Discourage And Demotivation Did Not Stop Me

As my bio says blogging is all I ever wanted. That's right. I always wanted to be a blogger. Something kept telling me, an inner sound whispered in my ears you could be a blogger.

I was always attracted to blogs on the internet and I was amazed how blogs are written. I enjoyed reading them and comment under them. Express my feelings or let the blogger know about my opinions. I am interested in several topics so I read loads of blogs in many niches.

I though I could do this. Since I have hobbies that's already in good niches such as music, cooking, gardening, astronomy, travel and many others why not tell the World what I am interested about.

I started to research and find out how to do blogging in a proper way. During my research I came across a lot of things that I have never heard of. Hosting, domain name, WordPress, plug-ins. It all seemed very complicated to me, but I wanted to stick to my dream and who knows I might find a brand new interesting and enjoyable hobby beside my many others.

I started to learn about all the things mentioned above. After watching countless hours of videos and reading about them online, I finally managed to brainstorm a name for my domain and bought my first hosting service. I was ready to write. But what about and how? That was my next big question, perhaps that should have been my first question.

Never mind I picked a topic and started to write about it. I don't have to say, that I didn't like it. It just did not sound and looked as good as other blogs I read. I kept trying as I don't give up so easily. My first blog post was short and simple and it did not look professional at all, but I didn't mind. I was happy enough to know, that I have my first blog published on the world wide web.

I also found out, that I can track my website visitors. I can see how many clicks I get each day and from where my readers are. I thought that's a very good thing so I know that I am actually talking to someone. I started to write more and more articles they were longer now and more structured, so my blog looked a bit better. I kept checking my data as well. After days, weeks and even months have passed my visitor counter showed zero.

Hmm that's discouraging. I put so much effort learning, researching and writing and still I felt I was talking to nobody. My learning curve didn't stop there. There was so much more to discover and learn.

The next things I learned in order to improve the quality of my blog and get more visitors I have to do keyword research and deal with long tail keywords. So when people search for a specific topic, word or phrase I have better chance to have more readers as my blog post will be ranked higher on google.

As I dived deeper into this whole blogging idea I realized, that I can actually make some extra cash. This is where my journey got more interesting and I started to have way more fun with blogging. There is something called affiliate marketing. Since I don't have to have my own products or services and I don't have to deal with customers I thought this could be a perfect opportunity to make money online and I can still do what I love.

Blogging and affiliate marketing

Pick your niche, pick a product and start promoting your affiliate link. Sounds amazingly simple right? Well it is not in fact it is pretty hard to get affiliate commissions as a newbie blogger and affiliate marketer. At this stage I wouldn't call myself a blogger and an affiliate marketer anyway. It started to make sense all the links, that I saw and clicked on the blogs I read. That's how they make money.

I also needed proper paid tools such as visitor tracker, keyword research tool, landing pages, auto responder and to do niche market. Although it is an exciting journey being a blogger and affiliate marketer it requires a lot of time and effort and definitely money to start.

I didn't go that way. Affiliate marketing was not my cup of tea, but I sticked to my blogging. Somehow money making methods kept me interested. So how can I make money from blogging if I don't do affiliate marketing?

Writing for online magazines

There are plenty of online magazines, that pay for your work after a successful submission. The range of payment can be anywhere between from a few dollars to up to a $100 per article. That is amazing, but the approval is not guaranteed. I tried it anyway and I was bombarded with the following responds. "We are sorry to say, that your article does not fit to our magazine" or "your submission was rejected, but you can try again later".

Of course I read some articles on those sites before I even started to write my own ones. They were well written and well researched articles. That was not for me either. I was just a minnow amongst the whales. I thought there has got to be a way to make it worthwhile. Then I came across with something that I have never seen before.

The decentralized social media

Over two years ago I stumbled upon with something innovative and mind blowing way to make money online while blogging. The very first decentralized social media micro blogging platform I joined called Steemit was perfect for me to practice my writing skills, meet new people and I didn't have to convince anybody to buy something in order to make money. It was not easy, but I enjoyed it, because I started to see some results in terms of writing to an audience.

I did not make much steem, but I was happy to see, that what I wrote people read it and engaged with my content. I was part of the community for almost a year trying to write every day. I then soon realized, that for some reason the more I write the less attention I grab. It should work the opposite way, but it didn't work out for me.

The reason for that is, because Steemit platform was going down. People started to leave even from my own built up community, so I was a bit disappointed. I got fewer and fewer readers and upvotes so it lead me to leave eventually. I withdrew all my steem, that I was able to make and left.

I was off writing for a while until about a week ago guess what happened. I found read.cash. Yes I found it. This is for me. After a week I see results people are reading my articles and got upvoted too. Even 11 people subscribed to my blog. This is absolutely amazing. I finally feel at home. I have my goals set up, I have more experience to write, I enjoy engaging and meet new people. Nothing gives me more pleasure, than receiving likes, reading meaningful comments and knowing, that other writers like my work and tip me.

Final message

Never give up. There is always hope and with your hard work and determination it will be worth it.

Thank you for taking your time and read my journey of blogging. I wish you similar success with your writing.

Please share your experiences down in the comment section. I am eager to know how you progressed your writing skills.