Welcome to Episode 9 of the Above The Fold podcast show for bloggers, solopreneurs, and small business owners! In this episode, I share with you my 10-year journey as a blogger, so far, and how I'm planning my blogging strategy for the next 10 years!
Hey, what’s happening everyone? Fabrizio Van Marciano here from Magnet4Blogging dot net, welcome to episode 9 of the Above The Fold podcast show for bloggers, marketers, and solopreneurs.
If you’ve just stumbled upon this show for the first time, a BIG warm welcome to you and it’s great to have you here.
This show is all about me sharing with you actionable tips and advice for creating and growing your blogging business; From creating content to creating passive income to doing marketing and promotion, to growing your audience, and a whole lot more.
So, here’s what I’m going to be talking about in this week’s episode -
I’m celebrating my tenth year of blogging guys, so I’m sharing with you my journey so far, and what I’m doing to get myself prepared to continue blogging for the next ten years, hopefully.
Hey, guys welcome to another episode of Above The Fold. So, it was around the end of August of 2010 that I made the decision to launch my first blog which was hosted on a Bluehost shared hosting plan (Affiliate link) at the time.
I remember feeling really excited about it and I couldn’t wait to start writing my first post.
In my first post, I introduced myself and outlined some formalities about what I would be blogging about, which was mainly around the topic of online business, e-commerce, and internet marketing.
I felt that I could write about those topics comfortably since I was already running an e-commerce business and website anyway.
As time went on, I began to learn more about WordPress, themes, plugins, etc. And of course, I added those topics to my blog categories as well.
For me, the first year was the most challenging, and boy did I make a lot of mistakes. Six months into creating my blog, in fact, I had written just over 100 blog posts and something went wrong.
I woke up one morning, went to my blog, and saw a white screen, a blank screen if you will. I remember frantically logging into my hosting account and I did the craziest thing. I somehow managed to delete the database for my blog
It was a pretty amateur thing to do, I know.
I remember the feeling all too well, though, it felt like the first 6 months had been all for nothing really, and that was going to be the end of my little blogging venture.
Luckily, however, I was able to reinstate my blog via a backup that the Bluehost (Affiliate link) team was able to pull up for me, so it was all good, it all turned out fine in the end.
So yeah, I definitely think the most challenging part of starting a blog from complete scratch and without any prior knowledge, is the learning curve. It’s such a steep one and there’s just so much to learn. When I started, I felt that I needed to learn as much as I could in a short time.
If I was going to be successful at this blogging thing, I needed to understand how everything worked, not just writing and publishing great content, but how WordPress worked, the themes, various plugins. I even ventured into coding a little bit.
And of course, learning to code opened up a whole new can of opportunities which allowed me, later on, to start a secondary business as a freelance designer and front-end developer at FabrizioVanMarciano.com
If I could give one piece of advice to any blogger that’s just starting out, and that is to just learn as much as you can. Read books, watch videos, tune in to podcasts, and don’t just learn, practice as well. It's OK le learning about new things but if you don’t put what you’ve learned into practice then you’re not going to improve at all.
I’ll link to a post over on my blog with a list of the best books that have helped me with my blog over the years so be sure to check it out, (Link above).
So, anyway guys, three years into my first blogging venture, and Google unleashed two updates that catastrophically tanked my blog. You may remember Google Panda and Google Penguin. Google’s algorithm change which literally wiped thousands of websites and blogs off the surface of the World Wide Web. One of those blogs was mine.
And so, after three and a half years of blogging and having written more than 500 posts, I was left with no other choice but to start over completely with a fresh new blog. I just could not regain back the organic search engine traffic that I had built up for my blog. And so in April of 2013, Magnet4Blogging was born. And as the saying goes, the rest was pretty much history.
So, yeah, the last ten years has been an incredible journey with my blog. I’ve experienced some high and low moments. I’ve made a ton of mistakes, and I’m OK with that because mistakes are all about learning what to do and not to do.
But I’ve also made so many great connections, friends, and have come to know many of you listening to this show along the way. I’ve also enjoyed following your journeys too. I’ve seen so many new blogs come along, and of course, I’ve also sadly seen many blogs disappear.
So, what are my plans for the next ten years?
Well, pfft, the next ten years is going to be unpredictable for starters. I mean, it’s a long old time and anything can happen. However, that shouldn’t really stop us from making plans, right?
Technology is changing, the way in which we create and consume content online is changing, the way in which we do business online is changing. So, my plan is to continue creating great content, but not just for my blog, although that will be my focal point, but also for my YouTube channel and podcast, and my creative business over at FabrizioVanMarciano Dot Com.
I’m seriously planning on creating a lot more videos in the future, that much I do know. I’ve been able to grow a small following on my channel of around 2.5K Subscribers, so that’s been pretty awesome.
I will also continue to monetize my blog much in the same way as I’ve been doing for the last ten years, but as I said, things are changing constantly and something new might come along.
The tactics and strategies that I’m implementing now might be obsolete in the future, so who knows.
One thing I’m also going to be doing in the next few years is creating online courses. I’m actually already developing one which I’m really excited about, and yeah, there’s a lot of things that I know I think will be useful for me to teach others how to do, so online courses is definitely on the cards.
I’m using a plugin called LearnDash (Affiliate link) to create my online course which is an absolute killer of a tool, and if you're ever in the mindset of creating an online course, I know there’s a lot of options and solutions out there, but if you are savvy enough to use WordPress, I’d highly recommend it.
I will have a link to LearnDash in the show notes if you want to check it out. It is an affiliate link guys so if you click on it and make a purchase of the software I will be paid a small commission, at no extra charge to you.
Going back to my strategy for the next decade, I think the best strategy, rather than to look at my 10-year goal as the endgame, which by the way is to make enough money through my blog and online business to buy a house in the Canary Islands, that is my ultimate dream goal. To retire in the Spanish sunshine, but yeah, the best strategy is to take break my goals up into smaller achievable goals, one week, one month at a time.
The next ten years will be about me gathering all of the knowledge, resources, skills, and experiences that I’ve gained over the last ten years, and growing the best blog that I can, but more importantly, to continue providing lots of value to you, my listener, subscriber. I wouldn’t be doing any of this if it wasn’t for your continued support and I really appreciate you.
And, of course, I want to do all of this without sacrificing my mental or physical health. If that is going to be possible at all? We’ll see.
So, that’s the short of it really. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed blogging over the last ten years. I’ve learned so much from my own blogging experience and also from seeing what bloggers have been doing and I just want to continue being the man of value, and helping you guys become successful at blogging and creating your online businesses.
That is it, folks, I want to take this opportunity again to thank you for your support and helping me to grow. You can expect more awesome content in the future, and if there’s anything that you need help and advice on, do let me know. I want to be able to create the kind of content that you want to read, listen to, and watch, so feel free to get in touch with me with your ideas or requests for the blog.
OK, so that’s all I have for you in this episode I hope you enjoyed listening. I’d love to learn more about you and your own blogging journey so far, and your goals for the next year or so, or maybe even ten years from now.
Do you have a #10yearchallenge?
Do let me know in the comments section if you’re tuning to this episode via my blog. I’d love to engage with you for sure.
Again, I hope you’ve found this episode useful and valuable, and all the rest of it. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving me a short review over on iTunes and maybe even subscribing to future episodes.
If you want to get more blogging and online business tips, check out my blog at magnet4blogging.net. You can also find me on YouTube and Instagram, @vanmarciano. That’s it, I’m signing off, I’ll speak to you soon in the next episode. But until then, take care, stay safe out there, and peace, cheers.
