My Blog Journey: Why I Started Blogging
Do you remember what blogs were like in 2006? I may be dating myself here, but that was when I was first introduced to blogging.
Blogging was more of a personal diary that people used to document events in their life. I really enjoyed reading blogs back then and have fond memories of many bloggers that shared their life stories. A lot of bloggers I followed stopped blogging consistently around 2009/2010, so I stopped actively reading blogs around the same time.
Fast forward to 2020 and blogging is not the same! Blogging is now a way for people to share their stories AND make an income. To be honest, I didn’t realize how much blogging had changed over the years until I started doing some research a few months ago.
What happened to blogging? Blogging is now more of a profession than a personal diary! What I discovered over the last couple of months was so impactful that I decided to start my own blog.
Let me start at the beginning to explain why I started blogging.
I love watching YouTube videos. I consider them my time-wasting entertainment activity since I don’t watch much TV anymore. ?
Earlier this year, I noticed some videos of people teaching others how to become Software Developers. After years of watching funny YouTube videos, this was the first time I saw Information Technology career-related content!
This made me curious, so I started doing some research. As I told you in the About section, I love Education and Information Technology. So, I thought this could be a unique way for me to also share IT career-related content on YouTube.
FREE Blogging Courses
My research led me to the YouTube channel of The Humble Penny by Ken and Mary. I’m not sure why they popped up, but I’m glad they did! What I found interesting was that The Humble Penny actually started as a finance-related blog and just recently started their YouTube channel.
Out of curiosity, I checked out their blog and noticed they were offering a free 7-day blogging email course. They had me at FREE, so I signed up!
Over the next 7 days was introduced to the new reality of blogging. You mean people can actually make a full-time salary from blogging? Where have I been all these years while the blogging environment changed?
Within a week of completing their course, I thought of Your IT Career and bought the domain name from GoDaddy. Their tutorial recommended Bluehost, but I already had some other domains on GoDaddy, so I went with that instead.
Now that I had an idea and the domain name, I was not quite sure how to proceed. So, I kept on researching.
My research next led me to the YouTube channel of Alex and Lauren of Create and Go. I am so glad I found them! Based on what I have seen so far, they are absolute masters of blogging.
First, they created a successful blog and then started another blog to teach others how to blog. They also had a free 5-day blogging course that I signed up for. It was free, so why not?
That course included videos and was even more detailed than the first course I took. It had enough information for me to take the next step and actually start the blogging process. Alex and Lauren also have other paid courses that can be purchased. I will go into details of that in a later post.
The last place my research took me was to Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income. Pat was offering a free 5-day Build Your Own Brand course that also talked about building a business around a blog and selling digital content. This was also very valuable as Pat shared some detailed information on how to start a blog including how to create a content plan.
I came across a lot of information in my research, but these three resources were the ones that helped me make the decision to start my blog.
I bought WordPress hosting and the Genesis framework and went to work!
It has not been an easy process because I’m a wife and mom currently managing virtual schoolwork. I also work full-time at my IT job, so I keep very busy! On top of all that, I have also been working on an IT course for Udemy (it just launched this week!). However, I believe so much in the potential of blogging that I fit it in my schedule.
Legally Protect Your Blog
One thing I must mention as part of the process is legally protecting your blog. From the post about IT Careers, I mentioned that I work in the IT regulatory and compliance space. This means that I am very conscious of all things compliance. I wanted to make sure that my blog was legally protected.
In researching how to make sure I’m legally covered as a blogger, I came across Amira of A Self Guru. She’s a lawyer and sells legal templates specifically for bloggers. Talk about a great niche!
I bought her starter legal bundle, and within 30 minutes I was done uploading the required legal pages to my website. I will share more about her legal bundles later.
Doing the Work
So, let’s go back to where I started. I started researching about YouTube channels and blogging in June. By August, my blog was launched, and I had my first blog post published. I now have six posts (including this one), and several pages on the blog.
I even have a couple of free templates for blog visitors to download.
Now, the next stage is to actively start building traffic to the site. I’m starting that this week which is why I thought this was a great post idea for this week. My goal is to build a decent level of traffic and then start working on how to generate income from the blog.
Part of my traffic strategy includes building an email list of subscribers. An email list is absolutely necessary to have direct access to blog visitors via email. This is how bloggers can reach out to blog visitors outside the blog.
I’m officially a blogger now and I did that in about 2 months! I’m just starting, so I can’t tell you any success stories yet. But I truly believe in the power of blogging to impact lives by sharing valuable information.
In the About section, I mentioned that my goal is to share information on how people can start, develop, and sustain a successful career in Information Technology. I’ve seen enough lives changed by transitioning to a career in Information Technology.
I have personally met people that went from minimum wage jobs to earning $70,000 and more after making a career transition. Others doubled their salaries to six-figure salaries in a short time.
It’s not magic. They simply got information that they did not know before. Then they applied the information by getting trained in an IT area of their choice.
You can also have a successful career in IT.
All you need is a passion for learning, access to necessary information, and a willingness to work hard towards your goal.
You bring the passion for learning and willingness to work hard. And I will share information to help you set out on the right path.
There are a few blog posts already that share some valuable information on careers in Information Technology. If you have not already, please read some of the prior blog posts.
- 6 Tips on How to Pass Certification Exams – The First Time
- 7 Remote Job Opportunities in Information Technology
- 5 High Salary Information Technology Jobs – No Technical Degree
- 5 Essential Soft Skills in the Workplace for Career Success
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I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post. Please leave a comment below and suggest any topics you would like me to write about. I’m currently working on a blog post about learning to code and that should hopefully be posted soon.