Key essentials to do before you start a blog

Before I start with the essentials, I advise you not to pay too much attention to YouTubers or bloggers who say, 'Earn 1000$ in your first month of blogging' or 'Rank your blog number one in Google'. Okay, this can be true but it is exceptional.
One thing I learned is that blogging is easy and difficult at the same time. It is lots of fun writing blog posts and pressing the 'publish' button, but it can be very frustrating too, when you run out of inspiration or a deadline is getting closer and closer.

There are lots of bloggers who make a very nice income from their blogs, but they put lots of work and time (and sometimes money, too) into it. You only see the result of their hard work. And by the way, there can only be one ranked number on Google ;-)

Finding a good niche to blog about, optimizing your blog for SEO, setting up your WordPress theme, etc., are all topics where you can find much better articles than I can write. And most of these articles are copies from other bloggers.
No, I will write about the issues I encountered when I started this blog and where you can almost find no information about it. Things I wished I had known before I started this blog.

The list below will be updated regularly as I learn more and more about blogging.

When I started this blog, I had so many ideas in mind that I did write about everything. So, my posts were a jungle of different topics without any logic or structure in them.
Readers and also search engines like structure and order, they love everything well organized.
So, I started to write down how I wanted my blog to be structured and what the main topics would be.

In my case, I wanted to write about passive income. So, I limited myself to only four topics: blogging, Etsy, passive income, and productivity. These will be the four I will focus on in the upcoming months
Having a limited amount of categories not only makes your blog easier to navigate but also makes it easier for SEO (and building up authority).

I not only had issues with the internal structure of my blog, but the look of this blog also needed some restructuring. Something I completely forgot about when I started writing code for this blog was the structure of the menu bar.
I forgot a few important things in the menu bar: the contact page and a search bar. I am still figuring out how to put them in there without disrupting the design (which finally starts looking okay on mobile).

Also, pay attention to the structure of the URLs you are using.
I didn't know this was important for SEO (but it really is), so I left it as it was. The URLs were very easy for me to use (and keep it organized), but some search engines (like Bing) don't like such URL structures.
And now, writing redirects for each page will take me a lot of time. Time I can use to write articles, do research, and work on other projects. And also, it's something I'm not particularly eager to do (I have to be honest). But it needs to be done (and will be done).

If your goal is to make money from blogging (Passive income with blogging), you have to start with a plan. Plan and write out how you want to make money and what you need for that.
Me, I started with the attitude 'wait and see', but that was completely wrong. You have to implement it from day one.

This is especially true if you want to have a newsletter and start gathering email addresses.
You don't only provide content to the people; they expect something more. You need to give them a reason to subscribe to your newsletter. This can be a free ebook or free access to extra content.
I thought my content was enough for people to subscribe to a newsletter. But I was wrong, you need to give them a good reason to subscribe. And that is why I still need to implement a subscription box (at the moment of writing).

I'm not a big fan of affiliate marketing because it makes you write an article about a certain product. And I don't like to push stuff into people's face, I like to write what I think is interesting for my audience. However, it can be that there are some affiliate articles on this blog.

It can take several months to have your blog ranked on Google, so don't wait for it and start spreading the word.
You already can start promoting your blog on different channels, depending on the niche your blog is in.

I realized this only after two months: Google had indexed all my articles but only discovered 21 keywords. I did some research on this, and most people say it can take 6 to 12 months for Google to have you ranked in a decent place.
A bit long, right?
The moment this became clear to me, I decided it was time to find an alternative way to attract people to my blog.

Reddit was my first choice, I subscribed to several sub-Reddit in line with the topics I write about. I was surprised of the amount of useful information you can find on Reddit. And it is also a good way to promote your blog or to ask advice.

I also set up an account on X, which is more for networking and community-building. And believe it or not, there is lots of wisdom to be found on X just by following the right accounts.

Pinterest is another social media platform (it's like a visual search engine) that can also be used to drive traffic to your blog. And again, it also takes a while to get discovered there.
Next in the row will be Instagram, I finally figured out how to promote my blog over there.

You already might have guessed it; getting traffic to your blog takes a long time. All you have to do is be consistent in your posting and be patient. And don't believe what many on the internet say.

I will be honest with you: I am not a Franz Kafka or James Joyce. I know my writing style can be much better.
There are many online courses (Skillshare, Udemy, ...) on how to write perfect blogs. I just subscribed to one (but still need to start it - I hope you will see the result in my next posts).