I’ve Been Blogging For A Week

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And it felt like I got a new hobby to play with, even though I don’t have a niche.

But I did spent some time last week before and after work searching on Google, Reddit, WordPress itself, and other sites for tips on being successful while blogging. I have gotten some valuable tips along the way, and I will like to share what I have learned and experienced

You don’t really need a niche: Most bloggers have a niche and are using that to make money for their knowledge, but if you don’t have a specific niche, that’s fine too. I personally don’t have a specific niche and have a variety of topics to write about. Considering my blog is a week old, I’m actually okay with it. Even if you want to make money off your blog, you might not need a niche to do it. I would say, just be knowledgeable on the various topics you want to write about. So far, I have already written about Eurovison, anti-MLM, Rocketbook, and Bingo… all vastly different topics, and that’s not even scratching the surface

SEO: I’m still learning Search Engine Optimization, but what it does is that you can create backlinks for your site, curate relevant keywords to your topic at hand, and gain more visibility to Google and other search engines. I was told this is important for marketing, so I will be focusing on this behind the scenes a little bit more.

Theme: If you haven’t read my blog post So I’m New To WordPress, I’ll leave a link. On that post, I wrote about my struggles to get the theme I wanted plus the color scheme that not only I like, but it also doesn’t strain the readers’ eyes. I went through three themes before I decided on the one you’re seeing now, mainly because I wanted to use excerpts on the front page. If you are someone still strugging with a theme, I can tell you this… find the one that you like, but also one that helps the reader see your posts clearly.

Keyword Researching is definitely a thing: So I had to look this up because I wasn’t really sure where they were going with this, but I did find a website where you type in your keyword and it’ll show you how it would perform as well as other keywords you could use. That’s what I did with my Bingo Blitz post. This is also part of the SEO, but basically, the best thing to do is to use the low frequent tags to gain traffic, and then you can move up from there.

Sharing your posts also help: I have mine set to share automatically on Twitter and LinkedIn, but you can also plug your blog on other social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. Now I haven’t shared on Instagram yet, but then again, I don’t really use social media a lot. I also found out that you can share your blog on Quora and Pinterest and you may get more traffic, so I will be trying that out too, since I have accounts on both.

Posting as often as you possibly can: This was a big one for me because I thought initally that you have to post, let’s say, 5 times a day, but fellow WP blogger Mac’s Opinion gave me a great recommendation — post daily. Some bloggers can get by with posting 2 to 3 times a week, sometimes 4, but I feel like, because I’m starting out, I want to post daily. Of course, because of my job, I can’t physically post daily, so instead, I use the schedule option so that each post I make, I set it to 12pm EDT every day to keep up with my posting schedule. If you want to try that, make a post, and then after you’re done, when you click Publish, go to the arrow on the ‘Publish’ tab (just below visibility) and you can schedule your post there. This is also great for drafting purposes when you can make changes to your posts before it goes live.

Finally, just be yourself: With all these tips in mind, and life in general, it’s always important to be yourself. You don’t have to copy every single thing a successful blogger does, but you can always put yourself out there for other bloggers to read your posts. I have struggled to be myself nearly all my life, but I can tell you, it’s rewarding once you let go of things that are holding you back. Blogging is a great avenue to share tips, tricks, and your opinions on various topics, and you might find an audience for it.

These are all the tips I was able to get from my research last week. Do you know any others? Drop them below in the comments section. If you’ve been coming back to this blog or if you are a new visitor, thank you so much for reading.

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So I’m new to WordPress…

Photo by Moose Photos on Pexels.com
NEW: You can listen to this blog post here

And I wanted to start a blog here to share my views as well as a focusing mechanism, if you will, because for the last 20 years, since middle school, I have had a hard time focusing on even the basic stuff. I would not plan my days accordingly and therefore, go hours and even days without doing what I was supposed to do.

In other words, I was winging it.

But even though it’s a problem that is never fully going away, I wanted to find ways to mitigate it. I usually use Google Keep, One Note, and my Rocketbook notebooks (I have two and planning on buying a third) to keep me company while I sort out my days.

I know it’s not as exciting as actually planning the day the night before, but for me, it helps. I will share those apps in a later post.

For now, I will drop this equation here, and I’ll show you the steps to get the answer at the end of this post: -3(5x+9)=18

For this post, I spent the day fixing the template. I had a vastly different template when I started this blog Sunday night and I spent all of Monday fixing it and playing with it. I ended up hating my first template and switched to the second. The second one was alright — I was able to customize it — but I was still missing something. I had three posts (this is my 4th), and they weren’t showing up the way that I liked. I wanted to show just the excerpts of these posts, but the whole posts were being shown, so I really searched for a free WordPress template that shows excerpts and it’s easy to read while showing off my favorite color scheme.

Enter the one you’re looking at now.

So, yeah, it’s trial and error. If you’re new to WordPress like me, just play around with the templates, create your posts, and see where it goes from there. I was able to add the sidebar widgets that came with it, so I have an about me, a search function, categories, and tags on the right-hand side of this blog. I’m even trying out the in-house ad function because eventually, I want to make money off this. Right now, it’s a hobby of mine. I know I said in my first post that I am a math wiz, but I also like to write, so this is a perfect outlet for me to be creative (and be more creative than I really am).

Despite my forgetfulness, I was able to get by alright in my job. I can learn things academically without a problem, but when it comes to real-life stuff, my brain goes kaput. If you’re having the same issue, welcome. I am not a professional doctor, so I urge you to go to one if it’s part of a bigger health problem you might be dealing with. If you are reading this, thank you for stopping by.

And now, let’s revisit the equation I dropped earlier: -3(5x+9)=18. We are looking at an equation that requires distribution and solving for x

First — distribute the -3 to the inside parenthesis. Remember that multiplying a positive by a negative (and vice versa) will give you a negative: -15x-27=18

Second — add 27 to both sides. The + and – 27 will cancel out and you’ll be left with -15x=45

Finally — divide both sides by -15. Just like multiplication, the positive/negative signage applies to division. Dividing a positive by a negative (and vice versa) will give you a negative: x=-3

And if you want to check to make sure it’s correct, just plug in the -3 and solve. Remember the PEMDAS rule

-3(5(-3)+9)=18

-3(-15+9)=18

-3(-6)=18

18=18

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