 Can you dim the lights, please? Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Shilpa Shah. Hey. And I recently started a new blog. So today I'm going to tell you about all the things that I learned along the way, all the things I wish someone had told me before I started, and some things that have worked really well for me so far. So a little bit about me. I'm from Pune, which is just a four-hour flight. And I'm sure that is more than the average flight time of all the World Camp Asia participants here. So I actually met someone who traveled 40 hours with three layovers. So four hours is really close. In my past life, I was a software programmer. I moved on to be a project manager. I joined Hans with Karthik over there in 2011. I was with Hummingbird until 2021. I moved on. And I'm getting ready to start my new WordPress blog, which is why I'm here. So before we begin, when people say, I want to start a blog, what they're really saying is, I want to work only two hours a week. I want to work while vacationing in the Bahamas, sipping my Pina coladas, and earning six-figure incomes in like three months flat. But blogging is also about those really lonely nights when your traffic suddenly knows dives and you have no clue why. It's about when you write a brilliantly exceptional post that you pour your heart into and you get zero visitors. So blogging is hard work, just like parenting. I'll let the picture speak for itself. So parenting is also about helping your child deal with any difficult emotions that he might be having. So before you start blogging, you need to think about five things. Having a lot of good ideas is not necessarily a good thing. You have to decide what your blog is going to be about. You have to have a crystal clear vision exactly what your blog is about so that every time you touch your keypad, you know what you're going to write about, whom you're talking to, know your audience. Are they beginners? Are they advanced users? Are you solving a problem for them? Are you giving choices to them? Are you comparing products so that they can buy something? Decide what it's going to be about. Look up your competitors. See, if you can identify a gap that all of them are missing, that's brilliant. Go for it. And obviously you need to have a passion for whatever you're writing because without that, it will show. If you're just going to write about kitchen cabinets because you think it's trending but you have no interest in them, it will show, believe me. You need to define exactly what success means to you. If you're going to say, you know what, let me start a blog. I'm going to enjoy. I'm going to have fun. Let me see how it goes for six months. And if it works, I'll go for it. Or you know what, I'll just move on to something else. So that attitude will take you nowhere. And I promise you, you will be disappointed no matter what. So you need to know exactly how many impressions, how many visitors or what's the dollar revenue that you're gunning for. And if you're not confident about setting a dollar target, start with impressions because to begin with, you'll have zero visitors. So how many impressions are you getting in the search results? That's a decent thing to keep you motivated. So you can set short-term and long-term goals because if I set a long-term goal and tell you, you know what, you need to get 10,000 visitors in six months, you'll say, yes, I can do it. But if I tell you 10 visitors like this week, you'll be like, I don't know where they're coming from. So set short-term goals and long-term goals so that it continuously keeps, so that you push yourself and you keep yourself motivated. And yes, put it up on a vision board. It's easy to forget. Once you finish planning and you start blogging, everything becomes a blur. So put it up on a vision board. You remind yourself about it every single day. And yes. So think about the third thing you really, really need to do is think about are you quitting your day job or are you keeping it? If you're going to do this as a side hustle along with your day job, how many hours can you really commit to it? Set out, put up a calendar, look at the 24 hours that you have, you know, strike out, block out time that you need for your personal goals, your personal commitments, running exercise, family time, kids' time, whatever have you and your daytime job and then realistically see how many hours you have left. So when you set your goals, that's something that you definitely need to factor in. If this is not a side hustle, if this is a side hustle and you're quitting your full-time six-figure job, then how much staying power do you have? Do you have enough money to go on with this for like six months? Who's going to pay the rent? So think about all these things before you start. And yes, you need a mentor. It could be anybody. It could be a friend, a cat, a coach, anything in between. I have a coach and while I've been extremely thrifty and very tight-fisted with my money, I'm spending on the coach because he's the calm voice I need to hear when I'm rambling and I'm scrambling and my thoughts are all over the place, he really helps me to make my decision based on logical and sound reasoning instead of saying, you know what, I feel like doing this today because it's always going to be something new the next day. So a coach or a friend, it could be a friend, a peer, a competitor, anybody whom you trust and believe in. And luckily we are blessed to be with WordPress which is full of helpful, friendly folks out there. And if you just reach out to someone, I'm sure somebody will help you to validate your ideas. The imposter syndrome, nothing to be said about it. Get over it. If you think you have nothing of value to tell the world, you're wrong. I used to think that too, but trust me, if you even know how to log into WordPress, that's something that other people are struggling with. So don't be afraid of putting yourself out there and telling the world what you know. And sometimes maybe you're wrong. So what? So admit it, correct it and move on in life. So with these five things out of the way, month one is when you start laying the foundation. Start building your site and plan your content. Here all I have to say is just get your website out there. You will never be happy with your website. It will never be complete. So just simply go for it. I've seen people obsessing over logos and trying to get the color right, but honestly you're just starting out. Nobody could care less. It's your content that you should focus on. And as long as you have a decent website where people can scroll and read and get to the content they need to, you're fine. There's no point in doing performance improvements if you have no visitors. So why load test your website for 10,000 visitors when you have zero right now? There's plenty of time to do that later. Yeah. Create a content calendar because without that you will lack the structure and discipline to... Everything's okay? Yeah. You lack the structure and discipline to keep blogging. So creating a content calendar will make sure your topics that you write on are in line with your blog's objective, which I'm hoping with those five things you already sorted in your head. Because otherwise it's easy to say, oh, that guy's writing about this. Let me write about that today. That will only confuse your users. Decide whether you want to, you know, publish a post daily, weekly, frequently, how frequently, and stick to it. Month two. As strange as it sounds, I promise you once your planning is done and you start executing, the questioning will begin immediately. You'll immediately start second-guessing your plan. You'll wonder if it's worth it and you will want to throw it all away and start it fresh. That's the time you need to not... You have to resist the temptation to do that and stick to it. There'll be plenty of time to pause and look back later. Much, much, much, much later. And track your time. That's extremely important because that four-hour blog post that you thought could actually be eight hours. So track your time. There's no need to worry about what you're tracking. There might be unplanned tasks that you might not have thought of earlier, but we'll use all this data later. Month three. So now that you have some content to show for on your website, start signing up for affiliate programs and be prepared for rejection because you're still new and it's okay. Don't take it personally. Most affiliate programs allow you to reapply once you have more content and more visitors. So make a note of all of the affiliate programs, what you got approved for, all the ones you've rejected, and reapply. Set aside some time every single day to keep track of what's happening in the outside world. Especially if you're working solo, it's easy to lose track of what's happening outside. Sorry. Month four is when you can start guest posting. So... And when you start guest posting, don't just create random links to random pages on your website, random posts, or just the homepage. Choose your links carefully. So it could either be a revenue generating post or in your author bio, you could link to a lead generation page where you can have your users sign up and give their email to you. And this article that I've talked about here is you really should bookmark it. It's a brilliant article for anybody who has a new blog, a new unknown blog and wants to start guest posting. Right, sorry. So, yeah. So month five, ramp up your guest posting. Because in month four, it'll take you a long time to just start applying. For me, it takes me two, three hours to, you know, just zero in an apply for a guest post. And by month five, you should start writing. So build a planet into your content calendar and focus on it. And give it your very, very best shot because you have to respect the opportunity and the platform that you've been given to showcase your talent. So I usually end up spending twice as much time on a guest post as I do vis-a-vis writing a blog post on my own website. So be sure to give it your best shot. Month six, now you have the time to pause, look back and see all that you achieved in the last six months. Now is the time where the data that you've been logging, that will come in handy. You'll sort of figure out and say, you know what, I need to, I'm spending an inordinate amount of time on stuff that I thought would be really quick. For example, creating header images, if that's taking you too much time, think about outsourcing. Pick a virtual assistant and outsource that bit. Are there things that you planned which you don't enjoy so much? Look at whether you want to outsource that. And now is a good time to think whether you want to change the course. Is it working? Is it not working? And resist the temptation to just say it's not. Because now you need to compare and see where you are. Look at the goals that you had set out for yourself and see whether you achieved them. If you plan to pivot, which I hope you don't need to, but if you do, again, this is the time to reach out to your coach, mentor your friend and have that validated. You need to really think hard and look hard at what you achieved so far before you decide to throw it all away. And yeah, rely on data and intuition. I'm big on intuition, not so much on data, but I wouldn't recommend that. And yes, just when you think everything is going right, it won't. So there'll be Google updates. And contrary to what most bloggers believe, I think Google updates are always a good thing. If you get hit negatively by a Google update, it means your website is giving a poor user experience, really. So Google is telling you, you know what? You need to do this in order to give the user the best experience they can have. So it's actually an opportunity for you to improve your website. So that's the approach you need to take. Otherwise, it's just going to depress you. Be prepared for self-doubts, especially if you're working alone. They're going to be plenty. Are you doing this right? Are you doing that right? Is that one more successful than me? Why am I not getting the money yet? So there'll be plenty of self-doubts. But really, just stick with it. Chat, GPT, AI tools, there'll be so much disruption. I mean, the pace of technology is frighteningly fast. So you need to make sure you, instead of getting anxious about things like chat, GPT and other AI tools, learn more about it. Learn how you can embrace it. Learn how to adapt it. Bring it and make it part of your blogging strategy, instead of trying to stick your head in the sand and saying it's all going to go away or dismissing it right away. So embrace and adapt any new technology that comes in. And yes, like I said, blogging is hard work. If you want to make it successful, it takes dedication and consistency like everything else in life. And yes, so you need to find your sweet spot, whether it's, you know, it needs to be the right combination of having fun and challenge, just enough to keep it exciting. But so yeah, so you need to have fun along the way. Yes, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Any questions? Thank you, Shilpa. Thank you. Any questions? I have a few, please roll. Okay. If you have any questions, you know where to find me. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Shilpa, I have a question for you. Okay. Do you think it's better to start from scratch or acquire a blog and get started? Okay. That, yeah, I mean, yeah, that took me a while. And that is something that I seriously considered. But I did the math and it didn't quite work out because most websites, when you try to acquire them, they look for like two years of revenue or at least 1.5 years of revenue. So even if they're like earning $1,000 a month, I will end up paying $18,000 or $25,000, $24,000 for acquiring it. After that, I need to, again, to keep up the momentum and make sure that revenue doesn't drop. I'll have to invest. So I did all that math and I figured out it's better that I put in that much money in my own blog. So it'll take me longer to get there, but I chose to go this way. But no way, there's no right or wrong about this. If you have the money to invest, then go ahead. But I didn't want to. Thank you. Any questions? Yeah. Yes, please. You want to get a grab? Thanks for the presentation. Yes. So you shared what to pay attention when you want to start a blog. Right. Would you like to share why would one choose WordPress? Why should one choose WordPress? Yeah, over other solutions. Okay. So I'll tell you when I started. I went with the simplest approach. I don't know if there are any other blogging platforms out there that are more, you know, faster, better, whatever. I went with what I know. I chose a theme. I chose everything that I did. I chose what was in my comfort zone because starting on, I didn't want to take the headache of, you know, hardening the website, hardening the server, taking care of website security. I went with the simplest, easiest, managed WordPress hosting. Even though I'm uncomfortable with self-hosting, I have a decent amount of experience with that as well. I didn't want to take on that burden. So all I'm saying is starting out, just go with whatever you know. If you want to experiment this, I don't want to experiment. I wouldn't recommend it. Yeah. That's it. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.