The economy has tanked, you’re in over your head, and you’re paying the babysitter as much as you’re making at work. You won’t be getting a promotion anytime soon, because your company currently has a salary freeze. You need a second (or third) income. Why not a blog? You can blog in your pajamas and you can do it whenever you want – late at night, early in the morning, while the kids are napping, etc.
Sound familiar?
When I first started this blog last September, I thought to myself, “How hard could this be? I love to write, I’m on the computer messing around talking to people half the day anyway, so why not make a blog a business? Half the blogs I read have spelling and grammatical errors all over the place. I could totally do this better than they do.”
While it all sounds good on paper, and it made perfect sense to me at the time, it wasn’t my best idea ever. Don’t get me wrong, I love my blog almost as much as my family, and something about my unmanicured fingernails clicking away at the keyboard soothes me.
Like I said before, I love to write. I always did, even as a kid.
I was an executive administrative assistant for 8 years, and have had one administrative job after another my entire life. I know my way around a computer. I know what proper sentence structure is. I even won the spelling bee in 4th grade. I should be making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year blogging in my opinion.
I was wrong. Unbelievably wrong. I hate having to admit when I’m wrong.
When you read those stories about bloggers making six-figure incomes, they tell you it’s a lot of hard work. I’m no stranger to work. Waiting tables is hard work. I was good at that too.
The thing is, i never fathomed the amount of time, effort, and discipline blogging takes. If you’re not 200% committed to it, a blog will never be successful. It’s not the kind of thing that goes away after your shift is over.
For my first 6 months, I wrote a few posts a week and sat around and expected people to throw money at me. After all, I’m a blogger. Blogging is a business, and I should be getting paid. Millions.
Wrong again. I made nothing. Not one red cent, and very few compliments. As a matter of fact, I started to get embarrassed about blogging. When people asked what I did for a living, I didn’t tell them I had a blog. I told them I sold things on eBay.
I do sell things on eBay, but I have honestly spent more time working on my blog in the past 9 months than I did in the 11 years I have been selling on eBay. I also made money on eBay. The problem is that I don’t want to sell yard sale items for profit. The money’s good, but it feels like such a chore.
I want to write. I want to talk to people about more than the cost of shipping and what type of packaging I will be using. I want to connect with the world and share my crazy life with them.
Today I have already logged six hours commenting, networking, reading emails, editing old posts, reading other blogs, tweaking my site, and now I’m writing. I figure by the time I’m done I will have logged at least 9 hours. I do this every day. At times it gets incredibly frustrating, and once in a while I even want to throw in the towel.
Granted, I really didn’t get serious about my blog until ab0ut 3 months ago. I sat around waiting for the traffic to come. And it didn’t. Now I’m getting my blog name out there as much as i possibly can, like one of those creepy people that coax you to play their games at the fair.
”Hey you, do you see me? Come check me out!! I have some great stuff over here I’d like to show you!”
And, slowly but surely, they are coming.
I have met some amazing people through blogging that have helped me in so many ways to grow my little corner of the blogosphere. Now that I have more traffic, companies are willing to connect with me more. It’s coming along.
My blog is not spreading like the wild fire I expected it would be, but more like a slow burning ember. Every day it gets a little bit hotter and the ember gets a little bit brighter. And I’m totally okay with that. At some point in high school, a teacher told me to find something I love and make it make money. When you get paid for doing what you love, it doesn’t feel like work, and you won’t be miserable.
The moral of this story? Not everyone can be a blogger. Not everyone is cut out for it. You have to be willing to commit time, patience, skill, money, and most of all, perseverance. And then do it again. And again. And again. I have never in my life worked so hard at something. I have also never had so much pride in “my job” as I do now.
I keep feeding my blog little by little every day, and it gets brighter and brighter. Occasionally it rains, and the fire smolders a little, but I divert the rain and keep plugging along. I probably won’t ever see that six figure income I thought would instantly fall on my head like a ton of bricks, but it really doesn’t feel like work most of the time, so I’m not complaining.
Freakout Over! Happy Friday!
