In my quest to create a successful blog in the era of “blogging is dead” I’m gonna start writing monthly reviews for my blog, the idea being it will be a good way for me to re-evaluate my efforts, course correct, and leave a path for other bloggers starting from scratch too.
In the month of November I wrote 12 articles, 8 of which were product reviews of stuff I have laying around the house.
Why Write Product Reviews?
There used to be a guy named Chris Deoudes who wrote a very successful men’s blog called Good Looking Loser. He stepped away from his blog for years and briefly revived it via YouTube videos, but he has since taken all of his new videos down and closed the blog, most likely because he hit his early retirement number and decided to peace out.
Anyway, during one of the videos he recommended, in order to get some WiFi money going, go through your house, film a YouTube review for everything you got, and put an Amazon affiliate link in the video description. I decided to do that + write reviews on my blog too.
I haven’t done any YouTube videos yet, but that’s the plan. And then I’ll embed each video to the corresponding blog post.
So far, I’ve made ~$4.00 in affiliate sales. I honestly don’t even know how people are finding my blog since I haven’t promoted it at all and Google traffic is minimal, per Google analytics about 12 people have arrived to my blog via search.
How Am I Doing On Reaching 100 Posts?
To quick start my blog, I’m trying to get to 100 articles as fast as possible. I’m currently at 33 (34 when this post goes out).
Why am I taking this approach?
Two reasons:
Mr. Beast – My son is goofing around with making YouTube videos and I helped him get set up. Mr. Beast, who I believe is the most subscribed YouTube channel, says make 100 videos, they’ll suck, nobody will watch them, and you’ll learn so much; and that’s the best advice he can give to somebody starting out.
This seems like sound advice for bloggers too. In my mind, I have this vision of me creating an uber successful blog that looks beautiful, has the most epic articles, etc, etc, etc. But, honestly, it’s probably better to have 100 articles vs. 1 “epic” article (that nobody reads). The feedback loop comes much quicker this way.
It’s the opposite of what I normally do – Normally, I approach things very slowly, often stuck in “research / thinking endlessly about it mode” before making a move, and then my move is made slowly as well. I’m 40 and nowhere close to where I want to be in life.
I asked myself: “What if I tried the opposite of what I normally do?” So, I decided to move fast and imperfectly.
Blog design? Doesn’t matter. Email list? Don’t care. Social Media? A distraction. Picking a blog niche? Limiting. Perfect dot com domain name? Unnecessary.
Final Thoughts
I don’t know if this is the correct path or not, but I’m gonna hold steady for 100 articles and then re-evaluate. I’m not even getting all of my articles to 100%, I’m getting them to about 80% satisfactory (to me) and letting them fly. Getting the last 20% usually takes longer than getting the first 80%.
I always have the option of going back and tidying things up. But for now, it’s full steam ahead because that is how progress is made.