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Newbie to Successful Blogger – The UpgradeReality Story
By SEO Advisor | March 6, 2010
Hi, my name is Diggy and I am the author of UpgradeReality.com, a blog all about self improvement with the intention of helping people reach their full potential.
Thanks to Deelip(from MaxBlogPress), I am going to share my blogging success story with you and you will learn:
- How I went from not having a clue about building a website to having a rapidly growing blog with 1000 subscribed readers in 7 months.
- How long it took me to get to where I am
- All the shortcuts that you can make that will save you months of trial and error (which I all figured out the hard way).
- Ways to be inspired and motivated to keep working on your project for months without giving up before you reach your desired results.
Where It All Began
My journey started back in mid-2008. I became friends with a guy who did SEO as a job for big companies. I was over at his house one day and he showed me a little about his work and what he was doing, and at the time he had just bought a domain to start a new blog.
I immediately took a big liking to the idea of creating websites and being able to share my thoughts with other people all over the world. When I got home I did a lot of thinking about what I wanted to do. Within a week I had decided on the name UpgradeReality and the .com domain was available so I registered it.
Although I had absolutely no clue about internet marketing, blogging or creating websites, I was pretty good with computers so I was able to fight my way through the steps of buying a domain and hosting.
Too Much Information
Today I realize that it is a problem that most newbies to the online world struggle with. It is the problem of too much information.
So here I was, I had registered my domain and I had the idea of creating a cool website that would get hundreds of thousands of visits, but I had no clue where to begin.
My first instinct was to Google what to do next, and that is what I did. I stumbled upon hundreds of web pages about blogging and internet marketing. For the first couple of months I just read and read and read. I bought a couple of online courses that promised to teach me how to blog and how to make money online.
Guess what happened?
I read these guides, spent some time trying to follow their instructions and then gave up. It was too hard and didn’t make sense. Money down the drain.
I found Squidoo, a community where you can create free web pages and use them to share your content with the world and make money with affiliate links. While I was still experimenting with my blog, I started making Squidoo Lenses and over a period of 9 months or so I managed to make a good $800 from them (with no expense), so that inspired me to keep going and working on my blog.
My Newbie Days
At the time when I wanted to get content up on UpgradeReality, I had no clue that the Wordpress platform existed, so I found a free CSS HTML template and took a few weeks of manually coding it to get a site up on my domain. Thinking back, I was pretty proud of myself, but the site was absolutely horrible!
Luckily, my friend that had inspired me to start blogging pointed me in the direction of Wordpress which I immediately installed. I was amazed that it did so many things for you in such an easy way.
I found a free (but actually ugly) theme that I put on my blog and I started writing some content. My articles were never longer than 500 words back then, the grammar was not perfect and the formatting of the articles was not very professional. In other words, it sucked. I remember thinking that I was well on my way to becoming a good blogger. I had 20 or 30 readers (mostly people I knew) and their few comments on my articles inspired me to keep writing.
For the next months it was just a massive learning period for me with a lot of trial and error. I changed themes every few weeks, tweaked with logos and designs, plugins, affiliate banners and links and I am honestly surprised that those 30 readers did not unsubscribe!
14 Months after having registered the domain Upgradereality.com, I was finally ready to take my blog to the next level and put all the things I had learnt into action.
Kicking Into Gear
August 1st 2009.
I decided to stop messing around with free themes and purchase a professional and pretty theme. It took some searching but I settled on a ‘wood’ theme that I thought and still think looks pretty cool.
Let me put the things I did and learnt into list form so you can benefit from them:
- Commenting
I got in touch with many bloggers in the same niche as me (personal development and self improvement) and subscribed to their RSS feed to get their updates. I started to leave real (not generic) comments on their articles and this got their attention and they would head over to my site too. It also helped me gain awareness in the community and got me quite a couple of readers who would click through to my site from my comments. - Guest Posting
I started writing articles for the sole purpose of giving them to other blogs to put up as a guest post on their blogs with a link back to my site. This helped them because they got good free content and it helped me because I would get some of their readers to click through to my site and subscribe to my RSS feed. - Regular Posting Schedule
I realized that readers get used to checking in to a site for new articles. If there is no regular posting frequency, the readers may lose interest and will unsubscribe or not come back. I decided to post twice a week, on Mondays and on Thursdays. - Writing Style
I needed to do something about my writing style. I decided to start writing articles that were minimum 1000 words in length and that were pleasing to the eye. This meant that the articles were broken up with sub-headings which were easy to scan (because most people just scan posts and they don’t like reading massive blocks of text). - SEO Optimize
Something that I had neglected up until this point, was SEO. I was not trying to rank for anything and that was a waste of potential and targeted traffic from search engines at a later stage. I read up about SEO for Wordpress and tweaked my site to be as easy as possible for search engines to understand what I am trying to rank for.
Where I Am Today
Fast forward seven months since I started taking Upgradereality seriously and here are the results:
- Around 1000 subscribed readers
- 15000 Unique visits per month
- Top-40 ranking for my keyword
I feel that I am at a stage now where my growth is going to pick up exponentially and is going to me much faster than last year. Although it has taken me a total of 20 months to get where I am, only 7 of those were needed once I took things seriously. I am confident that I could build a blog from scratch to a level where Upgradereality is today within 4 months.
However, I needed all that time and trial and error to gain the experience and knowledge to be able to have these skills.
Anyone who tells you that you can become good at something in a few months is giving you false hope. While it certainly is possible for the few exceptions, it is likely that it will take you 2-4 years to get really good at something. If you have just started blogging or are interested in starting a blog, this is something very important to keep in mind. You have to want to work for 12 months without seeing serious results before you actually start to see results. You should have no attachment to immediate results and be content with the fact that you are working on your skills and your blog, and your hard work is going to pay off sometime in the future. This brings me to my next point:
Inspiration And Motivation To Blog
I have had times where I felt like abandoning the project. I even attempted to sell my blog in the early stages because I felt helpless and was getting zero results.
The reason why I share this with you is because you will experience difficult and trying times. There will be times when you don’t see the point in continuing what you started, but if you give up you will never get to see your own creation grow into something magnificent that you never thought was possible.
You know better than anyone what motivates you. Find something, like a postcard of a tropical island, a cause you support or a friend who encourages you and use that as motivation to keep going.
When you blog, write as if you have 10 000 readers, yet don’t expect to get a single reply or comment. This will allow you to produce your best work every single time and yet you will not get disappointed because you do not get feedback. Even if your article makes an impact on one single person, it is enough to write that article.
I am proof that you do not need special talent or skill to become a successful blogger. I used to get B’s and C’s for English in school and I hated writing essays.
All you need is passion and perseverance. Keep at it and love what you do and you will become successful over time. Guaranteed!
Parting Words
I hope that you enjoyed reading the story behind UpgradeReality!
Currently my goal is not to make loads of money from my blog but instead focusing on getting many readers so that I can make a difference to the world and to other people’s lives for the better with the articles that I write. I feel there is so much positive change we can all make in this world, but not enough people are working together to achieve that change.
How you choose to build your community and the main purpose of your blog is entirely up to you. Whether you want to build up a successful blog to earn your living from or that you can share your ideas and art with others or if you want to make a difference in the world like me, it is all possible.
Decide what you want to achieve and don’t give up until you get it!
About The Author:
Diggy writes all about self improvement and personal growth. He wants to inspire and motivate as many people as possible to live their lives to the fullest and to be their best selves. Spread the word or subscribe to his blog via RSS or Email
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Topics: Internet Marketing, Network Marketing, Network Marketing | No Comments »