Building Up Your Blog Is Not An Overnight Process – It Takes a Long Time!

I recently came across an excellent article (The Insanely Slow Road to Building a Blog) which correlates directly to my own experience and thoughts about blogging in general.

Some of the most successful blogs took years and years of consistent effort before any momentum was built.

I didn’t write this post to scare anyone away, but more to be completely transparent that 1.) blogging is a lot of work and 2.) blogging takes a long time to start gaining traction, traffic and a loyal following.

The unfortunate part about this is not the length of time it takes to build a successful blog, but the number of people that give up too early and quit.

My main goal with this post here is to encourage as many people as I can to continue blogging for the long-term, no matter where they are currently at.

To help drive this point home, let’s take a closer look at my long-term blogging metrics.

Long-Term Organic Traffic Chart

We will be looking at three different plot points in the chart below.

1. ) 16 Months of Very Little Traffic
2. ) Breakthrough/Spike #1
3. ) Breakthrough/Spike #2

It’s important to note that this chart is analyzing organic traffic coming in from the search engines (and not total traffic).

1.) 16 Months of Very Little Traffic

My first blog post ever published for this website was in May of 2016.

You can see for around 16 months to follow, I received very little to no traffic on my blog…Yes that’s 16 months of very minimal results!

Luckily I have experience with building up websites organically over time, and know that this is definitely not an overnight process.

However, taking a step back and looking at my own long-term traffic trend, made me completely understand why so many aspiring bloggers quit in the first place.

It can be quite discouraging to continue blogging after 16 months of slow results and most people will quit far before then (sometimes even within 1-2 months).

I wasn’t focused nor worried about the lack of traffic coming into my website during that time period.

Instead I was producing/publishing as much high-quality content as I possibly could to build my foundation.

I would publish anywhere from 4-8 blog posts per month, optimize them properly and share them on social media.

In combination to generating quality content, I also started guest posting on other relevant websites to increase my overall reach and build quality backlinks.

This helped me to finally start getting noticed in Google and led to my first big organic traffic spike.

2.) Breakthrough/Spike #1

After 16 months of generating quality content and building backlinks to my website, I started to get certain blog articles ranked in Google for specific keyword phrases.

This is where you see the first real spike in organic traffic in the chart above (labeled “Breakthrough #1”).

Again, most people would have quit months and months ago without giving their website a fair chance.

You have to realize that I was building my blog completely from scratch and with a domain authority of 0.

It’s not surprising that no one was visiting my website in the beginning, since it was brand new.

I had to let Google know that I actually existed.

I also switched my website to https before the first spike, which added to the traffic increases you see.

What’s powerful about this first breakthrough/spike is that my traffic never again dropped to as low as it was in the 16 months prior.

I was now getting a steady flow of targeted organic traffic to my website on a monthly basis.

3 .) Breakthrough/Spike #2

Fast forward to January 2019 and I hit a new all-time high in organic traffic by a long-shot (see screenshot above).

Now this was another 14 months or so until I saw a noticeable spike in traffic again.

Hence why patience and consistency is everything with blogging.

To see this second spike, my strategy was pretty much the same as before…I kept creating quality content, optimizing my blog posts and building quality backlinks.

There were a few additional tactics that aided in increased traffic like improving my website speed, but the fundamentals did not change.

At this point (almost 3 years in) 99% of people would have already quit.

This is to be expected as it takes time and effort to build a blog that produces a consistent stream of traffic.

But it’s also hard to think that so many people, if they stuck with it and implemented the right techniques could have a successful blog on their hands today.

And potentially a blog that generates a predictable extra income.

Key Takeaways For The Aspiring Blogger

To summarize, almost 3 years in at the time of writing this post and my blog just getting started. Results will vary from person to person and blog to blog of course, but the message here is the same.

I’d like to leave you with a few key takeaways when it comes to blogging:

• Adopt a Long-Term Mindset/Vision
• Expect Stagnant Results At Times
• Keep Work Consistent Even in Times of Discouragement
• Blog About a Passion of Yours
• Celebrate Small Wins
• Stay Patient & See It Through

I hope this post gives you some perspective on what it takes to start a blog and more importantly stick with it.

The stories you see of successful bloggers are generally the result of years and years of hard work.

The rewards of blogging can be priceless, but it does take time to build your brand and following.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride!