5 Reasons I Stopped Blogging and Guest Posting

Writing has been a hobby of mine since I was in middle school and I love it. I love putting words together to entertain and inform people. I have always wanted to be a 'professional' writer. But when I was young it was still an era where making money as a writer involved an agent and lots of rejection. Then along came the internet and I had direct access to publishers.

No agent needed but still lots of rejection.

Eventually I discovered that I could write content for other people and make money. Which I did for several years. I wrote for people like Demand Media and other content mill sites. It turns out I was pretty good at it, but I didn't like the idea of being tied to making money according to how much time I spent working. (Not to mention Google changed their algorithm and most of those sites stopped overnight.)

In about 2009, when the internet was really growing, it seemed like anyone could make money with a website, if they were able to write the content, so I decided to jump into the fray.

Limited Results

My first website was Things To Do With Kids MN .com and it was a subject I was very passionate about.

My kids were little at the time and we didn’t allow them more than 30 minutes of screen time on week days and 1 hour per day on weekends. 

Have you ever tried to keep a 2- year old and 6- year old busy without the use of electronics? We created a lot of fun memories in the process of keeping them away from the television.

We got to know every kid friendly park, museum, festival and activity in the Twin Cities.  We found something fun to do every weekend together. So much so that teachers would comment on it at parent/teacher conferences; so I started writing about everything we did and published it on my blog.

I wanted to help other parents find fun things to do with their kids and it worked – I built a small local following. I managed to sell quite a few copies of my books and while I wasn’t making enough to quit my day-job I was having fun.

At the time the wisdom was that if you wrote often enough and posted it on social media your website would magically climb to the top of the ranks and you would make money hand over fist because, of course, you would do it better than the hundreds of thousands of other people trying to do the same thing.

Following all of the ‘gurus’ advice I wrote, posted, shared, tweeted, friended and even did YouTube videos in an attempt to be everywhere and get traffic to my website with the ultimate goal of making money.

Even when I was posting new blog posts daily, the traffic to my site never crossed over the thousand hits mark in any given day. Not near enough traffic to pull me to the top of the Google search where all good websites want to be.

I never ranked above page 3 for my website overall, though I did have some posts for specific attractions that ranked well. And then Google changed their algorithm (over and over again.)

It was really frustrating to work so hard for such limited results.

But kids get older. As mine reached those wonderful (yes I am rolling my eyes right now) teen-age years we stopped doing things together every weekend. I was just happy to have a conversation that included more than the word fine.

I Lost My Passion

The website was specifically targeted at parents and grandparents of grade school aged children and once my kids were older, I lost my connection to that world. It became harder to write meaningful posts and I started to just renew old posts with updated information.

Eventually I stopped blogging for the site; but kept the reviews of the local attractions updated. I didn’t want to give up completely as I had published a number of books and having a website seemed to help me look like a legitimate expert.

Now I had a new passion – Autism. (My oldest daughter is on the Autism Spectrum.)

I created a new website to help parents of autistic kids find colleges that were a good fit for them. This is where I started guest posting a lot. The website was not a blog, but a database of schools so the best way to drive traffic was to guest post – and I did. In fact, if you Google my name you will still find me under Autism Parenting Magazine and Autism Daily Newscast.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t have a thick enough skin.

Even though I was doing my best to help other people many of the articles that were published had comments that were hurtful. I know there are trolls out there, but it got frustrating for one person to give a comment and someone else to give the exact opposite comment on a different article.

One person would tell me I should refer to my daughter as autistic and someone else would tell me I should refer to her as having autism – like there is somehow a difference. (When I asked my daughter her preference, she looked at me like I was crazy and told me she didn’t care as long as she got to read the article first.)

Eventually I just gave up.

There were too many people who only seemed to be interested in telling me where I was wrong, not interested the advice I was giving, in using my website or buying my books.

Took Too Much Time Away From My Family

Towards the end I was spending hours every night with writing posts and guest posts.

It wasn’t just the writing.

It takes a lot of time to do all of the things involved in getting 1 post published: finding the right websites, asking to post, submitting a proposal, research to get the facts right, writing, then re-writing (because it is never right the first time), marketing it on social media, checking for comments and then responding to them, then do it all over again.

It became too much.

My kids were getting older every day and it felt like they were slipping through my fingers on their way to adulthood. It became more important to to me to spend time with them, while they would still let me, then it was to argue with people online about the science behind vaccines and that just because something is on Google it isn’t a fact.

When they were younger the article’s I wrote for my blog were quick, easy and were actually a way to help us have fun as a family. I wrote a lot of articles about fun science experiments and games to play. All of which we had to try first, just to make sure they were fun. Some of them we had to repeat because they were really fun. (And I am terrible at taking photos – you have no idea how hard it is to get a good video of what happens when you blow bubbles outside at below zero temperatures.)

Later on, when I was doing a lot more guest posting than posting on my own site, I would have to lock myself away from my children and found myself snapping at them because they wanted my attention when I was busy writing.

 Not the results I was looking for.

I Never Made Any Money Blogging

During the entire time I had my own websites I was also writing for online publishers; and getting paid for it. I had a nice side job ghost writing books for other people as well as writing and publishing my own books. I also continued to provide web content.

Unfortunately, I never made any money directly from my blogging or guest blogging. No-one ever bought one of my books from my website or a link that was included in a guest post. They bought them directly from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Apple.

Now that could be the places I was posting. It could be my complete failure as a marketer. It could also be that the market was already filled with so much noise that people just didn’t react to my offers.

But whatever the reason, I never made any money directly from my blog posts or from guest posting.

So I stopped.

And the world didn’t end, in fact as far as I can tell the world didn’t even notice.

I did leave my websites up and running for a time. It was hard to think about shutting down something I had put so much time and effort into.

Then I got a notification from my web host provider that I had been hacked.

My Website Got Hacked

I admit, I wasn’t really doing anything with my either of my websites when one got hacked. But the fact that it no longer appeared in search engines at all pushed me to just shut it down.

I could have paid a couple of hundred dollars to get it fixed, but why bother. I wasn’t making any money anyway and it had become just one more thing on my endless ‘to do’ list that never got done. The passion was gone as my kids were now teens and there just didn’t seem to be any reason to keep going.

So I didn’t.

There was such a feeling of relief.

After trying to figure out the ‘secret’ system to making money online for years I stopped. I refocused my time and energy back into what I really enjoyed - the writing.

I believe the internet is almost a living thing. It is constantly changing and evolving. The process to build an online business that worked 10 years or even 10 months ago may not work now. The World Wide Web is changeable enough that creating a profitable business can be done in as many different ways as there are people doing it.

When I started online, blogging was the key. Now? I have no idea.

I still believe that building an online business is possible for anyone who is willing to put in the time and effort and yes, the money. It isn’t easy, but it can be done.

Just not by me. Not right now anyway.

I am going to fulfill my need to write by publishing here on LinkedIn and solve all 5 of the reasons I quit writing:

1.     Not looking for specific results, just want to share my thoughts and enjoy writing again

2.     Any subject is an option, so I can share whatever I am passionate about at the moment

3.     Still have time to spend with my family as there is no publishing schedule

4.     Not selling or trying to make money

5.     LinkedIn is highly unlikely to get hacked

I hope you enjoyed reading this article as I truly enjoyed writing it and that, after all, is the whole point.

Dawn

#Blogging