I tried blogging four times in seven years. Here’s what was different this time.

I started my first blog in 2019. I don’t remember what it was about, which tells you how it went. Since then I’ve started three more, built other sites, and quit every one of them somewhere between post four and post nine.

In February I started again. This time there’s a site earning money, a spreadsheet of real numbers, and thirteen posts I actually finished. The difference wasn’t motivation, and it definitely wasn’t working harder.

What killed the first four

I picked topics I liked reading about, not topics I knew anything about. Every one of those blogs ran out of things to say around post five, because I was writing from research rather than experience. That’s exhausting and it shows.

I had no idea whether it was working. No tracking, no numbers, nothing but a vague sense that nobody was reading. When you can’t tell the difference between "too early" and "not working," you quit at the first quiet month — and every month is quiet at the start.

I treated setup as the work. Themes, logos, plugins, a new color scheme. All of it felt productive and none of it was publishing.

What changed

I picked a topic I had actually done. Something I had first-hand experience of and opinions about, rather than a passion or a trend. Posts take a quarter of the time to write and they’re the ones that earn, because nobody can generate them.

I tracked from day one. Clicks, conversions, earnings per click. It sounds joyless and it’s the opposite: numbers turn "is this working?" from an anxiety into a question with an answer. When my first commission arrived in June, I knew exactly what had produced it.

I stopped redesigning. One host, one theme, no more decisions. Everything I pay for is in my stack and it costs about sixty dollars a year.

I set a schedule I could hit while bored. Not "write every day" — one post a week, on a day I protect. Enthusiasm gets you through four posts. A calendar gets you through forty.

I didn’t fail four times because I lacked discipline. I failed because I had no way to tell the difference between too early and not working.

What I’d tell 2019 me

Pick something you’ve done, not something you like. Install tracking before you install a theme. Publish weekly and expect nothing for six months. And write down the numbers, because the numbers are the only thing that will keep you honest when month three feels like failure.

If you’re on your own second or third attempt, that’s not a character flaw — it’s the normal path. The starting guide is the order I’d follow now, and the income report is what the first seven months of doing it properly actually looks like.

The log continues every quarter, numbers and all. One email, no sequences.