Are You Cut Out to Blog?

I’ve written on more than one occasion about new bloggers and how you should NEVER pay a dime for blogging courses as everything you need to know and learn is on the internet. Legit, I copied word for word what I just found on Pinterest by querying BLOGGING:

How I made $25,000 with a small blog

$3,800 a month after 3 months of blogging with no experience

How I make $3,000 a month as a newbie blogger in just 6 months

How I make $5,000 a month as a blogger

I’ll ride a magical unicorn to my wedding with Brad Pitt before any of the above happens. These are snake oil salesmen and they’re really pissing me off. Upon clicking on each of the above, you look at their “income statement” and much of it is just a flat out lie. If it’s not a lie, what they don’t tell you is part of their “income” comes from the following non-blogging activities:

• Flipping websites (do you know how to do that? After 3 years of blogging, I’m just now starting to entertain the thought)
• Consulting
• Training
• Coaching

I’ll be real, these conartists are pissing me off to the point that my inner troll is starting to come out. I’m one step away from commenting on their post, telling them to quit preying on new bloggers. Take this woman for instance:

It’s not working lady because you’ve been swindled!

I went back on this blog post to see that clearly this conartist is promoting Carly’s “Pinterest course” as she had a link to it 3 f’ing times. For every person this chick sends to Carly, my guess is she gets a %. And for $47, you too can take this crap course to learn everything that you could have found for free on Google.

It cracks me up how these conartists promote posts where they made $5k in their first 3 months of blogging. Really? You knew that much about blogging that you were able to capitalize on it immediately? Wow! You’re like the damn Buddha of blogging. Congrats.

Look, I don’t make a ton of money blogging. Not enough to quit my day job but I’m here to win the war, not the battle. These ass holes make their money simply by selling courses to people who don’t know any better. I have NEVER read a blogger that claims to make a fortune that is blogging about anything other than blogging. And you know what? If they make money by blogging about things other than blogging, then they aren’t going to post a money hungry Pinterest post about how much money they make because all that is is clickbate.

What It Really Takes to Blog

This is my own opinion and I could be completely off. After almost 4 years of blogging, here is what I think you need:

Perserverance

Do you know I just got my first big shout out last year and it was from Mr. Coffee? I wrote a post on my love of Mr. Coffee and they sent me some launch-a-rocket, borderline orgasmic coffee maker that makes me lattes by a simple push of the button. That took me 3 years folks. I still haven’t gotten enough $$ from my Google Adsense to even cash out at $100. I’m willing to stick it out. Are you?

Willingness to Try New Things

If you’re stagnent, don’t keep doing what you’re doing! Again, don’t buy these stupid “courses”. Just Google it. Hell, send me a message. I’ll help you however I can. I became self-hosted in 2017 and lost the easy ability of gaining new followers via WordPress.com. So what did I do? I began to not only post on my self-hosted blog but write a 2 sentence intro and post every post on wordpress.com so I could be found in the WP reader. Now I get new readers daily and love it!

Can You Post Consistently?

I take about 4 days off a month straight and not blog. It’s an amazing time because my idea bank fills back up. That being said, if you can’t post at least once a week, I don’t think blogging is for you. Now if you don’t give care about a follower count and blogging is more cathartic, then by all means, space it out however you want. Also, Google appreciates fresh, new content so posting consistently and regularly will be appreciated by Google.

Learn, Learn, Learn!

If you’re not into learning new things about blogging, don’t blog because you may grow frustrated when stagnation occurs and you don’t know what to do. When StumbleUpon closed down and became Mix, I did my best to try and learn Mix. When I didn’t see a tenth of the results with Mix, I shifted my focus to mastering Pinterest. Aside from Google, Pinterest sends me all sorts of traffic. I have close to 2,000 followers and continue to pin on almost a daily basis.

Don’t Pick Too Much of a Niche

The “experts” say pick a niche. I didn’t. Now, I may be suffering from this but I don’t know any better. I feel like if you pick a niche so specific like say…..water pitchers, there’s only so much one can say about them. I’ve seen bloggers pick a very specific niche and 6 months into it, they either shutter or add in new topics that have nothing to do with water pitchers. The few readers that shared the same affinity for water pitchers become confused and leave. In their heads, you have an infinite amount of information on water pitchers. My niche is my voice. I talk about anything I want to talk about but keep the same tone and personality for each post.

Be Interesting

One thing that drives me crazy about some bloggers is they raddle off about their day, like we were there the entire time and have a frame of reference. I try to write each post like it’s the first time someone’s reading. I make a point to mention my sons and their ages if I’m talking about them. My point is, most of what happens to you, people don’t care about. I’ve gotten 200 words into a post and announced, “this really sucks” and just delete it.

So new bloggers, those are a few things I really think you need if you want to be into blogging for the long haul. I take this shit seriously and again, DON’T BUY COURSES. If you ever have questions, shoot me an email at [email protected].

Happy blogging!