My Blogging Journey: 18 Valuable Tips for New Bloggers

Are you thinking of starting a blog? Great, you’re in the right place. In this article, I’m going to share with you my blogging journey.

If you’re new to the blogging world, welcome. This article is perfectly geared toward blogging for new bloggers. It will hopefully give you an insight into what to expect in the first year of blogging. 

There is so much information online about starting a new blog but what no one told me about were the unexpected things you learn along the way, which now looking back seem blindingly obvious.

I talk about 18 tips for new bloggers, things that I found out the hard way and wish someone had told me at the start of my blogging journey. Let’s go!

What I’ve Learnt So Far on My Blogging Journey

It doesn’t matter if you want to be a hobby blogger or a pro blogger, or the topic you want to write about. If you’re new to blogging, there will be something in this article to help you take those first steps.

18 Things No One Told Me Before Starting a Blog

In this section, I’ll share 18 valuable tips to start blogging – providing essential guidance for beginners entering the world of online content creation. 

You’ll find my personal insights on how I started my blog, offering real-life experiences and learnings to inspire your own blogging journey.

1. Technical Jargon

There is a fair amount of technical jargon and geek stuff to get your head around.

I’m quite happy to admit I’m an absolute technophobe. Before I started blogging, if you asked me what a ‘cookie’ was, I would probably have given you a blank stare and just replied ‘I don’t know, but I know I love white chocolate ones’. 

Things like SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), DA (Domain Authority) and a ton of other technical jargon will all impact your blog in some shape or form. To make it even harder, most of it comes in the form of an acronym. Even though I’ve been blogging for a while now, I’m still finding new terminology, I’ve only just touched the mere tip of these whopping icebergs.

I’m certainly more WTF rather than LMAO with all the technical jargon. 

2. Blogging Isn’t Free

You probably WILL have to invest a little bit of money into your blog.

So, yes, there are free web-building sites out there, but if you starting your blogging journey with the intention one day to monetise your site, then it’s better to start straight away with a WordPress.org site. Basically, this will give you more control over your blog in the long run.

Your two initial expenses will be a reliable hosting provider such as Lyrical Host, as well as registering a domain name. 

As you get more involved, you’ll probably want to invest in various themes, widgets, courses, and a designer or developer, but these aren’t essential at first. 

Two invaluable tools that have been worth the investment since I started blogging are KeySearch which takes out a lot of the hard work of SEO research as it tells you which keywords are best to target your blog posts on

Hint; if you want to try and rank on page 1 search in Google, then you will NEED KeySearch.

It can take up to 6 months for a new blogger to rank (if at all!) Basically, SEO is a waiting game. However, using Keysearch properly will give you the best chance for Google to see you. 

3. Patience is Key

It takes A LOT longer than I initially thought it would take to do ANYTHING!

We’re talking glacial speed here, by that I mean if you plan for a task to take 10 minutes, you can bet that it will take more than double, triple or quadruple that time.

I’ve lost count of the hours I’ve pumped into my blog. Especially if you are self-teaching yourself everything from scratch. It can be frustrating and time-consuming but also incredibly rewarding when you actually get it right.

4. Your Photography Skills Will Improve – Tenfold!

My photography style has changed, big time, and for the better. Looking back at any picture I took when I first started travelling back in 2013 just makes me cringe. What the heck was I thinking?

Thankfully you don’t need an expensive camera to start taking great photos, most likely your phone does a pretty good job, even better there are some great little compact cameras out there. 

I’m actually obsessed with the Panasonic Lumix range, I’ve had a few of them over the years.  Mostly I use my phone, purely out of convenience, but I still love my ancient little compact – a  Panasonic Tz80 – yeah it’s not the most modern camera, but it’s for web, images are shown at 72dpi, it still does the job.

I’m also a massive fan of photo editing software; Lightroom and Photoshop, that come as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan. if that’s too expensive then Luminar by Skylum is a cheaper alternative.

Canva is also a useful tool for making things like Pinterest pins quickly.

Since taking the plunge into travel blogging my photography style has changed so much. It’s daunting knowing where to start, but there are some great eBooks and eCourses as well as templates and presets out there. 

5. Don’t Expect to Make Big Bucks Early On

It’s always the pipe dream to be able to make enough money from your blog to live off. Trust me, that’s my goal and sometimes it seems unobtainable. 

If making money quickly is your sole goal for starting a blog, you’re in the wrong career. The blogging journey isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme.

That said, blogging can be lucrative if you put in the effort. First and foremost, you need to be passionate about what you are blogging about, as you will be putting in hours of unpaid work.

There are people out there who claim to make big money right away. It might well have been possible for the fortunate few, even so, like anything quick-fix, it’s not sustainable. 

Like with everything in life, consistent hard work and dedication do pay off.  

6. You Can Find Answers to Everything Online

Everything you have a question about can be found online.

I’ve lost count of how many YouTube videos, forums, Q&A threads, and Facebook chats, I’ve used to find out how to do stuff. 

This blog is built using WordPress and is hosted by Lyrical, who has a pretty awesome support team and has sorted out a ton of techy problems for me.

WordPress also has some pretty comprehensive forums with a super active community to answer everything. There’s also the site WPBeginner, with its comprehensive guides. 

Frankly, if it’s not on this website site then it’s probably not worth knowing about.

7. Find Communities in Facebook Groups

I love a good meme or video of cats doing silly things, Facebook is ace at this. However, delve a little deeper and with a little bit of research, you’ll find a whole tribe of like-minded individuals from all over the globe there. 

For the new blogger (or at any stage in your blogging journey) Facebook Group pages are a gold mine of information, a little group of like-minded people just like you. 

Facebook Groups have been invaluable for finding answers to problems, getting handy hints and advice, inspiration and encouragement when it all goes tits up.

Try it, go do a search on Facebook now to see how many amazing groups there are.

8. Find Your Niche

So my blog is about travel, that’s a given. But ‘Travel’ it’s a massive genre, so on my blog, I’ve honed it down to what excites me the most when I’m away travelling, which is wildlife, temples and adventure sports.

Other niches could be luxury, family, cruises, beaches, fashion, foodie, city breaks, country-specific, hiking, camping, and road-tripping – there are so many possibilities.

The same goes for any genre of blogging. So if you are starting a blog on Food/ Fitness/ DIY /*insert another genre here*, try to focus on something more specific.

9. Social Media Can Be Likened to Spinning Plates

Before I delved into the deep dark world of blogging, I didn’t even have a Twitter or Instagram account and the only thing I used Facebook for was to share silly cat memes.

Each social media platform has its own set of guidelines as to how to optimise it for getting you the most number of click-throughs to your site. Keeping on top of them all can be a real balancing act.

In the early stages of your Blogging journey, it’s difficult to balance them all. So just choose one or maybe two to focus on at the start. In fact, more recently, I’ve abandoned most of them – the effort put into maintaining them never correlates to traffic to my site, which for me, is more important. 

Alternatively, you could check out one of the many social media management tools to take some of the workload off of balancing multiple social media accounts.

10. Domain Authority (DA) Takes a Long Time to Build

‘Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages’, (add a link to Moz site)

When you first hit ‘launch’, every blog is given a DA of 1. There is a whole range of factors that make this number grow (100 is the maximum DA a website can get).

You’ll find some people get really hung up on their DA score, whereas a better indication of how successful your blog is, is the number of visitors and views. 

Just remember that your DA doesn’t define you or your blog, just use it as an indicator. There are lots of things outside of your control, including the dreaded algorithm updates, that will affect it.

As long as you keep posting good quality content, using keyword research and pushing your blog out on social media platforms, your blog will continue to grow along with your DA.

11. Traffic Doesn’t Just Magically Appear

..and it’s SOOOO frustrating.

Especially after you’ve used Keysearch to find a great keyword then slaved over a great article, put in a ton of stunning photos, optimised the article to give it the best SEO chance and hit publish. Except for your friends and family, the numbers still aren’t rolling in. Why is no one else finding it?

Consistent traffic to your blog through search engines takes a long time to build. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a long-term game plan. 

Each post should be optimised for search engines, but it takes time to rank. You can use social media to give your new blog a much-needed injection of traffic, but consistent high traffic is a long-term goal, not overnight!

To build traffic in the early days you need to be doing a decent mixture of self-promoting, sharing on social media, networking, link swapping and even being in the right place at the right time. 

12. The Blogging World Does Have Some Very Artificial People

Don’t get me wrong, there are a ton of amazingly awesome bloggers out there too and thankfully these outnumber the fakes. Just be aware that the blogging world, just like any other profession, has its fair share of people willing to walk over others.

Some fellow bloggers will be nice upfront, will act as if they have your best intentions at heart, and want you to support their product/social media/campaign and yet after being used as a stepping stone don’t do the same in return. Others will come across as friendly until they realise you are actually of no use to them. And others simply claim to be people they just aren’t.

You’ll learn to suss these ‘types’ out fairly early on. Ignore them and move on to the hundreds of awesomely supportive people who will be supportive of you, wherever you are in your blogging journey.

13. Attend Blogging and Networking Events

One way of meeting other awesome bloggers is to attend a blogger event. There are tons of incredibly inspirational people out there and it’s nice to be able to chat with people who just ‘get-it’.

I’ve attended a few blogger events and after each one, I’m left buzzing with ideas and have a newfound motivation to implement them all as well as a ton of people I’ve connected with.

One of my favourite events is WTM (World Travel Market). It’s a massive multiple-day exhibition-style event and an absolute eye-opener into the Travel Industry. It’s not specifically aimed at bloggers; however, a lot of content creators do attend. 

Two things this event is great for; inspiration and networking. 

14. You Will Never Be 100% Happy With Your Site

I’m a Virgo through and through, an absolute perfectionist, well, that’s my excuse anyway. It’s totally normal and just part of the blogging journey process to never be 100% happy.

There will ALWAYS be something you want to improve, tweak, add or alter on your blog. And quite rightly so, this is your passion, your metaphorical baby. So it’s natural to want it to be perfect. 

I’ve seen so many typos and mistakes (like links not working, or pages that don’t load) even from the pro bloggers, so cut yourself some slack. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

15. You Will Spend a Lot of Time Procrastinating

To-do lists will be your favourite thing.

I’m a serial list writer and champion procrastinator – like honestly, list writing is one of my favourite things to do. I have little to-do lists everywhere. I even have a list of lists to tackle. Basically, when you start the blogging journey, you’ll have a constant string of things that need attention. You’ll feel like your work is never done.

I’ve spent so much time pondering and thinking about how to do stuff when in reality I just need to suck it up, knuckle down and get stuff done. I try to catch myself procrastinating and set myself mini-goals and time constraints as well as prioritising what’s actually worthwhile doing or not.

16. Don’t Compare Your Blogging Journey to Anyone Else’s

This is one that I constantly have to keep telling myself. It’s human nature to compare, but my blogging journey isn’t the same as anyone else’s. So why would I be at the same stage as them? 

It’s good to be aware of what other people are doing and how they do it. It’s also good to look at what tactics work well for them as well as what things they don’t so well. Repeat after me, ‘I’m in competition with no one but myself’. 

17. Don’t Underestimate the Little Blog Wins

Blogging is hard work and incredibly competitive so don’t underestimate and brush off even the tiniest bit of success. Make a fuss or even just a little happy dance over the smallest of blog wins.

Not all ‘wins’ have to be in the form of money. I get super excited when I get a lovely and genuine comment from an absolute stranger who’s stumbled on and read my post or if a social media post goes viral.

18. There Is Enough Room for Everyone

As I said in the previous point, blogging is incredibly competitive. I don’t even feel like a small fish in a big pond, it’s more like tiny plankton in a very big ocean. 

It does feel like all the big guns are getting all the best gigs and that seeing that type of success for myself is light-years away. However, everyone starts somewhere and there are loads of opportunities to get your foot in the door. 

I’ve had some great success working with smaller companies in my home town, which is a great way of getting your foot in the door. 

In turn, this will allow you to build a relationship between you and the company. If all you’re after is freebies, then you’re blogging for the wrong reasons and setting yourself up to fail. It’s a two-way thing, think of it as a partnership more than anything else. 

My Favourite Tools and Blogging Resources

I’ve just bombarded you with a ton of information in this article, no doubt you’re feeling brain-overloaded right now. 

So to summarise, here is a list of my favourite tools and blogging resources that I’ve used from the start of my blogging journey and still using now.

• My website is built on WordPress with Lyrical as a host. The great thing about using WordPress with Lyrical is that they do all the technical stuff such as installing WordPress for you along with a ton of other stuff to make your blogging journey as simple as possible.

• For SEO optimisation, I swear by KeySearch – check out their free trial and see how it revolutionises your keyword game, let me know what you think.

• Because I’m lazy I use social media schedulers. I switch these up depending on the platform, and I’ve experimented with so many to find the one that works best for me. 

• To buy your domain name,  NameCheap has the best prices.

• For graphics-based stuff, I’m use a mix of Canva, Photoshop and Lightroom and Luminar (whch is pretty much a cheaper Lightroom alternative). However, I get it  –  these are expensive and can be challenging to master. If the Adobe suite is too complicated, then I highly recommend Canva.

Tips for New Bloggers

For aspiring bloggers, starting a new blog can be both exciting and challenging. In this section, I’ll provide blogging tips for new bloggers to kickstart your blog journey successfully.

• Find Your Niche: Identify a specific topic or area of interest that you are passionate about and knowledgeable about. 

• Create High-Quality Content: Focus on producing well-researched, informative, and engaging content. Quality content will keep your readers coming back for more and help you build a loyal audience.

• Be Consistent: Set a regular posting schedule and stick to it. Whether it’s daily, weekly, or bi-weekly, consistency will help you establish a reliable presence in the blogging world. Google loves fresh content.

• Utilize Social Media: Leverage the power of social media to promote your blog and connect with your audience. 

• Engage with Your Audience: Interact with your readers by responding to comments, emails, and social media messages. 

Blogging for New Bloggers – FAQs

Congratulations on picking up some new blogger tips and tricks! I’m excited to share even more tips to start blogging and answers to commonly asked questions that can truly help you on this fantastic blogging adventure.

Thinking About Starting a Blog?

If you’re thinking about starting a blog, my opinion is just go for it! 

You could read dozens of articles about blogging for new bloggers, but the real learning happens when you start doing it. Your first blog probably will be awful – like the first time you do anything – just get started and worry about honing your skills later. 

By following these tips for new bloggers and of course, some dedication, you can create an exciting and fulfilling blog journey.

Happy blogging!

Looking for more blogging resources? read more inspirational articles here…

• Is Travel Blogging Dead? If You Think ‘Yes’, Then Think Again
• Best Digital Nomad Packing List
• What it Takes to Create a Professional Blog
• How To Work And Travel At The Same Time