I run 5 WordPress blogs and a Medium.com blog and I’ve been a full-time blogger for 3.5 years now.
In this post, I will share the biggest issues with blogging that I’ve encountered in the past years.
#1 Time consumption
Blogging takes time. There’s no way around it.
Google needs to trust your site before showing your blog posts high in search results. And this can take months, no matter how good your site is!
Also, to make Google trust your site more, you need to write a ton of content which also takes time.
Unless you can hire a team, you need to work really hard before making a decent income with your site.
In my experience, it takes about 6-12 months of full-time work to make a living with blogging.
This assumes you work smart, choose the right niche, and know exactly what you’re doing.
Also, for most of us, it’s not possible to jump in full-time right off the bat. Instead, you need to blog while working, which probably means 10-20 hours per week.
This means it can take even longer to find success.
This means it can easily take a year or two before you can actually jump in full-time.
#2 Monetization challenges
Not every blog can be monetized well.
Some niches can earn $100 per 1,000 visitors. Then some niches earn $0.1 per 1,000 visitors.
Make sure to read also: How much affiliate marketing actually makes
Consider a niche like chess. It’s a good niche for sure.
But when it comes to making money, there’s not much you can earn from it.
People already have equipment. They’re simply looking for information.
If the target audience is “cold” or unlikely to buy anything, there’s probably not much you can earn from it either.
#3 Spam, trolls, and criticism
If your blog has comments enabled, you will find out that most of the comments are bots selling some services. Surprisingly many!
Also, as a blogger, you will get a ton of fake sponsor emails that ask you to publish a post on your site with a link.
Plus people try to sell you all sorts of SEO services and claim that your site is broken.
These emails can feel personalized and legitimate but are always either scams or overly priced services that you should ignore.
Last but not least, if it’s not the bots that reach out to you, you might get emails or comments that heavily criticize you.
#4 Maintaining consistency
As I stated earlier, it takes at least 6-12 months of full-time work to find success with your blog.
This means you need to work hard and strategically all the time.
While your blog won’t crash if you take a month off, you shouldn’t really do that.
It will hinder your performance and postpone your dreams of blogging freedom.
What I’ve done for a long time is work about 8-12 hours on my blogs every day for the past 2.5 years to keep them growing.
#5 Technical challenges
Although you don’t need to have any technical skills to run a blog, it’s still a new skill and platform that you need to learn how to use.
Also, there are some simple, what some would consider “technical” housekeeping tasks you occasionally need to do.
But those are easy to learn—no matter what your background.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the customizability of websites is still quite limited on many platforms.
You can easily set up a basic blog with the necessary pages, comment system, emails, etc.
But then if you want to add something unique, such as a yellow CTA box after each blog post, you might need to copy-paste a code snippet to your file manager.
#6 You Essentially Work for Google
One of the main benefits of being a blogger is to be your own boss.
While you can create your own workflow and schedule, you’re always heavily dependent on Google. Almost to an extent where you’re working for them.
If Google decides to change its algorithm, your blog might come down overnight.
In other words, if Google doesn’t like your work, they can easily get rid of it—without having to tell you.
This is actually why it’s not ideal to just run one blog.
When your first site makes a good income, it’s wise to expand to other platforms and perhaps even hire some freelancers to run your blogs.
#7 Stress
Thanks to all the difficulties I just mentioned, blogging can be exhausting and stressful. Especially if you’re 100% dependent on it.
If you work too hard, it can even lead to burnout.
But if you don’t work hard enough, it’s hard to reach your goals.
This is problematic.
I personally have found blogging awesome. However, working really hard comes quite naturally to me. It was not a surprise that I’d have to spend about 50-60 hours a week on my blogs.
But for many, this can be way too much. Especially because many sites earn absolutely nothing during the first months or even years.
Wrap Up
And that’s a wrap! I hope that I didn’t scare you away. 🙂
In my experience, blogging is a really fun, enjoyable, and lucrative business. It’s easy to start (and stop). All it takes is time and hard work.
Just keep in mind that not every day feels great as a blogger. There are some roadblocks along the way—but hey, that applies to everything in life anyway!
Thanks for reading. Happy blogging!