I wanted to finish this week with another post about my blogging and explain why I built my Website and started blogging.
I started building my website and blog just over a year ago but I had been thinking about it for years before taking the step to just get started. The fear of putting myself out into the big world of the internet was scary, would people read it? Would people think it was rubbish? It’s these thoughts that stopped me for years then one day I just decided to do it.
So what changed and why did I take the plunge?
I wanted to have something for myself:
I have a young family which can be all consuming (toddlers are brutal) and can end up just focusing on that alone. Now that is not a bad thing at all but it’s nice to have something that is just for you and that could be anything e.g. exercise. For me I wanted a creative outlet, doing something that I had not done before. It gave me something else to focus on.
Essentially for me, this was a new hobby to get lost in.
Learning something new:
This is not something that I thought I would get into when I was younger and writing is not something that I thought I have ever been good at. And this might be another reason why I took so long to get started.
The first thing that I had to do was get my Website up and running, this was a whole new world for me. Luckily, a good friend helped out in this space and got me up and running with Elementor on WordPress. So now I had to learn how to build a website and update it, I am not joking when I say I lost hours trying to work out what I wanted my website to look like. Working out what pages I needed, what my blog template looked like etc. I am pretty happy at the moment with how it’s looking but I am still learning and planning what to do next.
The other learning exercise was just blogging and also finding the right tools to use to create them (blog post to come on this subject). As I say I am not great with writing so I have to spend time focusing on spelling and grammar to make these posts somewhat legible, but I like to think that over the past year I have improved my skill as a writer. And this is a skill that transitioned into my job as well.
Starting a side hustle:
I didn’t start my blog to make money but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t something that I thought about. In the start, I did it because of the above and just the enjoyment. As my blogging has evolved I have moved more towards wanting to make this into a side hustle and start to make some money if possible.
I love the fact that you can, if you put the time and effort in you can make money from doing something that you enjoy doing. This is why I didn’t start the blog to make money, this way you are not doing something just for the money, I think this takes out the enjoyment and can be a sure fire way to lose interest if it’s not taking off quickly.
It didn’t cost a fortune to get started:
As far as hobbies go this is relatively cheap to get started. There were a couple of things that I needed to spend money on to get going.
- A Domain name (I use Go Daddy) – I think this costs me about £12 a year.
- Web Hosting(Word Press/Elementor) – My good friend helped me out here and I only pay about £12 a month.
I already had a laptop and an iPad so I didn’t need to fork out any money on that side of things. Granted not everyone may have a laptop etc. but for me the cost was small so it was relatively easy to get going. So all I had to do at this point was just to start writing.
You can write about anything:
This is why I love blogging, you can write about what you like it just needs to be something that you enjoy writing about. I don’t claim to be an expert in what I write about but I have a passion for tech and productivity and therefore have a view. I like the fact that someone might read one of my reviews and it helps them to decide on whether they want to buy that product or not.
I have also started to write more opinion type posts, mainly because it’s expensive to keep buying tech LOL. But I have my own thoughts and views on what is going on in the tech and productivity space that I want to share with my audience.
Conclusion:
So for me, I am so glad that I did decide to take the plunge and started blogging. I have certainly learned a lot and it also led to me venturing into content creation on Instagram and starting a YouTube channel (currently taking a break). This has led to me join a great community full of people that share the same interests as me.
I still have the same fears as mentioned at the beginning of this post but the enjoyment that I get out of blogging outweighs those fears.
So if you are reading this and are thinking about starting your own blog then I would say just go for it, what do you have to lose.