My first month of blogging – expectations vs. reality

When I first began my website, http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com, my 3 visitors were Googlebot, my mom, and my girlfriend. I loved writing and I had an obsession with what everyone was doing at work. It led me to think: Confessions of the Professions. I wrote a lot of articles, solicited a lot, and even paid a lot of people on Fiverr to write articles. After that first year, which was probably the most exciting and depressing at the same time.

I can remember getting excited when I received 30 visitors in one day. Over 4 years later, the website is receiving well over 30,000 visitors a month from all over the world, makes money in ads (not enough for me to quit my day job, but it does pay for the server), and I have written hundreds of articles already, with hundreds waiting to be published, and my inbox? Literally dozens of unique articles sent to me each month with requests from individuals, freelancers, marketers, and companies all wanting to have their publication on the site. There is normally a 2-3 week waiting list just for me to publish an article.

So what I have learned is... websites mature as do you depending on your approach to your own blog/website. It can be your greatest passion or just a seldom side hobby. It seems, the more you love it, the more your visitors love it, and the more they are the ones who actually keep it going, keep coming back, keep commenting, keep sharing with their following, and ultimately, they are the ones who keep YOU motivated to maintain your blog.

I have so many that rely on me that I actually would hate to let them down, so I do take the website as serious as a business, and I moved the server to an optimized VPS, daily scheduled backups, and the images are all stored on a CDN, just to ensure the site is mostly safe from going down and prevention of any (most) data loss.

The best advice one can give, just as you did: Just keep going.

Just keep writing. Just keep coming up with clever ideas and topics to write about. You can literally write about anything, though it is always best to focus on the topics you know best. In doing so, you won't come to hate your blog in a few months and you'll learn how to write and publish more than just one article a week.

Hope your blog continues to rise and see growth! Just keep writing! ;)