The First 5 Steps To Creating A Successful Blog

So you want to start a blog, huh? Not just a hobby one, though, one that can make you some money? Well, I am going to go into a few things I want you to know about starting a successful monetized blog and a little bit about how my own blog & YouTube came to be.

In my opinion, a successful blog is one that has become monetized & is continually growing that you enjoy working on. Although my blog is “young” (born in summer 2020), it IS monetized & it is growing everyday! I work very hard at it & hope that my strategies I will share with you in upcoming posts will help guide you through as well. I thought it would be helpful to new bloggers out there to here things from someone who has recently done these things & is currently working hard to grow her own blog, more relatable.

So, I want to start with my back story about my own blog & YouTube channel. About 5+ years ago or so I had a (different) blog & YouTube about all things planning & productivity. I even became monetized on it after long months of hard work! Life at that time was crazy with being a new mom (hence my thinking to start a blog so I could be home with my sweet baby more) & just life itself, so I never tended to my blog & YouTube the way I should have & ended up giving up. After all, it is about consistancy! So, I permanently deleted the entire thing. Even though it was monetized, I hadn’t reached the thresh level so I never actually got paid anyways. So I went on with my life without it.

Fast forward to summer of 2020. I had been wanting to start my blog & YouTube back up (a new one, since my old was deleted for good) & decided to just go for it. It was something that had always been on my mind to start back up one day & starting in the beginning of 2020 I was already prepping to do so. Well with the circumstances of the 2020 pandemic, my daughter had to do virtual (home) schooling therefore making me have to cut back on hours at my full time job (as a floral designer) to be home more. My husband is an essential worker so he couldn’t cut back, in fact, he was working overtime a lot due to the circumstances. I decided, this is it. This is my chance to start back up what I have been wanting to while I am home & have the time to do it.

Plan With Bee was born. If you have been following me then you know what my content is about. For those who do not know, I create content on all things about functional planning, productivity & also now helping others become content creators too with my tips & strategies from my own experience. I love being a content creator & helping & inspiring others. From the writing process to the video editing & just all around being creative with what I do, I just love it so much. So of course I would want to turn something I love and enjoy into a potentially paid passion that I could do from anywhere on a schedule I create!

I started Plan With Bee up in August 2020 and became approved for monetization by mid November 2020. So essentially in less than 4 months I was approved! I had strategies going into it as I hoped to become monetized, but I also told myself that if I didn’t, at least this is all stuff I enjoy talking about & sharing with others anyways as a hobby. Plus, I sort of knew what not to do from my previous attempt at my old blog.

I want to be clear with you, having a blog & YouTube is not some easy peasy “job” (if you are looking to have it as one for your income vs a hobby). It takes a lot of hard work & lots of hours for all the behind the scenes work. You, solely, are responsible for making sure you get everything done you need to as well as marketing your brand to bring in traffic to your site all while producing great content. Unlike a typical job where you are usually guaranteed your pay for your hours worked, there is no guarantee here. I am not telling you this to discourage you, but to succeed at this, you must know all the truths. If it is something you are passionate about & truly want to do, then I fully encourage you to do so.

Some bloggers never see any income or it takes them a long time to reach that monetization approval. Many of them unfortunately quit due to the long wait and months or years of hard work before reaching that monetization approval.

So, to help you all, I am going to be doing a series of blog posts & YouTube tutorials on all the different aspects of starting a blog/YouTube, growing your brand & reaching that monetization approval! This is all through my own experience with what I have learned & my tips & tricks. I am NOT an expert in this & am not telling you what to do. I simply will share my own experience & my strategies I have found to work for me that might also help you! Be sure to follow me here on my blog as well as my YouTube & all social platforms (linked on homepage) so you never miss when I upload something new!

Okay… so let’s get into the first few steps you must take when starting your blog / YouTube.

1. You must pick a niche. What do you want you content to be about? You have to choose one niche and stick to it. For me, my niche is about planning, productivity & helping others with starting up their own content creation. They go hand in hand for me as it all is about planning & following through. So, if you think your niche is to be a mom blogger, then do that. Maybe you are a fitness guru or an amazing cook, then do that. Do you travel a lot or have a great sense of affordable fashion? Do that. Bottom line, your niche should be one thing & it should be something you are passionate about. If you jump around too much within your content you could start to lose subscribers as they came to follow you for the content you were putting out. Pick one thing and be amazing at it!

2. Once you know exactly what it is you want to blog about, you need to come up with your name & logo (if you want a logo, which I recommend). You want something simple yet memorable. You need it to be easy enough for people to remember and be able to search for. Remember, when you first start out, no one knows who you are…yet. I chose Plan With Bee for a few reasons. It is simple enough to remember, it has the word “plan” in it which ties into what my content is about, it has Bee because that is my nickname and when you say it all together it sounds like “plan with me” which is a popular tagline within the planner community. See where I am going with this? A lot of bloggers also just use their name in a clever way which is great too, as long as you make it clear to your viewers what your content is about. You can also use subheadings for that as well.

3. Now that you have your niche and your name, it is time to get the ball rollin’ & set up your blog site & YouTube ( I will have posts & tutorials in the near future with these steps). While WordPress does have a free version, you do need a self hosted website in order to become monetized one day. I recommend using Bluehost to create your domain for your WordPress which is what I use. (Again, I will have a post up on this specifically in the near future). Now, you may be wondering why I keep including YouTube because maybe you do not want to be a “YouTuber”. Well, the truth, blogging and YouTube go together! I am not saying you can’t just do one and make money form it. What I am saying is they both help grow your brand. If you mainly want to blog, that’s great. But having a YouTube to so some videos or tutorials or whatever it is you would be blogging about, is even better! They compliment each other and it is important, in my opinion, that you get them both set up. Even if you feel you’ll never make a YouTube video, just set up a channel ready to go. Basically, you cannot put “all your eggs in one basket”. You need different platforms to drive traffic to you.

https://www.bluehost.com

https://wordpress.com/start/domains

4. Going along with the above, you will want to get your social media platforms ready as well. You have to get yourself out there and drive traffic to your site. You have to market yourself, you, and only you, are what is going to get your brand to succeed! Youtube helps along with social media for driving traffic to you. However, your BEST FRIEND to help drive traffic to your site that is a MUST as a blogger is PINTEREST. Get all these sites ready to go. For reference, I have a blog, YouTube, instagram & Pinterest all for Plan With Bee.

5. Okay… you still with me? Now, you must just start! I know this may seem like a silly step to list, but it is the one that hold many people back. You’re site and platforms will all be a work in progress in the beginning. Honestly. they’ll be a work in progress for a while! But, no one knows you or your site yet as you need to grow it over time. So do not keep waiting for weeks and weeks until it is “ready” because you will find that it will never be quite ready therefore you will never get it going. I have changed things up multiple times along the beginning of my journey and recently got to a place where I feel it is “ready” haha! So just start it up!

Hopefully these five tips have helped get you thinking & planning about what you want to do. These steps are the foundation of your content and need to be well thought out. In my upcoming blog posts as well as tutorials on YouTube, I will go into great detail about every aspect of setting up a blog, YouTube and a brand in general, how to do all the steps that might get confusing along the way, my strategy to faster monetization & SO MUCH MORE! Again, be sure to follow me across all my platforms to stay updated! (all linked on homepage)

Thanks so much for reading! You can watch the corresponding video for this post below!

View the full “Become A Blogger” Series HERE.

DISCLAIMER: Blog post may contain some affiliate links. If you use these links I could receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support PWB so I can continue offering you free content. Thank you for your support. (:

DISCLAIMER: These are all my opinions & my strategies for starting a blog. I am not an expert in this field & can only speak through my own experiences. Hopefully they help guide you as well!