The First 3 Months of Blogging is Hard!

By the way, this is my first article here at Performancing. I came here looking for a more interactive place for talking about blogging. My usual hangouts are ProBlogger and Warrior Forum. I’ve been in the game for a few years now.

What I’m really trying to say is: Wazzup!

The first 3 months of growing a blog is difficult. I’d like to share with you what I did differently on my 3-month-old guitar blog ATOMIC Guitarist that’s already surpassing my old blogs. With 3 years of frustration and failure comes wisdom.

Here are 5 ways I’ve gotten through the first 3 months of my new blog.

1. Unconventional Use of AWEBER

This time around I immediately started using AWEBER opt-in e-mail service to grow my e-mail lists. But I did it for the sake of blogging. My list doesn’t see many broadcasts about buying affiliate products or my own products. I’ve been using AWEBER to drive my list back to my content pages, which provides growing traffic on a daily basis. I’ve also found that more guests opt-in to my e-mail list than subscribe to my RSS feed.

2. Networking

What makes the first few months of blogging so hard for me is the lack of comments and interaction. So what I did was find a list of other guitar bloggers with quality material, I put them on my blog roll, and made friends with them. I interact on their fronts sometimes more than they do mine. With my blog being of quality (according to my pals), and with the use of my blog roll, they’ve also added me to theirs. Besides having the ability to be social, this tactic had a lot to do with the instant PR4 I received the other day with Google’s update.

(Some of my best pals include Guitar Noize, and Stratoblogster, IG Blog, and the Mad Stratter.)

3. Predicting Searches

Most of my search engine traffic has come from predicting what guitarists will be searching for in a few weeks/months/seasonally, a piece of advice Darren Rowse personally gave me. I tell you. It works. When the buzz about Radiohead circled the net, I saw gobs of traffic pouring in every minute.

4. Correctly Using StumbleUpon

Although StumbleUpon doesn’t send the best quality traffic, SU has eased my hardships in my first few months of blogging at ATOMIC Guitarist. SU traffic doesn’t convert into dollars with your blog’s advertising, but I saw some serious opt-in numbers to my e-mail list. What you have to remember about StumbleUpon is that you can’t submit a page for the same site within something like 48 hours apart. So I Stumble the pages I like on my friends’ blogs around the same time every other day.

5. Make a Post at Least Once Every Night

For ATOMIC, I developed a strategy I didn’t use prior. I actually set my time on my blog to 4 hours earlier than my timezone, so when I post at 8pm, it publishes an entry marked as the next day. I do this so that anyone who regularly visits my blog the next day will read something “up-to-date.” I don’t know exactly how big of an effect it has, but it seems more professional.

* Bonus Tips for Getting through the First 3 Months of Blogging

• While other blogs are crashing after just one month of frustration, keep yours pumping. We’re all going through the same thing. I doubt Techcrunch took the net by storm its first few months. Then again, maybe it did. Point is: very few take off that early.
• Set small goals. For instance, vow to double your traffic to your blog every month for the first 3 months. You can do this by focusing on SEO.
• Hey, every post doesn’t have to be a novel. From my experience, readers who hang around your blog every day like informative content, but they also want blurbs and they want to get to know you.
• Don’t take too much advice. Just focus and simplify your blogging strategy with goals in mind. For example, 1) post every day (often with a focus on SEO), 2) comment on others’ blogs every day, 3) work on getting your link out there, 4) build your lists, 5) know that everyone has a hard time the first 3 months.
• If you hate your blog, change your niche to something you can talk about every day. Don’t blog just for bucks. But blog for bucks so you can continue blogging.
• If you’re just starting out, think of your first few months of blogging as blogging college.
• If someone tells you blogging for profit is easy, laugh out loud until your stomach hurts.

Again, this is just one dude’s thoughts on blogging for the first 3 months. Hope it’ll be helpful for someone out there.

Good luck soldier.