#(Because I Needed to Catch Up With Rei and Reread Things)

[koushirouizumi]

Me: Ok. Ok now I just need to watch the Holic stage play with M E: All guy actors

[dollfaceksj]

Okayy thank you!! <3 Just a heads up I’m a sucker for angst soooo What if maybe she’s not home when he comes to visit her, she’s away for vacation or a work thing & he realizes he really hates not being able to see her when he comes back. She ends up saying he can crash in her place bcs she feels bad. He agrees but he was so excited to see oc but not being able to have her, he needs relief bad. He tries to hold off so bad but ig we can chalk it up to him just being a man *cue lana del rey* He ends up having a girl over and oc comes back early from her trip & finds them in bed together. In the same bed they used to share. She’s conflicted because she can’t be jealous because she’s knows she’s not the only one he sleeps with and he’s technically not cheating. Shes hurt but also curious to see if he really doesn’t mumble sweet nothings into other girls ears like he does to her or if he doesn’t kiss them & gives them gentle caresses like he does to her. (Whether he does or doesn’t idk I can’t decide😭😭). When Jungkook & the girl are done he walks her out and she leaves but what neither of them saw was oc sitting on the couch. Once he locks eyes with oc his face turns pale as if he’s seen a ghost. He’s quick to try & salvage whatever it is they have with the excuse that they’re not together & it’s not cheating but oc can’t take the disrespect of him “needing some” so bad that if he doesn’t get it from her he’s willing to bring someone into their own home or at least the home they used to share. He catches her on this & he’s a little toxic about it trying to deflect where he’s wrong in this situation, he reminds her that it isn’t their home anymore it’s just hers because she made the decision of ending their relationship. They argue & she’s so hurt but so mad too bcs it’s kinda true. In the end she feels really defeated. She kicks him out & as much as he wants to fix things he’s just as angry too, plus he has a flight to catch for a fight. Soon as the fights over he jets straight from the arena to her house to finally apologize and fix things but she doesn’t open. He’s so used to her always opening the door that, that’s when he knows it’s officially over, she might have broken up with him first but he’s the one that really ended it. Orrr another scenario is (this is a whole different scene, not including the argument above, but as I’m rereading this I feel like it can kinda go together too lol) he comes back and she opens the door but tells him he can sleep on the couch because she’s adamant on this not being able to continue, she eventually caves and they end up sleeping together but while they’re doing it she cries which she’s done before but this time he feels like it’s a little different but he continues (bcs she’s saying she doesn’t want him to stop) so he settles that she’s just crying out of pleasure. Then once it’s his time to leave again she stops him & instead of the usual quick kiss, she kisses him. Like really kisses him. & before he leaves she says something cryptic like “goodbye Jungkook, good luck” with a small smile. He thinks she’s just saying goodbye until next time & good luck on his next fight, so he leaves and doesn’t think much of it. Only when he comes back she doesn’t open the door, the person that does says they’ve just moved in a few days ago, the previous tenant moved. He tries calling her but the number is out of service, that’s when it clicks for him that she was saying goodbye the last time they were together & this completely breaks him. Omgg this was so long & idk if you can see what I mean when I say I just have huge ramblings!! You said you’re already working up a part 2 (I’m so excited to hear!!) so I was so close to not sending this in but I already had my rambling written out because I’m really forgetful so I figured let me not let it go to waste lol if this doesn’t fit, make sense or you just don’t like it, thanks anyway for listening to my ramble <333 I can’t wait to read the rest of your work!!

thank u for this it was entertaining to read! and its fine u can always ramble to me i dont mind at all it was very fun and cool to read someone explaining an idea they got from *my* story its rlly cool!!!

i might pluck some of these ideas and cook up a drabble but it wont be for any time soon tho. hope u look forward to part 2! <3

[7-wonders]

Had to reread your sith!Anakin stuff to shift back into Star Wars mode (got stuck in stranger things mode for a couple weeks lol) after seeing your post from earlier, and one of the things you wrote mentioned shared dreams between Anakin and rebel reader. What exactly was happening in those dreams 👀 and do you think they’d have a sort of force connection the way k*lo ren and Rey did?

Okay so I wanna answer your question first: in short, I do see Rebel and Anakin having a connection in the Force. I'm not quite sure yet if it's because of the two representing a balance in the Force or if it's simply because Rebel is one of the few non-Sith left in the galaxy. That will become more clear to both me and you as I continue writing this little universe. Also this is just the first dream that's shared. They have other, spicier dreams that I'll write about later.

It's quiet here...peaceful. You're back on your home planet, in the forest that you and your friends played in daily throughout your childhood, and it looks just as pristine and untouched as it did even before the Clone Wars. The sun warms your skin, a change from having to constantly be moving in the dead of night and hiding in cold, damp bunkers that were hastily constructed for the Rebel Alliance. You take it all in for a long moment, enjoying this happiness that comes only from such simplicity, such feelings of belonging.

"C'mon, are you giving up so soon?" a voice from above calls down to you teasingly, and it's then that you remember that you've been running after someone in the forests you once called home.

The difference is that, for the first time in a long time, it's not a run of life-or-death, not a run to try and catch up to someone or to try and escape someone before they kill you. It's meant to be fun and lighthearted.

You grin. "Never!"

"Hmm, sure seemed like it to me!"

You roll your eyes and hike up your dress (when was the last time you wore a dress?) to make running easier. Pausing for a moment, you take a deep breath and call upon the intuition that you've had ever since you can remember, the intuition that you now know as the Force. It leads you to a tree a few hundred feet away. Looking up, you can't see anyone past the foliage, but you know that the person you're looking for is up there.

It's an easy climb, years of muscle memory making it second-nature as you grab branch after branch and hoist yourself up higher off of the ground. When you're about halfway up the tree, a hand appears in your line of vision.

"Clever. I knew you'd find me! Here, let me help you up the rest of the way." They sound proud of you, and it fills your chest with warmth.

You grab onto the hand and allow them to pull you up. You smile, looking up to say thank you, before your heart drops and you gasp.

Darth Vader stares back at you, looking just as surprised and alarmed as you. You don't care about how he feels though, not when he's the kriffing Sith Lord that made it clear when you escaped him that he would not stop until he had you again. You try to wrench your hand out of his, needing to get as far away from him as possible, and eventually succeeding. When he does let go, the motion of you trying to get away propels you off of the branch you're perched on.

It happens too quickly for you to do anything about; you can't even think to grab onto another branch before you're falling backwards towards the ground. A noise of surprise escapes you as the air whistles past your form, and you can do nothing but stare up at Darth Vader's rapidly-shrinking form as you prepare yourself for death.

You come to a stop suddenly mere inches before you smash into the ground. Darth Vader jumps gracefully off of the tree, landing next to you on the ground on his two feet before releasing you from his Force hold. You let out an "oomph!" as you hit the ground, but it's a much lighter impact than if you had hit before your falling was stopped.

"Are you okay?" His hands are on your face as his eyes (a shade of blue that startles you, considering you've only known him with golden eyes) look you over to make sure there are no injuries.

"What—what are you doing in my dream?"

His eyebrows furrow. "Your dream? No, this is my dream."

"We're on my home planet," you argue.

"This is where I liked to train my Padawan when we were off-world," he fires back.

You've shifted from anger to confusion. "So...we're sharing a dream?"

"It appears so."

"And this isn't some elaborate plot to capture me?"

He scowls. "Do you really believe I'd have been so surprised to see you if this had been my plan all along?"

"No," you mumble. "How is this even happening?"

"I'm not sure. It's not something that I've ever come across in my studies, both Jedi and Sith."

"Huh."

You really don't know what else to say, considering Darth Vader's just as lost as you are. And though logic is telling you not to believe him, reminding you that he's a Sith and Sith lie, something in you knows that he's being truthful. Maybe it's the part of the Force that has given you a dream shared with the man you'd consider to be your enemy, but you can feel that he's telling the truth, that he's just as bewildered as you are.

"Your eyes," you say after a long moment and reach a hand up to his cheekbone, not able to stop yourself, "they're blue."

"What?"

"You had blue eyes...before, then?" Instead of leaning away from you or yanking your hand off of him, which you had expected, Vader leans into your touch and allows you to keep your hand on his face.

"I did. They haven't been that color for a long time, though." His hand comes up to yours, but it's simply to hold onto you. He's warmer than you had expected, and you wonder if he feels like this in real life, too. "How is this happening? Why is this happening?"

You shake your head. You're about to answer that you really don't know when you hear someone calling your name. It's muffled, like they're standing outside of a room, and you realize that it's Rip that you hear. Vader must hear it too, from the way that he looks at you. Before either of you can say anything, you feel a hand on your shoulder that pulls you away from the dream and unconsciousness in general.

You wake up with a start, sitting up in the chair that you had fallen asleep in. Rip is looking at you, his hand on your shoulder from where he must have been shaking you to wake you up. You're still in the hangar, you realize, and you must have fell asleep while you were working on tweaking some flight plans.

"Hey," he says softly. "Came lookin' for ya and found ya passed out."

"Sorry," you mutter, stretching your arms until they pop.

"Go get some actual rest, yeah? Maker knows you could use it."

You glower at him and flip him off, but follow him back to the barracks anyways, your mind spinning with questions the entire time. Rip seems to chalk up your lack of talk to you having just woken up, and you appreciate that he leaves you mostly in silence.

When you're in your bed, you're fighting sleep because you know that there's a good chance you'll see him again. Why did you share a dream? Is this the will of the Force, or something darker? Is this a phenomena that happens often?

When you wake up the next morning, no memory of how you actually fell asleep, you're not sure if you're relieved or disappointed that you didn't dream of Darth Vader again.

[a-moth-to-the-light]

but then! sleep is mine. (nov 25, 2022)

My Tumblr (and irl! he's a real person it's wild) bestie requested that I start doing daily updates on my account, sort of like I did for Tranquil's Studyblr Challenge (which I still need to do the last question for, oops!), and who am I to deny the public their wishes? Now that planning is done and this feature has finally arrived, I hope that I'll be able to keep up with it to some extent as time goes on! Thanks for the idea, and let me know what kinds of things you want to hear about in these posts :)

The Day, In Short

So, on Tuesday night, I got zero hours and zero minutes of sleep, and I've been using the holiday to catch up on that! So I slept about ten hours last night + napped for two today, and, as per usual, got made fun of for it. But I do not care! *smug* Everyone is just jealous that I love sleep with my new meds--they've made my sleep way deeper and falling asleep easier, which has really improved my relationship with it! On the plane yesterday, I fell asleep before we were even in the air, and I didn't wake up once. The best flight experience ever :)

I've had trouble focusing on reading these past few days, though. I brought Lockwood & Co. book three with me to visit family, but my attempts to read have been pretty pathetic. I think the focus issues might be a mix of accumulated lack of sleep & anxiety (unfortunately VERY related), so I'll need to be a bit easier on myself when it comes to reading for the next week or so, I think. Shorter phases of focus, more reading out loud!

OMGOMG LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT

Wednesday: I'm visiting family right now, and my youngest sibling convinced me to start watching Wednesday on Netflix with him today. We got through the first two episodes, and I'm thoroughly entertained! I absolutely love the costuming, the way it creates very distinct, whimsical aesthetics for characters like Marilyn Thornhill, Enid, and Wednesday herself! I'm looking forward to seeing more, though now I'm craving a reread of The School for Good and Evil trilogy (the second trilogy doesn't exist to me, sorry not sorry!), which has the same deliciously discomfiting aesthetic, but with relationships I find a lot more compelling! (Let's just say a lot of crying happens in the series, and I love it for that!)

Partner in Crime: See, I keep leaving really sad songs on repeat and then wondering why I've been so moody and anxious. A few days ago it was Lana Del Rey's "Ultraviolence," and now I'm back to Lucy Dacus's "Partner in Crime," particularly the Spotify Sessions acoustic version. The guitar sounds so close by, rubbing nicely against my ears when I listen with earbuds, and the chorus gets me every time, which is perfectly consistent with past Lucy Dacus favorites (FOREVER HALF MAST FOREVER HALF MAST), where her fluid shifts in and out of her delicate higher range keep me in awe. Listen for how she sounds on "city that never sleeps" and cry, folks. CRY.

Wanna Know: So Irris made their debut back in July, apparently, but I didn't hear this song until it came on shuffle a week ago. I'm so glad it did, because I'm absolutely obsessed! It reminds me of Gugudan's "Shotgun" in terms of structure, with the main attraction of both being a bubblegum-pop prechorus that drops into a deadpan chorus, but I think "Wanna Know" really leaves its mark through the performances. I'm glad they put the rap in the bridge--it amplifies the energy so well, just like LE's bridge rap in "Up & Down"--and I find their vocals very satisfying and memorable! That rap is absolutely captivating, though--I'll be keeping a lookout for Liv in the future :)

things that make brain buzz

I'm not actively working on any big writing projects (outside of academic papers for school, that is!), but I have been reading and annotating an old favorite, the Lockwood and Co. series, which I'm really excited to do some writing about! I have so much to say about this bizarre, fantastic series and the impact it's had on me, to the point where I get pretty overwhelmed just thinking about it. I really struggle with long-term writing projects, ones where I want to cover a lot of content and a lot of ideas, so this is one avenue through which I'm hoping to practice formulating more expansive projects--a big step towards creating the kind of content I dream of!

I've also been collecting material for a more personal essay, one about my experiences with Alba Reche's music & winter. Her newest collection of music, honestamente triste, has reminded me of the many cold, isolating days her music has been my company throughout, and I've been feeling just sentimental enough to want to revisit them in writing.

Will I Do Anything Interesting Tomorrow?

There's a new Friendly Space Ninja video, so that's on my priority list for tomorrow! My focus issues with reading have unfortunately extended to YouTube listening, too, which is really sad because my little corner of YouTube brings me ridiculous amounts of joy and inspiration. I love referencing video essays in my writing for classes, and I've learned so much about the kind of writer I want to be from the YouTube creators I obsess over! I've still been saving videos in my to-watch list, though, so hopefully not too many will get lost in the shuffle during this phase!

Otherwise, I just need to take my flight home and find some good things to eat, because I've been missing out on meals / eating very lightly lately, and that's made things really tough for me :( I might go out for ramen, or make a quick Walmart run for sandwich wraps!

Quote of the Day!

OMG NO NOT HER COUSIN

-- me

[my-queer-collection]

Light Novel: I’m in Love with the Villainess

Ordinary office worker Oohashi Rei wakes up in the body of the protagonist of her favorite otome game, Revolution. To her delight, the first person to greet her is also her favorite character, Claire François–the main antagonist of the story! Now, Rei is determined to romance Claire instead of the game’s male leads. But how will her villainous lady love react to this new courtship?!

Title: I'm In Love With The Villainess

Writer: Inori

Artist: Hanagata

Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment

Format: Digital/Print

Steam Level: Not Steamy

Status: Ongoing

Book 1: https://www.rightstufanime.com/Im-in-Love-with-the-Villainess-Novel-Volume-1

Book 2: https://www.rightstufanime.com/Im-in-Love-with-the-Villainess-Novel-Volume-2

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

If there was a way to give a higher recommendation I absolutely would, I loved it that much. This series is ongoing (to at least volume 4 so far) though these two volumes make a complete story arc. I haven’t read an Isekai story before and now can understand why they’re so popular, it was a bunch of fun. According to Wikipedia, isekai is “a genre of light novels, manga, anime and video games that revolve around a person from Earth who is transported to and has to survive in another world, such as a fantasy world, virtual world or parallel universe.” Revolution, the game Rae is transported to, is set in a fictional Europe but reading between the lines (and with a name like Claire François as the love interest) its setting is a fictional France and the French Revolution. The characters are super fun and I greatly enjoyed watching them change and grow. Normally, stories with political intrigue bore me to tears so this world fascinating me and keeping me wanting to learn more was a big surprise. How the world is explained was well done, not at all feeling like a tedious info dump, just what you need to know a bit at a time stacked on what you have already learned. I really loved that Rae’s deep knowledge of this world is because she researched deeply into it to write fanfiction for Revolution. Who hasn’t done that? For the most part, first person narration annoys the heck out of me but this was a delight and the conversational, jokey tone didn’t go overboard. There is a mention of suicide in book two from Rae’s life on earth that is just heartbreaking though, thankfully, isn’t gone into detail. From what I’ve read, the original text does use honorifics like “-san” and “-sama” but those are changed in this translation to “Miss” and “Master” which absolutely makes sense in this setting of a fictional Europe.

After I finished reading, I wanted to immediately reread it to catch all the little hints of what is going on (and what will happen) that I completely missed. Inori tied everything together beautifully. One of my two biggest complaints is how little art is sprinkled in the books, there were so many amazing scenes I would have liked to have seen. The second thing is in book two, I could not get a grasp on how much time passed between the last chapter and the epilogue (though the special extra chapter helped with that.)

There was some controversy recently (March 2020) about a passage left out that explained and helped make Rae sympathetic. It is absolutely understandable why people are put off/uncomfortable with how Rae acts towards Claire, I took her over the top antics for what they were, Rae protecting herself and at the same time what an insecure Claire needed (no hiding and consistent feelings.)

Here is a very good post about it all: https://yurimother.com/post/646128158505041920/light-novel-im-in-love-with-the-villainess

It took me three days to read both books (I had to work one of those days or it would have been two), I could not put these down and I already preordered the next book. Do yourself a favor and get these books.

[queenmagnusao3]

Regrets - Chapter Seven

AO3 Link - I’m feeling a bit better about this fic so I’m posting an update on here. I’d say this one is almost halfway done now

“Chief! Chief I found something!”

Lin turned from the board of papers and photographs she had set up across one of the walls of her office to see Detective Chen come running into the room, nearly sliding across the floor as he came to a stop. It had been two days and Lin hadn’t slept at all as she flung herself into researching everything she could about the case. Chen held a small black book in his hand.

“What did you find?”

Chen was catching his breath as he handed it over to her.

“It’s a diary. From Jia, the woman who…”

Kidnapped my daughter.

Lin finished the sentence in her head as she flipped through the pages. It appeared to be a diary of sorts. There was an entry that had evidently been bookmarked, most likely by her detective.

“I worked at the hospital part time and was approached by a man to kidnap a baby after it was born. At first I said no but he offered me more money than I make at the hospital in five years. I knew how horrible it was but figured I could just treat it like a job and tried not to think about it too much after I said yes.

The day came and there were complications. I had the opportunity to say the infant didn’t survive. I thought this would make things easier for my boss. But then I couldn’t follow through. I couldn’t hand this perfect little girl over to him. I don’t even know what organization he was from.

I didn’t know who the baby belonged to before I agreed to the job. And I’m ashamed to admit that even after I found out I couldn’t bring myself to come forward. She was my daughter now.

The Avatar’s son moved on and had kids of his own and I saw how busy the Police Chief was with her job. She didn’t have time for a child anyway.”

Lin stopped reading, flinging the book across the room before she damaged the evidence. There was a pressure building inside her and thought her heart was going to beat out of her chest. This was undeniable proof that this missing girl was… that her daughter wasn’t…

She slammed a fist down on her desk, the whole thing buckling in on itself as the metal crunched and twisted. Chen didn’t say anything as he stood quietly, waiting for his Chief to gather herself. It took a couple minutes of slow, steady breathing before Lin found herself able to speak.

“Are there any leads on the girl’s location or who may have taken her?”

“No, Chief. I’m sorry. We haven’t found anything.”

Lin walked around her mangled desk and slumped into her chair.

“Thank you, detective. Let me know if you get any leads.”

“Yes, chief!”

He left and Lin carefully picked up her phone from the ground. It only took two rings for Kya to pick up which meant she must have been waiting near it.

“Lin?”

She felt a lump in throat, trying to steady her voice but it still cracked when she spoke.

“Kya, it’s her. It’s really her.”

Lin let out a gasp, quickly pulling her face from the phone and covering her mouth to stop the sob that threatened to open a dam of emotions she was struggling to contain. Kya didn’t speak for a moment and when she did her voice was soft and kind.

“We’ll find her, Lin. I promise. Will you please come home? Just for tonight?”

Never promise the victim’s family that you’ll bring their loved one home safe because that’s not a promise you can always keep. The bitter thought was automatic. The very basics of dealing with missing persons cases. Lin never imagined she’d be on this side of things and yet here she was.

“I’ll be home in a bit.”

“I love you, Lin.”

“Love you, too.”

They hung up and Lin walked to her case board, carefully unpinning a photo of the dark haired girl and studying every inch of her.

Rei.

Her daughter.

 ____________________

The next day Lin was back at the station before the sun had even come up. She had spent the morning in a terrible mood, yelling at anyone that crossed her path and unfairly belittling her own officers for not having more information for her.

She retreated to her office and started reading more passages from the diary they had recovered from the girl’s apartment. There were dozens of passages, mostly the random thoughts of the woman who wrote them. But there were also many excerpts about her daughter.

“Rei said her first word today. I was hoping it would be mama because she’s been so close but instead she’s been repeating the phrase “uh oh” over and over again. I’m not sure when she picked it up but it melts my heart every time I hear it.”

“She’s an earthbender!! I was sweeping the back steps today when I tripped and cursed at the stairs. Rei was sitting nearby and waddled over. She yelled at the stone stairs for hurting her mommy and then proceeded to make a dramatic and sloppy movement with her arms that caused the entire top stair to break away and go flying across the yard. I’m so proud! I’m going to have find someone to teach her pretty soon, though, otherwise she’s going to start doing some real damage.”

“We saw Chief Beifong today and I’ve never been so scared in my life. Rei and I were walking down the street when a bunch of police cars came flying up the street. The car they were chasing lost control and I quickly grabbed Rei and braced us for impact as it came right for us. I felt something wrap around us before we were yanked away. The Chief came up and asked if we were okay before running to the car that had nearly killed us, dragging a couple of bank thieves from within. I didn’t stick around. I just picked up Rei and ran home.”

Lin was frozen as she reread the passage again and again. She remembered that day. She remembered pulling the woman and child out of the path of that car. Once she knew they were safe she hadn’t even paid them another moment’s notice. The date indicated that Rei had been 4 years old at that time. Shouldn’t she have recognized her? Why didn’t she recognize her?

There was a soft knock on her door and Tenzin came in, robes billowing behind him.

“I saw her.”

“What?”

He had stopped dead in his tracks, looking to her in confusion. She got up from her desk and handed him the book opened to the passage she had just read. He scanned the page, slowly stepping back and sitting on the couch she kept in her office. Neither of them spoke as Tenzin sat quietly and Lin started pacing, lost again in thought and a renewed sense of guilt.

She could feel Tenzin looking at her, watching cautiously as she continued to pace back and forth. She always paced when she was upset. He used to joke that if she were a firebender there would scorch marks on all their floors from where she paced.

Lin stopped, leaning against the edge of her desk with her back to Tenzin. They were missing so much of the puzzle. Why had they wanted their daughter all those years ago and why did they decide to take her now?

“Lin… you need to read this one.”

She turned to him and saw that his face had paled. He got up and handed the book back to her.

“I’m so scared right now. It’s been all over that these powerful prisoners have escaped and are trying to hurt Avatar Korra. I didn’t get many details but one of them is called Zaheer. The man who hired me to kidnap Rei once talked about someone named Zaheer. They all still think Rei died the day she was born but I’m still worried. Rei is a teenager and just wants to hang out with friends but I’m so scared something is going to happen.”

Lin’s eyes snapped to Tenzin’s her mouth slightly open.

The Red Lotus.

Before either of them could speak there was a sharp knock on the door. Lin turned to see one of her rookie officers standing there, looking completely terrified as she held up a white envelope.

“S-sorry to interrupt, Chief. You just said to let you know if you got any mail.”

Lin beckoned the nervous officer in and took the letter from her. There were no markings on the envelope except for the words “Chief Lin Beifong” written in a swirling script. She didn’t even bother dismissing her officer before ripping it open.

She scanned over the words a few times before crumpling the paper in her hands, letting out a frustrated growl. She thrust the paper at Tenzin before he could open his mouth. He read the note, backing up slowly, rubbing a hand over his head.

“Bring us the Avatar if you ever want the chance to meet your daughter”

Lin was angry now as she resumed her pacing. Apparently there were still remnants of the Red Lotus that were still loyal to Zaheer and his ideologies. Somehow they now knew that she knew the truth about who Rei was. And they were going to use her daughter to try and get to Korra.

“Do you know where Korra is right now, Tenzin?”

“She went with Asami on a business trip to the Fire Nation.”

It took a few minutes for Lin and Tenzin to figure out where the couple were staying and Lin immediately picked up her phone as soon she tracked down the correct contact number.

“I’ve got food!”

Kya entered the office holding up a couple bags of food. She had been making it her personal mission to do whatever she could to take care of Lin and not add to the increasing amount of stress weighing down the woman she loved. Tenzin shushed her loudly, gesturing to Lin and the fact that she was using the phone.

Kya set the food down perched herself on the arm of the couch.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Korra, but I need you to come back to Republic City. I know… I know. I’m sorry. Korra just… please…”

Kya reached out for her brother’s hand and squeezed it tightly as her heart broke a little at the desperation in Lin’s voice. Korra must have heard it too.

“Thank you, Korra. Please be safe. Come right to the city. I promise I’ll explain everything.”

Lin hung up the phone and collapsed back into her chair again. She didn’t look to them, staring blankly as her thoughts raced.

“Korra and Asami are their way back. They’re going to meet us on Air Temple Island.”

[thelivebookproject]

December Wrap Up + 2020 Annual Review

BOOKS READ (12)

The Roommate - Rosie Danan --> 3.5/5

Olvidado rey Gudú - Ana María Matute --> 2.5/5 *

Sorcery of Thorns - Margaret Rogerson –> 4.5/5 [Review]

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily #1) - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan –> 2.5/5 [Review]

Beach Read - Emily Henry –> 4.5/5 [Review]

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials #1) - Philip Pullman --> 3.5/5

How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories (The Folk of the Air #3.5) - Holly Black --> 3.5/5

Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite - Ed. Zoraida Córdova & Natalie C. Parker --> 3/5

The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet - Bernie Su & Kate Rorick --> 4/5 [REREAD]

The Lost Estate - Alain-Fournier --> 2/5

Well Played (Well Met #2) - Jen DeLuca --> 3.5/5

The Court of Miracles (A Court of Miracles #1) - Kester Grant --> 4.5/5

*Only available in Spanish

CHALLENGES

December Readathon

TO SUM UP DECEMBER

What a great month!!!!! I managed to read 12 books and enjoyed the majority of them, so I couldn’t ask for a better way to end the year. I am especially happy because my last book of the year, which I won in a giveaway, was a masterpiece, so it was a great note to end on. I really hope this reading luck keeps in 2021!

Under the cut you can find my (very thorough) 2020 annual review, don’t miss it!

2020 it might have been a terrible year in all aspects, but in reading terms I can't complain. I've read 113 books!!!!

Photo proof of me absolutely demolishing my yearly goal of 85. You can check out everything I've read here!

If you're curious and want a bit more depth, you can check out my monthly wrap ups, of which I'm very proud (you can see my reads, my ratings, links to reviews, any challenges I did that month, etc):

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December's in this same post

I also wrote a top 10 list about the best books I read in 2020... Including an addendum that I read too late to include. Whoops.

I completed, in some cases surpassed, all my yearly goals, including my 20 in 20 goals. Everything is crossed off and I couldn't be prouder of myself! The only thing I didn't do is actually write any reviews in French (I did review some books in Spanish) because I was too much of a coward. Maybe 2021 will be the year this blog becomes officially trilingual...

One of the highlights of the year were, of course, the reading challenges and events I participated in! Here are some (but I'm pretty sure there are others I've forgotten about):

Fairytale February

Comfort Zone Bingo

Summer Reading Bingo Challenge

Reading Ibero-America Challenge

Bookoween

December Readathon

And now onto my reading stats. I saw @lizziethereader doing them last year and immediately became jealous, so here are my own!

First, the authors. I read 96 authors, excluding the individual authors of the short stories anthologies I read because it was too complicated to bother with each one.

Gender diversity:

(Next goal: reading more non-binary authors!)

Racial diversity:

(I clearly need to do better...)

Country/area diversity:

(I definitely need to do better on this area!)

And now onto the books themselves!! All of these graphics (and info) belong to The StoryGraph, and they really satisfy my inner nerd.

Finally, there are a couple of other things I'm really happy about that I can't not mention.

In September, I became a moderator of Forgotten YA Gems after about two years of being a member in the group, and it's been great so far. Carrie (@brightbeautifulthings) and I have been planning lots of things for 2021, and I really hope people participate. Come join us!

And, obviously, my interview project Talking Books With has been an absolute wonder. I still can't believe everyone's enthusiasm and encouragement, and I'm really, really happy I started it. 2021 will bring us lots of new interviews, so catch up on everything here! Thank you so much.

All in all, 2020 hasn't been that bad. I'm really happy with everything I read, thankful for people here on booklr, and I can't wait to see what the new year brings.

Read you in 2021!

[toysoldiers-rwby]

[SYT] 2.5 Three’s... a party? pt.1

Show Your Teeth

Characters: Robyn, Joanna Rating: Teen Tags: Fluff, Poly Negotiations

Summary: Joanna and Robyn talks about their new friends. Takes place while May and Fiona are flirting- I mean sparing at the beginning of Chapter 2.

A/N: @rei-of-sunsh1ne suggested i write Joanna struggling with her poly feelings for the Happy Huntresses and Winter.

Joanna leaned over the stove, taking a deep break of the warm curry. It was a Vacuo recipe, simple, easy, and perfect for those on a small budget and scavanging to get by. With some spices it almost Minstralian. It would take a little more time so Joanna settled back on the couch, got up to look for her reading glasses and settled back in again.

She reread today’s journal entry so far. A few hours at a Vale restaurant, played bouncer for a Faunus club for two hours, then exercised with Tank and walked him until… Until she ran into Ms. Fiona Thyme.

Joanna tapped her chin with her pen and looked at the door. It’s not that she didn’t trust Robyn to go through her journal. It’s just… weird. Writing about something personal for a change. The women flipped back a few pages.

Since they decided to leave the Police Force the journal started to become more of a worklog. Where she worked, who payed better, a small review of the job and people there. The most rewarding and fun jobs were lower payed. They had the most heart and passion and the life Atlas tries so hard to stamp out. The same heart she saw in Ms. Thyme and oddly she saw passion in those elites. For all the pictures and videos, the Marigold and Schnee was… very… human. A caring protectiveness for a Faunus.

Joanna underlined the word elite several times and was about to write something else when the door opened. Joanna glanced at her undisturbed Scroll on the coffee table. Robyn always texted her when she brought someone home, asking if she would join or not. Joanna smiled at her partner, “Welcome back-” In just two strides Robyn straddling her waist on the couch. The women was shivering, pupils blown wide, body so flushed she was sweating just a little. Joanna tried to remove her glasses but Robyn quickly grabbed her hand and instead pulled it to rest on her check.

Joanna smirked and rubbed her partner’s cheek with her thumb. She felt a pang of guilt for a split second. Before Joanna could even recognize the feeling, Robyn placed a soft kiss over her wrist. That look… heated, full of desire and content and need for her. Joanna’s heart beat slowly picked up. Robyn nipped her pulse point and kissed harder, feeling the soft beat pick up.

“Please don’t think or feel that,” Robyn mumbled, slowly laying down on her partner. Joanna let out a deep hum in agreement. For some reason women seemed to like it. As predicted Robyn shivered against her, hands clawing at her shirt and breath stuttering. “Sex is nice but I don’t want strangers right now.”

“Just a cute little girl and her over protective friends?” Joanna teased. Robyn blushed hard, nuzzling Joanna’s neck and biting and kissing and squirming restlessly. Joanna had to fix her glasses multiple times and could only laugh at all the attention. She held Robyn close and breathed in deep. The smell of lavender, spring fields, and just the women she known for years warming her chest.

One hand wandered up to her head and pulled the frustrated women into a kiss. Joanna sighed into it, melting too slowly for Robyn’s liking. She bite and nibbled on Joanna’s bottom lip, trying to get her to play and dance but Joanna only moved at her own pace.

And it was a slow passionate one.

Slowly she tamed Robyn’s frustrations. Soothing her heated kisses, pulling back when Robyn started clawing at her shirt and rewarded her weak sighs by pulling her closer and hugging her tighter. Eventually Robyn tried retreat back to regain her composure. But if the women was being a needy brat, Joanna wasn’t going to be so forgiving. She followed, taking the lead.

She bite Robyn’s lip hard enough to make her Aura flare and for her to gasp. Joanna slipped her tongue inside, demanding and taking more till Robyn was shaking again and moaning weakly. With a soft laugh Joanna finally pulled back and let Robyn brace herself on her chest, softly panting and unfocused.

“Ugh, your the worst!” Robyn mumbled, collapsing onto Joanna’s chest. The giant threw her head back and laughed.

“Oh, that was nothing, lil’ bird,” Joanna murmured hot into Robyn’s ear. “You should have seen Ms. Thyme storm out of the Academy. She could probably throw you against the wall and-”

“Shut up, shut up,” Robyn growled silencing her partner with a hard kiss. Joanna chuckled, accepting it and trying to steal a little more but Robyn nuzzled her neck. “You have no idea how bad I want her.”

“Babe,” Joanna snorted, “You came home alone, shaking and pounced on me,” Joanna said with a quirk brow. Robyn muffled a loud groan in her neck. “I think I have a pretty good idea. Plus you love surprises.”

“She looks so cute and sad but she’s so tiny and feisty!” Robyn mumbled, half swooning and half frustrated and…

And listing everything Joanna wasn’t.

“I just wanna pick her up and kiss her!”

“She is… really cute…” Joanna mumbled. Robyn slowly looked up at her, a measured and worried look. Joanna sighed and looked away, “I’m just being silly. You just, you usually don’t go for cute…”

“Because cute girls are usually dainty and boring and… um… ah.” A slow blush started to crawl over Robyn’s cheeks again. “And they’re usually scared of you and it’s bullshit, alright!? You deserve a lot more love.” She said the last part so quickly and softly, Joanna almost didn’t catch it.

For a long moment the pair stared at each other surprised. A slow blush spreading across Joanna’s face as Robyn squirmed nervously on top of her. It was cute, almost like her first confession all over again. Robyn has… a bit of a problem with commitment and serious feelings.

She runs from it like she was doing now, “I um- I think the food is burning.”

“You’re not getting off so easily, lil bird,” Joanna said. Robyn almost squeaked when Joanna grabbed her ass and easily stood up, carrying her brat to the kitchen. “Well. Ms. Hill? Is there something you’d like to share?” Joanna asked slowly, dripping her voice low despite the soft blush on her face. Robyn squirmed a little more, legs tightening around Joanna’s waist. Joanna grinned, seeing her ears tint red again.

The insecurities was still there but it was more of an annoyance in her chest than a stab. Joanna was the only women who challenged Robyn without trying to drown her. Joanna closed her eyes and rested her forehead against her partner’s. Robyn loved her for being that rock in the ocean. Unmoving, unyielding, enduring and patient. Even after almost three years of dating. She wasn’t cute and small like Ms. Thyme and that wasn’t a bad thing.

Eventually Robyn found her words, “I think you two… would y’know. Look good together…”

“As in dating together, not just helping you fuck her?” Joanna asked. The Robyn grumbled, trying to hid her face again but Joanna set her on the counter. With her hands free she gently cupped Robyn’s face so she couldn’t worm her way out it. “Babe…”

“Yes! I want both of us to date her…”

Joanna smiled and kissed her partner lightly as a reward. “I promise I’ll be open but… if we don’t click I’m not going to force it.” Robyn mumbled something against her lips in agreement before kissing back.

[brokengem]

Tag game

rules: 21 questions and tag 21 mutuals you want to get to know better. 

@sass-sage​ tagged me. And I’m a dork and love this silly little things so I always try to do them when I’m tagged anyway lol.

1. nicknames: Depends really, but mostly Kristi when I’ve introduced myself. Sometimes Gem (on here) or Gaelle (the name I usually go by when playing games and on Discord.)

2. zodiac sign: Virgo

3. height: Uhh...I think I’m about 5′6? Maybe? 

4. hogwarts house: If I really think about it I’m probably a Hufflepuff. If I got to choose I’d say Slytherin lol.

5. the last thing i googled: This Time Around ao3 dc extended universe (because I’ve been reading this fic on my iPad and my friend was interested in it when I told him about it but I didn’t have the link on my phone hence google search lol)

6. favorite musicians: Panic at the Disco, The Neighbourhood, Queen, COheed and Cambria, Voiceplay, Kalafina

7. song stuck in your head: Gloria by Kalafina (in particular an english cover done by Lollia)

8. following: 1,225(geez i may need to clean this up XD)

9. followers: 444

10. do you get asks: Every one in a while I do and it always makes me happy when I do. Even if it’s something silly. Or questions or a request! MY ask box is always open! Recently been getting a little Fruit Baskets anon and I love them <3 

Speaking of, little Furaba anon (if you are following me and are the same person for both XD) I have seen your asks! It’s been a minute since I’ve read the manga or seen the og anime. But I’ve started to reread the manga. So I’m not ignoring your ask about headcanons, it’s just me thinking over what I would personally headcanon for your question! And I am also 4 episodes behind on the Reboot so once I’m caught up I’ll answer your other one :D! Just want to let you know I’m not ignoring them! (you can let me know you saw this if you want)

11. amount of sleep: Probably around 6 hours. Give or take. 

12. lucky number: 9

13. what you’re wearing: a green nestle waters t-shirt I stole from my brother and my game theory lounge pants.

14. dream job: A Writer

15. dream trip: So many places. Japan, Rome, France are probably my top 3 dream spots.

16. instrument: I don’t play anything, but I had always wanted to learn piano or the flute or violin

17. languages: English and Spanish

18. favorite songs: Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey, I Want to be Free by Queen, Lying is the Most Fun a Girl can have without Taking Her Clothes Off by Panic at the Disco, Hey Look Ma, I Made It! by Panic at the Disco, 

19. random fact: When I get into a fandom, I obsess pretty hard. Once I get into something I’ll stick with it forever, even if it may go downhill or if I don’t actively do anything for said fandom. I will always have one character I love over all the others and probably multi-ship them like crazy, but I will always have that one ship for them that I love above anything else.

20. aesthetic: I’ve never really thought of this before...Probably the color teal, comics, final fantasy games, headphones and an anime lol. *shrugs*

21. taglist: uhh... @catching-vibes-and-stars​, @theinfamousanastasia, @argentum-ls, @cateyesinlove, @detroitbydark and I don’t know anyone else who may want to. You don’t have to obviously lol.

[bae-b-8-imagines]

Soulmate AU - Poe x Reader (Part 5)

Author’s Note: HERE IT IS! I hope you all enjoy this part. I threw a bunch of stuff in there because...why not? I am excited to see what @rebel-scum-stuff will take away from this. Requests are open, and always remember...Stay Gold! 

Warnings: Angst

Word Count: 1,900+

You sat on a bench outside of the gas station. You had no idea where you were, or how to get back to your friends. Nobody was at the gas station, and from what you could tell, nobody would be here for a while. This place was deserted, the only other people who would come here would be the workers at the desk inside. There was no phone on the wall to call anyone, and your cellphone had no service and was on 5%. This was not how you wanted to be lost.

As you munched on your Cheetos, hoping that your friends would be able to come and find you, you heard the rumbling of a vehicle in the distance. Looking up from where you were, you were saddened to see that it wasn’t Finn and Rey, but maybe these people would be willing to help you. The creepy guy who worked in the gas station didn’t seem like an option.

The classic black car pulled up to the pump. A tall man got out and went inside, he smiled at you on his way in. Another man worked on filling the tank up. You decided you didn’t wanna go inside the gas station again, so you walked towards the man filling the tank.

“Excuse me, Sir?” You asked.

He turned around to see who was talking to him. He let go of the pump and turned all the way to face you straight on.

“Yes, Ma’am?” He replied. His voice was much deeper than expected, and you were a bit intimidated by him.

“My friends and I are making our way to Montana, and our car broke down. I was wondering if you had seen them? They’d still be on the side of the road...I think we were about three miles outside of Sioux Falls…” You trailed off.

He looked over to the door, where the other man was walking out, “Hey Sammy, you didn’t happen to see a car, or any people on the side of the road when we drove in did you? She says she’s with them, but forgot the way back.”

The taller man glanced at you before responding to his friend, “Yeah actually, I did. An older beat up car?”

You nodded your head, “Yeah, that’s the one, do you think you could give me a ride to them? Or at least tell me where I need to go to get there?”

“Of course.” He said with a small smile, before opening the door of his car to you.

The small talk you made on the short drive back to your friends was nice enough. When you finally arrived back to Finn’s car you waved goodbye to the two men. By now the sun was ready to set, and you were ready to get back on the road.

“So, who wants to drive?” You asked clapping your hands together.

“Nose goes!” Finn yelled before putting his finger on his nose.

You were quick to follow, unfortunately Rey was the last one to catch on. Finn smirked and threw her the keys as she walked toward the driver’s seat. You and Finn both hopped into the car and headed on the road. It was still  going to be another ten hours before you arrived at the site of the crash. You just wished that you could be there with your soulmate to comfort them.

Eventually you made your way into the State of Montana. You, Rey, and Finn were all extremely exhausted. A new set of words had appeared on your wrist at some point during the trip, you were glad to see that this was something more relaxing than surgery, or plane crash! Today it said that your soulmate would get an interview. Maybe this was a good thing! This would mean that hopefully you would be one step closer to figuring out who this mystery person was.

You were the one driving now. Finn and Rey were both asleep in the back. The radio wasn’t picking anything up, so everything was silent. It was dark outside, and your eyes were dropping so much. You only had a little bit of time left. You needed to get there, no matter what, you were going to make it to the airport.

---

Poe woke up in the middle of the night. He had slept so much after his surgery, he was glad that everything was better, but his soulmate was not helping his situation. Goodness this person was going to be the cause of high blood pressure or something with the amount of stress they were causing him. He tried to push everything into the back of his mind. Everything was going to be alright obviously. It didn’t say that they were going to DIE or something. Poe had to hold on to the positive things.

Since it was so early in the morning he didn’t want to turn the TV on and disturb anyone who might be outside. Poe decided he would catch up on some reading on social media. At first it was the normal celebrity and pop culture articles, and then he began to see more and more articles about his flight. Some of the news sources were hailing him a hero, others thought the opposite. They pointed out ‘reasons’ as to why he was the one at fault for the crash. Those people who wrote those articles weren’t even on the flight, he didn’t understand how people could make such accusations.

Along with the news articles about him and his apparently shitty piloting, Poe had received so many notifications on basically every platform he could think of. People direct messaging him asking questions, wanting to interview him. People commenting on his public posts about how they were happy he, and everyone else, were safe. And then there were comments right next to those telling him that he should’ve died on the plane, because at least then this wouldn’t happen again.

It was all too much and he locked his phone and ran a hand over his face. This accident was going to turn into a whole lot more than that. He would need to speak out about it, probably have to call a lawyer. And as soon as he could get walking again Poe wanted to talk personally to each and every one of the passengers and staff that was on the flight.

Eventually a nurse came into the room to check his vitals once more, seeing that he was awake. She smiled at him, and told him that the doctor, who had worked on him in the ER, wanted to speak with him.

“Absolutely, I would like to thank him, or her, at some point. Do you know when they’re free?” Poe asked, hoping soon, he really needed something to get his mind off of the media, his soulmate, everything.

“Actually, Mr.Dameron, Dr.Camden is free right now if you would like to talk to her?” The nurse responded.

“Oh, perfect!” Poe said sitting up a little straighter.

“I’ll go get her for you.” The nurse said before leaving the room.

Poe and the doctor spoke for a while, about his ‘bravery’, the flight, the crash, the injuries, the people. They were in the middle of talking about one of the younger children who had been slightly injured during the flight when Dr.Camden got called to the ER. At first Poe wasn’t sure what was happening so he asked.

“Is everything okay?”

“I’m not sure. There’s been a car accident...four people...two women, two men. Two are stable but the other seems to be in critical...one pronounced dead on the scene...I shouldn’t be telling you this. I have to go. Hopefully we can talk later Mr.Dameron.” Camden said before rushing off towards the ER.

Poe looked down at his wrist, hoping that you were okay. That you would get the help you needed. He couldn’t be sure if out of these people who were in the car accident one of them would be you, but either way he was hoping for the best in either situation.

He reread the words once more: Admitted to the ER.

---

The road was slick. You were exhausted and could barely keep your eyes opened, but kept pushing on. You drifted off once, but when you felt the car swerve you were completely awake, on edge. In this weather you didn’t want to be in an accident. You had woken Rey and Finn up to keep you company on the road.

The lights gradually began to hurt your eyes more and more. The ones in the rearview mirror made your head ache, but you didn’t dwell on it. Each sign that you read meant you were one mile closer to your soulmate. Finally.

The car that was driving in front of you made you worry. They had swerved a few times, and their speed varied from extremely fast, to extremely slow. You wanted to pass them, but didn’t know when the best time would be. Right before you made your decision to pass the car they slammed on their breaks, your mind wasn’t working quick enough to stop, you were so close to them that even if you had reacted quickly there still would have been an impact.

The cars collided and spun out on the side of the road, other vehicles nearby came to a stop. If you weren’t exhausted before then you were now. There seemed to be a warm liquid running over your forehead, every sound was muffled. You thought you heard your name being called, but couldn’t tell. You could see flashing lights in the distance. Good. That meant that you could get medical help. Medical help meant living. You weren’t going to die. Were you? Eventually you gave up thinking all together and closed your eyes.

There were multiple moments of consciousness on the way to the ER. You remember a light being flashed into your eyes, and a drip being placed in your arm. You also remember the intense pain you felt when one of the first responders gently placed their hand on your lower abdomen. Something was terribly bruised, or broken. You couldn’t tell at this moment. Somewhere along the lines you heard that Finn was okay. That caused some peace to your mind. The word ‘dead’ was thrown around a few times, this caused you to worry more. Rey’s name hadn’t been mentioned the entire time. Was she okay? What would Finn think, would he say that you were the cause of the crash? Maybe if you had given up on your soulmate you wouldn't be here.

You were brought back outside again, probably to be taken from the ambulance into the ER. Raindrops hit your face along the way. It felt nice. A woman’s face appeared above your head.

“Hello -”

“Y/N, Y/N L/N” You groaned.

“Y/N, I am Dr.Camden, we are going to make sure that everything turns out alright, don’t you worry. The first responders told me your information, and we are taking you up to the OR to get rid of some of this internal bleeding okay?” She asked as she placed a mask over your face.

You didn’t have any time to respond or ask questions as they rolled you into the OR and got to work. You were in a dream world, one where you and your soulmate were finally together. You only hoped that this wasn’t a huge setback in finding them.

Tags: @heyohheyitsgabi @mrsdaamneron @o-brienwrites @summerlogy

Soulmate Tags: @o-brienwrites @introvertedmouse @tfwqueenidjit @izhetbean @pdamn-eron @ayatimascd

[gffa]

One of the reasons I haven’t read as much fic lately as I would like is because some of the STAR WARS novels have been absolutely killing it with how enjoyable and satisfying they are! While my fic recs are always and forever recs(rather than reviews), I wanted to do some book reviews. They can function much like recs, though, and I would love to encourage more people to read them along with me, they have some incredible moments, whether adorable or heartbreaking or hilarious or just plain awesome. If you need a fix of something to read or just want a place to start, maybe this can help start you on the path! STAR WARS NOVELS: ✦ Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston, ahsoka & ocs, 400 pages ✦ Wild Space by Karen Miller, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & bail & cast, 354 pages ✦ Thrawn by Timothy Zahn, thrawn & governor pryce & ocs & yularen & cast, 448 pages ✦ Leia, Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray, leia & bail/breha & cast, 416 pages ✦ Phasma by Delilah S. Dawson, phasma & brendol hux & cast, 400 pages ✦ Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel by James Luceno, galen/lyra & jyn & krennic & tarkin, 352 pages ✦ Bloodline by Claudia Grey, leia & ocs, 352 pages ✦ Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure by Cecil Castellucci and Jason Fry, leia & ocs, 240 pages ✦ The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure by Jason Fry, luke & ocs, 192 pages ✦ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by Alexander Freed, jyn & cassian & bodhi & baze & chirrut & k2so & galen & krennic & cast, 336 pages ✦ Lone Wolf by Abel G. Peña, obi-wan & luke, 76 pages ✦ The Hive by Steven Barnes, obi-wan & ocs, [short story] ✦ Guardian of the Whills by Greg Rucka, chirrut & baze & ocs, 240 pages ✦ Secrets of the Jedi by Jude Watson, obi-wan/siri & anakin/padme & qui-gon & adi gallia & cast, 208 pages ✦ The Force Awakens: Rey’s Story by Elizabeth Schaefer, rey & cast, 128 pages full recs under the cut!

STAR WARS NOVELS: ✦ Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston, ahsoka & ocs, 400 pages    Following her experiences with the Jedi and the devastation of Order 66, Ahsoka is unsure she can be part of a larger whole ever again. But her desire to fight the evils of the Empire and protect those who need it will lead her right to Bail Organa, and the Rebel Alliance.    About the only criticism of this book that I’ve ever seen that held any water with me is: NEEDS TO BE A DOZEN BOOKS LONG. It can’t possibly cover everything of Ahsoka’s story, not even just the time focused on her finding her way again back to a purpose in the galaxy at large, to how she finds her desire to fight again after she left the Jedi, but I thought it did a really good job of covering as much ground as it could about that time in her life. My other caveat is that I don’t think the “bleeding” crystals was done as well as it could have been, it took me a long time to come around on that through other material, but rereads don’t bother me as much. That’s it, that’s all I can think to nitpick about this book, because it’s absolutely in my top ten favorites and does such justice to this character I love so much. The mentions of Obi-Wan and Anakin were spot on, both hilarious and so true that it made my fannish heart ache–there’s a reason I’ve quoted this book a few dozen times! It nailed those two and the way Ahsoka saw them! But it’s also a book that has to do a lot of worldbuilding without losing sight of the story it’s telling, the character journey Ahsoka goes on, and how she finds her way again.    And, oh, I enjoyed that part of the story so much. I enjoyed that she connected with people, that she maybe had feelings for a girl (who definitely had feelings for her), I enjoyed that she didn’t immediately know what she wanted to do or where to go, but when the Empire came, she couldn’t walk away, she couldn’t do nothing, because this was where she was supposed to be. Ahsoka may not be a Jedi anymore, but in some ways she’s a Jedi more than ever, she’s in touch with the Force and her path more than ever. The grief she’s slammed with when she feels the lights go out in the galaxy as the Jedi are murdered, the sadness at how lost and alone she is are beautifully done. All of it was a solid, engaging, feelings-laden read, with moments of absolute greatness that really shone. It’s a book that I think I could reread someday (I’m not a big rereader of things) and absolutely on my list of recommended Star Wars books in general, and a must-read for fans of Ahsoka’s character. ✦ Wild Space by Karen Miller, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & bail & cast, 354 pages    When Senator Bail Organa reveals explosive intelligence that could turn the tide of war in the Republic’s favor, the Jedi Master agrees to accompany him to an obscure planet on the Outer Rim to verify the facts.    I had a hard time figuring out what to ultimately say about this book, because I loved it a lot… but not precisely in the way I expected to. I think the best way to put it is: It’s not a very strong story, but it’s an incredible collection of character moments. If you’re looking for something to quote or just to spend some time with the characters, then this book is going to be a lot of fun!   It took me awhile to put my finger on my biggest problems with the book, but I think my #1 frustration was: The first half of the book was absolutely amazing, it was catching us up to speed on the moments around the Clone War starting on Geonosis, it dealt with the aftermath of Anakin losing his arm, of the rift that had grown between him and Obi-Wan, how they work on trying to bridge it back, how Anakin deals with the first days of Ahsoka being his Padawan and her observations on the Obi-Wan/Anakin relationship, and Obi-Wan discovering yet another plot that needs taking care of. There’s some great h/c where Anakin just about loses his mind when Obi-Wan is injured, there’s some great banter, there’s some really fascinating parallels between Obikin and Anidala (and several Obianidala hints, if you want to see them that way), and so much more nuance about the PT Jedi’s role in the war than I’m used to seeing!    All of that was great. It takes up about the first half of the book, then the war separates Obi-Wan and Anakin, they go off in different directions, and the plot shifts to focus on Obi-Wan and Bail Organa working together to uncover a Sith plot. And that’s where things just sort of fizzle for me–because it starts promisingly! So much debate between Obi-Wan and Bail! So much nuance and so many quotes I’m going to pull from it! Awesome! And their storyline builds up really nicely, culminating in them crashing on a Sith planet and having this arduous trek to get help. Still awesome! Obi-Wan is a goddamned tank in this part of the book, he’s under constant physical and mental assault and he still keeps going, the amount of damage he can take and still keep fighting was awe-inspiring! I am all for this!    But then it just kind of… ended. The entire second half of the book (which felt like a separate book from the first half) was a three day walk across some deserted planet. It was a long, grueling slog of a walk and the writing does justice to that, but… that’s it. They get to the Sith shrine and it’s over in a handful of pages. There’s plenty of cool character moments on this walk, but I never felt like Obi-Wan and Bail actually earned their new friendship, they hardly talked about anything other than “We have to rest.” “No, we have to keep going.” And there was hardly any actual action, the plot was just sort of thinly there to provide long sections of whump writing. Which made me feel that… as a story, it wasn’t put together that well, it was the strength of the author’s take on Obi-Wan’s character and the relationships he has that really made the book an interesting read for me.    That said, it’s absolutely and totally worth it for every moment between Obi-Wan and Anakin, while it started out with me making some unsure faces (because I don’t buy for once second that Obi-Wan would have been fooled about Anakin and Padme ending their relationship), by the end I was entirely onboard with these moments, the depth the author added to their relationship, the moments of insight that felt spot on, the subtle undercurrents or the things that smacked me in the face (like the realization that Obi-Wan didn’t know the content of Anakin’s dreams, that they were dangerous, rather than regular dreams) or just gave me a lot of feelings about how co-dependent they could be with each other. It’s a great book for getting a better understanding of Obi-Wan’s point of view while still keeping him distant from those around him, it does a great job with showing the weight of his thoughts and feelings while keeping his iron will intact. And it really is entirely, entirely worth the read for the Old Married Couple banter between Obi-Wan and Anakin! ✦ Thrawn by Timothy Zahn, thrawn & governor pryce & ocs & yularen & cast, 448 pages    “I study the art of war. Work to perfect it.” —Grand Admiral Thrawn    Reintroducing a character like Thrawn to the current canon of Star Wars can be tricky, especially after the character was already introduced via season three of Rebels, now Zahn had to write backstory for him. But this book was everything I could have asked for from it–it was an engaging story all on its own, but also that it balanced having little nods and winks to old EU canon with keeping firmly in the now, that this is still a character who needs establishing in this version of continuity. This book also does a really good job of showing Thrawn’s point of view, which isn’t easy with a character like this, one who is always supposed to be at least three steps ahead of everyone else, but I enjoyed every moment of it and I found the character to be incredibly engaging and charismatic, in that sense of how I always wanted to be reading more about him. I read through this book fairly quickly and while it was perfectly paced for what it was, I also found myself thinking that I would very easily read another five in a series of books about this character from this author and that I hope there really is a sequel in the works!    A good chunk of the book is also dedicated to Governor Arihnda Pryce, we get to see her go from being reasonably morally decent to where she is in Rebels and she’s fascinating for it! While I still was more interested in Thrawn, by the end of the book, I saw what she brought to the table of this story and how everything was solidly woven together and so I don’t begrudge her being there at all! (Plus, it’s hard to begrudge a female character getting in on the titular character’s action, when I’ve seen so many male characters do the same to female central characters.) The use of the OCs was also nicely done and I came to care about Eli Vanto by the end, I enjoyed his character and seeing Thrawn through his eyes as well! But, yes, ultimately this was Thrawn’s backstory and the tale of his rise through the ranks to Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy and it very much hit all the notes I wanted it to hit.    By the end of the story, it had caught my imagination (I spent a few minutes wondering what it would have been like had Thrawn been on the other side), I found that I liked the explanation for his character, why he joined and worked so hard for the Empire, the way he dealt with people, that he could have such honor and morals, while still doing terrible things, while still absolutely being a villain. For all that he’s very thoughtful and engaging, for all that Thrawn values lives, I don’t think the book ever forgot that he was ruthless and would not hesitate when it came to what needed to be done, that combination endeared the character to me and now I would genuinely like an entire series about him or for him to have the same prominence post-ROTJ that he did before, even if I know that may be impossible with Disney’s new canon. This book won’t quite unseat Ahsoka as my favorite of the new canon, but it sure as heck is on my top five list now. ✦ Leia, Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray, leia & bail/breha & cast, 416 pages    Sixteen-year-old Princess Leia Organa faces the most challenging task of her life so far: proving herself in the areas of body, mind, and heart to be formally named heir to the throne of Alderaan.    I really, really loved this book a lot, I thought it achieved everything it set out to do, and was just a really good look at a young Leia, where she came from, and how some of the pieces of her life started sliding into place. I love it because there are a lot of little moments that work well for me, the ways Leia unknowingly touches the Force were some of the best, that they made sense in the moments they were used and weren’t too heavy-handed to make you wonder why she herself didn’t notice–that’s not an easy balance to strike! But it’s also that this makes so much sense as a young Leia story, where she’s struggling with wanting to do more for the galaxy around her, but not having the maturity to understand some of the more long-term plans that are out of her reach, to understand why her parents haven’t told her about them. And this story is about her struggle to grow up into someone they can trust with that, her struggle to become that person as much as it about the struggle of trying to decide how much to risk Alderaan in this Rebellion, to risk the one safe place the galaxy has. And that dilemma felt much more organic and meaningful than the dilemma she faced in Bloodline, I felt.    I enjoyed the new characters, for all that they were fairly predictable that didn’t take away from that I liked reading about them and that their story had meaning to help support Leia’s–and I’m looking very much forward to seeing some of them show up in The Last Jedi! The familiar characters (like Tarkin and Mon Mothma) were well-used, they’re important figures that we know Leia knew, but they weren’t overdone–a lot of the references to things we know about canon or the use of various bits of trivia (like when we briefly see Eriadu from Rogue One) were all well done! I enjoyed that this is a character who is very much her bio-father’s daughter, but is also even more Bail Organa and Breha Organa’s daughter, that the pieces we see of Alderaan, the bits of worldbuilding that we get are really lovely. And, oh, Bail and Breha are used very well here, they may not be main characters, but they certainly feel human and weighty in the narrative. Basically, this book is all I could have asked for from it and I would enjoy seeing Claudia Gray write more of her! ✦ Phasma by Delilah S. Dawson, phasma & brendol hux & cast, 400 pages    One of the most cunning and merciless officers of the First Order, Captain Phasma commands the favor of her superiors, the respect of her peers, and the terror of her enemies. But for all her renown, Phasma remains as virtually unknown as the impassive expression on her gleaming chrome helmet. Now, an adversary is bent on unearthing her mysterious origins—and exposing a secret she guards as zealously and ruthlessly as she serves her masters.    This book is not at all what I expected it to be. When I picked it up, I thought it would be a book that would try to get into Phasma’s head–an odd proposition for a character we know very little about at the moment. But instead it’s a book that looks at her story from several outsiders’ views of her, it’s a story about her, not from her. And that’s also something I wouldn’t have thought I would enjoy, but yet I did. It balances how weird Star Wars can be with an unwinding story about showing who Phasma is at her core, that she’s mysterious and difficult to parse, but the more you see of her, the more you start to slowly catch glimpses of her. And by the end I felt like, yes, this is a Phasma I could see and understand and she made sense to me.    The book does have a lot of trivia pulled into it, but it’s all stuff I enjoyed and nothing I thought would stop a person from understanding it through context! And I really came to enjoy the new characters, I adore Vi Moradi like you wouldn’t believe, I thought the First Order was shown as reasonably understandable how they don’t recognize what they’re in the middle of, yet it’s unquestionably a horrible, poisonous organization. I wound up enjoying the structure of the story about Phasma rather than from her, I found the adventures the characters all got into to be engaging, I found the world ultimately made sense to me (despite my early misgivings about how I wasn’t sure things worked like that), and it was just one of those books that maybe I don’t have a ton to say about, but I felt served the character and the franchise really well. It’s just engaging, I could pick it up and read for an hour no problem, and it was an entertaining ride. Honestly, that made it one that I absolutely would recommend it for! ✦ Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel by James Luceno, galen/lyra & jyn & krennic & tarkin, 352 pages    For years the Republic and the Separatists have battled across the stars, each building more and more deadly technology in an attempt to win the war. As a member of Chancellor Palpatine’s top secret Death Star project, Orson Krennic is determined to develop a superweapon before their enemies can. And an old friend of Krennic’s, the brilliant scientist Galen Erso, could be the key.    I read this novel before I saw the movie (as there are no real spoilers for it, only backstory) and it’s one of the best decisions I could have made, because what this novel does is draw many more connections to the greater Star Wars galaxy than the movie does. I think even reading it after you’ve seen the movie will do the same, it will explain a lot of how the characters got to where they are, especially Lyra, Galen, and Krennic, because it does a really good job of bridging the gap between the Clone Wars and the state of the Empire ~20 years later–well, as much as any one novel can. It draws in planets like Coruscant and Geonosis, it creates new ones that still feel like Star Wars planets, it touches on the use of kyber crystals, it’s about the building of the new Empire, it’s about trying to draw Galen Erso in to work for them and how exactly that happened, when he’s not someone who would have knowingly done so, but he was manipulated and lured in and felt that he had to work on the Death Star, otherwise they’d complete it without him much sooner, especially since they had his notes on kyber crystals from before.    The book isn’t really so much a story in and of itself, it’s more of a backstory and filling in the gaps, connecting the dots, kind of story, but I loved it for that, given that I felt Rogue One (for all its cameos and being centered on the Death Star plans) felt like it was very detached from the larger galaxy that I knew and loved. It does a great job with the three characters it centers on, it breathes some life into Lyra, it explains Galen better, and it writes an absolutely hilariousKrennic (his cat fights with Tarkin are amazing), as well as has the single greatest premise: That Galen Erso used so much ineffecient bureaucracy to make the higher-ups so sick of looking at reports that they just went Okay, fine already! and let them keep the tiny flaw in the plans. It’s a book that’s very much meant to go along with the movie, but I think it’s one that achieved exactly that goal and made the whole experience stronger! Luceno is one of my favorite authors and this book definitely did not disappoint me. ✦ Bloodline by Claudia Grey, leia & ocs, 352 pages    As the daughter of Darth Vader, Leia faces with distrust the prospect of any one person holding such a powerful position—even when supporters suggest Leia herself for the job. But a new enemy may make this path Leia’s only option. For at the edges of the galaxy, a mysterious threat is growing….    I definitely could not put this book down and I think Claudia Gray has a great grasp on Leia’s character, so reading this book as a Leia story was absolutely a worthwhile time! It especially understood her complicated relationships with both her fathers, both Bail and Anakin, and her difficult to untangle feelings there. It doesn’t shy away from that Leia is the goddamned boss, that she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty by digging into the hard work, even ~thirty years later. The only complaints I have about this book are in the political and structural stuff–one of which isn’t the author’s fault, as this book was published not long after The Force Awakens, so it couldn’t really contain anything with Luke or Ben, it had to dance around actually dealing with those things, when it clearly would have been important to do so. It does what it can with the Han/Leia relationship, but it’s still chained to what the movie put down, so I don’t blame it for that.    However, the politics of the book were terrible and made zero sense–the idea was that, because Palpatine had abused his power via the Empire, there should be no central government anymore and that’s just bullshit. By that logic, there shouldn’t be any planetary government, either. Or any country-level government. Or city-level government. All government is open to potential abuse, if you vote the wrong person in, that doesn’t mean you scrap the whole idea. Especially not when Leia then leaves the Senate and founds the Resistance, which I’m pretty sure has a heirarchy that’s open to potential abuse if the wrong person gets in. It also contained references to how apparently the New Republic allows “indentured servitude” and Leia witnesses this and barely thinks much of it. It also relies heavily on characters acting for the plot sometimes, rather than acting how a reasonable person would. And I wish the balance between the plot of uncovering the First Order (which can only do so much, since we know where this has to go) versus the moments of just pure Leia had been better.    Okay, I’m being pretty harsh on this book and I don’t mean to be, because I absolutely think it’s worth reading for the Leia moments, where she’s so solidly herself, where she has all this passion and anger, but she’s so thoroughly goodthat even the galaxy being unfair to her cannot shake her core foundations. It was a book I couldn’t put down and it felt like Star Wars (which is a hugely important thing to me!), especially in that there were lots of aliens, some that I recognized and some that I didn’t, that there were tons of planets and different cultures that truly felt like a space opera. And for all that I criticize the political philosophy here, that the politics were important to the story, just as much as the action was, was very well done!    It’s a bit of a slow start, but by chapter 5 or 6 I had trouble putting it down and I had that experience of feeling, “Ahhhh! I need to talk to people about my feelings about this book!” in a good way, which is something I also treasure. It’s a book that balances Leia’s incredibly caring nature, her huge heart, and her deep wells of anger. It’s a book that had engaging new characters that I cared about while I was reading about them. I wish there’d been more introspection on Leia’s feelings about Anakin as her bio-dad, but it’s also a story that captures how she’s such an iconic character, and it’s an incredibly engaging read. I absolutely recommend it, no question. ✦ Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure by Cecil Castellucci and Jason Fry, leia & ocs, 240 pages    Set between Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, the story follows the warrior princess as she leads a ragtag group of rebels on a dangerous mission against the evil Galactic Empire.    I enjoyed this book! It’s not particularly game-changing in any way, it doesn’t involve a lot of introsepction and it’s almost entirely action, but it’s a fun filler type of story where Leia has to run a mission for the Rebellion to distract the Empire while they work on something else. It has some fun moments and it was easy to pick up and put down, it had moments of solid characterization–and that’s really what this is. A very solid read, especially if you like Leia as a character and want to see her leading a team on an adventure. It has a solid cast of supporting characters (including some recognizable and some new alien species!) and it does a solid job of adventuring around the galaxy, really feeling like Star Wars, as is always important to me. It’s just all the way around a solid, solid story that I easily read through in just a couple of days because it was engaging enough that I sailed right along. ✦ The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure by Jason Fry, luke & ocs, 192 pages    Set between Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the story finds Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, and R2-D2 stranded on a mysterious planet, and explores a dangerous duel between Luke and a strange new villain.    My feelings on this book are pretty much identical to how I felt about Moving Target, in that it’s a very solid story that is a fun filler piece (and that’s not a slam, because filler pieces often make a world feel richer and more fleshed out) with some adventure and some solid characterization moments. It’s a story that I read when I was incredibly hungry for anything Star Wars related and so I inhaled it in just a couple of days, because it was engaging and easy to read, it’s solid and worth the time, if you’re a fan of Luke Skywalker’s character. ✦ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by Alexander Freed, jyn & cassian & bodhi & baze & chirrut & k2so & galen & krennic & cast, 336 pages    The Rebellion has learned of a sinister Imperial plot to bring entire worlds to their knees. Deep in Empire-dominated space, a machine of unimaginable destructive power is nearing completion. A weapon too terrifying to contemplate … and a threat that may be too great to overcome.    I enjoyed Rogue One as a movie, but the characters never really spoke to me until I read this novelization. It’s the kind of book that does exactly what I want from novelizations–where it adds all these little, tiny moments to the story and it allows for a better understanding of the characters because it gets into their heads, while still sticking to the story that I saw on the screen. This novel especially did incredible things for Jyn’s character for me, she is so messy and complicated and jaded and cynical and hurt and damaged here, shown through her pov in a way that helped me to understand why she behaved the way she did in the movie, why she was so cold on the surface and seemed so flat, all while there’s such a great character that appealed to me under the surface.    Jyn alone is what I would have enjoyed this novelization for! But it really did a lovely job with the Cassian and Bodhi scenes as well, there were a couple of devastating lines about Baze and Chirrut as well, even K2-SO wasn’t immune from breaking my fannish heart in this book. The highlight of this one is how it added depth to the story that was already there, especially with Jyn’s character (I wanted to quote so many lines!) but it’s pretty much everything a novelization should be–it was interesting and engaging even while telling a story I already knew the details of. ✦ Lone Wolf by Abel G. Peña, obi-wan & luke, 76 pages    A narrative of Obi-Wan facing the realities of a Jedi outcast at the twilight of the Clone Wars.    I have very complicated feelings about this short story–on the one hand, I wrote like half a dozen blogging posts about it because there were moments in it that absolutely sent me over the moon! There were some great details that I will cherish forever! But the tone of the story was incredibly grimdark in a way that was trying too hard even just post-ROTS would warrant, it was a little too over the top trying to be serious and edgy, as well as there are a lot of descriptions of how gross and yucko the women in this story are. As a fan of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the grief he was working through at this point in time, I don’t regret reading this book, there were some goddamned stellar quotes from it! But it comes with a whole lot of caveats and side-eyeing of certain elements and… well. I have a reaction post from it, if you don’t mind spoilers! There was potential here and I would be happy to see this author take another crack at SW stuff, but this one didn’t hit the mark for me–and that may be a personal thing! (Aside from the way the women in this story were described.) But, well, this is a list of reviews for like-minded fans, so I can’t say I really recommend it for my crowd personally. ✦ The Hive by Steven Barnes, obi-wan & ocs, [short story]    Dispatched as a Republic envoy to the Outer Rim planet Ord Cestus — in a bid to halt the sale of potentially deadly “bio-droids” to the Confederacy — Obi-Wan Kenobi finds himself enlisted in a mission more desperate, and dangerous, than diplomatic.    This is a short story that was a companion piece to the Cestus Deception, I believe, and it’s one of those that’s solid for what it is, but I wish there had been a bigger scope to it. It’s a fairly routine (for this character, anyway) mission where Obi-Wan is on a planet trying to help a race of insect-like people regain their royal eggs, and the world-building and culture and original characters are all well done! I was never bored by anything that was here! My only caveat is that I wish there’d been more, more to the aspects I already knew and cared about, like Obi-Wan thinking more about Anakin or the Jedi or having others show up. If you’re going in for a look at an alien society in the Star Wars universe, this book is really great! And I do like what’s here of Obi-Wan’s character! And I saw a review once that likened it to a lost episode of The Clone Wars and I felt like that was a good description of it, that I wanted more, but for the focus of this short story being what it was, it was solidly done. ✦ Guardian of the Whills by Greg Rucka, chirrut & baze & ocs, 240 pages    On the desert world of Jedha, in the Holy City, friends Baze and Chirrut used to be Guardians of the hills, who looked after the Kyber Temple and the devoted pilgrims who worshiped there. Then the Empire came and took over the planet.    This is a middle-grade novel and I think a lot of the enjoyment of it depends on what you’re looking to get out of it. I had been hoping for something that delved into Baze and Chirrut’s background a little more, to get something of their history as Guardians of the Whills, to develop that aspect of the SW universe again, but instead this novel is set a handful of months before the Rogue One movie, so it’s dealing with the Empire taking over their city and what leads them to the fight against it. That said, it’s a solid story and has some great lines between the characters, the old married couple dynamic (while I wish they’d been made canon, I felt like there was at least a very, very easy time to read into them that way here) is a highlight and a joy, and it’s a solid story with engaging characters. While I wish there had been more depth to the characters and their history, Rucka does a great job at showing them in the moment, that they felt very much like the characters I saw on the screen, and felt very true to how I imagine they would have been drawn into the fight against the Empire on Jedha. If you like these characters, I would say that this is absolutely worth the read! ✦ Secrets of the Jedi by Jude Watson, obi-wan/siri & anakin/padme & qui-gon & adi gallia & cast, 208 pages    To be a Jedi is to safeguard peace in the galaxy. To be a Jedi is to defend justice against tyranny. To be a Jedi is to rely on the Force. To be a Jedi is to not love or live as normal people do … at whatever the price.    I have such a complicated relationship with Jude Watson’s writing–it’s very much written at 13 year olds and I think the pacing and worldbuilding often suffer for it, that little has much room to breathe or let the impact be felt, that the logic of the Jedi doesn’t hold up on a worldbuilding level/doesn’t fit with the higher level canon, and the characters aren’t always how I see them. But, at the same time, when she nails a moment, she absolutely nails it, her writing can be incredible quotable and I really do love the characters that inhabit these novels (I especially love Siri and Bant!) and the underlying story is often one that has a lot of potential, if you want to explore it more, it’s often practically made for character-exploring fic pieces, practically! It is a book that is centered on romance–that each of the stories being told here (about Qui-Gon, about Obi-Wan, about Anakin) is about romance at the heart of it, which can be frustrating when there are so many other important relationships, but the book did well with the comparisons and contrasts between them.    I’m kind of hard on the book, but I’m reading it as an adult and I’m not really the target audience for this story anymore (even as I think kids’ books can appeal to adults in the right author’s hands) and that’s not to say that I don’t see the appeal of it to a lot of people. I actually enjoy reading other people’s enjoyment of this book, even if I often feel like I think these books work better if you read them when you were younger, rather than looking at them through the eyes of current canon, especially since the book came out in 2005. Would I recommend it? Depends on the person and how much you’re invested in various characters–Obi-Wan fans will enjoy the book more than Qui-Gon or Anakin fans, I suspect. It’s not one that I consider to be particularly true to Star Wars, but the handful of moments that were worth reading for are incredibly worth reading for! ✦ The Force Awakens: Rey’s Story by Elizabeth Schaefer, rey & cast, 128 pages    Rey never thought she would leave the desert planet of Jakku, but her life is turned upside down when she meets BB-8, a small droid with a big secret. Like it or not, Rey is about to be caught up in something much larger than herself: a galactic war between the evil First Order and the fledgling Resistance.    While this book is almost entirely going over the events of The Force Awakens–well, her parts of the story, that is–I suspect it would go over best with those who really enjoy her character already! But I found that it was worth the read because I really do love Rey a ton and there were bits and pieces that were new (like a bit more of what she filled her time with while on Jakku), as well as moments where she connected to the Force or her feelings for Finn or little touches that could mean more, were nicely present. It’s a short book, a light read that’s mostly just going over something we’re familiar with already, but it was a very sweet one for that.

[kyluxtrashpit]

Feel-Good Kylux Rec List

I’m having a not very stellar time in brain land right now and kylux may not have the most comforting tropes traditionally speaking, but here’s some fics from the softer side that I like to read when I’m having a sad

(Most of this is h/c and touch starvation stuff. Lots of angst with a happy ending and graphic descriptions of caregiving. So ymmv because I know I have weird tastes in what I find comforting lmao. A lot of these also have mental health issues themes, so please heed the tags on each individual fic)

Sustenance by @kyloknightofhux - M, Canon, 7.8k

Hux discovers something unusual about Kylo, and his curiosity gets the best of him.

Okay guys this is THE touch-starved Kylo fic. Like if you’re into that at all and you haven’t read this yet, please stop right now and do yourself a favour and read this instead. I’ve probably read it north of 10 times and I know it’s an older fic, but it still surprises me that I’ve never seen it on a rec list before. Seriously, read it. Beautifully in character and though it’s definitely cannoli kylux, it still does the trick for me every time

Literally anything by @starsshinedarkly77 - T-M, Modern, 1.7-11.8k

(please tell me your name is the same on both and I didn’t just tag a random person who also happens to like kylux lmao)

Seriously, literally all of their fics hit that spot I need when I’m sad. Some of the softest kylux around and yet they always feel fully in character. If you’re having a bad day and you have the time, just read them all, you won’t regret it. For a specific rec, try:

a fool for lesser things by @acroamatica, @starsshinedarkly77 - M, Modern, 8.1k

Kylo’s whole life is a series of bad decisions, starting with saying yes to accompanying Hux to a work Christmas party, as if he were the kind of person who did that.

Hux deals with the aftermath as best he can. He doesn’t understand. But perhaps he will.

Heartbreakingly beautiful. Starts out incredibly sad, but ends on such a great note that it always leaves me feeling better. Some of the things thought/said feel like they came right out of the darkest recesses of my brain. This fic is the written form of one of those rare cleansing crying sessions that actually make you feel better after

If You Should Fall Into My Arms by @cut-off-the-grain - M, Modern, 5.9k

“Hux is so close, pressed chest to chest, and he again catches a whiff of the spicy-sharp scent of Hux’s cologne, but underlaid with the scent of warm skin. Delirious, overcome, he starts to lean forward to kiss Hux, his hands aching with the urge to slide down and cup the slight swell of hips, but he stops himself, forces himself to remember that Hux is not wrapped in his arms like a lover because he wants to be, no matter how cruelly close this is to what Kylo yearns for.”

Kylo wants what he can’t have. (Or does he?)

I am such a sucker for this exact sort of thing. Kylo’s perspective on things actually hurts to read because I know that feel so hard, but the way everything works out is just so gratifying that it’s worth it. It’s like a candy that starts out sour but then gets sweet once you reach the middle

Opia by @humanveil - G, Modern, 3.7k

Kylo is a professional cuddler. Hux is a lonely, touch starved, thirty something with cash to spare. 

It’s Hux’s turn to get the touch-starved treatment and oh, this is just such decadent fluff. Despite nothing in the fic being inherently romantic, though there is some underlying subtext of it, it’s so wonderfully intimate. As soft and sweet as a freshly baked cookie

Exhibits by @deluxekyluxtrashcan - T, Modern, 3.3k

Phasma talks Hux into going on a blind date with Rey's ugly cousin, Ben Solo. Ben is, by all accounts, an unattractive, undateable guy, so Hux has very low expectations for their short date. 

Ugh, this is just such a great first date fic. Ben’s low self-esteem is heart-wrenching, but Hux getting invested and managing to turn it around is brilliant. There is literally nothing here not to love. The dynamic is just so sweet and soft, there’s no way you can make it to the end without smiling

Lull-lull-lullaby by @sithofren - T, Canon, <1k

Kylo can't sleep. 

Funnily enough, I reread this one a lot when I’m plagued by my own insomnia demons and that’s pretty much exactly what it’s like for me. Hux trying to help even though he doesn’t know how is just wonderful and then the acceptance and validation is just the cherry on top. A beautiful little treat

Aromatherapy by @mini-mantis - T, Canon, 1.6k

"Why don't you ever get in here with me?"

In which Hux, with rolled up sleeves and sponge in hand, washes the grime and Kylo's insecurities away.

Look, if you’ve read my fics, you probably know that bathing and, specifically, hair washing is my ULTIMATE WEAKNESS. So this fic just fucking slays me in the best way. The bickering is funny and cute, but the underlying feelings are too adorable for actual words. Incoherent noises are more appropriate

Affection by @theweddingofthefoxes - T, Modern, 3.6k

Hux has had a crush on his friend Ren for awhile now, and when disaster strikes, he learns that Ren's willing to go further than a typical friend would in order to make sure he's okay. 

A second touch-starved Hux fic, because that trope will never, ever, ever get old. Kylo is such a good friend and I really like that it highlights how something can be a disaster and affect you deeply despite you thinking it’s nothing major and that it shouldn’t. And oh, that delicious, wonderful pining

i will reveal you by @huxcrying - T, Canon, 1.7k

Kylo is self-conscious about his new scar.

This is such a good. Like really. Kylo being self-conscious and hiding, Hux hunting him down and being his usual asshole self until he thaws and melts and shows he really does care. So so good. And if I wasn’t already sold on the entire premise of it, the pet names at the end did me in for sure

[richardrobertsimsuccessblog]

How to Start a Blog in 2018: New Method That’s 20X Faster

What if I told you there’s a new way to start a blog that’s 20X faster, requires no software or technical expertise, and costs absolutely nothing up front?

You’d think there must be some hidden catch, right?

But there’s not. It’s totally real.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through the newest method for how to start a blog, step-by-step, with screenshots and links to all the resources you need. Let’s jump in…

Table of Contents

Should You Even Start a Blog in 2018?

The Old Way to Create a Blog (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

How to Start a Blog the Right Way (the New Method)

Make Sure Your Blog Is Actually Viable (Not All Are)

Spy on Popular Blogs to See What’s Working

Test Your Ideas on Medium (Not WordPress!)

Get a Clear (Not Clever!) Domain Name

Switch over to WordPress

Set Up WordPress the Right Way

Grow to $1,000 per Month (and Beyond)

  Should You Even Start a Blog in 2018?

With the dominance of video content on platforms like YouTube and Facebook, you might think the whole idea of blogging is a little… out of date. Research tells a different story, though:

Source: http://ift.tt/2kqlR3d

And it’s not just companies who are getting great results from blogging. It also works well for…

Nonfiction authors: Before giving you a book deal, publishers want to know you have a “platform” — an audience who will be happy to buy and promote your book. Blogging is one of the best ways to build that platform, and so it’s no coincidence many popular bloggers also become bestselling authors.   A blog is also helpful when you’re self-publishing. By leveraging your existing audience, you can drive your book up the Amazon bestseller list, giving you the chance to grab the attention of readers who would’ve never heard of you otherwise.  

Lifestyle entrepreneurs: If you enjoy writing, and you’re willing to be patient, you can use blogging to produce a passive income that gives you the lifestyle many people only dream of having. Top bloggers often travel the world, buy dream homes in the mountains or next to the ocean, and have nearly unlimited free time to spend with their family or doing whatever they choose.   Where does the money come from? In the past, bloggers were limited to selling advertisements and sponsorships, but today you can make even more money from affiliate marketing, creating your own course, or charging ultra-high rates for coaching/consulting. For example, I once charged $1000 per hour for advice over the phone, only worked five hours a week, and had a six-month waiting list.   That being said, it’s hard to do. You need the skill, persistence, and talent to attract hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers. If you can pull it off though, you may never have to worry about money again.  

Mature businesses with millions of potential customers: This might be surprising, but not all businesses should start a blog. If you’re running a tech startup, small retail store, or manufacturing plant, for example, it’s probably not the best use of your time. On the other hand, it’s a great fit for mature businesses in markets with millions of potential customers.   By “mature,” I’m referring to companies with a refined and effective product or service, existing revenue (at least six figures), and a deep understanding of their marketing metrics. In other words, you’re not really guessing about whether your company will succeed. You’re just looking for a way to grow.   And ideally, you’re in a market with millions of potential customers. This one can be tricky because it’s not the size of the market that matters. Space rocket manufacturing is a multibillion-dollar industry, but I would guess there are a few hundred customers out there buying rockets. On the other hand, there are millions of small businesses, clothes shoppers, productivity geeks, and so on. For a blog to be effective, that’s the kind of market you want.

So, let’s say you fall into one of these categories. Should you just install WordPress and get cracking?

Actually… no.

The Old Way to Create a Blog (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

A few years ago, I would’ve said WordPress was the only game in town. It’s faster, more powerful, and more customizable than anything out there. That’s why they power 27% of the sites in the world.

The problem?

WordPress is also extremely complicated. Here’s a typical list of tasks for setting up a new site:

Purchase web hosting

Set up a new site through cPanel

Create a new WordPress installation through Fantastico or one of their competitors

Pick out and install your WordPress theme

Customize your theme until it looks the way you want

Install and configure caching plugins

Install and configure backup plugins

Add any extra functionality you need, such as social sharing, e-commerce, etc., by installing additional plug-ins

If you’re a techie, and you’ve done it all before, it’s not a big deal. You can do it all in a few hours.

But if you’re a beginner using WordPress for the first time?

It’s overwhelming, and once you see how much there is to learn, you’ll probably feel like quitting. If you do push forward, you can spend months or even years stuck in a technical quagmire, just learning how to do everything the right way.

Of course, you can always outsource it, but you don’t really know what you are doing, your chances of picking the wrong service provider is pretty high. You might get scammed, hacked, or overcharged.

And here’s the really disturbing question:

Even if you get your WordPress site set up the right way, what if you discover you chose the wrong market or nobody likes the content you are publishing?

It happens all the time. When I was a beginner, I went through three failed blogs before I created one that succeeded. Each time, I spent dozens of hours setting up WordPress, only to discover the blog was never going to work, and I had to start over. If you push forward and set up WordPress without testing your idea first, I pretty much guarantee the same thing will happen to you too.

The bottom line:

Putting it all together, I think setting up a WordPress site is the worst possible approach for a beginner. You’re just setting yourself up for failure.

Fortunately, after working with thousands of students, I’ve discovered a new method that is much, much easier, not to mention faster, and I’m going to outline the entire process for you here.

How to Start a Blog the Right Way (the New Method)

The driving principle behind this new method is simple:

Waste as little effort as possible.

If you’re familiar with the thinking behind The Lean Startup by Eric Reis, everything outlined here will intuitively make sense to you. If not, here’s the idea:

Innovation is messy. Anytime you create something new — regardless of whether it’s an app or book or blog — there’s a huge chance of getting it wrong and having to start over.

The problem with blogging?

Most people don’t know there’s a huge chance of failure, so they spend months or even years creating a blog that has zero chance of succeeding. Eventually, they realize where they went wrong, and they start over, but again, they invest months or even years into creating a second (or third or fourth) blog that doesn’t work.

And here’s the part that’s tough to swallow:

This kind of failure is inevitable. Whenever you’re doing anything new, you will make mistakes and have to start over. It doesn’t matter if you are smart, rich, or successful at many other things. The first time you launch a blog, you will fail. It’s pretty much guaranteed to happen.

The good news is, you can dramatically speed up the process. Instead of wasting months or years chasing a bad idea, you can find out if it’s going to work in weeks or even days. In fact, the process I’m outlining here often destroys a bad idea within minutes.

The result?

You waste WAY less time. Instead of banging your head against the wall for months or even years before you finally figure everything out, you can adapt quickly and get to the right idea within a matter of weeks or months. It’s at least 20X faster. Probably more like 100X.

So, let’s dive in:

#1. Make Sure Your Blog Is Actually Viable (Not All Are)

Important: The ideas in this section are subtle and hard to grasp. Reread it several times, and think about it carefully. We have tested it on thousands of students starting their blogs, and there’s no question it’s correct, but it’s easy to misinterpret these rules. When in doubt, consult an expert (like us).

  It’s not fun to think about, but if there’s no chance in hell of your blog succeeding, wouldn’t you rather find out right now?

Well, sometimes you can.

One of the most damaging myths about blogging is the belief that you can start a successful blog targeting anyone, almost as if it’s a one-size-fits-all technology for getting “free traffic.” But it’s not true. The fact is, blogs are good at getting traffic when targeting specific kinds of audiences, and they are absolutely terrible when targeting others.

It’s also shockingly common to target the wrong audience. Of the thousands of students who come into our courses, more than 95% begin by targeting a poor or nonexistent audience that will never be able to support a successful blog, no matter how much time they put into it, and we have to use this checklist to push them in the right direction.

Surprising, right? You probably had no idea there was such a thing as a “bad audience,” but it’s true.

Here are some examples:

Men suffering from erectile dysfunction

Business executives

Parents

People struggling with depression

Women who are planning their wedding

Guys struggling to understand masculinity

Freelancers

Breeders of Dobermans

  To be clear, I’m not saying you can’t target these audiences. I’m saying blogging is an inefficient way of attracting them. You’re better off using advertising, public relations, attending conferences, etc.

Of course, the obvious question is, “Why?” Why is it that some audiences are well-suited to blogs and others aren’t?

Let’s step through the criteria, and I believe it will become more clear. A good audience…

Self-identifies (“That’s me!”). Recent scientific research suggests that some boys who are raised by single mothers struggle to understand their own masculinity. The problem is, they don’t think of themselves that way. If you were to ask a group of men, “How many of you have trouble understanding your masculinity?” no one would raise their hands.   The solution: target the symptom. Ask, “How many of you get friend-zoned by girls, and you can’t figure out why?” A bunch of hands would go up on that one. In other words, you must describe your audience using the words they use to describe themselves. In almost all cases, you’ll describe the symptoms, not the actual cause.  

Is happy to be grouped together. You would think freelancers would be a viable audience, right? After all, there are so many successful sites that seem to target them! Again though, it’s misleading, because there are many types of freelancers: photographers, copywriters, designers, and so on. They all share similar perspectives (getting and managing clients, etc.), but if you put them in a room together, they would naturally sort themselves by field. For this reason, blogs about a particular type of freelancing are always more successful than blogs targeting freelancers in general.  

Includes a wide continuum of experience. In every market, the most successful blogs are the ones with a lot of beginners and relatively few experts. For example, there are millions of people thinking about starting a software company, but there are relatively few billionaire founders. However, if you target an audience like “business executives,” you are narrowing the continuum of experience to new executives and experienced ones, or perhaps middle managers and CEOs. In either case, it’s fatal to the blog, because the most rabid audience for blog content is always the beginner (in this case, someone who wants to become an executive someday).  

Shares the same perspective. For example, both mothers and fathers fall under the category of “parents,” but they generally have different perspectives on what being a parent means. For that matter, a parent of a toddler and the parent of a teenager will also have different perspectives. Therefore, the audience of “parents” should be subdivided before it can become viable. For instance, “middle-class mothers of toddlers” might be a good audience to target, because their perspectives are relatively similar.  

Talks with each other on social media. Erectile dysfunction is a multibillion-dollar market with millions of men who are desperate for help, and yet you’ll never see a popular blog about it. Why? Because men don’t talk with other men on social media about erectile dysfunction. If you started a blog on the topic, you wouldn’t get any traffic from Facebook, for example, and that would make it very difficult for it to survive.  

Wants to learn. With millions of people suffering from depression, you would think a blog about it would be wildly popular, but there’s not one, and here’s why: for the most part, people with depression have no desire to read about depression on a regular basis, probably because it makes them depressed! On the other hand, a blog for families of people suffering from depression would probably be quite popular, because they have a deep and ongoing desire to help their family member.  

Has an ongoing interest. At any given time, there are millions of women who recently got engaged and are planning their wedding, and yet there are no big blogs for them. Why? Because they are only interested in planning their wedding until they actually have the wedding! As a result, this particular market has a lot of “churn” — people going out and new people coming in — and the limited window of opportunity makes it unsuitable for blogging.  

Consists of millions of people. Occasionally, you’ll find an audience that passes all the other tests, but it’s so small in number it can’t support a blog. A good example is breeders of Dobermans. You could easily start a blog for them, and you would probably have a small following of loyal readers, but it’s unlikely the audience would ever grow large enough to make running the blog worthwhile. For a truly effective blog, you need a potential audience consisting of millions of people. Otherwise, it’s not worth the effort.

Interesting, right? And perhaps a bit unsettling?

The good news is, a rule disqualifying a bad audience usually suggests the adjustment you need to make. For example, the audience of “parents” was disqualified by the rule that a good audience must “share the same perspective,” but by subdividing the audience down to “middle-class mothers of toddlers,” we were able to find a viable audience.

Sometimes though, you can’t make a topic workable, no matter what you do. In those cases, look at the bright side: you just saved a lot of effort by finding out now rather than after years of trying.

But what if your idea for a blog is indeed viable? Well then, it’s time to do a little good old-fashioned espionage!

#2. Spy on Popular Blogs to See What’s Working

Thankfully, this next step is a lot less painful than the first one. It’s also much easier to explain.

Once you’ve verified your blog has potential, you need to study the blogs your audience already reads.

For instance, let’s say you want to start a blog for new homeowners. You’ll teach them how to make simple repairs themselves, maximize the value of their home, save money on their mortgage, and so on.

After going through the checklist above, you discover it meets all the criteria, and — alakazam, alakazoo — you have a workable blog topic. What’s next?

Well, the average new homeowner is in their 30s. Many are also parents. Chances are, a lot of them also have at least a passing interest in personal finance. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to afford a home.

So, here’s what you do: study the top personal finance and parenting blogs. In particular, you need to uncover their most popular content and learn from the patterns you see.

Here’s how:

Use Alltop to identify the most popular blogs in your space. I recommend sorting through several of the subcategories, collecting a list of 20-50 popular blogs you think your audience might be reading. Here’s what I mean…  

Plug the domain names for those blogs into Buzzsumo to find their most shared content. In particular, pay attention to Facebook shares, because it’s driving the most traffic in almost every space right now.  

Look for patterns that might give you a clue into what kind of content your audience might like. Focus on the headlines, but also click through on any posts that grab your attention and read the whole post. You might even want to read the comments because they can give you insights as well.  

Use a tool like Evernote or Google Drive to keep a list of headline ideas. Write down any headlines that occur to you while doing your research.

When you finish, you’ll have a list of ideas for blog posts backed by evidence of popularity. While nothing is guaranteed in life, the success of these posts will be far better than anything you might dream up in the shower and decide to write about. As a result, you should have a much easier time outpacing your competitors.

But it’s still worth testing a few of them, just to make sure…

Test Your Ideas on Medium (Not WordPress!)

At this point, you might be tempted to grab a hosting account, install WordPress, and start blogging your heart out, but don’t.

Yes, you’ve done some cool research. Yes, your ideas for blog posts are far more likely to succeed. Yes, you’re way ahead of most beginning bloggers.

But I hate to break it to ya…

There’s an excellent chance you analyzed all those popular posts from other blogs your audience reads and came to all the wrong conclusions. Before going through all the effort of creating a new blog, I recommend testing your ideas on perhaps the coolest blogging platform out there right now:

Medium.

If you’ve never heard of it, Medium is the brainchild of Ev Williams, the geeky and brilliant co-founder of Twitter. He created it to become the largest, easiest to use blogging platform in the world, and he’s managed to attract over 30 million monthly readers, as well as celebrity writers like Matthew McConnaughhay and James Altucher.

And here’s the really cool part: you can write on Medium and get the chance to have your writing exposed to its 30 million readers, free of charge. Here’s how:

Register for a free account. When you visit the site, you might notice banners inviting you to become a premium member. There’s no doubt it gives you access to some excellent content as a reader, but as a writer, it’s by no means necessary to test your ideas. The free account gives you access to all the writing tools, so register for that.  

Write a post based on one of the headlines gleaned from your research. Using Medium’s excellent editor, you can have a stylish post put together within a few hours.  

Make sure you choose the appropriate interests. Anyone who subscribes to that interest will have a much higher chance of noticing the post.  

Conduct a miniature outreach campaign to the blogs you studied in the previous step. By emailing them and asking them to share your post, not only do you have a chance to start building your audience, but it’s an excellent way to validate your approach. If influencers are willing to share your content, there’s a good chance you’re on the right track. I’d recommend emailing 10-20 of them.   Click here to read our extensive post on outreach.

Now, here’s the big question:

How do you know you’re ready to switch over to WordPress?

Should you target a certain number of claps? Shares? Comments?

Actually, none of the above. In my opinion, none of those really mean much.

You’re much better off paying attention to your outreach success rate. You see, influencers are an excellent judge of content. If you can convince 20% of the blogs you email to share your post, and you can hit at least 20% on three different posts, I believe you’re ready to start your own blog.

If your outreach success rate hits 20%, there’s also an excellent chance at least one of your posts will end up featured on Medium, either on one of the interests or maybe even the front page, driving thousands upon thousands of new readers to your post. Again, not only will that help you build your audience, but it’s an excellent indication you’re on the right track, and it’s time to branch off on your own.

Note: If you’re familiar with the Lean Startup, the approach we’re following here is similar to the idea of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Instead of creating a product though, you are creating the minimum amount of content necessary to test your post ideas.

Get a Clear (Not Clever!) Domain Name

So, lots of influencers are sharing your post on Medium, and you’re itching to crank up your own site and snag some of that traffic?

Cool. Let’s just take it one step at a time, and the first step is getting a clear domain name.

Put yourselves in the shoes of the visitor. You’re browsing the web, and you see a headline for a blog post that catches your attention. Maybe a friend on Facebook shared it with you, maybe it came up on a Google search, or maybe it’s just a link in another article you’re reading. Regardless, you click the link, and consciously or not, you’re asking yourself a single question as you browse through it…

“Is this for me?“

Within a few seconds, you have to decide whether to keep reading the post or move on to something else, and the only way you’ll stay is if it’s relevant to you. Not just the post, either. When you’re deciding, you’ll take in the design of the page, other post headlines, and, yes, the domain name.

For example, consider Entrepreneur.com. Is there any doubt who the site is for? Entrepreneurs, of course!

How about MakeaLivingWriting.com? Obviously, it’s for people who want to make a living as a writer.

Neither names are clever, but they help you decide to stay or go by clearly articulating who they are helping. That’s what a good domain name does.

Of course, all the great domain names are taken, right?

Not necessarily. Here are three different methods for finding the perfect domain name for your site:

Name the audience. The simplest way to get a clear domain name is to call out the audience in the domain itself. Examples: SmartBlogger.com, CouchPotato.com, AFineParent.com

Name the topic. If your blog focuses on a specific topic, try finding a domain name that describes it in clear, concise language. Examples: The ArtofManliness.com, BudgetsAreSexy.com, PaleoHacks.com

Name the benefit. Why should people stick around? If you have a good answer, sometimes you can turn it into a domain name that really stands out. Examples: MakeALivingWriting.com, BiggerPockets.com, BeABetterBlogger.com

My suggestion:

Use these three strategies to make a list of 10-20 domain names you’d be happy having. You can write them out in a word processor, or if you want to get fancy, you can use a tool like NameStation to generate a lot of ideas at once.

Once you’re finished brainstorming, head over to a site like NameCheap to see if they are available. Click “Bulk Search” in the search box and paste in your domain names to check them all at once.

Sometimes you get lucky, and one of your favorites is available. If not, you either have to head back to the drawing board for another brainstorming session, or you can go to a premium domain name marketplace like Sedo.

Either way, one word of advice:

Don’t get hung up on your domain name. While it’s certainly helpful to have a good one, there are thousands of hugely popular sites with terrible domain names no one understands.

In other words, it’s not really a “make or break” factor for your site. Give yourself a few days or maybe a week to brainstorm ideas, and then make a decision, because once you have your domain name, you are ready to…

Switch Over to WordPress

You knew we had to run into some technical stuff sooner or later, right?

Well, here it is. There’s no code, complicated software to install or anything like that, but there are a lot of little steps you need to follow in exactly the right order.

It’s not too bad, though, I promise. You can do everything here in about an hour, and I have step-by-step guides to walk you through every little detail.

Let’s get started…

Choose a web host. If you’re not familiar with the term, a “web host” is kind of like a warehouse for websites on the Internet. You pay one a small fee to keep your website on the Internet, handle all your visitors, back up your website, and so on. There are a gazillion different hosts out there, but the one we recommend and use ourselves is SiteGround. Click here to get a 60% off discount (affiliate link).  

Install WordPress. Once you have your account set up, you can use their built-in tools to install WordPress for you. It’s super easy. Here’s a video that walks you through all the steps:  

Migrate your posts from Medium to WordPress. Thankfully, Medium makes it relatively easy to export your posts, but you do have to jump through a few hoops importing them into WordPress. Click here to learn how.   When you finish, all the content will have switched over, and you’ll see all the posts on your own site, but that doesn’t mean you’ve finished. While WordPress works exceptionally well out-of-the-box, it still needs a little tweaking. Let’s talk about how to do that next.

Set Up WordPress the Right Way

The great thing about having a self-hosted WordPress site is you’re in total control. You can change how it looks, what functionality it has, improve its performance, and almost anything else you can imagine.

The problem?

Complete control also comes at a cost: complexity. There are thousands upon thousands of themes and hundreds of thousands of plug-ins to choose from, and you can easily lose weeks or even months of your life wading through them all and trying to figure out what’s best for you.

So, I’m going to take a minimalist approach here. Rather than giving you a huge list of things to do, I’m reducing it down to the absolute minimum, and I’ll even recommend some specific themes and plug-ins. Before we begin though, let me be clear about one thing:

Your content matters more than anything else.

You can have a site that’s ugly, clunky, and slow, but if you have great content, you’ll still get a lot of traffic. Not the opposite, though. You can have the most beautiful, user-friendly website online, but if the content sucks, nobody will give a damn about you.

So, don’t allow yourself to get lost in these details. Focus on making your website functional, and then you can always come back and make it unique or beautiful later.

That said, here are some different options to consider:

The Simplest Option: Elegant Themes

Cost: $89 per Year

You might wince a little at the annual price, but the advantage of Elegant Themes is they give you everything you need in one package:

Divi, the most popular WordPress theme on the market

A built-in page builder that can design anything you can imagine

Monarch, a social sharing plug-in that’s customizable and looks great

Bloom, a simple but functional app for building your email list

Regular updates and support, making it easy to stay current

  Now, is every piece of it the best?

No. In fact, I don’t think they are the best in any single category.

But the combination of everything put together makes it far easier to get started. The design is also top-notch. That’s why they’ve become the most popular theme company on the market with over 400,000 paying customers.

The bottom line:

If you’re looking for a simple, stable solution that will last you for years and doesn’t require a “tech guy” to get up and running, Elegant Themes is the way to go.

The Free Option: A Hodgepodge of Stuff

Cost: Zero

So… what if you can’t really afford to spend any money on your blog? What should you do then?

The answer:

Cobble together a hodgepodge of free stuff into a workable site.

Here’s what I would do:

For your WordPress theme, install the free version of Astra

For your page builder, check out the free version of Elementor

For social sharing, go with the free version of Sumo

For building your email list, also go with the free version of Sumo

  The downside?

Sumo will only last until you hit 500 subscribers, and then you have to either switch to something else or start paying a rather high monthly fee to stay with them. You also have to update everything separately, and you’ll have far less support if anything breaks.

To me, those are some pretty big downsides, and I really wouldn’t recommend it, but sometimes you don’t have any other choice. If that’s the case, give it a try.

A Quick Word about Caching

Regardless of which option you choose, you’ll want to install a caching plug-in before you start getting too much traffic (100+ visitors per day). The two most popular options are plug-ins called WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache.

If you’re looking for simplicity, I recommend WP Super Cache. You can install it, and you’re done. Here’s a video where a guy gets everything set up in three minutes:

Later, when you’re getting 10,000+ visitors per month, you might think about getting a tech guy who really knows the ins and outs of either plug-in to configure it for you. It really helps, but it’s not worth the trouble or expense for a new blog.

Important: If you end up going with Siteground (affiliate link), as I recommended above, they have their own caching plug-in, and it only takes about a minute to set up. Here’s a tutorial that walks you through it.

Grow to $1,000 per Month (And Beyond)

In the immortal words of Harry Connick Junior…

Up to this point, you’ve published posts on Medium until it’s clear people love what you write, you switched over to your self-hosted WordPress site, and now you are up and ready for the world. So, here’s the big question:

When does the money start rolling in? After all, that’s the point of all this, right?

Well… good news and bad news.

The good news is you’ve done the hard part. By far, the hardest part of building a popular blog is writing posts other people enjoy reading. Nothing else even comes close.

The bad news?

That’s just the beginning.

Now that your blog is up and running, you have to learn the ins and outs of getting traffic, building your email list, and monetizing your site. Even if you have top-notch writing skills, it’ll still take you at least 3-6 months to figure all that out.

But think about it this way…

Nothing worth doing is quick or easy.

Personally, I was a slow learner, and it took me three years to reach $1,000 a month. That’s a long time, right? Well, two years after that, we crossed $100,000 per month, and we’ve never looked back.

The point:

Getting started is the hardest part. It might take you a few months or even a few years to build up momentum. And you might feel a little dumb for investing so much time to it, but then that momentum builds and builds and builds, and you wake up one morning to the stupefying yet delicious realization that you’ll never have to worry about money again.

That’s what happened to me. Might happen to you too.

At the end of the day though, there’s only one way to find out:

Get started and see what happens.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

  How to Start a Blog in 2018: New Method That’s 20X Faster

[alanajacksontx]

How to Start a Blog in 2018: New Method That’s 20X Faster

What if I told you there’s a new way to start a blog that’s 20X faster, requires no software or technical expertise, and costs absolutely nothing up front?

You’d think there must be some hidden catch, right?

But there’s not. It’s totally real.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through the newest method for how to start a blog, step-by-step, with screenshots and links to all the resources you need. Let’s jump in…

Table of Contents

Should You Even Start a Blog in 2018?

The Old Way to Create a Blog (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

How to Start a Blog the Right Way (the New Method)

Make Sure Your Blog Is Actually Viable (Not All Are)

Spy on Popular Blogs to See What’s Working

Test Your Ideas on Medium (Not WordPress!)

Get a Clear (Not Clever!) Domain Name

Switch over to WordPress

Set Up WordPress the Right Way

Grow to $1,000 per Month (and Beyond)

  Should You Even Start a Blog in 2018?

With the dominance of video content on platforms like YouTube and Facebook, you might think the whole idea of blogging is a little… out of date. Research tells a different story, though:

Source: https://expresswriters.com/the-big-2017-content-marketing-spend-infographic/

And it’s not just companies who are getting great results from blogging. It also works well for…

Nonfiction authors: Before giving you a book deal, publishers want to know you have a “platform” — an audience who will be happy to buy and promote your book. Blogging is one of the best ways to build that platform, and so it’s no coincidence many popular bloggers also become bestselling authors.   A blog is also helpful when you’re self-publishing. By leveraging your existing audience, you can drive your book up the Amazon bestseller list, giving you the chance to grab the attention of readers who would’ve never heard of you otherwise.  

Lifestyle entrepreneurs: If you enjoy writing, and you’re willing to be patient, you can use blogging to produce a passive income that gives you the lifestyle many people only dream of having. Top bloggers often travel the world, buy dream homes in the mountains or next to the ocean, and have nearly unlimited free time to spend with their family or doing whatever they choose.   Where does the money come from? In the past, bloggers were limited to selling advertisements and sponsorships, but today you can make even more money from affiliate marketing, creating your own course, or charging ultra-high rates for coaching/consulting. For example, I once charged $1000 per hour for advice over the phone, only worked five hours a week, and had a six-month waiting list.   That being said, it’s hard to do. You need the skill, persistence, and talent to attract hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers. If you can pull it off though, you may never have to worry about money again.  

Mature businesses with millions of potential customers: This might be surprising, but not all businesses should start a blog. If you’re running a tech startup, small retail store, or manufacturing plant, for example, it’s probably not the best use of your time. On the other hand, it’s a great fit for mature businesses in markets with millions of potential customers.   By “mature,” I’m referring to companies with a refined and effective product or service, existing revenue (at least six figures), and a deep understanding of their marketing metrics. In other words, you’re not really guessing about whether your company will succeed. You’re just looking for a way to grow.   And ideally, you’re in a market with millions of potential customers. This one can be tricky because it’s not the size of the market that matters. Space rocket manufacturing is a multibillion-dollar industry, but I would guess there are a few hundred customers out there buying rockets. On the other hand, there are millions of small businesses, clothes shoppers, productivity geeks, and so on. For a blog to be effective, that’s the kind of market you want.

So, let’s say you fall into one of these categories. Should you just install WordPress and get cracking?

Actually… no.

The Old Way to Create a Blog (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

A few years ago, I would’ve said WordPress was the only game in town. It’s faster, more powerful, and more customizable than anything out there. That’s why they power 27% of the sites in the world.

The problem?

WordPress is also extremely complicated. Here’s a typical list of tasks for setting up a new site:

Purchase web hosting

Set up a new site through cPanel

Create a new WordPress installation through Fantastico or one of their competitors

Pick out and install your WordPress theme

Customize your theme until it looks the way you want

Install and configure caching plugins

Install and configure backup plugins

Add any extra functionality you need, such as social sharing, e-commerce, etc., by installing additional plug-ins

If you’re a techie, and you’ve done it all before, it’s not a big deal. You can do it all in a few hours.

But if you’re a beginner using WordPress for the first time?

It’s overwhelming, and once you see how much there is to learn, you’ll probably feel like quitting. If you do push forward, you can spend months or even years stuck in a technical quagmire, just learning how to do everything the right way.

Of course, you can always outsource it, but you don’t really know what you are doing, your chances of picking the wrong service provider is pretty high. You might get scammed, hacked, or overcharged.

And here’s the really disturbing question:

Even if you get your WordPress site set up the right way, what if you discover you chose the wrong market or nobody likes the content you are publishing?

It happens all the time. When I was a beginner, I went through three failed blogs before I created one that succeeded. Each time, I spent dozens of hours setting up WordPress, only to discover the blog was never going to work, and I had to start over. If you push forward and set up WordPress without testing your idea first, I pretty much guarantee the same thing will happen to you too.

The bottom line:

Putting it all together, I think setting up a WordPress site is the worst possible approach for a beginner. You’re just setting yourself up for failure.

Fortunately, after working with thousands of students, I’ve discovered a new method that is much, much easier, not to mention faster, and I’m going to outline the entire process for you here.

How to Start a Blog the Right Way (the New Method)

The driving principle behind this new method is simple:

Waste as little effort as possible.

If you’re familiar with the thinking behind The Lean Startup by Eric Reis, everything outlined here will intuitively make sense to you. If not, here’s the idea:

Innovation is messy. Anytime you create something new — regardless of whether it’s an app or book or blog — there’s a huge chance of getting it wrong and having to start over.

The problem with blogging?

Most people don’t know there’s a huge chance of failure, so they spend months or even years creating a blog that has zero chance of succeeding. Eventually, they realize where they went wrong, and they start over, but again, they invest months or even years into creating a second (or third or fourth) blog that doesn’t work.

And here’s the part that’s tough to swallow:

This kind of failure is inevitable. Whenever you’re doing anything new, you will make mistakes and have to start over. It doesn’t matter if you are smart, rich, or successful at many other things. The first time you launch a blog, you will fail. It’s pretty much guaranteed to happen.

The good news is, you can dramatically speed up the process. Instead of wasting months or years chasing a bad idea, you can find out if it’s going to work in weeks or even days. In fact, the process I’m outlining here often destroys a bad idea within minutes.

The result?

You waste WAY less time. Instead of banging your head against the wall for months or even years before you finally figure everything out, you can adapt quickly and get to the right idea within a matter of weeks or months. It’s at least 20X faster. Probably more like 100X.

So, let’s dive in:

#1. Make Sure Your Blog Is Actually Viable (Not All Are)

Important: The ideas in this section are subtle and hard to grasp. Reread it several times, and think about it carefully. We have tested it on thousands of students starting their blogs, and there’s no question it’s correct, but it’s easy to misinterpret these rules. When in doubt, consult an expert (like us).

  It’s not fun to think about, but if there’s no chance in hell of your blog succeeding, wouldn’t you rather find out right now?

Well, sometimes you can.

One of the most damaging myths about blogging is the belief that you can start a successful blog targeting anyone, almost as if it’s a one-size-fits-all technology for getting “free traffic.” But it’s not true. The fact is, blogs are good at getting traffic when targeting specific kinds of audiences, and they are absolutely terrible when targeting others.

It’s also shockingly common to target the wrong audience. Of the thousands of students who come into our courses, more than 95% begin by targeting a poor or nonexistent audience that will never be able to support a successful blog, no matter how much time they put into it, and we have to use this checklist to push them in the right direction.

Surprising, right? You probably had no idea there was such a thing as a “bad audience,” but it’s true.

Here are some examples:

Men suffering from erectile dysfunction

Business executives

Parents

People struggling with depression

Women who are planning their wedding

Guys struggling to understand masculinity

Freelancers

Breeders of Dobermans

  To be clear, I’m not saying you can’t target these audiences. I’m saying blogging is an inefficient way of attracting them. You’re better off using advertising, public relations, attending conferences, etc.

Of course, the obvious question is, “Why?” Why is it that some audiences are well-suited to blogs and others aren’t?

Let’s step through the criteria, and I believe it will become more clear. A good audience…

Self-identifies (“That’s me!”). Recent scientific research suggests that some boys who are raised by single mothers struggle to understand their own masculinity. The problem is, they don’t think of themselves that way. If you were to ask a group of men, “How many of you have trouble understanding your masculinity?” no one would raise their hands.   The solution: target the symptom. Ask, “How many of you get friend-zoned by girls, and you can’t figure out why?” A bunch of hands would go up on that one. In other words, you must describe your audience using the words they use to describe themselves. In almost all cases, you’ll describe the symptoms, not the actual cause.  

Is happy to be grouped together. You would think freelancers would be a viable audience, right? After all, there are so many successful sites that seem to target them! Again though, it’s misleading, because there are many types of freelancers: photographers, copywriters, designers, and so on. They all share similar perspectives (getting and managing clients, etc.), but if you put them in a room together, they would naturally sort themselves by field. For this reason, blogs about a particular type of freelancing are always more successful than blogs targeting freelancers in general.  

Includes a wide continuum of experience. In every market, the most successful blogs are the ones with a lot of beginners and relatively few experts. For example, there are millions of people thinking about starting a software company, but there are relatively few billionaire founders. However, if you target an audience like “business executives,” you are narrowing the continuum of experience to new executives and experienced ones, or perhaps middle managers and CEOs. In either case, it’s fatal to the blog, because the most rabid audience for blog content is always the beginner (in this case, someone who wants to become an executive someday).  

Shares the same perspective. For example, both mothers and fathers fall under the category of “parents,” but they generally have different perspectives on what being a parent means. For that matter, a parent of a toddler and the parent of a teenager will also have different perspectives. Therefore, the audience of “parents” should be subdivided before it can become viable. For instance, “middle-class mothers of toddlers” might be a good audience to target, because their perspectives are relatively similar.  

Talks with each other on social media. Erectile dysfunction is a multibillion-dollar market with millions of men who are desperate for help, and yet you’ll never see a popular blog about it. Why? Because men don’t talk with other men on social media about erectile dysfunction. If you started a blog on the topic, you wouldn’t get any traffic from Facebook, for example, and that would make it very difficult for it to survive.  

Wants to learn. With millions of people suffering from depression, you would think a blog about it would be wildly popular, but there’s not one, and here’s why: for the most part, people with depression have no desire to read about depression on a regular basis, probably because it makes them depressed! On the other hand, a blog for families of people suffering from depression would probably be quite popular, because they have a deep and ongoing desire to help their family member.  

Has an ongoing interest. At any given time, there are millions of women who recently got engaged and are planning their wedding, and yet there are no big blogs for them. Why? Because they are only interested in planning their wedding until they actually have the wedding! As a result, this particular market has a lot of “churn” — people going out and new people coming in — and the limited window of opportunity makes it unsuitable for blogging.  

Consists of millions of people. Occasionally, you’ll find an audience that passes all the other tests, but it’s so small in number it can’t support a blog. A good example is breeders of Dobermans. You could easily start a blog for them, and you would probably have a small following of loyal readers, but it’s unlikely the audience would ever grow large enough to make running the blog worthwhile. For a truly effective blog, you need a potential audience consisting of millions of people. Otherwise, it’s not worth the effort.

Interesting, right? And perhaps a bit unsettling?

The good news is, a rule disqualifying a bad audience usually suggests the adjustment you need to make. For example, the audience of “parents” was disqualified by the rule that a good audience must “share the same perspective,” but by subdividing the audience down to “middle-class mothers of toddlers,” we were able to find a viable audience.

Sometimes though, you can’t make a topic workable, no matter what you do. In those cases, look at the bright side: you just saved a lot of effort by finding out now rather than after years of trying.

But what if your idea for a blog is indeed viable? Well then, it’s time to do a little good old-fashioned espionage!

#2. Spy on Popular Blogs to See What’s Working

Thankfully, this next step is a lot less painful than the first one. It’s also much easier to explain.

Once you’ve verified your blog has potential, you need to study the blogs your audience already reads.

For instance, let’s say you want to start a blog for new homeowners. You’ll teach them how to make simple repairs themselves, maximize the value of their home, save money on their mortgage, and so on.

After going through the checklist above, you discover it meets all the criteria, and — alakazam, alakazoo — you have a workable blog topic. What’s next?

Well, the average new homeowner is in their 30s. Many are also parents. Chances are, a lot of them also have at least a passing interest in personal finance. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to afford a home.

So, here’s what you do: study the top personal finance and parenting blogs. In particular, you need to uncover their most popular content and learn from the patterns you see.

Here’s how:

Use Alltop to identify the most popular blogs in your space. I recommend sorting through several of the subcategories, collecting a list of 20-50 popular blogs you think your audience might be reading. Here’s what I mean…  

Plug the domain names for those blogs into Buzzsumo to find their most shared content. In particular, pay attention to Facebook shares, because it’s driving the most traffic in almost every space right now.  

Look for patterns that might give you a clue into what kind of content your audience might like. Focus on the headlines, but also click through on any posts that grab your attention and read the whole post. You might even want to read the comments because they can give you insights as well.  

Use a tool like Evernote or Google Drive to keep a list of headline ideas. Write down any headlines that occur to you while doing your research.

When you finish, you’ll have a list of ideas for blog posts backed by evidence of popularity. While nothing is guaranteed in life, the success of these posts will be far better than anything you might dream up in the shower and decide to write about. As a result, you should have a much easier time outpacing your competitors.

But it’s still worth testing a few of them, just to make sure…

Test Your Ideas on Medium (Not WordPress!)

At this point, you might be tempted to grab a hosting account, install WordPress, and start blogging your heart out, but don’t.

Yes, you’ve done some cool research. Yes, your ideas for blog posts are far more likely to succeed. Yes, you’re way ahead of most beginning bloggers.

But I hate to break it to ya…

There’s an excellent chance you analyzed all those popular posts from other blogs your audience reads and came to all the wrong conclusions. Before going through all the effort of creating a new blog, I recommend testing your ideas on perhaps the coolest blogging platform out there right now:

Medium.

If you’ve never heard of it, Medium is the brainchild of Ev Williams, the geeky and brilliant co-founder of Twitter. He created it to become the largest, easiest to use blogging platform in the world, and he’s managed to attract over 30 million monthly readers, as well as celebrity writers like Matthew McConnaughhay and James Altucher.

And here’s the really cool part: you can write on Medium and get the chance to have your writing exposed to its 30 million readers, free of charge. Here’s how:

Register for a free account. When you visit the site, you might notice banners inviting you to become a premium member. There’s no doubt it gives you access to some excellent content as a reader, but as a writer, it’s by no means necessary to test your ideas. The free account gives you access to all the writing tools, so register for that.  

Write a post based on one of the headlines gleaned from your research. Using Medium’s excellent editor, you can have a stylish post put together within a few hours.  

Make sure you choose the appropriate interests. Anyone who subscribes to that interest will have a much higher chance of noticing the post.  

Conduct a miniature outreach campaign to the blogs you studied in the previous step. By emailing them and asking them to share your post, not only do you have a chance to start building your audience, but it’s an excellent way to validate your approach. If influencers are willing to share your content, there’s a good chance you’re on the right track. I’d recommend emailing 10-20 of them.   Click here to read our extensive post on outreach.

Now, here’s the big question:

How do you know you’re ready to switch over to WordPress?

Should you target a certain number of claps? Shares? Comments?

Actually, none of the above. In my opinion, none of those really mean much.

You’re much better off paying attention to your outreach success rate. You see, influencers are an excellent judge of content. If you can convince 20% of the blogs you email to share your post, and you can hit at least 20% on three different posts, I believe you’re ready to start your own blog.

If your outreach success rate hits 20%, there’s also an excellent chance at least one of your posts will end up featured on Medium, either on one of the interests or maybe even the front page, driving thousands upon thousands of new readers to your post. Again, not only will that help you build your audience, but it’s an excellent indication you’re on the right track, and it’s time to branch off on your own.

Note: If you’re familiar with the Lean Startup, the approach we’re following here is similar to the idea of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Instead of creating a product though, you are creating the minimum amount of content necessary to test your post ideas.

Get a Clear (Not Clever!) Domain Name

So, lots of influencers are sharing your post on Medium, and you’re itching to crank up your own site and snag some of that traffic?

Cool. Let’s just take it one step at a time, and the first step is getting a clear domain name.

Put yourselves in the shoes of the visitor. You’re browsing the web, and you see a headline for a blog post that catches your attention. Maybe a friend on Facebook shared it with you, maybe it came up on a Google search, or maybe it’s just a link in another article you’re reading. Regardless, you click the link, and consciously or not, you’re asking yourself a single question as you browse through it…

“Is this for me?“

Within a few seconds, you have to decide whether to keep reading the post or move on to something else, and the only way you’ll stay is if it’s relevant to you. Not just the post, either. When you’re deciding, you’ll take in the design of the page, other post headlines, and, yes, the domain name.

For example, consider Entrepreneur.com. Is there any doubt who the site is for? Entrepreneurs, of course!

How about MakeaLivingWriting.com? Obviously, it’s for people who want to make a living as a writer.

Neither names are clever, but they help you decide to stay or go by clearly articulating who they are helping. That’s what a good domain name does.

Of course, all the great domain names are taken, right?

Not necessarily. Here are three different methods for finding the perfect domain name for your site:

Name the audience. The simplest way to get a clear domain name is to call out the audience in the domain itself. Examples: SmartBlogger.com, CouchPotato.com, AFineParent.com

Name the topic. If your blog focuses on a specific topic, try finding a domain name that describes it in clear, concise language. Examples: The ArtofManliness.com, BudgetsAreSexy.com, PaleoHacks.com

Name the benefit. Why should people stick around? If you have a good answer, sometimes you can turn it into a domain name that really stands out. Examples: MakeALivingWriting.com, BiggerPockets.com, BeABetterBlogger.com

My suggestion:

Use these three strategies to make a list of 10-20 domain names you’d be happy having. You can write them out in a word processor, or if you want to get fancy, you can use a tool like NameStation to generate a lot of ideas at once.

Once you’re finished brainstorming, head over to a site like NameCheap to see if they are available. Click “Bulk Search” in the search box and paste in your domain names to check them all at once.

Sometimes you get lucky, and one of your favorites is available. If not, you either have to head back to the drawing board for another brainstorming session, or you can go to a premium domain name marketplace like Sedo.

Either way, one word of advice:

Don’t get hung up on your domain name. While it’s certainly helpful to have a good one, there are thousands of hugely popular sites with terrible domain names no one understands.

In other words, it’s not really a “make or break” factor for your site. Give yourself a few days or maybe a week to brainstorm ideas, and then make a decision, because once you have your domain name, you are ready to…

Switch Over to WordPress

You knew we had to run into some technical stuff sooner or later, right?

Well, here it is. There’s no code, complicated software to install or anything like that, but there are a lot of little steps you need to follow in exactly the right order.

It’s not too bad, though, I promise. You can do everything here in about an hour, and I have step-by-step guides to walk you through every little detail.

Let’s get started…

Choose a web host. If you’re not familiar with the term, a “web host” is kind of like a warehouse for websites on the Internet. You pay one a small fee to keep your website on the Internet, handle all your visitors, back up your website, and so on. There are a gazillion different hosts out there, but the one we recommend and use ourselves is SiteGround. Click here to get a 60% off discount (affiliate link).  

Install WordPress. Once you have your account set up, you can use their built-in tools to install WordPress for you. It’s super easy. Here’s a video that walks you through all the steps:  

Migrate your posts from Medium to WordPress. Thankfully, Medium makes it relatively easy to export your posts, but you do have to jump through a few hoops importing them into WordPress. Click here to learn how.   When you finish, all the content will have switched over, and you’ll see all the posts on your own site, but that doesn’t mean you’ve finished. While WordPress works exceptionally well out-of-the-box, it still needs a little tweaking. Let’s talk about how to do that next.

Set Up WordPress the Right Way

The great thing about having a self-hosted WordPress site is you’re in total control. You can change how it looks, what functionality it has, improve its performance, and almost anything else you can imagine.

The problem?

Complete control also comes at a cost: complexity. There are thousands upon thousands of themes and hundreds of thousands of plug-ins to choose from, and you can easily lose weeks or even months of your life wading through them all and trying to figure out what’s best for you.

So, I’m going to take a minimalist approach here. Rather than giving you a huge list of things to do, I’m reducing it down to the absolute minimum, and I’ll even recommend some specific themes and plug-ins. Before we begin though, let me be clear about one thing:

Your content matters more than anything else.

You can have a site that’s ugly, clunky, and slow, but if you have great content, you’ll still get a lot of traffic. Not the opposite, though. You can have the most beautiful, user-friendly website online, but if the content sucks, nobody will give a damn about you.

So, don’t allow yourself to get lost in these details. Focus on making your website functional, and then you can always come back and make it unique or beautiful later.

That said, here are some different options to consider:

The Simplest Option: Elegant Themes

Cost: $89 per Year

You might wince a little at the annual price, but the advantage of Elegant Themes is they give you everything you need in one package:

Divi, the most popular WordPress theme on the market

A built-in page builder that can design anything you can imagine

Monarch, a social sharing plug-in that’s customizable and looks great

Bloom, a simple but functional app for building your email list

Regular updates and support, making it easy to stay current

  Now, is every piece of it the best?

No. In fact, I don’t think they are the best in any single category.

But the combination of everything put together makes it far easier to get started. The design is also top-notch. That’s why they’ve become the most popular theme company on the market with over 400,000 paying customers.

The bottom line:

If you’re looking for a simple, stable solution that will last you for years and doesn’t require a “tech guy” to get up and running, Elegant Themes is the way to go.

The Free Option: A Hodgepodge of Stuff

Cost: Zero

So… what if you can’t really afford to spend any money on your blog? What should you do then?

The answer:

Cobble together a hodgepodge of free stuff into a workable site.

Here’s what I would do:

For your WordPress theme, install the free version of Astra

For your page builder, check out the free version of Elementor

For social sharing, go with the free version of Sumo

For building your email list, also go with the free version of Sumo

  The downside?

Sumo will only last until you hit 500 subscribers, and then you have to either switch to something else or start paying a rather high monthly fee to stay with them. You also have to update everything separately, and you’ll have far less support if anything breaks.

To me, those are some pretty big downsides, and I really wouldn’t recommend it, but sometimes you don’t have any other choice. If that’s the case, give it a try.

A Quick Word about Caching

Regardless of which option you choose, you’ll want to install a caching plug-in before you start getting too much traffic (100+ visitors per day). The two most popular options are plug-ins called WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache.

If you’re looking for simplicity, I recommend WP Super Cache. You can install it, and you’re done. Here’s a video where a guy gets everything set up in three minutes:

Later, when you’re getting 10,000+ visitors per month, you might think about getting a tech guy who really knows the ins and outs of either plug-in to configure it for you. It really helps, but it’s not worth the trouble or expense for a new blog.

Important: If you end up going with Siteground (affiliate link), as I recommended above, they have their own caching plug-in, and it only takes about a minute to set up. Here’s a tutorial that walks you through it.

Grow to $1,000 per Month (And Beyond)

In the immortal words of Harry Connick Junior…

Up to this point, you’ve published posts on Medium until it’s clear people love what you write, you switched over to your self-hosted WordPress site, and now you are up and ready for the world. So, here’s the big question:

When does the money start rolling in? After all, that’s the point of all this, right?

Well… good news and bad news.

The good news is you’ve done the hard part. By far, the hardest part of building a popular blog is writing posts other people enjoy reading. Nothing else even comes close.

The bad news?

That’s just the beginning.

Now that your blog is up and running, you have to learn the ins and outs of getting traffic, building your email list, and monetizing your site. Even if you have top-notch writing skills, it’ll still take you at least 3-6 months to figure all that out.

But think about it this way…

Nothing worth doing is quick or easy.

Personally, I was a slow learner, and it took me three years to reach $1,000 a month. That’s a long time, right? Well, two years after that, we crossed $100,000 per month, and we’ve never looked back.

The point:

Getting started is the hardest part. It might take you a few months or even a few years to build up momentum. And you might feel a little dumb for investing so much time to it, but then that momentum builds and builds and builds, and you wake up one morning to the stupefying yet delicious realization that you’ll never have to worry about money again.

That’s what happened to me. Might happen to you too.

At the end of the day though, there’s only one way to find out:

Get started and see what happens.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

  from Internet Marketing Tips https://smartblogger.com/how-to-start-a-blog/

[cherylxsmith]

How to Start a Blog in 2018: New Method That’s 20X Faster

What if I told you there’s a new way to start a blog that’s 20X faster, requires no software or technical expertise, and costs absolutely nothing up front?

You’d think there must be some hidden catch, right?

But there’s not. It’s totally real.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through the newest method for how to start a blog, step-by-step, with screenshots and links to all the resources you need. Let’s jump in…

Table of Contents

Should You Even Start a Blog in 2018?

The Old Way to Create a Blog (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

How to Start a Blog the Right Way (the New Method)

Make Sure Your Blog Is Actually Viable (Not All Are)

Spy on Popular Blogs to See What’s Working

Test Your Ideas on Medium (Not WordPress!)

Get a Clear (Not Clever!) Domain Name

Switch over to WordPress

Set Up WordPress the Right Way

Grow to $1,000 per Month (and Beyond)

  Should You Even Start a Blog in 2018?

With the dominance of video content on platforms like YouTube and Facebook, you might think the whole idea of blogging is a little… out of date. Research tells a different story, though:

Source: https://expresswriters.com/the-big-2017-content-marketing-spend-infographic/

And it’s not just companies who are getting great results from blogging. It also works well for…

Nonfiction authors: Before giving you a book deal, publishers want to know you have a “platform” — an audience who will be happy to buy and promote your book. Blogging is one of the best ways to build that platform, and so it’s no coincidence many popular bloggers also become bestselling authors.   A blog is also helpful when you’re self-publishing. By leveraging your existing audience, you can drive your book up the Amazon bestseller list, giving you the chance to grab the attention of readers who would’ve never heard of you otherwise.  

Lifestyle entrepreneurs: If you enjoy writing, and you’re willing to be patient, you can use blogging to produce a passive income that gives you the lifestyle many people only dream of having. Top bloggers often travel the world, buy dream homes in the mountains or next to the ocean, and have nearly unlimited free time to spend with their family or doing whatever they choose.   Where does the money come from? In the past, bloggers were limited to selling advertisements and sponsorships, but today you can make even more money from affiliate marketing, creating your own course, or charging ultra-high rates for coaching/consulting. For example, I once charged $1000 per hour for advice over the phone, only worked five hours a week, and had a six-month waiting list.   That being said, it’s hard to do. You need the skill, persistence, and talent to attract hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers. If you can pull it off though, you may never have to worry about money again.  

Mature businesses with millions of potential customers: This might be surprising, but not all businesses should start a blog. If you’re running a tech startup, small retail store, or manufacturing plant, for example, it’s probably not the best use of your time. On the other hand, it’s a great fit for mature businesses in markets with millions of potential customers.   By “mature,” I’m referring to companies with a refined and effective product or service, existing revenue (at least six figures), and a deep understanding of their marketing metrics. In other words, you’re not really guessing about whether your company will succeed. You’re just looking for a way to grow.   And ideally, you’re in a market with millions of potential customers. This one can be tricky because it’s not the size of the market that matters. Space rocket manufacturing is a multibillion-dollar industry, but I would guess there are a few hundred customers out there buying rockets. On the other hand, there are millions of small businesses, clothes shoppers, productivity geeks, and so on. For a blog to be effective, that’s the kind of market you want.

So, let’s say you fall into one of these categories. Should you just install WordPress and get cracking?

Actually… no.

The Old Way to Create a Blog (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

A few years ago, I would’ve said WordPress was the only game in town. It’s faster, more powerful, and more customizable than anything out there. That’s why they power 27% of the sites in the world.

The problem?

WordPress is also extremely complicated. Here’s a typical list of tasks for setting up a new site:

Purchase web hosting

Set up a new site through cPanel

Create a new WordPress installation through Fantastico or one of their competitors

Pick out and install your WordPress theme

Customize your theme until it looks the way you want

Install and configure caching plugins

Install and configure backup plugins

Add any extra functionality you need, such as social sharing, e-commerce, etc., by installing additional plug-ins

If you’re a techie, and you’ve done it all before, it’s not a big deal. You can do it all in a few hours.

But if you’re a beginner using WordPress for the first time?

It’s overwhelming, and once you see how much there is to learn, you’ll probably feel like quitting. If you do push forward, you can spend months or even years stuck in a technical quagmire, just learning how to do everything the right way.

Of course, you can always outsource it, but you don’t really know what you are doing, your chances of picking the wrong service provider is pretty high. You might get scammed, hacked, or overcharged.

And here’s the really disturbing question:

Even if you get your WordPress site set up the right way, what if you discover you chose the wrong market or nobody likes the content you are publishing?

It happens all the time. When I was a beginner, I went through three failed blogs before I created one that succeeded. Each time, I spent dozens of hours setting up WordPress, only to discover the blog was never going to work, and I had to start over. If you push forward and set up WordPress without testing your idea first, I pretty much guarantee the same thing will happen to you too.

The bottom line:

Putting it all together, I think setting up a WordPress site is the worst possible approach for a beginner. You’re just setting yourself up for failure.

Fortunately, after working with thousands of students, I’ve discovered a new method that is much, much easier, not to mention faster, and I’m going to outline the entire process for you here.

How to Start a Blog the Right Way (the New Method)

The driving principle behind this new method is simple:

Waste as little effort as possible.

If you’re familiar with the thinking behind The Lean Startup by Eric Reis, everything outlined here will intuitively make sense to you. If not, here’s the idea:

Innovation is messy. Anytime you create something new — regardless of whether it’s an app or book or blog — there’s a huge chance of getting it wrong and having to start over.

The problem with blogging?

Most people don’t know there’s a huge chance of failure, so they spend months or even years creating a blog that has zero chance of succeeding. Eventually, they realize where they went wrong, and they start over, but again, they invest months or even years into creating a second (or third or fourth) blog that doesn’t work.

And here’s the part that’s tough to swallow:

This kind of failure is inevitable. Whenever you’re doing anything new, you will make mistakes and have to start over. It doesn’t matter if you are smart, rich, or successful at many other things. The first time you launch a blog, you will fail. It’s pretty much guaranteed to happen.

The good news is, you can dramatically speed up the process. Instead of wasting months or years chasing a bad idea, you can find out if it’s going to work in weeks or even days. In fact, the process I’m outlining here often destroys a bad idea within minutes.

The result?

You waste WAY less time. Instead of banging your head against the wall for months or even years before you finally figure everything out, you can adapt quickly and get to the right idea within a matter of weeks or months. It’s at least 20X faster. Probably more like 100X.

So, let’s dive in:

#1. Make Sure Your Blog Is Actually Viable (Not All Are)

Important: The ideas in this section are subtle and hard to grasp. Reread it several times, and think about it carefully. We have tested it on thousands of students starting their blogs, and there’s no question it’s correct, but it’s easy to misinterpret these rules. When in doubt, consult an expert (like us).

  It’s not fun to think about, but if there’s no chance in hell of your blog succeeding, wouldn’t you rather find out right now?

Well, sometimes you can.

One of the most damaging myths about blogging is the belief that you can start a successful blog targeting anyone, almost as if it’s a one-size-fits-all technology for getting “free traffic.” But it’s not true. The fact is, blogs are good at getting traffic when targeting specific kinds of audiences, and they are absolutely terrible when targeting others.

It’s also shockingly common to target the wrong audience. Of the thousands of students who come into our courses, more than 95% begin by targeting a poor or nonexistent audience that will never be able to support a successful blog, no matter how much time they put into it, and we have to use this checklist to push them in the right direction.

Surprising, right? You probably had no idea there was such a thing as a “bad audience,” but it’s true.

Here are some examples:

Men suffering from erectile dysfunction

Business executives

Parents

People struggling with depression

Women who are planning their wedding

Guys struggling to understand masculinity

Freelancers

Breeders of Dobermans

  To be clear, I’m not saying you can’t target these audiences. I’m saying blogging is an inefficient way of attracting them. You’re better off using advertising, public relations, attending conferences, etc.

Of course, the obvious question is, “Why?” Why is it that some audiences are well-suited to blogs and others aren’t?

Let’s step through the criteria, and I believe it will become more clear. A good audience…

Self-identifies (“That’s me!”). Recent scientific research suggests that some boys who are raised by single mothers struggle to understand their own masculinity. The problem is, they don’t think of themselves that way. If you were to ask a group of men, “How many of you have trouble understanding your masculinity?” no one would raise their hands.   The solution: target the symptom. Ask, “How many of you get friend-zoned by girls, and you can’t figure out why?” A bunch of hands would go up on that one. In other words, you must describe your audience using the words they use to describe themselves. In almost all cases, you’ll describe the symptoms, not the actual cause.  

Is happy to be grouped together. You would think freelancers would be a viable audience, right? After all, there are so many successful sites that seem to target them! Again though, it’s misleading, because there are many types of freelancers: photographers, copywriters, designers, and so on. They all share similar perspectives (getting and managing clients, etc.), but if you put them in a room together, they would naturally sort themselves by field. For this reason, blogs about a particular type of freelancing are always more successful than blogs targeting freelancers in general.  

Includes a wide continuum of experience. In every market, the most successful blogs are the ones with a lot of beginners and relatively few experts. For example, there are millions of people thinking about starting a software company, but there are relatively few billionaire founders. However, if you target an audience like “business executives,” you are narrowing the continuum of experience to new executives and experienced ones, or perhaps middle managers and CEOs. In either case, it’s fatal to the blog, because the most rabid audience for blog content is always the beginner (in this case, someone who wants to become an executive someday).  

Shares the same perspective. For example, both mothers and fathers fall under the category of “parents,” but they generally have different perspectives on what being a parent means. For that matter, a parent of a toddler and the parent of a teenager will also have different perspectives. Therefore, the audience of “parents” should be subdivided before it can become viable. For instance, “middle-class mothers of toddlers” might be a good audience to target, because their perspectives are relatively similar.  

Talks with each other on social media. Erectile dysfunction is a multibillion-dollar market with millions of men who are desperate for help, and yet you’ll never see a popular blog about it. Why? Because men don’t talk with other men on social media about erectile dysfunction. If you started a blog on the topic, you wouldn’t get any traffic from Facebook, for example, and that would make it very difficult for it to survive.  

Wants to learn. With millions of people suffering from depression, you would think a blog about it would be wildly popular, but there’s not one, and here’s why: for the most part, people with depression have no desire to read about depression on a regular basis, probably because it makes them depressed! On the other hand, a blog for families of people suffering from depression would probably be quite popular, because they have a deep and ongoing desire to help their family member.  

Has an ongoing interest. At any given time, there are millions of women who recently got engaged and are planning their wedding, and yet there are no big blogs for them. Why? Because they are only interested in planning their wedding until they actually have the wedding! As a result, this particular market has a lot of “churn” — people going out and new people coming in — and the limited window of opportunity makes it unsuitable for blogging.  

Consists of millions of people. Occasionally, you’ll find an audience that passes all the other tests, but it’s so small in number it can’t support a blog. A good example is breeders of Dobermans. You could easily start a blog for them, and you would probably have a small following of loyal readers, but it’s unlikely the audience would ever grow large enough to make running the blog worthwhile. For a truly effective blog, you need a potential audience consisting of millions of people. Otherwise, it’s not worth the effort.

Interesting, right? And perhaps a bit unsettling?

The good news is, a rule disqualifying a bad audience usually suggests the adjustment you need to make. For example, the audience of “parents” was disqualified by the rule that a good audience must “share the same perspective,” but by subdividing the audience down to “middle-class mothers of toddlers,” we were able to find a viable audience.

Sometimes though, you can’t make a topic workable, no matter what you do. In those cases, look at the bright side: you just saved a lot of effort by finding out now rather than after years of trying.

But what if your idea for a blog is indeed viable? Well then, it’s time to do a little good old-fashioned espionage!

#2. Spy on Popular Blogs to See What’s Working

Thankfully, this next step is a lot less painful than the first one. It’s also much easier to explain.

Once you’ve verified your blog has potential, you need to study the blogs your audience already reads.

For instance, let’s say you want to start a blog for new homeowners. You’ll teach them how to make simple repairs themselves, maximize the value of their home, save money on their mortgage, and so on.

After going through the checklist above, you discover it meets all the criteria, and — alakazam, alakazoo — you have a workable blog topic. What’s next?

Well, the average new homeowner is in their 30s. Many are also parents. Chances are, a lot of them also have at least a passing interest in personal finance. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to afford a home.

So, here’s what you do: study the top personal finance and parenting blogs. In particular, you need to uncover their most popular content and learn from the patterns you see.

Here’s how:

Use Alltop to identify the most popular blogs in your space. I recommend sorting through several of the subcategories, collecting a list of 20-50 popular blogs you think your audience might be reading. Here’s what I mean…  

Plug the domain names for those blogs into Buzzsumo to find their most shared content. In particular, pay attention to Facebook shares, because it’s driving the most traffic in almost every space right now.  

Look for patterns that might give you a clue into what kind of content your audience might like. Focus on the headlines, but also click through on any posts that grab your attention and read the whole post. You might even want to read the comments because they can give you insights as well.  

Use a tool like Evernote or Google Drive to keep a list of headline ideas. Write down any headlines that occur to you while doing your research.

When you finish, you’ll have a list of ideas for blog posts backed by evidence of popularity. While nothing is guaranteed in life, the success of these posts will be far better than anything you might dream up in the shower and decide to write about. As a result, you should have a much easier time outpacing your competitors.

But it’s still worth testing a few of them, just to make sure…

Test Your Ideas on Medium (Not WordPress!)

At this point, you might be tempted to grab a hosting account, install WordPress, and start blogging your heart out, but don’t.

Yes, you’ve done some cool research. Yes, your ideas for blog posts are far more likely to succeed. Yes, you’re way ahead of most beginning bloggers.

But I hate to break it to ya…

There’s an excellent chance you analyzed all those popular posts from other blogs your audience reads and came to all the wrong conclusions. Before going through all the effort of creating a new blog, I recommend testing your ideas on perhaps the coolest blogging platform out there right now:

Medium.

If you’ve never heard of it, Medium is the brainchild of Ev Williams, the geeky and brilliant co-founder of Twitter. He created it to become the largest, easiest to use blogging platform in the world, and he’s managed to attract over 30 million monthly readers, as well as celebrity writers like Matthew McConnaughhay and James Altucher.

And here’s the really cool part: you can write on Medium and get the chance to have your writing exposed to its 30 million readers, free of charge. Here’s how:

Register for a free account. When you visit the site, you might notice banners inviting you to become a premium member. There’s no doubt it gives you access to some excellent content as a reader, but as a writer, it’s by no means necessary to test your ideas. The free account gives you access to all the writing tools, so register for that.  

Write a post based on one of the headlines gleaned from your research. Using Medium’s excellent editor, you can have a stylish post put together within a few hours.  

Make sure you choose the appropriate interests. Anyone who subscribes to that interest will have a much higher chance of noticing the post.  

Conduct a miniature outreach campaign to the blogs you studied in the previous step. By emailing them and asking them to share your post, not only do you have a chance to start building your audience, but it’s an excellent way to validate your approach. If influencers are willing to share your content, there’s a good chance you’re on the right track. I’d recommend emailing 10-20 of them.   Click here to read our extensive post on outreach.

Now, here’s the big question:

How do you know you’re ready to switch over to WordPress?

Should you target a certain number of claps? Shares? Comments?

Actually, none of the above. In my opinion, none of those really mean much.

You’re much better off paying attention to your outreach success rate. You see, influencers are an excellent judge of content. If you can convince 20% of the blogs you email to share your post, and you can hit at least 20% on three different posts, I believe you’re ready to start your own blog.

If your outreach success rate hits 20%, there’s also an excellent chance at least one of your posts will end up featured on Medium, either on one of the interests or maybe even the front page, driving thousands upon thousands of new readers to your post. Again, not only will that help you build your audience, but it’s an excellent indication you’re on the right track, and it’s time to branch off on your own.

Note: If you’re familiar with the Lean Startup, the approach we’re following here is similar to the idea of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Instead of creating a product though, you are creating the minimum amount of content necessary to test your post ideas.

Get a Clear (Not Clever!) Domain Name

So, lots of influencers are sharing your post on Medium, and you’re itching to crank up your own site and snag some of that traffic?

Cool. Let’s just take it one step at a time, and the first step is getting a clear domain name.

Put yourselves in the shoes of the visitor. You’re browsing the web, and you see a headline for a blog post that catches your attention. Maybe a friend on Facebook shared it with you, maybe it came up on a Google search, or maybe it’s just a link in another article you’re reading. Regardless, you click the link, and consciously or not, you’re asking yourself a single question as you browse through it…

“Is this for me?“

Within a few seconds, you have to decide whether to keep reading the post or move on to something else, and the only way you’ll stay is if it’s relevant to you. Not just the post, either. When you’re deciding, you’ll take in the design of the page, other post headlines, and, yes, the domain name.

For example, consider Entrepreneur.com. Is there any doubt who the site is for? Entrepreneurs, of course!

How about MakeaLivingWriting.com? Obviously, it’s for people who want to make a living as a writer.

Neither names are clever, but they help you decide to stay or go by clearly articulating who they are helping. That’s what a good domain name does.

Of course, all the great domain names are taken, right?

Not necessarily. Here are three different methods for finding the perfect domain name for your site:

Name the audience. The simplest way to get a clear domain name is to call out the audience in the domain itself. Examples: SmartBlogger.com, CouchPotato.com, AFineParent.com

Name the topic. If your blog focuses on a specific topic, try finding a domain name that describes it in clear, concise language. Examples: The ArtofManliness.com, BudgetsAreSexy.com, PaleoHacks.com

Name the benefit. Why should people stick around? If you have a good answer, sometimes you can turn it into a domain name that really stands out. Examples: MakeALivingWriting.com, BiggerPockets.com, BeABetterBlogger.com

My suggestion:

Use these three strategies to make a list of 10-20 domain names you’d be happy having. You can write them out in a word processor, or if you want to get fancy, you can use a tool like NameStation to generate a lot of ideas at once.

Once you’re finished brainstorming, head over to a site like NameCheap to see if they are available. Click “Bulk Search” in the search box and paste in your domain names to check them all at once.

Sometimes you get lucky, and one of your favorites is available. If not, you either have to head back to the drawing board for another brainstorming session, or you can go to a premium domain name marketplace like Sedo.

Either way, one word of advice:

Don’t get hung up on your domain name. While it’s certainly helpful to have a good one, there are thousands of hugely popular sites with terrible domain names no one understands.

In other words, it’s not really a “make or break” factor for your site. Give yourself a few days or maybe a week to brainstorm ideas, and then make a decision, because once you have your domain name, you are ready to…

Switch Over to WordPress

You knew we had to run into some technical stuff sooner or later, right?

Well, here it is. There’s no code, complicated software to install or anything like that, but there are a lot of little steps you need to follow in exactly the right order.

It’s not too bad, though, I promise. You can do everything here in about an hour, and I have step-by-step guides to walk you through every little detail.

Let’s get started…

Choose a web host. If you’re not familiar with the term, a “web host” is kind of like a warehouse for websites on the Internet. You pay one a small fee to keep your website on the Internet, handle all your visitors, back up your website, and so on. There are a gazillion different hosts out there, but the one we recommend and use ourselves is SiteGround. Click here to get a 60% off discount (affiliate link).  

Install WordPress. Once you have your account set up, you can use their built-in tools to install WordPress for you. It’s super easy. Here’s a video that walks you through all the steps:  

Migrate your posts from Medium to WordPress. Thankfully, Medium makes it relatively easy to export your posts, but you do have to jump through a few hoops importing them into WordPress. Click here to learn how.   When you finish, all the content will have switched over, and you’ll see all the posts on your own site, but that doesn’t mean you’ve finished. While WordPress works exceptionally well out-of-the-box, it still needs a little tweaking. Let’s talk about how to do that next.

Set Up WordPress the Right Way

The great thing about having a self-hosted WordPress site is you’re in total control. You can change how it looks, what functionality it has, improve its performance, and almost anything else you can imagine.

The problem?

Complete control also comes at a cost: complexity. There are thousands upon thousands of themes and hundreds of thousands of plug-ins to choose from, and you can easily lose weeks or even months of your life wading through them all and trying to figure out what’s best for you.

So, I’m going to take a minimalist approach here. Rather than giving you a huge list of things to do, I’m reducing it down to the absolute minimum, and I’ll even recommend some specific themes and plug-ins. Before we begin though, let me be clear about one thing:

Your content matters more than anything else.

You can have a site that’s ugly, clunky, and slow, but if you have great content, you’ll still get a lot of traffic. Not the opposite, though. You can have the most beautiful, user-friendly website online, but if the content sucks, nobody will give a damn about you.

So, don’t allow yourself to get lost in these details. Focus on making your website functional, and then you can always come back and make it unique or beautiful later.

That said, here are some different options to consider:

The Simplest Option: Elegant Themes

Cost: $89 per Year

You might wince a little at the annual price, but the advantage of Elegant Themes is they give you everything you need in one package:

Divi, the most popular WordPress theme on the market

A built-in page builder that can design anything you can imagine

Monarch, a social sharing plug-in that’s customizable and looks great

Bloom, a simple but functional app for building your email list

Regular updates and support, making it easy to stay current

  Now, is every piece of it the best?

No. In fact, I don’t think they are the best in any single category.

But the combination of everything put together makes it far easier to get started. The design is also top-notch. That’s why they’ve become the most popular theme company on the market with over 400,000 paying customers.

The bottom line:

If you’re looking for a simple, stable solution that will last you for years and doesn’t require a “tech guy” to get up and running, Elegant Themes is the way to go.

The Free Option: A Hodgepodge of Stuff

Cost: Zero

So… what if you can’t really afford to spend any money on your blog? What should you do then?

The answer:

Cobble together a hodgepodge of free stuff into a workable site.

Here’s what I would do:

For your WordPress theme, install the free version of Astra

For your page builder, check out the free version of Elementor

For social sharing, go with the free version of Sumo

For building your email list, also go with the free version of Sumo

  The downside?

Sumo will only last until you hit 500 subscribers, and then you have to either switch to something else or start paying a rather high monthly fee to stay with them. You also have to update everything separately, and you’ll have far less support if anything breaks.

To me, those are some pretty big downsides, and I really wouldn’t recommend it, but sometimes you don’t have any other choice. If that’s the case, give it a try.

A Quick Word about Caching

Regardless of which option you choose, you’ll want to install a caching plug-in before you start getting too much traffic (100+ visitors per day). The two most popular options are plug-ins called WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache.

If you’re looking for simplicity, I recommend WP Super Cache. You can install it, and you’re done. Here’s a video where a guy gets everything set up in three minutes:

Later, when you’re getting 10,000+ visitors per month, you might think about getting a tech guy who really knows the ins and outs of either plug-in to configure it for you. It really helps, but it’s not worth the trouble or expense for a new blog.

Important: If you end up going with Siteground (affiliate link), as I recommended above, they have their own caching plug-in, and it only takes about a minute to set up. Here’s a tutorial that walks you through it.

Grow to $1,000 per Month (And Beyond)

In the immortal words of Harry Connick Junior…

Up to this point, you’ve published posts on Medium until it’s clear people love what you write, you switched over to your self-hosted WordPress site, and now you are up and ready for the world. So, here’s the big question:

When does the money start rolling in? After all, that’s the point of all this, right?

Well… good news and bad news.

The good news is you’ve done the hard part. By far, the hardest part of building a popular blog is writing posts other people enjoy reading. Nothing else even comes close.

The bad news?

That’s just the beginning.

Now that your blog is up and running, you have to learn the ins and outs of getting traffic, building your email list, and monetizing your site. Even if you have top-notch writing skills, it’ll still take you at least 3-6 months to figure all that out.

But think about it this way…

Nothing worth doing is quick or easy.

Personally, I was a slow learner, and it took me three years to reach $1,000 a month. That’s a long time, right? Well, two years after that, we crossed $100,000 per month, and we’ve never looked back.

The point:

Getting started is the hardest part. It might take you a few months or even a few years to build up momentum. And you might feel a little dumb for investing so much time to it, but then that momentum builds and builds and builds, and you wake up one morning to the stupefying yet delicious realization that you’ll never have to worry about money again.

That’s what happened to me. Might happen to you too.

At the end of the day though, there’s only one way to find out:

Get started and see what happens.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

  from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/how-to-start-a-blog/

[felixdgreen]

How to Start a Blog in 2018: New Method That’s 20X Faster

What if I told you there’s a new way to start a blog that’s 20X faster, requires no software or technical expertise, and costs absolutely nothing up front?

You’d think there must be some hidden catch, right?

But there’s not. It’s totally real.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through the newest method for how to start a blog, step-by-step, with screenshots and links to all the resources you need. Let’s jump in…

Table of Contents

Should You Even Start a Blog in 2018?

The Old Way to Create a Blog (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

How to Start a Blog the Right Way (the New Method)

Make Sure Your Blog Is Actually Viable (Not All Are)

Spy on Popular Blogs to See What’s Working

Test Your Ideas on Medium (Not WordPress!)

Get a Clear (Not Clever!) Domain Name

Switch over to WordPress

Set Up WordPress the Right Way

Grow to $1,000 per Month (and Beyond)

  Should You Even Start a Blog in 2018?

With the dominance of video content on platforms like YouTube and Facebook, you might think the whole idea of blogging is a little… out of date. Research tells a different story, though:

Source: https://expresswriters.com/the-big-2017-content-marketing-spend-infographic/

And it’s not just companies who are getting great results from blogging. It also works well for…

Nonfiction authors: Before giving you a book deal, publishers want to know you have a “platform” — an audience who will be happy to buy and promote your book. Blogging is one of the best ways to build that platform, and so it’s no coincidence many popular bloggers also become bestselling authors.   A blog is also helpful when you’re self-publishing. By leveraging your existing audience, you can drive your book up the Amazon bestseller list, giving you the chance to grab the attention of readers who would’ve never heard of you otherwise.  

Lifestyle entrepreneurs: If you enjoy writing, and you’re willing to be patient, you can use blogging to produce a passive income that gives you the lifestyle many people only dream of having. Top bloggers often travel the world, buy dream homes in the mountains or next to the ocean, and have nearly unlimited free time to spend with their family or doing whatever they choose.   Where does the money come from? In the past, bloggers were limited to selling advertisements and sponsorships, but today you can make even more money from affiliate marketing, creating your own course, or charging ultra-high rates for coaching/consulting. For example, I once charged $1000 per hour for advice over the phone, only worked five hours a week, and had a six-month waiting list.   That being said, it’s hard to do. You need the skill, persistence, and talent to attract hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers. If you can pull it off though, you may never have to worry about money again.  

Mature businesses with millions of potential customers: This might be surprising, but not all businesses should start a blog. If you’re running a tech startup, small retail store, or manufacturing plant, for example, it’s probably not the best use of your time. On the other hand, it’s a great fit for mature businesses in markets with millions of potential customers.   By “mature,” I’m referring to companies with a refined and effective product or service, existing revenue (at least six figures), and a deep understanding of their marketing metrics. In other words, you’re not really guessing about whether your company will succeed. You’re just looking for a way to grow.   And ideally, you’re in a market with millions of potential customers. This one can be tricky because it’s not the size of the market that matters. Space rocket manufacturing is a multibillion-dollar industry, but I would guess there are a few hundred customers out there buying rockets. On the other hand, there are millions of small businesses, clothes shoppers, productivity geeks, and so on. For a blog to be effective, that’s the kind of market you want.

So, let’s say you fall into one of these categories. Should you just install WordPress and get cracking?

Actually… no.

The Old Way to Create a Blog (And Why It Doesn’t Work)

A few years ago, I would’ve said WordPress was the only game in town. It’s faster, more powerful, and more customizable than anything out there. That’s why they power 27% of the sites in the world.

The problem?

WordPress is also extremely complicated. Here’s a typical list of tasks for setting up a new site:

Purchase web hosting

Set up a new site through cPanel

Create a new WordPress installation through Fantastico or one of their competitors

Pick out and install your WordPress theme

Customize your theme until it looks the way you want

Install and configure caching plugins

Install and configure backup plugins

Add any extra functionality you need, such as social sharing, e-commerce, etc., by installing additional plug-ins

If you’re a techie, and you’ve done it all before, it’s not a big deal. You can do it all in a few hours.

But if you’re a beginner using WordPress for the first time?

It’s overwhelming, and once you see how much there is to learn, you’ll probably feel like quitting. If you do push forward, you can spend months or even years stuck in a technical quagmire, just learning how to do everything the right way.

Of course, you can always outsource it, but you don’t really know what you are doing, your chances of picking the wrong service provider is pretty high. You might get scammed, hacked, or overcharged.

And here’s the really disturbing question:

Even if you get your WordPress site set up the right way, what if you discover you chose the wrong market or nobody likes the content you are publishing?

It happens all the time. When I was a beginner, I went through three failed blogs before I created one that succeeded. Each time, I spent dozens of hours setting up WordPress, only to discover the blog was never going to work, and I had to start over. If you push forward and set up WordPress without testing your idea first, I pretty much guarantee the same thing will happen to you too.

The bottom line:

Putting it all together, I think setting up a WordPress site is the worst possible approach for a beginner. You’re just setting yourself up for failure.

Fortunately, after working with thousands of students, I’ve discovered a new method that is much, much easier, not to mention faster, and I’m going to outline the entire process for you here.

How to Start a Blog the Right Way (the New Method)

The driving principle behind this new method is simple:

Waste as little effort as possible.

If you’re familiar with the thinking behind The Lean Startup by Eric Reis, everything outlined here will intuitively make sense to you. If not, here’s the idea:

Innovation is messy. Anytime you create something new — regardless of whether it’s an app or book or blog — there’s a huge chance of getting it wrong and having to start over.

The problem with blogging?

Most people don’t know there’s a huge chance of failure, so they spend months or even years creating a blog that has zero chance of succeeding. Eventually, they realize where they went wrong, and they start over, but again, they invest months or even years into creating a second (or third or fourth) blog that doesn’t work.

And here’s the part that’s tough to swallow:

This kind of failure is inevitable. Whenever you’re doing anything new, you will make mistakes and have to start over. It doesn’t matter if you are smart, rich, or successful at many other things. The first time you launch a blog, you will fail. It’s pretty much guaranteed to happen.

The good news is, you can dramatically speed up the process. Instead of wasting months or years chasing a bad idea, you can find out if it’s going to work in weeks or even days. In fact, the process I’m outlining here often destroys a bad idea within minutes.

The result?

You waste WAY less time. Instead of banging your head against the wall for months or even years before you finally figure everything out, you can adapt quickly and get to the right idea within a matter of weeks or months. It’s at least 20X faster. Probably more like 100X.

So, let’s dive in:

#1. Make Sure Your Blog Is Actually Viable (Not All Are)

Important: The ideas in this section are subtle and hard to grasp. Reread it several times, and think about it carefully. We have tested it on thousands of students starting their blogs, and there’s no question it’s correct, but it’s easy to misinterpret these rules. When in doubt, consult an expert (like us).

  It’s not fun to think about, but if there’s no chance in hell of your blog succeeding, wouldn’t you rather find out right now?

Well, sometimes you can.

One of the most damaging myths about blogging is the belief that you can start a successful blog targeting anyone, almost as if it’s a one-size-fits-all technology for getting “free traffic.” But it’s not true. The fact is, blogs are good at getting traffic when targeting specific kinds of audiences, and they are absolutely terrible when targeting others.

It’s also shockingly common to target the wrong audience. Of the thousands of students who come into our courses, more than 95% begin by targeting a poor or nonexistent audience that will never be able to support a successful blog, no matter how much time they put into it, and we have to use this checklist to push them in the right direction.

Surprising, right? You probably had no idea there was such a thing as a “bad audience,” but it’s true.

Here are some examples:

Men suffering from erectile dysfunction

Business executives

Parents

People struggling with depression

Women who are planning their wedding

Guys struggling to understand masculinity

Freelancers

Breeders of Dobermans

  To be clear, I’m not saying you can’t target these audiences. I’m saying blogging is an inefficient way of attracting them. You’re better off using advertising, public relations, attending conferences, etc.

Of course, the obvious question is, “Why?” Why is it that some audiences are well-suited to blogs and others aren’t?

Let’s step through the criteria, and I believe it will become more clear. A good audience…

Self-identifies (“That’s me!”). Recent scientific research suggests that some boys who are raised by single mothers struggle to understand their own masculinity. The problem is, they don’t think of themselves that way. If you were to ask a group of men, “How many of you have trouble understanding your masculinity?” no one would raise their hands.   The solution: target the symptom. Ask, “How many of you get friend-zoned by girls, and you can’t figure out why?” A bunch of hands would go up on that one. In other words, you must describe your audience using the words they use to describe themselves. In almost all cases, you’ll describe the symptoms, not the actual cause.  

Is happy to be grouped together. You would think freelancers would be a viable audience, right? After all, there are so many successful sites that seem to target them! Again though, it’s misleading, because there are many types of freelancers: photographers, copywriters, designers, and so on. They all share similar perspectives (getting and managing clients, etc.), but if you put them in a room together, they would naturally sort themselves by field. For this reason, blogs about a particular type of freelancing are always more successful than blogs targeting freelancers in general.  

Includes a wide continuum of experience. In every market, the most successful blogs are the ones with a lot of beginners and relatively few experts. For example, there are millions of people thinking about starting a software company, but there are relatively few billionaire founders. However, if you target an audience like “business executives,” you are narrowing the continuum of experience to new executives and experienced ones, or perhaps middle managers and CEOs. In either case, it’s fatal to the blog, because the most rabid audience for blog content is always the beginner (in this case, someone who wants to become an executive someday).  

Shares the same perspective. For example, both mothers and fathers fall under the category of “parents,” but they generally have different perspectives on what being a parent means. For that matter, a parent of a toddler and the parent of a teenager will also have different perspectives. Therefore, the audience of “parents” should be subdivided before it can become viable. For instance, “middle-class mothers of toddlers” might be a good audience to target, because their perspectives are relatively similar.  

Talks with each other on social media. Erectile dysfunction is a multibillion-dollar market with millions of men who are desperate for help, and yet you’ll never see a popular blog about it. Why? Because men don’t talk with other men on social media about erectile dysfunction. If you started a blog on the topic, you wouldn’t get any traffic from Facebook, for example, and that would make it very difficult for it to survive.  

Wants to learn. With millions of people suffering from depression, you would think a blog about it would be wildly popular, but there’s not one, and here’s why: for the most part, people with depression have no desire to read about depression on a regular basis, probably because it makes them depressed! On the other hand, a blog for families of people suffering from depression would probably be quite popular, because they have a deep and ongoing desire to help their family member.  

Has an ongoing interest. At any given time, there are millions of women who recently got engaged and are planning their wedding, and yet there are no big blogs for them. Why? Because they are only interested in planning their wedding until they actually have the wedding! As a result, this particular market has a lot of “churn” — people going out and new people coming in — and the limited window of opportunity makes it unsuitable for blogging.  

Consists of millions of people. Occasionally, you’ll find an audience that passes all the other tests, but it’s so small in number it can’t support a blog. A good example is breeders of Dobermans. You could easily start a blog for them, and you would probably have a small following of loyal readers, but it’s unlikely the audience would ever grow large enough to make running the blog worthwhile. For a truly effective blog, you need a potential audience consisting of millions of people. Otherwise, it’s not worth the effort.

Interesting, right? And perhaps a bit unsettling?

The good news is, a rule disqualifying a bad audience usually suggests the adjustment you need to make. For example, the audience of “parents” was disqualified by the rule that a good audience must “share the same perspective,” but by subdividing the audience down to “middle-class mothers of toddlers,” we were able to find a viable audience.

Sometimes though, you can’t make a topic workable, no matter what you do. In those cases, look at the bright side: you just saved a lot of effort by finding out now rather than after years of trying.

But what if your idea for a blog is indeed viable? Well then, it’s time to do a little good old-fashioned espionage!

#2. Spy on Popular Blogs to See What’s Working

Thankfully, this next step is a lot less painful than the first one. It’s also much easier to explain.

Once you’ve verified your blog has potential, you need to study the blogs your audience already reads.

For instance, let’s say you want to start a blog for new homeowners. You’ll teach them how to make simple repairs themselves, maximize the value of their home, save money on their mortgage, and so on.

After going through the checklist above, you discover it meets all the criteria, and — alakazam, alakazoo — you have a workable blog topic. What’s next?

Well, the average new homeowner is in their 30s. Many are also parents. Chances are, a lot of them also have at least a passing interest in personal finance. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to afford a home.

So, here’s what you do: study the top personal finance and parenting blogs. In particular, you need to uncover their most popular content and learn from the patterns you see.

Here’s how:

Use Alltop to identify the most popular blogs in your space. I recommend sorting through several of the subcategories, collecting a list of 20-50 popular blogs you think your audience might be reading. Here’s what I mean…  

Plug the domain names for those blogs into Buzzsumo to find their most shared content. In particular, pay attention to Facebook shares, because it’s driving the most traffic in almost every space right now.  

Look for patterns that might give you a clue into what kind of content your audience might like. Focus on the headlines, but also click through on any posts that grab your attention and read the whole post. You might even want to read the comments because they can give you insights as well.  

Use a tool like Evernote or Google Drive to keep a list of headline ideas. Write down any headlines that occur to you while doing your research.

When you finish, you’ll have a list of ideas for blog posts backed by evidence of popularity. While nothing is guaranteed in life, the success of these posts will be far better than anything you might dream up in the shower and decide to write about. As a result, you should have a much easier time outpacing your competitors.

But it’s still worth testing a few of them, just to make sure…

Test Your Ideas on Medium (Not WordPress!)

At this point, you might be tempted to grab a hosting account, install WordPress, and start blogging your heart out, but don’t.

Yes, you’ve done some cool research. Yes, your ideas for blog posts are far more likely to succeed. Yes, you’re way ahead of most beginning bloggers.

But I hate to break it to ya…

There’s an excellent chance you analyzed all those popular posts from other blogs your audience reads and came to all the wrong conclusions. Before going through all the effort of creating a new blog, I recommend testing your ideas on perhaps the coolest blogging platform out there right now:

Medium.

If you’ve never heard of it, Medium is the brainchild of Ev Williams, the geeky and brilliant co-founder of Twitter. He created it to become the largest, easiest to use blogging platform in the world, and he’s managed to attract over 30 million monthly readers, as well as celebrity writers like Matthew McConnaughhay and James Altucher.

And here’s the really cool part: you can write on Medium and get the chance to have your writing exposed to its 30 million readers, free of charge. Here’s how:

Register for a free account. When you visit the site, you might notice banners inviting you to become a premium member. There’s no doubt it gives you access to some excellent content as a reader, but as a writer, it’s by no means necessary to test your ideas. The free account gives you access to all the writing tools, so register for that.  

Write a post based on one of the headlines gleaned from your research. Using Medium’s excellent editor, you can have a stylish post put together within a few hours.  

Make sure you choose the appropriate interests. Anyone who subscribes to that interest will have a much higher chance of noticing the post.  

Conduct a miniature outreach campaign to the blogs you studied in the previous step. By emailing them and asking them to share your post, not only do you have a chance to start building your audience, but it’s an excellent way to validate your approach. If influencers are willing to share your content, there’s a good chance you’re on the right track. I’d recommend emailing 10-20 of them.   Click here to read our extensive post on outreach.

Now, here’s the big question:

How do you know you’re ready to switch over to WordPress?

Should you target a certain number of claps? Shares? Comments?

Actually, none of the above. In my opinion, none of those really mean much.

You’re much better off paying attention to your outreach success rate. You see, influencers are an excellent judge of content. If you can convince 20% of the blogs you email to share your post, and you can hit at least 20% on three different posts, I believe you’re ready to start your own blog.

If your outreach success rate hits 20%, there’s also an excellent chance at least one of your posts will end up featured on Medium, either on one of the interests or maybe even the front page, driving thousands upon thousands of new readers to your post. Again, not only will that help you build your audience, but it’s an excellent indication you’re on the right track, and it’s time to branch off on your own.

Note: If you’re familiar with the Lean Startup, the approach we’re following here is similar to the idea of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Instead of creating a product though, you are creating the minimum amount of content necessary to test your post ideas.

Get a Clear (Not Clever!) Domain Name

So, lots of influencers are sharing your post on Medium, and you’re itching to crank up your own site and snag some of that traffic?

Cool. Let’s just take it one step at a time, and the first step is getting a clear domain name.

Put yourselves in the shoes of the visitor. You’re browsing the web, and you see a headline for a blog post that catches your attention. Maybe a friend on Facebook shared it with you, maybe it came up on a Google search, or maybe it’s just a link in another article you’re reading. Regardless, you click the link, and consciously or not, you’re asking yourself a single question as you browse through it…

“Is this for me?“

Within a few seconds, you have to decide whether to keep reading the post or move on to something else, and the only way you’ll stay is if it’s relevant to you. Not just the post, either. When you’re deciding, you’ll take in the design of the page, other post headlines, and, yes, the domain name.

For example, consider Entrepreneur.com. Is there any doubt who the site is for? Entrepreneurs, of course!

How about MakeaLivingWriting.com? Obviously, it’s for people who want to make a living as a writer.

Neither names are clever, but they help you decide to stay or go by clearly articulating who they are helping. That’s what a good domain name does.

Of course, all the great domain names are taken, right?

Not necessarily. Here are three different methods for finding the perfect domain name for your site:

Name the audience. The simplest way to get a clear domain name is to call out the audience in the domain itself. Examples: SmartBlogger.com, CouchPotato.com, AFineParent.com

Name the topic. If your blog focuses on a specific topic, try finding a domain name that describes it in clear, concise language. Examples: The ArtofManliness.com, BudgetsAreSexy.com, PaleoHacks.com

Name the benefit. Why should people stick around? If you have a good answer, sometimes you can turn it into a domain name that really stands out. Examples: MakeALivingWriting.com, BiggerPockets.com, BeABetterBlogger.com

My suggestion:

Use these three strategies to make a list of 10-20 domain names you’d be happy having. You can write them out in a word processor, or if you want to get fancy, you can use a tool like NameStation to generate a lot of ideas at once.

Once you’re finished brainstorming, head over to a site like NameCheap to see if they are available. Click “Bulk Search” in the search box and paste in your domain names to check them all at once.

Sometimes you get lucky, and one of your favorites is available. If not, you either have to head back to the drawing board for another brainstorming session, or you can go to a premium domain name marketplace like Sedo.

Either way, one word of advice:

Don’t get hung up on your domain name. While it’s certainly helpful to have a good one, there are thousands of hugely popular sites with terrible domain names no one understands.

In other words, it’s not really a “make or break” factor for your site. Give yourself a few days or maybe a week to brainstorm ideas, and then make a decision, because once you have your domain name, you are ready to…

Switch Over to WordPress

You knew we had to run into some technical stuff sooner or later, right?

Well, here it is. There’s no code, complicated software to install or anything like that, but there are a lot of little steps you need to follow in exactly the right order.

It’s not too bad, though, I promise. You can do everything here in about an hour, and I have step-by-step guides to walk you through every little detail.

Let’s get started…

Choose a web host. If you’re not familiar with the term, a “web host” is kind of like a warehouse for websites on the Internet. You pay one a small fee to keep your website on the Internet, handle all your visitors, back up your website, and so on. There are a gazillion different hosts out there, but the one we recommend and use ourselves is SiteGround. Click here to get a 60% off discount (affiliate link).  

Install WordPress. Once you have your account set up, you can use their built-in tools to install WordPress for you. It’s super easy. Here’s a video that walks you through all the steps:  

Migrate your posts from Medium to WordPress. Thankfully, Medium makes it relatively easy to export your posts, but you do have to jump through a few hoops importing them into WordPress. Click here to learn how.   When you finish, all the content will have switched over, and you’ll see all the posts on your own site, but that doesn’t mean you’ve finished. While WordPress works exceptionally well out-of-the-box, it still needs a little tweaking. Let’s talk about how to do that next.

Set Up WordPress the Right Way

The great thing about having a self-hosted WordPress site is you’re in total control. You can change how it looks, what functionality it has, improve its performance, and almost anything else you can imagine.

The problem?

Complete control also comes at a cost: complexity. There are thousands upon thousands of themes and hundreds of thousands of plug-ins to choose from, and you can easily lose weeks or even months of your life wading through them all and trying to figure out what’s best for you.

So, I’m going to take a minimalist approach here. Rather than giving you a huge list of things to do, I’m reducing it down to the absolute minimum, and I’ll even recommend some specific themes and plug-ins. Before we begin though, let me be clear about one thing:

Your content matters more than anything else.

You can have a site that’s ugly, clunky, and slow, but if you have great content, you’ll still get a lot of traffic. Not the opposite, though. You can have the most beautiful, user-friendly website online, but if the content sucks, nobody will give a damn about you.

So, don’t allow yourself to get lost in these details. Focus on making your website functional, and then you can always come back and make it unique or beautiful later.

That said, here are some different options to consider:

The Simplest Option: Elegant Themes

Cost: $89 per Year

You might wince a little at the annual price, but the advantage of Elegant Themes is they give you everything you need in one package:

Divi, the most popular WordPress theme on the market

A built-in page builder that can design anything you can imagine

Monarch, a social sharing plug-in that’s customizable and looks great

Bloom, a simple but functional app for building your email list

Regular updates and support, making it easy to stay current

  Now, is every piece of it the best?

No. In fact, I don’t think they are the best in any single category.

But the combination of everything put together makes it far easier to get started. The design is also top-notch. That’s why they’ve become the most popular theme company on the market with over 400,000 paying customers.

The bottom line:

If you’re looking for a simple, stable solution that will last you for years and doesn’t require a “tech guy” to get up and running, Elegant Themes is the way to go.

The Free Option: A Hodgepodge of Stuff

Cost: Zero

So… what if you can’t really afford to spend any money on your blog? What should you do then?

The answer:

Cobble together a hodgepodge of free stuff into a workable site.

Here’s what I would do:

For your WordPress theme, install the free version of Astra

For your page builder, check out the free version of Elementor

For social sharing, go with the free version of Sumo

For building your email list, also go with the free version of Sumo

  The downside?

Sumo will only last until you hit 500 subscribers, and then you have to either switch to something else or start paying a rather high monthly fee to stay with them. You also have to update everything separately, and you’ll have far less support if anything breaks.

To me, those are some pretty big downsides, and I really wouldn’t recommend it, but sometimes you don’t have any other choice. If that’s the case, give it a try.

A Quick Word about Caching

Regardless of which option you choose, you’ll want to install a caching plug-in before you start getting too much traffic (100+ visitors per day). The two most popular options are plug-ins called WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache.

If you’re looking for simplicity, I recommend WP Super Cache. You can install it, and you’re done. Here’s a video where a guy gets everything set up in three minutes:

Later, when you’re getting 10,000+ visitors per month, you might think about getting a tech guy who really knows the ins and outs of either plug-in to configure it for you. It really helps, but it’s not worth the trouble or expense for a new blog.

Important: If you end up going with Siteground (affiliate link), as I recommended above, they have their own caching plug-in, and it only takes about a minute to set up. Here’s a tutorial that walks you through it.

Grow to $1,000 per Month (And Beyond)

In the immortal words of Harry Connick Junior…

Up to this point, you’ve published posts on Medium until it’s clear people love what you write, you switched over to your self-hosted WordPress site, and now you are up and ready for the world. So, here’s the big question:

When does the money start rolling in? After all, that’s the point of all this, right?

Well… good news and bad news.

The good news is you’ve done the hard part. By far, the hardest part of building a popular blog is writing posts other people enjoy reading. Nothing else even comes close.

The bad news?

That’s just the beginning.

Now that your blog is up and running, you have to learn the ins and outs of getting traffic, building your email list, and monetizing your site. Even if you have top-notch writing skills, it’ll still take you at least 3-6 months to figure all that out.

But think about it this way…

Nothing worth doing is quick or easy.

Personally, I was a slow learner, and it took me three years to reach $1,000 a month. That’s a long time, right? Well, two years after that, we crossed $100,000 per month, and we’ve never looked back.

The point:

Getting started is the hardest part. It might take you a few months or even a few years to build up momentum. And you might feel a little dumb for investing so much time to it, but then that momentum builds and builds and builds, and you wake up one morning to the stupefying yet delicious realization that you’ll never have to worry about money again.

That’s what happened to me. Might happen to you too.

At the end of the day though, there’s only one way to find out:

Get started and see what happens.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

  from IM News And Tips https://smartblogger.com/how-to-start-a-blog/