12 Truths About Blogging to Know Before Starting a Blog
Blogging is a great habit if you do it correctly. Moreover, you can enjoy to its fullest if you know some real truths about it. Because, it will help you to understand its limitations, so you can adapt the skill in blogging. Moreover, you should know that blogging is not like writing a book or fiction nor it is a business tool.
But it is something which will give you the opportunity to do marketing your skill over the internet as well. Passionately, it is very much encouraging for the bloggers to market their skills. So blogging is a kind of platform which should be built by the blogger itself by delivering the quality blog at the regular interval. So you want to become a blogger, get that whole internet lifestyle of passive income, doing what you love and living it up at some beach yeah?
Feeling totally inspired, you start your blog and being the hardworking person that you are, you read up online all the best and proven tactics that can help make your blog soar. They should work, right? I mean, these tips and tricks are by proven people with success! But the hard reality is: They don’t work. Not for you at least.
Maybe you were just overly optimistic, but the internet is riddled with so much information that only real experience and failure can set what is real, and what works for you.
I created this list which was inspired by my own journey as a young blogger. Like a lot of us, I thought it would be easy, or at least not that hard to work a successful blog. Damn, I wish someone told me this when I started out...
1. Blogging isn’t Easy
If you regularly read blogs or have been blogging for any length of time, you’d straight away agree with me that “blogging isn’t easy.”It takes a lot of time to set up your blog (idea, research, hosting, design, schedule, content creation), and even more time to see it build some momentum. You have to create compelling content, read and comment on other blogs, learn SEO, and write guest posts, network with other bloggers and so on.
However, blogger burn out happens faster than most people anticipate it. A lot of people lose sight of their goals when they don’t see traffic coming their way. You can’t be blamed. It’s just human nature. We want results. Our actions are inspired by results.
We need the motivation to do something. If you are working on a 9-5 job, then maybe it’s the paycheck that motivates you. Sometimes it may be the work culture or even the job itself that motivates you. Whatever you do, you need to be constantly motivated. It’s no different with blogging.
When you start blogging you are really motivated and super excited. How can you be not so? You are doing it for the first time. You are thrilled by the experience. Your expectations are sky high.
Six months down the road, you still do what you were doing when you started off. You are yet to receive loyal readership or feedback. It’s kind of de-motivating. I know. I have been through it when I launched my first blog. My second blog also had a short life. Heck, even my third blog suffered the same fate.
Success happens when you slowly learn to swim against the flow. You keep pushing until you reach your goal. When you exercise, you keep pushing yourself to do an extra set. Just like that, when you think you have failed, you keep on pushing until success is in sight.
Authority blogging takes a while. If you need an instant result, either become a celebrity and start blogging or develop patience. It takes 1 or 2 or even the number of years to achieve success.
2. Blogging Isn’t a Viable Business Model
Let’s face it, blogging is not a viable business model. Sure, you can be a web publisher and make money by selling ads on your blog, but this won’t be a business per se. Plus, the people who can make significant money with this model can be counted on the fingers of your hand.A better way to see it is that a blog is a tool to promote your business. Not the business itself. So you need to have a product, a service, or something else that you sell/offer to your customers.
If you want to build a successful business, then you need to use the blog to build trust, authority, generate leads and build customer relationship.
Blogging should be taken as a means to boost your main business
3. Blogging isn’t all about you
Many blogs about blogging advice people that your blog reflects your personality. They tell that a blog is all about you, you and only you.Well, I’d like to say a blog is all about them, them and only them. Who’d I refer to like them? “Them” are the readers who visit your blog.
If people came to your blog because they liked you, then they’d be interested in your personal life as well. Try posting articles about your personal life and you will soon see people going away. This is because people come to your blog for niche specific contents. They want advice, tips and a little bit of motivation.
If a blog is all about the author, then I’d say ProBlogger would be dead by now. How many posts does Darren from the problogger post these days? Many of them are guest articles. Yet, ProBlogger is as heavily trafficked as ever.
Blog with your readers in mind. Not your personality.
4. You don’t need to interact much with your readers
Reader interaction is supposed to be one of the holy grails of blogging.Reader interaction happens most when people comment on your article. But do you really need other people’s comments on your blog? It depends.
Most of the time, people comment on your blogs only to get a link back to their blog. There are some exceptions though. You’d argue that we must give some sort of recognition to people who take their time to comment on our blog.
Would you really want to be thankful to someone if they hit your son with a truck and then later rescue him with the intention of getting money from you for saving your kid’s life?
I don’t want to portray other bloggers as criminals or something. It’s just that not all posts are worth commenting and not all comments are worth publishing. You have to be judicious while allowing comments and also while commenting on other blogs.
If the reader needs to ask something, let them use the contact form. If they have some outstanding contribution to make, let them provide it through the contact form and you edit the post and include it. You are now giving more value to the person who shares his ideas.
If you want to build a community, building a forum is much better where your readers can freely interact with each other. Having a forum section for your blog is also a good move.
Don’t worry too much about reader interaction. Provide them quality content, gather feedback and improvise.
5. Practice doesn’t make you perfect
Many writing blogs offer this advice. Write, write more and write even more.I really don’t understand the concept. If you mix the wrong ingredients in the lab to make a new compound, you simply can’t make it. What use is it to do it over and over again, only to fail each time?
You must use some sort of feedback mechanism to constantly improve your process workflow. If you keep repeating the mistake, you get better at making the mistake, not avoiding it.
Take help from your friends, family members or even pay others to give constructive criticism. Forums are a great way to gather feedback for your site. And, it is absolutely free as well.
Use a feedback mechanism to improve your blog.
6. You don’t need a lot of blogging advice
Sad, but it’s the truth. You don’t need to read blog tips every-day. Keep the basic points in mind.- Understand and listen to your readers (Using analytics, feedbacks, etc)
- Write quality content and killer articles
- Promote your blog posts through guest posts or other means
- Observe what others in your niche are talking about
The only thing you need to do is start doing things your way. If you keep reading articles about blogging and wait for the right moment to start a blog after grasping everything, that moment will never come.
Nothing can teach you better than experience. Go ahead, try blogging your own way, and see what works and what doesn’t work.
7. Good content is king, but that doesn’t make for good writing
You got a really awesome topic in mind for an article. It’s meaningful and thought-provoking. And you’re pretty sure many would like it, cause, after all, others have blogged about it before so there’s simply no reason why you shouldn’t receive the same amount of attention.Sadly, that’s not the case. There are many nuances in writing and blogging that can make a huge difference in the overall picture.
Think about this: The Lord of the Rings books have more content, but why is it most people would rather watch the movies?
The answer may be obvious, but if it’s so obvious, why is it then there are many blogs with good content yet still struggling to make it big, while the big guys up there have it all?
It all lies in the nuances of writing.
In writing, you need to have a unique perspective, your own style and ultimately, the ability to offer readability.
Good content should jump out to the reader, not for them to think and analyze it through first. By then, it’d be too late.
8. Top 10 lists of easy money making tactics aren’t going to work
You and everybody else started off the same way. You’re enticed by the “ease” of internet marketing and blogging.Just do a simple Google search and there’d be many articles like, “Top 10 sure-fire techniques to make money on Twitter” or “Make money on autopilot while you sleep”.
And people even SWEAR by those techniques…
…but they aren’t going to bring you the incredible results you hoped for.
What you need to actually do is figure out a way to add value to your readers long-term. You got to create your own brand to stand out. You need to be able to establish a relationship with people and engage them.
You need a strategy, not just spam tactics.
9. You can’t make money with lots of traffic
Well, different people have different ways of making money online, but I want to debunk the whole, “If I get 1,000 people to visit my blog, I am pretty sure one or two would buy my eBook” myth.After all, it’s like 1,000 people walking into a shop, someone’s got to buy something! Right? Wrong.
Not all traffic can be monetized. You’d be surprised how cold a ton of traffic can be. They come. They go. And not a single f**k was given.
I actually had a 1000+ visitors day before. Guess what? I got nothing from it. Not a single click on my banners.
There are actually many more important things to focus on in a blog, such as building a list, finding ways to get people to opt-in, writing to add real value, to name a few.
10. It’s going to take a long while for you to succeed
It’s easy to hear about others’ road to success, like how long they fought to succeed and then tell yourself, “I can do that too”.You read about others’ stories in seconds. Are you ready to work hard for months if not up to a year?
Effort and time go hand in hand, but man, time can really mess you up. It can drag you down. It can confuse you as you can’t see the future.
And it can discourage you when you don’t see progress. So get ready to be patient, because even many of the A-list bloggers out there took a long time too.
11. Not everyone is going to support you, and that actually hurts
Every blogger has their fair share of haters, or generally people who don’t agree with what you have to say.Now, you may’ve probably read about that before. But do you think you’re truly ready to handle detractors?
Because honestly, it can actually feel hurtful when you’re on the wrong side of the press.
It’s easy to sit by and laugh at stupid comments in a flame war in YouTube or some forum, but when it’s directed at you, right under your own comments section, it literally takes things to a personal level.
Because at the end of the day, not everyone shares your vision of your blog, no matter how awesome or free your content is.
And the internet makes it too easy to disregard tact. This is the part you find your audience.
12. You have to be brilliant to really become whatever you’ve heard about
That blogging is easy and making money online is not a problem. A fellow blogger inspired me once when he was telling me how hard he worked on his blog.This stood out, “Unless you’re brilliant, you’re going to need to invest a lot of time and hard work. I am not brilliant”. So you got to work hard as the rest of us normal folks.
That being said, isn’t that a wonderful thing that all of us can actually achieve greatness with just a little hard work?
What do you think will add to the list of ugly truths? Do you think some points aren’t as ugly as I make it out to be? Speak up! Do Comments and Share with your friends.
