This guest post is by Aman Basanti of ageofmarketing.com.
If you have not yet started a blog, stop. Write 20 to 30 posts before you launch.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but this strategy may just be the thing to help you succeed as a blogger.
Why?
It stops you from quitting
Here is the number one reason most bloggers fail: they lose the will to continue.
Anyone who has ever started a blog will tell you that it is downright demoralizing to start a blog. When no one visits your blog, no one accepts your guest posts, and advertising proves too expensive to make a viable traffic generation strategy, you feel lost and destroyed.
Unfortunately for most people, that is the end of their blogging journey. Within months, if not weeks the blog is abandoned and another number is added to the failed blogs hall of fame.
But the very mind that loses hope can be made to maintain it if you invest a lot of effort into your blog upfront. It is human tendency to try harder at and stick longer to something that you have already devoted effort to.
It helps you build and maintain momentum on your blog
Guest posting is one of the most powerful ways to build your blog. It allows you to get your name on established blogs, and gives you a taste of what it would be like to have a popular blog—not to mention attracting high-converting traffic to your own blog.
The thing with guest blogging is that you need to do it often to make it a viable brand building and traffic generation strategy. You cannot do that when you barely have enough posts to keep your own blog going. Having 20 posts in reserve can help keep your blog going while you are concentrating on pitching and writing guest posts.
Plus, once you get a few guest posts on big blogs you will get requests to write guest posts on even more blogs. And you need to be able to maintain the momentum. So the post reserves will come in handy.
It helps you get paying gigs
Finally, posting on your blog and writing guest posts for other blogs may even bring you paying gigs.
When someone is paying you good money to write posts, you need to able to deliver high quality content under tight deadlines. This means you need a lot of practise before you start. Writing 20 or 30 posts helps you build your writing ability.
This means that when you get a request for guest post or get a paying gig you can deliver high quality content quickly.
This is what happened to me. Impressed with the quality and originality of my guest posts and the posts on my blog, a company contacted me to write for them. The only catch was they needed content quickly. Luckily, I had a few posts in reserve, some of which they liked. That weekend I earned my first ever pay-check from blogging, netting around $2,000 for several posts. It was such a thrill.
So if you have not yet started blogging, wait till you have 20 to 30 posts before you launch.
Aman Basanti writes about the psychology of buying and teaches you how you can use the principles of consumer psychology to boost your sales. Visit www.Ageofmarketing.com/free-ebook to get his new e-book – Marketing to the Pre-Historic Mind: How the Hot New Science of Behavioural Economics Can Help You Boost Your Sales – for FREE.
Great advice. I usually only have 3 articles in the pipeline and now I realize that I need to step up my reserves to at least 10 to 15.
It definately helps to have 5-10 in reserve. You never know when you are going to product content quickly. Good to do some forward planning. Thanks for your comment.
I did a mistake, I started my blog with zero posts. May be that’s the reason why I struggled a lot at the beginning.
Well, Praveen, I don’t know if it would have solved all your problems but it probably would have helped. In any case, your blog is doing pretty well now, so I guess it worked out in the end anyway :)
Thanks Aman. I have not yet started a blog of my own and have an idea to do tha. But I ignored writing 20 posts before starting a blog because I didn’t know for what it is. Thanks for your help through this article:)
No problems Jomson, glad I could help. Thanks for the comment.
Excellent advice. I wish I had done that when I first started.
hehe, I know there are a few things I wish I had done differently too. Well, you live and learn. Thanks for the comment.
I have to admit that blogging is truly inspiring, as well as thought-provoking. Who wouldn’t want to blog about something interesting, while potentially earning a healthy profit from their blogging efforts? There’s so much to talk about in a blog, as well as share valuable ideas and humble insight with everyone online. Blogging is truly joy to the soul :-)
Basanti I believe you also have done mistake of starting new blog without posts and after lot of experience you wrote this post for newbies like us.. lol
Writing 20 posts first:
– helps with focusing your blog theme/niche
– helps you determine whether you like the topic
– gives you time to product 20 top notch articles
– helps plan blog categories and navigation
– I find writing content inspires new content … potentially great content for subscribers.
– helps honing keyword research (again, the more deeply I go into a niche, the more great keywords I discover)
– researching is an impetus for exploring other websites and blogs in the niche.
It looks like it’s too late for me then. :p
But most of my posts consist of daily stuff and article round-ups, so it isn’t really anything I can do in advance. However, stockpiling on writing articles is something I could do so I can guest blog.
I started with 40 posts ready to go – and am soooo glad I did. You cannot plan for some of life’s challenges. It certainly helps to know that you are prepared to keep moving forward when things get in the way.
I run 9 websites, and agree with you, would even say to go a step further and plan you first year.
Get your 20 posts, get your next 20 post ideas, make some videos, make some guest posts, the more you plan the more successful you will be.
The great thing about the internet is that it allows you to backdate things. If you’ve got 20 posts and you want to establish some credibility backdate them weekly or fortnightly. For new visitors to your site they wont know how new the posts really are and it will give you an air of credibility of having been around in the space for a while.
It probably doesn’t matter that much, but do you think there is an ethics issue with backdating articles? It creates an appearance of “experience” that isn’t really there.
“$2,000 for several posts” – it is something unreal…
20 posts is a good start but sometimes it may not be required for some blogs to be able to succeed. But good tips overall.