Knowing your real WHY of blogging is absolutely vital
Therefore, it is absolutely vital for you to know your true WHY in blogging.
That’s the 8th thing you need to know.
Without a strong enough personal WHY that will truly motivate you to be absolutely committed to showing up and blogging regularly over many years, please do not start blogging.
It will take years to establish yourself if you do not have any people following or list.
If you have a business with existing customers, then blogging can be a viable option to create stickiness and generate incremental revenues from your paying customers.
Constantly innovate and solve people’s problems
The reality is that we are all time-poor. People want comprehensive answers to their problems as quickly as possible. There’s no mucking around.
That’s the 9th thing you need to know.
In the past, say in 2009 (or earlier), you could just launch a website, write an article or two, add your keywords a few times (like in your title tag), and then press “publish” to make passive income.
Ten years on, the Internet is looking so different.
You must constantly innovate and find new strategies and approaches to make passive income from the Internet especially by solving peoples’ problems quickly.
You cannot rely on yesteryear strategies. Keep adapting and stay on top of your game.
This is where you need to know that some ‘experts’ are still teaching yesteryear strategies that have made them successful.
One expert still recommends reaching out to other established bloggers for guest post opportunities. I tried this strategy and because I am new, there were no responses at all.
Thinking about it from hindsight, who wants to accept a guest post from a no-body when there are so many others to choose from?
People are demanding comprehensive, high-quality content
The 10th thing you need to know about ranking well is that Google needs to see that your content covers an entire topic in-depth. You must cover everything there is to know about the topic in your post. It has to be comprehensive and high-quality.
This assumes that you are relying on organic traffic to bring people to your website.
When you give Google what it wants, you can expect higher rankings and more traffic. This means that you must have more comprehensive content on your website by including “Subtopic Terms” into your content.
For example, a comprehensive article about The Simpsons should have terms like Homer, Moe, Mr. Burns, and Springfield in the content. It’s a comprehensive result that gives our readers everything they’re looking for about the topic, The Simpsons, all in one place.
Here’s the kicker.
To constantly and regularly produce complete and comprehensive content requires much more effort, commitment, and research. Content length should generally be more than 2,000 words.
If you are not prepared to do this extra work for all your content over a two or more year period, then starting a blog is not the thing for you.
It’s really a labour of love especially if you are starting out new today.
It does take constant hard work and committed time to rank on Google. You also need to regularly give value to your readers.
Don’t believe everything – The iceberg problem
The 11th thing you need to know is not to believe in everything you read or hear.
I find that the people who are telling you their success stories and have made six or seven figures have started their blogs more than 10 years ago when the Internet was still unknown. They had a first-mover advantage. Back then, it was easy to rank on the first page of Google.
They also have not told you how much effort and time they have already to put into their website that has brought them to this stage of success.
If they did tell you the truth, it will certainly turn you off immediately.
They may not be showing it because they want to tell you how easy it is to do what they’re doing. They want you to give them $1,000 to show you their same outdated formula because it will so passive and so easy for you.
Why would they want $1,000 from you when they could just keep doing what they’re doing making enough money for themselves?
Think about it.
I really like to ask this question to the experts who have made 6-figure incomes just from blogging – “If you were starting out new, with no list, no contact/connections, no experience, no money, and no time (time poor), would you still use the same blogging strategies that have made you successful, earning that 6-figure passive income?”
I am sure the answer is going to be very different.
Go into blogging with your eyes open, not closed.
What I have described is only the tip of the iceberg. Perform your own due diligence before embarking on blogging as a vehicle to generate passive income for yourself. For everyone’s circumstances will be different.