☕ tea talks

by Freya J. Lively, from Lemon & Lively​

There are three things every blog must have in order to have any chance at success.

(FYI -- I'm changing "Tuesday Tips" to "tea talks" 'cause I like that more 🙃)

This is the utmost baseline, regardless of whether you're blogging for business or hobby purposes.

1. A functional site with blog software. There are ways around this, if you're familiar with web development. I've built my own blogging software, for instance. 👩‍💻
2. Super helpful, shareable content. You need blog posts to attract people to your blog and pique their interest.
3. An email list. You need a way to keep in touch with people who visit your blog and want more of your content. While super fans WILL seek your blog out, many people will forget where they found something.

Here's what you DON'T need straightaway and why:

• A niche. Niche bloggers are easily replaceable. Aim for curating a niche audience and focusing on specific topics, rather than sticking with a niche. Every single "popular niche blogger"? The niche is actually themselves.
• Setting up Google Analytics. While this helps Google discover your site faster, it doesn't mean it'll never be discovered. Not having Analytics/Google Search Console only prevents you from accessing that data from the start.
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  Your site WILL still be discovered, as long as you don't block search bots in robots.txt.
  • Case in point: I play online trading card games. I've also run a few myself. 👀 I've never submitted tcg.AutisticJane.com to search engines, but it shows up there anyways.
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    It also shows up in spot #4 for "portia's post".
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    (AutisticJane.com is my former blog name, so the site was on Google, but subdomains are treated as different sites. If you go to the domain itself, you'll be redirected to LemonAndLively.com.)

Wanna know the additional thing you need if you're blogging for business? It's a way to make money. If you don't put yourself out there, nothing will happen. 💁‍♀️

​Read the post if you like more details👉​

Pink mugs and kitten hugs,
Freya J.