10 Questions to ask yourself before you start a blog
When you’re planning to start a blog, there are a few questions to ask yourself before you do so, some of which you’ve never considered. Starting a blog is more complex than you may initially believe it could be, especially if you want your blog to be successful and eventually be able to be a full-time blogger.
Of course, you could jump right into the new adventure and see how it goes. But when deciding to start a successful blog yourself, there are many things you need to first think about before diving into the topic of becoming a blogger.
A blog is more than just about writing content regularly.
Becoming a blogger involves mastering a bunch of entirely different fields.
This blog post will help you determine whether you are willing to learn new things, do your research and if you have the strength necessary to become a blogger or if you should skip this adventure and think about walking down another path.
Today, we’re discussing ten questions you should ask yourself before you start a blog.
1. Why do you want to start a blog?
A blog is all about written content. Therefore, your desire to create your own blog should include some form of writing because this is precisely what you will do most of the time as a blogger: writing new content.
If you are not really into writing, or if you’ve never tried to make writing a habit of yours, I highly recommend that you practise writing before diving into creating your own blog.
Shift your perspective.
Getting a perspective shift is best when you ask yourself why you want to start a blog. Your blog should never revolve around what you can get from it and what you can get from your readers, but how you can serve your audience in the best way possible.
Your WHY should always revolve around how you can serve others well.
This is because, especially at the beginning of your blogging journey, you won’t get anything in return from your blog or audience during the first few years or so. If you mainly want to start a blog to get something from others, you probably should think about this idea again.
Starting a blog requires you to give a lot – whether it’s time, energy, money, discipline, creativity, or passion – you won’t get anything in return in the beginning. See it as a test of how humble you can be.
Therefore, you need a solid reason to start a blog. Of course, financial independence can be a massive motivator. And honestly, it’s also one of the reasons why I initially started a blog. Hence, after almost two years – one year, I was solely dedicated to learning all the skills necessary to launch a blog, and the last year I spent creating a successful blog with semi-success – I did not see a single cent out of my labour yet. And guess what? I’m content with it.
There must be more about creating a blog than just the promise of earning money with it.
It’s a great initiator, but you may need something more intrinsic than money as your main reason.
For me, it’s to help you, my readers, realise that you can be so much more than you were taught all your life. I help you see that you’re a true gift to the world the way you are and make you aware that you are more than enough the way you are. This is my mission and passion. If someday I can live from this blog, it would be a dream come true, but I would not mind if I would never earn any money with this blog, as long as I’m the most helpful to you guys so that you can live a more fulfilling life to your conditions.
Find a solid reason besides money or influence before you start a blog.
2. What do you want to write about?
If you browse the internet, you will see that blogs for nearly any topic you could think of exist. Therefore, you could write about anything. But should you write about anything? Of course not!
In the blogging scene, many bloggers talk about finding your niche.
What is a niche?
The niche you pick to write content about from now on and in the future is the topic you’re interested in or what you think you could serve others. A niche is primarily a child topic of a parent topic. For instance, you want to focus on food for your blog. As you can tell, the topic of food is massive. There are nearly endless niches when it comes to the topic of food.
To name a few, so you get a hint of what I’m talking about:
- Vegan
- Gluten-free
- Paleo
- Keto
- Dairy-free
- Recipes on the go
- Raw food recipes
- Food from scratch
- Fish or meat recipes
- Healthy/organic food recipes
- …
If you pick food as your topic, it makes more sense to write about a more narrowed-down topic regarding food – your niche. Think about it precisely: A vegan person would not be interested in learning about fish or meat recipes. At the same time, a person who consumes eggs and cheese would also not be interested in learning how to substitute these ingredients into a vegan version.
Therefore, niches make sense in terms of making it easier to develop a loyal audience and to make it easier for your reader to navigate through your content.
Choose your niche according to your preferences.
When choosing your niche, you need to consider that you first need to find a topic you’re interested in writing for the next few years, and second, it needs to be broad enough to have enough content to create.
Stick with your niche the moment you pick it.
When you decide your blog’s topic, stick with it for the next few years. This makes sense because you want to get to know for a specific field. You want to establish yourself as an expert in your field. This takes time and dedication.
Also, you learn to be consistent by sticking to your niche and creating content in that field. If you change your mind each day, you cannot practise to get perfect in one area, leading to confusion and frustration since you are less likely to succeed.
Choose a niche you’re passionate about.
Let’s be honest: every niche can probably lead to a successful blog because there is an audience for nearly any topic you can imagine.
Therefore, the question is different from what niche is the most profitable, but what niche are you the most passionate about?
You are the one behind your blog, and you’re the one who will be sitting in front of your laptop for hours each day, creating great content for your readers. You could pick the most profitable niche, but if you think this topic is trash because you don’t like it at all, you will suffer the most.
Your readers may read the content you create and take a few minutes to browse your blog posts, but you’re the one making it for hours. Therefore, you will be the one working with your niche the most, which is why you must be passionate about the niche you’re picking.
Nothing converts better than emotions.
Also, as we already discussed, the reason you start a blog should be about something other than making money with it. But anyway, nothing converts better than emotions.
This is why there are brands out there that can sell products that may not be as good as they could be, but people love the brand and, therefore, are willing to purchase products that do not deliver the best quality possible. These people buy the story behind the product and the emotions the customers associate with them.
Therefore, you must link your content to emotions to convert people who visit your blog into readers. And who creates these emotions? You are the one.
By creating content you are passionate about, and in what you have personal experiences with, you develop emotions that convert people into whatever you aim them to be.
3. Who are you writing for?
You may think, well, I write for myself and everyone willing to read. That’s at least an approach.
However, narrowing down your audience is crucial for staying creative and continuing to write valuable content.
Discovering who you’re writing is not only a big deal because of the people you want to write for, but by deciding who is your ideal target audience, you’re also clarifying who you are as a blogger. Your audience tells a lot more about you than you may think.
Look at my blog, for instance. I’m not writing for every single person on this planet. My blog is all about mental health and personal growth, plus I’m writing about blogging. This means that there are endless topics I’m NOT covering. And that’s a great thing.
Get to know your audience.
On the one hand, this means that I’m mainly approaching people interested in their personal growth and mental health and those interested in the blogging scene. On the other hand, there are many other people I’m not addressing, and I guess there is a great bunch of people who are not resonating with my content.
The truth about blogging is that the longer you are into the game, the more aware you become that you don’t want to approach everyone. Just think about it precisely:
Where would it make sense if I would address every single person with my content? Even these people, who are living their lives in a massively unconscious way? They could never resonate with what I’m talking about and would probably hate what I’m writing about.
My stats would look fantastic because it would record millions of people visiting my blog. But the majority would hate what I’m writing about and would leave within a blink.
I want to create content for people interested in reading about what I have to say. I believe my content is valuable to some people, and it’s best only to approach people who can truly resonate with my content.
And you should aim for the same.
Therefore, you must define your ideal target audience before you start a blog. This way, you will save time, energy and effort.
4. How do you want to start a blog?
When starting a blog, you have different options for creating your blog. You could either A. do it all by yourself, B. get help from other people only for the parts that overwhelm you, or C. let someone else do the work for you.
Usually, it all depends on two factors: Money and time.
If you don’t want to spend money on starting a blog, you are probably in the wrong field. Starting a blog for free is possible, but you will be very limited when monetising the blog. Usually, for free, there is a blog when it’s on a platform that offers blogs for free. But then, it’s not your blog. It still belongs to the platform that is hosting everything for you.
Always aim for independence.
Imagine your blog to be your very own little store in the online world. Starting your blog for free on a platform is equivalent to opening your store in a hotel room. You may be able to make it work out initially, but you will be extremely limited in what is possible for growing your business.
Be willing to invest in your blog.
No matter what plan you choose for starting your blog, you must be willing to invest in it, whether it’s money or time. Because ideally, you will be working with your blog daily from the day you start it. Therefore, treating it like something worth your time and money would be best.
If you choose to do all the work by yourself and create a blog on your own, you will have to do the research and build your blog by yourself. Let me tell you: it’s overwhelming, but it’s possible. I made Gloriously Her all by myself. It took me a decent amount of time and energy, but I did it.
You can do it, too.
And to assure you from the very beginning, you don’t have to be into the technical side of things to be able to build your blog. I’m nothing like a tech-savvy at all, and it worked out just fine. However, I was dedicated to learning new things and did not shy away from hard work. And building your blog will be, indeed, hard work. But it’s so worth it. Because it will teach you a lot about yourself and your current life, with building a blog from scratch, you will have to grow and get uncomfortable.
For me, starting a blog was a blessing in the end. But it also came with a lot of ups and downs. Learning everything required to launch a blog was very challenging, and I struggled most of the time during that process. Also, I experienced many times when I was anxious about the blog and putting myself on the internet. I tell you this so that you know you are not alone. Suffering and struggling are a natural part of the learning process.
It can be an excellent opportunity for you to outgrow your current self. To face everything you’re currently struggling with in your growth journey.
5. How much time can you dedicate every day to your blog?
I want you to start your blogging journey with realistic yet hopeful expectations. This also means that before you start your blogging journey, you know how much time you will dedicate to your blog daily for the next few years.
Starting a blog is not a short-term project. If you want to be successful as a blogger and if you want to have a thriving blog, you have to think in the long term.
The more time you can dedicate to your blog, the sooner you will see results.
It’s very straightforward with a blog: the more time you dedicate to your blog, the more you’re willing to create content and work on it, the higher the chances that you will see results quickly.
Now, if you take things into your own hands and research online, you will likely come across a lot of advice that you must publish a blog post at least once a week to succeed. Also, you will find a few successful bloggers who publish a blog post twice a week or even daily to see results.
This may be true for some people, and of course, the more you can be active and the more you can show up for your blog, the more rewarding the results will be.
But do you know what is even more vital than seeing results in your blog? Your mental health.
Your mental health is most crucial.
There is no point in showing up for your blog every single day for 5 hours plus on top of your daily life and top of your day job if, in the end, you will end up with mental health issues and sleep deprivation. Let me tell you: I nearly got burned out when I tried to keep up with the pace of other successful bloggers.
This was when I decided that it was not worth it. Nothing in this world, no success, no results, is worth it that you put yourself in danger. Do not put yourself in a situation where you get burned out and get other significant mental health issues just to be considered successful.
Every journey in life is different, and every blogging journey is unique. Don’t get discouraged by what other people can do at a specific time. You don’t know their circumstances. You know nothing about their life except what they want to share with the world. Other people’s life decisions are not essential to your journey. Do what you must do to stay mentally and physically healthy. This is when you truly succeed in your life.
You do what is best for you.
Of course, if you want to have a successful blog, you must dedicate time regularly. Otherwise, it won’t work out. But you must get very sensitive about your body’s signals, especially when you add something significant, like a blog, to your daily workload.
Get to know your limits.
This is my best advice when it comes to starting a blog.
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6. Are you willing to convert into a lifelong learner?
With your very own blog, there is always something new to learn. There will always be a unique yet unknown skill to discover. It starts with creating your blog and getting to know everything you need to know to be able to work with your blog. Further, it’s about writing stunning blog posts, marketing your social media content, and many other topics.
You can always learn something new.
Therefore, make yourself ready to convert into a lifelong learner. If you’re willing to see yourself as a student of life for the rest of your life, you will have a much easier time when it comes to learning unknown skills and ultimately starting your blog.
A blog will show you that there are more things you have yet to be aware of than you already know. You will have to learn a lot – prepare yourself for much learning.
Though a blog is a lot of fun, you must have the proper attitude when starting one yourself. Otherwise, you will be overwhelmed the second you begin.
7. How much do you want to invest in your blog?
When you’ve never had anything to do with a blog, and this is your first time, you will see that starting your blog is entering an entirely new world. There are endless ways to upgrade your blog and add more or less practical plugins and other things like courses, programs, etc.
You will see that even if you initially planned on building your blog by yourself, you could quickly watch yourself spending even more money than hiring someone to do all the work for you would cost you.
With a blog, you must also learn what you want to invest in your blog.
Less is always more.
When investing in your blog with anything the internet offers in this field, always keep in mind that less is more. Don’t get overwhelmed; don’t let yourself be manipulated when starting your blog.
Time will tell you what you must invest to be a successful blogger.
8. What if it does not work out as you imagined it?
You also must consider what your plan B is in case your plan A does not work out the way you imagined it. Your plan A is, of course, the reason why you want to start your blog.
But let me tell you this: if you shift your focus from a demanding perspective to a serving one, you don’t need a plan B.
Think about how you can serve those millions of people out there, and make plans on what you can provide them to make their lives better with your blog. This way, you always win.
But if you already plan what you can get from your readers, you will likely be disappointed quickly, even before establishing yourself as a blogger. You first have to give something to prove yourself on the internet.
Serve your readers well.
You will get something in return if you serve your readers well from the beginning.
With your blog, you start building relationships with people out there. And just like it happens in a real relationship, you have to put some authentic hard work into it to make it a healthy and thriving relationship.
This is precisely what you’re doing with your blog. Your blog is your gate to the internet and, therefore, directly to others.
9. What is your long-term goal for your blog?
With a blog, you need to have a plan on hand. Not just one for the next few weeks, but one for the next few years. Without a plan, you don’t know where you’re heading.
To choose your path to walk, you first need to know your destination. This is valid for your blog and life in general.
With a blog, there is simply no way to stay passive or swim with the mainstream—a blog forces you to prioritise and think about where your life should go.
10. How will you measure the success of your blog?
What is a successful blog?
This is the number one question you must define for yourself before you do anything else. Answering this question will tell you much about who you are because success is an individual definition.
Of course, you could define success as how much money you can generate per month or your monthly traffic.
But is this important to you?
Some kind of success is not measurable, and that’s fine. Let’s say you want to change the world for the better with your blog; in this case, you cannot measure the success of your blog so easily since there are no numbers for happiness you can track.
There are many more important things to life than just hitting great numbers. Some things are not measurable. If you are one of these people whose reasons for creating their blog are also not measurable, then let me be the one to tell you that you are more than destined to be a successful blogger.
Starting your blog will be an extraordinary journey with many ups and downs. During your journey, you will evolve into a completely new person, and by putting in all this authentic and hard work into your project, you will realise what is truly vital in your life.
A blog will define who you want to be business-wise and your core values. Your blog is your gate to communicate with the world. And the better you treat it and the more serious you are about your blog, the more your hard work will pay off.
It will be challenging and demanding work, and sometimes you’ll want to give up because learning is complex. But if you stick around, it will be so worth it, and the only thing I want to ask from you is to stick to your journey until you reach the top.
For once, stick with your journey and walk these steps even though it’s exhausting. Walk until you reach the top of your mountain, and then you can decide if you want to linger here for longer or to head to new adventures.
Creating your blog will be a transformative kickstart for your growth journey.
Therefore, take action today!
Take time for yourself and consider what you value in your life. Determine the ten questions above and get some answers. You must know who you want yourself to define when starting a blog. This will make things so much easier.
I believe in you, and you can do it!
Until next time,
Keep evolving into your most glorious self!
