10 lessons I learned from 10 years of blogging

Wow, it’s hard to believe that I have been blogging for 10 years. The very first blog post was published on July 20, 2014. Although I had created a few personal blogs before this particular blog, writing a personal finance blog was completely new to me and quite frankly I had no idea what I was doing when I first started. 

Before starting, I had been reading many different personal finance blogs like Millon Dollar Journey, My Own Advisor, Young and Thrifty (now Money.ca), 1500 Days to Freedom, Go Curry Cracker, Retire by 40, Boomer and Echo, and Mr. Money Mustache. After six months of debating whether to create a blog or not, I decided to go forward with it and see what would happen. 

In 2014, the personal finance and FIRE blog space was still relatively new. Lots of new blogs were popping up every other month and I was keeping in touch with many of these bloggers who started their blogs around the same time as me like She Picks Up Pennies, Our Next Life, Dividend Diplomats, No More Waffles, and Northern Expenditure. 

Unfortunately, most of the personal finance/FIRE blogs that started around the same time as me are no longer around. It’s rather sad that so many bloggers stopped writing after a year or so. Of the ones that continued after a year, not many made it past the five-year mark. Even for those few that are around still, some aren’t active anymore or only post sporadically. Blogging is a very lonely game in that sense – you have to keep yourself motivated and accountable. 

To be perfectly honest, there were times that I thought about giving up and not writing anymore myself. The most difficult period was probably between 2017 and 2018. Back then I didn’t have a regular posting schedule. I was writing and posting erratically and producing some very questionable articles. To make life even more difficult, I wasn’t planning and writing ahead. Most of the time, I wrote the posts a few days before publishing them. It was a stressful period and I faced a lot of “writer’s block.” 

Attending FinCon in 2019 and connecting with other personal finance bloggers provided a big mental boost. Around that time I started planning and writing ahead by about one month. I also started creating annual goals and resolutions. Things took off in 2019.

Between 2019 and 2020, as part of my annual blog goals, I published six articles every month. I reduced this publication schedule to one every Monday. This change gave me a bit of a breather and made planning and blogging much more straightforward. Being a planner (are you surprised?), the planning aspect took off from there – I was planning and writing around three months ahead. 

But the most important thing that kept me going was all the supportive readers like you. I certainly wouldn’t have made it if not for all the encouragement, comments, and emails. I’m always appreciative of connecting with readers.

Here are 10 things I learned from 10 years of blogging.

Side note: 5 years ago I wrote the 7 lessons I’ve learned from 5 years of blogging. Funny enough, all the points are still true.

#1 SEO is important but don’t make it the top priority – blog what I’m passionate about

For a long time, I didn’t care about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I simply wrote what I wanted. At the two Fincon conferences that I attended, other bloggers always talked about how SEO is important and that everyone should pay attention to SEO and what Google is doing at their regular updates.

To boost blog traffic, I tried to write SEO focused articles. But these “best of,” “how to,” and “reviews” were not my favourites to write.

Don’t get me wrong, I have published some SEO-focused articles. But whenever I can, I try to dazzle some relatable personal stories in them to make them a little bit more relatable. 

Over time, I decided that while SEO is important, I shouldn’t make it my top priority. Readers are returning to this blog because they like that my blog articles are relatable and personal. They like reading about our financial independence journey and the lessons that we are learning along the journey. And for certain, that journey is a ‘we’ enterprise – we are both, readers and I, engaged in it.

So I focus on writing what I am passionate about and stay true to that vision. 

#2 Focus on what works well

Running a personal blog is about trying different things, finding out what works well and what doesn’t, and focusing on those things that do work well. 

For example, I found publishing six articles each month far too daunting, so I changed to publishing an article each Monday in 2021. This publication schedule has provided solid consistency. More importantly, it has allowed me to plan and write ahead. 

In the last two years, I usually have had three months’ worth of articles completed in advance. Then each month I’d complete time sensitive articles like the monthly dividend updates and quarterly goals and resolutions updates. Occasionally an idea might surface due to recent events, which would mean shifting the already-written articles and changing my publication plans. 

The Monday publication schedule has worked very well so I have stuck to it. 

On the other hand, the weekend readings and the good reads from the PF community posts have been hit and miss. Some of them received good feedback and some of them didn’t. Rather than making them regular weekly or monthly posts, I decided not to put too much emphasis on them and only publish one when the occasion strikes. 

#3 Only share things I want to share 

When I started this blog, I was writing anonymously. However since Tawcan is a name that I invented and I have been using this name on the internet since the late 90s, many of my friends and family figured out who was behind this blog very quickly. 

I went public with my identity when the Money Sense article featuring me was published in January 2017. As you can imagine, it took me a lot of thinking before agreeing to reveal my name for the Money Sense article and on this blog. 

When I finally “came out” Mrs. T and I agreed that there are certain things that I would not share publicly due to privacy reasons. 

• Our net worth
• Our portfolio value and how many shares we hold per stock or ETF
• Pictures of our kids (you’ll notice all the pictures are either from the back or the faces are blurred out)
• Our income (which means we don’t specifically call out how much money we added each year in our dividend portfolio)

I need to stay true and be open and honest about our financial independence journey but many things are simply “off limits.” I truly believe it’s important to set up rules about what you share on the internet and stay within these boundaries.

#4 Create & build relationships – believe in the community

Thanks to this blog, I have been able to connect with many like-minded people. I am forever grateful to be able to connect and meet with other personal finance and FIRE bloggers. FinCon became an excellent event to meet other personal finance/FIRE bloggers in person. And because we have read each other’s blogs for years and follow each other on Twitter, immediate bonds were formed. 

I am also extremely happy to be able to meet many readers in person. Some locally in Vancouver, and some in other parts of the world. 

Without such a strong community of bloggers and readers, I wouldn’t have been able to last ten years with this blog. Thanks to the strong community, I have been able to appear on podcasts and articles, and get fellow bloggers and readers to appear on here. Although it took a lot of convincing, I am very appreciative that Reader B agreed to do a long interview with me and share his knowledge on dividend investing. His interview posts continue to be one of the most read articles on this blog. 

In 2017 a UK reader reached out to me about his FIRE inspirations. Being a university lecturer, he also politely pointed out that I needed to pay attention to my grammar (which I took to heart). Since the initial emails in 2017, this reader then started a tradition of emailing me at the end of each year with a quick update. This reader may visit Canada next year and it would be super cool to meet up.

It definitely brings a smile to my face when I think about all the connections I have been able to make over the past 10 years. 

#5 I can’t do everything – hire professionals & ask for help 

I am not a jack of all trades so I can’t do everything myself. There are things I need to rely on the experts. For example, rather than designing the site logo myself, I hired a professional to design it for me. I have also hired professionals to code specific things for this site.

Over the years, I have reached out to other bloggers and asked for help. Thanks to the strong and supportive community, everyone has been very helpful and happy to provide a helping hand.

Having been on the receiving end, I also try to be supportive and helpful to other bloggers whenever help is needed. 

#6 Protect my blog like my own house

There are a lot of trolls and people with ill intentions on the internet. Not surprisingly, I get a lot of spam, terrible emails, and awful comments every single day. It’s easy to get sucked into this negative downward spiral so I’ve learned to ignore and delete them right away.

I like to use the analogy that this blog is like my own house – I wouldn’t let a stranger enter my house without permission and I wouldn’t let strangers make changes to my house. 

Therefore, I guard this blog very carefully. I used to let people leave negative comments but I have stopped that completely. It’s fine to leave constructive comments but if someone leaves an attacking comment about me or my readers, I delete it right away and set the commenter as a spammer. Similarly, if someone harasses me via email or on social media (it has happened many times), I will mute and/or block them. 

It’s important to focus on the positives and block out the negatives. 

#7 Pay for better experience & performance

Running a blog isn’t free. 

When I started in 2014, I registered the domain name and a cheap hosting plan with Dreamhost which cost about $5 per month altogether. To keep the blog cost to a minimum, everything else I used like the WordPress theme, newsletter, WordPress plugins, and other tools were free. 

However, free tools often have their limitations, especially in performance. This blog was consistently getting poor scores on performance tests like Google PageSpeed, GTMetrix, and PingDom. I tried to optimize things myself but it was a very challenging process. I would often break things and would have to spend hours fixing the backend stuff. 

After doing a lot of DIY to improve the blog performance, I found out I could improve the performance drastically by paying for tools and getting a better hosting plan. So I did.

Here are the tools & services that I’m using for this blog and their associated cost:

• GeneratePress Premium – a lightweight WordPress theme that is very fast with a lot of customization. After initially getting the yearly license, I upgraded to the $249 USD lifetime access.
• BigScoots Managed WordPress Hosting – shared hosts are typically very slow. Managed WordPress hosting is super speedy in comparison. $394.24 USD per year.
• Domain Registration – $10.95 USD per year to keep the tawcan.com domain alive
• WP Rocket – a WordPress caching plugin to get a speedy website. $59 USD per year
• ShortPixel – for image optimization. About $2 USD per month.
• Bunny.net – a global CND to improve blog content delivery speed. $1 USD per month.
• MailerLite – for sending weekly newsletters. $135 USD per month. This is by far the most expensive service I use for the blog. And the cost will increase with more subscribers.
• Link Whisper – helps me with internal links on each blog post. $49 USD per year.
• WordPress to Buffer Pro – helps me automatically send updates on X. $39 USD per year.

Ignoring the GeneratePress cost, the other tools & services cost about $182 USD or $249 CAD per month. Can I get by with a lower cost? Absolutely, but I am happy paying for these services to make my life easier. As you can see, most of these paid services are for website speed optimization –  good performance and experience are important to me. 

Having a monthly cost is the key reason why you’ll see ads and referral links on here. I certainly didn’t create this blog to make income. It’s a passion project and I believe my passion shows in each blog post, comment, email, any any guest appearance on the internet.

#8 Have my own voice

I believe many readers continue to read this blog because they enjoy my writing style and my perspectives. Over time I believe I have developed my own voice that I am comfortable with. There’s no point in copying or mimicking someone else. 

if you’re a new blogger who is still trying to find your own voice, don’t be discouraged. Having my own voice and style took me a few years to develop. 

#9 I can’t do all social media 

There are so many social media platforms and I have learned that I can only focus on one or two of them. I am most active on X/Twitter because I find it easy to post and automate things. I also enjoy the social interaction on X/Twitter. Although I have an Instagram account, it is used mostly for posting personal pictures and not as blog-related. 

I know some bloggers focus on many social media platforms and end up burning themselves out.. For me, being stressed out and feeling burned out aren’t worth the extra exposure or traffic. 

It is far more important to stick with one or two social media platforms. Connect with other people there and create a community. 

#10 Have fun 

This is the most important lesson I have learned from 10 years of blogging. I have learned that I need to have fun from blogging. If I’m not having fun, I wouldn’t still be blogging.

How do I have fun blogging? I think lesson #1 covered it pretty well. Create and write content that I am passionate about and not focus primarily on SEO. 

Having fun also means going to meet-ups to connect with other like-minded people in person. 

Having fun also means not being afraid to try writing on different topics and expanding my comfort zone. 

Wrapping it up – 10 lessons I learned from 10 years of blogging

It’s hard to believe I have been blogging for 10 years. In internet years, 10 years makes this blog like a VERY old grandpa. 

While it’s a major accomplishment to have a 10 year blog anniversary, I wouldn’t have been writing for this long if not for all the supportive readers. I want to thank you for reading this, regardless of whether you’re a first-time reader or a returning reader. 

From the bottom of my heart – thank you!