What I Learned in 1 Year of Blogging

I really like hard facts, so to start off, Knittle and Pearl by the numbers, one year after my first Instagram and blog posts.

• 215 Instagram posts
• 929 Instagram followers
• 42 blog posts – including 4 free patterns (incidentally 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything)

I wanted to start a blog because I had a desire to have some kind of stake in the knitting/fiber arts world. Most of my friends who knit have actual businesses around their knitting, either selling finished items or as a knitwear designer. I had once explored the idea of selling things at markets and determined that wasn’t something I was interested in. I was, and still am, very leery about entering the design world. Yes I have some patterns out. Yes I have some garment ideas. Do I want to actually call myself a designer at this point? No. So for those reasons, a little over a year ago I decided to jump in and start a blog. And one year in, I still want to keep trying this out, and still don’t want to jump into the aforementioned areas.

It feels a little silly to say I truly learned things over the past year, though I suppose I have. And since I’m also a post-secondary educator, I know that the experience itself doesn’t promote learning, it is the reflection on the experience afterwards that leads to learning, so that’s what this blog post is for. And these points also act as a kind of guide for “What to expect” if you have recently started, or are thinking of starting your own blog.

1. It takes awhile to find your style

I was already very aware that for Instagram, and by extension blogs, good photos are key. Obviously Instagram is a visual platform, so it seems obvious that good photos are important. I had learned a number of things from a blog post on editing photos on Instagram that definitely helped me improve my photos. The most important thing being that photos be taken in natural light. But it was a couple months in that I fell into my style. I was looking at my grid and had a bunch of pretty pink pictures, but what was also clear was that I had created a checkerboard pattern of grey and white backgrounds for each photo, completely by accident. I loved it and decided to go with it!

2. No one thing will suddenly make you money unless you’re really lucky.

Affiliate links require large followings. Making money from ads requires large followings or a lot of traffic. And as you’ll see below, there are some things that I believe hindered my following. One year in and I have not made any actual money. I’ve made a small amount of theoretical money (about enough for 1 hand-dyed skein of yarn) from the aforementioned links and ads, but you have to reach certain thresholds for that money to actually make its way into your wallet. So in keeping with the next point, don’t expect to instantly start making money from your blog.

3. Be careful with expectations.

Most people are probably familiar with SMART goal setting. And while I never set out with particular goals, I did have various expectations for myself that required revision very early on. One of the things I thought I’d do was publish a blog post with great enough frequency that there would be one for an Instagram post every 3 posts. That would have been a LOT of work and a LOT of different ideas. So if you scroll back to the beginning of my feed, you’ll see that was abandoned quickly for an every 6 posts pattern, which essentially meant a new blog post a week. This lasted considerably longer but I hit a point where my job and the rest of my life just didn’t allow it. And I had gotten quite tired from my job, and when you’re exhausted, at least for me, creativity takes a huge nosedive (see post on Maker Motivation). So the Realistic part of a SMART goal really had no footing in my original expectations. If you’re going to set goals for yourself, be realistic.

4. You cannot operate in isolation.

I’m an introvert. Even when I can hide behind a screen, sometimes more so when I am hiding behind a screen, I am not one to jump into interactions with others. This is something I’ve had to get over a little bit in order to have some success on Instagram. And it is usually my real life interactions that end up sparking ideas for blog posts. You need at least a little exposure to real life to help spark creativity.

5. Posting frequently actually does seem to matter. I think.

Anything you read about growing a blog or growing your Instagram account will tell you to post every day. As you can tell from my 215 Instagram posts and 48 blog posts, I did not achieve this. At first this was partially due to my un-achievable expectations mentioned in point 3. I had kind of hoped that I would hit 1000 followers by, or before, 1 year of Knittle and Pearl. While the impact of posting regularly has likely had little impact on the blog itself, I would guess it did have a huge impact on Instagram. If there are a few days where I don’t post, the next few posts have considerably less engagement. Even if I think it’s a gorgeous photo, and has most of, or the same hashtags as a previous post that racked up the likes. Of course sometimes, even with following all the posting rules, there’s still a post like that which won’t get the attention I think it deserves.