Last year I took a challenge to write 30 posts in 30 consecutive days on my blog Trade Brains in July. There were three main reasons for taking this challenge.

First, I wasn’t posting enough. In the months prior to this challenge, my frequency of posting articles was somewhere between 3-5 per month. Yeah, I know, this is low, especially for a guy who doesn’t have any full-time job.

Anyways, the reason for this inconsistency in the past months (before the challenge) was because I was busy launching my android app. At that time, I was handling everything- from app ideation, design to development. And obviously, leading the developers to get the desired result and building the screens the way I want to look– took a lot of efforts. Anyways, after a lot of iterations in development and testing, I launched this app on play store in June 2019.

Nonetheless, launching the app was just the beginning. The next steps were more intense which involved getting downloads and collecting feedback from the users to improve features. And because of all these works, I wasn’t able to give enough time to post articles on my blog.

The second reason for taking this challenge was because my blog was not growing (not at all). The reasons why my blog was not growing was that neither I was posting consistently, nor I was promoting the existing articles. I hardly send one newsletter per months at that time.

If you look at the figures, I reached +100k monthly pageviews many months preceding the challenge. However, since the past couple of months, the number of monthly page views were hovering somewhere between 90k to 130k. I wanted this to change and to grow my blog traffic massively. Taking this challenge looked like a good idea. 

And third, I wanted to test out a few things. For example, I knew that Google rewards the blog if you post frequently i.e. ideally Google rankings and organic traffic should increase when you blog often and consistently. However, I wanted to test this hypothesis on my own blog for my future references.

Besides, there was one more personal reason for taking this challenge. In the past, I have always challenged myself so that I do not get stuck in my comfort zone. And I thought, taking this challenge and committing to posting daily for the next 30 days can brush up my writing skills. Moreover, I guessed how hard it could be to write a single article every day?

The outcomes of this challenge stunned me!!

How I kept myself motivated for 30 days?

Before starting the challenge, I knew that I won’t be able to keep myself motivated for 30 long days if I commit just to myself. After all, cheating yourself is the easiest thing that anyone can do.

Let me explain this by giving an example. For those who go to gym can easily relate to this. When you go to gym, if the instructor is watching, you might be giving your best, lifting heavy weights or doing fast push-ups. However, when no one is watching, is your performance the same? Do you actually do the same number of push-ups at the same pace? If you are a regular guy like me, then most probably not!

Therefore, I decided to take a bigger step so that there won’t be any turning back.

And the best way to keep myself motivated was by committing to a bigger audience, not merely to myself. Hence, I emailed a newsletter to all my 24,000 subscribers that I was taking the 30 days challenge to write 30 consecutive blog posts. I also posted an announcement for the same on the blog. Here’s the exact snippet from the newsletter that I send to my subscribers.

 

Besides, there was also an added benefit of sending this newsletter. Along with telling my commitment to the subscribers, I also asked for topic requests from the readers that they want me to cover in the upcoming blogs. This single email helped me generate hundreds of topic ideas and I understood better regarding what my blog readers exactly want me to write.

Later, I made a content schedule for the next 30 days based on the response that I received and also added a few of my personal topics that I wanted to write in this duration.

Also read: HOW I BUILD AN EMAIL LIST OF 18,000+ SUBSCRIBERS WITHIN 13.5 MONTHS (FROM SCRATCH)?

Results of the Challenge

Most probably, this challenge was the first time when the majority of my works were easily visible to my audience. After all, it added 30 new articles and people were easily able to notice my daily blogging frequency.

Although, I’ve consistently worked on my blog for the last one and a half year, however, a lot of those works were in the backend. For getting traffic, I did a lot of things apart from writing blogs like answering over 700 questions on Quora, reposting blogs on medium, writing answers on different forums, creating youtube videos, growing social following etc. 

These activities were not easily visible to the direct audience on my blog. However, posting consistently for one month was a front-end work and was massively appreciated by the blog readers.

Now, here are the three key outcomes that I noticed on my blog after completing the 30 days, 30 posts challenge.

1. My Blog Traffic skyrocketed:

After the 30 days challenge, I found that my blog traffic increased significantly.

By the end of the second month after the challenge, the blog page-views increased by around 100%. And this traffic kept on increasing for the next few months after the challenge even when my posting frequency decreased notably. 

Note: This increase in traffic for the next few months may be because Google takes a few weeks to rank your articles in the search index (i.e. result from SEO is not instantaneous). 

Moreover, the organic traffic on my blog from Google search peaked after the challenge. This made me conclude that Google actually rewards consistency and posting frequently (and obviously, your content quality should be great to reap this reward).   

However, I do not want to give the entire credits of the traffic growth to just ‘blogging frequency’.

The quantity of blog posts is another factor that may have played a big role in this growth. Before the start of the challenge, there were 155 articles on the blog. And after the challenge, the total numbers of articles increased to 185.

In other words, there was an increase in the total number of posts on my blog by around 20%. And obviously, as the number of articles increases, the blog traffic should also shoot upwards. Even if one article is getting an average of hundred page views per day, having an additional 30 articles results in an extra 3k pageviews per day on the blog. 

Overall, I believe both frequency and an increased quantity of articles helped my blog to significantly increase the number of visitors and page views.

2. Returning visitors increased

This may be an obvious outcome of the 30 days challenge. As my readers were expecting new posts every day, they continuously returned back to the blog to check out the recent posts.

Moreover, I was also writing frequent newsletters to the blog subscribers informing them about the newest published content. I was also actively sharing the new posts on social media (my combined social media reach from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc is over 45k). This further resulted in an increase in returning visitors. Overall, the percentage of returning visitors also peeked after the 30 days challenge. 

3. More emails and interactions from readers

During the challenge, people knew that I was blogging actively. Many of my newsletter subscribers and social media followers already requested articles and suggested ideas during the pilot mail.

For every new newsletter that I was sending during the challenge, the number of replies, topic request, suggestions, and appreciation emails increased from the subscribers. 

Moreover, even the first time visitors on my blog started noticing the consistency in my posts. And they started commenting on blogs and mailing me their doubts.

Further, as the number of emails and comments on my posts increased, I had to fix a time to respond to their questions. Anyways, this didn’t burden me. After all, it feels good when people notice your work, appreciates it or even ask their doubts concerning any point that you covered in any of your blogs.

Therefore, I fixed the time between 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM every day to reply to the emails and comments. This way, I could reply to the questions of the people on the very same day and also not waste any time during my other working hours for checking or responding to the emails.

Bonus Benefits:

In addition to spiked blog traffic, increased returning visitors and frequent emails and blog comments, I also noticed a few other noteworthy outcomes of the challenge.

For example, I started getting more sponsored and affiliate post requests. However, I declined all of them bluntly as I didn’t have time to negotiate the pricing and I didn’t wanted to shift my energy and focus. At that time, I was trying to create valuable posts and working on paid contents may divert my effectiveness.

The second big outcome which I noticed was the increased number of newsletter subscribers and social media followers. As the readers did not want to miss out any of my latest articles, they started signing up for the email newsletters. The newsletter subscription increased by over 35% since the 30 days challenge.

The third and final outcome, I became overly comfortable in writing blog posts. Now, I am confident that I can write an excellent blog post which can get a lot of attention from the readers even within two hours. During those 30 days, I build a framework for all my blog contents. Now, whenever I have to write a new article, I just have to put contents, not to work from the zero levels. 

My final advice

Don’t take this challenge if you are not ready..!!!

When I took this challenge, I believed that writing 30 articles won’t be a big deal. After all, I’ve written over 150 articles on my blog in the past eighteen months. However, writing consecutive 30 articles turned out to be a totally different experience (and not an easy one).

Maybe one of the biggest reason why this challenge was not easy for me was that I am a finance blogger. Writing an investing article requires a lot of research, data, cross-checking the facts etc. For every topic request from the readers, I had to research intensively and then to simplify the concept in easy words. Moreover, making people read finance blogs and not sleeping in between, is not an easy task. 

Anyways, I believe that writing 30 consecutive blog posts even in any other niche (like cooking, fitness etc) also won’t be easy. After all, the bloggers have to be creative every single day to write amazing articles to convert their ideas into words.

However, if you want to take massive action on your blog and move to the next level, I would definitely encourage you to take this challenge. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. Happy Blogging!!