Learn from the best! Alex and Lauren from CreateAndGo.

Lets learn blogging from the best!

Learn blogging from the best and find out how to blog so you can succeed.

Before we begin, I’d like you to learn why I began to blog.

As I was writing this I was at the stage where my mental health and endometriosis blog, which I run along with my lovely wife (the contributor) was only 4 months young.

So far, I managed to achieve a lot by myself but I am not where I want to be just yet. I had to learn blogging from the best.

In order for you to understand this article, I’d like to open this introduction with my humbling little story. And so here it goes…

My beautiful wife suffered throughout the majority of her life from anxiety, depression, and OCD.

Mental health problems affected her from a very young age due to traumatic childhood and M’s teenage years. She was on Prozac for 18 years.

My growing up and warm family environment, even though poor as we lived purely on bread and butter for the first six years of my life, I remember as happy times. It made me a man full of optimism and of calm mature.

Fast forward to this day, January 2020, our roads crossed about 14 years ago. On our wedding day, M told me that she gave up on the pills over a period of 8 months prior to our wedding. I was flabbergasted!

Long story short – the strength of my love towards my wife, allowed me to help her get out of mental health problems, her anxiety, depression, and her suicidal attempts. Yes, you heard that correctly – suicidal attempts!

I don’t want to brag about it, because it is not the subject of this article and if you want to read about it, I invite you to take a look here. But what I can tell you is, that even in the darkest chapter of our lives, I have never given up on M.

These troubled times and my unconditional support, allowed me to realize something. I may not be a celebrity, a rock, or a famous movie star but in my wife’s eyes, I am.

I am an extraordinary man because I did an extraordinary thing. I saved a life.

It also made me realize, that I want to give her more. But I did not know how…

My wife suffered enough and even though her suffering may never end, because M suffers from endometriosis, I am going to be there for her until the end of my days.

She deserves more and I want to make her happy.

M gave me her unconditional love and changed my life for the better. We don’t choose mental illness. Life can be cruel but it can also be beautiful.

My optimism helped her pass the impossible and still does to these days.

Her chronic illness brings back depression and fear for the unknown future. She worries on a daily basis. Sometimes To such an extent, it blinds her to see that I’m happy.

She feels a burden, as people who suffer from mental illness do. M feels sorry for me having to put up with her. But I don’t see it the same way.

I’m truly happy. Sometimes she doesn’t believe that I am.

I have reasons to get up every morning with a smile on my face.

Through our blog, we help other people in their struggles with mental health issues and I absolutely love it. I helped one person, so I can help millions more.

This pattern of thinking will never change.

My reasons for blogging…

Blogging became my passion, my obsession, my way of life. I want to help people on their journey to combat mental health problems and find a happier path in life.

So I did it. Four months ago I clicked the “publish” button!

I decided to do something extraordinary for other people, but in order to do this, I needed to learn blogging from the best bloggers in the field. 

Helping them avoid the situations we went through whilst battling M’s mental health problems, I want to make a change in people’s lives for the better.

I wanted to bring mental health support to another level. And so I decided to run my blog from the perspective of the supporter and sufferer.

Both points of view allow us to see things more clearly and help to a greater extent.

As I am writing this post, the Worry Head blog was born 4 months ago after I’ve written my book, which by the way didn’t sell a single copy on Amazon.

The reason? I had no clue how to do it. I still don’t know but it doesn’t bother me, because Amazon takes a humongous ginormous chunk of the hard work that you do, just to benefit themselves.

And why would I do that?

Instead of trying to sell the book for £14.99 and gaining only a miserable £4.49, whereas Amazon would gain out of my hard work £10.50 for free, I’d rather sell it cheaper on my blog.

I figured that the blog will help me reach directly people who are actually interested in my book. “No amount of anxiety will push me away” is available to buy for £10 in our book section but for subscribers, we sell it for 50% of the price. 

Any-who… the bottom line is, despite the young age of Worry Head, I don’t want to say fluffy words about how clever I was to reach 3000 visitors and 6000 views in 4 months because I don’t think it’s good at all.

Yes, I might have helped a small number of subscribers with their problems, because this wonderful bunch of people are interested in improving their mental health, otherwise, they wouldn’t read my emails.

But that’s not good enough. I want to reach and help the gazillions of beautiful souls.

I can openly say, that despite having experience in mental health support, like a freshly baked blogger, I have no clue how to truly grow my website.

Writing this article I consider myself an advanced beginner but I’m still at the beginning of this long journey. I need to educate myself more but I want to learn from the best!

So here’s to Alex and Lauren of Create and Go!

I decided to buy two of their courses. I’m not a beginner, so I plan to opt-in for the second and third courses. I see great potential in it thanks to their great knowledge in the blogging world.

It is my first article in regard to being totally open with everyone and to begin with, I decided to write about my humble beginnings, so all the blogging beginners can see, how I have done it from scratch.

Take the journey with me.​

Not only do I want to help you understand:

• How to build a blog
• What tools to use
• Provide you with all the basics

But I want to also reveal:

• My failures and successes that I experienced.
• How not to waste your time.
• Guide you directly to the stuff you need to focus on.
• How to use social media to promote your blog.

All of that I have learned myself and so I will give it to you on the plate over the few articles.

I am prepared to take failure on the cheek, but most of all I’m here to succeed, so I can expand and help gazillions of people in their need.

So why do I do this, apart from the above facts?

1. Is it an experiment? Maybe.
2. Is it an adventure? Definitely.
3. Is it my birthday? Heck yeah!

Yes, I decided to give myself a present, it’s my 40th after all. And what do we do on our 40th? We go crazy!

Well, I always wanted to do a Mad Hatter party from “Alice in Wonderland” as the theme for my birthday, because I’m a little bit mad haha!

But my plans did not work out, there is no party at all, so I decided to give myself a treat and do something special for myself by purchasing two of their courses. 

In my opinion, they are not too expensive but it is not my usual spending habit of mine, I’m pretty tight in the wallet department but I want to learn blogging from the best!

Shh… my wife doesn’t know about it! But this was 100% money well spent!

Here’s to Alex & Lauren!​

A personal touch to say a big thank you to both of them! It is for their honesty and inspiring words. Yes, they are both a true inspiration to millions of people. 

They don’t know me and I haven’t spoken with them either but I promised myself that if I was to succeed, I will shake their hands in person.

I am a determined optimist who never gives up. I guess there is only one thing ahead of me, success!

No matter how long it takes, I am going to reach my goal!

Alex and Lauren, regardless of what the future brings, I am grateful for their motivation and for sharing with all of us so much useful information for free!

Now, I decided to begin with their Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course.

I am going to read it, digest it, learn it, and implement their advice. Six-Figure Blogger course afterward but first, I plan to sweat my butt off on this one.

So here’s to Alex and Lauren! Let’s do this guys!

I was going a little bit ahead of myself, wasn’t I? Well, that’s what passion for something does to you.

But on a serious note, if you’re reading this article, it means that I am about to click the purchase button for the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course.

I am most probably going to jump for joy and act silly!

I am at the stage (advanced beginner) where my progress of blogging so far was a big learning curve. I did it without any help just by my stubbornness and pure determination.

I’m here to tell you what I’ve learned so far but the second article on the topic will come up soon after I implement changes learned from the course.

Starting a blog…

You can start a blog for FREE if you want to write and share your passion as a hobby.

But if you want to be serious about blogging and want to become a professional blogger, help a greater number of people, you need to think beyond that.

I’m not at the stage where I am making anything from it. Originally, it was going to be an educational blog. But I’ve learned that you can kill two birds with one stone, by helping others and so your wallet.

So far I have only spent money on my blog.

But I have a passion for it and it does not discourage me. I would be lying to you if I said, I don’t want to make money out of this. Of course, it’s a business.

And if I want to expand Worry Head in order to reach and help more people, just like any kind of online business, I need to grow. So you have to put the money in first.

Many bloggers make a living from blogging. Just like Alex and Lauren, they make a great living, visit the world, and live a life of financial freedom. They can:

• Wake up when they want.
• Wake up where day wants.
• Don’t have a boss.
• Work for themselves.
• Have a safe financial future.

If that isn’t appealing, I don’t know what is!

So, having in mind, that we established the basic benefits of blogging, brings me to the next point. How do you actually do it?

Before the second part of this very article, I’m going to write a post about creating blogs from scratch, from top to bottom.

Until then I won’t go into too much depth but in order to start a blog, you need a hosting company and a platform.

I started cheap, in my humble opinion, with the best hosting company on the planet – Hostgator!

They have excellent tech engineers, who will help you with the most difficult issues. They are so friendly, you feel like talking to a friend.

You might not need their help but if any issues were to occur, they are extremely polite and helpful.

So, without any questions, I totally recommend you start a blog. Choose any niche you want, help people, and your own wallet.

You can start your blog with Hostgator for as little as £2.75 a month! it’s a bargain for the excellent service they provide!

By purchasing Hostgator by clicking on the link above or the picture below, you can directly access the page where I began.

And at absolutely no extra cost on your part, you will be to us great help, because we will receive a little percentage from Hostgator. It’s called “Affiliate Marketing” and I am going to teach you in my next article how to earn money from it.

Thank you ever so much! 

Allow me to continue…

Before the publication of this very blog, I sat every evening for a period of 8 months learning how to start the whole blogging thing.

I didn’t want to make any mistakes and so I fell into a common trap of delaying the process of going live. To be honest, plenty of people does the exact mistake.

You really have to learn blogging from the best if you want to succeed!

We carry ourselves away with designing and redesigning our blogs over and over again, looking for some kind of perfection that we will never find.

Because we want to succeed so much, perfectionism takes over and it’s difficult to snap out of it. Therefore defeating the very object, I’ve made mistake number one – I delayed clicking the publish button.

But I do not regret it!

I’ve learned a lot during the period of eight months. I also wrote a few articles about endometriosis and the mental health topic, so I could publish them anytime I wanted and have them in my arsenal as a few posts ahead.

I also spent that time designing my website from scratch. I was short on money and so I wanted to skip the process of buying a theme.

I decided to go with the longer, more tricky but cheaper route.

Designing it from scratch allowed me to learn a few technical bits and bobs, in case of any errors if they were to occur in the future.

And they did. But I knew what to do and how to solve the issues.

I didn’t buy a theme for a reason. I didn’t know how it would work for me in the sense of speed and performance. Nobody wants a slow-loading website.

At the very beginning of starting your blog and even towards a few weeks/months prior, you don’t need a mega-fast website.

Of course, it matters for your pages not to load longer than 3 seconds but at the beginning of running your blog, you will probably not get a big enough traffic, which would visit your site daily.

Besides, I didn’t want to pay for something I never tested before, so buying a theme wasn’t an option for me.

I went for one of the simplest options there was. A pretty blank but extra light-free Astra theme. It allowed me to design my website with one of the best editors there is – Elementor.

Elementor works very well with Astra, which by the way you can upgrade to pro, which is totally worth doing but as you can see based on my website, it is not necessary.

I combined both features and after spending some time, the Worry Head blog came to be.

First traffic…

To some, it might come as a surprise, that I didn’t ask my mom, my sister, brother, and friends I knew to be my first visitors. The majority of beginner bloggers do that.

I was always different. I always put the bar high in anything that I do and I wanted to learn blogging from the best people in the blogging world.

Not only that was the reason but the fact that Worry Head was based on the experience of my wife’s mental health problems and so I did not want to brag about it.

The privacy of my wife was and always will be my rule number one. Unless M will change her mind in the future, her face will never be revealed publicly on the blog.

Only our subscribers have a glimpse of her. I want to thank all those who join the bunch of fantastic people, who already subscribed to Worry Head.

The traffic came as soon as we published our first 10000-word article on endometriosis.

We had 15 visitors on day one. That’s pretty good, isn’t it?

Fast forward to the present day, our article was seen well over 1000 times, so did another one about depression, posted the following week.

It’s a slow growth but it was growing. So, Pinterest was the way to go!

Before two weeks ago I discovered how to be more successful in Facebook and Twitter promotion (I’ll explain it in another article), Pinterest was and always my favorite platform I used to share my blog.

Pinterest still is, and always will be!

If you want to join us on Pinterest, click HERE and follow us!

However, Pinterest has its faults. I was affected by the drop in traffic twice already. Both times for two different reasons.

Firstly, it was my lack of knowledge about Pinterest, its rules, and a bit of ignorance on my part towards learning about it, which caused me the loss of traffic.

The first loss came to be when I simply wanted to share my article on the subject, which is very close to my heart.

I wanted to share with others how I helped my lovely wife in the most difficult time of her life when she tried to commit suicide on a few occasions.

I was there. I helped M. I caught her in the act and I wanted to share my point of view on the matter, how I felt like her husband.

I explained how to help avoid such a difficult situation it also how it affected me because undoubtedly it impacted my life.

Don’t get me wrong, the article “Burden” is okay. It’s just the very fact of me promoting it on Pinterest was the issue.

It wasn’t Pinterest’s fault but the lack of my knowledge about its algorithms caused me a loss of traffic.

I used the word “suicide” on my pins and its mixture with the images I attached, in the Pinterest algorithm’s eyes I was “promoting suicidal attempts” whereas it was entirely the opposite.

The platform saw it as sensitive content.

Pinterest hid the board where my “distressing” pins were and did it without any knowledge of mine.

That was wrong on their part not to inform me.

Along with the board, all my depression-related pins were gone. Instantly I had less content on the platform and what followed, less visibility.

Over a period of less than a week, I’ve lost 90% of my traffic.

I just wanted to help but I ended up losing.

And just so you know – Pinterest will not warn you or tell you a hoot, they will just remove the sensitive content, they will hide it or in extreme cases, suspend your entire account.

Luckily for me, my account wasn’t suspended but the lack of information on what was happening to it and the unexpected, sudden loss of traffic, made me question why things were going wrong.

I should have been informed.

Immediately I emailed Pinterest but to my surprise, they took more than a few days to respond. Furthermore, their email didn’t specify the exact reason why.

I sent my first email on November 29th, with two questions; “why and what happened”?

Pinterest responded:

“You selected the option to appeal an account suspension, but the account you logged in with isn’t suspended. It’s possible you have more than one Pinterest account.”

After explaining to them that I have only one account (I provided its link), I received the following email:

“First I can confirm that everything is alright with your profile and am sorry for the confusion.

We have a bug in the system lately that prevents the data from November 27th onward to show up in the analytics (thus showing traffic of zero). I am sorry for the confusion.

As there does not seem to be an issue with your profile, I will gladly reach back out to you, as soon as I receive further information regarding the analytics bug.

At the moment I, unfortunately, do not have further details regarding it” (and by the way, don’t take notice of my old crappy logo haha).

So according to their answer, I had no issues with my profile but a bug…

I noticed, however, that Tailwind (pins scheduler) wasn’t showing my depression pins as it was supposed to. I needed to know more. I questioned the bug and asked about my pins.

The response came after a few days:

“Thank you for your reply. I am sorry about the impact it had on your blog.

The bug should only affect the view of your data in analytics, it will not affect how many impressions your pins will actually get.

Impressions are also expected to fluctuate (a lot in some cases) because of short trends or new Pins.

If you see a decrease, the best suggestion I can give is to create more content that your audience is interested in.

For the bug, unfortunately, we can not give a time frame for the solution right now but I will let you know when I get a prediction about it.

Sorry again. I hope it will be fixed in a timely manner.
If there is anything else I can do for you, please let me know”.

Pinterest suggested creating more content that my audience is interested in. But I did enough, I was pinning 10 new pins a day not to mention repinning my old ones.

That wasn’t the issue.

I should learn blogging from the best bloggers, then none of that would have happened.

I questioned my pins but got an unrelated response:

“Good morning Lucjan,

thank you for your message. I am reaching back out to you because the data bug has been fixed.

The Analytics Overview should now show your data correctly again. Please let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.

Have a nice day”.

Yes, I was happy not to have a bug anymore, but they didn’t answer my question. Another email followed with my question in regards to the pins I could not see.

Pinterest responded:

“Some content that doesn’t otherwise violate our Community Guidelines may still create a bad experience for some Pinners who come across it inadvertently.

In these cases, the Pins or boards may be hidden from search results and topic feeds.

Your “Depression” board is currently in this state.

Pinners who are following you or the board will still see the content from your board in their feeds”.

So I’ve got some clue of what was happening but still, there were no details about what exactly caused it.

I was told to look at the guidelines but no particular explanation was provided.

Can you guess what I did next? I question again. I needed to know the details so I could act on what happened. Pinterest responded:

“Thank you for contacting us on December 01, 2019. We hope we were able to resolve your inquiry – Loss of audience.

We’d love to hear your feedback on your experience with us. This survey will take approximately 2 minutes to complete. Thank you in advance! 

Overall, how satisfied are you with the Pinterest agent you interacted with”?

Well, I wasn’t in the mood for surveys you can probably guess but I tried not to get upset and questioned again.

I was given exactly the same survey again as if Pinterest ignored my questions. I felt ignored. But I didn’t give up. I questioned again… followed by:

“People come to Pinterest to discover inspiration they can use in their lives, and our principles maintain a safe, useful, and positive experience for our users.

Certain things that are perfectly acceptable to some people might make others uncomfortable. For this reason, we will keep this board hidden.

Additionally, please take some time to go through your Pins and remove any that may violate our policies as we have not yet verified the remaining Pins are compliant”.

I stopped questioning…

If Pinterest didn’t verify which pins were “sensitive”, I couldn’t chase the unchaste.

I felt they would never respond correctly.

I received two more emails with the survey. I filled one in telling my story and bad experience with the help department.

I received the last email on December 19th.

It took me 3,5 weeks to give up on chasing my answers. I decided to erase my depression completely.

I cleared out all my boards of pins that were showing zero in all stats. I redesigned new old ones and added new ones.

I had all my depression pins saved on Canva (where you can create beautiful things for FREE, forever) and so it was easy to pin them back, without the need for the creation of new ones for a week.

I contacted fellow Pinterest friends and realized, that not everyone had a bug. It made me question a few things but after noticing over time my small and slow, but steady growth, I forgot the bug existed.

I think it was the combination of the bug and my misunderstanding of Pinterest’s Guidelines, which led me to the loss of traffic.

But I’ve learned that bugs happen and the guidelines change now and then in order to avoid spam. I have to adjust to both.

It was my unwillingness to read the rules of Pinterest that caused it all in the long run.

I’d like you guys and girls to avoid my mistakes, and so do not put sensitive content, which can violate the rules of this beautiful platform.

Don’t be like me and simply read them.

Three and a half weeks of unanswered questions and the following three weeks of getting back on the track made me realize, that I’ve lost 1,5 months.

But that was then and now is the time to reverse the damage.

Right now I’m in the place, where the bug and my issue are both sorted. Mr. Pinterest awards me again with my slow but steady growth.

Whilst all this was happening, I stumbled upon Alex and Lauren of CreateandGo, who inspired me tremendously!

By reading, watching, and learning their trade I allowed myself to have a glimpse of hope.

They don’t even know me and yet helped me go through my difficult time with Pinterest. They kept me motivated and helped me stay on track to not give up.

I made a decision to purchase their courses and so I begin with the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche.

I am so looking forward to it. I’m willing to learn and grasp every precious piece of advice. I will take it wholeheartedly and follow their instructions.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, this is the first one on the subject of my successes and failures.

I am going to write another one soon as a review and the progress I’ll make…

No failures will take my passion away. Blogging is a long-term game. I want to help plenty of people, help my wife reach her satisfaction too.

Because in her difficult times of stress and worries, Worry Head will be the asylum, where people can escape to feel safe and wanted.

If you liked this article, please leave a comment in the section below. We greatly appreciate your support and contribution.

Take care of yourself and we’ll see you in another article.

Learn blogging from the best my friends!

Cheers!

I hope you enjoyed this post. Blogging is in my opinion the best way to reach financial freedom, but you have to work hard on it. Alex and Lauren did!

Beginning with the basics and progress to advance! Start making money today my friend!

All you need to build successful blog is here!