7 Habits: How To Become a Successful Blogger
How to become a successful blogger is kind of a big question. I’ve been blogging for over 9 years now and I’ve learned quite of few things based on my own wins and failures. I’ve also coached around 400 bloggers and can tell you the traits and habits of those who become successful versus those that do not.
Over the years, I’ve intentionally surrounded myself with smart bloggers who are successful. The side effect of this was that my blog became successful and started to see a definite trend in what separates a hobby blogger from a pro blogger. In this post, I want to share the top 7-8 habits I’ve noticed that ALL truly successful bloggers practice consistently.
How To Become a Successful Blogger Habit #1- You get clear about the TYPE of blog you are building.
The one pivotal part of my own blogging success was the fact that I started it even though I didn’t know a thing about blogging.
I learned everything I needed to know as I went but to honest, much of the information I collected was not well organized and came from all over the place. Sometimes I was getting soo much info from so many places that I got paralysis of analysis and didn’t do anything. When I was getting my blogging ideas from everywhere, it showed. I wasted a ton of time on worthless pursuits and bunny trails.
As a person who already struggles with FOCUS on a daily basis, what I needed more than anything else was consistent, organized information created by a person I knew I could trust and who had proven to be successful already.
Right around year 2, I found an online course tailored toward a blog similar to mine. It was great and helped filled in some of the gaps in my blogging education but later I realized that I had made yet another mistake.
MISTAKE: Thinking that there is a one-size-fits all approach to becoming a successful blogger. I thought, if I just follow this person’s path to success, I’ll also be successful but that transitioned in overwhelm and burnout when I realized that I didn’t have the same KIND of blog as the person I was learning from.
Following that person’s approach didn’t necessarily always fit and it wasn’t until I was a year into helping other people build their blogs that I saw what was missing.
So with 8 years of blogging experience, I was able to build out a blogging class and community that would support 3 main TYPES of bloggers on the long-haul journey called Treks to Blog Success.
Want help figuring out what TYPE of blog you are building? Take my quiz below!!!
How To Become a Successful Blogger Habit #2- You nail down your audience and focus on writing to them.
One main problem that I struggled with early on was that I just wrote without knowing who I was writing to. It worked at first because Pinterest sent me people who were interested in the random topics I was writing about. But the longer I blogged the more I discovered how vital it is to narrow down who you are writing to. It helps you create consistency within EVERYTHING you create from blog posts, to emails, to videos to social media posts.
Most bloggers are able to get pretty specific about who they are writing to by creating an “avatar”. You do this by writing down the characteristics of your ideal reader including demographics. Take a look at my questions below and spend about an hour REALLY thinking about these. Then write down your answers and only write to that person for one year!
- Male, Female or Both?
- Age?
- Money situation?
- Likes & Dislikes?
- What do they struggle with?
- What are their particular pain points in life?
When you know these things you can begin to write about them and draw your “ideal” reader to you! You will attract the tribe of readers you are looking for! When you know who you are writing to you can create content faster and easier. The people who follow you will like you for the long haul!
How To Become a Successful Blogger Habit #3- You filter who you take blogging advice from.
There is tons of information online about blogging. There are many courses out there to choose from. But the most important thing you can do from day 1 of blogging is to choose only a few “experts” that you plan to listen to or follow and ignore the rest. Be sure that they are people who are already successful at blogging. Like my friend Rosemaries always says, “If they have fewer pageviews, less social stats and fewer followers than you, then you are probably more of an expert than they are.” Keep your money and invest it elsewhere.
I’ve been blogging for 9 years, make a full-time income, and made enough that my husband was able to leave his 9-5 and work for himself. I may not be one of the voices you choose to listen to but I’d love for you to listen to a few episodes of my Podcast: The Self-Made Writers Podcast and see if we jive!
How To Become a Successful Blogger Habit #4- You don’t get stuck in comparing your blog with other blogs.
One thing you’ll learn when it comes to blogging is that no two people make a full-time income in exactly the same way. Blogging has taught me about various income opportunities and I chose which ones most aligned with what I enjoy doing and creating. Therefore it’s silly and self-defeating to compare any of your numbers to another blogger because even if they have a billion page views a month, you could still make more than them in a year with the small audience you may have. It just depends on how you decide to monetize what you are doing.
How To Become a Successful Blogger Habit #5- You don’t spend tons of time & energy on social media channels that your audience isn’t using.
One thing I know for sure about my mom audience is that they don’t use Twitter. Therefore, spending hours on Twitter and investing time and resources there, just doesn’t make sense. On the other hand, my people are on Facebook and Pinterest. Therefore I spend lots of time on those channels hanging out with my people!
Figure out what social channels your audience actually uses and show up there. About a year ago I tried to be an early adopter of Periscope. I wasted a ton of time setting those up and my video’s seemed to be watched by weird dudes with terrible things to say during scopes. So I just stopped. My moms weren’t using it!
Now we have Instagram & lives and that works great because my people are there!
Don’t waste your time trying to be everywhere with everyone. Keep it simple and blogging will be easier for you all around!
How To Become a Successful Blogger Habit #6- You publish high-quality content – CONSISTENTLY.
I can’t stress this enough. If you want your online business to be successful, you have to show up, write and publish every week. Even if it’s just one blog post a week, you have to be consistent or the thing will never get off the ground!
You can be successful if you’ll just decide you are going to start and you will stick with it. Every month I make an editorial calendar where I decide where I’m going to write about each week. Then I simply write those posts and publish them to my site each week.
More content = More chances for pageviews. The best analogy I can use is, if you are a musician every single song you put out there isn’t going to be a hit. The same goes with your content. You won’t hit a home run with each piece so you need to keep cranking it out.
I like to teach people through a Blitz Content Creation model.
How To Become a Successful Blogger Habit#7- You create a freemium to grow your email list & email your list consistently.
Oh, man. This was one of my biggest failures in the early days. And even though I heard over and over about how important it is to grow an email list as well as create an awesome free printable, webinar or whatever it may be, I was super stubborn and it really hurt me in the long run. Now I know better!
Create a freemium that solves a problem for your audience. Use an email system like Mailerlite or Convertkit to collect emails, and automatically send people their freemium.
One of my other fails was hyper-focusing so much on content creation that I never actually sent emails out to the people on my list. I would send them out on random days whenever the mood struck. But that doesn’t keep readers engaged!
What a difference it made when I started sending an email out on the same day each week without skipping a beat. If you want to be successful you have to nurture the people that already like what you have to say enough that they gave you their email addresses! This can work to build traffic each week as well.
How To Become a Successful Blogger Habit #8- BONUS! Join a good mastermind group and surround yourself with other successful people who hold you accountable!
If you don’t know what a mastermind group is- it’s simply a group of like-minded professionals who you collaborate with. It might be a secret Facebook group. It might be a forum of some kind. However you interact, it’s important for you to find and build a team of 5-6 people who will help you as you help them. You share ideas, get feedback and even share your failures. You become a little tribe yourselves dedicated to helping each person excel to their greatest potential!
I hope that you have found this article on 7 Habits of Highly Successful Bloggers helpful!!!!
Kim Anderson is the organized chaos loving author behind the Thrifty Little Mom Blog. She helps other people who thrive in organized chaos to stress less, remember more and feel in control of their time, money, and home. Kim is the author of: Live, Save, Spend, Repeat: The Life You Want with the Money You Have. She’s been featured on Time.com, Money.com, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Day, and more!