How I Became A Lifestyle Blogger: My 8-Year Journey

2021 is coming to an end in a few days and 2022 signals a grand entrance. So, I felt I should tell my tale of my adventures of becoming a lifestyle blogger.

This journey started barely 8 years ago. I needed to do something more, something that can keep me busy outside the conventional activities and also fetch me some passive income alongside. So, I searched the internet for what I can do online to make money, then I came across Google’s caption on the Adsense website on how to “turn your passion into profit” through blogging and vlogging. Before then, I knew there were opportunities in blogging but I never clearly knew what these opportunities were.

So, I jumped into blogging in 2013 as a total novice. I knew nothing much about starting a blog, not to talk of starting a lifestyle blog.

My Journey So Far

First off, I didn’t start off as a lifestyle blogger. As a matter of fact, I really did not have any specific niche for my blog when I started. It’s funny but it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know I had to niche down on a specific niche for my blog and nobody was there to tell me, that but this did not go without repercussions.

I created my blog using the Blogger platform and after that, I published my first few articles which got some views and encouraging comments that got me motivated. Within a few weeks, I got more than 30 articles published on the platform. Great progress, right? A few years down the line, I realized that those posts I published earlier were substandard and under-optimized according to SEO standards. 

Shortly after I realised that I unpublished all my posts and edited most of them all over again. This was a result of how ignorant I was about blogging and my desperation to start off as soon as possible. There are a host of things anyone must know before they create their blog and start publishing articles. This may not require a lot of time, not more than a day or two, or a week at most, but a thorough knowledge of these things could give you a good headstart and avoid some of the hitches I experienced when I started blogging.

Challenges I Encountered In Blogging

When I started blogging, the first thing I considered immediately after publishing my first few posts was monetization through Adsense advertising but that was way off the grid. I didn’t even have enough page views, no organic traffic, the content was insufficient and all these affected my Adsense account approval. It was only after a while that my account got approved.

The natural challenge any blogger would experience is the problem of traffic. How can I get enough traffic to my blog? How can I get devoted visitors to my lifestyle blog? This may look very difficult to overcome for starters but the simplest answer is “keep doing what is right”. But then, the most complex question is “What are the right things?

After learning about the importance of niching down for new blogs, it was hard for me to find a perfect niche for the ideas I had about Knowseeker. Then, the name was just Knowseeker Blog. It was later on that I found that my blog contents matched with those of lifestyle blogs, then I changed the name to Knowseeker Lifestyle. This change made so much difference in the way I now run the blog and the kind of content I now publish.

Where SEO Changed My Life as a Lifestyle Blogger

SEO means Search Engine Optimization and it refers to practices and methods that helps your site rank better in search engines like Google, etc. Traffic sources can be classified into two – Organic and Inorganic traffic. Traffic from search engines is referred to as organic traffic while those from social media and URL shares are inorganic.

Much like every other seasoned lifestyle blogger, I started optimizing for keywords, requesting backlinks to my articles and deliberately improving the contents of my articles but these were obviously not enough. I needed to do more as much as I need to do more now. The journey is an endless one, full of adventures but this journey of SEO and related methods to boost your site’s visibility is indeed a very interesting one.

Milestones Attained in Recent Times

The first milestone was getting my Adsense account approved and it meant such a great deal for me.

I needed to optimize my already existing articles, those I considered sub-standard and under-optimized. This was quite challenging for me because I had quite a number of posts to re-edit but I was soon able to get over this.

One of the ranking factors for SEO is page speed, so I decided to implement Google AMP Technology on my blog. Doing this was a major challenge because very few Blogger blogs had successfully implemented AMP templates but here was I trying something very few people have been successful at. Really challenging but it was very satisfying when I finally got a hold of it.

I was recently recognized as one of the top 100 lifestyle blogs in the world on Feedspot. This was one of my most exciting moments and felt like a very important milestone for me. It gives me hope that greater ones are coming too.

Also, I have had a couple of writers on my editorial team and they have been incredibly awesome.

Finally, hitting tremendous traffic figures in the order of 200k plus receiving affiliate link and business deal opportunities with a crazy number of clients in the past two years have been an exciting experience.

My Gratitude

It’s been a hell of a journey, more intense than the picture I painted in this post but I am grateful to God for the adventures, the ups and downs, for the periods when I was motivated and other times when I felt no inspiration to write. It has not always been all smooth and easy.

My gratitude also goes to my fans and visitors who visit read my blogs, to my team of writers, to my partners in affiliate marketing and related businesses here. Thank you very much.

I am publishing this story of how I became a lifestyle blogger at this time because I believe 2022 will be greater for all of us. We hope to foster a better relationship with you all this new year and we hope to provide you better content and make your stay with us worthwhile now more than ever.

I am a medical doctor, a seasoned writer and passionate blogger. Thanks to many years of trials, failure, and near successes. I am the founder of Knowseeker and our content are geared towards enlightening and making you a better and happier audience.

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