You Started A Blog Now Here Is How to Grow Your Blog

Today, I thought that I would share some of the things that I have been doing to help me grow my blog. After all, if you just started a blog, now is the time to focus on the growth of it.

You Started A Blog Now What?

Starting a blog is so exciting. You think about all the possibilities. Maybe you started your blog because you are tired of working and not making enough money at your current job?

Maybe you just want to share your thoughts, opinions or knowledge. Hoping that you will be able to monetize your blog and earn some money to cover the costs of running your blog.

As you know, I started my blog so I can eventually walk away from my freelancing business. When I created my freelancing business, I had no clue that I was creating a job.

Now I am tired of working for clients who don’t really want to pay any money to get work done on their blog. Plus I’ve realized that as I get older, it’s important to have some type of passive income.

Something that will allow me to do the work once and it is out on the Internet working for me while I take time off or am sleeping.

I also want to have something that produces income as I near retirement age. We hear about those scary retirement statistics that most Americans can’t afford to retire. If you don’t believe me, read this.

That’s why I work so hard on this blog. I don’t want to be one of those statistics.

Grab My Kindle eBook

I’ve created a Kindle eBook with 6 steps you can start implementing to help you start growing your blog. As you know, growing a blog is the hard part of blogging.

You’re Not Seeing Any Results

Blogging can be frustrating, especially, at the beginning. You write amazing content and no one is reading or sharing your blog posts.

If you still haven’t found a social sharing plugin, this is the one I use for my blog. It’s important to make it easy for people to share your blog posts.

Unfortunately, it’s going to take some time to see the growth of a blog post. At first, it’s going to feel like you’re not getting anywhere.

The most important thing to remember is that it takes time to grow a blog. Some of us it takes longer, especially if you are completely new to WordPress.

If you are completely new to WordPress, grab my The Complete Beginners Guide to WordPress eBook which will help you with the basics of WordPress.

Keep Blogging

The best advice I got during my first year is to keep blogging. I know that it’s frustrating to wake up every morning and hit publish on a new blog post.

Maybe you’re like I was and I was constantly checking my Google Analytics on my blog. To see if I got any new visitors.

Stop checking your analytics so much and start focusing more on blog promotion. I am going to share some things that I have used to help me grow this blog.

Promotional Techniques

When you’re brand new, you should focus more on promotion than publishing new content on your blog. Yes, you still need to publish content.

However, you want to make sure that you’re not sitting in front of your computer all day writing content. You need to be putting effort into growing your blog.

Chances are you don’t have a lot of money or time to promote your blog. When I started this blog, I didn’t have the money to pay for advertising. I still don’t pay for any advertising.

While it’s true that you might be able to grow quickly if you know how to do paid advertising. However, you can also lose a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing.

That’s why I always focused on free marketing methods to help me grow my blog. Let me share some of my favorite things that I have done to grow my blog.

Blog Commenting

Ryan Biddulph from Blogging from Paradise has built his online empire by taking the time to comment on people’s blogs.

Now when I say commenting, you don’t want to waste your time with those one line comments that say “great comment or nice article.” Those types of comments are not going to help you.

You’ll end up burning yourself out and wasting your time. No blogger is going to allow those types of comments to be published on their blog.

As you can see, Ryan left an amazing comment on the Pro Blogger podcast. These are the types of comments that get noticed and approved.

If you’re going to spend the time commenting, make sure that you’re doing it correctly.

Share The Post

Now I don’t only take the time to comment on the post, but I also share it. I truly believe that by taking the time to share and spread the love, it has helped me land some guest posting opportunities that I wouldn’t have been able to get.

Guest Posting

Speaking of guest posting, I love using this method. I know that many people think that guest posting is not worth their time.

Why should they give away their content to someone else when they are trying to build up their own blog. We all know that we need fresh content to build up our own blogs.

However, if you’re brand new one of the best things that you can do is start guest posting on blogs that are bigger than yours.

If you’ve read last month’s blog update, you know that I am not focusing that much on guest posting right now. Instead, I am focusing on Pinterest because that’s what’s actually helping me grow my blog.

You can read how to use Pinterest for business, my case study that I am still doing.

Don’t Make This Mistake

One of the mistakes I made when I started guest posting is that I gave away my best content to blogs that were at the same stage I was at.

The end result was that all I was doing was helping them grow their blog. I didn’t get any traffic, subscribers or anything from those guest posts.

I know that some people say that you should be everywhere. I’ve come to realize that this important.

However, if you’re spending time creating amazing content and want to start guest blogging, make sure that you’re giving away your content to sites that are bigger than your own.

Here’s a great article that will show you how to get started with guest blogging the right way.

It’s going to take some time to get better with guest blogging. So if you make some mistakes at the beginning like I did, just forgive yourself and keep going.

Eventually, you’ll start to see the benefits of it and your blog will start to grow. I’ve written a post on how to get started with guest blogging if you are completely new.

Using Pinterest

Pinterest has been one of the social media channels that I have been focused on to help me grow this blog. I have to admit that it has taken me a long time to see some growth results.

One of the reasons that it has taken me so long is that I spend so much time guest posting and blog commenting. Most of the people who see success with Pinterest right away tend to focus all their time and energy there.

For some reason, I just refuse to spend 100% of my time learning Pinterest. So my growth is slow.

Create Multiple Pins

When I started using Pinterest, I had maybe 7 of my own blog posts. I never took the time to create multiple pins for my blog posts.

However, if you spend time reading the Tailwind blog, they will even tell you that you should be creating more than one pin for every blog post.

While I still don’t take the time to create multiple pins for every blog post. I’ve ran a couple of tests to see if it was actually worth my time to create multiple pins and guess what, it was.

Take a look at these pins to see why it’s so important to create multiple images for your blog posts.

You can see that Pin B got a lot more shares than Pin A. I started out with only submitting Pin A. If I hadn’t taken the time to create a second pin, I wouldn’t have gotten so many shares.

It does take time to create multiple pins, but it’s definitely worth it as you can see from the image above.

Rinse and Repeat

These are basically the only tasks that I do on a regular basis to help me grow my blog. Yes, I know that everyone is going to say that you should be on Quora, Facebook Live, Tumblr and etc..

The truth is that I am one person and I still have a freelancing business that requires a lot of my attention. So I have to spend my time where I get the best results.

So every morning I wake up and I know what I am going to be working on. I don’t waste any time trying to decide what needs to be done.

It’s kind of like clockwork. I know what needs to be done and I just do it.

Find Out What Works for You

Just because someone says that you can get a ton of traffic from Reddit or Quora, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work for you.

You’re going to have to find out which traffic methods work for you. Then focus on 2-3 promotional strategies each and every day.

As long as you are continuing to get subscribers and seeing growth on your blog, those strategies are working. Once you master those methods you can move on to another method.

Here’s a great plugin that I started using that has helped me increase my email subscribers without any extra work.

Chances are you do not have time to blog. So you need to find the promotional strategies that are actually helping you grow your blog.

Stop listening to everyone who says that this or that will work for your blog. Remember, it’s up to you to find out what works for your blog and then put your blinders on and just keep blogging.

Final Take Away

You started a blog because you wanted to change the lives of your family and help your readers. It’s not going to happen overnight.

However, as long as you stay consistent by producing great content and focusing on promotion, I have no doubt that you will look back in a few years and see the amazing business that you have built online.

Hand Picked Articles

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• No Time for Blogging 30 Minute Blogging Tasks to Grow Your Blog

Growing a blog is hard and it takes a long time to see results. What other tips can you give someone who is just getting started and isn’t seeing the results as quickly as they had hoped they would?