I wanted to outline my journey of starting a 6th blog around a fun hobby that I’m excited about learning about. Now that I have two established blogs that are monetized, I wanted to try my hand at one more topic (even though I have four others that are awaiting full ramp up). I wanted to share with you my mindset and strategies for each month during this journey.
If I can get this to monetize, it will allow me to do a comparison across three completely different niches so that I can compare seasonality of blog topics against each other.
Goals for the New Blog
Niche Inspiration
I was teaching my kids how to do something one day, and it dawned on me that there wasn’t a lot of topics on it. My goal for this blog is a niche blog that talks only about those topics. Unlike my lifestyle blog where I share DIY home decor projects I do around the house and motherhood tips, this niche blog would be very specific to a topic I was teaching my kids.
Goals
My goal of this blog is three fold:
- I really have an interest in this space and learning about it, so having a blog like this will force me to learn about it.
- It will be additional passive income.
- It will give me another blog to compare performance against my other two monetized blogs.
The Difference with This Blog Compared to Existing Blogs
I wanted to share with you a few different approaches that I am taking with this blog compared to my lifestyle and food blog.
More Content Published Earlier
With the food blog, I had dripped out content over a long period of time, which meant that it took a while for Google to start indexing my content. It took about 8 months for me to start seeing hocky stick growth with the food blog.
Hiring Writers for Majority of Content
I know that with a full-time career, kids that are in extracurriculars, and having other online platforms (already monetized), I wouldn’t have a lot of time dedicated to this blog. So I decided to hire out the content on this blog after writing 1-2 blog posts. I was able to use Upwork to hire some people to write content on my blog. I also used a writing service recommended to me by a blogger friend:
- TextGoods – 10 Blog Posts: $717.18
- Upwork – VA1: $40/post
- Upwork – VA2: $15/post
I’m making a pretty decent income from the two monetized blog (three if you consider $3 monetization), so I’m investing a small chunk of that money into additional content for this new blog.
Hypothesis in December 2021
If I continue to hire people to write content, this means I’ll consistently have around 8 blog posts published per month. Using a competitor I found that has only ~65 blog posts, if I keep this up, I believe I’ll see 50,000 pageviews by August (by starting the blog content publishing in January). I believe that I could potentially be monetized with Mediavine by next January. I’ll continue to leave this hypothesis here so you can hold me accountable.
Niche Research in December 2021
Before I share the monthly updates with you, I wanted to give you an overview of the the analysis and data I did prior to starting the blog. If you don’t start with analyzing your niche, then I think you’d be doing yourself a disservice. I wanted to share with you everything I honestly did before I even purchased the domain name.
- I searched for key terms that someone learning about the topic would look up. I jotted down who the competitors were.
- I went to SEMRush and looked up the competitors using the string “semrush.com/info/XXXX.com” with XXXX being the name of the domain. I took note of their rankings, keywords, and competitors.
- I went to Feedly (an RSS reader) and plugged in those competitors to look through their blog content and jotted down ideas of what I wanted to write about.
- I looked at the blog post ideas I had, and went back to Google. I look at the predictive search dropdown for more ideas, the Chrome plugin for KeywordEverywhere, and the common searches at the bottom of the SERP.
- I wrote down my ideas in Notion and categorized them by topic/subject in order to plan for the categories I would create on the wordpress site.
- In Notion, I outlined 10 blog posts.
- I created my standard operating procedure for my writers to follow for writing content for the blog.
Initial Blog Setup
Once I felt confident that there was room for me in the niche, here are the steps that I followed (tried and true from my previous blogs).
I want to be clear about something: I did not spend a lick of time on design of the blog when I was publishing my first ten blog posts. Literally I published, then I spent time on the design. Having content out there that Google can crawl vs having a pretty design that no one is going to care about was where I invested my time.
- Registered a domain on Dreamhost.
- Used BigScoots for my hosting. Had them setup Dreamhost for pointing the domain from Dreamhost and whatever they. had to do.
- Installed Themes: Genesis with Foodie Pro
- Configured settings in WordPress to have URL to be named as blost posts and setup other reading settings
- Added the following plugins:
- Add Widget After Content
- Akismet Anti-Spam
- Feast Plugin
- Insert Headers and Footers
- Redirection
- Regenerate Thumbnails
- Simple Social Icons
- Web Stories
- Yoast SEO
- Published 10 blog posts.
- Redesigned the menu, home page, and footer with Feast Plugin.
December – Month 1
My blog was set up and I posted a single blog post.
Content
- Total Blog Posts: 1
Performance
- New Users: 0
- Sessions: 0
- Pageviews: 0
January – Month 2
Content
- Total Blog Posts: 16
Performance
- New Users: 63
- Sessions: 100
- Pageviews: 304
February – Month 3
New plugins added:
- AAWP – A plugin that allows me to add well-formatted affiliate links from Aamazon
- Create by Mediavine – Allows me to add formatted tutorial blog posts
- Thrive Leads – Allows me to add a way to add email subscriptions
Content
- Total Blog Posts: 25
Performance
- New Users: 69
- Sessions: 81
- Pageviews: 138
Analysis: Last month’s pageviews were probably from just me!
March – Month 4
New plugins added:
- None
Content
- Total Blog Posts: 39
Performance
- New Users: 184
- Sessions: 218
- Pageviews: 362
Analysis: Last month’s pageviews were probably from just me!
April – Month 5
New plugins added:
- Upgraded to Google GA4 Analytics since Google Analytics will be sunsetted this year
Content
- Total Blog Posts: 50
Performance
- New Users: 451
- Sessions: 514
- Pageviews: 673
May – Month 6
Current State of Plugins:
- AAWP
- Add Widget After Content
- Akismet Anti-Spam
- Create by Mediavine
- Feast Plugin
- Insert Headers and Footers
- Redirection
- Regenerate Thumbnails
- Simple Social Icons
- Thrive Leads
- Web Stories
- Yoast SEO
Content
- Total Blog Post: 58
Performance:
- New Users: 695
- Sessions: 789
- Pageviews: 936
June – Month 7
No changes made to the blog except for additional blog posts.
Content:
- Total Blog Posts: 59 (I got side tracked from career and personal life goals)
Performance:
- New Users: 904
- Sessions: 1,032
- Pageviews: 1,248
July – Month 8
No changes made to the blog except for additional blog posts.
Content:
- Total Blog Posts: 67
Performance:
- New Users: 1,161
- Sessions: 1,355
- Pageviews: 1,722
August – Month 9
No changes made to the blog except for additional blog posts.
Content:
- Total Blog Posts: 86 Blog Posts
Performance:
- New Users: 2,307
- Sessions: 2,627
- Pageviews: 3,411
September – Month 10
Started having VAs create web stories from existing content.
Content
- Total Blog Posts: 92
Performance:
- New Users: 2,250
- Sessions: 2,652
- Pageviews: 3,518
October – Month 11
Added more pinnable images into the blog posts based on what VAs created.
Content
- Total Blog Posts: 92 (didn’t write a single blog post)
Performance:
- New Users: 2,656
- Sessions: 3,134
- Pageviews: 4,038
November – Month 12
I was looking at my hypothesis before, and it looks like I am wrong. However, I am seeing more traffic. I just need to triple it to be able to apply for Mediavine.
Content
- Total Blog Posts: 112
Performance:
- New Users: 4,514
- Sessions: 5,107
- Pageviews: 6,729
December – Month 13
Posted all content from VAs and got caught up.
Content
- Total Blog Posts:
Performance:
- New Users:
- Sessions:
- Pageviews:
Total Expenses:
Here’s the expense break down:
- TextGoods: $717.18
- Upwork (at $40 an article with fees): $1,080
- Upwork (at $15 an article with fees): $1,140
- Upwork (at $20 for Pinterest images with fees): $620
- Domain Registration 3 Years: $43.97
- Domain Hosting: $9.99 per month (part of my overall Big Scoots plan that supports up to 10 blogs)
- Thrive (divided because I use it on other blogs): $114.00
- AAWP Plug-In: $49.00
- Tailwind App: $119.40
At this point, I have weekly recurring costs of:
- Article writing at $30 a week
- Pinterest image creation at $20 a week
- Pinterest syndication at $20 a week
- Web
Total Profit
ZERO. It’s an “investment” right now. Hoping to turn it passive soon!