Each week, I walk through steps to starting a successful blog (that’s every bloggers dream right?). This is week two. Check out my journey and results below. Click here to see the guide for week 1. There are amazing blog guides out there, however, all of them are from the perspective of an established blogger. They tend to skip over some of important (and frustrating) steps and obstacles. I detail what it takes to set up a successful blog, from there perspective of someone who is doing it now. First, if you want to follow the journey to writing a successful blog, please sign up for my “Free Weekly Blog Guide” below.
Success!
Week 2, Successful Blog (hopefully one day) Statistics:
Week 2 Cost (click here for week 1 cost breakdown): $400
Ad Revenue: $0
Net Revenue: -$867.00 (yikes, this is more expensive than I expected! But it’s an investment)
Blog posts this week: 3 (12 total)
Week 2 page views/visitors: 3,284/2,205
Total page views/visitors (since April 1, 2026): 5,122/ 3,328
Week 2, Successful Blog (hopefully one day) Milestones
The City for Millennials launched two weeks ago and has reached over 5,000 page views. I guess there are a lot of us trying to survive in expensive cities. We are all in this together! As a reminder, The City for Millennials is a platform to discuss ways to have fun living in expensive cities, while also planning for financial independence.
The blog received three guest blog contributor offers. I accepted all three, so stay tuned to learn about: 1) Pathway to homeownership; 2) DYI apartment decorating and gardening on a tight budgets; and 3) Full body workout options around the city If you can’t afford to pay for a gym membership.
Successful Blog Milestone Announcement
I’m excited to announce that I was offered to write a guest blog for Millennial Money Man(M$M), This is rad because M$M reaches over 2 million people per year. Last month, Millennial Money Man made over $120,000 in net revenue. Yes, in a MONTH. Certainly a successful blog! Stay tuned, and I will send out a link once it is published.
I decided to use ConvertKit as my email list platform. You get 1 month free service, so I have a few weeks to get used to it. I still cannot figure out how to deploy Opt Ins effectively. Luckily, they have awesome customer service.
Search Engine Optimizer proficient! As I mentioned last week, I am using Yoast SEO. It is important to include keywords throughout each post. All of my posts currently are “good quality”. Check out the 67 Best SEO tips for bloggers.
Successful blog research
In week two, I signed up for three blog strategy courses. I received daily emails with successful blog tips. I recommend signing up for the ones produced by: Millennial Money, Millennial Money Man, and Making Sense of Cents.
Currently, I am a quarter of the way through the course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. Ultimately, I want to have a successful blog, so this course is helping me understand how to monetize my site. I attempted to add affiliate adds to my blog, but they are not landing, so I plan to remove them until I know more about how to be effective.
Successful blog promotions
Social media promotions. I spent some time strengthening my social media presence. It’s important to have a presence and consistent message on all platforms, but experienced bloggers recommend to focus on Facebook and one other for the first few weeks. Furthermore, I paid for multiple post promotions on Facebook to test which ones are most effective.
Started writing a Free Guide to Student Loan Elimination. Goal is to promote this download to encourage weekly updates subscribers. The key to success is having a strong email following with dedicated readers.
I wrote 2 guest blog posts, and published 3 posts in week 2.
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Guide to writing a successful blog, week 2
The following are steps to consider for week two of your blog set up. Note that I work a full time job during the week, and thus, progress should be compared on an adjusted scale based on your effort. As it turns out, I worked on this blog for 20 hours this week.
1. Try and get to at least 10 posts by week 2.
And then keep writing. It’s hard not to get distracted by all the other aspects of your blog, but I am told by many successful bloggers that content is number 1. Once you reach the 10 posts mark, you may consider taking a brief step back to ensure your content is adhering to your niche, focus on the design of your page, setup your email list framework and strategy, and build your social media presence.
2. Focus on SEO for everything you publish
I made a huge mistake, and should have know better. However, like you, I am new at all this. I wrote a guest post for a blog, and thought that I could also include it (in part) as content on my about me page. Duplicate content makes the SEO ranking factor decrease, oops! Perhaps I should have reviewed the 67 best SEO tips for bloggers prior to posting.
With that said, it’s important to focus on writing new material in week two. And then write some more. If you focus on connecting your material to your keywords, then you are ultimately going to rank better. As I mentioned last week, I am using Yoast SEO. All of my posts have a green “good” ranking. One thing that I learned is that it’s important to include alt text on your post photographs.
3. Educate yourself about affiliate marketing, but hold off
A successful blog makes money from affiliate ads. Ultimately, it will be important to add ads. But in the first few weeks, it’s important to write content and build your viewership. You don’t want to turn your readers away with too many affiliate ads, a cluttered page, or ads that do not target your audience.
As I mentioned previously, I purchased the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course and am about a quarter of the way through it. In week three, I plan to complete the course and develop an affiliate marketing strategy. You may notice a few affiliate ads on my page. I plan to remove these until I am more educated. On a whim, I signed up for FlexOffers, and broadcasted ads on some of my pages. Clearly this was not the right strategy. I’ve made a grand total of zero $$ on them.
4. Start building your email list
Your email list will be your biggest asset as your blog develops. A solid, dedicated crew of readers will make your blog successful. As I mentioned above, I am using ConvertKit. The first month is free, but will cost around $25/month afterwards. MailChimp is free up to 2,000 subscribers, but I like the way ConvertKit allows you to be strategic and build out email sequences and automize them. I’m sure MailChimp does this, but it was not as straight forward to me. Plus, ConvertKit has amazing customer service. They have a chat function and have guided me through multiple issues.
As it turns out, I have not been very successful in building a crew of subscribers. Once I have a bit more content (say 15 posts), I am going to focus on building an Opt in strategy and promote a free student loan elimination guide for those who sign up for my weekly newsletter.
Here’s your opportunity to signup and be the first to get the guide!
Success!
5. Expand your social media presence and promote
While I have a presence on Twitter and Pinterest, I’m focusing on Facebook and Instagram to promote my blog ,The City for Millennials. Experienced bloggers suggest focusing on one social media platform in addition to Facebook in the beginning. I am most familiar with Instagram, so I chose that.
In addition to inviting my friends to like my Facebook and Instagram pages, I am running promotions on each platform to direct people to the blog website. You can pay as little at $1 a day for a promotion, however, I’ve been spending around $20/day to help identify which content is most enjoyable by readers. The goal is to identify promotions that have the lowest cost per click to your page. Right now I am as low as 7 cents. I’m working to refine my approach to get down to 1 cent per webpage click. Spending upfront $$ will hopefully have a return on investment. Though I did make some mistakes that felt like a waste of $.
If you haven’t already, you can follow the City for Millennials Facebook and Instagram page by clicking on the content below:
6. Read other blogs and connect
Try and read the blogs of 5 experienced bloggers within your niche arena this week. Make sure that you are not blatantly copying them. But also learn from them. How are they displaying posts? What is there Opt In email strategy? How are they displaying affiliate ads? What products or services are they offering? There are many blogging groups on Facebook. I’ve learned a lot from joining a few.
I connected with a few bloggers this week. One connection resulted in a guest blog request during the second week of my blogging life. It’s a big one, and I am stoked. I hope I don’t mess it up!
7. Make mistakes, it’s how you learn.
But then again, everyone is going to mess up at first. In my two weeks, I’ve made too many mistakes to list. Some of them were costly $$. Of particular note, I purchased the full privacy protection Bluehost annual subscription at around $255. Apparently, all you need is the basic $3.95/month. I learned of this mistake in a bloggers Facebook group. I also spent way too much on initial Facebook promotions. But now I know what works!
8. Blogging can be addictive, be careful and have patience
Im having a blast figuring out how to make a successful blog. Honestly, it’s a little too much fun. All I want to do is work on it! I love writing content and figuring out how to display everything on the page. Over the last 14 days, I lived and dreamt blogging. I’ll repeat what I shared last week. I forgot two things. 1) to take care of myself, and 2) enjoy time with loved ones. There is more to life than blogging, side hustling, and making money. Don’t forget to live!
But really, this is so much fun! Dream big everyone! Much love.