Consider your target market. You’ll also need to consider if your customers are local, national or international. While some locals get Philadelphia’s new slogan, “PHL: Here For The Making,” it may have left tourists scratching their heads. When establishing the “price point” for your craftwork, you need to consider the cost of materials; supplies, equipment, and possibly workspace; advertising; stocking your items for sale; shipping (especially if selling online); labor (yours and possibly others'); and the retail markup, which should probably be at least in the 30-35% range.
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Having the right expectations when you’re first starting your blog can make all the difference in the world– regardless of whether you’re just getting started or trying to grow your blog exponentially.
I should know! I’ve learned how difficult it can be to make a decision about what to focus on as a blogger while working full time as a freelance writer.
7 Tips To Consider While Launching Your Craft Website Free
That’s why the best tips and advice can make a huge difference in whether you feel like you’re spinning your wheels with your blog or moving forward.
There’s so much advice about what you should be doing that it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and end up binging Netflix for 3 days instead.
The good news is that there are a lot of straightforward ways to successfully grow your blog. You don’t have to do everything at once, especially when it comes to learning how to drive massive traffic to your blog and promoting it.
I’ve put together the top things that made a difference in my blogging efforts to help you take action launching your blog instead of getting overwhelmed.
7 Tips To Consider While Launching Your Craft Website For A
Start Before You’re Ready
Don’t wait anymore! Start now!
This is one of the biggest pieces of advice that every single blogger has.
And it’s one that I wish I paid attention to sooner.
I kept waiting for the perfect moment to start my blog.
When I knew more. When I had more free time. When I was more of an expert.
And it makes sense.
It’s easy to give an excuse to wait for the “perfect moment.”
But the truth is– there’s no perfect moment.
You’ll never feel entirely ready to start.
By starting right now and taking action consistently, no matter how small that action is, you’ll see the benefits of putting in the work as it compounds over the days, weeks, and months.
To achieve your goal of making a profitable blog, you have to get started TODAY!
There will be unknowns, but you’ll learn along the way.
Figure out what you can offer to a potential audience that gets you inspired to take consistent action every day!
Focus on Realistic Expectations with Smart Habits
People get into blogging for a variety of reasons.
Most people want to have a sustainable business that can generate $1,000/month in income.
If this is your goal, it helps to have a business plan.
One of the biggest tips I can give is to create habits that will set you up for success.
Most bloggers will use calendar blocking to create regular time to research, write, publish, and promote content.
If you don’t create space in your calendar to actually work on your blog every week (it can be early in the morning before work if you’re an early bird or late in the evenings if you’re a night owl) you won’t make progress quickly enough to reach your goals.
I’m always learning and focusing on putting what I learn into practice with my blog. Whether that’s driving more traffic to my blog or learning how to write better blog posts, or even discovering other ways to make money blogging.
Focus on the Ways You Stand Out
In copywriting, we call this the USP or UNIQUE SELLING POINT. This is what you and you alone can bring to the table.
For example, my USP is that I have marketing experience as a copywriter– I’ve helped big businesses grow their audience and sell their products so I was sure that I would be able to help people just like you grow and launch their own business.
The blogging world is constantly changing, which is why it’s so important to carve out your unique voice.
Think about what can make your blog different from what’s already out there.
What unique experience, knowledge, or understanding can you offer to your potential audience?
Let’s say you want to start a fitness blog, for example. Why would people want advice from you instead of all the other fitness blogs out there?
Maybe you focus on helping new moms get back into shape. Or maybe you want to help business owners find more time for fitness.
The point is, you want to create a position that helps you stand out. Then you can create content that’s hyper-focused on that audience.
Figure Out What You Stand For and Your Voice as You Go Along
In a similar vein, it’s also important to decide what message you want to share.
What do you want your story to be?
Then as you start creating more content, your voice will evolve and develop along the way.
Maybe you want to create a paradigm shift in the way women talk about weight loss and fitness.
Maybe you want to add more compassion to the fashion industry.
Maybe you want to teach people how to take the perfect selfie.
It’s all about the narrative you craft!
This will help guide your content and bring in a unique audience.
You can always change along the way if you need to.
Start Where You Are
Let’s be real.
Your first blog posts are probably going to be pretty terrible.
And that’s okay!
The point is to start where you are and grow from there!
It takes time to learn the best way to communicate with your audience and the kind of content they’ll like.
But you won’t ever discover what kind of content they like if you don’t put it out there in the first place.
The difference between the bloggers who are making $60,000/mo and those who are still just dreaming of it is the full-time bloggers started.
So many people get stuck because they don’t want to risk failure.
They don’t want to risk writing that blog post because what if the grammar isn’t perfect or what if someone doesn’t like it?
Or they say they don’t want to create that video because people will think they’re weird!
But I can promise you, the first time you do ANYTHING, whether it’s writing a blog post or creating a video, it’s not going to be awesome.
In fact, it will probably be terrible.
You still have to do it.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel or attempt to break the wheel like the Mother of Dragons.
(Can you still use Game of Thrones references without making everyone sad?)
Focus on learning how other people became successful and apply those lessons to your niche.
Study the people who have become amazing at what you want to do and figure out what works for them.
Then you can decide how to apply those lessons to your own business in a way that’s sustainable and interesting to you.
For example, when I first launched, I created around 25 blog posts very quickly to get going right out of the gate.
It allowed me to get a lot of viewers upfront while providing engaging content.
Putting the work in before I launched helped me make $1,000 in a week with my freelance writing templates.
It is so much easier to start out on Pinterest when you already have a variety of posts to bring in some traffic.
Network!
So many people are scared of networking these days.
I think it’s because they believe it’s all about those skeezy suits drinking too many cocktails and just being plain stupid.
But if you have zero followers, you still have people in your life.
You have people you went to high school and college with.
Family. Friends of the family, etc.
You have contacts and second-degree contacts.
Start reaching out to them when you’re first launching your blog.
You aren’t selling anything, just telling them that you’re making something cool!
7 Tips To Consider While Launching Your Craft Websites
Ask them if they know anyone it might be good for!
That’s how I got started, I reached out to some friends in the marketing world and they said people needed help with copywriting and marketing for their blog!
And Voila! Blog from the Beginning was born!
When you’re focused on growth, you’ll constantly evolve.
Stop Spending So Much Time Planning and Do the Work
I’m definitely someone who can get stuck planning and thinking about doing things instead of actually doing the work.
But it’s time to stop planning the perfect way to launch your blog.
Just get started.
You don’t have to have all the bells and whistles or the perfect plugins.
You could have the ugliest website in the world and you know what?
It would still be better than not having one at all!
Create the Best Content You Can
Don’t worry about publishing as often as you can.
Instead, focus on publishing the best content you can write.
There’s more competition now and all the studies are showing that the in-depth content performs the best.
Have faith that you will figure it out.
You can create in-depth content by focusing on more research and coming up with unique ways to get your message to your audience.
The Final Word
Launching your blog is all about putting in the work and getting started.
It doesn’t have to be perfect!
If you work on your blog for one hour every day, it will inevitably grow!
I’ve helped thousands of students just like you overcome the anxiety of not having any idea about how to launch a blog.
If you’ve ever wondered about how to start a blog, I created this free eCourse for you!
I wanted to create this to help you create a blog even if you don’t have and tech skills or a huge budget for a web designer.
My guide will show you EXACTLY how to get started creating a money-making blog, without breaking the bank!