I’ve been blogging for almost a year now. I’m sure this isn’t the first article that I’ve begun with that sentence, but it’s the truth. I’ve spent the last year of my life posting into the ether. I started on Medium, without my own domain name. I wrote a bit for four or five months and saw little to no traction. This was to be expected. I read an article about blogging and knew that it normally takes about 3 years for blogs to succeed. That being said I am a writer, and I know I can do well at it with time. So I put in the time. I wrote, and I wrote some more. My first articles were pretty mediocre. They were generic and designed to answer simple questions from Google. I was using the Arefs keyword research tool while brainstorming articles. I wrote into the ether, legitimately unsure of whether or not I was making the correct decision.
Then about 6 months in, my first article began to rank. My essay on how Andrew Tate got rich made it to the front page of Google. A couple other articles were also starting to get clicks. Then, before I knew it, my Andrew Tate article was the first result on Google.
This is when I knew I was onto something. Writing, blogging, SEO. These are my skills. I bought a domain name in July and accepted that my traffic would briefly slump. But I know it’ll come back soon. I had more than 50 articles written when I bought the domain name. But I didn’t stop working. I knew I wanted to lock in the traffic source I was building and make myself a real website. So, I kept writing. Now, I’m pushing 140 articles, and have another 3 months left until I start ranking on Google. 3 years from now, I’ll be making real money from this thing. If everything pans out the way it should, I’ll be making passive income for 7 -10 years after that “build up” period. Doubling the number of articles on my website has taken a lot of work, and I have not seen my traffic increase at all. As a matter of fact, my traffic has gone down due to the loss of authority caused by me buying a domain name. But writing these extra 90 or so articles has likely added thousands of dollars to my future income.
Most pursuits are kind of like this, although blogging is a little bit extreme. The written word tends to pay people for a long time, so it can be quite tough to get started making a living. But unless you’re working a job, a lot of the work you do will be done without seeing much upside at the beginning, even if you’re destined to go far. When it comes to traditional labour, we take for granted the fact that we spend 13–20 years preparing for labour force. Sometimes even longer. If you’re trying to start a new venture, accept that you haven’t done all of your “learning”. Don’t completely abandon the concept of looking for results. Look for small clues, little victories or setbacks that give you a rough indicator of where you’re heading. Look at other people’s career journeys and try to see how you’re doing in relation to them. You want to be doing as well as the average successful person in your field, if that makes sense.
All this being said, there’s usually a long flatline period when you’re building something, followed by a sudden jump in results when you find yourself at the next level. With blogging, the jump comes when your articles are on Google. If you’re selling a product or service, the jump comes once you have great quality and word of mouth is on your side. I’ve been through both these processes before, and have been able to earn good money by putting them into motion. If you can work at something proven, without worrying too much about the results (usually for a year or more), you can win.
Thanks for paying attention.
