{"id":207623,"date":"2024-02-23T22:41:09","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T22:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/23\/how-starting-a-blog-changed-my-life\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:21:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:21:40","slug":"how-starting-a-blog-changed-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/23\/how-starting-a-blog-changed-my-life\/","title":{"rendered":"How Starting a Blog Changed My Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"From

This is a guest contribution from Joen Rude Falsner.<\/em><\/p>\n

Most\u00a0of us have been there: we\u2019ve all had this job where the financial compensation was the\u00a0absolute single motivation\u00a0to even show up.<\/p>\n

Luckily for most people this, usually, low-compensated, uninspiring and numbingly boring\u00a0job is characterized by being temporary. Something we do only for a short\u00a0period of time.<\/p>\n

Not for me.<\/p>\n

For five full years I was rocking the position of a full time phone supporter specializing in assisting\u00a0surprisingly helpless people\u00a0with their TV setup and broadband service subscription.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you tried turning it off and on again?\u201d<\/p>\n

I hated it. Oh my God, how I hated it.<\/em><\/p>\n

A little bit about me<\/h2>\n

So I\u2019m Joen. A now 30-something-year-old dude from Denmark who has an opinion about most things in life. I wrote this article a few years ago but the story is still relevant today, because my blog is going strong and continues to support me and my lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Whether the\u00a0topic is bear hunting in Alaska or how to keep\u00a0tropical flowers alive in a costal temperate climate, I will find a way to ask questions that I am genuinely interested in knowing the answers to while also insisting that I\u00a0know\u00a0a thing or two about the subject.<\/p>\n

The struggle of saying no to the system<\/h2>\n

This is who I\u2019ve been most of my life. In my mind I have always had\u00a0all the answers, but never when the topic landed on me. When the topic was \u2018Joen\u2019, I instantly became mute.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0was okay with this for a few years, but then I started to realize that my friends were\u00a0moving up in the world.<\/p>\n

Everybody\u00a0around me seemed to be\u00a0thriving with fancy degrees, fancy grades and eventually fancy titles. They had their life paved already, while I was digging my own hole deeper and\u00a0deeper using faulty modems and TV boxes as a shovel.<\/p>\n

At age 25, it would be fair to describe me\u00a0as\u00a0a rather depressed individual primarily due to the fact that I didn\u2019t seem to have much of a bright future.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have any formal education other than high school and a 2-year-short piece of garbage degree in marketing that was worth nothing more than a seat behind the register in your nearest\u00a0supermarket.<\/p>\n

See, that\u2019s the thing. I never wanted a formal education, because it simply wasn\u2019t for me. I just couldn\u2019t care less about it.<\/p>\n

I wanted to\u00a0create. They wanted me to read.<\/p>\n

Saying no to the system was a huge deal that I am forever grateful I did. It was also\u00a0something that was incredibly difficult. Everybody expects you to do what society expects you to do.<\/p>\n

Because if you don\u2019t do what society wants you to do, then what are<\/em> you going to\u00a0do?<\/p>\n

Entering the digital universe<\/h2>\n

Regardless of\u00a0my state of depression I was eager to dig my\u00a0way out of the hole.<\/p>\n

My close friend, Frederik, who is\u00a0kind of a SEO and PPC hero told me about blogging and affiliate marketing. He actually introduced me to\u00a0the whole digital universe a few years earlier, but it took me two years before I summoned the courage to act on it.<\/p>\n

Finally, I decided to start a blog.<\/p>\n

February 7, 2014, I\u00a0started\u00a0Stayclassy.dk<\/a>,\u00a0a fashion and lifestyle blog with focus on quality over quantity and the good life.<\/p>\n

I was determined to be successful.<\/p>\n

From dinosaur to digital\u00a0dude<\/h2>\n

Back in 2014, when I started my blog, I think it would be fair to say I was kind of a dinosaur.<\/p>\n

Of course I knew how to work my way around\u00a0a computer and I have always been pretty handy with \u2018basic stuff\u2019, but I had no idea just how big the difference was between\u00a0casually using a computer and understanding the incredible\u00a0opportunities the Internet offers.<\/p>\n

Getting\u00a0started with blogging<\/h2>\n

When I started blogging I was\u00a0only\u00a0familiar with basic tools.<\/p>\n

I knew that it was important to make a keyword analysis in order to identify the best keyword for an article so that it would be easier for it to rank. I also\u00a0knew it was important to create a lot of content.<\/p>\n

Quality content of course.<\/p>\n

But that was pretty much it. Those were my tools. Creating content and using the right keywords. Looking back, I actually like the simplicity of my starting point.<\/p>\n

Because creating content is really the most important part of getting\u00a0started with blogging. Forget link building, guest blogging and what else you got.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no point of reaching out to people if you haven\u2019t\u00a0already built a solid platform to show.<\/p>\n

My goals when I started the\u00a0blog<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m not gonna lie.<\/p>\n

Getting into blogging was mainly incentivized by\u00a0the possibility of earning money. I wanted to get out of my day job badly and in order to do so\u00a0I had to earn money.<\/p>\n

I started the blog while also\u00a0working my full time job. In other words, my schedule just got a lot busier. It was three hours of blogging before work and 3-4 hours of blogging after.<\/p>\n

All together that made my average day ~3+9+3=~15 hours long.<\/p>\n

The goal from day 1 was to\u00a0create one quality article a day. An article that had to be at least\u00a01000 words long.<\/p>\n

I knew that text heavy articles weren\u2019t\u00a0necessarily a goal in itself, but setting this\u00a0rule was important as I was also forcing myself to write.<\/p>\n

A lot.<\/p>\n

You have to remember that when I started blogging my only writing experience was chatting to\u00a0girls on Tinder. I had zero experience, although I\u2019ve always been all right\u00a0at putting\u00a0together a sentence or two.<\/p>\n

The strategy<\/h2>\n

By writing an article a day, and sometimes even two, I knew that in a year I would have 365 articles in the bank. That\u2019s 365,000 words or the equivalent of 3-4 good books. I liked the sound of that.<\/p>\n

Content before anything.<\/h3>\n

That was\u00a0my basic strategy to begin with. It wasn\u2019t until I had +45 articles that I began thinking in terms of getting links.<\/p>\n

With 45+ articles I had something to show. I had already created a blog that I was really proud of. People would also take my blog\u00a0seriously and that made my link-building effort a lot easier as more of my guest post\u00a0enquiries\u00a0were granted.<\/p>\n

Along with the consistent output of quality articles I started getting links. My blog started to become authoritative-ish.<\/p>\n

I remember how much I hated the link-building game.<\/p>\n

I thought it\u00a0was so lame that links were\u00a0the all-important factor in getting those much desired organic rankings. This\u00a0was also one of the reasons that I didn\u2019t put too much effort into it at that point, which, in hindsight, was a really bad decision, but more on this later.<\/p>\n

Affiliate blog posts\u00a0for the win<\/h2>\n

That was my\u00a0mind-set.<\/p>\n

If I wanted to earn money, I had to monetize as much as I could without of course making my blog appear spammy.<\/p>\n

So the majority of the articles I wrote were affiliate blog posts, however I\u00a0would complement them with lifestyle blog posts of various sorts in order for my blog\u00a0to maintain\u00a0a dynamic range of content.<\/p>\n

Mainly it was affiliate articles in the fashion department where I had one particular affiliate program that would turn out to perform extremely well.<\/p>\n

I already knew that, as this was the online\u00a0go-to-fashion retailer<\/em>\u00a0for most\u00a0Danes, but I didn\u2019t know that it would become ~70% of my combined affiliate income almost three years later.<\/p>\n

Spending\u00a0a lot of time analyzing all the available affiliate programs as well as testing them out has been of great importance to the success of my blog.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t\u00a0keep a close eye on this, you will consequently earn less money. Less money that over time will accumulate to a huge loss.<\/p>\n

Earning my first dollar<\/h2>\n

Exactly 14 days was how long it took me to earn my first affiliate dollar after having started the blog.<\/p>\n

My first sale was worth exactly 7 euros.<\/p>\n

I was ecstatic. Just two weeks in and here I am already living the passive income dream.<\/p>\n

Okay not really, but I could immediately see that this \u201cearn money online blogging\u201d-thing wasn\u2019t just a fairy tale pipe dream.<\/p>\n

It could be done if using\u00a0the same technique as Andy Dufresne in\u00a0Shawshank Redemption<\/a>\u00a0(best film ever by the way),\u00a0who dug a hole through the wall by applying\u00a0only pressure and time.<\/p>\n

Pressure and time<\/h2>\n

That is all it really takes and although there isn\u2019t any hole to be seen right away, you will eventually hit the other end of the wall.<\/p>\n

Although I was seeing dollars only two weeks after getting to work,\u00a0things were moving slow. Painfully slow actually, but it was easy to\u00a0stay on track as I continued to grow my audience\u00a0month after month.<\/p>\n

\"From