Blogging Tips

The Pinterest Course That Helped Me Monetize My Blog

November 18, 2019 itsamandaburnett 5 Comments

If you’re unaware of what Pinterest is, it’s one of the biggest search engines on the web besides Google! Bloggers all over the world swear by using Pinterest to grow their blog traffic. When I first started my blog though, I sort of went into it blindly. I kept hearing all these great things about Pinterest so even after I created a business account, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I had a couple of pins that went viral but I had a feeling I needed to improve my strategies to find further results.

*This post does contain affiliate links which means if you click on a link and purchase something, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you*

The great thing about the internet is you can find courses on literally anything. So there I was, trying to find a course that could help me with Pinterest. The problem was, I was on a budget and a lot of courses were around $100!

I’ve been following Ell Duclos on Twitter and have been on her Facebook group for months before I realized, wait a minute, she has a Pinterest course! The best part though? It’s only $30.

Inside The Course

Inside her Pinterest course, you will find 7 chapters each filled with multiple pages of very valuable information. She goes into easy to understand but in-depth details!

Blog Basics – This is the first chapter in her course and instead of diving right into the Pinterest side of things, she talks about different tips and resources you need when you’re first creating your blog! I love this because before you can make money from Pinterest, you should have a good blog foundation.

Set Up Pinterest – Her second chapter has 6 steps that go into how to set up your Pinterest properly. When I first saw the title, I honestly thought, “My Pinterest is already set up. I don’t need this step.” But I’m so thankful I still read it because I found so many things that I was doing wrong and that I was able to improve! She even includes lots of pictures to show you step-by-step for you visual learners.

Creating Pins – I found this chapter so helpful because creating visually appealing pins is so important! She gives you a visual of how you can use Canva to create pins that people will want to actually click on. She even includes resources such as her favorite sites for stock images!

Joining Group Boards – Have you ever wondered what the importance of group boards were? Well, Ell explains all and she even includes links to find group boards to find on Pinterest!

About Tailwind – Tailwind, the tool everybody says you need to triple your traffic! What is Tailwind? How do you use it effectively? What are some strategies you can use? This chapter is one of the more detailed chapters (22 pages!) Ell explains all of the ins and outs, pictures included, so you can feel confident in how to use Tailwind for your blog.

Pinterest Traffic – When it comes to social media and our blogs, traffic is our friend and we want more of it! Well, Pinterest is not just to bring traffic to your blog specifically. There are so many things you can bring traffic to using Pinterest.

Affiliate Sales – It’s one thing to be earning money on your blog from great traffic but what about making affiliate sales? Affiliate sales can potentially bring you the most income! Ell provides great info on how you can do that as well. Fun fact, she has an affiliate program for her courses you can earn from too! Let me disclose, I am using her affiliate link in this post but I would never promote this if I didn’t think it was valuable to my audience.

I have learned so much from this course and the fact that it’s so affordable is an absolute win. These 7 chapters provide so much detailed information. I highly recommend investing in this course because for the fabulous price, you can become a pro at Pinterest.

Click here to go check out her Pinterest course!

Thank you so much for reading!

5 Things You Need To Know Before Starting A Blog

October 28, 2019 itsamandaburnett 23 Comments

Starting a blog is going to be a process and there is a lot to learn. Before starting a blog, there are a few things that you definitely should know and consider. This post is going to help you through 5 main areas of the planning phase of starting a blog.

There are certain things I wish I understood better before launching my own blog about two years ago. I pretty much dove right into it blindly and I want to make sure you don’t have to do the same. I’ve made many mistakes along the way and I now have more wisdom to share and guide you along your journey!

What’s Your Niche?

You may hear this a lot when it comes to blogging but the first thing you should think about is your niche. What’s a niche? It’s a funny-sounding word for your blog topic!

The question you should ask yourself is, “what do I want to blog about?” Let me give you a list of ideas.

Beauty
Fashion
Food
Parenting
Student life
Lifestyle (A little bit of everything)

When I was thinking about my own niche I was a little overwhelmed because there are just so many topics you could choose to write about, right? Let me give you this piece of advice, blog what you’re passionate about. Your blog should be based on something or multiple things you could write about all day and not get bored. This ensures that you are less likely to give up on it!

Creating Your Domain

The next important thing you’re going to need to think about is your domain name. A domain name is your blog’s identity so it’s something you’re going want to think carefully about. It shouldn’t be something you can just whip up in a few seconds because there are multiple factors to consider.

You’ll want your domain to be simple and rememberable. You want people to hear about your website and be able to easily find it when they search for it. So don’t get too creative with spelling because it’s likely they’ll misspell it and have a hard time being able to find you.

My domain name is literally just my name because I want my name to be my brand. But if you were to blog only about beauty, your domain could be “beauty with _____.com” for example.

Free or Paid Platform?

The next thing you will need to consider when starting your blog is if you want to blog on a free or paid platform.

Free

If you’re totally new to blogging, you may want to start out on a free blogging platform to find your footing. I personally started on wordpress.com and highly recommend it! The whole platform is very easy to navigate and use. They even have an awesome “reader” section so other bloggers who use WordPress can find your posts and follow you on the platform. It’s a great way to gain an audience when you’re still a newbie!

Although, one thing I encourage you not to do is put money towards their “upgrades” if you ever realize you want more for your blog. I spent over $100 on a yearly upgrade and was still pretty limited! If you ever realize you want to take complete control over your blog, read on.

Paid

If you want 100% control over personalization and monetization to finally make some money on what you love doing, you’ll want to self-host.

What do I mean by 100% control?

Ability to upload plugins
You can monetize with Google Adsense
You can download themes
Completely customizable to your liking
Your site is 100% yours

When I realized that was the route I wanted to go, I wanted to stay with WordPress because it was a platform I trusted. Although, I learned that you still need to find a web hosting platform for wordpress.org.

The hosting platform that I use is Siteground and they’re amazing! They made switching from wordpress.com to wordpress.org so easy and I’ve received great support. Their StartUp plan is only $3.95/month! That’s well under $100. My blog is also very fast and responsive, and that’s what you want when searching for a hosting platform. I highly recommend them.

Branding

Branding your blog can be so much fun if you let it be. You want to choose your main colors, pick your fonts, and create your logo! I’m going to let you in on a little secret though, I’ve rebranded twice now so it’s okay if you change your mind down the road. Don’t stress it too much.

Colors

What colors/tones speak to you? While you want to make your blog visually appealing to your viewers, you want to make it something you love too because you’ll be looking at it every day!

When I first started my blog, my brand colors were dark and light purple. Although, I’m now really into light and pastel colors. My brand colors are now light pink and gold.

To further understand and discover different color schemes, Canva has a post listing 50 color schemes from different websites!

Fonts

There are thousands of different font styles out there so the only way to figure out which ones you would like on your blog is to play around with them! I quickly realized that I really like fancy fonts and that is what I like including in all of my blog banners and social media posts.

Logo

Now it’s time to start creating your logo. A logo is just a graphic that resembles your blog. When somebody sees your logo, they’ll think of you. For example, when you think of Nike, you think of the checkmark right? I know a lot of people hire people to create their logo but if you’re on a budget and want to do it yourself, Canva is a great tool to use. They even have many free logo templates ready to use!

Where to Build Your Audience

Even if it’s your blog’s first day of being live, you need to go out there and start building your audience. Social media is a huge reason for my growing success today. So let me give you a few ideas of where to look for your audience!

Facebook. Facebook has many blogging groups you can join that are filled with other bloggers just like you. The groups are there to help build relationships, ask and answer questions, and share your blog posts!
Twitter. Twitter is probably my favorite social media platform right now. The blogger community on Twitter is not only huge as well but they’re so helpful and kind. There are hundreds of pages dedicated to sharing your blog posts!
Pinterest. Pinterest is a visual search engine. Many bloggers claim that most of their audience comes from Pinterest! All you have to do is create a pin for your blog post, create a catchy title and description, then link your blog post. 250 million people are on Pinterest so it’s more than likely you’ll get your blog post to be seen! If you want to schedule your Pinterest pins, I highly recommend using Tailwind.

Like it? Pin it!

Before starting a blog, I highly recommend you take these 5 tips into consideration as they are vital to understand before leaping into the blogging world. As these are only 5 tips, there are many more tools and guides that I am working on to help you through your blogging journey so stay tuned!

Already created a website but stuck on your first blog post? Check out my blog post that gives you 7 tools you need to create a successful blog post!

I hope this post was helpful. If you have any questions or topics you’d wish to further understand, leave me a comment down below so I can answer and/or create another post on it!

5 Ways To Overcome A Creative Block

September 2, 2019 itsamandaburnett 33 Comments

If you’re a creative person like I am, then you’ve most likely experienced the dreaded creative block. One week, you have so many ideas for your blog. You have content planned for your Instagram. You have a strategy in mind and you’re on top of the world. Then all of a sudden, you have no idea what to do. Your mind is blank and you grow frustrated. You just want to get an idea to come out of the brain that once could come up with five in one minute. It’s one of the worst things that could happen when you genuinely love creating content. The past two weeks, I’ve been in dealing with this. I’ve dealt with it before though so I took these 5 steps and it’s safe to say, I’m back and my creativity has been restored!

Take a break

This is the first step I highly recommend. It’s also one that I hate but it actually works so hear me out. When you spend so much time planning and creating, your mind is working pretty hard. Us creative people are always thinking. There’s a reason why you can’t think of anything anymore, your brain is tired!

Taking a social media break isn’t bad. Will you get as many views as normal? Probably not. But you need to remember that taking a step back will do more good for you in the end.

Tip: When taking a break from creating new content, just edit and re-publish old blog posts! It’s called refurbishing and from experience, it can actually help your blog without too much effort on your part. Bring those posts from six months ago back to life!

Make Self-Care A Priority

When we’re so busy creating, we often neglect ourselves without even knowing it. You wake up super early so you can get work done on your blog before getting ready for your day job, sometimes forgetting to even eat or drink enough water. You get back from work and you waste no time working on your blog/social media again resulting in getting little sleep. Sound familiar? I know I’m not the only one guilty of this, guys!

While you take a step back, focus on yourself. How?

Make sure you’re getting enough sleep
Eat three meals a day and drink enough water
Read
Catch up on Netflix shows
Journal
Pamper yourself with a face mask and a bubble bath
Go out and be social

Keep A Notebook Nearby

Creative blocks don’t last forever and you will eventually get some ideas flowing again. The thing is, they may come at any random time and you don’t want to risk trying to remember them. Keep a notebook nearby so you can write an idea down right away when it comes to you. This may even mean bringing it in your car or to work with you!

This is a good tip to do at all times but especially when you’re going through a creative block!

Reorganize/Change Things Up

There’s a good chance your creative block is from things being a bit too repetitive or boring. I know I personally always feel more refreshed and motivated when I buy new home decor, rearrange my room, organize my makeup drawers, or even getting my hair done!

Here are some more ideas for you:

Buy new home decor
Rearrange your house
Change your look
Go shopping for a new outfit

Find Your Inspiration

Believe it or not, inspiration is right around the corner.

Photo by Katarzyna Grabowska on Unsplash

Look up inspirational quotes and write your favorites down
Check out the list of my favorite positive affirmations
Pick up a self-development book (I’m loving Girl Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis right now)
Read articles on successful bloggers and influencers. What are their secrets? Write down some ideas that you get!

It Doesn’t Last Forever

I’m going to end this blog post by reminding you that your creative block will not last forever. Try taking these 5 tips into consideration! I’m sure you’ll get that much closer to breaking free and getting your inspiration back.

If you’ve experienced a creative block and you have a secret to getting out of it that I haven’t mentioned, let me know below!

5 Ways To Grow Your Instagram For Beginners

August 5, 2019 itsamandaburnett 48 Comments

How to grow your Instagram for beginners

Let me start by saying, I’m no Instagram expert. Just last year, I only had about 400 followers. Today, I have reached a little over 1k! Instagram is definitely one of the hardest social media platforms to figure out. If you’re finding it hard to grow and be discovered, I promise you that you’re not the only one!

I’ve come a long way in just a year. I’ve made many mistakes, learned from each one, and have finally reached my first major goal of 1k followers. You may be sitting there thinking, “Must be nice but I’ll never be able to accomplish that.” Although, I have 5 tips that are perfect for beginners to focus on. These tips got me to where I am now!

Create Quality Content

When people are on Instagram, they want to discover good content, right? I mean, think about what you like to see when you’re scrolling through Instagram. If an image is dark, hard to see, the main object is off-center or if the picture is too busy, the chances of the person scrolling quickly past are pretty high.

This being said, it’s important that your pictures are of high quality and visually appealing. Does that mean you need a fancy expensive camera and equipment? Absolutely not. Honestly, most of my pictures on Instagram are taken with my phone. It works pretty great if you ask me! So what are some key things that help create good pictures?

Natural light (If it’s a bit dark, turn up the brightness!)
A pop of color
Clarity
Focus on the main object

#Hashtags

Hashtags have been around for a while now and believe it or not, they are actually a powerful tool to growing your Instagram and getting discovered by new people. If you post about beauty as I do, anybody else who is interested in beauty can find your posts just by searching #beauty or #makeup. Although, you should always try to use new hashtags with each post. Try using the brands or product names that you’re posting about. You can also see how popular a hashtag is by typing it in. Did you know #beauty has been used 322M times?

I like to have a good length of a caption under my posts then at the bottom, I’ll leave about 5-10 hashtags that relate to what my post is about.

Another thing you’re able to do know is following hashtags! So for instance, if you follow #beauty, anybody who has a post with that hashtag will pop up on your feed! This is a great way to discover and interact with new accounts.

Tag Brands / Companies

I’ve been posting product pictures and reviews on Instagram for a while and I’m embarrassed to say, I only recently started utilizing this magic tool! When you post a picture of a product, you should tag the brand so it has a chance to be seen by them! I’ve done this quite a few times now and I’ve received likes by brands such as Butter London just because I’ve tagged them in a post with their eyeshadow palette!

Post Often

If people truly like your content, you don’t want to leave them hanging! I personally always check profiles that I love to see if they post anything new. When you post often, your loyal followers will keep engaging with your posts! I personally like trying to post every day, if not every other day.

Another tip is to utilize your Instagram stories! On days that I don’t feel like I have the best photo for my feed, I’ll post a nice quote or an engaging poll to my story. This way, I’m still being active!

Engage Daily

If you’re not one to post every day, you should at least hop on Instagram for a few minutes a day and leave lots of likes and comments to the people your following. Engaging lets people know you actually care about their content as well. I’ve had many instances where I was following somebody who wasn’t following me back but after liking and engaging with their posts often, they ended up following me back!

Even if somebody doesn’t follow you back, it’s still nice to leave love on a photo if you genuinely like it. Let’s be real, they’re in the same boat and are working hard to have their content seen just like you. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together.

Reflection Time!

After reading my five tips for you, how confident are you in yourself that you can practice these to reach your goal? No matter where you’re at with your Instagram game, don’t forget there are no limits to your potential. A year ago, I never thought I could ever reach 1K but here I am. I worked hard and with hard work comes results.

I hope this post helped anybody who’s working hard on growing their Instagram. As I keep growing and learning new things, I will happily make more posts in hopes to keep providing insight.