In this interview with Mishal Soni, we will learn many things. Mishal Soni is the man behind Blogging Excel, a blog dedicated to digital marketing, SEO, WordPress to make your blogging journey easy and successful.
Let’s read this interview with Mishal Soni and know new stuff.
1. Can you tell our readers about yourself and your blog?
Firstly, thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my blogging knowledge with your audience.
Hey folks, I’m Mishal Soni, a full-time blogger, affiliate marketer, and founder of Blogging Excel.
I’ve been blogging for more than three years. In these years, I have started so many blogs and learned so many things from those.
And finally, after so many unsuccessful blogs and learning a lot of things, I started my dream blog Blogging Excel (with another domain name) in October last year.
In this blog, I talk about blogging, WordPress, SEO, SMO, affiliate marketing, web hosting, it means almost everything related to blogging.
Apart from this, I am also running a facebook group name as “Blogging Excel VIP Group“, where I help my blogging buddies in their blogging related problems.
2. Describe how did you first get into blogging?
This is a bit long but very interesting story.
Since everyone knows what the value of a government job in India is, So after completing my studies, I also tried hard to get a govt job, but unfortunately, I failed every time.
After this, since I was a student of science stream, I also did a diploma in the paramedical field so that I could get a good job in this field.
After this I sat in the Govt eligibility test in which I got the #1 position, but after the result, all the rules were changed for that job, where the selection was to be made between the candidates who came within a division, it was now district wise, And since only people from specific backward communities were to be recruited in my district, even after I came in the first rank, I got out of this race.
This time was the most painful time of my life, I had gone into a lot of depression.
Since I had no job, I started spending most of my time on the Internet, and from here I came to know about blogging, and I also came to know how I can make a name and money from doing this.
This was the turning point of my life from where I started blogging and did not look back at the job.
3. Can you tell me some of your strengths that really helped you in blogging?
I can say that I am a good reader, I love reading new stuff every time, and this is the main strength that helps me in blogging, apart from this there are many other things which help me to remain in blogging like:
- My passion for blogging,
- I always think that I can write better and with more detailed content from all the articles available online on the topic on which I am writing.
- And yes, I can’t forget those who are always ready to help me in blogging.
4. What type of networking do you think is better to enhance your traffic to the blog?
Great question Vivek.
Many newbies think that they have prepared a good blog, written some good articles on it and also done SEO well, now a lot of traffic will come on their blog automatically, but it is not true my friend. Google does not send any traffic so easily to sites that are brand new.
In such a way, there are many ways through which you can get traffic to your blog.
I believe that blog commenting, article sharing, guest posting, and connecting with other fellow bloggers on Social Media these four are the best ways to enhance traffic to your blog.
If you follow these four ways properly, you will soon find that your blog is getting noticed, and is also receiving a good amount of traffic.
When I started Blogging Excel, I joined many Facebook groups from where I made many blogging friends who helped me a lot in getting traffic. I made some special friends who are like my brother cum mentor- Ankit Singhla, Santanu Debnath, Swadhin Agrwal, Sumit Sao, Navin Rao, Umer Quresi, Gururaja Murthy Devarangadi, and Sazzadul Bari, Sorry if I forgot anyone name.
5. How do you manage time to run your blog efficiently?
As I am a full-time blogger, I have made a daily schedule, but still, it is rarely possible that I can follow that schedule properly because I have a lot of responsibilities due to being the eldest son of the family. Because of this, I have many difficulties to follow it.
By the way, my daily schedule is like this-
- 6:30 – Wake up
- 6:30 – 7:30 – Morning Walk and some exercise.
- 7:30 – 8:30 – Take bath and breakfast
- 8:30 – 9:00 – Social Media time
- 9:00 – 2:00 – Work
- 2:00 – 3:00 – Lunch with family while watching TV
- 3:00 – 4:00 – One small afternoon Nap
- 4:00 – 8:30 – Work
- 8:30 – 10:30 – Family time and dinner.
- 10:30 – 12:00 – Work
- 12:00 – Sleep
6. What do you think is the best strategy that worked well for you to get more traffic to your blog?
Although I follow many strategies to get traffic to my blog, but yet every time, I have felt that the best strategy that works for me is On-page SEO. This is the reason that most of the traffic (more than 75%) on my blog is received directly from the search engines.
It doesn’t mean that you ignore the remaining sources of traffic, and if you are doing niche based blogging like me, then you should not ignore them at all.
Social media is the second-largest source of traffic on my blog. You must have seen that I remain very active in social media like Facebook; this is the reason for me being so active.
Apart from these two methods, you can follow a lot of ways to get more traffic like guest posting, email marketing, joining social media groups, blog commenting, etc.
7. Who has impacted you most in blogging and how?
Well, there are many people who have inspired me to keep blogging and stay in it, but I want to say that in my early days I didn’t know some well-known bloggers, at that time Harsh Agarwal (founder of ShoutMeLoud) was my inspiration.
After that, slowly, I came to know about many other successful bloggers. I started following their blogging journey and learned a lot from them. Some of them are – Anil Agarwal from bloggers passion, Ankit Singla from Master Blogging, Akshay from BloggingX, and many more.
8. What was the most challenging moment in your blogging journey so far?
If we talk about the challenges, then every blogger goes through many challenges in their initial days, in my blogging journey, I have faced two big challenges.
The first one, due to being from Hindi speaking area, my grip in English was very weak, since I had studied in Hindi medium from the beginning and even there was no one among my friends who knows English well and with whom I can use to practice it, so it bothered me a lot.
The second biggest challenging part of my blogging life was to start making money. I did not earn a single penny for a long time in my initial days.
It was a very frustrating moment, sometimes I thought I should leave it all, but I continued to take it forward with hope.
After a long time, I earned my first income of $115 through Adsense. It was a moment to spark my hope.
After this, I gradually became stable, and today, I am making good money through affiliate marketing and my own services.
9. What inspired you to start your blog?
As I told you earlier, due to no job, I started spending most of my time on the Internet where I came to know about blogging.
From the internet, I also came to know about Harsh Agrawal and his blog ShoutMeLoud. I started following ShoutMeLoud and learned a lot from there. Since I learned initial blogging from Shout Me Loud, I can say that I was inspired to start blogging from this blog.
10. How do you motivate yourself to keep the blog up and running?
I know what I’m doing, and I love to do it, so there’s no chance of being demotivated. But if ever I feel demotivated, I start reading people’s success stories, I peep at my past and then think about my future. Doing this again inspires me to engage in my work with great agility.
Apart from this, when I feel lazy, I start exploring social media groups, I see what problems people are looking for, and my agility comes back just to find answers and provide them.
11. How much time do you spend blogging?
Since I have already told that I am a full-time blogger, most of my time is for blogging, but still, I cannot say with exact accuracy that I spend a total of 5 hours blogging or 12 hours per day.
This is because when I am free or I do some other work, I still remain active on social media. And being active on social media is also a part of my blogging work according to me.
12. Would you encourage other people to make their blogs?
Absolutely, Blogging is awesome, and it is for everyone who wants to make their life easier.
When I can do blogging, why don’t you, this is also one of the main reasons why I started my blog on the blogging niche.
Yes, one more thing I want to say, many people think only engineers can do blogging, but it is not so, you can look at me as an example, I have completed my graduation from science stream and after that, I did my master’s degree with sociology.
It means that no matter from which stream you have completed your study or are studying, you can do blogging.
13. Can you name some of your favorite bloggers and explain why they are your favorites?
Well, I have already mentioned some of the top bloggers who have inspired me for blogging directly or indirectly, but still, I want to mention some names here, I enjoy reading whose blogs and learn something new every time.
- Brian Dean’s blog Backlinko.com – His blog is like an ocean for bloggers, and I follow his blog to learn backlinks and SEO strategies. I have one secret, if you want to improve your writing style then start following this blog from today itself.
- Jon Morrow (Smartblogger.com) – This name is quite popular in the blogging industry; their story is enough to inspire many people like me.
- Adam Connell (bloggingwizard.com) – The great thing about his blog posts is that they are researched very well.
14. Cool tips for a newbie?
Well, there are no such cool tips as blogging is not so easy. If you believe that you can do this, then you should not be late to start it, but if you are looking to make some quick money, then this industry is not for you at all.
Apart from this, while starting your blog, you should never pay attention to the niche which has more money, but you are not interested a lot. Instead, you should blog on such a niche in which you are interested.
Yes, one more thing, start making blogging friends, because without friends you can’t make your blog popular.
Thanks.
So this was all about the interview with Mishal Soni. Frankly, I enjoyed interviewing him and asking him questions and hope you’ll too like his points of view. There’s so much to learn from him.
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