Green and Clean mom wrote a thought provoking post the other day about mom bloggers quitting. I wanted to share my feelings about this topic.
First, I think anyone who hasn’t thought about quitting isn’t human or never really got started blogging. There are many reasons you may want to quit.
Blogging is hard work. Blogging can make you vulnerable. Blogging can be hard to balance.
There is nothing wrong with quitting, and it may be the right decision for some people. I have no criticism of someone who stops blogging.
But if you don’t want to quit, I’ll address each of these points one by one and then share my tips for working through these issues. Consider it a How to Not to Quit.
Blogging Is Hard Work
Coming up with great content day after day, week after week, for months on end with little reward (at least, not at first), can kinda suck. At first you wonder, is this thing on? Is anybody reading?
For every comment you get, there may be a hundred or even a thousand people actually reading the content. If you judge the success of your blog by that, it will set you up for disappointment quickly. You may get one “fan” email for every ten thousand people who actually laughed/cried/moved by your post. If you’re in it for the feedback, it can get discouraging.
If you’re blogging for money, don’t expect to earn much your first 6 months. Of course, there are exceptions. And blogging can help you seque into other business and moneymaking ventures and partnerships. But generally speaking, the benefits of blogging, money wise, are on the back end. It takes determination to stay the course.
Of course, there are ways to make blogging easier. Some of those are mentioned in my 100 Top Blogging Tips report which you can download free here. One way to create more content in less time is with the skillful use of PLR (private label rights) content. You can see my recommended sources for PLR on my recommended tools page.
My advice for how to not quit:
Set goals. Know your purpose.
If you know what those are, you’ll know when you’re hitting them and it will be easier to stay in the game. If your goal is to keep your sanity and connect with others through your writing, then who cares if you don’t have rock star stats? If your goal is to make money, then rejoice in that very first $2 affiliate check. It will grow if you keep at it.
When you feel like quitting, keep revisiting those goals.
Blogging Can Make You Vulnerable
The best, most engaging and magnetic bloggers have a bit of transparency in their blogs. This opens you up for a lot of love, and a whole lot of crap too.
Case in point.
I get an email from an anonymous (they almost always are – people who have nothing better to do but spew their hate on the internet rarely have the cajones to put their name to their words) person who told me I should be locked up for breastfeeding a 6 year old, that I was a pervert and somebody call DFCS quick!
Now, the first thing. I have never breastfed a 6 year old. I am assuming the hate came after I offered a quote to a reporter doing a story about extended breastfeeding. (Nasty mean people like that rarely fact check. They rarely want to be bothered by the facts when their minds are made up. The dumb masses are like that.)
That kind of thing runs off of me like a duck’s back, but it can be quite upsetting when you’re new to blogging or don’t have a thick skin. For 3 years, I had a woman follow me around on various blogs I owned or places where I was guest blogging, leaving nasty, hateful, spiteful, personal (anonymous!) comments. I finally tracked down who it was, turns out it was a woman I had met briefly offline. It really bothered me when it was happening, but now?
I hit delete and move on.
Advice to help you not quit:
Grow a thick skin.
No matter what you’re doing, if you’re visible or doing anything well, you’re going to attract people who are lonely, depressed, have low self esteem or whatever, who want to pull you into the hole they slid out of. Try not to let it get to you. It’s about THEM, not you.
Blogging Is Hard To Balance
I could also have named that headline, “blogging is addictive”. It’s true, isn’t it?
I think for many of us, blogging fills a need. A need to express ourselves. A need to write. A need for connection. A need for validation. EVEN IF we’re primarily blogging for income, these other things are part of why we choose blogging (with its commenting) instead of only building static html sites.
For memoir/diarist bloggers, it may be even more of an issue to balance blogging with other areas of life.
Green and Clean mom referenced a blogger who quit because she was spending too much time at the computer (her words), was feeling stressed about it, and the blogging became an issue between her and her husband.
I have a couple of thoughts on this.
First, I would bet my left kidney that if she were earning income with that blog, her husband would have had no problem with it. That’s kind of the way men are. Straightforward. I would bet if he saw a direct benefit from the blog to him and the family (meaning, money), he would have been more supportive. But if she was spending hours a day plugging away at something that, while valuable to HER, didn’t produce an appreciable result to him, it’s understandable he would have an issue with it.
Not saying it’s right or wrong, just sayin’. It just is. So the answer would be communication. If blogging is free therapy for you, communicate that to your significant other. Make sure they understand how important it is to you. Show them the benefits they may not be seeing, in more concrete terms.
A lot of the times, the initial problem that presents (which in this case was “you’re spending too much time blogging”) isn’t the real problem. Maybe the real problem is “the house is too dirty” or “I want snoogle time instead of you being online late at night”. (Just being honest!)
The question of balance is a tricky one. What’s balance for me may not be balance for you. It goes back to goals and purpose.
My advice for not quitting:
Draw boundaries. Stick with those.
How much time you’ll spend blogging and on related activities, how many times you’ll get online during the day, how you’ll go about enforcing those boundaries with yourself, etc.
These are things you might want to think about so that blogging doesn’t take over your life. Even simple things like setting a timer when you get online, avoiding email and social media sites until after you’ve accomplished something, limiting the number of times you check email each day, etc. Those can go a long way towards helping you achieve boundaries and not get lost in the time sucking chasm of the internet.
When it comes to quitting generally, I’m not surprised that mom bloggers are quitting. People every day quit at all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. That’s not a shock.
I also don’t think that the fact that some are quitting means that the rest of us won’t be taken seriously. The fact that many people in general quit blogging just means that the ones of us who don’t quit will be taken more seriously.
So what do you think? Have you ever felt like quitting? How have you pushed past that, or not?