Blogging is a tough business, and it requires a lot of investment of time, effort, and funds from a blogger. The responsibility of maintaining an audience and living up to their expectations is also a factor that makes this job difficult. Moreover, it is also about networking and socializing with other people and bloggers.
Blogging is a huge commitment; it is really hard to manage your life as well as blogging at the same time. So, several fears start to come up when you decide to start a blog site. Naturally, you will feel like you are struggling and cannot overcome these fears. But, the fears can be controlled just like many bloggers had done in the past.
The reasons for your fears are reasonable as it is a huge responsibility, and it takes courage to put up your voice to be heard. Not many can share their experiences and thoughts, and if you have decided to start a blog, then you probably want to be heard. Following your passion of writing requires a lot of research and planning. So, it is better to take care of your hesitation before going forward in your journey.
Your over-thinking and dwelling over problems should stop, and the following points may hit the right part of your brain. So that you finally get a hold of your fears and launch your blog with confidence.
1. Fear of Deciding a Niche
This is one of the most important decisions as all your future blogs will be based on your niche. Moreover, there are tons of niche you can choose from, so the task gets even more confusing. Looking at the market and considering people’s demands also helps in deciding the niche. As a result, it takes even longer for a beginner to pick a niche and to finalize it, so that he can finally start the blog site.
Now hear me out, choosing a niche is as important as it has been told to you, but dwelling upon it will not get you anywhere.
Handle this by self-analyzing yourself and the topics you are passionate about. Finalizing should come out of your analysis and should be based on your experiences in life. For instance, you may have learned about meditation and may also be following it in your life, so it can become a niche you can write about.
Also Read: How to Choose a Profitable Blog Niche
However, this does not mean that you should be an expert in your niche. You can even choose something which you find attractive or comfortable to write about. There are some perks and advantages of selecting a specific niche, like having a more audience base than another niche. But, you can find a huge number of people in any niche or topic you choose. So, rest easy about selecting a niche and just go for what you think suits you the best.
2. Fear of Audience’s Response
There is a thought in your mind that you want to speak up about but cannot because of your hesitation. You are afraid what would be the people’s reactions. Will they love it or hate it?
All such questions are common and reasonable because you are trying to highlight your blogs and your words could make or break your chances of success. You are thinking in the right direction. But, the problem occurs when you overthink that someone would know your thoughts on a topic.
It is perfectly fine to show your opinion and ideology on any topic of your liking.
Some may like them, and some would not. This fear contradicts directly with your decision of blogging. On the one hand, you are trying to grow and be recognized, and on the other, you are afraid to spread your thoughts.
Look past this by conversing with your family or friends and telling them about your topic of interest. They work as the best source of feedback so you can be somewhat prepared for people’s reactions on the Internet.
Sometimes you could be wrong about some points, and that is ok as no one is perfect and everyone’s thoughts differ. Try to understand the audience’s point of view and work on your thoughts to make your content shine and be heard.
3. Not Having an Actionable Plan
Thinking of starting a blog site and starting it are two very different pieces of work. Firstly, you need to have a structure and idea of what a blog is to start with the work. Secondly, you need to invest in starting out blogging.
You need to be well prepared to dedicate your time and effort into achieving the goal. But, this becomes a burden when you are unable to prepare a plan of action for your blogging journey. You start to lose focus and have no idea what to do throughout the day. It feels like a joyless game to you and then, at last, you give up on the idea of blogging.
It is time for you to lift yourself up and finally take action. Many people start by making simple plans, like finding time to think about all the titles of the blog. Beginners are recommended to take it slow and mix blogging into your daily routine little-by-little. Also, always make your plans in small chunks which are not hard to complete yet are challenging in some way.
- Think of a niche
- Analyze how you could deliver content on your niche
- Research on your niche to get a better picture or fill the gaps of knowledge on the subject
- Brainstorm for a good domain name and buy it including a hosting service
- Set a goal to publish a single blog in a week at first
- Taking goals into account change your daily routine slowly to make time to write
- Eat, sleep, work, write, and repeat with correct time management
- When goals become easy to achieve, revise your plans and goals
Keep it simple but efficient, and you will start to see how easy it becomes.
4. Fear of Socializing
There is and have always been the need for socializing when talking about blogging. It may feel like there is no need to interact with others as your job is to write behind a computer screen. But, that is not all there is to blogging, and this scares many.
Making networks is one of the key elements which a blogger has to put efforts into if he wishes to become a successful blogger. Networks can be made through social media platforms, emails, and forums. Firstly, share other people’s blogs this will help others know what you are interested in and that you support others. Secondly, a healthy attitude towards others goes a long way because it helps you get the same reaction, and you get to make new friends.
Comment on other’s blogs, write your thoughts on it and what you liked the most. This is an easy task, and it will help you a lot in building networks. Share your blog or a blog you like on facebook groups, you can interact with other people in the comments.
This is a great way to get to know the people who have the same interests as yours. You could get to know bloggers of the same niche, and they could even guide you in your endeavor.
Moreover, follow others on Instagram, twitter, facebook, and any other social site to get to know them better. Slowly build your communication skills as well as your networks and ask other bloggers if you can guest post on their blog site. This will be a huge step towards getting exposure and attracting the audience.
In short, start low and keep on interacting with people who have the same interest as yours. In no time, you will have control over your fear.
5. Lack of Confidence
Confidence is something many struggles to have in their life. They may be struggling to become a musician or a businessman, and lack of confidence made them failures. Blogging requires you to believe in yourself and your work; meanwhile, you must be diligent and passionate to be successful.
At first, not many support you, so it becomes even harder to be confident. But, this gives you the chance to be self-dependant and self-motivating to help yourself. Your blogs might not come out good. Still, you must believe that you can push through and deliver better.
A successful mantra which you could use is to only make good points about your blogs at first. Read the points and feel that you are achieving something and making something of your own. Moreover, forget about the analytics of your blog site until you have published a couple of posts.
Only look on the bright side.
After you start to feel like you have started good and got the hold of blogging, start improving. Critically analyze your writing and see how you could do better, this phase comes when you become confident and have taken the step to become a responsible blogger. In other words, keep on researching and experimenting with your blog and make it your own.
Have a sense of pride in your efforts, and soon you will start to see the confidence in yourself as well as in your work, your management, and your social life.
Dedication and passion will help you get the confidence you need. As a result, when you see your self worth something, no one can shake your zeal, not even you.
6. Doubting Your Skills
No one is amazing at writing from the get-go. Everyone has to learn and understand many concepts and skills to get to where they want to be. Each blogger invests numerous hours in understanding a topic and tries to deliver the best content to his audience. So brooding over your lack of skills seems fair. Right? Wrong.
Even though all the things said above are true, you should not let your lack of skills bring your spirits down. Everyone starts at some point, and the most important step one needs to take is to just start writing. You can never be ready to start blogging if you keep on improving your skills. Moreover, one learns best when one is thrown into the situation itself.
Many people take several lessons to be in the best shape to write, although this is a great step, you must not let this delay your blog launch.
So don’t beat yourself up and keep on working on your skills while blogging. You may even get some pointers by some of your fellow bloggers to guide you through your journey.
In the end, you will see that your experience taught you more than any other lesson or guide could.
7. Fear of Being Unoriginal
People are obsessed with finding something original to write about because they think that it will be their blog’s Unique Selling Proposition. Theoretically, this sounds good, but practically it is difficult to come up with a niche that has not been touched. As a result, it has become a hindrance for many beginner bloggers as they spend most of the time creating a new niche rather than selecting one. Moreover, it negates the concept of selecting a niche you are interested in and passionate about.
If someone finds a unique topic to write on and he is also interested in the same, then it is all well and good. On the other hand, if a person is brainstorming just for the sake of being original, then he may lose the zeal to write in a short time.
Focus on telling your ideology, thought, and your story. The uniqueness of your blog will come from your thinking. There is a huge audience waiting to read the same topic in your style of writing. Therefore, do not waste time and start building your style and fill your blogs with your personality and humor.
Subsequently, you will see that it is not only the niche that is bringing the people but also the personality which you are giving to the blog.
8. Fear of Dealing with Criticism
Dealing with social anxiety and low confidence are challenges that are hard to overcome. Still, you try to improve on these. Meanwhile, you are hit with a criticism on your blog, shattering your hopes and bringing you down. Many have faced this, and many still do.
You cannot escape criticism no matter what you write and how you write it. Just like some people support you and leave a good comment, some people will grill you on your work. Some may leave healthy criticism which you need to learn to accept after some time. On the other hand, you will face people who are not so calm about what you wrote.
Dealing with the audience’s feedback takes time. Therefore, if you feel you are not ready to take serious criticism, you can temporarily disable comments on your blog. This sounds bad, but it will do more good than bad for your blogging career. It will help you get the time to absorb people’s reactions and anger without any more criticisms coming towards you.
As a result, you will see that you are becoming more comfortable in handling harsh words. Besides, you could also use the criticism to your benefit by improving on the same. Just make sure that it was correct and honest criticism and not just any hate comments.
9. Fear of Running Out of Ideas
The possibility of not having any idea to write is quite high. Everyone faces this issue, whether they are professional or otherwise. But, there are methods to overcome writer’s block. Not many can keep on delivering good content with 100% consistency.
People need the inspiration to write and when it becomes difficult, simply take a break from blogging. Keep yourself engaged in other activities, go for a vacation, spend time with loved ones, etc. Moreover, keep your goals aside for some time like publishing a set number of blogs in a week. Maybe you can lower the number of blogs, or you could even take a full-time break from all the blogging activities.
You could also write short blogs in your niche, which you find interesting. As a result, it will help you break the regular cycle of publishing long blogs. Similarly, not caring about technicality and SEO will also ease your burden and help you write just for fun. You could also use the Blog Title Generator to come up with titles for your blog, which can give you some ideas for writing.
In short, this is a common problem of every blogger, and everyone uses such methods to bring back the inspiration and imagination to write.
10. Issues of Managing Time
Time management is a huge problem at the starting and sometimes at different phases of life. Many bloggers have a day job; therefore, it becomes even harder for them to manage their whole day. To deal with this and remove the fear, you must set easy goals.
Also Read: Time Management for Bloggers
Simple and attainable goals will give you the morale boost as well as it will help you get the hang of managing time. Bloggers who invest 40-50hrs a week do get better results, but this does not mean you are supposed to copy them when you are unable to find the time. An unachievable goal will not make you learn anything, it will only add up to your guilt of failing.
Therefore, consider investing as much time as you can without you struggling to complete the goals. Do not be fast and energetic at the start just to become inefficient at a later stage. In other words, if you are serious about blogging, then start slow and blend blogging into your lifestyle little-by-little.
11. Fear of Bad Results In Terms of Audience
The main reason many want to write blogs is to get an audience who would appreciate their writing. This is one of the biggest fears many faces while starting a blog. Who will read my blog? Why does no one read my blog? Is my Blog bad? Will I ever get recognized for my blogs?
All these questions have haunted all the bloggers at the beginning of their journey. The answer to this is simple; you must focus on your work and nothing else. There is no rule which says that after some time you will get a certain number of followers. Therefore, the only thing to focus on is to keep on learning through experience and keep on changing and growing. The audience is ready to read your blogs; you just need to reach out to them by working hard and improving your content.
Also Read: Why Nobody Reads Your Blog and How You Can Fix That
Therefore, work on your weak points; for instance, work on optimizing your website so that search engines rank your site in search results. Keep publishing blogs, and you will see how you are improving with every subsequently published blog.
The design also plays an important role in the audience’s response and how they look at the blog. For this, you can customize the look of your website easily with the Blog Designer plugin to customize the look and design of the blog. You can choose a layout from a library of more than 50 layouts and can customize them to look the way you want with the given customization options. Check out the Blog Designer Plugin for WordPress.
Write on trendy topics so that it attracts more people to your blog. In addition, be consistent in blogging and never give up even if it takes months because blogging is a long term objective.
12. Hesitation In Introducing Money Matters
You are probably not starting a blog just to showcase your hobby. There should be enough earnings through blogging for you to support yourself. To do this, you need to be upfront about selling a product or service through your blog. Blogging is your passion, and you love doing it but make sure that sales numbers of products or services go up through your blogs.
Managing blogging is like managing a business, and if you are unable to make ends meet, then you will probably lose hope and stop at some point. Try to learn from other bloggers how they introduce a product or service and what tactics they use to sell it. Meanwhile, you will slowly understand that you are earning because of your hard work and efforts.
Also Read: How to Make Money from BloggingÂ
No one will buy anything if you don’t ask them to, and there is no shame in pitching a sale to your audience. In addition, many times, they are interested in getting the product described in your blogs. However, make sure you are honest with your audience by describing products that you find useful and which are related to your niche.
Slowly you will get a feel of how the whole selling structure is based around a blog. In addition, you will even get the confidence to negotiate with the sponsoring company to pay you handsomely.
Conclusion
We have seen the types of fears which usually get hold of a beginner as well as some intermediate bloggers who fail to deliver because of such hurdles. There is no need to be afraid of such problems as they are reasonable and legitimate hesitations. Moreover, any problem can be solved when you look into it, analyze it, and plan a logical action for it.
There are risks involved in any field of work, and blogging is not any different. It helps you understand and analyze yourself so that you can know how much you are capable of doing. Blogging teaches several skills that can be used in daily life. It takes a serious person to make his blog a success and become a professional.
Therefore, handling the problems and improving becomes a part of the job profile of a blogger. When you are thinking of all the possibilities and fears, you are walking in the right path of the planning phase. Only a dumb person would jump into blogging without any fear.
Seriousness brings fears, and overcoming those fears makes you wise.
In conclusion, do not let your dreams be dreams, work hard to achieve them and overcome all the obstacles to get to the top and finally launch your blog after getting control of all the fears you may have.
I hope some or all the points were relevant to your problems and I could help you out in tackling your fears head-on. Let me know by writing in the comments down below, what were the reasons which restricted you in unleashing your full potential in blogging.
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