Starting an Anonymous Blog -- Tips and Tricks?

[MrsBFI]

Hello All!
I am relatively new here, so please go easy on me.

My fiance and I are on the road to financial independence, and hope to obtain it in about the next 5 years. We though that it would be a great idea to chronicle our journeys, especially since we so fondly look upto the Frugal Woods, MMM, and Mad Fientist. We though that it would make sense to start a blog of our own, but to keep it anonymous, so that we didn't feel pressure from friends and family and that we could write openly and freely about experiences.

The biggest problem we are facing, is how the heck to get people there. I know a bit about SEO, and I'm working on marketing, but when you can't share what you're working on with your support system, it throws quite an interesting wrench into the whole situation.

I thought I would write to see if any of you are in this situation? Writing an anonymous blog, and how to get viewership. I am linking to the blog below. Thanks in advance!

http://befindependent.com/

[Frankies Girl]

You have been registered here at least 9 months. You have 11 posts according to the counter. I would not consider that new. And all of your posts are pretty much "check out my blog" stuff. You registered, threw out a flurry of "check out my blog" posts and then disappeared for the last 8 months (last post before this one was from December 2017). So you didn't think participating here was of interest?

This isn't meant to be harsh. It is meant to be a wake-up call that to be successful, you have to make sure to market yourself without alienating your audience by poorly promoting your blog (hitting forums with a bunch of links and not actually interacting with anyone that might be potential readers). Stop trying so hard to PROMOTE™ in all capital letters. Start writing authentic stuff and then go out and be authentic in places (like this forum) WITH other people and circulate and get to know the room (as it were). Think of this like a nice party - don't go barging into conversations throwing out your business card and then scampering off without so much as a basic back and forth before you dash off as if your time/energy is too valuable to share with anyone else unless they come to your blog; chat with folks, share some insights/opinions and let folks get to know you, and they might like you enough to seek out more of your work.

[marty998]

Yep - exactly what Frankies Girl said.

There's a trade off here - people are only going to be interested in your blog if they can get to know and relate to you. Which involves giving up a certain level of anonymity. How many popular FI bloggers are out there where you don't know there names and details? Not many.

Youth is also going to work against you here....With respect, at 23 your adult life experience is not going to appeal to a broad audience, so you are going to have to be really targeted in your marketing.

Guarantee you anyone 5 years older is going to look at your situation and say "ugh, not another self absorbed millennial wannabe instafame starlet"*, so it might be best to focus and zero in on the college demographic?

*that's not to say you are like this, but recently it seems like I've seen a plethora of youngsters with blogs trying to lecture me how to become FI. Hint hint - credibility is built with evidence. Show me you are FI, then I'll read your blog on how to become FI.

[patchyfacialhair]

I, along with many other people, seem to derive the most value from blogs from people that have already done the thing they are blogging about.

There is a place for what you want to do: in a journal. There's a journal sub-forum here, or you can go old school.

As stated before, you're probably not going to gain much readership unless you give up some anonymity and/or FIRE first.

Even MMM was FIREd for a few years before he started the blog accompanying this forum.

[JoJo]

If your end game is to make money on the blog, don't get your hopes up.

I started a travel blog about 1.5 years ago.  This year I have made $48, and spent about $320 plus a couple hundred hours of my time, and that's excluding depreciation on computer, camera, and travel expenses, etc.

You really need to work the SEO and get into the top 5 rank on google.  And traffic does not equal money.  I have about 3,000 page views per month, and only $3 of what I've made this is from affiliate sales.

[MrsBFI]

Thank you all for your comments and insight.

It definitely resinated, and I am going to sit back and give your insight some real thought.

I am also going to take the advice many of you gave and get more involved on the forums in a helpful way.

Thank you!