Writing is fun for me. When you combine writing and the Internet, you get blogging. Neat. But my last attempts at blogging failed miserably. I got some traffic, but not enough to keep the lights on. Since then, I’ve learned a bit, and I think I know what went wrong.
I have pretty much stopped posting on those sites and consider them all but toast at this point. Some of that content is still out there to this day. But it’s old and defunct at this point.
Maybe this will help you avoid the same mistakes I made. And hopefully I’ll be able to avoid them with Side Hustle Road.
I wasn’t thinking long term with my blog.
Blogging is a long game. It doesn’t work to just post a bunch of content and never post again. On the contrary, it’s important to keep a constant flow of fresh, helpful content. That requires thinking about the long haul.
Starting a blog and then posting five, ten, twenty, or more posts and then letting the site sit to rot doesn’t work. You need to have a plan for the long term. What kinds of content will you post? Will your future posts reference your past posts? And so on.
I wrote about too many topics.
There’s some measure of debate about the importance of a niche. Is a niche important for your writing, or can you write about pretty much anything? On Medium, I write about lots of topics – mental health, technology, side hustles, etc. But I’ve learned that my blogs need to be more specialized.
In the past, I failed to do that. I tried to appeal to too many people with my blogs, and wound up appealing to few people at all. Side Hustle Road is intended for people who want to follow my side hustle journey and want to learn about things like Medium, writing, print on demand, and the like. These things are all connected by one thing: ways to make some extra dough on the side. So posts about those topics should appeal to a subset of people who are interested in doing just that.
I stopped writing new content.
This is one of the big reasons my blogs failed. Like I said, blogs need to have a steady stream of new content, and if you stop posting, they grow old and stale, and their readers drift off to other sites.
After a while, I just got writer’s block and stopped writing.
Posting schedule? Didn’t have one.
On Medium, I’ve tried to be at least somewhat consistent with posting new content. Most weekdays I try to post something new. On my blogs? I wasn’t always so consistent.
On the contrary, I would post a few things here and there and then go long periods without posting more. And that led to an inconsistent, disorganized content strategy.
While I don’t have a strict schedule for posting on Medium or my other blog sites now, I am trying to be more consistent and make sure I’m producing new content that people will want to read without letting long periods of time pass without something new.
I got bored with the subject.
While you can certainly start a blog about a subject that isn’t your favorite, it’s important to maintain at least some level of interest in what you’re writing about. Otherwise you’ll have trouble coming up with new post topics. Or, if you do somehow come up with more topics, you’ll sound so disinterested and bored that your readers will catch on and walk away.
It’s important to remember that no matter what your subject, you need to show that you’re at least kinda interested in what you’re saying. Otherwise, you won’t be able to get your readers interested either.
Avoiding the mistakes of the past.
Currently, I’m focusing my writing efforts on Side Hustle Road and on Medium. Will I be able to avoid my blogging mistakes of the past? Time will tell, but my hope is that you will find something of value in my writing either on Medium or on my blog.
On Side Hustle Road, my hope is to keep my topics focused to appeal to my target audience and post somewhat consistently about my experiences on Medium, with print on demand, and elsewhere.
On Medium, I’ll continue posting about technology, mental health, faith, and more.
All in all, I hope someone somewhere finds this content helpful or interesting.