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Have you wondered if it’s possible for you to start a successful blog? I did! Here I share the good and bad of just over three weeks of blogging. I learned a ton, but I have so much farther to go! If you’re thinking of starting your own blog, hopefully you can learn something. And if you already have a successful blog, feel free to drop some tips in the comments! 🙂

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#Bloggoals

My first big goal is to shoot for 25,000 pageviews per month.

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At the beginning of January, I decided to try something new. In short, I wanted to blog for traffic. I’ve had a website for a long time, but it mostly served as a personal journal-slash-portfolio for freelance writing. Occasionally, I added race reports, or more recently, twin baby reports. The audience for these posts has typically been friends and family only.

On January 1st, my pageviews were two. As in 2.0.

Oh vey. Maybe my friends and family weren’t even reading me. Either way, there was nowhere to go but up!

I picked up the course Ready, Set, Blog for Traffic and have been [slowly] going through it. Slowly because the course is packed full of [great] information and I keep breaking to implement all the things.

Here are some of the steps I’m taking and the results so far:

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[Sort of] Picking a Niche

I’ve had trouble picking a niche. As a longtime fitness instructor, endurance coach, and now-author, the obvious topic to blog on was fitness. However, due to recent life changes (birthing twins, etc.) I’ve realized my message has changed. But to what? There are so many things I want to talk about–saving time, the pursuit of writing for a living, novel writing, managing twins, IVF, and myriad other things. How to choose? I couldn’t figure out a theme that successfully strung all those things together, so my posts have been all over the place.

The only thing I know for sure, is that I want to help women in my stage of life [young kids, thinking of career change] find more meaning in their days, and use their skills for a flexible career shift.

Yet…I’ve basically just been writing about whatever strikes my fancy. See exhibit A:

• A Triathlete’s Guide to Training with Power
• What you should know about Functional Threshold Power [FTP] testing
• How to buy your first bike
• The truth about running cadence
• Should I use a fan for indoor cycling training?
• 3 new mom hacks to save you hours per week
• Ultimate Guide: How to start cycling
• The truth about cadence and cycling

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Updating my Website

Fortunately this part was easy and fun. I’ve managed our small business websites for a number of years now, so it was fun to update my theme, rearrange, and decide how to best set up the new niche site.

But it still takes freaking forever!!

Ultimately, after listening to some podcasts and google research, I decided not to start with a brand new url. Instead I’ll just do a redirect whenever I pick my new name. I reserved several names, but I’m not absolutely in love with any of them. Here are the ones I picked up:

• Twinfant Diaries
• Be Bold and Simplify
• Create Space and Time
• IVF Life
• To Boldly Goal [current favorite]

Ultimately, I’m not sure if any of them completely encapsulate what I’m trying to do. [What am I trying to do again?] While I figure it out, I’ve just been writing on my main site under the categories Baby, Training Tips, and Writing.

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Joining Pinterest

I used to think Pinterest was all recipes and DIY tiny-houses made from popsicle sticks. I didn’t realize how much great information and potential there was! When I started in early January, I had about eleven followers and no engagement. My boards were called “bikes” and “best doggies.” So yeah, I knew nothing.

After I had a few posts, I made new boards, joined Tailwind, and became active on some group boards and tribes. I also signed up for Rich Pins. Whew! That sounds like a lot. It was a steep learning curve, but using Elna’s course, it was easy [though time-consuming]. Here’s what my Pinterest looks like three weeks in:

And then just a few days later, it looked like this:

Wow! I actually had a few pins go viral-ish just after week three which greatly increased my exposure. Part of my non-plan plan was to see which type of pins did well and use it to help settle on my niche. But the most popular pins have been about totally opposite topics!

1. I tried and ranked three electric breast pumps
2. An etsy photo I pinned years ago from a site that no longer exists
3. The five run mistakes you’re probably making

Even though I’m still settling on my exact niche, I’m pretty happy with how quickly I’ve gotten up to speed on Pinterest. Of course, I still have hardly any followers and my reach is small compared to many. But for three weeks? Not bad.

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Updating Old Content

In Ready, Set, Blog for Traffic and Blog Millionaire, there is a lot of talk about the value of repurposing old content. So I updated some old posts on running, swimming, and IVF, and wrote a few new ones about writing, saving time, and pregnancy gear reviews. Then I sat back to see what would become popular.

Interestingly enough, posts from the baby category are getting the most traffic.

• 3 new mom hacks to save you hours per week
• How to tandem feed twins to save time
• 5 tips for a productive morning routine with babies
• Four most comfortable and flattering maternity dresses [for 2019]
• The real deal on getting back in shape after baby

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Keeping an eye on Google Analytics

I was able to get 3k plus pageviews after three weeks, a feat I contribute almost entirely to Pinterest. One thing I’ve noticed about my Pinterest traffic is it’s not as ‘sticky’ as my facebook leads, which I assume means I’m not hitting the mark yet. Understandable, given the fact I haven’t even settled on a niche!

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Signing up as an affiliate

I’d blindly signed up as an Amazon associate during my book launch and hadn’t touched the account since. Thankfully it was still going, and as of today, I’ve made over $15 in comission the past few weeks. Woohoo! This won’t even pay for three weeks of blogging expenses, but it’s still pretty neat to make money, just from writing about products you’re obsessed with.

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Sped up my website

My website was way cluttered up with non-essential plugins and an old version of PHP. I went through Google Page Speed Insights’ recommended ways to speed things up and upgraded a lot of my old, clunky plugins. I also had a bad habit of uploading massive images without compressing, so I took care of that too. In case you’re interested in details, I also made a caching policy and set everything to lazy load. Blog Millionaire has a great podcast on this topic.

The audit was prompted by one day in mid-January when I noticed my bounce rate shot up to 90% in one day. After researching, I realized that my time to interaction was twenty plus seconds–people were abandoning before even getting started!

My site still isn’t super-fast, but it’s definitely better than it was.

All in all, I’ve learned a ton the past three weeks, and I’m only 19% of the way through my course. Next up, I start a course called Marketing Momentum. Hopefully I’ll come up with a more solid plan for my niche by the conclusion of that course.

Next week, I’ll post about other lessons learned [and final results] from my first month of blogging.

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• Get Published Podcast- Using Pinterest to Build your Email List
• 21 Online Tools Writers Need to Make an Impact

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