When I first started my blog, I never imagined that one day I would start an exclusive category dealing only with blogging.

Hedonistit blog was created in order to gather together in one place all of the things that will make life better, whether it's big things like travel tips or guides, or smaller things, but equally important, such as ways to get perfect facial skin or even easy recipes that upgrade your day. Over time, I got more and more questions about a subject that turned out to interest a lot of my readers – why did I open the blog?? And how do you even open a blog? What equipment do I use to take high quality photos? And the list goes on and on…

The decision to open the blogging category on the site was created out of a real need from you, and I found that although I never professionally learned about blogging and didn’t participate in seminars or courses about blogs, I have a lot {!} to share with you.

My passion for blogging and the fact that I’m autodidactic made me spend many hours researching the subject across the Internet and acquiring countless tools to build and manage a successful blog.

Now that I think about it – this topic of blogging naturally fits into the blog's original agenda – after all, the whole purpose of the blog was to make readers' lives better! Today I can honestly say that opening a blog was one of the best things I've ever done {and I have no doubt I'm not the only blogger saying this…}.

But like everything in life, blogging also has slightly more challenging sides. Although every day I bless the moment I opened this blog which allowed me to meet amazing people, try new products before they went on the market and travel the world much more than before {and even get invitations to amazing places}, the way to establish the blog wasn’t short and involved a lot of learning and familiarity with fields that were completely foreign to me.

Even Hedonistit didn’t become a successful blog that attracts tens of thousands of readers a month overnight. My journey in the world of “blogging” {which took almost two years! How time flies!} was {and still is} accompanied by a long process of trial and error, during which I was able to learn very important things that contributed to the growth and success of the blog.

In this post, I'll share with you the five things I think every blogger should know – whether you're a beginner blogger {or a future blogger} or a veteran blogger.

1. AN INDEPENDENT BLOG IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO

Even though this isn’t the free option of the blogging world, it’s really inexpensive {less than $4 a month} and it ensures that your blog will be completely yours, meaning that all the content you enter into the site will belong to you and no one will be able to suddenly delete it {unlike on other free platforms}. Besides, an independent blog is much more professional so it will increase the chances that companies will want to work with you.

I remember that when I opened my blog, I debated a great deal about this topic… I read endless posts and articles that analyze the differences between the various options and eventually, when I looked at all the successful blogs at that time, I discovered that everyone has one thing in common – everyone is working on an independent blog. It took me around a month to get the courage to go all the way and invest a little more money in the blog, and it completely paid off.

If you're still debating, you should read this post in which I explained more about the benefits of an independent blog compared to a free blog, and also explained how to easily open a blog in less than 15 minutes.

2. DON’T BE SCARED TO INVEST A LITTLE

Almost every hobby requires a certain financial investment. Take for example riding a bike as a hobby – a bike rider who takes his hobby seriously will have to buy a high-quality bicycle, a helmet, comfortable clothing and more. The same goes for dancing, photography, painting and even reading 🙂

The world of blogging isn’t different.

If you're blog is important to you, you should invest some money to learn and grow {for example, take courses on certain subjects that will save you hours and hours of self-study online} and buy equipment or hardware that will upgrade your site {like a strong computer, storage for the website and a professional design template}. Besides that, if you want to turn your blog from a hobby to a successful business, it’s important that you invest money in it just as you would with any other business. You know what they say – you have to spend money to make money.

You can read about the tools that help me manage the blog here and there.

3. DON’T GET NERVOUS FROM THE NUMBERS, BUT USE GOOGLE ANALYTICS FROM THE BEGINNING

At first you obviously won’t have a lot of readers, after all if your blog is new, it makes sense that no one knows about it yet  🙂 Don’t worry – you'll slowly see the numbers go up. True, it doesn’t happen overnight – but if you invest in your blog, write interesting content, incorporate inspirational images {ones that you've taken or from photo sources, if photography isn’t your thing}, tell people who are close to you about the blog and be involved in social networks – it will happen! And don’t worry, at first it may seem like you have tons of things to do and there's no way you're capable of it, but I assure you that it's totally doable 🙂

And yet, your blog's statistics are very important. Google Analytics is a tool that every blogger has to work with – it allows you to see which posts are most successful, how many people visited your site at any given time, how long they stayed on the site, and how they even got to your site. Whether to track the progress of your blog and understand which content works best or whether you want to work with known brands in the future – you need this tool in your life. The good news is that it's a completely free tool.

You really don’t have to check the data every day, but it's important that you understand the big picture. For a simple and understandable guide about using Google Analytics click here.

4. WHEN THERE’S ORDER, THERE’S TIME FOR EVERYTHING

A beginner’s blog is usually a one-man-show.

The writing, the pictures, the brand building, the operation and marketing of the site are all the hats that a blogger wears during his journey, and there’s no doubt that this could be overwhelming at first. This may be the exact reason you’re afraid to take the risk and start a blog or the reason you are collapsing under the load and considering quitting if you’ve already started one.

Trust me, I went through this myself for a long time – when I first started my blog I was employed and from the second I got back from my day job until the wee hours of the night I was working solely on the blog, trying to be a super-blogger marking off all the possible tasks on the way to the perfect blog. I would sit for hours and hours trying to get through an endless list of tasks, and then I realized that the reason I wasn’t reaching my goals was because I had given myself an impossible amount of tasks a day.

You can’t do everything in one day, in one week or even in one month!

The secret is to know how to split the tasks, prioritize them and set a different deadline for each one.

Over the last year, I discovered for the first time the real use of a schedule planner! If back in my school days I would buy a new planner every year mainly to scribble and paste stickers on it, now I use it for the purpose it was invented – to write all my tasks neatly! {In addition to the scribbling and pasting stickers, of course 😉 }.

I highly recommend you get started with an editorial calendar {I use the calendar in my planner but if you don’t have one you can download a really cute one for free from this site}. An editorial calendar is actually a regular calendar in which you write all the important holidays and festivities that take place during the year {like this or this} so that you don’t get caught unready. After you prepare a neat calendar and devote specific time for thinking and writing the right posts for each date, you'll find that you have plenty of time to get to things that are just as important like building a brand and marketing the blog. When you get to the second step, at the end of each month, dedicate time to write down the list of tasks you know about in advance that you need to do next month: preparing posts, creating content for social networks, marketing the blog, acquiring new skills, etc.

Divide the big tasks into mini-tasks that are easier to do and put them all neatly in your schedule 🙂 In the beginning, it may feel a bit strange to you, but you will quickly get to the point where you don’t understand how you managed to live without this planner!

In the end, it's all a matter of habit and there's no reason why you should give up your dream because you don’t think you have time… Believe me, you've got a lot of time, you just aren’t planning it the right way 😉

5. YOU AREN’T BORN A BLOGGER, YOU TURN INTO A BLOGGER

You may sometimes feel like your blog won’t work, after all, there are already a lot of bloggers much more experienced than you, their pictures are better than yours and they already have a million followers on all social networks.

Do you know the only difference between you and them? They’re simply doing it a lot longer than you!

Experience is everything in life… After all, the first post you write won’t look like the tenth, or the hundredth you write, right? At first you may not be 100% satisfied with your outcome, which makes perfect sense. It’s important that you use this not-so-satisfying result as a tool for self-stimulation rather than as a failed attempt that will make you give up.

I have a tip that may sound funny to you but it’s very useful – go to the oldest page of a blog you really like or to the first image of an Instagram account you love and see the huge difference from then to now! This will surely give you motivation 😉

If this post helped you, I would love to read about it in the comments 🙂 Also, tell me which additional topics you would like to learn about in the “blogging” field!