Content Creation and Personal Growth with Lidiya Kesarovska

I have recently connected with a fellow business blogger that I was so pleased to meet! Lidiya is the founder of Let’s Reach Success, where she teaches business, mindset, money, manifestation, lifestyle design, and personal growth.

After listening to her podcast and reading a few of the articles on her blog, I knew I needed to get into her world. And I’m so glad that I did!

After exchanging a few emails with her and finding that we had so much in common, I had to feature her story at Blogging She Thrives and introduce you to her too.

Here’s my interview with Lidiya Kesarovska. Enjoy!

1. Who’s Lidiya Kesarovska and what’s Let’s Reach Success all about?

I’m a blogger, course creator, podcast host and self-published author. I’m the founder of Let’s Reach Success where I teach personal, spiritual and business growth. My content mostly has to do with documenting my journey – sharing the tips and strategies that worked for me, as well as the mistakes I’ve made so others can avoid them and build their online business and design a life on their own terms faster.

2. Can you share a little bit about your blogging journey and how your blog evolved over the years?

I launched my blog in 2013 and it started as a hobby project. I’ve always loved writing, I had a message to share with the world, and I was passionate about personal growth. So the solution to combining all these and turning them into something meaningful was to start a blog and create content around those topics.

It took a few years before I started treating it like a business, though. Once I did, it grew much faster.

It eventually reached 100K monthly page views, turned into an authoritative site and got the attention of brands that wanted to work with me, as well as owners of bigger platforms who wanted to feature me or link to my site. It also led to earning a full-time income as a blogger.

Now, the traffic is much lower (30K-40K), and so is the income as a result of that. So I’m working on growing the numbers again.

3. I know you have several offers (books, courses and, more recently, a brand-new membership for bloggers). Can you tell us about those and who you created each of them for?

I love creating digital products and believe they are one of the best ways people can work with me. Especially knowing that I don’t offer coaching or any 1:1 services as it’s simply not my thing.

I’ve invested in plenty of courses and know what the right program can lead to, so I also entered the online course industry myself a few years ago.

The first ever course I created was Blog to Biz System, and it covers anything a new or intermediate blogger needs to start, grow and monetize a website.

Then, there’s Fearless Content, a 4-week program that will help you get clear on what’s no longer serving you and release it energetically, re-organize your whole business from a place of abundance, and achieve radical alignment in your content creation. 

This one was really fun to create as I combined content creation and branding, with personal growth and spirituality. I really infused my unique energy into this program, shared a framework and processes and strategies that I’ve created and have worked for me, and I believe it can help you unlock your best content and up level your brand. 

I combined my experience after 7 years of publishing content online and experimenting with different formats, platforms, niches, passions, audiences, goals, business models, and truly put my heart and soul into Fearless Content.

Next is The Blog Sponsorship Boss, another course for bloggers but which is very tactical and focuses on one specific income stream – making money from sponsored posts.

It’s your one-stop shop for anything related to making money with sponsored content as a blogger:

This course is a result of years of experience in the sponsored blogging niche and makings tens of thousands of dollars from sponsorships with just 1 blog. I believe that if I can do it, you can do it too.

I also have Bold Business School, which is my signature program for course creators teaching you how to create not just a course, but a dream offer and a digital product business set up for unlimited profit and freedom.

This expansive and empowering business experience will support you through

My latest creation is Blogger Playground – a community for bloggers to come together and learn, connect and level up.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Read my disclosures to know more.

It’s a monthly membership that gives you behind the scenes content and my latest and greatest strategies, allows you to share your latest blog content and get feedback on it, get motivated thanks to the action others in the group are taking, and brainstorm ideas.

And last but not least, it’s a safe, loving and empowering space to share what’s on your mind, ask me questions, feel less lonely, and find hope in the rollercoaster that is business.

I also offer Blog Audits. That’s a professional review of every element on your website.

You get a 60-page PDF file containing information about the most important areas of your blog as well as suggestions on how to improve it and the next steps to take.

Aside from that, there are some smaller trainings I’ve released over the years, such as: 

• Money Magic – a 3-day video training that will help you change the way you look at money, uncover and re-frame limiting beliefs, and welcome abundance in your life;
• Blog Income Boost – an online pre-recorded workshop, after which you’ll walk away with 7 revenue-boosting things you can do on your blog right away to get closer to that 5-figure income; and
• Pinterest Boost – a masterclass to help you demystify Pinterest and create your easy pinning strategy (no automation tools needed!) so you can bring consistent traffic to your blog.

I have also self-published a few books. They are mostly on personal growth topics, but last year I published my first-ever business book, High-Value Offers.

4. Inside your membership you offer numerous resources, strategies you’ve been trying out, income reports, and you also answer questions 1:1… How has this experience been different for you as a course and content creator, and what plans do you have for it?

I’ve been thinking of creating a membership for a long time now, but the time wasn’t right yet. Until last year. I did the pre-launch 3 months ago and the official launch last month, and the first members are already in.

I’m absolutely loving the experience of running it, growing it, and being a part of it.

Running a membership is challenging because there are 3 big things to take care of all the time:

• Creating consistent and valuable content (that’s worth paying for);
• Getting new members in;
• Keeping existing members in.

I can see why that’s too much for some people, so it’s important to make sure you really want this, have the time and energy for it, and can always come up with new content that members will find useful.

This experience has been different for me also because I needed a community like that for bloggers online, and I didn’t know where to find it.

So I created it. And it has already surpassed my expectations, to be honest.

I’m allowing a lot of creative freedom for this project, and also I’m co-creating with members in a beautiful way.

There are collaborations happening inside Blogger Playground already, open topics members can post in, questions are being asked and discussions are being started, all while I’m posting new strategic content weekly.

It’s such an amazing experience, and I’m also learning a lot from it.

5. With so much going on, how do you manage to do #allthethings?

What I’ve found to work well is to know which are the activities in your business that actually produce results, and to leave the rest for whenever you have time or feel like it.

Podcasting, for example, is quite time-consuming. That’s why I record new episodes only now and then and just see it more as a passion project, as a side activity that contributes to my brand and business, but which isn’t something I need to do weekly.

The income-generating activities for a blogger usually have to do with building traffic, creating and updating content, email marketing, and monetization. 

Any time you’re too focused on perfecting the design of your blog, posting on all social media channels because others are doing it (but without checking the metrics to see if the conversion rate is worth your time), following trends in the blogging industry, or changing direction too often because you don’t see quick results, chances are, you’re avoiding doing the things that will actually move the needle forward. 

6. Tight to our recent conversation about blogging in English as a non-native speaker, how do you feel about offering products and courses designed for an American audience? Did you find it challenging at first?

It always felt right. I never considered anything else. 

But that’s also a personal preference. I don’t come from an English-speaking country and don’t live in one (I’m from Bulgaria but relocated to the Netherlands).

I’m not the type of person to limit myself by sharing my message in one language that only one country speaks.

Lidiya Kesarovska

Also, as I’ve been in the personal development industry since I was a teenager (first as a consumer, then as a creator), I’m used to relying on American sources of information.

Another thing to mention is that I love the fact that my personal and business life are separate. The business is only registered in the country I live in, but the traffic comes from anywhere else in the world.

My goal has always been to reach the right people, the ones who – like me – are looking for the kind of information online that I write about. And creating content in English is the way to reach them.

As for offering programs in a language that isn’t my native but is for the customers, well that’s challenging. They can’t ignore my accent, some typos or that I express myself differently than them sometimes.

But again, if they want to work with me, resonate with how I teach things, and are dedicated to doing the work, then it can be fine.

With practice, you can improve. My podcast episodes and video lectures now sound better than back then. And I’ve updated older programs with newer recordings for those very reasons.

But I can’t imagine not creating the products I truly feel like creating, so while it’s harder for non-native English speakers, it can’t stop me. 

I am sure many other international bloggers have a hard time with this, though, and it prevents them from creating the content they want to create.

In that case, they can stick to just writing for now. Or they can work on their mindset and let go of the need to be perfect or to sound like native speakers, and just use their voice to share their message. 

7. What are your best tips for new bloggers looking to grow their traffic quickly?

SEO + Pinterest is what I call the ideal blog traffic formula.

Create optimized articles that provide value, give them time to rank, and share them on Pinterest often. This can ultimately lead to both short-term and long-term traffic.

Also, once you have a good number of posts on your site, don’t forget to go back to them, update them, maybe republish them, share them on socials again, and just give them a chance to rank better.

Google loves fresh content. 

8. How much content would you recommend new bloggers to publish if they were starting from scratch today?

I’ve always recommended to aim at posting 1 quality, optimized (and not too short) article per week. That mostly applies to new bloggers because they don’t know how much that takes, can’t manage their time well yet, aren’t sure what blogging activities to do first, and so on.

Once this feels like a no-brainer and you’re doing it week after week and still have free time that you want to dedicate to blogging, go for 2 posts weekly, then 3, and so on.

The more content, the better, but only as long as you don’t compromise on quality.

Lidiya Kesarovska

As for word count, plenty of experts have talked about this over the years.

You don’t need to create articles that contain thousands of words just so you can rank on top. The point is to make it answer the user intent and to provide real value, while optimizing the piece really well.

I’d say anything below 800 words is not long enough to give any solid information and to introduce a topic in detail.

But from then on, write as much as you can and want. The goal is to be of help to the reader. So only include what’s meant to help them achieve their goal, learn about the topic, solve a problem, or else.

If you still need a number to work with, I’d say go for 1000-1200 words per article. 

9. Do you remember the first $$ you made from the blog? How long did that take and where did it come from?

It must have been from a sponsored collaboration with a brand. Sadly, I don’t remember how long that took. But it could have been sooner.

I just wasn’t treating my blog as a business in the first 2 years, and didn’t even have a self-hosted WordPress site (but used a wordpress.com domain).

10. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received from a fellow blogger?

What immediately came to my mind is from emails I exchanged with Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard. He’s a very smart guy and runs one of the top blogging and marketing sites out there.

I interviewed him for Let’s Reach Success.

He shared some very powerful strategies in the interview, and I especially liked his answer to my question “How do you deal with a sudden drop in blog traffic?”

That’s exactly what I was experiencing at the time, and I was starting to think that maybe there are technical reasons for it.

I was using many tools to find out what’s wrong, diving into all the pages of my site that Google Search Console couldn’t crawl and access (although it turned out that didn’t matter and it was crawling many more than those), etc.

I felt like sending Adam an email to ask him what direction to take. And his answer changed everything. It was the permission slip I needed to stop looking for errors while everything is functioning well, and to focus on the most important thing – the content.

He reminded me that some ranking factors operate at a site level, but Google ranks pages not websites generally. So, I needed to look at the content that’s slipped rankings.

It’s also possible that some keywords no longer gain the traffic they once did. The search terms people use change over time and I have to adapt to those changes.

He also reminded me of how much a small update to a post can do, and the snowball effect many of these changes can make 🙂

I had started a content audit before that, but it was slow, and I was avoiding doing the actual work. Once I heard Adam say this, I went all in.

Now, a few months later, my traffic has increased significantly.

I updated all the pages on my site that were once driving most of the traffic but which later stopped getting so much attention. I updated hundreds of other posts on the site. I targeted new keywords with some. I was tracking the whole process, and I will continue updating many of these articles.

11. What’s a business tool you couldn’t live without?

I’d say Canva.

I create many social media graphics there, featured images for posts, workbooks and other materials for courses or for members of Blogger Playground. I have my content calendar for the membership there, and so on. 

I’m literally using it daily.

Wrapping Up

I would like to thank Lidiya once again for spending this time with us and for adding so much value to this insightful conversation.

I hope that her journey and the advice she shares inspire you to carry on and build a life and business you love waking up for!