The hidden struggles of blogging

Blogging is often glamorized as an easy way to express yourself and make money online.
How many times have you already seen on social media "make $1000 in your first month of blogging", "Get easily 1000 viewers a day" or "How I earn a six-figure income via blogging"?

It is true that blogging offers many opportunities, but the reality is far more complex and less glamorous than most people think. Blogging is much more than just setting up a blog, writing some words, publishing posts, and all of a sudden you have a big audience.
In this article, I go a bit deeper into the less glamorous aspects of blogging that nobody talks about.

1. Building a successful blog can take a long time

If you believe the internet, everyone makes thousands of dollars monthly. Tons of tutorials explain how to set up a blog, write a blog, and start making money immediately.
I can assure you this is not true at all, they just use clickbaity titles to lure you into reading their blogs (and buy their courses). Ok, there is nothing wrong with that, and I wish I had also been the same. But sadly enough, this blog is still not profitable (six months after publishing my first post), and I only see one or two visitors a day (I hope by the time you are reading this, this number has increased a lot).

I don't want to discourage you: blogging is amazing. I still love doing research for my articles; every word I write is done with love, etc. And in these six months, I learned much more than I could have imagined.
As a blogger, you need to master writing engaging articles, but you also need to be good at:

SEO to attract traffic

leveraging social media

building marketing strategies

communicating with our audience

email marketing

and so much more

As you see, being a blogger is like having a one-person business.

In the first months of your blogging career, you will see very little traffic (unless you are very good). The internet is flooded with blogs about every possible topic you can imagine, and your blog is just one of them. So, it can take a long time for your blog to be discovered, and there is even a chance that nobody will ever discover it.

2. Finding the right niche is not as easy as it seems

'Just start a blog about your passion". This is the general tip you hear from everyone who tries to help you. And it sounds very easy, but the reality isn't that simple.
The internet is saturated with content on every topic you can imagine. And if you want to stand out, you have to find a niche that is not only specific enough to target a particular audience, but it has also be broad enough to write a lot of articles about.

That is only one part, you also want to make money with your blog, right? Some niches are more suitable for making money than others.
You want to attract traffic to your blog, right? Most bloggers rely on Pinterest instead of Google for getting traffic. And some niches are more 'Pinteresting' than others.
This all makes finding the right niche something extremely difficult. You need to find the thin line of what you are passionate about and what can attract lots a big audience and make money.

3. A long road to generating revenue

Blogging is often referred to as the easiest and cheapest way of making passive income.
Well, I have to burst that bubble, but blogging is not a quick way to earn tons of passive income. You can make money from blogging, providing you with freedom, but it requires a lot of work.

You already read that it can take a very long time for your blog to gain traction. And depending on your monetization strategy, it can take even longer before you start making money from it.