A Guest Post by Annabel Candy – Get In the Hot Spot
In marriage they talk about a seven year itch. It’s the time when people get restless and think about giving up on their relationship.
For bloggers that itch and desire to give up comes sooner. In fact, most bloggers give up on their blogs after only 6 months.
I’ve been writing my blog for 6 months now and I can relate to people quitting at this time. It seems as if you have put a lot of time and effort into your blog, but it’s still to early to reap the rewards of that hard work. It seems as if you’ve made every mistake in the book but you still have so much to learn about blogging.
According to psychologists having grit, or persevering with a project, is more important than intelligence or any other personality trait when it comes to success.
With that in mind, I’d like to tell you why you shouldn’t give up on your blog and how you can find the motivation to carry on.
Why you should carry on blogging after 6 months
- You’ve already invested a lot of time and energy into your blog.
- Your blog may not have been ranked with the search engines yet.
- You may have been working hard but there’s still a lot to learn. It would be impossible to learn everything there is to know about blogging in just 6 months. Even pro-bloggers are still learning and many of them have been writing blogs for years.
- Your readers are growing slowly but steadily.
- Your content is also growing and the more content you have on your blog, the better it will rank with the search engines.
How to find the strength to carry on blogging
- Enlist help. Talk to friends, colleagues and relatives. Get their advice and feedback. Actually watch them using your blog. Set challenges for them to find a certain piece of information on your blog and see how easy it is for them. This will help you learn what improvements you can make to the blog to make it easier for your readers to use.
- Relook at your goals for the blog and reassess them if necessary. Have your blogging goals changed? If so how? What did you readers enjoy best? Which were your least popular posts? Make adjustments to your blog based on these findings.
- Do a survey on your blog. Ask you readers for feedback. What would they like to read about most? What topics have you covered that the would like to read about more?
- Play to your strengths. Do a skill swap. If you’re great at writing content but the technical side of blogging frustrates you, find someone with the opposite skills to you and trade off. You’ll both end up with a better blog and a blogging ally too.
- Stay motivated by using Twitter or the power of co-motivation with a like-minded blogger.
- Understand that success will only come from preserving. Most businesses make little or no income in the first year and your blog may not either. To gain benefits from blogging you need to carry on for more than a year. Congratulate yourself on how far you’ve come with your blog so far and resolve to keep up the good work.
- Stop comparing your blog to other people’s. Rejoice in their success, congratulate them on it and see what you can learn from them.
- Compile a testimonials page with all the positive comments people have left on your blog. It will cheer you up and impress new readers too.
- Learn from your mistakes. We all make them. Successful bloggers learn from their mistakes and press on regardless. They don’t give up blogging at 6 months and neither should you.
Look at anything you’ve achieved in your life. It probably didn’t come easily. There may have been times when you wanted to give up. But you’re glad you didn’t. Take heart from that and carry on blogging.
Press on writing and improving your blog for another 6 months and then another 6 months after that. It will be worth it in the end.
Annabel Candy writes Get In the Hot Spot: a blog to inspire and inform people on how to live their dream. If you dream of travel, writing, self-employment, or just being happy then Get In the Hot Spot by email. If you know someone who dreams of change or wants to be more daring with their life, please tell them about it so they can stop day-dreaming and start living their dream.
Annabel has four obsessions: writing, travel, Internet design and helping people follow their dream. Annabel ran a successful Internet marketing company in New Zealand for 10 years before following her dream and goofing off to Central America with her husband and three kids. After 18 incredible months in the jungle the Candy family moved to Australia where Annabel is now doing what she does best: writing and exploring.
I’m glad I stuck with my blog after six months – like the author mentions I did hit a bit of a wall after the 6 month point – but right around 7/8 months is when my blog started to take off.
If you want to make a positive impact as a blogger, and you want to make a little money – you’re going to need determination, and stick-to-it-tiveness. :) Stick with it – and as long as you have good content and a good niche, you’ll be fine!
Great post! A lot of people I’ve found have stopped blogging after 6 months because they are blogging for one reason: money.
They don’t realise that blogging exclusively for cash is tricky, and you need passion in the first place. If they follow that, then cash will (eventually) follow.
best thing for bloggers is not to read “about blogging” sites, not to read “how to improve you blog” etc. etc. you will automatically judge your blog to that of others, or get hung up about the deficiencies in your blog compared to all the “advice” given.
Keep on blogging, keep your style and keep your cool…. and please forget all these “content is king” points… you are the king, your blog only a representation of yourself.
Loose yourself in your blog is the first step towards losing your blog altogether.
I’ve just past the 6 months on my new healthy eating blog and I have to say that it’s not easy starting over.
I did last week take assess of which articles where the most read and getting more traffic to focus on those types of posts moving forward.
Also, I did a new keyword research to try to find keywords that pull better and that would get me more traffic.
I’m slowly, but surely removing activities that are not bringing results in order to get a great lift for the coming six months and have a lot of positive results when I hit the 1 year mark with my healthy eating blog.
This post is excellent and the comments that have been left until now are quite encouraging.
Krizia
I think it is important to stick with blogging, you do invest a lot of time into it and it is important to see positive results from it and not get disheartened by your learning journey, you will what works for you and what doesn’t and become a success with hard work. I think the most important thing to remember is that everyone started somewhere, no one has instant success and no one makes money from home instantly people work hard to get where they are today and they learn from people on similar blogs.
I also wanted to add that “not comparing your blog with others” is a very hard thing to do.
When you look at your stats on a daily base and read about other blogs in our niche getting 3 million visitors per month, it can be quite deflating and discouraging and you sometimes feel like you will never get there.
As to the comment on money. Indeed, it’s not easy keeping keeping on when little money is coming in.
Interestingly, last night I calculated the ad money that another site in my niche could be making with 3 million visitors per month … without having to sell any digital product and I’ve calculated that this blogger could be making about $15,000 to $20,000 just in ads and surely not working half as hard as I am and I got a bit down.
With that kind of monthly income, I’d be free from having to juggling my sites + working contracts on the side.
That said, I will keep pushing forward, as it’s the only way to success.
@ Ian – great reminder.
I actually needed that reminder today.
As I’ve mentioned, my traffic really started coming AFTER the six month mark. Keep this in mind before you give up.
I have passed the 6 months itch. Now waiting to celebrate the first birthday of my blog.
Time, patience and the honest belief that you are doing what moves you. Having that level of passion will bring the rewards of success naturally. Continue to learn from others that have experienced what you are going through to stay encouraged and maintain the enthusiasm that you started with.
I would say have a 4-5 year outlook on blogging before you even start. That way when you hit the one year mark it’s not that big of a deal.
I would also say it will probably be easier to stick with it if you’ve had a reference point for persistence before you started blogging. If you’ve gone through something before that took persistence and really overcame the obstacles of it only because you stuck with it, you’ll really understand why you shouldn’t give up.
Thanks for the wonderful article. I, too, am just around the 6-month mark and can totally relate.
6 months is a significant amount of time to be thinking, “well something’s gotta be happening now…” and it comes down to expectations.
I truly believe I am building a top notch blog, and will continue on as you mention until the first big pay off!
Thanks.
-Josh
Although my current blog is only about to reach the 3 month mark, I anticipate reaching the 6 month mark with as much energy that I have right now.
I agree with @Rhys comment about blogging for money will quickly demotivate you, as I am a victim of this on a previous blog that I started.
I think if you look at the other benefits that blogging can provide: personal development or sharing of knowledge – these should be enough to motivate one past the 6 month itch.
Great post!
Don’t give up! Blogging is hard work, and even though you are passionate about the topic you’re writing about, the temptation to quit WILL come up from time to time.. Just suck it up and write another post!
Annabel,
Great post! One piece of advice – get a professional logo designed for your site.
Dear Annabel:
Most people want results fast and they they give up if they don’t get them fast enough. Building a blog is no easy task. Think about it. You have pick a design, write awesome posts, retain readers and so on and so forth.
Thankfully, there are many tools out there that help us to focus only on the writing part of the blog. I think the biggest question that “new” bloggers have to ask themselves is: “Why am I doing it?”
Am I doing it for the money? Is it because I want to touch other people’s lives? Is it because I want to practice marketing? Is it because I want to improve my writing skills? Is it because I want to work on creating an awesome website?
Knowing why you are doing something, should help keep you motivated through the rough times. Also, the above techniques are great to way to stay focused.
Although carrying on with a blog just because you invested a lot of and effort in it, is not valid reason to keep going. It is important to evaluate where you are right now and if blogging is really for you in the long run.
Thank you for a good reminder to keep going through the rough time.
Best,
Tomas
Thanks for the motivational post. I’m just over 6 months with my Illustration blog, and I feel like I’m getting my second wind by reinventing the scope of the site and moving into more of a community phase.
Thomas
Technically, I’ve been blogging for a year. I just passed 6 months of “serious” blogging, though – with my own domain and serious goal of 5-7 new articles every single week.
I actually have a staff of nine writers who write anywhere from once a month to 10+ times a month (well, just me writing 10+ times). This allows the magazine to have fresh content nearly every day without totally overwhelming me personally.
Fantastic post Annabel!
Someone once shared the following quote with me: “Everyone got where he was, began where he was” It really resonated with me on a number of levels and I think it’s especially true in terms of blogging.
Blogging is hard work, but I believe that the more passion you put into it, the more it will come back to you times 1,000. All of our blogs started off with 0 posts and 0 readers and each of us have grown from there.
I know that with each passing day, post, comment or tweet, my blog continues to grow. Had I given up after 6 months I wouldn’t have gotten to where I am today, which is a much better place than I was at in month 5 or 6!
I think Annabel’s suggestions to “find the strength to keep blogging” are incredibly useful, and from each suggestion could stem new inspiration to keep you blogging for another day, month or year.
Great article. If you can find a way to keep going past six months, you’ve done more than 90% of the bloggers out there.
I wrote something similar last month: Are you in the top 10% of bloggers who can survive six months?
Great post! I think my blog is just 6 months old although I’ve been working on it for a year now. I never want to give it up just because I love writing for it. But the thought that maybe I should be spending my time on something else to help my business has crossed my mind. Since I’ve learned so much and already invested so much time, I plan to persevere! Great to hear advice from someone else to stick with it.
I think the biggest myth about blogs and any online business is that they can be overnight success stories. Most don’t get that it takes time and effort and you really are building a business. I’m in the process of launching a second blog and building key relationships which is where I am realizing that now I’m starting to treat it as a business rather than a hobby.
@Broderick: I think the 4-5 year outlook is a really brilliant insight. I may have to sit down and write out a strategic plan for my blog that uses that time line.
People miss out on a lot of great opportunities in life because they start things but refuse to stick with it long enough to see results.
I can think of a dozen of my friends who started music lessons, wasted some money and time, and never developed their skills. Then I think of my sister who has been taking piano lessons for 15+ years and she is just phenomenal.
If we want to see results, we’ve got to stick with it!
Annabel,
You hit on some great points. Perserverance is A1. Forget all of the technical aspects of blogging. If you don’t have something mentally, you can forget about having it physically. Successful bloggers see themselves as successful bloggers so they keep going until they are successful bloggers. The picture precedes the thing. It’s only though persistence that you’ll learn what you need to know to become successful.
Comparison is a curse. I’ve felt great about my blog so many times in the past and when I saw a flashier blog I’d get discouraged. I’d also see blogs with big readerships that didn’t carry my quality of content, at least in my opinion. What this taught me is that blogging is a highly individualized activity. The moment you compare, you’ll be disappointed because your blog will never be the same as anybody else’s, and nobody else’s blog will ever be like yours. Don’t compare, continue to create according to your own individuality.
Hey Annabel,
A very effective method to persevering with your blog after 6 months is to always have the focus be on your passion.
Do it because you’re passionate. If it feels too much like work, then use the tip you mentioned about reassessing why you’re writing. Shift the focus to be on what you’re passionate about. Then, continuing becomes a lot easier because you not only are working towards an end goal, but you’re loving the process as well. You’d do it even if no one was reading.
It’s like with music. If you’re only doing it to become famous, make money, win awards, etc. then it’s very hard to push on if results aren’t happening as quick as you’d like. But if you love making music, then you’ve “made it” every time you’re crafting a new tune. All that other stuff is the cherry on top. Maybe you don’t have as many listeners, but you won’t stop making music because you’re passionate about the process itself.
Best,
Oleg
I like the skill swap tip…it is cool that you are also guest blogging on Problogger already! :)
6 months mark is a killer, I agree. But it does get much easier. The main thing that kept me going is that I was writing about what I enjoyed and knowing that if I stop this and start a new blog then I’ll be 6 months behind my current blog. Nice pointers you shared, thanks.
Good post.
I agree with Dan about the logo!
Branding is everything :)
Blogging takes a lot work. After six months it is definitely hard to stick with your Blog if you are not seeing much traffic or money. I don’t know, I have been trying a lot of different things and a lot of different Blogs. Hopefully one will workout for me.
We’ve been at it for 3+ months now, and it sure is a slow process. Our blog is designed to capture new leads, and be an industry expert in the ecommerce field. All it takes is 1-2 leads to turn into clients, and the blog has done its job.
Hopefully at the 6 month point we’ve seen enough benefits to keep it going far into the future. Regardless, we have a 1-2 year plan with the blog that is sustainable. Just gotta grit it out. :)
Rob – LexiConn
Nice article Annabel—
I myself just started blogging, and plan to go way beyond the 6 months…I’m hoping to follow a 5 year plan at minimum. With me, its about the writing, and hopefully having something of substance to offer the reader. Money is really not even a consideration at this stage. If it happens, great, but if not, I believe the fun of writing is the sustaining factor that brings most people past the 6 month mark.
Thanks for this article. I do feel like giving up in blogging most of the times. But after I realized what I’ve been through in blogging until now, I’ve changed a lot. Some people call me information-machine because I always share information, giving tips and many more that related to my blog.
And I realized that I’ve fight until this far. Why in the hell should I quit? I must finish what I’ve started. :)
I’ve been blogging for 6 months now. In my case, some big rewards happened, like decent traffic and some comments in every post I wrote. Now I’m starting a newsletter mail list and trying new marketing tools so I can get my blog to the next level :)
When I was trying to set up my blog last year, I found that all the names I wanted to use were taken…by blogs that were no longer active! It was so frustrating, but after nine months of blogging, I understand the frustration they went through. I have wanted to end it too.
I’m glad I haven’t, but I do have a lot to learn. This post is a good start.
I’m right at the six month point right now. Whats motivating me? A publicity push. I’m focusing on commenting, advertising, submitting guest posts and brainstorming other ideas. It has really energized me.
Good Advice, I’m only at two months right now and it’s starting to get frustrating, I keep building links, writing content and joining communities but my rewards seem to be going slower than I imagined, and I’m not even talking about the money. Thanks for the advice though its very reassuring.
Easy come, easy go, they say. It’s the things that tax us and drive us to greater accomplishments that we value, and this includes blogging. If you’re new to blogging and have heard about most people giving up after six months, you should write down what you would do then to keep you going and refer to that in six months. It’s easier to throw in the towel but better awaits those who persevere. It would also help if you don’t expect to make money from your blog for over a year so you can concentrate on dishing out valuable content and building links
Great article Annabel. I’m actually right at the 6 month line with my blog-a-zine, The Success Center. It’s been an interesting journey and I’m definitely grateful for your inspiration. I love the idea of watching someone use the blog to figure out where improvements can be made. I’ll definitely be trying some of these and continuing with my mission to take over the world, one blog reader at a time. Thanks again!
Rod
http://www.rodkirby.com
I think this applies to literally any month after a period of fairly consistent posting. Eventually there will be a point where you have to slow down when you post as you simply cannot keep generating new content on the topic. At that point, its time to start looking at new options for your blog, possibly write about new topics.
Inspiring post. I haven’t reached the 6-months-mark just yet but I definitely keep this in mind if I do.
This is a great point. I think we all come to this thought at some point. Even the most successful blog owners had at least a pinch of this on their mind at some point. The ones that carried on strong reaped the success eventually.
What a timely article for me today. I hit my initial challenging point at 11 months. I’m now at the 15-month point with my photo blog and, admittedly, am not posting as frequently as I did for the first 11 months. Some of that is due to facing the reality of time constraints, realigning life priorities and the need to attend to projects that help pay the bills.
Thanks for the encouraging words.
Deb Phillips
Hi Annabel.
It was good to read this. This is a very strong post for anyone thinking about if their path is going the right way as far as site-writing. The time factor is a huge one that keeps many from giving it a long-winded try.
Your point about not comparing your site with those of others is just right, because there is no point in that. It is like looking at Microsoft’s success right now and then getting discouraged because catching up to it seems so hard. There is no value in that.
Empowering set there for those early in their site, among others.
Its almost 2 years now, and blogging is too much of a passion to have given it up by just 6 months. As soon as i wrote my first post, i knew i’d live here forever.. in others words, its the place where, and why i spend most of my time apart from household chores and kids! Great tips, i would give a thought to the second last one. Thanks for sharing :-)
Annabel,
My blog is just reaching the 6 month mark. I realize in the grand scheme of things that my blog is just a baby. But I plan on blogging for life, so quitting is not an option for me. Thank you for the timely advice.
Thank you everyone for all your comments, kind feedback and ideas so far.
I’m enjoying your recommendations for carrying on blogging despite setbacks. They seem to fall into 8 main categories:
1. Be passionate about your topic.
2. Cultivate “stickiness” or perseverance. Promise you’ll finish what you started.
3. Take time to assess progress so far.
4. Make and bear in mind long term goals.
5. Love your community.
6. Envisage success.
7. Don’t compare.
8. Keep what moving forward.
Justin, I agree. This isn’t just a problem at the 6 month mark. I’ve thought of giving up on my blog many times previously and I may want to again in the future. I’ve noticed it’s a common problem for new and not-so-new bloggers and I’m delighted that this article shares that.
When you’ve got a problem or you’re down the best feeling is knowing that you’re not alone because other people have had, or are having the same experience.
Dan and Buzzlord – Sorry you don’t like my logo. It was designed by a friend with an MA in graphic design, but it is a bit out there:) Maybe time for me to run a poll on that…
Great post! It is nice to see some of these types of posts every once in awhile. One can easily get discouraged blogging.
Nice Post.
I also think that way too many bloggers give up blogging after 6 months. The most common reason is because they dont see any income or because they dont see any positive results.
Blogging is a long term commitment and it takes longer then 6 months to get some success or see some money coming in.
How happy I am that you wrote this today.
Blogging can be the greatest blessing and most fun ride of your life.
On the other side of the token, you can feel a bit bulldozed over, and that feeling is just too painful to deal with sometimes.
Push on.
im 4 and half months in. Almost to that 6 month mark cant give up.!
Im relaunching my old blog up to make me some money. My community i have is happy to see me back.
Also i make more money in adsense on my blog because the keywords my blog targets.