What Happened In Business and Blogging — 10-Years Of Valuable Lessons Learned

Like old flames, once beloved subscribers can decide to unsubscribe for a variety of reasons. Businesses — like the one you might be running OR be dreaming of — obviously want you to stick around. I’m here to explain how YOU can make fewer mistakes since I’ve made so many. Learning about business and blogging and using the valuable lessons learned is imperative in moving forward.

I’m using my blog as an example, however, I could use the same guidelines for any aspect of business and I know these tips will apply to your business as well.

WHAT WORKED:

• Research the hosting platforms to find the best fit. Within the top couple, further research what they do, and how much they cost to find the best one for you
• If using WordPress, research the type of plugins you need (i.e. testimonials, quiz creation, opt-ins, SEO, etc..). Find the best and determine which are worth paying for
• Use tickets and IT on the host platform. Ask for help and also ask to learn so in the future things make more sense and you can do them alone -you can also refer back to the ticket
• Find people who are not in your “zone of genius”, follow them, reach out, sign up for pertinent newsletters, ask for help, and pay them for their services
• Use your analytics, link back from featured articles, etc… get ahead and schedule posts
• Write from your heart AND make it forward-facing. How is this post helping someone else?
• Your story is how people relate to you. Making the post outward-facing is how people help themselves
• CTA, CTA, CTA — what do you want people to DO?

WHAT DID NOT WORK:

• I went off a recommendation from a coach to change my blog and website platform. It was one of the most expensive which I assumed equated to “best for me”. And it wasn’t. It’s a great site, really amazing, and my coach was correct — just not for what I wanted. I jumped in without making an educated decision FOR ME.
• Using it meant I lost a few years of capturing audience traffic
• It meant I had to do the transfer to the new site manually which was a tremendous amount of time
• I lost about 3-years of content with the changes as well
• Letting someone else set things up and not understand what was done (and not done)
• I used the site’s tech to set things up and because I didn’t ask enough questions, it wasn’t set up properly. This is why I like to learn how to do things myself and keep the “ticket” as a reference
• I like getting help — just know what questions to ask
• I didn’t use or understand my analytics. I could have monetized the blog in the first year back in 2012 if I had understood how things worked, asked questions, and tweaked things slightly
• Allow fear to dictate what you do
• My blog was “lost” about 4 ½ years in. 18-months later when I recovered it, I reacted and moved it to my website — which was the absolute worst thing I could have done. I let the fear of losing it again dictate my decisions and made the wrong choice

Had I known THEN what I know NOW, or had I become curious about analytics, I could have monetized the blog almost a decade ago.

For more tips on blogging, as well as the other topics I cover, I’d love you to subscribe to the blog!

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