Hindsight, they say, is 20/20.
If you think about it, you can only see it clearly, after figuring out why something didn’t work in the first place.
To figure out why something failed, first, you need to have not succeeded in it. To have not succeeded, means, you dabbled with it. You tempted. You immersed yourself in the machine. You let your gut down. You showed up.
And I feel, honestly, that you’ve been showing up: Well, you wanna grow your business so you read emails, you explore blog posts, you take online courses, you reach out, you stay sane, you try again…
The universe should be obliged to reward you. However, currently, it doesn’t seem to care.
The big reveal: That’s the life of an entrepreneur.
You have big ideas but you are currently limited by the few resources that you have, hence the need to know where you spend them.
For most, this is the plan:
Establish your freelancing services, increase your rates, launch that business idea, scale the venture, hire people and pay well, help other businesses grow, speak in events, support courses you believe in…
And my all-time favourite: Buy books at the bookstore without checking the pricing.
Great plans, big up my friend. My plans almost follow the same rhythm, with the exception that I want lots of free time to spend with my loved ones when I finally get married. Seriously.
… With What You’ve Got.
So these plans have to start from somewhere, right?
For you, it may be landing a freelance client, establishing a small business in your area, or creating your first digital product.
While in campus, I ran an organization, called Dream Possible. We did well. Apart from growing out mentors and mentees, we ourselves got to grow in different aspects of life.
I had a great team, and we pushed ourselves to the limits. Without money.
……
After campus, the dream was now bigger (Read that, ‘we failed.’) and we disbanded DPK… We are now, behind the scenes, slowly building something else. Frankly, this is a long shot, but we do have the Stamina to get us through.
Letting go of Dream Possible, hindsight says, wasn’t the best move. But we learned in the process …
Dabbling With Blogs
The first time I heard about making money blogging was in 2014. I was a freshman in college looking for ways to sustain my stay and fund my dreams. I tried freelancing but I didn’t have access to people who would guide me. So I tried every writing platform there was, without much success. I did earn $23.25 on Iwriter before calling it quits.
So in 2015 I started a blog, called The Secrets Dispenser (it went with the floods, don’t search for it)
It was all messy, no clarity, no feelings.
I then decided to open up the blog so that anyone could register and post their own articles. Am actually laughing at this right now( hindsightedly, that’s not a word). Because I actually got over 14000 ‘users’ within the first week. I was elated. Over 2000 posts we’re posted.
Actually, these were all spams. I didn’t even know that then. So I did the honorable thing, I removed all the users, deleted all the useless posts, and started blogging at my own pace. Eventually, towards the end of the year, I gave it up. I didn’t renew hosting.
I went back to learning, this time I focused on digital marketing. By now I knew a thing or two, and Fiverr was sustaining my bills, until it got stuck again, because I went missing on the platform.
So I started PennyMatters as a WordPress dot com. This was early 2016. I was also running an inspiration blog on WordPress as well.
Well, I started my second professional blog, pennymatters.org (yes, I don’t know what happened) I failed to renew hosting and it disappeared.
Luckily, I still had my WordPress dot com blog, so I went back there and continued blogging.
Then in 2017, I grabbed hosting for thepennymatters.com and migrated my blog. I only started blogging seriously on this blog in 2018.
Don’t be afraid to play along.
Now, that could be a ton of mistakes in there, but you know what? They were worth it.
Don’t fear to play around. I can assure you, I installed every theme available on WordPress on my new blog. Trying to get what works.
The time that I would have rather used in creating more valuable content all went into obsessing about blog design.
Today, if blog design takes me more than 7 days, I have to check up with my self. Copywriting can take me a while, especially when I was building mysson.co
However, once I had that off the way, designing the blog was a breeze. Why? Because the lessons learned while installing every theme back then, came in handy.
- Install a flexible but simple theme like Astra
- Choose your brand colors and fonts
- Grab your favorite page builder like Elementor
- Start with settings. Set your theme colors and fonts in your customizer
- Find a few templates for inspirations
- Start building your core pages and blog layout.
- Set up Google Analytics, Rankmath SEO plugin, etc
- Set up opt-in forms
- Start blogging
If you haven’t started your blog, please don’t make these ridiculous mistakes that I did. This blogging guide takes you through the 9 steps that you need.
Things to Tinker Around to Get Better at Digital Marketing:
- Blogs; visuals, blog layout, conversion
- List building: opt-in forms, opt-in forms headlines, opt-in forms placement, landing page designs, and promotions
- Pinterest marketing: viral pin designs, group boards, pin descriptions, pin copy (headlines)
- Social media marketing: what platforms work for you, engaging posts, what to post, posting schedule, best times to post
- Content creation: Blog post intros and headlines, tone and voice, blog visuals, post formats
Today Consumables:
1: Start a Blog With Bluehost and Start Dabbling. It’s always easy to get away with not doing something when you don’t have a commitment system. Your blog, by default, becomes a commitment system.
2: Learn the Skills that You Need. Whether it’s creative writing, marketing, communication, painting, journaling…
3:Recoup; Call yourself into a meeting and be honest about your goals and your plans. Set reasonable timelines and commit to getting things done.
Woah! I just had a revelation, maybe the next lesson should be on Getting Things Done.
Conclusion:
Whether you are starting a blog or launching a tech company , there is always gonna be a learning curve and an uneasy moment of no results. The secret is to get past that moment as fast as you can, without breaking yourself apart.
I hope you found this post helpful.
Creators take action, so they are always a day earlier.
Mysson
