Strap in for an extra long blog post that is sure to bring some interesting nuggets of wisdom. I started my blog in May of 2023. The first post went out on May 16th at 8:40 pm. The end of December marked about 7 months of starting a blog so far.
Discovering the Blogging World
Exploring Different Avenues
I started my blog, honestly, to make money. Up until 2023, I didn’t realize that people made full-time incomes and more through this channel of creativity. I was shocked. But, it made sense to me. For the few months before that, probably the start of the year, I had been toying with different ways I could make an income from side hustles.
I tried a couple of reels, an Etsy shop selling skincare and relationship journals, and played around with the idea of print-on-demand products. I would be lying if I didn’t still think about all of these things. I had spent a ton of hours creating these journals and guides, thinking about how they would look and what value they provide. I did my research on what existed in the market and where there were gaps. I had my Etsy shop open for a few months and even had some ads running through them. I probably spent about $15 on it not including the hours I work that could convert to money.
Nothing was taking off. I know this was a short amount of time, but I was getting impatient.
Navigating Initial Doubts
Somehow I stumbled upon blogging, and as a shy introverted kid, I like the idea of having my things be seen without having to explicitly market them. Generating good SEO and keyword strategies was a way I could get people to my blog without sticking my face on the internet. Plus, I had been reading and following blogs for years.
I spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not this is something I wanted to pursue because it would take initial money to start up. On top of that I didn’t know what to write about, whether it would be worth it, and of course, what would people think. I looked for validation a lot initially. I distinctly remember asking my friend if she thought I should start it and whether I should call it Aditi Rani. I honestly, don’t remember what she replied, but saying that I was thinking about starting a blog out loud I think made it a lot less daunting.
Plus, at this point, it had been almost ten years of me loving the beauty industry, from which I had researched products, ingredients, and routines for thousands of hours. Literally thousands. I wouldn’t buy a product unless I had seen every review out there for it from YouTube to blog posts. Since I needed permission to buy things with my parents’ money, I took the time to research. And that research led to a lot of knowledge.
Why I Started a Blog
Two other main reasons led me to create a blog. The first was that I was unhappy with the degree I was getting in college and wanted to make my time feel more worth it. Second, while in college, the number of people asking for my opinions or recommendations in the beauty world grew ten-fold because friends realized I was knowledgeable. By the end of college, I’d given out like 10 full-blown routines to friends that they still use today.
This felt like the perfect way to share my knowledge before I forget it all and hopefully make some money off of it. But, fast forward a few months, and I am still only averaging about 300 views a month and haven’t made any money while haven’t spent about $600 on admin-related things and courses. I will say, that the cool thing is that these views are unique because to this day, I haven’t told my family that I own a blog and very few of my friends even know.
Navigating the Challenge of Finding My Niche
Embracing Authenticity
More than once a month, honestly like every two weeks, I would go into this deep pit of trying to find a niche that works and resonates with me but still gets a lot of search traffic. I would post in forums about how I am not getting views and need advice, and everybody would say the same thing: niche down. The problem is this week I want to talk about haircare and the next week about finance. On top of that, I didn’t want to take the typical influencer approach to a lifestyle blog because I didn’t want to promote consumerism in that way.
I wanted my blog to revolve around sustainability and beauty education instead of just product recommendations. And like all of us, I have many passions and want to share my knowledge on it all, from cooking to studying, and more.
Not Getting Overwhelmed
I can’t imagine myself writing 50+ posts on hair care, nor do I want a blog named after me to only represent that one thing. And of course, your blog will pivot and expand and change as you grow, and then you won’t be known as just an expert in one area, but it still just never seemed right to me.
In 7 months I went from the niche of a South Asian lifestyle blog to intentional living to conscious living to living in your 20s to simple living, back to intentional living and sustainability to personal development to self-improvement to a blog for the everyday brown girl and round and round again. Each time I made this “pivot” I probably spent 20 hours finding the right set of keywords, creating new blog post ideas, writing out my target audience persona, and more.
Each time, I felt great for the next week until it didn’t excite me anymore. At the time of this post, I have February and March fully planned out, have already changed it twice (from beauty to a focus on haircare to now having more review-focused content), and am thinking of changing it yet again. I have even thought of new blogs that I already want to start even though I can’t get this one up and running yet.
I keep switching to make it feel new, exciting, and honestly, bring on some motivation. But also because I am not fully confident in myself. I still feel like I don’t know how to make these posts look good, I don’t feel qualified, and each industry feels too saturated.
Lessons Learned and Growth Achieved
Seeking Clarity Amidst Confusion
Every time, I would throw an extensive amount of questions at chatGPT and Bard to figure out the keywords and unique niches to be hitting and would accumulate 20-page documents that I would then read and edit down. Every time, I watched a ton of influencers market their courses watched their free “masterclasses” and downloaded their e-books and PDFs. And yes, some of these were helpful, but honestly, I am realizing how big of a waste of time these all were.
I would seek out these pieces of information as an excuse that I am “learning” and building my “knowledge bucket” but in reality, I was shying away from writing the blog post or recording the video until I had to because it is demoralizing to post and not see any growth on it. Had I spent the time using all those hours towards writing, I think I could have come a lot further.
Embracing Individuality
What I think I have now realized is that everyone will have advice and that advice will be different for every person. I tried to absorb all this information and tried to use it all, as a result, I was so overwhelmed and never felt like enough. Someone would say to have X amount of Pinterest boards and another would say to only post in this way. In the end, at its foundation, the advice is the same. It’s the added twist and turns of luck that everyone tries to share which makes it so confusing.
Looking Ahead: Embracing Passion and Growth
Redefining Success
The year 2023 has been a year of trying and testing new things of what works and doesn’t work but still makes me happy and excited to write. I have spent well over 200 hours thinking about what to write and getting stuck on analytics, keywords, and what the hell my niche is supposed to be. Let’s redefine success now from money and analytics, to pursuing a passion and writing about what brings value.
At the end of the day, if even one person finds my blog helpful, it should be a success.
Authenticity Over Algorithms
Moving forward, and starting with this post, I am going to try to write more about my passions and the behind-the-scenes work I am doing rather than just pleasing the algorithm. What I realized is that every time I search for a keyword with high search volume and low competition, I start to go down this black hole of picking a niche, finding the right keywords, trying to impress my audience, and what happens? These posts all start sounding like the rest, there is nothing unique. Of course I want the page views, but more than that, I want the community that these platforms can provide for people and myself.
Embracing Personal Growth
I want my audience to be able to come to the blog and binge-read these posts, getting an idea of who I am and what value I provide to them rather than trying to get those 50,000 pageviews a month. I think that’ll come eventually, hopefully, one day, but in the meantime, I’ll write as a passion. Moving into the new year, I want to get a bit more comfortable putting my face out there as well because I think I am ready for that step. Writing the last 7 months broke the introverted shell so now we’ll go a step forward.
Evolving Social Media Strategy
I also originally started my Instagram account (maybe in September) and YouTube channel (around the same time) to help feed traffic to this blog, but now I am treating them like separate entities that help fuel my creativity, what I have learned, and what I want to share. Because of the whole YouTube and Instagram niche and what to talk about, there is an entire topic for another time. As someone who lives alone and works remotely, I enjoy the camera aspect because I get to dress up, put on some nice clothes, and talk to a community. I also love the aspect of taking product photos for my blog and have enjoyed that process. Each social media platforms presents its own learnings and nuances, and I have enjoyed the process of trying it all out.
Reflecting on Growth and Skills Acquired
Gaining Valuable Skills
But now, let’s talk about what I have learned, because honestly, while I don’t love my day job, this blogging journey has taught me significant valuable skills.
The biggest takeaway is that a lot of obstacles are internal and self-imposed. Taking a video of yourself is not a difficult skill, neither is writing, or editing. But, because we are scared to do it, we make up these stories about how hard it will be. One think I started to do to get over this, is just to create for myself. In I want to do a GRWM video or written makeup tutorial, I’ll just write or record to practice. This helps diminish those non-existent obstacles and shows your brain that it is actually way easier than you think. The hardest part is just getting started and sitting down to film or write because there so many easier, less rewarding things you can do instead. Watching Netflix being one of them.
Diversifying Expertise
Starting a blog has taught me a lot of new skills. I have improved my photography skills, marketing skills, web designing skills, video editing skills, and creativity skills as a whole. My verbal and written communication skills have drastically gotten better as well as the way I think about problems. I try to step into my audiences or “clients” shoes to see what they might be thinking. I have learned about SEO and keywords and how to make them the center of any work you are putting online.
I have also learned that there is a lot of admin work that happens on the back-end which we don’t always see. Although once creators are big enough, this work is outsourced, in the interim, there is a lot to do from managing emails, to writing and posting blog posts, making sure everything uploads correctly, recording, editing, marketing, and more.
The most “annoying” part is probably the back-end blog work so the run-time is fast, the links are safe, and scammers and hackers aren’t infiltrating my hard work. At some point, this can hopefully just be writing and then shipping off the work to someone to clean-up, but until then its a one-woman show.
Personal Aspiration
One thing I remember is writing that I had a blog at the end of my Harvard MBA interview reflection paper. I think that is the first time I told someone about the blog besides a few close friends. Who knows if that got me in or if they thought I was stupid, but I think that moment pushed me. Because I want to be known for something. Something good, something big, something where I can make a positive impact on people’s lives. So, here’s to the manifestation part of 2024: help me build a community of at least 10,000 high-achieving, hardworking, confident brown girls who want to empower themselves, and the world around them.
Who knows where this will take me in a year, but until then, cheers to 2024!
With love,
Aditi <3
Aditi Rani – Figuring Out Life in Your Twenties
*Disclaimer: This is not professional advice. Some links are affiliate. By clicking and/or purchasing, I may receive a commission. It does not alter the price or change your buyer experience.
