7 Reasons Why Blogging is Not the Answer You’re Looking For

It’s a bold statement and certainly a bitter pill to swallow, but running a blog might not be the best thing for you.

If you’re thinking of starting a blog this is probably something you don’t want to hear. You’ll be full of enthusiasm and excited about beginning something you believe has the potential to change your life in some way.

However, blogging is not a good fit for everyone regardless of how enthusiastic they are at the start of their blogging journey.

Like I say, it’s a broad statement.

So why might blogging not be a good fit for you?

#1 You’re Expecting Visitors Immediately

At the start of anything new we all have an idea of how things will progress.

When you start a blog it’s easy to imagine you'll begin getting visitors quickly. Unless you’re prepared to advertise aggressively, this is unlikely to happen.

It takes a long time for people to start noticing you… usually because it takes a long time for search engines to start noticing you.

If you expect a glut of visitors to hit your blog as soon as it's up and running, you’re setting yourself up for a big disappointment.

#2 You Want to Earn Money Quickly

If you’re not able to get a lot of traffic to your blog quickly, you’ll find it very difficult to make money, if that’s your goal.

Your ability to make money through blogging is to a large extent connected to how long it takes for you to start getting stacks of visitors.

I’ve covered visitor growth above, but to reiterate, expecting to make money from your blog out of the gate with few visitors will lead to frustration. This increases the likelihood you’ll lose motivation and commitment, which are significant reasons why blogs  fail.

#3 You Have Commitment Issues

Commitment to your blog over the long-term is the only way to give yourself a real shot at blogging success.

Most bloggers don’t see any fruit from their labor until after at least six months. During this time it’s imperative to post high quality content on a frequent and regular basis. It’s also extremely important to promote your posts so people will find them in searches.

Since blogging requires a great deal of sweat investment, before any encouraging signs your effort is yielding results, you have to be prepared to commit to it.

It’s super hard to keep working on a blog when it feels like you’re the only person visiting it.

Committing to your blog is an absolute requirement: if you can’t commit to it, blogging might not be for you.

#4 You Want A Low Maintenance Side Hustle

There aren’t many things in life you can do to earn money without having to get your hands dirty.

Blogging is not a low maintenance side-hustle. If anybody tells you that a blog offers maximum output for minimum input, they’re deeply mistaken.

Blogging is a high-maintenance side-hustle, so don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. 

You have to produce content, promote it, develop social media relationships and maintain the blog itself. This is no mean feat!

Moreover, if blogging is something new for you, you’ll also need a growth mindset and be prepared to learn.

#5 You Don’t Want to Invest in Learning

There’s no nice way to say this, but if you don’t want to learn you’ll find blogging a serious bind.

Aside from learning how to manage a blog and the many ways to promote it, you’ll need to keep up with search engine changes.

Search engines are famous for changing how they work behind the scenes.

You have to be proactive in your learning so you understand not just what works best for search engines today, but what changes they are likely to implement in the short term that might affect you tomorrow.

As with most things in life, if you want to be at the top of your game you have to keep learning to be the best version of you possible.

#6 You’re Not Very Sociable

If you’re serious about blogging, it’s more important than ever to have a presence in social media.

A social media account that’s regularly updated with interesting information, imagery and videos helps to give you and your blog credibility.

However, it’s not just about your accounts.

Involving yourself in other people’s discussions, adding value to them and being generous in sharing what they say will make people gravitate towards you and can encourage them to take an interest in what you’re doing.

Furthermore, social media accounts showing a lot of activity in terms of what you do and how people respond to it, send signals to search engines your blog is worth taking notice of.

As with growing your visitors though, developing social media relationships and building up your following does not happen overnight.

Just like in the real world, you can’t expect to be best buddies with someone the minute you meet them in a social media environment. You have to work at it.

#7 You Hate Writing

I’ve left this one until last since writing and content is the foundation of any blog.

If you hate writing you’ll find blogging absolutely unbearable. Plain and simple, to be a successful blogger you’ll have to write… a lot!

But more than this, you’ll need to be a good writer so that visitors engage with what you’re saying. High quality content is important for search engines too. Why would your blog posts deserve a high placement in search results if the quality sucks?

Given the amount of writing you’ll need to do in the first six months to a year of your blog’s life, if you hate writing you’ll feel like tearing your hair out!

Of course you can always pay for someone else to write for you. However, this approach will cost big money throughout the time you’ll need to be pumping out content to get a foothold in your niche.

Even if you love writing, it can become something you grow to despise while you’re working through the early stages of building up a readership.

If you hate writing from the get go, your enjoyment of the writing process is unlikely to improve.

Summary

There are many things that make blogging a fantastically rewarding activity, but it’s not a free ride.

Blogging requires a long-term mentality, consistent effort, an ability to learn and adapt and a willingness to write regularly.

If this sounds like you... perhaps blogging is the answer you’re looking for after all!