You decide to start a blog. You do your research. You believe in yourself… Yet, that doesn’t mean you will become a successful blogger, and today I will tell you why you should just drop it.
Who am I? I’ve been blogging for over four years, have two blogs that combined bring me over 200 000 monthly page views (as per Google Analytics), I sustain my family with the income, hired an assistant to help me last year, and I am slowly but surely growing my business.
Yet, as I draft this post, I’m in a huge writer’s block and have no clue how to tell you to pack your bags and leave the blogging world before it’s too late.
I am serious! Blogging isn’t for everyone, and today I want to share with you 10 reasons not to start a blog as it will fail.
I’m tired of reading blog posts on how awesome blogging is, how easy it is to become a blogger and why everyone should have a blog. Here’s why!
10 Reasons Not to Start a Blog in 2021
1. You are after quick money!
If someone tells you that it’s easy to start a blog and make money with it, don’t trust them. The bitter truth is that blogging isn’t easy, and money won’t come easy either.
Over the past few years, the average time a blogger needs to be present online in order to make money varies to up to two years.
That doesn’t sound like “quick money” at all. Of course, there are those cases where people start a blog, and few months down the road, they are rich. Yet, to do that, you already need to have good knowledge of marketing or SEO. Alternatively, you would have to pay someone who knows those two topics to navigate you down the road.
Blogging brings money, but it doesn’t bring quick money. It’s a game of nerves where you wonder which one is going to happen first: getting that precious affiliate sale of $10 or giving up on that blogging drama.
2. You don’t love writing!
Intentionally, I didn’t use the word “like” because blogging isn’t about liking anything. It’s about loving it to the point where you don’t care if you’re missing out on a night out with the girls or a football game with the boys. You are eager to sit behind the computer and do your thing, share your words, and reach people and souls with them.
If you don’t love writing posts, emails, social media posts, descriptions, e-books, ideas, answer questions, and much more, then you won’t enjoy blogging, and you will fail.
3. You aren’t wiling to fail!
In blogging there are more failures than successes. Here I said it!
You try and try new things. You spend hours wiring a post, updating it, editing it, you hit the publish button and … crickets. Months pass, and you are getting nothing on that post. Nobody cares about it.
You spend an hour crafting a FB post for a sale you run on your shop; you create banners, links, coupon codes, you sound so cheerful and confident. You hit the button, and three days down the road, you still have zero sold products.
You will come up with many many ideas and try most of them. You will fail in all but a few.
That’s the reality. This is how you build presence; this is how you build experience; this is how you learn blogging. If you aren’t willing to fail, blogging is not for you. Yet, failure is all worth it once you succeed…
4. You think it’s easy!
In case you missed the first three points in this post, it’s pretty obvious that blogging isn’t easy.
And if you think it is, you have the wrong mentality and approach to it. It’s easier to stick to it once you start seeing the coins piling up on the accounts. But it’s so hard to get to that part.
It’s hard to get up at 5 am and sit to write a blog post on a topic you care about only after the third coffee. It’s hard to say no to catch up with a friend on the weekend so you sit to catch up with your content for the week.
It’s hard to skip scrolling through your favorite YouTubers’ channels, so you create your own Youtube video. It’s hard to leave the dust to pile up for another day or two because you are behind on creating pins for Pinterest.
It’s hard to miss on life when your blog becomes part of you. And if you think it’s wrong to sacrifice any of those for the sake of blogging, then blogging isn’t for you.
5. You aren’t willing to change your life!
This is closely related to the previous point. Your life will change a lot, and in more aspects than you can think of. First of all, you will have to learn to change your mentality and believe in yourself when no one else does.
Then you want to adapt to changing your daily-to-day life in order to create time for blogging.
Once you’re on those two, it comes the moment of changing your environment in a way to fit your new expectations of yourself.
You turn off a few monthly subscriptions because you have no time for them. You skip buying clothes because there’s a Pinterest course you should invest in.
On top of that, you get used to feeling anxious every time you have dips in your traffic and hold back on giving up because it’s just that hard.
And if all that isn’t enough, then there’s that loneliness that nobody around you understands what you do and why you do it.
So you end up wondering who you should fight – yourself or the others who push you to just give up.
If you aren’t willing to go through all that, then you better not start at all.
6. You do it so you don’t have to work again!
I wish you could see my evil smile while I write this one, lol! I laugh loud every time someone says that blogging isn’t an actual job and I don’t work at all, money just falls on my head every morning.
I’ve worked in a coffee shop, I’ve worked in a bank, I’ve worked in warehouses… Yet, I’ve never worked that hard as I do since I started blogging.
In 2019, the year I grew my blog from 70 000 to 220 000 page views, got excepted by Mediavine, opened a second blog, and worked as an office assistant (for a few months only), I had days where I would wake up at 2:30 a.m. and work until 7 p.m.
Do I recommend it? Absolutely not!
Yet, blogging is hard and it’s not about WHAT you do that is hard. FINDING OUT what to do is where your energy will go mostly.
7. You don’t like learning new stuff!
Yeah, I will just leave this one here.
Learning new stuff is what makes you grow. Experimenting with your knowledge is what makes you grow. Pushing yourself to learn all the time – that is blogging.
8. You listen to people’s opinions
I must admit I was so guilty of this one. My blogging success happened only once I stopped listening to what people think of my business and job.
Very few (if anyone) will believe in you from start to end. You have to be ready for this, and you have to understand that those who don’t believe in successful blogging have no clue what blogging is.
9. If you want to blog about yourself…
Yeah, I wish people cared about me as much I cared about myself.
Yet, those who make money blogging about themselves are the influencers, and even they didn’t just start talking about themselves only. They created an image of themselves that people can relate to and sold that image to you.
Leave influencers out; we talk about blogging. Bloggers are just normal people who take their knowledge, experience, fears, and ideas and shape them in a way that serves their readers. It’s still about them, yet it is all about their readers.
10. You aren’t willing to invest in it!
I bet the first thing that popped into your head was money.
Yes, you might have to invest money in blogging. And if you can afford it, invest as much as you can as early as you can.
And then invest more… time, work, effort, energy.
Because what will fail you isn’t the lack of money to invest in your blog. It’s the lack of everything else: hard labor, ideas, energy, self-trust, consistency, and willingness to make it work.
Conclusion on reasons not to start a blog this year
Now you know. You understand that blogging is hard, requiers time and persistence, passion and self-belief. Yet, I can assure you that after all that complaining how time-consuming and life-consuming blogging is, I would still choose to do it over anything else. Blogging is my life and it makes me whole (yes, I know that sounds weird).
So, with all that said, I encourage you to try. Try it because you need to know your limits and push your boundaries. You must get out of your comfort zone and poke success until it turns towards you.
Pin this for later
10 Reasons Not To Start a Blog As You Will Fail For Sure
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.
I’ve read a lot of articles and this made sense! Despite all you said I’m starting tomorrow after months of consideration. I’m 79 but I’m willing and ready to put in the time and energy. I’ll let you know if I’m still alive in 2 years!
Success doesn’t have an age requirement, it is never too late to do something your heart tells you to. Wish you all the best!