5 Hardships Every Blogger Must Overcome

May 18, 2011 by Daniel Sharkov|

The article is a guest post by Preston Zeller. Preston will share the top five blogging challenges, you must overcome as a blogger. It’s an interesting read and I hope you like it!

There are many different circumstances in which one might want to start a blog. It’s Thursday night and you’ve decided your passion for micro-brew beers needs to be shared with the world; you have a knack for reviewing French disco-pop; you’ve been elected to spearhead the launch of your company’s new blog.

Whatever the case may be, I think it can be easily said that there needs to be a reasonable amount of passion behind what you’re writing. Ok, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s focus on the fine print; the details that few will tell you and quite frankly, are not obvious from the established blogs you already follow.

Fact of the matter is, every blog has a beginning. Unless you’re already celebrity status, starting a blog is not going to be easy. Starting a blog will seem, actually who am I kidding, it WILL be a daunting task for a while. Granted, the longer you pursue establishing your blog and making it a respected source of material in your field of expertise, the ‘easier’ it will get. But let us not get ahead of ourselves; there’s nothing easy about starting a blog from scratch. You will run into some common problems in the beginning that tend to weed out the weekenders from the committed and passionate bloggers. To lend a helping hand, here are my top five:

1. What Do I Write About?

This might sound like a silly question, but seriously, what do you write about? I find a lot of people run into this problem because they are not specific enough about their topic. So you want to write about Ferrari’s? Great. But even that can be narrowed down even more. Perhaps you write about the different types of seat fabrics or body kits that Ferrari owners indulge in. Or say you want to write about the stitching process that goes into the steering wheel of the Ferrari Enzo.

Yes, be specific! You don’t already have to be a specialist in your field, per se, but that is an end goal of writing a blog isn’t it? The point is, choose a specific area that you are passionate about, and write on that. It will make your job easier in the beginning, instead of feeling like you have to write on some broad topic.

2. No One is Reading My Blog!

Of course they’re not! You just started the silly thing. Really, unless you have the celebrity following already, expect a grass-roots following. Bottom line: content will speak for itself. This is why it’s so important to be sharing valuable information on your topic that is not found, or at least scarcely found anywhere else (this goes straight back to a specific topic).

As you write, pay attention to tagging the article properly, as well as using the right categories from the get go. I use SEOQuakeand GoogleTrendsto maximize tagging efforts.

3. Where Are My Subscribers?

This is a common question. You’re getting a decent flow of traffic, and your two posts per week are proving to be engaging and having your readers coming back for more. Much of that problem can simply be derived from the fact that your “subscribe now” box is difficult to find, not functioning correctly, or simply isn’t there. One of the best way subscribers come on board is when they StumbleUpon your blog, discover it via Delicious, or any other social media avenue. Likely, they will scan over your blog, discern as to whether or not it fits their intellectual needs, and then move on. If it works, they could bookmark it or subscribe. But you need to be giving them a chance to subscribe on every page. What’s more, perhaps add incentive to subscribe, but only if you can provide precise follow through; empty promises are best kept to past relationships.

4. Why Did My Viewership Plateau/Decline?

This is a tough question because it could be a number of reasons. Did you just promoted your blog on Facebook and the promotion ended? Did you do a guest post on another blog over a week ago?

If you haven’t done any promoting outside of writing your blog and promoting it on Facebook and Twitter, then it could just be a slow period. At the end of the day, it’s going to do you no good to worry about slow periods (# of visitors, # of subscribers, # of comments). These things tend to happen with blogs. The more important thing is that you keep on writing according to your editorial calendar (what, you don’t have one yet?) and keep producing content.

5. I’ve Run Out of Ideas!

Nonsense! This is more likely due to a creative block of some sort, and it’s also where you get a chance to spice up your blog a little! In the beginning, we tend to go for the obvious issues, the articles that are easy to write on. Sooner or later, you will realize that you have the ability and knowledge to write about topics you didn’t even know existed when you first started the blog.

Let me be clear on this: Be adventurous! Exhibiting your dynamic creativity on a subject will say a whole lot more about your ability as a writer and expert in your field than will the same article being regurgitated 10 different ways. Dig deep!

While there’s no paved road to success in the blogosphere, there are commonalities between bloggers that we can learn to share and help each other out. This is a community, not a one man show, so sharing tips and tricks along the way will help you become more educated, as well as improve the quality of content overall. There are just some of the hardships that you may experience. Do you have more? Comment below!

Preston Zeller has published several creative works spanning photography, film, and music. His creative pursuits have brought him from film sets in Los Angeles, to musical performances throughout Southern California, and the Cannes Film Festival in France. At current, he serves as Marketing Director for MSW Wireless – a wireless accessory company in San Diego, CA.

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