I was speaking at a small event here in Melbourne recently and I was asked about the common hurdles bloggers face when building profitable blogs. It’s a difficult question to answer, as everyone’s hurdles are different – as are their coping strategies.
In today’s podcast I thought going through the hurdles I’ve faced personally in blogging and the strategies I used to get over them might be useful. You might recognise some or all of them, or you might know someone struggling with one of these (in which case, feel free to share this post with them!). I’ve also included links in the show notes for you to get more information.
The obstacles in my journey I’ve faced to get to where I am today first started with technical know-how – or rather, lack thereof. As a result I made a huge amount of mistakes that meant it was a slow and painful beginning. I’ve learned so much over the years, and as I did I made better and better choices so there are six tips in the podcast that should ensure you avoid or at least minimise the hurdles along your own path.
I also talk about fear: fear of looking stupid, fear of being criticised and even personally attacked (and how I dealt with a particularly frightening encounter when it was happening to me). There’s a section on building readership, which is incredibly frustrating when you’re writing good content but nobody is reading it, and a section on finding the right monetization model, blogger’s block, blogger’s burnout, narrowing your niche, and getting your time management balance right. All things I’ve struggled with but eventually found a way out of.
You can listen to the podcast here, or over at the show notes of episode 57.
What do you struggle with as a blogger? Have you found an effective strategy of getting around it?
Further Reading:
- 3 Questions to Ask When Facing Fear [And Why Wobbly Courage Is Enough]
- Finding Readers: From Seed to Sequoia – Growing Your Blog One Reader At a Time
- Top Three Takeaways from Finding Readers Week: What Can You Do Today to Create Community?
- A Checklist for Choosing the Right Monetization Method
- How to Handle Criticism: a Practical Guide
The fear of criticism destroyed my blogging career for 5 years Darren. Or I let the fear destroy my blogging career. I recall my first guest post here on PB during the lean years. I checked comments every few hours to see when someone would rip me a new one. When I did get 1 comment that felt negative but wasn’t too critical I saw this as an excuse to go into a shell, to hide away, to curse guest posting and to write it off for good. No pun intended. What a well adjusted guy, eh? ;)
I got over this fear in bits and pieces, although I am not beyond it completely today. I sat with nasty eBook reviews, with critical comments and the like, finally getting the idea that criticism has nothing to do with me. Do not take it personally. All has to do with your critics and how they view themselves. A simple projection, that’s all. Sitting with the sting helped me trip over a hurdle, then, I lept over it by seeing regularly that critics are speaking about themselves and not me. Thanks for sharing Darren.
Signing off from the jungles of Nicaragua.
Ryan
Ryan,
And from your negative experiences you kept going strong and became a better blogger.
Hi Darren,
Quite a similar start with me also. I am running my blog single-handedly bcoz don’t have money to pay others and don’t know all the technical things. I am learning from your and few other popular blogs because I don’t want to give up. You are truly inspirational for me.
Thank you for sharing.
Jay
There is always a big concern for a Blogger and that is to share quality tutorials with your audience and never to share something with your readers which can harm them by any means.
For me, it was mostly the fear of sharing in the first place. At first, I felt like an impostor for sharing what I had to say with the rest of the world. Later I realized that haters gonna hate and that we should not let the fear of other people’s opinions stand between you and your potential.
At the time, this resulted that I was not fully comfortable sharing my content on social media, but what is the point of writing if you are scared of other people reading it. Now I not longer care about what other people think and I see that most reactions are positive, what was there to be afraid of in the first place?
I also struggled a lot with the technical know-how at first, but now I can really get a kick out of fixing something that I couldn’t at first. Other people recognize this also and it led to other opportunities.
Fear and struggles are not a bad thing, it helps us to prioritize, to refocus and to grow in the process. Thanks for sharing this!
Joep