by Esther Adeniyion February 14, 2019March 5, 20192 Comments on 7 Reasons you just won’t start your blog!
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Honestly, I have met and discussed with tens of Bloggers and intending Bloggers over my course of Blogging and I can say that there are some categories of problems that have common causes and solutions.
This is only expected if you have been blogging for close to a decade now. Esther Adeniyi will be 6 years in March but I started blogging years before then. ‘The Nigerian Student’ was what the blog was titled and it was hosted on Blogger as at the time.
Well, it was supposed to be a lifestyle blog chronicling my experience as a Nigerian Student who’s been through some hurdles surviving in the harsh reality of education in Nigeria.
(By the way, you should click on the link above. I have added it for people who have always had a problem with differentiating between a lifestyle blog and a personal blog)
After a while;
-I ran out of topic ideas. I know better now, that should never happen to any Blogger who knows how to overcome that. You can read my blog post here on how to never run out of blog topic ideas.
– I lost motivation. As at the time of Blogging, there weren’t many resources out there to help Bloggers. It was a very new terrain. People only opened blogs as online diaries. It was just for thought keeping.
– I didn’t have people to talk to about what I was doing because I would first of all have to explain what Blogging was and then talk about it. You guessed right, it was all pointless and totally unnecessary.
– I began to worry about the unnecessary things. What if I am not an interesting person to read? What if my blog just sucks and no one’s had the guts to tell me. I was gradually beginning to get exposed to foreign Bloggers and I binged on their blogs. This drove me further away from blogging, so I quit.
Not long after, my passion re-ignited and I just couldn’t not write. I just wanted to write. I am that girl who takes in a lot of information and for me, breathing in too much was choking, I needed an outlet to express and an audience to read.
And so I switched things up. I expressed and informed at the same time. That way I was sure to keep people coming back. This is because I quickly learned that we are all self-serving human beings and no one is dying to know what I was up to except I was Kim Kardashian.
I have decided to take time to write all I have written so that I can build a strong foundation for what I am about to discuss with you.
You see, if many successful Bloggers (I count myself as one because I am fulfilled blogging. Overtime, you will come to realize that blogging success means a lot of things to different people) came out to share some of the earliest parts of their blogging journeys, I believe that a lot of intending Bloggers would find the courage to finally open their own blogs.
A bunch of us share our stories, you will find them if you look well enough.
In the following paragraphs, I will outline the most common reasons people still won’t open their blogs despite their incessant talk about opening one. I personally know people who have been opening their blogs for years with their mouths.
Contents
- 1 Procrastination
- 2 The need for Perfection
- 3 No clear Direction
- 4 Money
- 5 Fear of rejection
- 6 Fear of failure
- 7 Confusion
This is a personal attribute that might have seeped into other very important areas of your life. You are just naturally the person who procrastinates. If it were not so, you would have been blogging for 3 years now.
I believe that procrastination is closely tied to laziness. If you procrastinate every time, it might be an indication that you are lazy or just never motivated internally until there is a forceful push.
Personally I believe that if you do not learn how to overcome procrastination, it might well affect you even after you start blogging. You might not be able to keep up to schedule even if it’s once per week.
I would, if given a chance, suggest that you deal with that habit first of all. If you are to be truthful to yourself, it has not only affected Blogging or the move to open a blog. It has affected so many other things, so deal with it.
Too many times I meet intending Bloggers who keep on telling me that they want to get it right. They want their new blogs to be perfect. Some even had blogs before, like I did, lost it and now want to start on a new slate.
So, they want this new one to be all right and great. Of course, it’s fine to have a badass new blog, only that if you keep on going at that rate, you might end up not having a blog at all.
Listen, everyone started from somewhere. You see all the Bloggers who seem to have it all together, who have all the big companies collaborating with them and who have the largest traffic share in this sphere started from a domain name and the first blog post.
You need to start. It’s always good to start prepared as it can speed up your growth, I won’t deny that. But obsessing over perfection will never allow you to start your blog.
Only companies and corporate blogs are allowed to be obsessed over perfection. You, my dear friend, will figure so many things out along the way.
If many Bloggers will be honest with you, they will tell you that they are still trying to figure out so many things. One of these days, I will share with you units of things I am still trying to figure out and I give you my word, some will shock you.
Some of the things I will mention here are not absolute in their own rights, they are conditional and relative. Some blogs are solely for the purpose of making money and I tell you that that is even more of a clear direction than a blog that has just been opened, for nothing.
Oh yes, you can open a blog just to make money, there is nothing wrong in that. Many of the niched blogs you see out there are for the sole purpose of generating income. They may not be as prevalent here in Nigeria. One thing is common to many of them however, quality content. The level of information and useful content on these blogs are unmatched and this is for many reasons, part of which ease of making the money is among.
So, it’s possible that you have not been able to get around opening your blog because you don’t have a clear direction yet.
Everyone has a blog, so should you. People seem to be rolling in mega bucks, so should I. You need a purpose, fam. You need direction because it will keep you going when you are tired of putting out content on your blog.
This was why I wrote – “seriously, why do you blog?” I wrote this blog post to help Bloggers and intending Bloggers validate their why. You see, validating your why is necessary and it doesn’t even matter how far gone you are. You can stop now to validate it.
This right here is one of the major things stopping people from blogging. Apparently, there is the misconception that you have to spend a lot of money to open a blog.
Listen, you can start a blog with as little as 5,000 Naira a year. I would have said, oh well, for free but I am a strong advocate of buying your domain name. So, yea, 5K goes. This is if you start with Blogger.
With Blogger, hosting is free because it is by Google. If you have 5,000 Naira now, you can open a Blogspot blog and buy your domain name. As time goes on, if you are well financially settled and feel the need to migrate your blog from Blogger to WordPress, then you can.
I feel a lot of intending Bloggers also think that you are stuck with whatever platform you start with so they would rather go save money and then start with WordPress self hosting. That’s not true, you can start now and migrate later.
If this means anything, many of the Bloggers who now have great blogs started from Blogger. I started from Blogger myself and migrated when I needed some features I could not find on Blogger. For some other people, sticking with Blogger will have no effect on their blogging experience and they will be just fine.
In the article where I talked about my migration from Blogger to WordPress, I discuss some of the pros and cons of Blogger and WordPress respectively.
If you are however looking to start on the better foot immediately, read this step by step tutorial on how to start your WordPress blog all by yourself. It is a complete checklist and the ultimate guide. It also teaches you how to make money from the new blog you have just created.
Let me tell you a brief story about my early days of blogging, it won’t bore you, I promise.
So, I would normally walk into a room of well established Bloggers and social media influencers and walk out with my head down.
This happened a lot, in both online and offline meet-ups. In fact, this was what inspired one of the posts I wrote – Dear Blogger, you are enough.
Overtime I came to realize that I can make of myself what I wanted if I wanted it bad enough because in reality, I had a right to share my own story. I might not have 50 blog visitors to my blog but my readers related to me. Which means I was not doing bad after all.
So, if your delay is as a result of rejection by other Bloggers, which by the way happens in your head, it is not a legit reason. I mean, get over it and start crafting your own experience.
I don’t know if this sounds right but there are no failures here. This is Blogging, not school. You determine how this whole thing goes. It’s your call.
If you decide that you will put nothing up on your blog for one year, well that’s your call. You choose your progress yourself.
You are not going to fail if you have a blogging purpose, you stick by a schedule and you have fun connecting with the whole of your heart.
When you are ready to take it a step further, then you begin to invest in courses, trainings, consultations. You can begin to make some other serious blog investments. You determine your speed and growth here. No one is passing or failing, so, kind of start already.
As you progress, you keep on tweaking your blog design (by yourself or with the help of a designer), you begin to acquire subscribers to your blog and emailing list, followers, a tribe, comment gang members on your blog. I mean, get on this journey. It’s an awesome ride, trust me.
They have finally gotten to you. Ahahahahahah..Like, in your research, you have read tons and tons of Bloggers with conflicting ideas about blogging and you have finally ended up being confused.
So, you are thinking… what’s the point? Listen, starting a blog is as easy as getting on your system and logging on to a platform to sign up. That’s all. You will figure the rest along the way.
Don’t permit all the many resources out there to confuse you. Whatever is happening in other people’s journeys is none of your business. These are supposed to inspire or correct you, that’s all.
It is also possible that the big blogging terms are shushing you away. People came up with these terms. There is no central blogging knowledge here. You will catch up with all of them, trust me.
In conclusion, it’s ‘amazing’ when I have someone talk about opening a blog everyday and never gets around to opening it. In fact, it’s worse when they open it and two weeks later, they disappear from the scene.
So, if you would go over my points again, please do and make up your mind this time. The blogging journey is fun, trust me, so, come on board already.
If you like this blog post, I would be really happy if you share with Bloggers you think should read this. Most likely they are Bloggers that have started and stopped. Most importantly, the people who would benefit from this the most are those who keep on telling you that they are going to open their blogs but never end up opening it.
If you liked this post, check this one out: How to start your blog and make a lot of money from it
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