Tips&Tricks | The 5 Things I Wish I Had When I Started Blogging For Business

My first ever blog was on Hometown@AOL (now AOL Lifestream). Yep, I'm a dinosaur. I used it mostly for distant family to keep up with me. At the time you didn't have much in the line of options but you could customize it to a point (Comic Sans rainbow font anyone?) and share it with anyone on the web.

A few years later I launched a blog for college on GeoCities via Yahoo. Like AOL the customization options were slim to none. But I developed a bit of a hobby to keep me sane while undergoing long hours of classes on fingerprint analysis and raising two kids. I started making ASCII art for my email signatures. I got really good at it too. I guess you could say that was my intro to design.

About the same time I discovered MySpace and started learning to create my own layouts. I devoured coding and even launched "Banana's Layouts" where people could come and get a cute layouts and I could release the creative energies of every day life. I also had a MySpace blog, but that's not the point here. And the point is coming. After the jump so click your way on over and finish the story :)

When MySpace filed social bankruptcy and conceded to Facebook for the most fierce social media platform on the web, I lost my creative spark. Not having a creative outlet was one of the worst things I have ever experienced. Then I landed on Blogger in 2008 and never really left.

Although my blogs have evolved and outright changed over the years, I have always tried to remain as in the zone as humanly possible. I've had everything from a dedicated book review site to what is basically the equivalent of an online resume. When I started Elle Ay Esse nearly three years ago I realized I needed to actually get in the game.

Like most bloggers I didn't start out "in the know". As I learned and grew my online presence I realized maybe all those things I didn't have could be listed out to help someone else who may be interested in starting and running a blog. That's where this post comes in.

Here are the top five things I wish I would have had, that YOU definitely want to have, to start a blog:

1 | An Accountability Partner 

This was probably the worst. I had some fantastic blog ideas (long before I launched this here website and started selling my designs) and I knew how to schedule posts but I am also the laziest person I know and I often found myself sidetracked taking photos for the amazing posts I was going to write but never actually sat down to post.

Having a niche is great, having a tribe is wonderful too. But having one specific person to bounce your ideas off of and to call you out for not posting is a great way to make sure you are actually pushing your great ideas out and sharing them with your readers. If I had had an accountability partner I may have actually gotten my name out in Blogland sooner because I would have had someone to make sure I followed through.

2 | A PayPal Account

Because eventually people want to start paying you for content. In my case it was for products and services (my design and coaching). If you do not have a way for people to send you the fees you have listed on your media kit page (you do have a media kit page, riiiight???), you may as well stop hoping to turn your blog into a business.

I'll take it a step further and say that what you really need here as well is a bank account. A surprising amount of people don't link their PayPal to their banks and if you don't do this, you can't access your fund or receive pay over a certain amount. Worse, if you don't link up that bank of yours, PayPal can (legally) send your monies received back to whoever sent them. 

3 | Office Space

I blog from my couch. No joke. But I blog from my couch because I got very sick and could not sit for long periods of time at my desk. Although it's nice to blog from bed or anywhere you like, having a dedicated office space will make you take what you do a lot more seriously.

When I was still able to use my desk I got more content pushed out and was networking like a boss. Ever since I got sick though I have had to make up for that by using timers and a focus sheet.

Get a dedicated space where you can work. Think of it like "going to the office" but in your pajamas.

4 | A Master Plan

Yeah, we all start out relatively clueless on new business ventures or even starting a hobby. I had been a "blogger" for a really good chunk of my life but it had no rhyme or reason. As I learned more and more I realized I was going to need a plan and then I would need to begin implementing it.

Had I researched first and asked questions or followed those people clearly more in the know than I was, I probably could have shaved about a year of blogging for pretty much no reason at all. 

5 | Patience

Because absolutely nothing good happens overnight.

The day I wrote my first post I stared at my Blogger stats (that would be number 6 if I had a number 6 on this list: ditch the stock Blogger stats and get Google Analytics. Why? Because Blogger stats are faaaaaaaar from accurate) and wondered why they weren't climbing. My post was fantastic (not really but at the time I believed it was) and people were going to love it. But no one was reading it. I would get so mad so fast because I wasn't getting commets or shares or anything.

Patience is most certainly a virtue in Blogland and absolutely no one becomes a success overnight. You have to do your time as the newbie, pay your dues with content sharing and post a lot of great things before you can start seeing the drastic change in your stats.

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Happy Humpday Readers!