Everyday I get a lot of messages on my social media channels asking me how to start blogging. There are so many articles out there on the internet, even I read some of them before starting my blog and to be honest none of it made sense to me as much. Until I started working on the idea, things started making sense, I understood better. If you don’t start, you will keep researching, that will only confuse you and you will end up procrastinating.
Other questions I get very often is how to travel frequently, how to work with me (probably because they want to travel), how to monetise a blog. Funnily the last one is asked by people who don’t even have any online presence or a blog. There are multiple ways to generate income once you start putting your content online. I will write a post very soon about how to monetise your blog.
You can’t just wake up one morning and decide to be an influencer, its your audience who decides that. Its been 2.5 years of serious blogging for me and I can’t stress on this point enough that you have to create content in order to get noticed by brands. How will brands notice you if you don’t have content online? Think logically!
I have traveled since forever and half the countries I have been to were before I even knew I wanted to be a content creator. I used to tweet about my travels, upload pictures on Instagram (not as a travel blogger) oblivious to the fact that I am making an audience of my own. I started getting messages from brands on Twitter and Instagram. That’s when I realised that I can do this professionally! At that time I had no clue about blogging or how it is done or if I was going to get paid for it, so I just read up online and first I got my own domain. It wasn’t easy as I didn’t ask anyone for help and went about it myself. Long story short, I got cheated, my blog crashed and then I had to start over from scratch 😀
The monetising part comes much later after you have started putting your content on the internet, brands notice and start connecting with you to create content for them. All of my travels before I started blogging acted as an investment for my blog. So if you’re thinking that you’ll start getting paid right from your first post on your blog then you should forget about becoming a blogger. I can assure you that you’ll start earning from your blog but first of all focus on your content.
HOW TO START?
I will keep it as simple as possible. Pick your blog name. I wish I had put in more thought on this. I just went along with Eattravellaugh which I had randomly picked as my username when I first joined Instagram and went ahead with it when I started blogging. Decide if you want a self hosted blog or start from a free platform. While the former involves expenditure the latter is free and you can just start writing. My advice is to go for a self hosted one only if you are serious about taking it up as a full time career.
Once you have this in place, start creating content for your blog. You must post at least 1-2 articles on your blog every week in order to generate traffic. So before starting your blog I would advice you to have at least ten posts ready to be uploaded in the next few weeks so that you don’t feel the pressure of generating content and get the hang of working on new content without getting pressurised. Also, build your social media side by side which is extremely important.
Start with whatever little resources you have. You can start with writing about your own city if you do not have the time or money to travel. You can start clicking pictures from your phone camera and edit them on apps like Snapseed or Lightroom. Most pictures on my blog are clicked on my phone. Do not waste time in thinking that you don’t have enough resources. Even I have procrastinated and I am telling from my own experience.
You have to start in order to get there. It’s happened to me too, I wanted to start blogging in 2015 but I procrastinated, finally I got a website made in 2016. I was very inconsistent and then I got serious about blogging in 2017. It took a lot of time for me to start it, so if you think you want to start blogging, start the very day you think of it. Start with whatever you have. These days most phones take good pictures, so start with that. You don’t need anyone to click your pictures, use the self timer. If you don’t have money to travel, explore your own city. But put up the content on your blog and social media channels to get an audience of your own.
My advice would be to not rely on any single social media channel. They are great but it is very important that people know your blog and actually read it. Always concentrate on building a community of your own involving your website because you never know which social media channel will become irrelevant some day.
Hope this helps you start! You don’t need anything extravagant to start blogging. So if you are thinking of starting, you should do it right away. If not now then when?
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