9 Things I learned from my first 6 Months of Anime Blogging

In a few days its gonna be 6 months since I decided to start my blogging journey.

Launching the blog just days before I started college, this time 6 months ago truly was a time full of changes.

This will be sort of a message to myself from 6 months ago. A list of some things I’ve learned from those 6 months.

If someone who is thinking of starting a blog comes up to this post, that would be great. I hope this could be even a tiny bit helpful for you.

So let’s get this started…

Post on consistent times

Decide how many posts you want to make.

You can post daily, weekly, monthly. Just stick to your decision. Find the quantity of posts that will work the best for you.

Personally I post something new every three days. I’ve sticked with this since December and I’d like to think its working well.

Schedule posts

Scheduling is a blessing. Back in January when I had a few scheduled posts, it was an amazing time.

It allowed me to focus on other things, and gave me time to finetune posts before publishing them if I still wasn’t fully satisfied with them.

Seriously just put in the extra work for a few days and schedule posts. It makes life easier and less stressful.

Even having one post made in advance gives you a nice ‘headstart’.

Interact with other bloggers

This is something I’m trying to do more of. I’m too much like real life, not interacting enough with other bloggers.

We are in this blogging thing together. Who is gonna help us out if not each other?

Follow bloggers on Twitter or other social media. Comment on their posts and like them. Give them the interaction you would want on your blog.

Guest posting is a great way to get yourself out there. Make connections and after a while ask them for a guest post too.

I really should practice what I’m preaching more.

If you are self-hosted on wordpress – use the Jetpack plugin

This is what I consider one of my biggest mistakes so far.

And it’s something I haven’t seen talked about in any of the many posts I’ve seen about starting a blog.

If you are self-hosted on wordpress, use the Jetpack plugin to integrate wordpress.com features.

This will allow you to use the WordPress reader which is basically like the social media for bloggers, each new blog post you make appears to your followers.

I’ve only realized the strength of this plugin in January. Don’t do the same mistake as me.

The reader feature isn’t even the only thing that makes Jetpack so useful. It’s really an essential plugin, and here I was not using it for almost half of my blogging time so far.

Get yourself out there

Just promote. A lot. But not in the spammy way.

Make a Twitter account but don’t just post links to your blog and call it a day.

Instead, become an active member of the community you are in. Reply to tweets, write your own thoughts. Just be yourself and follow anime fans and bloggers.

For me this was an easy step because I used a lot of Twitter before anyway. So making a new Twitter account for a blog and using it daily was pretty straightforward.

Make a Pinterest account. I feel it works very well for anime. Pin daily there too. It’s fun to just pin some cute anime stuff while waiting for a bus or train.

Use reddit. This month I linked my posts to the appropriate subreddits and it worked amazingly.

If you have a YouTube, do link to your blog there.

Sign up to animenano. Any way to get backlinks and get your name out there will help. No one will see you if you don’t make it easy for people to see you.

Make an email list

This could be classified as another one of my mistakes.

I still don’t have an email list. I briefly experiemented with it but decided to put it off for later, thinking I will find better ideas than simply offering ‘monthly email updates’.

A few months later and the better idea still didn’t come. So I’m still without an email list.

For many other niches its easy to make ‘lead magnets’, meaning downloads that will get people on your email list.

But for the anime niche I’m just struggling to find ideas. E-book? I’m not sure if people would really be interested in an ebook simply made of my lame blog posts.

Cheatsheet? I thought of making something like that for anime recommendations but concluded I may not have enough completed anime for such a thing.

Downloads? Of what? The GIFs I post? Not sure if that makes sense.

Maybe you have better ideas? If so, don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments cause it would really help me out!

Don’t trust those ‘How I earned x thousand dollars in x months’ posts

If you are anything like me, you’ve seen a lot of posts like that, somehow hoping you could achieve the same.

But let me tell you, whenever you see a number of dollars with a number of months in a title, don’t bother clicking it.

It’s usually just a blogger trying to make you pay for their blogging courses or something else that would put you to their email list.

Congratulations to those that did succeed in getting the money they say they’ve gotten, but for anime bloggers? I just don’t see it possible.

You can only achieve those huge numbers in the ‘how to make money blogging’ niche or something else that involves finances. Maybe lifestyle or travel bloggers too. But anime bloggers just don’t speak for so many people as much as those other topics do.

In other words, this is a much more specific niche where growth will be harder and slower. And slower growth means less money.

Improve every day

I believe that if you want long term gains from blogging you have to dedicate time for it every day.

Every day there is something you can do to improve or help your blog.

It doesn’t have to include just making new posts, commenting other blogs or promoting yourself on various sites counts too.

Change your habits, when you are waiting for something and you have the phone with you, use that time for your blog.

It is a hobby but one that needs to be incorporated into your lifestyle. If you want success at least.

People do notice what you are doing

It may seem like no one cares about your posts. Like no one is reading and all of it is useless.

But trust me, there are people that read your stuff.

Sometimes all it takes is a nice message to give you all the motivation you need. I had that in January when I thought no one cared about my posts, until one amazing reader sent me a direct message full of support.

I’m sure there is someone out there who would do the same for you.

If this will be helpful to even one person, I’ve achieved the goal of this post.

Here is to a lot more months of blogging. A big thank you to everyone that has supported me through this journey so far.

I’m not sure what else to add so that will be all for this post.