"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."

—Winston S. Churchill

The catalyst for launching this site came as I was rocking my newborn to sleep late at night. I was looking at different ways to improve her agonizing colic and after trailing so many strategies and looking at so much research I figured others had to be in the same situation. Then it hit me. Why not just share my nerdy dives and takeaways with others?

I had no idea how to make a website or start a business, moreover, how to identify long-tail keywords and SEO stats but I did know that I wanted to inspire others to be better parents and healthier in general. So, months later, on August 31, 2023, I launched MindBodyDad.

In those 12 months since, I’ve been schooled in everything from website design to writing to keyword rankings to various health, fitness, and parenting topics. It’s been an incredible crash course with plenty of surprises so today I'll share my most profound realizations and experiences from my first year as a blogger.

Lessons From My First Year Of Blogging

1. I thought I’d be writing a lot more.

While I knew that uploading articles would take time away from writing, I had no idea that there was so much to do when it came to running a blog. When it comes down to it, I only spend about 30% of the time actually writing articles. I average about an hour a day working on the blog and this is how that time is broken down:

• 30%: formatting, backlinking, finding and compressing images, adding keywords, fixing issues (broken links, etc.), and making meta descriptions and alt tags.

• 30%: Writing and researching.

• 10%: Networking. Reaching out to get an interview or to write a guest post.

• 12.5%: Social media (making and scheduling posts).

• 7.5%: Making the monthly newsletter.

• 5%: Keyword searching.

• (More recently starting a podcast has been very time-consuming but this is not included in the above stats)

2. I’m more confident and informative than inspirational and more productive than masterful with my words.

While these Grammarly stats are nothing more than interesting, the time that Grammarly has saved me on editing is huge.

3. If I wanted more success I could have niched up.

In the blogosphere, they say that “niches are for the riches” and while I knew that picking a fine-tuned niche (e.g. neuro adult occupational therapy) would have brought much more traffic, my passion for it would have faded fast. As you can tell, my interests vary wildly and this side gig is a passion project so I’m going to stick to my wide-ranging topics of interest and continue to scratch my curiosity and teaching itch.

4. Having to explain the topic like you’re talking to a 5th grader humbles you.

I thought I knew a lot about nutrition, fitness, OT, and parenting but then I began to write it out in simple terms with examples, explanations, and simple definitions and my fingers stopped typing. As Dave McCullough wrote, “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."

This has helped me to improve my understanding of topics and forces me to go back to the drawing board and really understand the issue. Another strategy I’ll mentally use is to ask "Why?” three times. Getting to the root of the topic allows you to see just how well you know it.

5. Everything changed with AI.

I got into this blogging thing about 6 months ahead of the GPT launch. While I was (read: am) a rookie in this space, I realized that it’s all changed. Google, Bing, and many other companies are scrambling to determine how the “new normal” will be algorithmically factored into their search engines. There are lots of opinions (it’s great, it’s horrible) and lots of predictions (is this the end of blogging? Will all human-generated content be extinct?). The only things we can safely assume are that AI is going nowhere.

While I’ve begun introducing AI into my writing and editing, I’ve done it hesitantly since I want a more familiar tone woven throughout the site. Given the complexity and time-consuming nature of looking at research, I am eagerly awaiting AI that can break down research articles for me (which GPT and Bard are surprisingly terrible at).

6. MindBodyDad is growing, just not as quickly as I hoped.

I did a lot of research before launching my blog and knew that blogging is a slow-growth game. Regardless, I thought I would have grown more quickly by now. There’s something called the “Google Sandbox” where Google doesn’t really recognize you until your site is 6 months old. Here is my Google Search Console snapshot from that point until now.

7. I’ve reframed my relationship with time management.

I knew that starting a side project as a new dad with two young kids and a full-time job would be a time management challenge so I set some ground rules at the get-go to make sure that my priorities were set in place when things got tough.

The first was that I would never choose blogging over parenting. Adhering to this wasn't that difficult although there were times when I’d have a great idea only to force myself to remember it for later and continue to be mindful as a parent.. I got good enough at making blogging a pre- and post-kids bedtime task that my 4-year-old son has only ever seen me on a laptop two or three times in his life.

The limited time I have to do this has also helped me better manage my priorities and improve my productivity to maximize that time. I have a list of over a hundred articles I would love to write and similar lists for plans I have with this project (see below) but I also recognize that even if I was able to dedicate 40 hours of work to this blog, it would provide lots of check marks but the treadmill of desire would keep spinning and I would never be truly satisfied. I reframe my view of time as an ally instead of an adversary.

So I try to overcome this cognitive bias by recognizing that I'm lucky to pursue this passion at all and the times I'm not doing it I am still helping others at my job, providing for my family, and most importantly spending time with my wife and kids.

On a related topic, here is a great article, Only The Passionate Survive, from the blog, Of Dollars And Data.

8. I love the challenge of learning something new, especially this field.

Before doing this, the biggest tech skills were using the alt+tab button and some other basic productivity abilities. For the last year, I’ve been fascinated with this blogging world. I thought it was write an article, add some pictures, upload, repeat (and it is for many) but the nuances and intricacies are what move the needle.

I dove in and learned the language of this field (e.g. SEO, UX, CTR, SERP, CTA), the strategies (e.g. meta description word length optimization, H2/H3/H4 structuring, optimal posting length and frequency; keyword management), and plenty of do’s and don’ts (avoiding keyword stuffing, analyzing data correctly, best etiquette for interview requests).

9. When you tell people you have a blog, the conversation gets weird.

The most common response is a brief mix of boredom and confusion on the other person’s face, followed by a shift in the topic. The next most common reaction is “What’s the site?” Those account for 99% of all of the responses with one person in the past year asking, “What metrics do you use to assess the site?” (Hey Aunt Joann).

10. Ingest everything with skepticism.

Everyone has a motive and it usually comes down to dollar signs. I’ve learned that the influencers, brands, and sites that I sought advice and info from as “reputable” have holes in their values (or stated values). While often it’s the money that guides sketchy advertisers they promote and poor quality studies they cite, it can be other things like confirmation bias that muddy the waters.

While I’m a small fish in a big pond, I’ve found that these issues are beginning to surface with me already. We’ll never know everything that goes on behind the scenes so be wary of everything you consume.

11. Google search keywords are everything.

A year in, one of the most important lessons I've learned is the significance of Google keywords and how they rule the internet. While I knew that sponsored links and conglomerates of websites were often on the first page of Google rankings, I also thought that mixed in there somewhere were the “best” results for your search. Not true. While writing good content is important, it’s merely a piece of the secret and ever-evolving algorithmic puzzle that Google and other search engines use. The results that pop up are the ones that have a number of SEO factors such as hitting the right keywords for a search and having enough backlinks, not necessarily the best answers to your search.

By strategically incorporating relevant long-tail keywords or highly specific and longer phrases that users search for, I get more first-page rankings and improve MindBodyDad’s visibility. This is a mixture of skill and luck and I’ve heard that some bloggers spend the majority of their day just finding good keywords and then writing blogs on that phrase. I’ve avoided going the profit-savvy wave of finding a keyword and blurting out a post on the topic. Instead I’m staying true to what I want to write and then finding a keyword around that topic to filter into my post.

12. You can always pay for it.

Since starting this side project, my goal has been to work hard but pay as little as possible. The bare minimum is the hosting platform, the website, and the LLC. While I’ve been very tempted to pay for things to help, I only pulled the trigger once on software that was going to help me improve keyword search stats but that proved futile and I cancelled the subscription after a couple of weeks.

The thing is, there are so many opportunities to pay for help, whether you’re an expert or not. If you want to grow the brand you can pay for writers, SEO experts (further broken down into on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, etc.), AI, graphic designers, social media marketers, email marketers, web hosting providers, and advertising companies. To improve my domain authority (a 0-100 scale of how likely you are to rank on search engines) I could write more guest posts but many websites charge you to write for them. You can even pay companies to get more followers on social media (I saw one rate advertised at $12.99 for 1,000 followers….seriously). It’s a Wild West out there and if you want your website to be more successful (in whatever way you define that) you can pay for it.

While some of the tactics are skeevy and make me cringe, getting help with on-page SEO intrigues me. There are tons of options but right now the question comes down to, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” from a financial and time-consuming perspective. I’m curious by it all but I carry a healthy skepticism and fear that anything I introduce will water down the site to make it less authentic and personal.

13. Social media is my arch-nemesis.

The use of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook is one of those necessary evils. Apparently, you have to have social media accounts for brand awareness but the ironic part is that no one ever leaves those sites to get to your brand content. For example, the conversation rate, or the number of times someone clicks on your Instagram link to go to your site, is an Instragram-wide 1%. The CTR (click-through rate) for an ad (which I’m not doing) is around 0.5%. In other words, Instagram doesn’t want you to leave Instagram. This does work for many who profit from “likes” but my media likely will never be one of them.

Beyond that, I just don’t like making each of the social media posts. It’s time-consuming (even with the help of Canva and Buffer). It starts out as fun to be creative with them but then I just spend too much time doing it which takes away from other tasks. I respect the difficulty in designing different posts but I’d much rather be writing.

14. Where do I go from here?

While I’ve only been blogging for a year, I have a lot of ideas to expand the brand but just as many questions.

• Content reach ups and downs:

  1. Tried and failed: Medium, LinkedIn,

  2. Haven’t tried but may: Paying for help, TikTok, YouTube, Newsletter subscriber like Substack

  3. Will try/trying: Ebooks, Podcasting (see below), Recommendation prodiuct page (see the top banner)

     
     
     

15. Helloooooooo podcasting.

As a way to diversify my reach, I’m going to use podcasting as a parallel medium for MindBodyDad. Yes, I’m going from one saturated territory to another but I thought this would be the best (and most efficient) way to help others with my content if they prefer not to read an article.

While I’m still wrestling with the best way to do this, I have decided to continue along this diversification with a name other than MindBodyDad. Over 40 of my original podcast names were already taken in a podcast format so readers helped me decide on their favorites. It was a close call between Better By Design and The Growth Kit but I decided on The Growth Kit after not wanting to be confused with some home remodeling companies that already exist.

Stay tuned for more on the launch of The Growth Kit coming this fall.

16. I’m partnering with brands I trust.

After many of you have reached out to me for suggestions on specific products or various things I use, I’ve decided to do an “MBD Recommends” section. Starting this venture was also a mini business lesson. The basic just is: sign up for a company’s affiliate or ambassador program, hope you get accepted to their program as well as the third-party site that most of them go through, and then help to promote their brand while earning some commissions.

Some companies I would never use have enormous commissions and a big fan base while others I often use are in the opposite camp. This business model is the basis for many influencers out there and another reason why I am extremely skeptical of anything that’s being pushed by another person on the internet (see point #10). That being said, I will stay true to my roots and only recommend products that I believe are healthy and worthwhile.

That’s all for now. Thanks for coming along with this ride for me for this first year. Please provide and suggestions you have for MindBodyDad in the comment section.

Related:

• 10 Life Lessons I Learned as an Occupational Therapist: Part 1

• 100 Tips To Live A Better Life