7 Things You Need to Do Before You Launch Your Blog
So, you’ve decided you want to start a blog? Let me just say, I am so happy for you! Just like anything in life blogging can have its challenges, but it is one the most fun, creative, rewarding, and best best decisions you can make!
Blogging, when done right, gives you the capability to create your own schedule, replace your 9-5 income, and the freedom to work from anywhere you want to!
In this post we will cover the seven vital things you need to do before you launch your blog. To top it off, I’m giving away a freebee in this post to help you get started!
Your Mindset
So, this part may sound like no big deal, but it’s the biggest gift you can give yourself, especially when starting something new and a little out of your comfort zone.
Often whenever we step outside of our comfort zone, or sometimes even think about stepping outside of our comfort zone, there’s a part of us that questions our own capability to succeed. This can lead us to retreat back to familiar territory.
This isn’t always a bad thing, but in cases where you're starting a new business or growing yourself as a person it’s not too helpful. When you start to feel yourself having that little anxiety panic of “what if I fail?” or “can I do this?” That’s when you tell yourself that “yeah, this is out of my comfort zone, but that is where I want to be.”
It’s true. To reach a goal you haven’t yet obtained, you’ll have to do something you’ve never done. When you experience your first sale, you're going to feel great! When you quit your job and work on your own schedule it will be like heaven on earth. When you decide to go on vacation and are still making money, you will be so grateful that you took the time to step out on a limb and give yourself a chance.
2. Decide Your Niche
This is where the fun begins! You get to decide what you’re going to write about. However, when looking to monetize a blog you’ll want to look at niches that already are successful. Of course when blogging it should be about something you love so much you can talk endlessly about it.
Health, wealth, motherhood, and homesteading are just a few of the successful niches out there! There are many to choose from. However, when choosing, keep in mind there needs to be a balance between your blog being about something you as well as it being something that you can earn an income from.
3. Sign Up For Squarespace
I feel like one of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make is signing up for a website host that is not user friendly *cough, cough* Wordpress. Having used Wordpress in the past I can assure you that it is far from user friendly. Squarespace makes it easy to get started and maintain your site like a pro with ease.
There are several different templates to choose from, and once you have chosen the best one for your brand you can easily personalize it with your own colors, fonts, and personal flare!
4. Create Your Own Brand
This step could actually be broken down into four to five different steps, and each one is vital for a successful business! Emotion, colors, font styles, your logo, and photography (I’ll mention this one again just so we can give it a bit more detail) are what go into creating a well put together brand.
I have put together a free branding board as well as a short course to help you get the hang of this! Just drop your email in the box below and press send, and I’ll email them over to you!
5. Photography
Even though photography could file under the tab of creating your own brand I feel like it deserves its own space. Photos of yourself and potentially what you’re blogging about give insight into who you are and what you’re about. They say a picture is worth 1000 words,and I honestly couldn’t agree more. If you’re into blogging about hiking then having an indoor photoshoot in your living room probably isn’t the best option. However, if you are a mom blogger that type of photoshoot may be a great fit!
Another part of this could be lighting and camera presets. You’ll want the photos to have a high resolution and you or what you are capturing in the photo to be highlighted. Also, you’ll want to make sure your photos are not over edited.
6. Blog Theme
This is where step three and four tie together. Through choosing the template you feel is best for your blog you are beginning to create your blog theme. From here, you get to put in all that you have decided on for creating your own brand. The colors, fonts, logo you made, and photos you’ve chosen create the theme for your blog. Then you get to create the layout of how you want your website to flow. Homepage, About Me page, Blog Post Page, ect.
I will say, it works best if you have the flow of how you want your website to go planned out before you start creating the pages for your blog.
7. Create a Social Media Strategy
It’s hard to say what is the most important step when it comes to blogging, but I will say if you get everything else right and get this step wrong it will be tremendously difficult to be successful. Without a proper social media strategy your blog will be incredibly difficult to find, thus it will be incredibly difficult to earn an income from.
Contrary to popular belief you don’t need to have a massive following to replace your 9-5 job and go beyond what that brings in for you. You don’t even need to spend that much time on it a week. All you need is well functioning, great looking blog, and top notch social media strategy. Once you understand how to make social media work for you it becomes super easy to make money. To top it all off, it doesn’t even take that much time a week to create a short plan as to how you want your strategy to go.
This is something I go into depth in on my Fast Track Blogging Academy. With the 50% off it makes the course only $47. Click below to sign up!