Are You Ready To Be A Blogger?
Tags: Blogging
5 Questions You Should Ask Yourself
Blogging is a fun and creative hobby. However, authors usually spend more time than they expect running their blogs. It can be very time consuming, especially in the beginning stages. It takes a lot of dedication, and more importantly, patience. Here are 5 questions to ask yourself before you make the jump into blogging.
1. Do You Have The Passion?
Running a blog takes hard work, dedication, and more importantly passion. You have to be passionate about what your doing or you will never success. It is important to enjoy what you do, especially what you write about. This will ensure that you never run out of useful content to create for your blog.
2. Are You Good At Writing?
It is true that there is more to blogging than writing. However, having a good set of writing skills can go a long way in separating you from the pack. Being able to communicate with your readers clearly, and precisely will ensure they continue to come back again and again.
3. Are You Willing To Continue Learning?
Blogging, like technology in general, is a never ending learning curve. Everyday, new products come out that make others look obsolete. It can be real difficult to stay on top of all the new software releases, widgets, plugins, and whatever else gets thrown into the mix.
Be prepared to continue your learning indefinitely as you progress in becoming a successful blogger. On a good note, those that love to learn will constantly find themselves occupied learning, which can make the whole process a fun journey.
4. Do You Have The Time?
There are countless programs, books, and advertisements saying you can create an awesome blog in a really short time. This is not entirely true. Yes, you can create a cool looking blog and add some content in a very short time. But it takes much longer to establish yourself, generate traffic, and receive comments on your posts.
You must be willing to spend time on various projects within the blog. Writing, designing, marketing, researching, and maintaining are all parts of the blog. Focus on just one of these and you will be setting yourself up for failure. So just remember, it takes patience, persistence, and time.
5. Are You Trying To Get Rich Quick?
This is an important to ask yourself right away. Making an income through blogging is definitely possible. In fact, there are a lot bloggers that make enough to money to quit their day jobs. However, this does not happen over night. It can take months, even years before you blog takes off to the point of supporting you financially.
Don’t Be Discouraged.
If you asked yourself these questions and you feel you have everything it takes to jump into the blogosphere, then by no means hold back. The sooner you start on your journey, the quicker you will feel success. And there is no better feeling than watching something you created from scratch grow into something successful.
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I looked at the rules and maybe blogging isn’t right for me. I do it just for fun and I’m a mediocre writer, but I enjoy it. I just go with that aspect of it.
Nice blog, I love to see this kind of content, keep up the good work.
I am trying to establish myself as a blogger, but I’m not trying to be a “problogger”. BUT my blog is for my website which will be my source of revenue; so in a way, I do have to have a “problogger” mindset and work ethic.
#2 is one that worries me. I am working on being a better writer from reading style guides, books on creative writing and related blogs. Maybe I should take a writing and/por editing class.
Even though I answered no to a few of those questions, I’m still trying to be a blogger. Now if I could just find the time to update it more than once a month… Anyways, I like the recent site improvements. Any chance of making a post about your traffic stats now vs. 6 months ago? That would be cool to see, as it seems like you are doing great with the blog lately. Ttyl man.
Jeremy
@ Jeremy It’s about time you get back on here, jk. Yeah the site has been getting a lot of updates over the last few weeks and I still hope to do a lot more.
That’s a good idea about the traffic stats and comparing them. Now that I have my categories broken down a lit better I hope to do a lot more posts on blogging itself. So stick around, I will definitely do a post like that in the upcoming weeks, probably at the end of October when the stats are in.
In general my rule is if someone else already got rich off the idea, it’s very unlikely that another person will get rich off the same idea. Blogging certainly can lead to a decent income but on its own it will not make you rich.
As for #2, it’s odd because I’m a very good technical writer but am many times too dry for the blogging world. I certainly view blogging as its own sub-genre of writing. Bloggers like you Justin who have a quick and entertaining but also informative tone are best suited for the always buzzing blogosphere.
I have a few pretty successful blogs now through my company and for the longest time (almost a year) I had no substantial traffic or much pull in my niches. Now after a lot of SEO work and just general promotion they have all started taking off and it was well worth the work. You are right it takes a passion plus time to really get them going.
I love #5–that’s what many people think, that blogging is a get rich quick scheme…when in actuality you must build a following from the ground up…and then hope you can make some money from it. Thanks Justin.
I started blogging in 2003, back when stats and revenues didn’t matter. Oddly enough, now that it’s popular, and that you have to keep track of it, I’m beginning to feel very lazy to blog. It beats the original purpose of why I started a blog in the first place.
I think I am ready to be a blogger. Seeming as I own a blog and all, I’m off to a great start. My Alexa rank has improved substantially. The other day I noticed it had dropped by 200,000 in the space of a few days.
With the type of blog I own, there is simply too many stupid people in the world for me to ever run out of material to post about.
Dwayne.
http://probablysucks.com
People blog for different reasons. For me, my greatest motivation for blogging is the fact that when I blog I am teaching myself on a particular topic, and in the course of teaching myself, I help others rediscover a piece of knowledge that may be of great value to my readers.
You’ve got a great list here. I especially like where it began.
Thanks for all the responses! It’s nice to hear feedback like this : )
I am blogging because I am having fun. Though I admit I am having difficulty with HTML
But I like it. I am learning too…and I would like to learn more especially in earning online.
I always don’t have enough time to look after my blog because of studying commitment. But the passion has always drove me to blog
Well I think I am doing OK as far as your list goes. I think even if people do have a few NO answers to these questions, if they think blogging might be for them they should give it a try. Initial investment in pretty minimal (zero if you use blogger etc) so there is nothing to lose and it’s the only way you’ll really find out in blogging is for you.
I enjoy your blog – it provides lots of information on blogging. I started my own personal blog a month ago and am excited just to get a few visits for now. I will try to build on that number every month and hopefully some day I can quit my day job, which happens to be writing a corporate blog! Thanks for your great advice.