Happy three months blogversary to me! Wow, I am going to relish in the fact that I’ve been consistently blogging for three months. Even though this is a tiny drop of time, it has already been a journey.
My goal is to keep a monthly blog update for all of you and for me as well. Each month, I plan to write about my blogging journey and share different aspects for newbie bloggers like me.
If you’re wondering, here are my month one and month two updates:
- Ups and downs in the first month of blogging
- Newbie blogger mistakes I made after two months blogging
In this update, I want to highlight tips to stay motivated if you’ve been blogging for three months or less.
Sadly, most bloggers quit within the first 3 months (source). So, if you’ve been blogging for three months, you’ve surpassed a major milestone.
In the early months of blogging, you may not get a lot of organic visitors to your blog. Native Mommy Lawyer is still in the Google sandbox and there are days that I need the motivation to continue blogging.
Here are tips to stay motivated after blogging for three months.
1. Celebrate the tiny milestones
In the beginning months, you should absolutely celebrate the tiny milestones in blogging. When you don’t have any visitors for days, hitting these tiny milestones will keep you motivated.
Early blogging milestones
- One week blogging
- 10 published posts
- First article ranking on Google (even if it’s on the 10th page)
- One month blogging
- 20 published posts
- First dollar earned
- Two months blogging
- Acceptance into an affiliate program
- 5 organic visitors a day
- Three months blogging
- First article on page 1 of Google
- Five dollars earned
Use this list or you can make up your own milestones too. This is your journey, so you get to decide on the exciting milestones.
And when I say celebrate, I don’t mean go out to a nightclub and party all night once you hit these tiny milestones. They’re more like inner feel-good rewards. It’s just a little something for you and maybe the people close to you.
2. Relish in the small (or big) wins
Small wins, especially for people who had zero experience prior to starting a blog, are huge. This goes hand in hand with the prior tip of creating and celebrating milestones.
When you have a small win, hold onto it for as long as you can, or at least until the next small win comes along. You might even have some unexpected big wins too.
When you do this, you’re basically riding a wave of small wins over and over again until, all of a sudden, you’ve been blogging for three months. Then it’ll be six months, then a year!
I discovered my most recent small win (actually a big win for me) yesterday when I found out one of my articles is ranking #1 for a keyword and has a featured snippet!!
Now, it’s not a very highly searched keyword. According to Ubersuggest, it gets 260 monthly searches but I’m seeing 3-6 organic visitors a day on this article.
Three months ago, I did not know what a keyword was and didn’t have a clue about search engine optimization, so I will be riding this small win for at least a month.
3. Join a blogging community
If I wasn’t part of a larger blogging group or community, I would definitely feel very alone in this journey.
I’ve been a member of the subreddits r/blogging and r/juststart since my blog launched. These two subreddits are immensely helpful.
There are so many items that I wouldn’t even know to search or look for, so I tend to just read posts and comments in these communities and I learn so much.
I’ve heard a lot of great things about Facebook blogging communities but I’m not on Facebook, so I haven’t had a chance to check them out.
Also, if you sign up for a blogging course, you’ll probably get an opportunity to join a community that way as well.
4. Write an article or two for you
When you start blogging, everything is SEO this or SEO that. And keyword research. I started a blog because I enjoy writing and, yes, it would be nice to make some passive income on the side.
It just so happens that the stuff I want to write about is very saturated on the internet. I’ve written many articles on toddler parenting but I find that I need to write about less popular toddler parenting subjects to even rank on Google.
Here’s the bottom line. If you’re getting bogged down by SEO and keywords and feel like you’re about to quit your blog, write an article or two for you. Write about whatever you want and reignite the passion for your blog.
This isn’t great SEO advice but it might just be the motivation you need to keep creating content.
5. Learn at least one social media platform
This past month I really dug my heels into my Pinterest business account and am actually starting to get some new users and pageviews to Native Mommy Lawyer.
Pinterest can be a lot of work without an automated scheduler but it’s kind of fun to learn the ins and outs of a new social media platform. If you feel like you’re about to quit your blog, sharing on a new platform might give you some motivation to keep going.
The other thing I like about Pinterest is there are a ton of other mommy bloggers. It’s pretty cool to see what other mommy bloggers are doing with their sites and how they’re marketing on Pinterest.
Pinterest can definitely be a little community for motivation as well.
6. Spend at least 5 minutes on your blog every day
This advice is probably one of the best tips I’ve received from my blogging community.
We live in a fast-paced world, with jobs, families, and a million things to do. Personally, I don’t have hours and hours of free time to spend blogging. I’m juggling work, a toddler, a household, and everything in between.
It helps me to do something related to my blog every.single.day. It could be as small as logging onto WordPress and updating my plugins. Or going onto Pinterest and following a few people.
Sometimes I will dedicate 15 minutes to writing a few hundred words. Often, fifteen minutes pass, the ideas start churning, and, voila, I have a first draft.
The idea behind spending 5 minutes every day on your blog is to remind yourself that you have a blog. Not that you would forget but it could slowly fade away if you’re not paying attention to it every day.
7. What are your takeaways?
If I were to quit blogging today, what would I be taking away from this experience? On the flipside, what else would I learn if I spent another month blogging?
I have been so frustrated with the technical aspect of blogging a few times that I almost quit. (It really stinks when your site is down and you have no clue why.)
After publishing 40 articles, my writing skills have improved considerably. If I were to quit today, I would be a much better writer than I was before blogging for three months. I am more knowledgeable about SEO practices, maintaining a WordPress site, hosting, plug-ins, and much more.
But if I spent another month writing and learning more about the technical aspects of blogging, where would I be then?
By the way, if you’re interested in a hosting provider with amazing customer service, I have been using Namecheap since I launched my blog. Click the link below to get 50% off 2 years of shared hosting.
50% off 2 years of Shared Hosting!8. Trust and believe
The scariest thing about the early months of blogging is that you don’t know if you will succeed or not. There is no instant gratification or easy reward.
For me, I have to trust and believe that I’m doing the right thing and that I’m on the right path. It’s about having that alignment with my goals and vision.
It also helps to remind myself of my ultimate mission. Again, it would be nice to have passive income but it would be great to help people and satisfy user intent with Native Mommy Lawyer.
Final thoughts on motivation and blogging for three months
I hope this article inspired you enough to keep chugging along in the blogging world. Writing this definitely gave me some inspiration and motivation to keep going.
If you’ve been blogging for three months or less, what are some tips that keep you motivated?