5 Frustrations Every New Blogger Face and How to Overcome Them

Hey there! I usually do not write about blogging and its success. But I’ve been guiding people around me who ask what the heck is blogging and how do you start it. Recently I stumbled upon a post on Google+ community where a new blogger complained about her frustrations. This is what made me write today’s topic: 5 Frustrations every new blogger face and how to overcome them.

Today, I’m going to list out 5 very basic and usual frustrations every new and sometimes even experienced bloggers face. My aim from this article is to help those enthusiasts who have started a new blog or planning to start one. I will make a genuine attempt to help you overcome your common frustrations.

Before beginning, I have a word of advice. Being angered, annoyed and frustrated is not going to help you. Stay positive and keep moving in the direction you’ve chose. Success will come eventually. Turn your frustration in creativity and every time you feel frustrated, work harder on correcting your mistakes. In fact, you don’t need to read any further if you understand this clearly. Just focus on your content and everything will start falling in place.

5 Frustrations Every New Blogger Face and How to Overcome Them

To begin with, let me ask you a question. Why did you decide to start blogging? Your answer will carry another answer which will help you clear all your frustration about blogging. Have your answer ready? Let’s begin.

1. My blog isn’t receiving traffic

Imagine you open a shop. In which area that shop will be? Where only a bunch of people with high requirement of that product live or in an area full of people with no or very low requirement?

You guessed it! Opening a shop in area with few people having high requirement will make your shop a hit. Opening a shop in area full of people with no requirement is going to fail.

The same goes for blogging. Internet is full of people with different interests. If you’re writing something which has limited or no audience, your blog isn’t going to get much traffic. And in addition, even if it is receiving traffic, you’re going to face the other frustrations mentioned below.

To overcome this frustration, think about what you will publish on your blog. How much demand is there for the subject your blog is based on. Do a Google search on terms related to your topic. A blogger writing about nursing mothers should search about problems faced by new mothers and write about providing them solutions.

[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#f0f0f0″ txt_color=”#ff3b3e”]”Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe.”[/mks_pullquote]

Another way is to ‘present’ your self and your blog. I’m sure every time you visit mall, you buy something you don’t need. Why? Because either the item is on sale, which is enough to convince you to buy it, or you saw a commercial which made you buy the product you don’t need. What do marketers and sales persons do? They ‘present’ their product in a convincing way. Your blog also need this treatment. Make your blog visible to people on the Internet and visitors will definitely start flowing in.

Remember one thing. Internet is a huge place and it takes time for people to notice your blog. So unless you have written enough genuine content, don’t worry about number of visitors and overcome your other frustrations.

2. No one follows me on social media

How many people do you follow? And how do you decide whom to follow? Now think why would anyone be following you? Just because you have cute profile picture? In fact a cute profile picture can get you more followers, but they’ll not be interested in what you post. They will stay in your list of followers having no potential impact on your blog at all.

Same as first frustration, having a large number of followers isn’t what you should aim for. You need faithful followers who are actually interested in what you post. To get more followers, make your profiles clear about you and your interests. Being specific will keep uninterested people away and you’ll get genuine followers, who in turn, will help you get more followers.

[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#f0f0f0″ txt_color=”#ff3b3e”]”Needing to have things perfect is the surest way to immobilize yourself with frustration.”[/mks_pullquote]

To get followers, engage with other users with same interests as yours. Join communities related to your interest and start following users like you. Add related relevant comments and provide feedback to others. This is a way of ‘advertising’ your self. No one’s going to notice you unless you make your self visible to them. You need to make your self ‘seen’ and ‘heard’. Remember not to do this with only intention of getting followers. If people think you’re doing it just because you want them to follow you, they will not follow you.

3. Visitors leave my blog too soon (high bounce rate, low session duration)

So you’ve setup Google Analytics or similar service to have an idea about how many visitors your blog is getting and how much time they spend on your blog. But the report tells you that you have a high bounce rate and low session duration. It means visitors are not engaging with your blog. And that isn’t a good sign. Sites with high bounce rate are not good for search engines as well.

[mks_pullquote align=”left” width=”325″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#f0f0f0″ txt_color=”#ff3b3e”]”Frustration is commonly the difference between what you would like to be and what you are willing to sacrifice to become what you would like to be.”[/mks_pullquote]

To make your guests engage more with your blog, along with good content and layout, you need other things as well. Put good images in your articles, choose nice and suitable colors, choose easy to read fonts etc. Also provide related posts after your articles. Encourage visitors to write a comment or provide feedback. Present them with related poll or something similar that will keep visitor busy.

Furthermore, represent your self trough your articles. Don’t make boring articles. Use headings and subheadings as necessary. There’s a different between a public service announcement and a James Bond movie. PSAs are not supposed to be entertaining. They have a message to deliver and that’s what they do. Could you bare watching or listening PSAs for two hours? No, but you’ll definitely watch an interesting movie for more than two hours. Apply this very same rule while blogging.

4. My blog doesn’t appear in Google search results (and other search engines)

A piece of advice: Stop worrying about this right now. I know Google is the ultimate source of traffic and appearing on top of Google search results is what every blogger want. When you see you’re not receiving any traffic from Google, it obviously irritates you.

[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#f0f0f0″ txt_color=”#ff3b3e”]”Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”[/mks_pullquote]

Google use strict algorithms. A new blog will not end up in search if it does not have enough content, back links and social shares. So before you start worrying about traffic from Google and other search engines, pay attention to your blog’s content instead of freaking out.

To make sure your articles are displayed in search results, you need fresh articles, covered in nice layout, containing relevant images and sources (outbound links).

If nothing seem to help you with this, then refer to the first point. You’re selling something with little or no demand. Unless your content is searched for and linked to from other sites, it is not going to appear in search. So make sure about interesting content which is something others will share on Internet and link back to your blog.

5. My blog isn’t generating income

My first question applies here too. Blogging is a great way to earn decent money. But if someone told you blogging will make you a millionaire, claim your money back! Okay, I know you don’t expect your blog to make you millionaire but of course you want to earn money from it. And as I said, you definitely can!

To make money from your blog, you need genuine and faithful visitors. In addition, you have to provide quality and unique content to them. Always remember, content is king on the internet. You can get inspiration from other sites but copying their content is a strict no. Why? Because Google will never consider your blog in its results. Google has a strict requirement of having genuine content. How would you feel when your efforts help others more than you?

To make good amount of money from blogging, you need to find ways that work best for you. Ad networks like Google AdSense are going to help you earn by advertising. But just like getting Google to display your blog in search, your blog needs decent, genuine and frequent content along with nice, easy to go with layout to get approved in AdSense program.

[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#f0f0f0″ txt_color=”#ff3b3e”]”If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”[/mks_pullquote]

There are other ways you can make money obviously. But before you could implement them and start making money, you will have to get sufficient amount of traffic. So work on overcoming other frustrations before worrying about income. Once you get everything set up perfectly, money will start flowing and you will thank me. 😉 I will post about other ways of income soon.

At this moment, do not pay attention on how much you’re earning. If you’re working as full/part time, keep working and start paying attention to frequent, quality content. This will help you from unpaid bills and frustrations. (Trust me, I’ve got this A LOT. I’ve been to the deepest level of depression you could imagine due to no income.)

End of story

Now after reading all 5 frustrations, you might have got the idea that all of them are related to each other. You will need to overcome each of them before you start seeing better results. One by one, work on fighting each of your frustrations. Start with the first one mentioned above before worrying about rest of them. Once you overcome one frustration, fighting others will keep getting easier.

Take a deep breath and don’t get frustrated or think about shutting your blog down. Make sure you try before you quit, because those who get defeated without trying are called losers and no one want to be considered a looser.

Best of luck with your blog!

I hope you found this article useful and interesting. If you need help, feel free to contact me and I’ll be more than happy to help you out. Do not forget to share this article with others.

Forget perfect on the first try. In the face of frustration, your best tool is a few deep breaths, and remembering that you can do anything once you’ve practiced two hundred times.