Any advice you might give to new bloggers? I started my own blog this month, and it definitely still looks like a new blog. I've been trying to slowly improve the look to appear more original, but I'm thinking I'm only going to get that original look putting some real work into it.
So, bearing in mind that I too am still in the very beginning stages, I think persistence is key. For a lot of the time so far, it has felt a bit like an echo chamber. Even after having some good days 5-10x my average traffic, there's always the reality of days that are way, way below average. You just have to keep writing and have faith that the audience will come-- which it is, slowly. Today is a total fluke, but the traffic has grown at a couple of percent per week over the past six months.
Social media has been a really great resource. I try to engage a lot on Twitter. I share/retweet articles expecting nothing in return. I try to be extremely grateful when people who have given me exposure have done so. Just being genuine and authentic feels really important. There are so many personal finance blogs out there, and when I don't have any ideas about posts, it's tempting to write about something like the Roth IRA ladder. Then I catch myself and think, "does the internet really need another explanation of the Roth IRA ladder when there are fifty good ones?" I force myself to take a break until I have something to write about that actually has meaning to me.
Obviously, the MMM community has been really important to me too-- for what I have learned here, for the thinking certain threads make me do, and because I had been posting for years and when I added my blog to my sig, I had a built-in "advertisement" of over a thousand posts. Though it's easy to doubt myself and wonder why anyone would care about my opinion, I think building credibility for me started here.
I hope some of that helps. It's so early for the blog that it's hard to know yet whether it will develop a long term following... but it's a lot of fun to write and it really is extremely motivating in keeping me on the FIRE path.
