MY BLOG IS ONE YEAR OLD!

Hey everyone!  Well, it’s official.…this blog is one year old!  Mystery Money Man went live on August 20th, 2016. During the past couple of weeks I thought about how I should mark this personal blogging milestone.

I realized that other, more savvy bloggers than myself, would probably have some pretty cool stuff lined up. They might do a giveaway, launch a survey, or take their readers on a journey through the first 12 months of their blog, noting the hits and misses along the way. Heck, some would use it as an excuse to invite their friends over and throw a party.

I thought about all of that stuff. In the end, I realized that I needed to keep it real.

You see, I’m a really boring er, low key kind of guy, so the pomp and circumstance just isn’t me. I’ve never been one for big celebrations. In fact, I would likely ignore my own birthday if it weren’t for my wife and kids.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to mark my first year of blogging by sharing a few thoughts on why I started in the first place, and how things looked in the days and weeks leading up to the Mystery Money Man launch.

Most of all, I want to give a shout out to all of the incredible people who have supported me on this journey, through reading, commenting, emailing, or simply promoting my blog. Believe me when I say I am very grateful for every one of you!

READY OR NOT

A year ago Sunday, I took a deep breath, hit the “GO” button, and this blog came into existence. August 20th, 2016. It was only a couple of months prior that I made the decision to start a blog.

When I say that I knew nothing about blogging prior to Mystery Money Man, I mean I knew absolutely nothing. I had zero experience with building a website, had no clue what SEO stood for, even WordPress was completely foreign to me.

I only knew that I wanted write, and I saw blogging as a way to do that. The ideal platform.

Somewhere along the line, I had decided that personal finance was the best footing from which to construct my ideas, and to share them with others.

After all, personal finance is something I’m passionate about, and have experience with. Enough experience to sound like I know what I’m talking about SOME of the time, at the very least.

In my mind, a healthy relationship with money is integral to how we perform in just about every area of life.

Because of this, any discussion about money can become a discussion about family, about parenting, about our experiences, our physical and emotional health, our greatest victories and our deepest fears.

There are no limits.

LEARNING CURVE

In the two months prior to launch, it took what felt like a couple hundred hours to build the site and create the initial content. It seems crazy now, but the learning curve was STEEP. I spent the better part of my two-week summer vacation doing a lot of heavy lifting. To this day I can say I never would have gotten my blog off the ground without that large block of time I had set aside.

When Mystery Money Man went live, I remember how unprepared I felt. I’d written a handful of posts, maybe 3 or 4 in advance, to make sure there was more than a couple of minutes worth of content to read.

I debated tweaking the site some more, writing a few more posts prior to launch, but I knew that I would never feel completely ready. Seriously, realizing that no one cared helped as well. I mean, my reader count was a big, fat, ZERO. It’s the only time I’ve felt relieved at the prospect of having no traffic on my site.

MY BIGGEST FEAR

When I started blogging, my biggest fear was running out of things to write about. I honestly doubted whether I could go more than a couple of months before exhausting myself of material.

A year later, this is my 61st post.

That may not be impressive to some, but I feel pretty good about it. I’ve averaged more than a post per week, for a full twelve months. That’s a number that would have felt insurmountable last August.

It’s also taught me a powerful lesson about consistency, and what can be accomplished by tackling a big goal one small step at a time.

SUMMARY

By far, the most valuable thing I have taken from my blogging experience has been the personal connections I’ve made with you, my readers, and so many fellow bloggers. Everything else feels superficial by comparison.

I have learned so much from you. You’ve been supportive and encouraging, challenged my thinking and inspired me to always improve, and I thank you!

Love,

-MMM

PS. I have to admit, looking ahead to Year Number Two is pretty exciting. Perhaps I should throw a party after all, even just a small one?…..nah. : )