I know, I know – I normally do a post about strategies for growing your blog in December. But this December I was so burned out from life and health and work that I couldn’t do it. So we’re doing it in January instead! The point is, this post has over 30 blogging resources that will help you grow your blog in 2025, make money from your blog, grow your blog audience, and more.
Past Editions: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great!
30+ Strategies for Growing Your Blog in 2025
As always, I’ve split this post into categories. But, also like always, some things can fit into multiple categories. I’ve split them into actions I’ve taken. That being said, not everything I do will apply to every blogger or creator. Similarly, there are plenty of things that you won’t see in this post (or even in posts from the past two years) because I’ve been blogging for so long and they are now normal.
However, you might also be wondering what the point is in doing this post every year. That’s because there are very few platforms that I have complete control over. Like, only this one. Instagram changes all the time. How people consume content changes all the time. So don’t be discouraged and let’s get into it.
Courses
Affiliate Marketing the PIPs Way
“Do you want to make more money? You see, I’ve figured out how to make a killing on affiliate marketing. And I’m going to teach you everything I know. It won’t be easy – but if you put in the time and effort, you can achieve the same level of success I have” (x).
I started this course in 2023 and finished it at the beginning of 2024. As always, I’m not going to share exactly what I did as a result of this course, as that’s not fair to the creator. But I will say that I updated some of my newsletter automations in ways that I do not describe later in this post.
The reason why I’m sharing this is because, before 2024, I hadn’t done a lot with my automations. Sure, I created them, and I have a specific welcome sequence for the holiday season and one for the rest of the year. But this course had me rethinking my automations and I updated them in a way I hadn’t before.
(This is actually a theme throughout this post. I did a lot more with my newsletter in 2024 than I had in the past.)
Tips for Successful Blog Posts + Blog Post Prompts You Need
Creating a Printable’s Business From Scratch
“Create a passive income printables business completely from scratch in 2 hours, using no premium software, skills, or assets” (x).
While I’m not interested in creating a brand new business, I have so much content that could easily be converted into printables. Not only does this course help you do that, but it gave me templates and ideas that were jumping-off points.
Research Tips for Health Bloggers
How to Add 100+ Email Subscribers Each Month for FREE
“In our 8-week course, How to Add 100+ New Subscribers Each Month for FREE … you’ll discover how to consistently add 100 or more email subscribers each and every month for free. You’ll learn our 7 strategies and improvements to what you’re already doing. Once you get a strategy working, you can move to another one. Each of these strategies should add 100 email subscribers each month…for FREE. I know because I use these strategies in my niche business where we add more readers everyday” (x).
Among other things, this course is what led me to publish The Essential POTS Symptom Journal! That, plus other things, really worked. In the past, my newsletter has only been in my top 5 traffic sources once. In 2024, after I completed the course in the beginning of the year, it was in the top 5 in 8 out of the remaining 10 months.
I really recommend doing this course.
11 Things You Need for a Good Health Blog
Traffic Jam SEO
“You’ll find this course is easy to consume and develop your SEO skills so that your website is found for all the right things in all the right places! […] You’ll find this course is easy to consume and develop your SEO skills so that your website is found for all the right things in all the right places! Watch as we show you how to create simple and impactful SEO so you can market your business with ease. Prefer to read instead of watch? We include the course book so you can do that. We also have an action guide to help you create your SEO strategy” (x).
Some of the things this course helped me do included finding new-to-me SEO tools and updating 56 blog posts and pages.
Yeah, you read that right. Fifty-six.
(Sorry, like I said, I’m not revealing the exact changes I made. That’s proprietary information!)
17 Things Needed for Making a Blog Successful
Newsletter & Social Media
Using a paid version of MailerLite
Like I said in the courses section, I spent a lot of 2024 working on my newsletter in a variety of ways. And part of that was because I was actually using a paid version of MailerLite for the first time.
I hit my limit of subscribers for the free version at the very end of 2023, so when I started 2024, I was ready to take my newsletter to the next level.
One thing that came from upgrading my newsletter was that I had more options for the type of newsletter and the scheduling.
I have 3 types of newsletters: monthly round-ups of my content across the blog and social media; conversational types with discounts, freebies, updates, etc.; and new blog posts. But it hasn’t been super clear to me what works best for readers – both in terms of structure and subject lines – so one thing I did was start A/B testing.
I did a fair amount of A/B testing with the subject lines for new blog posts and monthly round-ups, as those are consistent across posts. But since the whole goal of those posts is for people to get interested and click on the content they feature, I needed to get people to read them in the first place.
The A/B testing enabled me to pick 2 different subject lines for the same email. At the time the newsletter was scheduled, they sent the email to a small group of subscribers. One group got the email with subject line A and the other got subject line B. Whichever subject line got more people to lick into after the first hour was then used to send the email out to everyone else.
But the other big thing I did for my newsletter is when I scheduled it to go out.
Anyone who has been a subscriber for the last two years or so knows that I send out my emails on Monday. Specifically, at 8 PM on the US east coast (think the NYC time zone). But before 2024, I was sending them all out at the equivalent of that time zone. If you live in Australia, then, you got it on Tuesday.
But with the paid MailerLite subscription, I was able to send them out at 8 PM on Monday per time zone. Instead of getting my newsletter on Tuesday, Australians got it at 8 PM on Monday. My open rate increased by a lot once I did this!
As a whole, I played with some other scheduling things, but I kept coming back to that setting. It has made a big difference, which isn’t too surprising. Most of my subscribers are in the US, but what you might not know is that the lower 48 has 4 time zones. Sure, East Coasters were getting my newsletter at 8 PM, but the rest of the US was getting it between 5 PM and 7 PM. Not a lot of people were reading newsletters at that time.
12 Simple Ways for Bloggers To Get Ready for the Holidays
One of the other things I did with MailerLite in 2024 was update my newsletter templates.
I have 3 of them that I use the most: one for normal newsletters, one for when I have a new blog post, and one for a monthly wrap-up. They’re pretty similar – at least in the headers and footers – but I don’t have as much extra stuff in the monthly wrap-up template as much as I do in the others. That’s because those wrap-up emails also have highlights of my Instagram content, and I don’t want to add more things even after a message, the blog posts published, and the Instagram wrap-up. Those emails are already pretty full!
I updated all of my templates with links to my shop page and I updated one or two template with a link to my new workbook for chronic illness patients.
Blogging 101: Terms You Need To Know
I know that I’ve already briefly touched on these, but I wanted to talk more about specifically what I did with my auotmations.
I realized that it had been a while since I last reviewed, let alone updated, my automations, so I took advantage of having more tools available to update them. This included things like spelling, grammar, outdated information, and links. I added more affiliate links (and more relevant ones) and more links to relevant blog posts.
The Best Plugins for a Blog in WordPress
Finally – this is the last thing about my newsletter automations! – I made new automations with my new paid MailerLite account.
This is different because instead of updating existing automations I made a few brand new ones, especially because when I made my first automations my free account only allowed me to have so many.
The two newest automations are for my customers. One is for when people buy my signature ebook and one is for people who buy my workbook. I had already connected my Ko-Fi shop to my MailerLite account so when people buy anything they’re added to my subscribers if they weren’t already. But this is specifically for people buying those two products.
Here’s the thing, though: the automation is only one email. Because automations don’t have to be 8 emails!
As I said in the last section, when someone new joins my newsletter, they receive a couple of different emails. I don’t want to add another 5 emails to that sequence. Plus, a lot of people who buy those two products are already subscribers. They don’t need to get the sequence for a second time.
If you buy one of those two products, a day or a week later depending on the product, you get another email from me thanking you for your purchase. It’s relatively short and is just designed to keep customers engaged.
52 Blog Post Ideas Health Bloggers Need
In the last quarter of the year, I started getting newsletter subscribers in droves. This might sound amazing, but I had reason to believe that a lot of them were spam. For example, after getting 100 subscribers a month at the beginning of the year, there was a week where I got 100 new subscribers per day out of nowhere.
This concerned me for 2 reasons. First, I didn’t want to pay to increase my newsletter account because of spam followers. Second, the whole point of having a newsletter for my blog is having a dedicated audience. Spam followers are not a dedicated audience.
To deal with this, I turned on the double opt-in option for the sign-ups of my most popular pages. Yes, this meant that some real people would not sign up if they had to deal with going back to their email to complete joining the newsletter. But that risk is worth it if I stopped the spam, which it did.
How To Brainstorm Blog Post Ideas: 12 Questions To Ask Yourself
Added ads to more posts
Look, if I want to make money from passive things like ads, I need to put the ads on the blog.
I updated 8 of my most popular posts by putting ads in the posts and not just the sidebars. I also added them to all of my existing fall and winter holiday posts, including all of my gift guides.
Finally, I say this like 10 times a year, but updating old posts in any way shows search engines that those pages are still relevant.
25 Awesome Blog Post Ideas for Beginners
Removed inactive themes and plugins
Having inactive stuff on your blog slows it down. Yes, having too many active ones does, too, but if you aren’t using something and it doesn’t serve a purpose, you should remove it.
I do have 1 inactive theme now and 1 or 2 inactive plugins, but they all serve purposes. I want to have a back-up theme already installed and ready to go in case of blog emergency and the inactive plugins are back-ups for some active plugins. Or, rather, I’m testing to see if other plugins better serve the same purpose. Then I’ll remove whatever isn’t necessary.
How To Write a Blog Post in 10 Easy Steps + Free Blog Post Template
Changed my Cookie Notice plugin
Again, changing for what works. I did this because I like my things to be legal and the one I was using didn’t cover everything it needed to.
The plugin I use now is CookieYes | GDPR Cookie Consent.
Your Guide to Making and Using a Media Kit as a Blogger
Added Products for the Chronically Ill page
Don’t you hate going to a site that promises “the best tools you need for your illness!” only to find you have to go digging for them all? I have illnesses! I don’t have time or energy to go digging!
This page also is pulled together with widgets so I can easily replace them when a link is no longer available.
12 Tips for New Health Bloggers
Blog Posts
Published updated versions of posts
I published updated versions of 3 old posts:
- Everything You Need for Promoting Your Blog in 2024: I post a version of this every 2 years
- What Is Advocacy? A Patient Advocate’s Guide: An updated and different version of What Is Self-Advocacy? An Answer + Strategies To Help from 2020
- Be a Pro at Blogging: Best Practices You Need: Other versions include How To Be Good at Blogging: Blogging with Limited Time from 2022 and My Proven Method for Blogging with Limited Time from 2018
So why did I post new versions instead of updating these old ones?
One reason is that some of the information in the old one was almost completely irrelevant, especially regarding promoting blog posts.
Another reason is that I added a significant amount of text and information. An extra 100 or so words? Update the existing old post. An extra 1,000 or so words? New post.
What Blogging Platform Should I Use?
Deleted blocks that don’t work any longer
For those of you who don’t use self-hosted WordPress or a similar platform, a block refers to every part of a post. Images are blocks, as are text, plugins, ads, social media share buttons, etc.
But the problem if you have been blogging since 2013 and published well over 1,000 blog posts is that you can have blocks that no longer work, generally due to an external decision like prohibiting certain types of APIs, but sometimes due to my decision to uninstall a plugin.
Why is this a problem? Lots of broken things (links and blocks) means your blog can be slower, which leads to people leaving your blog more, and tells search engines they shouldn’t recommend you to others as often.
So in 2024, I deleted blocks that didn’t work … from 400 blog posts. Not only did updating them in general improve things, but specifically removing or replacing broken things improved my blog traffic.
The Dos and Dont’s of How To Get Your Blog Noticed
Updated popular posts
Again, updating posts shows search engines that they’re still relevant. But what I specifically did with 20 of my most popular posts was add images to them.
While a lot of things have changed since 2013, one thing that hasn’t is how much having images helps your blog. But you do want the images to be relevant and you don’t want them to slow down your blog.
By and large, I added 4-5 extra images – especially ones I’ve made over the years for Pinterest – to the end of my blog posts in a gallery to keep them manageable. Sometimes, though, if the blog posts are long and would benefit from having the text broken up, I added them throughout the post.
After all, for a long time, I only used 1 or 2 images in a blog post. This one – although it is very long – has 4.
This is what those galleries look like:
One of the biggest benefits of these images is that they make the posts easier to share on social media, especially Pinterest.
Why I Switched to MailerLite from MailChimp for My Email Newsletter
Updated problematic blog posts
Okay, these weren’t “problematic” like I shared offensive views or used words I shouldn’t have. They were problematic for load time and causing me to lose traffic.
I learned they were problems from the free Jetpack Boost plugin, as well as what I needed to do to improve them.
(But if I did/said something problematic in the normal sense, please let me know. I’ve been doing this for over 10 years and I’m human, but that doesn’t mean I want to keep things up that are confusing, don’t accurately reflect my views, or contain a word or phrase that is offensive.)
Why Isn’t My Blog Getting Traffic?
Started a blog post series
I am SO proud of my Rheumatoid Arthritis Guide A-Z series. It covers so many things, from medications to blood tests to remission.
I’ve done series before, such as:
But this series was different because it was, essentially, an extremely long blog post split into 3 posts.
It’s my most exhaustive explanation for and description of an illness, especially RA, and I worked really hard on it.
Now, what were the benefits to this?
It brought in a lot of traffic, and it also kept people on my site longer because there were 3 posts posts.
It helped my reputation as a knowledgeable blogger and advocate.
Writing the series and the reaction to it inspired me to write more of these over the next few years.
But it also helped me get through COVID and my recovery. I wrote it over the course of months – starting before my infection – and on days when I felt bad but not horrendous I could write one or two entries and feel like myself.
I’m so excited for this year and beyond. While I wish I got this post up in December like I originally planned, I like starting the year this way. I’ve updated my docs with the most recent blog stats, where my blog traffic came from in 2024, and my most popular posts of the year, and I’m excited for what’s to come.
Want to be an even better blogger? Get my signature ebook for health bloggers, Take Your Blog (And Income!) to the Next Level. It’s just $10 and includes blog and social media ideas, templates, places to grow your blog and income.
Like this post? Share it! Then check out:
Are You Plagiarizing on Your Blog? How You Might Be + Why It’s Bad, How To Make a Gift Guide, Why an Editorial Calendar Is Really Worth the Time + 164 Blog Post Ideas, Why You Need a Social Media Content Calendar
Kate Mitchell is a blogger, chronic illness patient, and advocate who helps people understand chronic illness and helps chronic illness patients live their best lives.
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