Darren: Hey there and welcome to Episode 271 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of ProBogger, a blog podcast, ebooks, courses, and events that are all designed to help you to start a blog, and to grow that blog, and to build profit around that blog. Now, today, with are continuing our series of podcasts with stories from bloggers in their first year of blogging. These are all short stories and tips from participants in our free starter blog course, which we launched last year.

We’re sharing these in the hope that they will inspire others to start blogs as part of our International Start a Blog Day on the 7th of February. Each of the bloggers in these series will be sharing their story and some tips that they learned along the way, which will help those of you who are starting a blog. If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, and we know a lot of listeners this podcast are thinking about starting a blog, or you know someone who’s thinking about starting a blog who should start a blog, head over to problogger.com/start-a-blog.

You’ll find our free seven-step course to help you through that process of getting a blog started and also some information on how to get involved on the International Start a Blog Day on the 7th of February. If you are listening to this after the 7th of February, that’s totally fine. You can still start a blog using our course. It’ll be there all year, so problogger.com/start-a-blog.

Now, today’s story comes from Jacob West, and he shares a short story that he submitted via video this week. He has a blog called Live Life Liberated, which you can find at livelifeliberated.com. He sent us in a video story. I’ll strip the audio out to use on the podcast today. You can find the full transcript of his story as well as a link back to his site on our show notes over at problogger.com/podcast/271. I’ll be back after he shares his story to pull out a few of the things that I noticed about what he shares. Here’s Jacob.

Jacob: Hey, everyone. My name’s Jake West. I just wanted to spend five minutes of your time to talk about my experience as a 2018 blogger. My site is Live Life Liberated at central URL, livelifeliberated.com. It’s a blog designed to question social norms, traditional ways of thinking, and a friendly, open-minded environment. It’s not really telling you what we think but more or less discussing, and so it’s very centered around the idea of having open debates, and commenting, and emailing between one another, and really just having a fair wondering of what’s really going on.

I started that in June 2018 so we’re on five months now. Essentially, the reason that I decided to start it because I had a group of friends and we would discuss these things a lot, and I couldn’t imagine that we were the only people wondering these things. I figured that we should make a blog that would create a community, create a friendly environment so that we could find more people that thought the same, or wanted to think the same, or whatever.

It’s been going really great. It’s been exactly what we had set it out for. We have been building more readers, a bigger community, and the swing of things have been going very, very well. I’d like to spend most of the time talking about tips because as prepared as I thought I was, I was not nearly as prepared as I definitely should have been. One of my main tips that I’d have if you’re thinking of starting a blog is to do it with people, preferably friends, because, for one, I thought web design was going to be very easy.

I thought it was mostly going to be laid out. It was not at all. One of my friends came in and they really set everything up for me and helped me learn do this and that. Together, he just made it possible. It would have taken five times as long without him. That’s the web design portion. There’s also the content writing because, eventually, you hit dry spots. It’s really nice to have some buddies of mine and, together, we made a weekly cycle of who was going to write for what week.

The workload’s never too much especially because, right now, I’m an undergrad. I thought it was going to be really hard to balance work or studying and then writing content but because of the flow and just the teamwork that we’ve had, it’s been really, really helpful and encouraging, too. It’s really nice to achieve something with people. It’s so much better to be able to hit a new reader number or get ad money which, by the way, is also something that I was not expecting but very cool.

I think we just got $50 after five months, which isn’t a lot, but it’s $50 more than I thought I had. That’s also a really cool part of running a blog. You also have to stay passionate and constantly try to pursue something more than you have. We’re always trying to redesign the site. We’re trying to find a new way to get more readers. I think these goals are good ways to keep yourself progressing and keep yourself loving it so I think that’s very key.

Personally, the way that you say passion is it’s something that you’re passionate about. You can’t write 20 or 30 posts about things you kind of care about; it’s really got to be something you care about and your group cares about, not just you. Lastly, you should be aware that it takes a lot of work and takes a lot of planning before. I was not that prepared and I wish I was, but by having a plan for logo, for web design, for ads, all these things, it really makes the workload and maintaining the blog a lot easier, and it just makes the whole process more fun and it’s less stressful.

Those are my four main tips. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you.

Darren: Thanks so much, Jacob, for sharing your story with us today. Now, the main reason I wanted to share Jacob’s story today is that it is a little bit different to some of the others that you hear about in these series. Most of the other bloggers that we’re featuring in these series are solo bloggers. They’ve started their own blog. They’re the main contributor. They set it all up themselves. I love the fact that Jacob actually involved others in that journey.

Whilst you would go to his blog today and you’d see he’s the main writer on it, there’s certainly other voices there. As you’ve heard, he had others involved in the setting-up process. There’s a lot of good reasons for doing this. Firstly, you are able to share the load of setting it up. You’re going to involve other people who might have more experience than you in the technicalities of your blog but also, as he said, it really does help to share the load to keep fresh as a writer, as a communicator.

Also, I love that point that he made about celebrating the successes together, and that’s something that I’ve certainly enjoyed over the last few years as I have involved other people more in my blogging. When I started out, it was just me and I got a lot of joy out of my blog just being a solo blogger but, certainly, having others involved and celebrating those wins that you have along the way is that something that can be really encouraging and energizing as well.

If you are perhaps an old-time blogger or are listening to this, that is something that you might want to take on as well out of today’s podcast, perhaps involving some others in what you’re doing. Having the shared goals is something that is great. Also, I love his other points there of having something to pursue, having goals, having something that you are working towards. Again, this is something for as much for new bloggers as it is older bloggers, particularly those of you who are listening who have maybe been blogging for a year or two now.

It’s very easy to lose some of the passion that you have to lose your way and energy for your blog as well, and having those regular updates of goals is something really important. You might have had a goal of getting a blog started, but what’s your next goal going to be? Maybe you want to have a burst of trying to find new readers for your blog, or a burst of exploring a new social network that you can promote your blog on, or perhaps you need to start a new way of creating content, trying some video, or podcasting, or live video.

These are all things that can help to bring a little bit of energy back into your blog, and to have another goal, having something to pursue, will energize what you do. Having passion for what you blog about is something else that Jacob talked about, which I think is really important for those of you who are just starting out. As you think about the topic of your blog or the topics of your blog, make sure it is something that you will be able to sustain.

Then, lastly, his last tip there: It does take a lot of work. Whilst we try and break it down, starting a blog, into seven achievable steps in our course, it is going to take some work. You will need to put some time aside into it and then have ongoing time that you can put into your blog as well. If you are looking to start a blog, again, head over to problogger.com/start-a-blog, register for the course there. 7th of February is when we’re doing our International Start a Blog Day. That’s approaching pretty quick, and it may be achievable for some of you to be launched by then.

For others of you who aren’t launched by then, don’t let that put you off. Start the blog. Many of the bloggers that you hear from this week took a little bit longer to get going, and that’s totally fine. As Jacob says, it does take some work. The main thing is to get it launched at some point. It doesn’t need to be perfect when you are launched, but get involved in the process. Hopefully, you’ll find a lot of joy comes from the process as well.

Thanks for listening. Again, today’s show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/271. Stay tuned in the next few days, and we’ll have another blogger story for you.