Blogging Struggles and What I've Learned
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Hi friends! I'm going to get super real with you in today's post, and let me warn you, it's going to be a long one.
Lately I have been struggling a lot with coming up with posting ideas for a few reasons. The first is that as a college student, I sometimes have a hard time constantly coming up with new outfits to post and new looks to shoot due to my limited budget. I also have a hard time shooting regularly due to my limited amount of daylight hours. As it has been staying lighter longer, that second roadblock has been getting a little bit easier to work around.
Another thing that I have been struggling with recently is figuring out what to say. I have been worrying a lot lately about my posts being overly superficial- only talking about the clothes I am wearing, and not allowing my readers to get to know me on a more personal level. A lot of times I will start a post, get halfway through and think "Really, Olivia? Who's going to read this? Is that actually all you have to say?" and then I give up on the post because I feel like what I'm saying does not make your leaving Instagram, Facebook or wherever it is that you found a link to my blog worth your while.
Because of these thoughts, lately I have really been admiring Katey McFarlan of
for the way she tells a personal story in each post, instead of focusing on the clothes alone. To me it makes her seem so much more genuine and relatable, and it gives me a reason to leave her Instagram in order to look at a blog post featuring the exact same outfit. I have been wanting to follow her example and start telling more meaningful or personal stories to accompany each outfit I post.
Today, since I have decided to start a new chapter in the life of my blog, I think it is only appropriate to talk about what I've learned in my first year or so of blogging. I originally started my blog about 6 months after I began working in retail. Before that, I never really had a reason to dress nicely as I previously had always just gone from class to work (a restaurant at the time) where I had to wear a uniform. When I started working in retail, I finally had a reason to dress up every day and I quickly realized that I absolutely LOVED it. Not only that, but I loved being able to help customers by offering them outfit advice and seeing their happy self confidence when we found something that looked amazing on them. That's what made me decide that I wanted to start a fashion blog. I wanted to be able to help more people find outfits that made them feel good about themselves.
When I first started blogging, I thought that in order to grow my blog, I had to mirror all of the other great bloggers and Instagrammers out there. I tried to shop the same brands, follow the same trends, and basically mold my personal brand into one that matched theirs. I originally thought that in order to grow my blog and give off a vibe of legitimacy, I had to be just like everybody else. I quickly realized that as a 20 year old college student with a part-time job paying only slightly above minimum wage, there was absolutely no way that I'd be able to keep up. This is when I decided that I would focus more on budget friendly fashion so that my style would be realistic for anyone who happened to find my blog, even broke college students like me.
One of the problems with this niche, however, is that the easiest way to shop on a budget is by finding pieces that are on sale. I know that at first glance this doesn't sound like a problem, but as a blogger, constantly buying your clothes on sale gives your content a much shorter shelf life. When you buy something on sale, chances are it is going to sell out FAST. Probably even faster than you're able to post it, which is why a lot of the time I have to find dupes for multiple pieces in each post. For instance, I bought this skirt not too long ago (around Easter) at Francesca's, even checking to make sure it was online at the time. Even though it was not on sale, it has already been taken off of their website. I tried to find a similar skirt to link, but sometimes it's almost impossible to find a good substitute for a piece that has sold out online. The skirt I did link is super cute and goes with the whole tropical print vibe, but obviously it's not an exact substitute. My top is from a boutique called
, and while they do have a pretty exhaustive online store, for some reason this top isn't there. Luckily, as it is a more basic piece, I was able to find a few similar ones at different price points and linked them all in the scroll bar above. If you've ever wondered, this a big reason that most bloggers do a lot of their shopping at Nordstrom: to avoid this problem. Nordstrom typically has enough stock that by the time you get around to posting about your outfit it's still going to be available. Unfortunately, Nordstrom can also be pretty pricey.
Another thing that I have learned is that while blogging can turn into a source of income, growing your blog to a point where that even becomes a possibility is both expensive and time consuming. First off, quality is KEY when it comes to blogging. For me, it has always been a struggle to take pictures that I felt were good enough quality to post. Even if I was able to get one picture that was clear enough to post on Instagram, I often couldn't get enough good pictures for a full blog post. At one point I was able to do a blog shoot with a professional photographer and let me tell you, the difference in engagement, growth and brand attention was monumental.
Not having the funds for a regular photographer felt like a huge disadvantage. I knew that in order to grow my blog, I eventually would need to invest in a DSLR camera because for one good, (mostly) clear picture taken with my iPhone there were usually at least 250 (not even joking, sometimes more) blurry or terrible ones. Another problem I encountered using my iPhone as my main method of photography was needing a plain, flat background in order to keep the focus on the outfit. I had to pose in front of some sort of wall in order to keep the picture from looking way too busy. I get WAY too excited about walls now. My friends always make fun of me because I'm always geeking out about walls. I'm sure they got so tired of hearing "guys, you would not believe this wall I found the other day! It makes THE best background!" all the time. I FINALLY invested in my first DSLR this past month, and I already know it's going to be a game changer. These pictures are some of the first I've ever been able to post where I'm NOT standing in front of a wall I found in a random alley (shout-out to my friend Shelby for taking amazing pictures).
Another thing that I've learned is that in order for your blog to grow and be successful, you have to treat it like a job. You have to spend your free time shooting content, writing posts, engaging with your followers and other bloggers on Instagram, commenting on other blogs, etc. I think for me, this has been one of the most difficult aspect of blogging, and my inability up until now to do so regularly has been one of the biggest reasons that my blog hasn't grown as much as I would have liked it to in the past year. This is something that I've been working on a lot more over the past month or so, and something I will continue to work on until I have fully perfected it. I've realized that if this my blog is going to go anywhere, I need to want it badly enough. I need to want it more than I want free time, and more than I want sleep. I need to make the conscious decision every day to give my blog the focus and time that it deserves.
I feel like this post may seem like a lot of complaining, and I apologize. Don't get me wrong, blogging has been an amazing experience for me. Through it, I have met tons of people that I am lucky to call friends, and have gotten to do things I never thought I would (like meeting Reese Witherspoon? Still can't believe that happened, tbh). This is just me talking about what I have learned, and what I will be doing differently from here on out. This is me making a promise to my readers and to myself that I am going to put in all of the work necessary in order to make my blog the best that it can be. This is me telling you about my mistakes, so that you don't have to make them yourself if you are thinking about starting a blog of your own.
I know that this has been a super long post, but it has been one of my absolute favorites to write. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading it, and maybe even got to know me a little bit better!
If you liked this post or if it helped you in any way, I would really appreciate if you would share it with your friends, family, dogs (equally important), etc. And if you have any questions about blogging, this outfit or anything else in this post leave me a comment or shoot me an email at
(:
Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to hang out with me here, it means the world to me!