My Blogging Experience : What I learned in 8 Months

Blogging is all about experiencing and learning from your own mistakes. This article is dedicated to me and my experience with Blogging. I wrote an article 2 Months ago named ” My 6 Months Blogging Experience “. These two months changes my life completely. During these two months I got more earnings, got some new websites and tested some SEO practices. Due to setting up my new blogs I am not much active here since a month. And I think now I shouldn’t be late to write about my experience. Hope my blogging experience will help you to learn more about Blogging.

My Blogging Experience

Make Money Blogging isn’t so easy :- That’s true thing and I experienced it during my 8 months of Blogging. In the starting, you can’t earn more. There is a simple Funda ” No Traffic= No Earnings “. So why to concentrate on Advertisements when you are not having enough visitors to get clicks/ sales. Blogging needs dedication, innovation and potential. You can’t earn via Blogging if you aren’t having dedication to your blog, innovative post ideas and potential to continue work without getting paid.
In the first 6 Months of my blogging journey, I didn’t earned even a single penny. But in these last two months I got enough money for my future projects. So its all about waiting for the wine to get old. In the starting months of Blogging, just target to get more and more traffic instead of filling the Ad spaces with annoying blocks. Seeing increasing visitors always gave me better feelings then getting money. I think my concept is cleared.

Never Underestimate Yourself :- No matter that you haven’t got even a single penny from Blogging but never underestimate yourself while making a deal. I did that mistake and lost a big amount of money in the starting. If you are getting a paid post, sponsored review or Advertising request, then don’t forget to discuss about the price with some Pro Bloggers. In the starting I published nearly 6-7 Paid posts for the price of $40.
Then I asked my friend Kulwant Nagi, that how much he charges for paid posts. And I was shocked to know that I could get $40 per post easily. Then I felt that how much fool I am. I could get better prices If I had contacted any of pro blogger to ask the standard paid posts prices before making a deal.

Deal is Deal And Always Should be Final :- If you are making a deal about anything like selling a website, Advertising or SEO services etc. Its always vital to think deeply before making the deal final. And if you made the deal and then refused, you are still a kid. Always think about the pros and cons, Then take the final decision. And once the deal is finalized, never refuse from your words.

Recently an incident happened with me that made me to think about my behavior. One of my domain was blocked by Adsense, means no Ads can’t be shown on that Domain. But that blog was getting daily 3K+ Unique Visitors ( Indian Traffic ). So I thought to sell it and contacted a dealer. He analyzed everything for 4-5 days and then our deal was final. He deposited the money in my bank account and I gave all the logins to him. But still I was having access to the domain. Then some of my friends told that I sold it for a cheap price and so I started thinking like a immature blogger. I took my domain back and offered to send the money back to him. But then he gave me some lessons about dealing and I was back to normal. Then I transferred the domain completely and all that ended with a “Sorry” from my side.

Never Rely on Adsense :- It was my biggest mistake to take Google Adsense as the main earning resource. However its the best one in the starting. But you can’ rely on it for lifetime. Google may ban your adsense account for even a very small mistake. So its like taking a risk. Always make a combination of earning resources. Try to sale the products related to your website content.

Before these 2 months ( Jan/Feb 2013 ) my earnings sources sequence was Adsense>>Paid Posts>>Affiliates. But now my best performing sources are Paid Posts>>Affiliates>>Adsense. I am happy to see that I am not Blogging on the mercy of Google Adsense who could hang me anytime.

Does backlinks still gives Quick SERP Rankings ?

Analyzing the current working SEO practices was the one of my major project during the last 2 months. And the results shocked me. For this project I took my 3 blogs for testing purpose. All these blogs were in same niche. An good thing about this niche is that bloggers of this niche doesn’t do SEO and its all about a specific country. So that I choose the following same niche blogs for my project due to less SEO competition.

1. A 6 Months Old Blog having more then 2K Articles indexed in Google but none was SEO optimized. None of the article was having image in it and there wasn’t much than 80 words per article. However this blog was having a lot of blog comments backlinks targeting to the homepage.

2. It was a 2 Months old blog having 40 pages indexed. It wasn’t having the SEO optimized content too. It was having nearly 20 Comments targeted to the main domain.

3. This one was the newest one ( Only 1 Months old ). It was having some keywords in its domain but wasn’t Exact Matching Domain ( EMD ). Nearly 45 pages got indexed withing the month and every single article was perfectly optimized with On Page SEO practices. For its every article, I made 1 dofollow backlink ( Using my own blog network ) and 7-8 Comments ( Using Comment Luv and Keyword Luv Blogs ). And create nearly 15 dofollow backlinks targeting to the homepage.

Result :- I was pretty sure that backlinks will work and SEO optimized blog will perform better. But the first blog performed the better than the 2 months old blog and finally the last one is still last. From these results I was able to get current major SERP ranking elements. According to my Experience to rank better in the Google search , your blog need following things at that time :-

1. Age :- Yes, its a major factor. And I have seen its effect on various blogs.

2. Indexed Content :- If your blog is having a lot of content indexed, then it will surely perform good in SERP.

3. Backlinks :- I created backlinks to the article pages of new domain with various keywords as Anchor Texts. But they didn’t worked because blog wasn’t having enough content indexed and the age to show that back links are natural.

Some SEO Myths got Cleared

During these months some of the SEO Myths got cleared. You shouldn’t care about Following SEO Myths :-
1. Page Rank : Yes, It won’t give you higher rankings. If you are having a High PR blog then its good to get more Advertisers but HIGH PR doesn’t means Higher rankings in search engine.
2. BreadCrumbs :- Everyone keep saying that Breadcrumbs are SEO friendly. But when I came to know about the experience of some bloggers with breadcrumbs navigation, Then I left using them. Breadcrumbs are not SEO friendly at all.
3. Backlink Relevancy :- Nearly 90% webmaster says that it matters but I haven’t seen its effect on my backlinks. I think its a Myth too and needs some modifications. Getting backlinks from Foreign language sites, p*rn sites etc. may be taken as negative SEO but I think getting backlinks from a different niche site doesn’t harms.

Final Words

During these 8 Months I have experienced a lot about Blogging. I will suggest every newbie Bloggers to do the following things :

1. Taking some tips and suggestions from Pro Bloggers by using any Social Media Site to contact them.
2. Follow the top blogs of your niche and analyze their promotion, writing and SEO techniques.
3. Never accept a SEO fact with blind eyes. Because SEO facts gets retired with the changes in the Algorithms of Search Engines. Get some extra blogs and test the SEO techniques on them before using on your main blog.
4. Always try something innovative if you want to exist in this rapidly increasing blogosphere.
5. Don’t concentrate on SEO/Backlinks in the starting days of your blog. Keep making some natural backlinks for the homepage. Write as much as you can and after 1-2 months start making backlinks for your articles.

That’s all what I have experienced till now. Hope this post will help someone who is seeking to start a blog or making some mistakes as I did. I would like to know about your blogging experience and the mistakes you made.