Why I started blogging – honestly it was my wife who drove me into it. I was never hugely into, but one random day I decided I would put an Instagram account together – AnotherFoodBlogger. It started with me just taking the usual I haven’t got a clue what I am doing pics with TERRIBLE lighting, a small bit of effort put into presentation and very few actual hashtags used. As time went by and I started to have more followers and read a little I figured I should put some effort into it. Luckily for me, it’s been growing steadily ever since. Don’t get me wrong now. I’m no Instagram sensation nor am I making tons of money from it, but I see it blossom into something.

Mistakes I did

Being as clueless at blogging as I was at instagram I made many errors like everyone does when they begin. The first one was choosing WIX as my platform. Sorry WIX!! Don’t get me wrong now. It was cheap enough, easy to design and got me started. Which I think if you are doing it as a hobby then it would suit you just fine. But, my goal was trying to monetize it as I had stopped working and was now a stay at home Dad – more about that later! I realized quite quickly that there were SERIOUS limitations with WIX quickly and was informed of the rest by long term bloggers. Simply traffic was a problem. Basic things that drive traffic like PINTEREST, COMMENTS, SHARING, etc were
challenging on WIX. The only way you could comment on my blog was to subscribe. The benefits of this were you gain subscribers, BUT not everyone wants to subscribe to your blog, so I never got anyone commenting! Speed was an issue too, and that’s when I realized I had to change.

Improvements I made

The first time I met Aamir was just a random post he had put up on one of the many FB groups about website speed. Once again this guy was CLUELESS! I checked my speed, and well I may as well have been going backward. I hit Aamir up for advice, and the first thing he suggested was moving to WP and changing my hosting site. A week or so later we had gone through multiple texts, facetime chats and FB messages my site was ready to go. He edited all my old posts, helped me with SEO, and suddenly my traffic felt like I wasn’t driving in the back arse of anywhere! As time has gone on, I have made adjustments and improvements – introduced WP recipe maker and started to understand SEO better myself so now I can say I am in a position where I can start to monetize it. GOAlS!!!

Stay at Home Dad

As I mentioned before I am a stay at home Dad which ultimately I get shouted at multiple times a day, play in every park known to man and clean, clean and clean some more! It’s hugely rewarding, but boy is it exhausting. So, the reason behind setting up a blog was to try to continue to be a stay at home Dad, do something I love (cooking) and make some money too. So far I’m not rich, but I have managed to make a little to help with paying for my golf!!! A few of my recipes are found here – www.squeakygate.com.au so swing by, take a look and maybe whip some up yourself! So in a nutshell, blogging (unless you’re a tech mogul) doesn’t come, to begin with, but constantly reading, trial and error and some great people like Aamir out there it gets more comfortable and more enjoyable. Come by my page www.anotherfoodblogger.com and have a browse, feel free to ask me any questions and who knows maybe subscribe and stay a while!