook at this stage but write as much content as you can.   This will show you whether you are capable of writing consistently in your chosen area.   The more innovative and newer the material you write, the more likely you are to attract visitors to your blog.   The process of typing this into your blog is only a tiny part of the effort required to run a blog.  Coming up with new material on a regular basis is a big and important part and a big factor in determining your success or failure.   As a start point, having four or five quality blog posts ready to go would be a good start.
  • Take photos or use an app like Canva to generate images in the formats used by social media platforms like Facebook and Pinterest.  You will need these to market your blog.
  • Develop a following on the big social media platforms.   Pinterest is amazing for this, Instagram and facebook can also be useful.   I believe Twitter is good but I don’t use that much  at this stage myself so I cannot really comment.   More on this in a later post.

Once you have completed these steps I would say you are in a good place to set up your blog and at that point it would be worth spending on a domain name and hosting.

Still want to be a blogger!!?

As I said at the top of this post Blogging is hard!!!   It is possible though. Along my blogging journey I have found some excellent resources and some genuinely helpful blogs and amazing people.  That said, I am writing this in March 2019 and currently have average page views of around 1,500 and average income of £1.30 per month! Needless to say my outgoings are FAR higher. I am not sure this will ever deliver me an income but I am going to keep going.   

The main reason I am keeping going is that I can see it build. Very slowly but it does build… you can read some of my blog progress updates here. I put out a few updates then life took over and I had a little break. When I came back after three months I found that I was still getting a building number of page views.   This was a major lesson for me. As I said above having content that people want to read is really important!

Ok Blogging is NOT easy but it is SUPER rewarding

Another reason I will keep going is job satisfaction.    I get incredibly excited when I see that people are visiting my blog.   I am completely thrilled when I get a comment from a real person who has read my blog and wants to make contact.    I use Google Adsense to try to monetise my blog and the days when I earn £0.01 are great days.   Days when someone clicks on an advert and I earn a few pence are AMAZING days.  

As I said above I work as an affiliate for a number of businesses that I have used and value highly.  I didn’t include the links above but will include them here so legally I have to include the following text.  Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you follow them could generate a small payment to me at no additional cost to yourself.  

Useful tools and apps to help you build your blog

1&1 – for hosting and domain name registration.   Follow the domain name registration link which will take you to a screen where you can test (at no cost) any domain name you can think of and see whether it is available.   Once you have a name you like you can purchase that domain name and leave it there or you can purchase a hosting package with WordPress if you are ready to take that step.

Canva – great for creating images for your blog and for social media.   More on this in a later post but I couldn’t work without Canva.   At the time of writing, they offer a reduced package for free which is as far as I have gone and  also  a free trial of their full application.   My art work lets me down I think so this is maybe something I should be spending more time on but there is so much I can still do without spending so it won’t happen any time soon!

Tailwind – invaluable for promoting your blog.   Again, more on this in a later post.  

long term investment of time pays off

I don’t get very much time to work on my blog.    I get about five hours during the week whilst I am commuting to work and generally get four or five hours at the weekend to focus on new content.   Progress is slow but I have a long long list of things I could be doing or doing better.    I can see that blogging could be a full time job.   Once again the bloggers who tell you that this is easy or that you can make your fortune and imply that you can do this with very little effort, are seriously misleading.    I would not want to put anyone off – if you would like to become a blogger – go for it!!!!  

Here are my final do’s and don’ts

DO NOT

  • overspend on set up (unless you have done everything you can AND can afford to invest).  
  • depend on this to make your fortune unless you make it a full-time job and give it all your focus. 
  • expect it to be easy!!!!    

BUT….. DO

  • connect with like-minded people.  
  • learn from other people’s mistakes and triumphs (do lots of research).  
  • put out good content
  • focus on social media as the means to market your blog.

I am planning two more posts on this theme.   Marketing your blog is not easy and Monetising your blog is not easy…..    till then…..

Happy blogging!

Annie 😊

Blog progress #6

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Hello and welcome to my August update.    Note – this post is focussed on my progress as a blogger – if you are here for the crochet please visit the craft projects section of my  blog!

It feels like I have been able to make some real progress this month as I was on holiday from my full time day job for a week or so.     I will include my stats for August compared to July at the bottom of the post.    But the key headline is that traffic to my site has more than tripled in the month.   Here is how I did it:

Actions taken to drive blog traffic

Write new, relevant content – One post I wrote early in the month grabbed the attention out there on Pinterest and I had two or three very exciting days where traffic to my site increased.   This also had a lasting impact as I acquired new followers on Pinterest.   As I had more time available this month I was able to write a new free pattern which again drove additional traffic to my site.   There are lots of actions you can take to drive traffic but having solid content makes it all so much easier.

I used the power of Pinterest –  I use Tailwind to manage this for me but also pin manually from my daily commute.   I am an affiliate for Tailwind so if you click on links on my blog to explore Tailwind that could generate a small payment to me at no additional cost to you.   However, that is not why I am recommending this tool.   Tailwind is a great way to maintain regular pinning, especially if, like me, you work full time and have to cram all your blogging into the weekends and evenings.    The reason I recommend it is simple.   I could not do without it.

I started with the free version but I now pay for a higher level of membership.    I am a member of five active tribes within Tailwind.     These are groups of people who are pinning in the same interest groups.    I post every new pin I write to the relevant tribe which then means that other tribe members see it and if I am lucky they add it to their scheduled pins.   Some of the members of the tribe have many more followers than I do so if I am lucky and one of my pins is selected by a tribe member with a big following it can really help!

Every Sunday I get my Tailwind schedule loaded up with my own pins and pins from other members of the tribes I belong to.    I can schedule pins for a couple of weeks or more but generally only set up one week at a time.    My Pinterest following is growing steadily.    This drives much of the traffic to my blog, and I am sure that this is in no small part down to Tailwind.

I Got started on Instagram – (with the assistance of my children!).   August was my first month on Instagram.   I found it really easy to find like minded people on this platform.   I also found it much easier to share work in progress quickly.    The format is based more heavily on images and there is no click through option so you only need a photo of your work and a few lines of text.

You need to set up a business account which gives you access to insights and stats on how your posts are doing.    This also enables you to include a link to your blog on your profile page.   You get information on how many profile visits you have had in the last seven days.   Those are important because those visits have been to the page that has your blog link and could have driven traffic.

You get an immediate response when you put new material up which is lovely and you can ask for views/opinions which can be helpful.     I haven’t explored the ‘story’ side of Instagram yet.   It is on my do list because I understand you can set up links to your blog from your story.    I can see my blog traffic increase when I gain new followers and put up new content.

Invested more time in Facebook – I had a Facebook account but hadn’t really had chance to use it.    This month I started to get involved in blogger support groups.   If you search for groups in your niche to join on Facebook they will all have their own set of rules you need to follow.   Find groups that fit your needs that have rules you can buy into and put in an application.   It really is worth while spending time on this.   There is so much support and help out there and you will find you can help others too which keeps it all going.     I started working on Facebook late in the month so didn’t see much impact as of yet.   I plan to spend a lot more time on Facebook in September.


So that has been my month!   Here is the impact.

Blog Progress Report – August 18

  • Pinterest followers – 770 (up 67 this month
  • Instagram followers – 313 (up 313 this month!)
  • AdSense clicks – 11 (up 5 this month)
  • AdSense income to date – £1.59 (down £0.23 this month after one really well paid click in July!)
  • Amazon affiliate income – 0
  • Shareasale income – 0    (Tailwind affiliate links)
  • Subscribers – 14 (an increase of 11 :-))
  • Etsy listings – 10
  • Etsy sales – 0
  • Page views – 2,178 (up 1,588 this month!)

I am delighted with progress but worried that it has been a blip that will be hard to maintain…. tune in next month to find out.    Happy blogging!

Annie 🙂

Blog progress #5

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Hello and welcome to my (definitely not weekly) update!     The last time I posted on progress with my blog was mid June.   Since then my day job took over and I haven’t really been able to put out new content.    I have been finding ways to spend what bit of time I had profitably though.   This post covers what I have learned.   At the bottom of the post I will share my progress for July 18 and going forward I plan to share monthly.   Please note – this is an update on the process of running and developing my blog rather than on the crochet side.    For crochet updates and patterns – please check out the craft projects area of my blog! 🙂

How to keep up blog progress when you have NO time!   10 ideas below.

It takes a long time to craft a blog post.   At least, it takes ME a long time to craft a blog post.   Maybe some of you have them tripping off your fingers and all the technical tweaks and twiddles just glide through in your world….. mine is more of a struggle.    Write, read back, edit, read back, scrap and start again, write, read back repeat….  then once I have a post I am more or less happy with…. time spent fighting with the idiosyncrasies of the technical side to post and promote the work.   I could go on – but basically I need a good few hours of clear time to be able to put up a post.    Usually this is a weekend task but there are times when my weekends are just too full.    I have the odd fifteen minutes here and there but no solid block of time.    The list below covers what I have found to be the best uses of these short bursts of time.    These are also the things I do when I am out of inspiration for a new blog post.


Brainstorm ideas for future posts.   You can do this whenever, wherever – as long as it is safe to let your mind wander.  Always carry a notebook!

Take photographs.   Keep an eye out for useful shots.  It doesn’t matter if they are not perfect – you can always crop them and focus on just a small element of a larger shot.   They could give you ideas for a future, more professional shot.

Keep up on social media.   Do you promote your blog on all social media sites?   Does one work better for you than others?  If you are travelling or have a short break in your day.   Make sure you are set up to use social media on your phone and put in any time you have building your network and engaging with your potential audience.

Keep on top of email and comments.   It doesn’t take long to respond to individual emails or comments.   However, if you let them build up it can feel like a big task.  It should be fun/exciting when you get contact from your followers.   Feedback is also a potential generator of ideas for posts so again – keep your notebook handy!

Read other blogs in your niche area and consider what appeals to you.   What works well and why?   What can you learn and apply to your own blog?

Contact other bloggers in your niche area or related subjects and give them support.  I don’t know about you but I am soooo thrilled when someone contacts me with supportive or constructive comments.   I don’t do enough of that but plan to do more!   It only takes a minute or two to leave a comment.

Reschedule Pins on Pinterest that you do not feel have had as much success as they could have had or reschedule Pins that were very successful first time round.   I use Tailwind for this.  I think you can use it for Instagram too but I am only a beginner on Instagram and haven’t yet linked my account to Tailwind.   When you reschedule old Pins make sure the links back to your blog are working!   Please note – these links are affiliates link so if you do click through to the Tailwind site it could generate a small income for me at no additional cost to you.   However, Please note, I am recommending Tailwind because I really rate it!

Develop more content in your niche – for me this means designing crochet items or producing crochet.   Working on existing projects is something I can do when I am too tired to think so it works well when I am busy.

Re-read your own blog (critically).   Blogs build over time and it is easy to forget what you have posted previously.    If you re-read it can help generate new ideas or you might find that there are posts that need a small edit to be brought up to date.   Make sure all the old links are working.   I often find I am reading old articles on other people’s blogs and they are normally still relevant but sometimes the links are no longer working.

Sketch out a draft post.   If you don’t have time to write a post but you do have an idea albeit very high level, get it down on paper or capture it on your device.   This could be in a note app or in the wordpress editor as a draft post.   It is much easier to flesh out an idea that is already written down.  At least – that is my experience!

Those are my 10 ideas.    I hope you find them helpful and that you find the time you need to work on your blog soon.

Finally – here is my status report.   Showing progress in July

  • Pinterest followers – 702
  • AdSense income to date – £1.82   (up £1.70 this month)
  • Amazon affiliate income – 0
  • Shareasale income – 0
  • Subscribers – 3 (myself, my son and MY FIRST actual subscriber – woo hoo!)
  • Etsy listings – 10
  • Etsy sales – 0
  • Page views  – 590 (up 170 this month)

Still a long way to go 🙂  Happy blogging!

Annie.

Crochet blog – update #7

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Hello and welcome to my 7th update.    I am still aiming to do these weekly but my week was crazy busy last week and I didn’t make enough progress to tell you about!

Over the last two weeks I managed to complete the squares for my hearts and spots blanket.  Here are the last four rows.    These are not laid out in the order I plan to put them together here but you get the idea.

The original colour layout looked like this.    I will be joining the blocks in this order more or less.

The heart squares are less stable than the spot and solid squares so rather than make it random I am rotating the three designs which means that a heart square will always be surrounded by solid/spot squares.  Here are the finished blocks in their colour piles!

I have been working on joining methods.    For my sunshine flower blanket I wanted to make the joins as invisible as possible.    This hearts and spots blanket will make a feature of the joins.    I am using the mid colour from each of the sets to join the blocks in each row.    For the joins between rows I haven’t decided what to use yet.    I might carry on with the mid colour of the previous row or might use the bold colours.

Away from this blanket I have been trying to get organised.    I recently published a couple of posts on daily and weekly planning with free printable planner downloads.  I have also been working on a stash catalogue which I will share in a separate post but this is what it looks like.   Here is the file as a free download.   The file is A5 size so you might need to resize it if you would like a different format.    If you have any problems with this please let me know and I will resize the file for you!   stash catalogue (136 downloads)

I have quite a large stash of yarn (!) and much as I try to make use of it before buying more yarn, it doesn’t seem to reduce any!   I hope that having it catalogued and available to browse through will improve my ability to create ideas to use it all.   One thing I have found is that as I go through the backs of cupboards and packing boxes to look at all my yarn, I am falling in love with it all over again.    I have found some yarns I didn’t know I had!    I read an article on yarn stashing and I know I am not the worst for this.   I do not have any yarn deliberately hidden from my family.    I loved one story I read, of a knitter who had removed a bath panel to create a new hiding place for an extreme stash 🙂

That’s all from me this week.   I will go back to joining squares and cataloguing my stash.    I hope to be able to edge the hearts and spots blanket next weekend and to share the final pattern.   Happy crocheting!

Annie 🙂

New to blogging

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Get your first blog up and running!!

I wrote this as my first post when I was just starting this blog. The advice contained below is exactly what I needed when I was new to blogging. I have loved my blogging journey and hope this helps you start yours…..

Original post starts here – May 2017. I am a new blogger and learning all the time from the huge number of articles out there.    I have found it to be a complete information overload.

Many articles claim to make the process of setting up a blog simple, then proceed with complicated instructions.

I am a complete beginner and have no qualification or expertise in this area.   I am only sharing my experience and limited knowledge in the hope that it helps you on your journey.

Below I share two links that are enough to make a proper start and get a working blog out there.   These are the best I have found.   I am still learning and I will continue to share as I find helpful information.

Firstly it is important to note that there are many free options out there for hosting your blog.   However, the solution I have chosen uses WordPress on my own domain hosted by 1&1.   This means I have paid for my own website name. My site is not part of another website. I read several horror stories about bloggers who put hours of work into blogs only to lose the content later.   Owning your own domain removes a big risk of this happening.

The links below take you to 1&1 Ionos where you can choose your own domain name and hosting package.   1&1 make this part very easy and quick.   Hosting packages can be very cheap and I would advise you start small.   You can always upgrade later as your requirements change.

get a domain name – 1&1 ionos

get hosting with 1&1 ionos

I found navigating WordPress and getting my blog up and running the hardest part.  I had made a small start using the welcome instructions in the WordPress software but I didn’t make any serious process until I found this free online course.

free wordpress tutorial

It really is free!   Signing up gives you access to a facebook based user group for support.  There are also discounts on offer for more WordPress support services.   I do not know yet whether I will need to use these but it is good to know they are there.

The only investment I made other than in hosting my own domain was to buy a WordPress Theme.  This is not essential and does cost money. However, the free themes are quite restrictive in what they allow you to do.   I bought the Genesis theme.  The course covers this subject.

This is all it took to get my first blog up and running!!   I did have to break off in the middle of setting up to complete a few tasks that I could have done in advance so I will put those into a separate post.   The main tasks were taking photos and preparing text.   I am still working on the photos!!

I hope this helps you and I wish you all the best in getting started on your own blog journey!   Please let me know how you get on 🙂

If you would like to read more of my blogging journey – click on Blogging in the menu above or follow this link to one of my more recent posts.