Fethiye, Turkey
A few months ago I deleted 100’s of posts from Blogging From Paradise.
Each thin, lower quality post signified me trying to sprint before I effectively crawled with my updated blogging business model.
I have experienced some success. In various aspects of my blogging campaign, I can appear to sprint.
But in other areas of my blogging career I still need to crawl successfully before being able to walk. After walking I will be able to jog. After jogging I can run and then I can sprint forward.
Perhaps this post sounds surprising but after doing something for 14 years you discover what you appear to be good at and what you really need to work on to reach the next level.
Blogging for a long time keeps you honest because you simply tire of lying to yourself and you also see how self-deception has hurt you.
For example, I tried to sprint by selling a high volume of eBooks through Amazon before realizing that I needed to crawl with a few blogging courses and PDF guides through Gumroad. My decision to sprint forward may have helped Jeff Bezos become a wee bit more wealthy but my commission rates basically made me an Amazon employee versus an entrepreneur running his own business. No thank you.
Crawling resulted in 90% commissions through other digital sellers and far greater creative control. I will take that, thank you.
Sprinting Creates Failure Plus Trashing What Did Not Work
If you sprint wildly out of the blogging gate, you will be deleting 100’s of thin, low quality blog posts years down the road. Rushing to publish 100’s of 600 word, thin posts guarantees that almost no one reads those posts or buys your premium offering through those posts.
Why?
You wildly rushed forward to create a hefty volume of low quality content versus patiently, slowly, mindfully crawling through the process of:
- optimizing each post for SEO
- writing and publishing long form posts spanning 1200 to 1500 words
- formatting posts for easy reading and scanning
- adding bullet point lists and headers to posts for a helpful user experience
- building each post around a long tail keyword
- promoting each post effectively as you build your tribe
Writing and optimizing a blog post worthy enough to reach page 1 of Google, drive targeted traffic and generate blogging income requires a slow, deliberate crawl as a newbie blogger. I am skilled enough to be able to write a basic, opinion-piece, 600 word post in 10-12 minutes.
However, even 14 year blogging veteran me spends 1-2 hours or more writing, optimizing and promoting a long form blog post.
If it takes seasoned pros a long time it will take beginner bloggers a very long time to blog effectively since you have much to learn, practice and master to add all critical details to a blog post.
Be at peace with crawling through that process….because you will!
Slow down. Calm down. Relax. Do a good job with your small business the first time out or else you will waste time doing ineffective stuff that you need to eventually let go.
My blog could be a rich collection of solely SEO-optimized posts published over the prior 9 years. But I took a few detours along the way motivated by my conscious and unconscious fears. I own my mistakes. I tried to sprint before I could crawl in terms of publishing blog content.
Now I clearly understand that patiently adding all necessary details to blog posts takes more time and energy but the investment drives greater organic traffic and overall success through every single post published to Blogging From Paradise.
Going back into the Blogging Ice Age of my early days online 14 years ago reveals a similar wild sprint into chaos. I chased success like a ravenous saber-toothed tiger hunting a massive wooly mammoth. Failure followed. I gradually smartened up, learned how to blog from pros, took my time and patiently build a strong foundation for my old blog.
Creating Blogging From Paradise in 2014 produced a mixed-bag through various aspects of my blogging campaign.
Thank the blogging gods: I crawl where I need to and sprint where I seamlessly can.
Start Crawling
As a small business owner, begin slowly crawling through the process by learning how to build your venture from successful entrepreneurs with vast experience in building a small business. Even though I’ve experienced some blogging success I am always learning from pros what to do and what not to do in order to expand my small business.
Some highly successful internet marketers have spent the first 6 months of their online career learning how to successfully build a small business. These individuals did nothing else other than learning, studying and planning their venture for 6 months before even buying their domain and hosting.
That is crawling! I also consider their crawling to reflect immense discipline back to the individuals.
Bravo!
Do you want to know why these entrepreneurs take this approach?
Virtually all of these pros experience increasing online success from day 1 because they do almost everything right from the beginning. Learning for 6 months influences you to do everything successfully from the outset.
As a result, crawling through 6 months of patient learning induces the walking, running and sprinting phases quite quickly.
Meanwhile, most online entrepreneurs purchase their domain and hosting without learning a thing about successfully building a venture, wing it, struggle, fail and quit because this majority tries to sprint toward massive success before crawling through each step to learn how to do it successfully.
Practical Example
I crawled patiently through my blogger outreach campaign.
I learned how to generously help successful bloggers, asking for nothing in return, to build strong friendships.
100’s of bloggers invited me to guest post on their blogs because I mindfully crawled through my blogger outreach duties. I appear to sprint now but only because I took my time in the beginning.
1000’s of bloggers will blindly pitch 1000’s of bloggers today. Almost all pitches will be ignored or rejected because versus crawling through the outreach learning process these folks tried to sprint forward, falling flat on their face by wasting 8-10 hours today, building no genuine friendships and needing to do the same thing tomorrow just to get one guest post placed.
What happens at the end of the year? You wasted 3,500 hours by building no strong relationships, growing your blogging business at a snail’s pace and placing 300 plus guest posts on low quality blogs that almost no one reads.
For those 365 days you may as well have been on a treadmill. You appeared to receive a great workout by sprinting; in reality you went nowhere.
Make each blogging hour count.
Take your time.
First, crawl. Learn. Practice. Add critical details. Be thorough.
Progress slowly. Stand. Gain confidence.
Walk. Take your time. Be comfortable with walking.
When the time comes….you can run.
Run freely. Patiently move forward at a heady clip.
Finally, you can sprint freely as a blogger but only because you gradually, mindfully and deliberately followed each step of the process.
Conclusion
Slow down.
Calm down.
First, learn how to build a thriving small business from experienced professionals. Crawl slowly through the process to do it the right way.
Down the road, after patiently learning and working, you will be able to sprint seamlessly but only because you developed your skills to the sprinting level.
