Today’s article is going to be a little bit different. I always get so many questions about blogging and it stops like how I got started any advice for someone who wants to start, etc, etc. So I figured why not jump on here and do a whole article just going through my entire blogging journey from the beginning.
All the way up until now, so let’s just jump straight on in when I first started blogging. I think that was all the way back in like 2016, I want to say it’s like middle 2016 and I don’t know I was like probably most of you reading now who was just makeup obsessed and also just loved, to read articles on YouTube and just into That kind of thing – and I also really really from the beginning – I always make sure to only use cruelty free stuff.
But I also started to get really really interested into product ingredients and only using brands that have less toxic ingredients in it. And that kind of thing so initially when I started vlogging, I just started on Instagram, I’m pretty much transitioned from my personal page at like a thousand followers and I just kind of turned it into a blogging page slowly so yeah that was just strictly on Instagram.
At that point, I hadn’t, how do you tube blog and I like it, wasn’t really in my mind to have one. That’s a lie I feel like it was in my mind, but I was still kind of like, like I don’t know. If I can do all of that, so it was kind of just on the back burner for that time it wasn’t until I think, chopped in 2017, so that was December 2017. When I was like you know what I want to document this process, so I article myself and carp right before my big chop.
I set up my little camera at the salon, a article that entire whole big chop situation and ended up posting it on my Instagram and I feel like. I got a lot of interest in this article and I feel like that’s when I kind of was like wow people are really saying. This is a big deal. People really want to know about this and see this journey, and so that’s when I decided that I kind of wanted to not completely let go of makeup.
Kids, honestly, that’s still like my passion and so obsessive makeup still product drunky, that’s me, but I realized that I also had something very special and unique when it came to my natural hair journey and it was just something that everyone was interested in. I got lots of questions all the time, so I was like you know what I’m going to keep on going with this. I’r going to keep people updated with my journey and kind of put more focus on that and less of a focus on makeup.
Just simply because that’s what I found people were interested in, it wasn’t until like February 2018, when I actually got it together and started my youtube blog with my first article ever it was like when I look back on it, I’m like oh cringe. It was just like a really short and sweet one-minute article, just saying hey guys, like it’s me like a little intro to my entire youtube blog and then I just did a whole bunch of little hair, tutorials, etc, etc.
So that’s pretty much how I got started when I first started. I obviously was not making any money off it. To be honest, like making money, wasn’t really in my mind, I wasn’t like going into it like. Oh, maybe I can make some extra money. Let these bloggers or rich online I feel like, if that’s your intention, blogging, probably isn’t for you, because this is really not like a get-rich-quick scheme kind of thing like it’s really not.
I really just went into it with my passion for these things and it kind of paid off. I guess so I didn’t start getting paid for a while, like it was a while. My first post was maybe like a $ 50 thing on Instagram. It really wasn’t until I started to gain a lot of traction on instagrams when I was like, like, I really need to figure out how these bloggers do get paid. It did a lot of research online like a lot when on YouTube.
When I Google read articles – and I just kind of scoured the internet to find out like how could I get paid because it’s so much work, it is so much work and so much of your time and effort that goes into it mind you to me it Was fun in a way because it was literally, like I said, she’s just my passion like I was happy to share these things, but just producing content in general. A lot of people don’t understand, like all of the things that are behind creating a piece of content.
Even just a photo, a lot of people think like selfie, easy done, but there’s planning that goes into it. I plan ahead for a week usually know what I’m going to post when I’m being good, not always like. Not always. I still have a 95 job right now currently, so it is really really hard for me to kind of juggle everything, but I try and stay as organized as possible. Applying content out people just don’t understand like how much work goes into this, but anyways back to when I first started making money.
I learned that what bloggers pretty much do is just charge on a per post basis. So what I did was I went on this website that I found called canva com. It’s actually a really great tool. If you like, digital, creating and stuff, you can create, like Instagram, post little things like it’s just a free tool that you can use online to create graphics. Pretty much so I went on canva and I created a little media sheets and the cute little media shake, and I listed out like Instagram photo for X amount of Instagram article for X amount YouTube article for XML.
The main reason why this media she was so important was that, when brands started to reach out to me, then I could just supply this them and say hey. These are my grapes. Let me know if this works boom BAM so yeah. That is pretty much still. How it works for me currently, except I like to target Browns myself as well. I feel, like people think that Browns are just reaching out to bloggers directly and boom done, but bloggers actually do a lot of work to actually target Browns themselves and reach out to them themselves and say hey.
This is what I’m capable of this is what I can offer for you are you willing to collaborate with me? That’s kind of how, like the whole Brown partnership works for me personally, I really wanted my pages, both on Instagram and YouTube, to be very, very authentic. To me, I just wanted it to stay genuine. I didn’t want it to feel commercially like I was always trying to sell stuff like I really really wanted to stay away from all of that.
So my main goal, when I transitioned into becoming more of a hair blogger, was to just encourage women from across the globe to love and embrace their natural curls. Just the way that I did because I felt like the day of I felt such a transformation and such a light inside of me, it was just I don’t know. It was life-changing for me, and I wanted to be able to encourage other people to do that and to experience that for themselves as well like to this day.
That’s really what keeps me going. That’s really my purpose and my goal for my blogs. It’s for people to just love and embrace their natural selves, so yeah without being my main goal, I always was very picky like even from the very beginning. I was very, very picky with which brands that I would work with. So, for me, when it comes to a brand and the type of brands that I work with, they one need to be 100 % cruelty, free, that’s something that I’ve stuck with from day.
One number two: it needs to be relevant to my brand and what I feel so that’s pretty much my story. I also wrote down. I have a few little pieces of advice in case you are thinking about vlogging or, if you’re trying to vlog, but you feel like it’s not going anywhere. I have a few pieces of advice from over the past few years, things that I’ve learned and things that I wish that I could tell myself when I first started.
Okay, so first piece of advice – I kind of went over this a little bit, but it’s like not bad at all. To reiterate this: do not get into blogging for the money people will be able to see through that, if you’re, not in it with your passion, if you’re not putting yourself like fully into this people will be able to see through that, and you won’t be successful. Also bond was a lot of work and especially in the beginning, you do a lot like a lot of a lot of content creating for free, that’s just the nature of the business.
You have to start somewhere build yourself up and once your followers start to grow, you can then use that to leverage payment. My second piece of advice is to visualize it. This is for somebody who’s, just starting out or even hasn’t started yet, but it’s just been in the back of your mind and you’re, really considering like how to do it, you need to visualize, like the big picture of what you’re trying to achieve.
You have to have a purpose behind it, and then you also need to visualize what it’s going to look like. Are you just going to do Instagram articles and stick to Instagram? Are you going to do YouTube? We’re going to do both? Are you going to write a blog? Are you going to have a website? You know visualize your endgame goal of like what you want, everything to look like look at your favorite bloggers on YouTube and Instagram and make notes of what you think makes them stand out and things that you like about them things you don’t like about them.
Just make note of everything know what kind of vibe you’re trying to bring across. Is it more like a sexy and boom, I’m the shit kind of thing, or is it more like a bubbly and warm, I would say like tiny, more bubbly, fun and goofy it’ll. Just make it a lot easier for you and you’ll have a better idea of what exactly you need to do in order to achieve it. My next piece of advice is to start and to start small, so, firstly, is to start like I waited so long before.
I started my youtube blog. I stalled myself because I was so I just made myself super overwhelmed and I gave myself every single reason why I couldn’t start yet. You know like oh, I need a nicer camera and I need better lighting and I can’t afford that. Yeah and buh-buh-buh-buh there’s always going to be a hundred reasons. Why you can’t start you need to find the one reason why you can and just start so starting in itself is like a major step and just know that starting small is the whole point of growth.
As you go through the process, every time you film and every time you edit, you learn different things. You learn how to articulate yourself better. You learn, oh like I need to stop saying um. Ah, whatever, like you literally learn as you go, so it’s important to get started as soon as possible, so you can hurry up, learn everything you can possibly learn and then continue to perfect your craft, just as you go.
Another piece of advice is to find your niche and just stick to it, so you’ll be able to find your niche. If you listen, it’s your audience. So, for example, in my journey, like I said, I started with makeup very makeup heavy and once I started going natural, I realized that that’s really what people were interested in what they wanted to see what they had questions about. So I was like you know what let me place a bigger focus on here and just do makeup here and there kind of thing you know so for me, my natural hair peeps, that’s my niche and when you’re creating content, you want to create content with that Niche in mind, so I’m creating my content in mind of a person who is going through a natural hair journey who is thinking about big shopping and that helps you to create content.
That is going to be useful for people when you’re creating useful content. That is when you are going to grow all right and then, once you have your niche, you got a post and you’ve got a post consistently. So that’s my next piece of advice is consistency. It is so important that I show up all the time they’re going to know Alyssa post articles on YouTube every Sunday, every Sunday they’re going to log on and wait for that article.
If you are haphazardly producing content here and there, people are going to forget about you honestly, like so many bloggers and so many different things to see online nowadays, you want to be in people’s face constantly all the time. It’s super super important to be consistent and then, as you’re going through your whole blogging career, it’s really really important to continue to set goals for yourself.
That’s one thing that I actually learned recently is something as simple, as that was just like a huge ignite and a difference for me in terms of the type of content I’m creating like in terms of everything really like setting goals is so important. But for me I have a set list of brands that I have, as my target brands brands, that I would love to collaborate with by just listing out those brands and just like having that in the back of my mind, saying: okay, this is my target that Helps me to gear my content towards that, and that way I’ll be able to position myself for an opportunity to work with that brand.
You need to have your goals like they need to be clear, set goals so that you know exactly like what you’re working towards and how to get there, because if there’s no destination like you’re, just kind of like in here doing nothing. So you need to have goals, set them, write them down. I actually have a really really great. I guess it’s an app and it’s also a website called Trello. That is where I have my little vision board.
My whole social media life is like plunder on trouble. So I have a board for my content planning any content ideas I have for like YouTube. Instagram I listed out all in there. I have a board for my vision board. So that’s where I set all my goals, target brands, etc. I have a board for like a to-do list. It’s just a really amazing tool, so check it out I’ll, also link it below alright and then my last piece of advice is something you may have gathered already from this entire long drama.
Article is that this is a journey, just as any kind of career path is like a path. It’s a journey, something you’ve got to work towards continuously blogging is the same way, so it’s very very easy to look online in see other bloggers who have already made it and think like. Oh, I can do that. That’s easy, like I’m cute, I can take cute selfies too, like it’s fine, it’s a really long journey and it’s hard there’s a lot that goes into content, creating it’s definitely one of those things where what you put into it.
It’s definitely what you’ll get out of it. There is no way that you’re going to work your ass off, producing amazing content and not get noticed if you are putting in your work. It’ll happen it’ll happen in its time. It’s really important to not look at other people and say: oh she’s, growing faster than me. I definitely definitely was guilty of that in the beginning and I would get on myself and there would be a lot of self-doubt and a lot of Tears and me wanting to give up all the time and honestly that still happens today.
But you just have to know that everything happens in its time and if you are putting in the work you will get the reward. You will just it’s just a matter of you just keep on going and that’s it you you got this. You you reading right now you got this and you can do this boom. That’s it drops mic wow I feel like I spoke forever. If you guys have any additional questions, please comment them below.
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