How I Hit 5,000 Pageviews In My First 6 Weeks Blogging

After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in a field I wasn’t passionate about, working different retail management jobs, and $30k in debt, I knew something had to change. That’s when I fully committed to starting a blog and growing traffic.

I had many sleepless nights and anxious thoughts wondering what I was going to do with my life. I had heard about blogging and tried blogging in the past, but I never stuck with it long enough to see the payout.

That’s when I decided to start this blog. I told myself, “you put four years into a degree you don’t care about, you put 3 years after that in retail jobs you hated, what are you losing if you put your time into starting a blog for profit?” Spoiler alert, the answer was NOTHING!!!!!

SO, here’s how I did it.

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.

How To Start A Blog

If you haven’t started your blog yet, but you’re reading this post, honestly you’re so ahead of the game. In short, I recommend using WordPress.org and SiteGround’s GrowBig Plan for hosting (I’ve used other hosts, and trust me- SiteGround is by far the best).

The GrowBig plan does exactly what it sounds like: gives you room to grow before needing to upgrade to a bigger plan. This is also their best selling and recommended plan.

I won’t go into too much detail here on how to properly set up a new blog, but you can find my guide to starting a successful blog here:

How To Start A Blog

Read that first, make sure you’ve completed all those steps (step 7 is hugely missed by new bloggers), and then come back here to see what’s next.

Blogging For Beginners Checklist

Once you’ve picked a host, domain, and theme, you’re almost ready to start focusing on traffic. But first, there are a few things we must discuss.

How To Make Money Blogging

I go into great detail on how to set your blog up for money-making success straight out of the gate here:

How To Make Money Blogging

If you read How To Make Money Blogging and are still hungry for more on that topic, this is a great course to get you there.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the number one most important factor when focusing on growing traffic. This is what makes your posts findable on Google and other search engines. This is super important because if google knows what your article is about and places it on the front page during a search, that will drive HUGE traffic to your site!

However, SEO is a long game. Experts say it takes about 6 months before you may get pages ranking on Google, but that doesn’t mean you should put off learning it until month 5.

Make learning SEO a priority. I’ve heard of horror stories of bloggers working on their site for two years with no traffic growth because they thought it was a bunch of garbage. Let me be the one to tell you, it’s not!

In my 5th-week blogging, I started getting traffic from Google, so it’s not impossible! Hunker down, be a student for a second, and learn as much as you can. It’s better to slow down now than trying to go back and edit 20 posts to work SEO in them. That’s why this has to be first in terms of growing traffic.

Content

Before you start promoting your blog on different social media platforms, it’s important to have content on your website. Make sure your navigation menu doesn’t have tabs without posts (even if you plan on writing posts of that topic later). Only add to your navigation menu once you have the content to support it. This also helps your site look like less of a newbie blog.

Get about 15 posts up on your website that you’re proud of (aka don’t rush through them to pump them out) before focusing on promotion and traffic.

Legal

Yes, you read that right. Legal documentation on your website is non-negotiable. If you take away anything from this post, it really should be this!

There really is no free way to get the appropriate documentation for your blog. I purchased this legal bundle, but I would encourage you to look at all the documentation options to make sure you choose the right one for your type of website.

Mariam is recommended by pretty much every blogger for a reason! I highly recommend her. I had trouble downloading the bundle after purchase, and she personally fixed my issue in minutes. I found her purely through word of mouth in the blogging community and cannot recommend her enough!

While there is no “wrong” way to start a blog or make money blogging, there absolutely IS a wrong way to keep your website legal. You are better off protecting yourself and being worry-free as you grow your site knowing that it’s legal.

PURCHASE YOUR APPROPRIATE LEGAL DOCUMENTATION HERE

Growing Traffic Using Social Media

Now I’m going to tell you EXACTLY what I did to lead me to 5k pageviews in my first 6 weeks blogging.

As you can see, my traffic started to skyrocket in my fourth week because of the methods I was using on Social Media. In fact, HALF of my traffic in my first 6 weeks was done IN THE 6TH WEEK!

Getting Started On Social Media

At first, I wasn’t sure what social media platforms to focus on, so I reserved my desired account name with all the major platforms: Instagram, Pinterest, Tik Tok, Facebook, and Twitter.

Next, I found blogging facebook groups to join that had helpful information and a friendly community. This way, if I couldn’t find what I needed through Google, I could hopefully find the answer by asking in a group.

Through my favorite blogging group, I found and purchased a course to learn how to be successful on Pinterest! Let me be VERY clear. I consider myself social media savvy, and I still could not have anticipated the detailed methods of how to be successful on Pinterest. This is what took my traffic growth to the next level. And even better, you can use my code TSA5OFF to save $5 on the course!

Additionally, I’ve been trying to improve my Instagram presence, however, I have heard this is not a successful platform to grow traditional blogs, so I have not put a huge focus on it.

Check out my Pinterest here if you want to see examples of my pins and boards.

Growing Traffic With Social Media

So, I feel like we have to get one thing straight.

It’s very important to note here that I did not promote my blog or website on any of my personal social media accounts.

100% of my traffic is organic. I’ve heard experts argue between whether or not using your personal social media accounts to promote your website is beneficial, but after growing my blog traffic exponentially faster than average, I stand by my decision.

I will continue to refrain from posting anything blog related to my personal social media accounts for the time being, and will update here if that changes!

Growing traffic using social media takes consistency, new content as often as possible, and sometimes lots of deep breaths.

I know it can feel discouraging to spend a ton of time on a method that doesn’t seem to be paying off. Hang on, keep going, and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Social media looks for new fresh content to promote to its users, so the more often you can create new posts and promote them on social media the better!

Growing Traffic With Pinterest

As I said before, Pinterest is my primary social media platform to grow traffic. I recommend investing in a course to learn how to use Pinterest the right way.

I attribute 80% of my growth to taking a Pinterest course!

If you are looking for a great Pinterest course to invest in to take your blog traffic to the next level, I suggest this one here.

While I won’t go into as much detail as the course will, I definitely still want to discuss 6 major strategies that were successful for me on Pinterest.

Pin regularly and consistently. Do not go more than 1 day without pinning.
If you think you won’t be able to pin one day, use Pinterest’s free pin scheduler to get you by and stay on schedule.
Create multiple Pinterest images for each blog post.
Don’t get caught up in gaining Pinterest followers as these have almost zero correlation with traffic growth.
Create a new Pinterest account for your blog rather than converting a personal account to a blog account.
Purchasing a Pinterest Course. I seriously cannot say it enough!

Major Takeaways For Growing Traffic

Let’s recap some of the most important concepts when it comes to growing your traffic.

First, get your hosting (preferably SiteGround GrowBig), domain, legal documentation, and theme up and running.

You absolutely have to sit down and learn at least SEO basics. This is a long game but can double or triple your stats 6 months-1 year down the road.

Get about 15 solid posts up on your site before you focus on social media platforms.

Get your legal documentation up on your site (here’s what I have).

Focus on one or two main social media platforms to promote your blog on. The most popular and successful are Pinterest and Facebook.

And finally, if you’re looking for even more information on where to start to grow your traffic, I HIGHLY recommend taking a blog traffic course or purchasing an Ebook.

This Blog Traffic Ebook Is GREAT!!!

Feel free to drop me a comment if you have any questions, and happy blogging!