I get a lot of questions about blogging and how to start. I certainly don’t claim to be the expert on it… but I’ve learned a few things over the years that I wish I’d known when I started, so I figured I’d share them with you….
The Wellness Mama Blogging Story
I first started blogging a couple of years ago because with little ones at home, I couldn’t meet one on one with as many clients as I wanted to, and it was a way to make the information available to more people. At this point, I was doing nutritional coaching and freelance journalism jobs from home, and there just wasn’t the time to keep both up.
Since my background is in both Journalism and Nutrition, blogging was a good way to combine the two.
It was also a way to have recipes, health articles and resources available… mainly for family members who used to call me a few times a week asking about a recipe or asking if something was healthy or not.
Nutrition had always been my passion (well, at least after my horrible diet in high school and college *cringe*) and I realized that there was a limit to the number of people I could help individually. With my husbands encouragement, I decided to jump into the blogging world.
I first started off on Blogger. It was free and was supposed to be user friendly. My Blogspot blog was my first attempt at blogging and at design and it left a lot to be desired. I ran into a lot of limitation on Blogger, and while it was easy to use, it wasn’t very customizable.
I then switched to WordPress.com, which was a little easier to use, and it was mainly my design work that needed the help!
I updated the design a little bit and my WordPress.com blog still looks like that today. WordPress was more user friendly (and I’d definitely recommend it over Blogger), but I ran into some brick walls with things I wanted to customize that couldn’t be changed without a self-hosted site.
I started getting what I thought was a lot of traffic (200 hits a day) and decided that I needed an updated design and the ability to actually own my site and blog name.
I bought a domain name, purchased the cheapest hosting I could find (I won’t recommend the company!), and had a friend explain how to install the WordPress software onto my new hosting account. I then found a free WordPress theme to use that I thought was cute. (Did I mention my background was NOT in anything to do with computers?)
After a LOT of headache and frustration, I was considering hiring someone who knew what they were doing to help. When I lost about 60 blog posts due to a glitch with my hosting service, and had a major theme issue, I found professional help (no, not the psychological kind…)
I found a web designer that was able to help me upgrade to better hosting, and pick a premium WordPress theme that wouldn’t have the issues my other one did. The green site on the left was my first “real” design after paying someone to help. He also suggested a WordPress video tutorial, so that I would understand how to use my site much better.
From this experience I found out that good hosting is very important, WordPress premium themes (meaning that I have to pay for them) look better out of the box and are easier to use and customize (and Google likes it too…).
All in all, I wish I had known then what I know now. I never would have used Blogger or even WordPress.com, and just gone straight to the self-hosted WordPress blog I have now. Not only am I getting much more traffic because the framework is more search-engine friendly, but it is so much easier to use.
Also, there are a lot more resources for bloggers starting out now than there were when I first started way back in 2006. If I was going to start all over again, I’d signup for this bundled blogging package of hosting, themes, plugins, and more.
Here are a few other blogging tips that I’ve found along the way…
- Be consistent: whether it is once a week or every day, be consistent in your posting if you want to increase readership. If you are posting everyday, it also helps to have a schedule of what types of post you plan to post on which day. For instance, I post recipes (mostly) on Mondays (one will post later today), Health related info on Tuesdays, Motherhood or other topics Wednesday, Natural Living ideas on Thursday, Fitness or Giveaways on Friday, and DIY or links on Saturday.
- Help other bloggers and establish relationships: I discovered inadvertently that when you link to, mention or recommend another blogger, (genuinely and because you actually like them) it will actually get you more traffic in the long run and can help establish a relationship with other bloggers.
- Use Social Media: While blogging does allow comments, it is still mostly a one-way street. Social Media lets you connect and “meet” your readers. You can ask them for input and posting ideas, answer questions and share things that you don’t want to post about.
- Write guest posts and let others guest post for you: On the tech side, this creates back links that can help Google find you better, but more importantly, they help you connect with other bloggers, widen the scope of the information you present, and get an occasional day off :).
- Take a course and learn from others: There is so much information available now about how to get started and all the best practices for growing your own blog. Some are much better than others, and this is one I really like.
If you’re considering starting a blog, this article has some good tips on how to do it.
Do you blog? If so, what is your best tip? Please share below!
I missed your Live Webinar you produced on 11-11-2014. Can you send me an email with your REPLAY LINK please? I am listed in your data bank under my name; Bill Braylark.
Thank you!
Inspiring story. I am a regular reader of your blog.
I wonder what camera and lens do you use to shoot your pics?
Also do you shoot indoor or outdoor in natural light?
This is the camera and lens I use. I shoot in both natural light outdoors, and fake light indoors, depending on the type of shot I need for the blog.
Thanks for letting me know.
Your pics look fabulous. I thought you do it via some expensive camera and lens.
I have a health, fitness and wellness blog. Im wondering if you could talk a little more about how to get good traffic and backlinks to your website. I know my content is good, optimized and helpful, but I’m still getting minimal traffic to my blog.
I appreciate your response.
Thank you,
You are the best! I agree with everything you wrote and would add several things.
1) Comment on other’s blogs that are similar in topic to yours or with readers of the same demographic. I love reading the comments on other blogs and have found that I have discovered some of my favorite blogs to read by doing this. I think other people do this as well because I see huge jumps in traffic to my site especially when I comment on a blog that is talking about fitness/wellness in the post and the writer is asking for input.
2) Don’t underestimate your pictures. You don’t have to go buy a crazy expensive camera but large pictures are so much better to look at and will draw a reader in.
3) Use pinterest and pin your posts. It is amazing and can do great things to boost traffic to your site.
4) Say thank you. For the most part, bloggers are super friendly people who love to help. Not that they can always help everyone but if there is a blogger you admire let them know. So much time is put into these blogs and is always nice to get a thank you. If someone leaves me a nice comment or sends a sweet email and they have a blog I always like to go look at it to get to know them better.
xoxo, Tamara
Thank you for your advise Tamara. I am a passionate fitness and dance instructor from Peru living in Syd for 3 years with an IT career :*) but passionate about wellness and follow my dream in Australia. Thinking about to start my blog in my new website.
cheers
Galia Fitdance
can’t wait till you post details for your web guy. I want to start blogging for friends and family since i’m pregnant – I want to document it all. However, i’m so not good with computers. It would be great to be able to get set up with your Web Guy and bypass trials of me trying to create one on my own….
Thanks,
Jessica Nelson
Oh how I wished you mentioned the hosting company you used. I bet it’s the same one we have!!!!!!! They are a PAIN! We have wordpress.org and think I will love it when I get a better hosting company. I am in the process of researching it now, so I am looking forward to hearing more info!
I couldn’t say anything nice about our old hosting company, so I didn’t want to say anything about them at all 🙂
Thank you for your post about your blogging journey! 😀 I really like the idea you gave about having a topic schedule of things to post about each day. I am going to implement that and I think it will help organize things better for me.
I had been blogging in a different niche and just started up my natural living blog. It’s been great! I’m using WordPress.org and I absolutely love it. We use blogger for our family blog and there are A LOT more options with a self-hosted blog. Plus, it’s easy for me to work with. I’m going to be launching a Website in a different wellness niche and I’ll be using a self-hosted WordPress blog with that too!
I designed my blog and will be outsourcing it soon, as I am not trained as a designer and am not good with technical things, haha!. Better to have experts do what they do best. 😀
Thank you again for your post. I am very excited to have found your blog.
Hello! I am a one-time guest contributor to Breaking Muscle (so far but hope to change that 🙂 and found your most recent post on there about making an excuse to work out, no matter what. It was so inspiring and after finding your site YOU are so inspiring! I love the advice you give to us newbies about blogging, sometimes figuring it out isn’t fun lol. anyhow great read and great site!!!!
This is so great! I also just started a blog with blogger but would love to look into a self hosted site. Can’t wait for more details 🙂
This is very helpful! I just started blogging this past Friday. I had planned on it being a temporary project to journal about trying a new program for my candida, but I’m having too much fun. I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop! Obviously, I’ve already started off on the unadvised foot with blogger. I look forward to seeing what your Web Guy has to offer. Thank you so much!
How funny. I am just about to start my blog and came to your site to look for a toothpaste recipe I wanted to try, and here you are posting about blogging! Great tips – luckily, I use wordpress.org because I already have a hosting account for my online business. I purchased “Using WordPress” by Triss Hussey and found it very informative and useful and helped me understand a lot of terms that were foreign otherwise. I’m super excited to start blogging and loved your tips!