Blogging for long term Success

I realize that there has been a pretty big delay since my last post.  I have been caught up with some other things.  And to be quite honest with you, I had soured on the blogging thing for a little while.  And it is not because I had not been seeing progress, because I surely have.  But I had some run-in's with Google and had one of my blogs shut down and for the life of my, I still can not see what the problem was.  I never truly got a clear answer, they just accused it of being SPAM!  So, I guess on a subconscious level, I was waiting for the other blogs to be closed down on me.  But they were not, so, I  figure it is about time to get back on that horse.

But since I have been on a bit of a blogging vacation, I have noticed something.  My blogs have continued to chug along.  Not really improving but surely not failing.  This blog has been consistently performing with no help from me.  And it got me to thinking.  Whats the rush?

Now I know, everyone in the world today is looking for the instant gratification.  I know I do, I know I hate to watch some blogs flounder, and often times I may give up on a blog before I have given it a proper chance.  There are doubts and concerns that I am wasting my time with a particular topic.  And in the end, I often pick up and move on to the next.

Since I last wrote on this blog, my blogging profile has changed.  Previously I was constantly writing on four free blogs and 1 paid blog.  I was stretching myself as much as I possibly could in order to create the success I was so desperately looking for.  The problem with that mentality and process is, I ended up burning out.  Not wanting to do anything anymore, because I just was not seeing the instant gratification.  And that was when I decided I needed to change my mindset.  I needed to take a step back and really look at what I was trying to accomplish.

For all of you who do not know, my main objective was to try and create income through blogging and online writing.  Enough to allow me to consider leaving my 9-5 job and work solely for myself.  Well after 10 months of that, I came to the conclusion it was not happening.  But what was happening was, I was slowly but surely creating awareness, and creating the all elusive web traffic that everyone in this business wants.  But I just was not seeing any of that traffic converting into income.  I was but the ratio was so far from what I had hope that It was just maddening.

So, I stopped.  I stopped it all, and became average Joe 9-5 again.  I remodeled my bathroom, worked lots of overtime and really just assumed that I would let my blogs wither and die.  But they did not.  I am now the proud owner of two very well traveled blogs.  Not tooting my horn because hundreds and hundreds of bloggers out there see more traffic than I can dream of, but I see that I have two investments that can and should pay off in the long run.

So that brings me to what I want to stress to you all today.  And that is don't give up, set your expectations at reasonable levels and watch closely at what you are doing and whether or not it is working for you.  Make sure that you spend time on your posts.  Make sure that they have value to your readers, and make sure that you do your homework and you know what search terms and "keywords" are going to perform for you.

I have given you a lot of insight and ideas as to what it takes to generate awareness of your blog in the ever expanding world of the internet.  You have to build backlinks and write informative and keyword rich articles, you need to find unique ways to build free backlinks through sources like Bukisa and Hubpages.  You need to use your social networking to promote your site and generate easy traffic, and you really just need to be creative, personable, and understandable.  If you can pull those things off, you will most likely see people coming.

And it is not going to happen tomorrow.  You will have failure and you will have success, and just like anything else in life, you have to learn from failure and build on successes.

Now I know this sounds like a big pep rally, and in many cases, it is.  I really am not here to teach you anything today, other than to not give up.  To find your niche and build build build.  Because over time, you will start to see your efforts paying dividends.  And slowly, you will start to see income or traffic building, or both, depending on what you are trying to achieve.

Don't let people tell you that free blogs are a waste of time.  Because I have to say that the majority of my success comes from my free blogs.  I have actually given up on the paid blog for the time.  The investment it was costing me was just not being paid back.  The blog got very little traffic, and it generated a big ZERO in the income column.

So look for me in the coming weeks and months, because I am back and I am ready to provide you with lots of new insight into this world of blogging, and I hope to see many succeed in what they are trying to accomplish.

I appreciate everyones comments.  I always love comments and hope to see many more soon!

Thank you,
Blogging for Beginners