Blogging Secrets: 13 Things Most Successful Bloggers Don’t Share

[This article was originally published in September 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.]

Did you know that there are many blogging secrets that most beginners don’t know?

I have been blogging since 2020, there are many tough situations after getting started with blogging and stuff. So, if someone said that blogging and building an online business is easy, I’m definitely not going to buy it!

There are a bunch of behind-the-scenes that if you know, will make you give up easily. The problem is that if you want to make blogging a full-time career, there seems to be a gap in knowledge between those that are trying to make it and those that do.

Getting start is hard

Blogging secrets: blogging is not complicated; it doesn’t require you to be a great writer, perfectionist content writer, professional web designers, expensive machines, or complex algorithms.

However, it is hard if you don’t know what to do at first. Just because anybody can create a blog, doesn’t mean anybody can create a successful blog. This is the harsh reality of it all – which I know some people don’t like hearing.

If you follow my free guide to start a blog, your life will be a lot easier. The steps are not difficult to learn, but you still need to put in a lot of effort and time. With this free guide, it will help you through all the curveballs that growing an online business will throw at you, and save you a ton of time, energy, and stress.

Simply put, starting a successful blog is difficult but not impossible.

If blogging were so easy, everyone would be a successful blogger, right? So don’t make things harder for yourself and ask for help when you need it. Send me a message on Twitter or contact me if you need help.

Learn some design basics

You don’t need to learn color theory to create a great blog. But you need to gain the proficiency to add text overlays and logos to your photos that significantly can improve your content on visually-oriented social media networks like Pinterest.

The easier way to do it is by using Canva, it is one of the easy-to-use tools that bloggers can quickly master for more shareable images. And here my blogging secrets to brand your blog and pick a great theme to make your blog stand out.

Invest amount of time in front of the computer

My blogging secrets: I spend roughly eight hours or more every day in front of the computer. It’s because of my freelance career and also growing my blog. You definitely need to be comfortable with spending awfully long hours of screen time.

Without planning your blogging schedule and knowing how to prioritize your to-do list, you will hate sitting for long hours in front of your computer. You do need to reach a certain level where you are comfortable outsourcing your work and building your self-hosted blog. Until then, get ready for long hours of quality time with your computer.

Great content

Blogging secrets: Many successful websites do not write their own content. They get their content by hiring someone to write on behalf of them; these people are called Ghostwriters. By doing this, it saves bloggers time because they don’t have to spend time researching, writing, and editing, and can focus on other aspects of their business, like promoting or creating products to sell.

Spend some time reading all the income reports from bloggers and then look at the kind of content that they provide to the audience. Creating content is hard work and it does require commitment.

Most bloggers do provide freebies in exchange for your email address. These bloggers also provide courses and ebooks for anyone in their audience who wants a more comprehensive experience at a cost.

What about myself?

I write all my own content because that’s my way of connecting with you. Personally, publishing my own content puts me at ease because I know my blog as well as I know myself. I enjoy sharing blogging tips as well as my personal thoughts and experiences.

Still, on the topic of content, successful bloggers provide a lot of content for free. Some bloggers publish more than 10 posts a month and some are fewer than 10. It is possible to publish one blog post a month when your content is very high quality and includes a lot of in-depth research as well as statistics and graphs – very comprehensive and lengthy ones.

Loneliness

Frankly saying, some people still see that blogging is not worth trying. That’s one of blogging secrets you need to know.

Why? Because, when you start blogging, it is not giving as much income when you work 9-5 job. The income you receive from blogging is uncertain; not fixed, it could be enough and it could be less to support your daily life. In real life, you will be all alone, sitting in front of your computer for hours!

So here, you have to be okay with being lonely.

Sometimes I feel lonely because I am working on my computer all day long alone. So I try to go to coffee shops just to feel the noise that makes me more comfortable.

When I was first building my blog, I can’t tell you how frustrated I am to stay up till morning to set up WordPress, make changes to my website’s theme, writing blog posts, etc.

Sometimes I push myself too hard to complete one task at once just because I desperately want to see the finishing look of it. I ended up suffering myself by sitting for hours, forgetting about eating, and resting. My hands started to shake and my head started to get dizzy because lack of sugar.

I can’t share my stress or frustration with my parents, friends, or people that don’t understand.

This is adding a reason why it is important to make friends online and join the blogging community. You can learn from each other and you stay connected with bloggers from around the world. You need to surround yourself with people going through the same things as you.

People will call you out

I like it when I get a lot of comments, likes, shares, or mentions on my blog or social media. But, intentionally or not, bloggers are going to make mistakes and people are going to call you out.

This is especially when you grow bigger and more people are exposed to you and your work. The more visible you get, the more you would find yourself at the receiving end of criticism.

Blogging secrets: you are going to learn to be humble, apologize when you’re wrong, and keep improving.

Your passion might not make money

To be honest, you may love something with all your heart and want to chase your passion, only to find out that it will not work as an online business.

Blogging secrets: not all niches will make you succeed, and not every niche will make you good money – some are more profitable than others. I’m not talking about six figures a month. I’m saying that some niches will barely make you a couple hundred a month. 

Most niches can make you a full-time income if you approach them the right way. There are so many niches out there about blogging. You might think that these are the only types of blogs that make money, but that would be incorrect.

Writing in a niche is nothing more than writing about a problem that people are having and how you can help them solve these problems. Essentially, make sure that the niche that you’re choosing is solving an actual problem that people would actually pay to solve.

Additionally, there is nothing worse than starting a blog and discovering after 6-12 months that you dislike your niche and the entire blogging process.

Successful bloggers will tell you that one of the key blogging secrets is that you love what you do. It was a total waste of time, money, and resources so please start a blog in a niche that you enjoy.

You have to be a great promoter

I’m not good at promoting, I’m not a fan of social media, and keeping engaging is something that I find really hard to do. So, before starting a blog, I know it’s time for changing my mindset. This might mean I have to break out of my introverted shell.

Blogging secrets: Even if your content was incredibly amazing, in order to succeed as a blogger, you HAVE to PROMOTE almost every day. If you stop promoting and engaging, your business stops working.

Before promoting my blog content, I learn how bloggers do it first. I keep promoting and I did have one post gain a lot of attention and I didn’t expect it at all. However, the success of that one post helped me to better understand my audience.

And when I engage with more and more people, I gain a better understanding of their problems and how I can give solutions.

You can start writing quality content that is related to your audience. Launch a product your audiences are willing to buy. And run a business that provides value to the world.

There may be different strategies for marketing yourself. I know this isn’t easy, but it’s something you have to do.

All bloggers follow proven strategies

If you’ve researched and visited many blogs every day, you would soon realize that most successful bloggers follow the same pattern of proven strategies. Some may be different, but what they are actually doing and you would soon notice some patterns that keep repeating.

Why so?

For blogging, there are absolutely ways of doing things that work. People may have done these strategies again and again, so why bother to fix what is not broken?

If you think that you’re different from others, observe what people are actually doing – you will soon learn that they don’t differ that much from others. For instance, writing a list of posts work, optimizing for SEO works, Pinterest will get you more traffic, and joining affiliate programs will bring you passive income.

Blogging is journey

Blogging secrets: Running a full-time blog is the same as running a full-time business. That means you can’t sit around and take days or weeks off.

Blogging is more than writing quality content, promoting your blog, and making money from it. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. It’s much easier to focus on the success of making a blog than it is to talk about the actual process.

Many bloggers were fiddling around in the dark trying to figure out how to make all of this work, and then one day it started to click. You might catch yourself getting caught in a research wormhole because you want to do everything perfectly from the beginning, but that never happens for anybody.

What sets them apart from most people is that they kept on walking forward with a plan, a purpose, and a goal. You can’t blindly blog and think you’re doing a great job and that at some point traffic will start to come through.

You have to set a goal and figure out a plan that will lead you to that goal, then stick to that plan.

Creativity

Blogging secrets: Bloggers are creators which means that they need and can find ways to solve problems using their creativity.

If you ask me whether I’m creative or not, my answer would be a definite no. However, over the weeks I have come to realize that I absolutely enjoy writing topics that could solve problems that my audience has.

In fact, I’ve seen so many bloggers offer solutions to other problems. There are so many ways that bloggers can get to their financial goals.

Grow a tribe and networking

If you aren’t engaging with other bloggers, you aren’t building the relationships that matter. Sharing content is definitely kind, but becoming an active part of a community where you add value is a much better way to showcase your creativity and get noticed.

Don’t set out to build relationships because you want to gain readers, links, and guest blogging opportunities (even if you do), but because you’re passionate about what you do and want to learn more about your field.

Routines make blogging easier

When I first started this blog, the thing that came to my mind is planning out my content and other blogging daily, weekly, and monthly tasks.

Sometimes my biggest fear is whether I can stick to my schedule or not. I now have so much content that I need to write with less time. Having a routine and a content plan makes blogging so much easier.

Choosing your niche, and topic, doing keyword research, and doing content research is the key to ensuring that you have truckloads of content.

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Now that you are aware of the hard work that has to be put into blogging, let me know below what blogging secrets you found after reading this.