9 Lessons I Learned From Blogging

Blogging is a way to build an audience, connect with that audience, and get more people to know about you. Although blogging is a powerful tool to grow your presence on the web, blogging will also allow you to learn many life lessons and things about your niche along the way. I have been blogging since 2011, and I started this blog towards the end of 2012. Now with over three years of experience, I have learned many lessons along the way. Here are nine of them.

1. Look back. I looked back at my entire journey as a blogger right when I finished writing the paragraph above, and when I looked back, it amazed me. Three years ago, I was just another blogger thrown into the mix. I was not the teenager entrepreneur, social media expert, or anything catchy like that. I was writing blog posts at inconsistent, infrequent rates about the Boston Red Sox, and typos were common. Here’s my very first blog I ever created paired with the very first blog post I ever created…ever. Who would have ever thought that three years later, the same blogger would be writing this blog post.
2. Embrace what you do. I only started to embrace blogging when I created my Yugioh Philosophy Blog. I updated it every day and enjoyed doing the research. Yugioh Philosophy was my first blog that ever brought in hundreds of daily visitors. Since there are not many Yugioh blogs that get updated every day, it’s fair to say that mine was in the Top 10 of the Yugioh Blogs on the web. Now the blog is inactive because I focus more of my time on this one, but I am proud to say that the Yugioh Philosophy Blog still has an Alexa Rank! It currently brings in a little over 100 daily views but is an inactive blog.
3. Get in even if you are unsure to avoid overthinking something. My first blog was about the Boston Red Sox, and no one (friends, family, you, and me) had any idea that I would end up writing blog posts about social media and blogging. If I over thought what I would create a blog about, then I would have never made it to this step.
4. The work you put in pans out in the end. Although my Yugioh Philosophy Blog was getting more traffic, it was not necessarily bringing in more revenue. I never sold Yugioh Cards on eBay (a problem that I am in the process of fixing) which means I had to rely on Amazon affiliate links. Just to give you an idea of the revenue I was making, the typical Yugioh Card got sold for $2, and I only made 4% per sale. That means unless a customer bought a lot of Yugioh Cards, I was barely making over $1 each time a customer bought Yugioh Cards. Since then, I have written my own books which now bring in at least $2 per sale, I have created my own training courses, and I have other plans for the future. No matter what the future holds, I know that the work I put in now will pan out in the end.
5. Learning and doing are two very different things. Some people learn that writing one blog post every day results in more traffic, but when it comes to doing, not everyone wants to put in the work to write one blog post every day. You can know how to get more blog traffic, but if you are not implementing that knowledge, then what is it really worth?
6. Do what you love. I have successfully escaped 40 hours of work every week to do 80 hours of work every week. I do not mind working the extra 40 hours every week because I am able to make a difference and do what I love. If you liked this one, never join the status quo.
7. Never stop learning. In order to grow your blog, you need to constantly learn about different techniques to grow your traffic, your email list, and turn your visitors into customers. The more you learn about something, the better you become at it. Another important thing to remember is that all skills are learnable.
8. Have a good role model. There are two types of role models. The first type is your family. They are the role models that should help you succeed. If your family does not have the right role models in it, then you need to be the role model that inspires change. The second type of role model is the person outside of your family. This is the person that you dream of meeting and inspires you to do your best work. For me, this type of role model would be Seth Godin.
9. Fight through the adversity. To this day, I continue to receive criticism. Most of the criticism I received at the beginning of my journey has gone away, but no matter how successful an individual becomes, there will always be critics. People have criticized past Presidents, do criticize the President we have now, and will criticize future Presidents. The critics criticize the people who are changing the world because they are envious.

After blogging for three years, these were the big takeaways. What are the lessons you have learned as a blogger, and which lesson on this list did you like the most?