This is a guest post by Tushar Agarwal from BloggersPassion.
The rise of blogging as a career option in last 3-4 years has taken many by surprise. Nobody expected blogging to reach at this level and after the introduction of micro blogging sites like Twitter, we can imagine how long way it still has to go.
Many bloggers has stepped into full time blogging career and their only source of income is their blog. Seeing their success rate and the amount of cash they make through blogging, youngsters are getting interested and the result is the number of blogs which is being created every day.
One reason behind this is that they look at blogs as a big part time income source but they do not realize the hard work, pain and dedication that full time bloggers have put in to make their blog this success.
For the new bloggers, here are some bitter truths you will have to accept before you start blogging seriously.
- You Won’t Get Rich In A Day Or A Month – No matter how hard you try, how much you have spent on advertising and SEO, the theme and design; your earnings will still take time to come. You will never earn $10 with Google Adsense in a day, nor will you get dollars of advertisements.
- You Need To Work Hard For Traffic – If you are one of those who can not spend money on advertising; you have to work very hard to bring regular traffic to your blog. Few comments here and there will not work. You will have to comment, guest post, use forums & yahoo answers and link building with dedication.
- You Need To Sacrifice Lot Of Your Daily Activities – Blogging demands at least 2-3 serious dedicated hours every day. If you are a student, you can afford this time but this will cost you many things you like to do. This may include hangout with friends, cricket, movies and your sleep. So, be ready to keep your interest aside for the benefit of the blog.
- You Can Never Compete With Darren Rowse And John Chow – If you think that one day you can beat these two great bloggers in earnings; you are entirely wrong. No matter how good you are at writing, there income would not be affected with your rise. You need to work hard to make a name for yourself.
- Writing Good Content Is A Tough – Blogging depends on the content and writing good content is a difficult task. Whether you write daily or in 2-3 days, you have to make sure that every post is a quality post. And mind you, you have to do a lot of homework and research for a good post.
- You And Your Family Will Lose Patience Eventually- You need to show results to you and your family within 6 months time or they will give up patience and might consider blogging as a waste of time. This is a common scene in Indian homes. So, make sure what you are doing is being done in a right direction
PS. – This post is not written to discourage you or stop you from blogging. My only motive while writing this post was to make all the bloggers aware of the reality behind the fascinating world of blogging. And I was able to write this post because I have realized these things in due course of time when I started 3 years back.
Have the spirit, keep a positive frame of mind and approach your goal with full passion. The success will itself find your way.
Very good list of what it takes…I wish I was only having to put in 2 to 3 hours a day.
For me, the hardest part has been learning and getting past all of the technical glitches. That alone can be time consuming.
I’m sorry I can’t agree with everything you say. My family for instance is 100% behind me, a year later and still struggling. They have never wavered and they never will.
As for sacrificing my daily activities. Not going to happen. You will always make room and time for what is truly important to you. It’s called “balance”. And this too is something bloggers must work at. If the balance of your life tips too far in the direction of blogging, your personal life will suffer.
Treat it like a job. Schedule and plan for it, but do the same for your personal life and family. Otherwise you will become lonely, bitter and blogging will be all you have. Yuck.
Blogging can be demanding, but it should be a growing, learning and positive experience. Just don’t let it become an obsession.
I agree with you.You have made some good points here.Scheduling in life is very important.You have to take care of your health,your family and other important things in life.You can manage these things by making proper schedule.
I am agree with your points 1,2,3 and 6. but cant agree on 4 and 5…the reason is that john chow and darren rowse are wherever they are now…but they also started once in their life…and hardwork plus a bit of cleverness and marketing tactics bring them to where they are now….but still they are human…aren’t they compete-able?
and as for the other topic, i wud say…that writing good posts are not hard…if you are passionate about what you write….if you are blogging just for the sake of it, then it gets a bit tough….
btw, nice article….and keep posting things like this…..have a good day! 🙂
This writing is needed to make me stay on the ground. It is so true that blogging is not an easy way to make money — need hard work, hard work, and hard work to gain success in blogging.
Agreed about reaching the heights of A-List bloggers – you have to be happy with that community you can build.
No matter how good your content is..if you can’t drive traffic to your blog,you are wasting your time. You need to spend twice as much time promoting your blog as you do posting on it. That being said…It is important to consistently post to keep your readers coming back. I Try to write at least 1 post per day and try to promote your blog at least three 3 hours a day.
I disagree with a few of your points.
Firstly if you’ve got some popular friends online they can definitely help to bring your blog traffic. And traffic = money
It also does not take that much time. I actually don’t have to sacrifice anyway. I usually anyway waste a few hours in front of the computer being totally unproductive. With good time management you can fit it in perfectly.
You Can Never Compete With Darren Rowse And John Chow – It’s not impossible its just improbable. Chances are you won’t. But that does not mean you can’t. With enough determination you could.
While I agree with your points in principal, I disagree with some wording.
You use a lot of “never” ” can’t” “won’t” “impossible” and so forth…just not true.
I agree. For me blogging is hobby and a job. I enjoy working on my site. My site is part of my buisness but for me, I prefer to spend more time working with my clients then working on the site. Eventually when the site makes money, I will change my goals and spend more time working on it.
I agree that, most bloggers will never reach the income of a-list bloggers, but it doesn’t hurt to work toward that goal.
As for time management, I work to much as it is. When I first started the blog I would spend hours working on it daily and it was worth to get the site indexed and getting traffic to the site. But after 7 months I have decided that spending time with friends and family was worth more to me than ignoring them. Now I work on the site 3 or 4 times a week about an 1 hour to 2 hours a day.
No. 6 is very true, family tends to lose patience very fast when you are hooked to the screen. As for Adsense, it’s funny how all new bloggers fall for the same vision of making lots of cash through it!