Overview: 5 of the BIGGEST Things I’ve Learnt in My First Year of Blogging

HAPPY ONE YEAR – the first year of blogging is now over! This year has gone faster than I could have ever imagined and now I’m just sat here like ‘how am I writing this post already!?’, but it’s here and I’m shocked. Despite the first year being very touch-and-go and full of struggles of trying to find time to do it, my stats are very good. I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for reading my blog and/or following me on social media, it means the world to me. I can only hope that next year is a lot more successful as I find a lot more time to blog to my heart’s content and get everything I need to say out there.

Read on to find out everything I’ve learnt in my first year of blogging!

1. Consistency Is Key

This is something that I struggled with a lot this year. I had a LOT on and it showed. I would have at least 50+ more articles up there and I literally have a huge book of ideas, but I just never found the time. If you want to grow and to grow properly, then consistency is key. I know that a year from now I would have cracked it. I’ll have a lot more time this time around and I’m going to make the most of it. One of the biggest things to do on your blog is to keep at it regularly. I need to make it my priority and you should too.

2. Showing Your Personality Is Everything

Almost everyone is blogging these days, so it’s super important that you find your voice. Back in the day, it was much easier to be noticed, but blogging is a lot more accessible now and so you’re competing with everyone for the top spot. One of the main things that makes a blog stand out against another really similar one is the way their personality shows. Almost like reading a piece of writing and feeling like you KNOW that person. It automatically makes you appear more authentic and trustworthy and that really is everything. Find your voice and run with it!

3. Research, Research, Research

What are you going to write about? Why? What’s already out there? Is there much competition? What’s missing? What can you bring to the table? How do you tell YOUR story? All of this is really important when it comes to writing a blog post that you want to be noticed (especially on Google). Don’t forget to do your research and see what’s out there. Don’t use research to copy other people’s work though!! It’s purely to see what’s there and to see if you can add to the knowledge out there already.

4. Ad Placements Should Always Be Strategic

Whether you’re using Google Adsense or another ad company, or even just embedding widgets and links into your posts, then you must know where to place them and why. You may be finding that the click-through rate on your ads is awful and you need to ask yourself why. Ensure that all of your ads are placed somewhere where they’ll be useful. Littering your website with hundreds of pop-ups and ads everywhere is really not user-friendly and people will click off. You can usually carry out ad experiments with your ad provider, so make use of this and see what works best for you and your site.

5. Quality Is Much More Important Than Quantity

I really don’t have that many blog posts considering the fact that I’ve had my blog for a whole year now. However, my stats are really good considering. I have a few posts that are a real hit and made first place on Google. They took a long time to write, it involved a fair bit of SEO research and I make sure to update it when I can. It really goes to show that quality is the most important thing. If you can get both quality and quantity, then you’re laughing. This is ultimately how you gain thousands of views every month, week or day.

BONUS Point:

People May Copy You or Be Influenced by You

Plagiarism is a massive problem in the blogging community and with many of us without a legal team behind us, it largely goes unpunished. On two separate occasions, I’ve had people steal my entire layout, including subtitles, affiliate ad companies with the exact same ad placement and clearly just briefly reworded content in order to steal first place. It happens with people all the time and it can be super frustrating. Sometimes people are just influenced by you or it really is just a coincidence that you wrote a similar post, but plagiarism does and will happen at some point. It’s important that no only you are aware of it, but that you do not do it yourself.

This is going to be weird not writing these posts every month now! But I’ll be back at the 18-month mark. 😉

Like what you read? Are you a newbie blogger? Here are my previous articles on what I’ve learnt on my blogging journey:

• Starting a Blog for the First Time: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My First Month of Blogging
• Blogging for the First Time: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Second Month of Blogging
• Beginner Blogger: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Third Month of Blogging
• Blogging Journey: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Forth Month of Blogging
• Blogging Experience: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Fifth Month of Blogging
• The First Year of Blogging: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Sixth Month of Blogging
• Having a Blog: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Seventh Month of Blogging
• Blogging in the First Year: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Eighth Month of Blogging
• Blogging Tips: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Ninth Month of Blogging
• Writing a Blog: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Tenth Month of Blogging
• Newbie Blogger: 5 Things I’ve Learnt in My Eleventh Month of Blogging

Check out my festival website too!