How to Survive Your First Six Months of Blogging

flickr image by wili_hybrid

I started blogging exactly six months ago on October 1st, 2008. And let me be honest: the time did not fly by! Those six months were some of the most challenging times I’ve ever endured and I’m glad it’s over. Now that I’m “out of the cave,” I feel more confident than ever about my blogging future. But enough about me…

The reason why the first six months are hard for any serious blogger is because it’s time you spend mostly with yourself as a newbie. You are essentially learning how to articulate your ideas into coherent blog posts, then realizing very few people will read them.

You also have to learn the ropes of blogging. This involves a bunch of reading, information filtering, theme and plug-in searching and staying on top of what other bloggers are saying. If you’re not careful, this stage can kill you!

The early stages of blogging are frustrating and lonely, but very important to your progress. Think of those first six months as a naturally-occurring process–like growing from a newborn to a young adult, with each month representing about three years of growth. You start from crawling and babbling to walking and talking to thinking your own ideas to finally establishing your identity in the world.

Accept Yourself

Accepting yourself is by far the most challenging part about blogging. When you start out, the first thing you’ll likely feel is a sense of inferiority to the more experienced–call them elite–bloggers. It feels as if they’re perched high on the sunny mountain top while you’re somewhere deep in the shadows of the valley.

When you first start writing, your posts may feel awkward and choppy to you. Many times you’ll feel like you’re just repeating what everyone else is saying. That’s perfectly okay. Remember–you’re learning how to walk here! If you just keep writing, your ideas will start to flow.

Feeling inferior will cause you to either hide behind other bloggers’ ideas by blindly supporting them (aka the perpetual happy commenter) or completely reject everything about them. Likely you’ll do both. 

Rejecting the ideas of other bloggers is actually healthy, at least at first. This indicates you believe in your ideas and–while you haven’t yet fully developed them–you have faith in their truth and their value. Think of this as your rebellious teenage years — when you resisted the rules and wisdom of adults in order to gain an understanding of yourself and your relation to others.

When you do finally accept yourself as different and original among other bloggers, you no longer have to reject them. You can now join them as an intellectual equal — you with your ideas and they with theirs. It’s a marvellous and liberating feeling. At this point your writing will start to become stronger and more comfortable to you.

While other bloggers will still have more authority, followers and money than you, you can at least claim true ownership to your ideas. This sense of personal authenticity sets the stage for your upward progress. And it’s much better than being just an ordinary fan.

I went through this stage big time with Brian Clark’s Copyblogger. We both focus on writing and web content. I constantly measured everything I did against what he did and tried my best to be different. It felt like I was up against a giant.

After time, I finally found the difference: Brian focuses on copywriting I focus on editorial strategy. Neither of us is more dominant than the other — we’re complementary. So now I owe Brian some thanks for providing me with the resistance to form my own ideas (mahalo (thanks) Brian if you’re reading this).

If you want to read more about accepting yourself, I write some more about it in this post. 

Learn to Balance Thought and Action

Another huge skill you’ll need to learn as a newbie blogger is the ability balance thought and action. All this means is you must take action upon whatever it is you’re thinking or learning about. 

It won’t be easy, due to content gluttony, which is as harmful to your productivity as food gluttony is to your body. I’ve said before there is far too much content to consume, even really helpful content. You simply cannot grow by spending your entire time learning about something and then not doing it.

For example, if you want to learn how to blog, do just that and no more (at least for now). Find a few trusted resources and stick with them. There’s no need to read every article and blog post on everything ever written on how to blog. (By the way — if you’re willing to pay, Blog Mastermind is an excellent and affordable blog mentoring program).

I recommend a 2:1 ratio of learning to action for the first three months of blogging. After three months, ease it down to a 1:1 ratio, so you end up putting in equal amounts of learning to action. As you mature beyond six months the ratio will naturally start to favor action to learning (but never stop learning!).

Carry A Notebook

Your notebook will be your most reliable and trusted method of catching your ideas before they slip away. Get one and carry it with you everywhere and use it. End of story.

Be An Editor

I consider myself an editor before a writer (and marketer) and you should, too. Editors not only write, but they ensure the overall quality and effectiveness of their publication. So the first step is to treat your blog as a publication — a dynamic collection of useful ideas rather than a linear series of posts and articles. 

In his book On Writing, Stephen King tells us to write first with the door closed and second with the door open. This means your first draft is where you let it all out without caring who reads it. The second draft–the edit–is when you refine your writing for your audience.

Confession: During my first six months, I suffered from obsessively editing while writing my first draft. Writing a single paragraph sometimes took me hours and a post would take a week! I did not produce much and my morale went down. Lesson: Don’t do this!

In blogging, the time between first and final drafts need not be long. Ideally you should write a draft and come back to it the next day. The time away (including sleep) will refresh your perspective and help you tighten your content.

If you’re a beginning editor, just focus on copy editing — fixing spelling errors, syntax and sentence structure. The best English grammar guide in the universe is of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Grab yourself a copy now.

When you copy edit, your writing will become clean and smooth and people will notice it. Once you become a good copy editor, you can then move up the ranks to Editor-in-Chief of your blog. I won’t get into the details of that just yet, but let’s just say top ranking editors carry a lot of power in the world.

Embrace Your Readers

Your readers are the lifeline to your sanity and success. They are the people who will become your community and support you as you grow and thrive. They will become your customers and most passionate spokespeople.

The more energy you put into nurturing your readers, the more they will put into nurturing you.

When you start blogging, you might feel crazy writing post after post with not so much as a single pageview, let alone a comment. But know this–not being heard is no different than when you were learning how to speak and your parents couldn’t understand what you were trying to say. Eventually they heard and understood you, right?

I guarantee after consistent posting, you will start to attract comments. I wrote 13 posts before my first comment. The comments will be fleeting and sparse, but will they will nevertheless energize you because someone is actually listening!

And here’s what you do: respond to every one of them. Talk to your commenters and engage with their ideas. Let them know you’re listening to them, too. Blogging is a two way conversation. As the great Gary Vaynerchuk says, your community starts at 1.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that like anything in life — great success requires great risk. Your willingness to endure difficulty means you are not someone who settles for the easy or even the middle path.

The first six months are usually harsh and tough, but with the right mindset, discipline and faith, you can do it! Aloha.