It just hit me the other day. As a new blogger, I still have much to learn from people, books, articles, internet, and, of course, another bloggers. Suddenly, light bulb was coming out from my head saying, “hey, why don’t you share what you are learning with others?” and I’m thinking, it’s so true. My hope is so that with my sharing to others about my learning curve, it can help people who wants to have a blog, but don’t know where to start, which direction they need to go, and what are the mistakes so that you don’t have to fall at the same pit like I did.
The 1st lesson – Know yourself
This is so important. A lot of people want to blog just because they saw people’s blog, and they want to have a blog like theirs. This is not necessarily wrong; however, it’s not enough. It’s not easy to start a blog. It’s even harder to maintain a blog. Starting a blog only requires little technical skills, but to maintain a blog, it requires determination, consistency, and creativity. That’s why maintaining a blog is way much harder than to just start a blog.
Do you really want to blog?
Ask yourself this question over and over again until you are really sure. Several questions you can ask yourself to help you find the answer:|
- Are you really passionate about something?
Blogging is not about collecting articles from all over the internet, and dump it to your blog. Instead, you need to have a passion about topics that you can discuss in your blog. These passions could be your hobby, your job, your position, your hometown, your organization/business, your favorite figures, etc. The more you are passionate about something, the more thorough and enjoyable your blogging time will be. - Can you stand sitting in from four computer for a long period of time?
Let me be honest to you. I spent a lot of hours sitting in front of my computer to blog. There are a lot of things in my mind regarding my blog. I started with what kind of theme for my blog I want to use, what widgets should I put in the sidebar, how do I let people know about my blog, what should I post next, and so on. So, if you are the type of people that doesn’t like to seat in front of your computer for hours, consider again your decision to start a blog. - What’s the purpose you are blogging?
This is really important to determine what kind of content you will put in your blog. Some people were blogging just to share their personal life (more self-oriented blog posting), some people were blogging for making money, selling product, share information, websites reviews, and many others. This purpose could change from time to time, but you have to have at least one specific purpose when you are writing a blog post at anytime. - Can you be a consistent person?
People don’t like inconsistency. When people come to your blog, they want fresh content. It means that you need to constantly post new postings. This is hard sometime, especially if you are a busy person who prefer to use spare time to get some rest instead of blogging. Consistency requires sacrifices. Most of the time, those sacrifices are your time and your thought.
After you are considering all of those questions above, you can draw conclusion for yourself, if you are to blogging or not. By knowing yourself better, you are like laying up a good foundation for your blogging life.
The 2nd Lesson – It doesn’t have to be perfect
This was actually my biggest mistake. I used to think that when I blog, everything has to be perfect. I have to have the perfect theme, the perfect plugins to use, the perfect content, the perfect internet presence, high traffic, lots of comments, and so on. The fact is ….They are not going to happen in 1-2 days. Liz Strauss in her article Perfect Blogs, 404 Errors, and Humanity explains this concept pretty clear. Nobody will not get something perfect at the first try. If something is already perfect, there will be no room for improvement, what a boring life it would be.
Your blog needs your constant attention and care in its entire blog life. You will not get it perfect the first time you setup yours. Before, I tried to gather all the information that I need first to make a blog before I actually create a blog. After I gathered “all” the information (I found out later on that my “all” is not nearly “ALL” at all), I setup my blog. To my disappointment, I still need more information, more plugins, more visitors, more, more, and more of other things. There was always something that needs to be fixed or improved as time goes along. Because of this, I stopped blogging several months ago. One thing that get me started to blog again is actually Twitter. As I was following people in twitter, I saw a lot of blog postings that really gave me good knowledge and information from the person I was following. As I was caught up in this Twitter madness, I decided to rejuvenate my blog again 😉
So what should you do now knowing that you can’t make a perfect blog at the first try? really simple…..
The 3rd Lesson – Just do it
I just learned this recently. Despite all of my limitations in web and internet knowledge, I learned you need to “JUST DO IT.” There will be a lot of obstacles along the way, but that obstacles are actually the thing that will be perfecting your blog. “Learning by Doing.” This quote says it all. Perseverance is the key here. You will not stop when problem comes. You fight them instead. Conquer them. As you are conquering them, you will rise as the winner with new knowledge and experience as your trophy.
How about you? For beginner bloggers, what are your difficulties now? For experienced bloggers, what were your initial difficulties and how you overcome it?
Steven,
That was really cool. In fact, I also started blogging but I realized I didnt spend much time and I really wasn’t organized.Actually the main reason I started blogging was to get some cash from google AdSense, then I realized it wont work because not many people traffic my blog and that is because its boring. Once I am more settled I will start blogging again. Jeremy Davis, is also a pro at blogging, who knows maybe we can all contribute.Great reading your blog. Keep posting
🙂
Maria
Hi –
#4 in the 1st Lesson is the one that I’m always up against. It’s tough to consistently post fresh content, as you said “especially if you are a busy person who prefer to use spare time to get some rest instead of blogging.” I’m new at blogging (2 months) and I also work full-time. For awhile, I thought to myself “What did I get myself into?”
Yes, maintaining a blog is TOUGH, no matter how satisfying it is to nurture it to life. It’s also good to know others are out there who know EXACTLY what it’s like and the commitment it involves. Thanks for the confirmation that blogging is still something I want to keep doing, simply because I enjoy it.
@MariaSmart When I start blogging 2 years ago, my intention was also the same, which is to make money from ads. Since I was doing Internet Marketing jobs, Ads (especially AdSense) is really dear to my heart 🙂 However, I came to the same conclusion like you. My visitors was to low to generate ads profit. After that, I began to “abandoning” my blog hhahahha
As you can see now, my new blog now does not use ads at all. Getting profit is not my main goal now. Instead, my goal is to build good relationship with my readers, building my blog community sort to speak.
@Marissa I know how you feel, actually I’m still struggling now seeing how hard it is to maintain a dynamic blog. We, as a blogger, sometime focus too much in promoting our blog, but we forgot that content is still KING. People are craving for fresh content. We often explore the internet for new content, but rarely look to our self and ask to our self, “what part of my life that I can share with people?” You will be surprise of how much information you can share. Yup….I am really enjoying blogging also.