8 Questions to Ask Before Quitting Your?Blog
Before quitting your blog ask yourself a few questions.
Give yourself the chance to keep blogging.
Sometimes, bloggers throw away promising blogging careers because of one obvious mistake that a personal Q and A session would reveal.
Correcting that error helps you feel good about your blogging potential and also tends to accelerate your blogging success. Feeling good and seeing success inspires you to keep blogging.
Every blogger thinks about quitting at least once during their careers.
If you’re thinking about quitting but want to give blogging a last chance ask yourself these 8 questions.
1: Why Am I Blogging?
Why do you blog?
Bloggers who want to quit choose fear-based drivers like money and popularity. Money and fame never arrive quickly because it takes great work executed over a long time to make money and be famous. Naturally, this crowd quits sooner than later.
Bloggers who blog predominantly for the fun of helping people (with subtle professional aspirations) never quit unless they cease having fun. As a rule, virtually every professional blogger blogged mainly for the fun and freedom of helping people. You need this driver to blog for a long time when nothing appears to be happening traffic and money wise.
I’ve blogged for almost 15 years. Fun, freedom and the joy of helping people predominantly drive me. If money or fame drove me I’d have quit 15 years ago when no one knew me and I made nary a penny through blogging.
Cling to modest professional aspirations if you wish but make your dominant blogging intent:
to become a patient, persistent blogger who moves beyond the urge to quit.
2: Who Did I Learn Blogging?From?
Oddly enough, many new bloggers learn how to blog from themselves via trial and error, even though they have no blogging experience.
Imagine if a teenager decided to “wing their way” to becoming a doctor?
Imagine if a teenager decided to “wing their way” to becoming a lawyer?
Learning how to blog successfully is a far less comprehensive process than learning how to be a doctor or lawyer but is still challenging and best taught by experienced, seasoned professional bloggers.
Some beginner bloggers learn how to blog from fellow new bloggers. None of these folks know how to blog successfully. Each teaches one another how to struggle, fail and quit because they have no idea what they are doing, blogging-wise.
Learn blogging solely from professional bloggers.
Do not learn how to blog from anyone other than professionals.
3: How Did I Learn Blogging?
How did you learn blogging?
Did you base your full blogging education on piecing together five blog posts?
Or did you invest money in a comprehensive blogging course created by a professional blogger that laid out practical steps to follow to become a successful blogger?
Did you listen to a few podcasts to learn blogging?
Or did you hire a professional blogger to coach you?
Did you learn blogging from struggling bloggers?
Or did you invest money in an eBook written and self-published by a professional blogger?
How you learn to blog greatly influences your success or failure.
Bloggers often quit because they:
Learn blogging only from professional bloggers if you want to succeed.
Invest money in their:
if you want to accelerate your success.
Learn from the best bloggers. Invest money to access the best advice from the best bloggers.
Before you quit blogging invest in proven blogging strategies.
Often times, a course, eBook or coaching session opens your eyes while goading you to continue blogging.
4: How Much Time Did I Spend Learning How to Blog Successfully?
Did you spend a significant chunk of time learning how to blog successfully?
I remember chatting with professional marketer and web designer Alonzo Pichardo. He said he basically spent 6 months learning internet marketing and web design.
Who does that?
Seriously; how many bloggers do you know who shut out all distractions and dialed in for 6 months to focus exclusively on learning how to blog successfully, studying how to blog successfully and laying a granite-like foundation for their blogging campaign?
An inordinately high number of bloggers quit because they never learn how to blog successfully. Either they think that blogging is easy and requires no learning or that they know all there is to know about blogging. Of course, most of these bloggers quit after being jarred out of their delusion with a cold, hard truth:
blogging is a highly nuanced skill that requires deep study before you write a single post (to really hit the ground running) and continual study in order to thrive.
You must study blogging as a high school or college student spends weeks, months then years studying a specific subject.
领英推荐
No one wings it to succeed.
No one exclusively teaches themselves.
Before you decide to quit ask yourself if you spent significant time learning and studying blogging.
5: Am I Utterly Delusional?
I shall now excuse myself from this question.
In all seriousness, aspects of my mind seemed completely delusional about blogging early during my career. I really believed I’d be sitting on Oprah’s couch (this was back in 2007–2008) just because I was a fired security guard who’d started blogging 6–12 months prior.
The ego is insane. It believes that you can gain access to millions of people being interviewed by an icon based on making a purchase and cruising through 6–12 months of mild blogging work.
Blogging reality doused me like ice water to the face. I gradually accepted the truth: blogging requires 1000’s of work-hours to slowly, surely, patiently and persistently mine success, one moment at a time.
Almost all new bloggers are completely deluded with laughably unrealistic expectations. We all have this part of the mind that wants something for nothing. When you do not get something for nothing, you quit based on the unfair exchange.
Sometimes, owning your silly delusion is the catalyst to a long, thriving, successful blogging career. Being honest with yourself breeds, generosity, patience and persistence, all cornerstones of a professional blogging career.
6: Did I Surround Myself with Struggling Bloggers?
As a rule, most new bloggers surround themselves predominantly with struggling bloggers because it feels:
Misery loves company. The ego loves to complain and loves having an attentive audience gobbling up its complaints even more.
Of course, you will quit blogging if you struggle horribly and only have struggling bloggers around you agreeing with your grievances, telling you how hard blogging is and how much it sucks.
But if you surround yourself only with successful bloggers these pros can breathe hope into your blogging campaign by showing you how to succeed and by cheerleading you along the way.
Hang only with pros. Feed off of their high energy vibe through osmosis.
Keep blogging by surrounding yourself with an uplifting blogging environment that picks you up when you need encouragement, guidance and support.
7: Did I Try to Blog?Solo?
Blogging solo is a common cause of online failure.
People think that blogging is just writing and publishing posts.
In truth, an imagined reclusive element of blogging partially drew me to this gig. After working a few customer service oriented jobs I wished to be the cyber version of Howard Hughes.
However, going pro involves working with humans by:
Teamwork makes the blogging dreamwork.
If you want to quit the reason may be trying to do it all by yourself.
Hire a web developer to handle design and development issues. Help bloggers without asking for anything in return to build your friend network. Read and reply to all blog comments. Serve customers and clients.
Blogging is a team effort not a solo jaunt.
8: Have I Asked for Honest Feedback?
Ask for honest feedback before quitting your blog.
One reader told me my old blog theme “looked like shit.”
Perhaps he could have attended finishing school but I got the point; he honestly pointed out that I felt bad about my old blog design.
At that point, I began working with a developer who crafted my old blog theme. Feeling good about the old theme inspired me to keep blogging. Even though I rarely considered quitting it felt good to get clear on the blog design.
Most bloggers fear receiving honest feedback. Shame, embarrassment, arrogance or anger feel like burdens too heavy to bear.
Feeling defeated, bloggers often quit when receiving one piece of honest feedback could energize them, inspire them and goad them to begin blogging successfully.
Ask your readers for genuine feedback. Ask a 5 year old for feedback. Ask a 75 year old for feedback. Honesty is the tonic of both the young and old. Little ones have not learned the art of hiding private thoughts. Older ones long ago lost the habit of people pleasing.
Open your mind to honest feedback. Authentic people may toss an opinion your way that:
Before you quit simply ask someone to honestly assess your blog.
Fielding honest advice has a funny way of freeing you in some way, shape or form.
Conclusion
Ask these 8 questions.
Wait for honest answers.
Look at yourself truthfully before you quit blogging.
Originally published at https://www.bloggingfromparadise.com on October 21, 2022.