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I’ve failed a lot in my life. At the time, I didn’t see the failure for what it is, the greatest motivator in my life. From each failure, I’ve turned my failure into success by: learning a lesson, making improvements to my plans or course correcting, and pushing forward, better equipped and more motivated to succeed.
My Website Failures (and My Approach to This Blog)
When I first started getting interested in blogging back in 2014, I signed up for a membership website. It was supposed to help you learn about website development and how to make income through advertising and affiliate marketing. The types of websites they primarily taught about were niche websites for products. These were websites that focus entirely on one product or one line of product. I read all of the articles, watched the videos, and followed the lesson plan they had.
My First Blog and My SEO Mistakes
This eventually lead to the creation of a niche website of my own. It was about a piece of exercise equipment. One that I neither used regularly nor was really that interested in promoting (but met the program’s strict criteria).
A large portion of the offsite search engine optimization (SEO) included writing articles on “authority” sites (in this case sites like Hubpages and Squidoo, which was sold to Hubpages) and linking back to your website.
I did this for about 6 months, focusing just as much attention on articles as I did on the website. I had regular traffic and made sales, but the most I ever made with any regularity was a couple of hundred dollars in a month.
In August 2014, I found out that Hubpages was acquiring Squidoo and that I would need to move all of my articles over to Hubpages.
My Hiatus from Blogging
I was already struggling with writing articles and blog posts because I wasn’t interested in the topic, but this news was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I decided to take a hiatus from blogging for a little while to focus entirely on my career.
Lessons Learned
From this experience, I learned multiple lessons.
I learned that all of the information I need to start a successful blog is mostly free on the internet.
I learned that focusing on articles on other sites at the expense of your own content is a recipe for disaster. Don’t get me wrong, guest writing and interviews are great exposure and advertising for your blog, but you should never work on this at the expense of the content on your blog.
I learned that, although blogging is a job because it takes work, it has to be something you’re passionate about to be successful. If you’re not passionate about what you’re writing about, it will show through your writing.
I also learned that blogging was a long term commitment. At that point in my life, I wasn’t prepared to put in the years of work necessary to learn and establish my blog as a viable resource and authority.
How I Learned and Grew from My Website Failures
Since then, I’ve focused entirely on my career, but I’ve also continued to read and learn more about blogging. I have continued to carry an itch for starting my own blog, so over the years I’ve developed a high level plan for a blog.
This year, I decided that one of my goals would be to start this blog, Intentional Fortune. This time around, I won’t be following any programs or specific guides. I’ve chosen a topic that I enjoy writing about and plan to write content that I believe can help people both professionally and financially.
I’m sure I’ll continue to make mistakes along the way, but I plan to use them as motivation to succeed.
Failure – a Harsh, but Necessary Teacher
Failure is a harsh teacher, but one that we need from time to time. It teaches us those lessons that success never can and burns the lesson into our memory with a fiery brand. We are introduced to humility and modesty and forced to self evaluate. Failure moves you one step closer to your best self and your dreams.
What have you failed at? What lessons did your learn and what action did you take as a result of that lesson?