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.
