Truths about blogging – The good, the bad, and the fugly.
You’ll hear different things here and there across numerous blogs about the benefits of blogging and why you should be doing it, but what about the things people don’t tell you?
Look, we want to inspire you to blog, it’s a great thing. But we don’t want to give you the impression that it’s sunshine and daisies with no drawbacks because there are drawbacks to everything.
Truth 1. Blogging isn’t easy
It takes a lot of time to set up your blog. You’ll need to cover a lot such as:
- researching your niche
- researching your competitors
- learning how to set up a blog with hosting
- getting the design and layout the way that you want
- and finally content creation
Once you’ve done all that, it can also take some time for it to grow. You always have to create good quality content that’s interesting to your readers. Along with improving SEO and networking with other blogs.
Over time you may also find that you suffer from a form of blogger burn out. If you don’t see the results of your efforts and your blog isn’t as successful as you anticipated, it’s easy to lose motivation for maintaining it.
Every blogger goes through this stage.
Maintaining motivation is being persistent with your efforts. When you first started blogging, you would have been excited, with ideas of what success could be like and high expectations.
But success only happens when you continue pushing forward, and the successful bloggers are the ones that have managed to do just that. Once you start seeing the success that you desire, you’ll begin to really love your blog and what you do.
Truth 2. A professional blog is not a diary
There’s a balance to learn between writing content for your audience and writing content to get things off your chest. Using your professional blog as a place to let off steam isn’t ideal as this can lead to a sense of negativity when people read your blog.
However, sharing personal stories and experiences can be beneficial to readers who feel they can relate and connect with you.
Blogging is mostly about sticking to a topic or niche. The bulk of your posts will stay on topic, and your life experiences may play a small role in some of your posts, but they shouldn’t take over.
Truth 3. A blog is a business even if it’s just a hobby
The majority of blogs exist so that they can make money. Just how much money they make depends on the blogger. You have to monetize your blog, even if it’s just simply to pay for your hosting fees.
There are many ways for bloggers to make money. These can be very subtle, so for example, if you didn’t want to show ads on your website, you could still have affiliate links or paid links. You can even sell your own products, such as ebooks or courses.
The fact is that you need to monetize. Whether it’s a little, or you use several methods to make a considerable income.
Truth 3.5 – You can make a lot of money blogging – people who say you can’t aren’t doing it right
Yes, that’s the truth. In addition to what we said earlier, there are many ways you can monetize your blog, and it’s not rocket science. There are no secrets to this, there are just proven methods that you can use that will open up your blog’s earning potential.
See our guide on how to do this.
But just how much money you make from these methods is down to you. The amount you earn comes down to the amount of time and effort you invest in your blog and your money-making methods. Like anything in life, it comes down to effort.
If people tell you that it’s too hard to make serious money from blogging, they either aren’t doing it right, or they aren’t putting the work in.
Sure, some niches are far more profitable than others, but no matter what niche you’re in, if you work hard and produce a lot of good quality content then there’s no reason why you won’t see a large number of monthly visitors.
When you’ve got the visitor numbers, selling or recommending to them is the easy part.
Truth 4. Your blog isn’t all there is to your blog
The truth is, your blog doesn’t just consist of the posts that you publish. There is a lot more to running a blog than just creating and publishing content.
In addition to content creation, blogging consists of:
- keyword research
- search engine optimization
- photography
- editing
- creating graphics
- social media
- promotion
- general research for future posts
- emailing (business negotiations)
- checking analytics and other data
- updating older posts
- managing your website
- performing updates
- checking security
These things may sound daunting, but you’ll slowly learn them as you go, and they’ll just become routine things.
Truth 5. Blogging isn’t a 9-5 job
If you’re blogging for a hobby, then it certainly isn’t a 9-5 job.
But if your blogging seriously and are a professional blogger whose blog is their business, then blogging becomes something that is worked on at any time of the day or night.
For sure, some people set hours that they blog or treat it like a day job, but you are forcing your creativity into a time slot that may not be as effective as blogging when ideas strike.
The more you blog, the more you’ll find yourself sitting in your shorts and letting your unibrow grow back.
You’ll blog at your desk, on the sofa, you’ll blog on your phone when you’re out and about, or traveling or on vacation.
Blogging really becomes your life. You’ll become obsessed with it. You’ll always be looking at things trying to see how you can get an angle for a blog post, and you will fall in love with it.
Truth 6. Being a blogger can be lonely work
In a normal job, you’ll have a boss to report to, colleagues to collaborate with, people around you to chit chat with.
But being a blogger, you’re almost certain to be working alone most of the time. Your partner might be working their day job and the kids might be at school. It might sound lonely, but doesn’t it also sound awesome?
Nobody is telling you what to do, no clients that you need to bend over backward for! Being a blogger might be lonely, but being your own boss, working when you want and where you want certainly is appealing.
Point of interest – when people ask you what you do, and you tell them that you’re a blogger, that always pricks up their interest, and a ton of questions typically follow but be prepared for an influx of negativity from people who don’t understand.
It’s common knowledge amongst bloggers that there can be a few family members scoffing at the idea of your blog being your business due to them not understanding your line of work and how you can make money from it.
But let’s be honest, that is their problem, not yours and the world is moving forward.
Truth 7. It can be hard to find a work/life balance
Whether you’re blogging in the evenings or spare time when you’re not working, or if you’re a full-time blogger, you’ll find that blogging becomes addictive. Not just in the creation of new posts, but replying to comments, managing your website, checking statistics and more.
You’ll find that it eats into your home life, which is unfortunate considering that having more free time such as spending time with your family may have been one of the main reasons you wanted to start blogging in the first place.
It’s contradictory to listen to us rant about how important it is to put the time and effort into making your blog a success, but also for us to tell you that you must spend time away from your blog to spend more time with your family.
Hear us out.
We have small children who we love so much, but we often find ourselves so zoned in on what we are working on that we forget about spending time with them, and guilt ensues.
You might come to a point in your blog where you have put in the initial hardcore grafting, and you start to have more leeway with your work. If you find moments to take time away from your blog, then definitely take them, but don’t let your blog sit idle.
A great way to get around this is to invest in a content schedule, which, if used properly, will save you time and publish your pre-written posts to all your platforms on your behalf.
Imagine bulk writing four or five posts and then being able to take four or five days off because your content schedule program is doing the publishing for you? It sounds like a great trade to us.
Truth 8. Learn to make sacrifices
Those Netflix nights that you have so often may be numbered once you start blogging. Once you become passionate about your blog and the work that you do, you’ll often prefer to work than to laze around.
You’ll begin to move away from the things that you used to do, whether that’s playing Xbox or browsing Facebook. You’ll begin to see value in the time that you used to waste, and you’ll use it for good purposes.
It’s important that you are aware that although blogging can bring many rewards like making good money, traveling or meeting lots of interesting people, there can be drawbacks.
Being mindful of those can help you make blogging not only a successful part of your life but just one part of your life.
Conclusion
Despite all the positives and negatives of blogging, it is one of the best decisions we have ever made, and the hard work it has taken to get to where we are has been worth it.
We hope we have made you mindful of what you could expect throughout your blogging journey, and hopefully, going forward knowing what to expect makes your work that little bit easier.
