Are Your Expectations Out of Line with Your Path to Blogging Success?
Hearing how someone generated a six-figure income after only two years of blogging is enough to motivate folks into trying their hand at it.
And then the reality of just how much work is involved to accomplish that feat kicks in.
That’s the make or break point for most bloggers.
Discover how to manage your expectations so they don’t sabotage your shot at blogging success and how to stay the course for the long-haul.
Enjoying this series?
It’s all about how I’m turning a hobby site into a money-making blog.
Are You the Baby or the Little Girl?
Let me share a story that clearly illustrates how expectations get in our way of success with anything.
Baby Steps
A baby is learning to walk.
It falls down – a LOT!
But the baby only knows one thing – the motivation to be mobile.
Complex Steps
A little girl is learning to kick a ball from a running start.
She misses the ball – a LOT!
And, she is also aware of:
- the passage of time and how long this is taking to learn
- how many attempts she has already made without success
- how tired she is becoming from the effort
She may take a break and do one of three things:
- renew her desire to learn this task
- give up because it’s too hard and is taking too long
- get frustrated at the ball for not making this easy
Both the baby and the little girl are motivated at first.
But the little girl has set an expectation that factors into her success.
It Will Always Take Longer and Cost More
Ever start a project that you thought would be easy and it turned into hours, or even days of work?
The next time you took on that same project, your expectations were in line with the reality you experienced previously.
I’ve remodeled four houses.
From experience I’ve learned that old cliche of doubling what you think it will cost holds true.
It’s the same with running a blog.
Gurus make everything sound easy and inexpensive.
I’m not a coach. I’m a trainer. And I shoot straight from the hip.
I generally don’t work with newbie bloggers for one simple reason – their mindset is not in line with reality.
That’s where marketing ninja gurus come in.
They invite you to a webinar that makes everything look so easy – and cheap.
If those gurus didn’t exist, most folks would never start blogging.
Two years later, if the new blogger survives the reality check of the work, money, and knowledge needed to actually succeed online, some of them find me.
They are ready to make a real investment in their success and they now know what’s hype and what’s not.
Every single person who follows me is saying Amen! right now.
We all start out with starry-eyed dreams.
And most folks fall prey to spending money on one course or service after another in the school of hard knocks until they learn enough to properly vet what they buy and who they hire.
You’re not alone in that regard.
The trick is to get through that gauntlet as fast and as unscathed as possible and find the real deal with the training and services you need.
Blow Past the Hype
Lately I’ve been contacted by some super savvy folks who are just starting out, but who have a business mindset already and they are bypassing that whole hype phase.
They value how much time and money they can save getting started on the right foot with their site security, speed, content, SEO, and conversions.
They can see that my Scratch to Published training is not only the perfect fit, it’s a bargain compared to losing 2 years and $2,000 like most new site owners do before getting to that point of awareness.
Just think of how much faster the little girl would have learned to kick the ball if she had someone knowledgeable helping her instead of being left to figure it out on her own.
Think about all the painful falls and frustration she could have avoided because she was simply suffering from what she didn’t know that she didn’t know.
The Role of Motivation and Goals
A goal is a target – that’s all.
Motivation gets you in motion.
That’s what it is for.
But dreaming without action gets you nowhere.
Motivation can renew your desire to try again, and again, and again.
Be the baby learning to walk.
It takes the time it takes.
It takes the effort it takes.
Don’t put an expectation on that!!
Sure, you can give yourself a date deadline.
But that’s not your goal. That’s your motivation.
The goal is to complete the task.
And what happens if you miss your deadline?
Does that kill your motivation too?
Unexpected Delays
One of my goals for 2019 is to turn my hobby carving site into a money-making woodworking site.
If you’ve been following this series, you know that I experienced unexpected delays and expenses right out of the gate.
Every single step has also taken longer to complete than I hoped.
Putting My Expectations in Line with Reality
So, I ponied up the money and I got rid of the expectations of time.
I’m on solid footing and have the tools and physical space I need to produce a quality blog and vlog.
I’m making progress every week, even if I don’t have a lot to show for it on the blog yet.
What I do have a lot to show for is in my education and experience.
I’m learning TONS of new things, most of which are establishing my foundation for all that I want to do with this endeavor.
I’m the baby learning to walk – try this, try that, find what works.
I don’t really care how long it takes.
I need the room, and time, to try new things.
My new expectation is to give myself that room and time and stay at it every day.
I learn, I grow, I do better as I go.
What Keeps Me Going
I stay motivated because I’ve made it fun for myself. I look forward to doing my woodworking stuff during my after-office hours.
That includes putting butt-in-seat and powering through learning a new software or app or taking a course.
I’m already seeing the payoff for my efforts with what I can bring to BlogAid.
More than anything, I know way more now about the challenges so many of my clients are facing because I now have a site in their arena of ways to make money online.
I’ve gained insight and ideas into the new posts, tutorials, and courses I can create to help more bloggers who are also trying to do what I’m doing with my woodworking site.
And all of that motivates me even more.
Just like a baby who gets 10 steps across the room, or can finally pull itself up to a table and grab that cookie!!!
What About You?
Are your expectations in line with reality? How long did it take you to wake up to that reality?
Online marketing is a job, even if you only do it part-time.
What expectations and goals have you set for yourself? Which ones did you let go of?
How are you rejuvenating your fun with it and reconnecting with the motivation that got you started?
Truer words have never been said.
I built my first website in 2003. It was a plain static HTML site – no WordPress or any other type of CMS.
As you already surely know, things started off very slowly. After 6 months that site was still only receiving around 200 visitors per day. But the thing is, that number was growing every month, and the increase every month was greater than the increase from the month before.
At that point I was still losing money on the site due to hosting fees and that era’s sky-high domain registration fees.
But I kept adding content – at least one new page per day. At that time I was still working a full time job hoping this “Internet thing” would eventually work out.
Then along about month 8 things really started to take off.
My traffic started doubling every month, and by the end of the first year I was making about $800 per month via Google Adsense. Not anywhere near enough to live on, but plenty to keep my hope and faith in what I was doing alive.
Fast-forward to now…
To date I have created and grown over two dozen WordPress blogs in various genres. Not all of them ended up being successful, but most of them did. The others I sold to other bloggers who had a more intense interest in those topics.
All of the successful blogs had one thing in common: It took about a year for each of them to reach the stage where they were earning a respectable amount of income every month.
By the way, folks just starting out don’t have a clue how lucky they are to have WordPress. It took me a month to get that first static HTML site online and looking and working exactly the way I wanted it. With WordPress it only takes me a few hours.
I said all of the above to say this: If someone is looking for overnight success and a fast-lane to financial freedom, they’d better look somewhere other than blogging unless they have a ton of cash to spend on advertising to kickstart the process.
But if they’re looking for long-term income there’s nothing better than being a blogger, in my humble opinion.
Just be prepared for it to take some time to achieve success.
Having the right help can get them there sooner, of course. And the information and services you provide are top-notch.
Keep up the great work, MaAnna!