I am likely running around furiously trying to make it look like I keep a clean place in anticipation of the arrival of my lovely blogging friends! One of the lovely friends arriving today happens to be Alex! I am so glad I met her (in real life…we were already friends via the internets) at Blend Retreat this year and am so excited to hang out with her this weekend for the Healthy Living Summit!
If you’re looking to start a blog, are looking for some tips and/or tricks on blogging or are interested in why others blog, check out this post and the rest of the Blogging 101 series:
Tips from the Chimes
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Hello everyone! I’m Alex, and I blog at Alex Tries it Out. I started stalking reading Amanda’s blog last year when I “came out” into the blog world (which is what I call “that time when I started actually commenting on other blogs”). I found Amanda through attendees of the first Blend Retreat. I loved her perspective on healthy living, and her posts about Blend caused ME to go to this year – where I met her IRL!
I was so excited to see Amanda doing “Blogging 101” posts. I would have loved to stumble on advice like this when I was starting to blog! There are so many things that we know as bloggers, that we take for granted as “easy.” If I can help one newbie blogger, that’s enough for me!
What do you blog about? How did you find your “niche?”
My blog has changed quite a bit since I started it. When I decided to start blogging, I knew that it was important to have a niche. I thought about it, and decided it would be fun to blog about trying new things – since that’s something I wanted to push myself to do anyway. So, although that’s not a terribly well-defined niche, that’s what I chose.
As I started blogging, I quickly learned that what I had chosen as my niche was not a niche, after all. I didn’t really “fit” into any specific categories (food, health, travel, etc.) because I blogged about EVERYTHING. I had a hard time figuring out where I fit, but I didn’t really know what to do about it.
After I had been blogging for a while, my subjects started trending towards health and fitness. I sort of fell into this when I started running, and I liked it! The community was amazing, and I felt like I fit in. I was sold! It also opened up more opportunities with brands, with link-ups, and chats. Plus, I was still able to wrap in my original blog theme.
I kept blogging about healthy living, and I enjoyed it, but got antsy. Didn’t I start a blog because I wanted to blog about whatever I wanted? The blog was gaining followers, but I didn’t always know that my heart was behind every post.
This phase only went on for a couple of months, luckily. And now, while I call myself a healthy living blogger, and a lot of my posts revolve around health, I blog about other things that I want to as well. There aren’t a lot of healthy living bloggers that talk about beer. But I do – because I want to. And that’s okay! I still fit into the niche, but I get other cool opportunities that come my way due to my differences. It’s working for me, and it’s the way I like it.
What blogging platform (Blogger, WordPress, Self-hosted) do you use and why? Have you changed from one to the other? What was your experience with the change?
Right now, I’m self-hosted under a WordPress CMS, but I don’t advise that for everyone. I can’t tell you how many of my friends decide to start a blog, only to give it up a few months later – so I always recommend starting with something easy to get started. There’s no use in putting a ton of work into something when you’re not even sure you like doing it yet!
I started my blog on Blogger, just for that reason. I didn’t know if it would stick (I’d had a couple other false-starts with blogging) so I didn’t want to invest the time and money into a self-hosted blog until I was sure.
When I was ready (about 7 months in), I moved my blog over to a WordPress self-hosted environment. I kind of just “figured it out” from online tutorials. I had a bit of trouble getting pictures over correctly, but overall, it worked pretty well. I think that I was lucky though, that I didn’t have too many posts to fix that image issue with. My advice? When you’re ready to make the switch, hire a professional that knows what they’re doing. Ask around – other bloggers can likely recommend someone that will help you out!
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I can totally relate to Alex’s niche dilema! I think it’s good to have a focus, but for goodness sake if you want to write off topic, go for it! People can tell when you enjoy what you are blogging about and typing robotic posts that even YOU aren’t excited about isn’t going to get you anywhere. I’m glad Alex figured that out because I know I enjoy reading her “off genre” posts. 🙂
I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week and I will be back next week with a recap of the Healthy Living Summit!
Do you blog? Why or why not?
Do you have any blogging questions I can answer or topics I can go over in a later Blogging 101 post?
Hey, I like to talk about beer too! LOL!