Top Five Lies About Blogging

Here are my top five lies about blogging. Do you agree?

1. It’s easy. After all, what could be harder that writing a couple of paragraphs a couple of times a week. Click publish, and then you’re done.

In fact, at least in my experience, blogging is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Setting and then meeting a publishing deadline, week after week, month after month, means doing a whole lot of staring at a white computer screen. Having something interesting to say does not always translate into being able to write it.

2. You can make lots of money. Slap a couple of ads on there, and you’re good to go.

This common misconception irks me no end, especially because I was guilty of it myself. And then people get discouraged when the dough doesn’t start rolling in. But if you analyze the figures, you should feel better.

Google Ads pay out after $100 earned. But that money is earned on CPM, or ‘clicks per thousand’. And each CPM earns about $.50. So you can see that you’re going to need a whole lot of clicks on your website to get to that payout.

On the other hand, that money is hard earned and largely deserved. And you didn’t have to actually do anything to get it!

3. People want to read what you write. As soon as you’ve clicked the publish button, hordes of visitors are going to flock to your blog, and then spread the word to all their friends.

When I first started blogging, I thought that my readers were going to hang onto my every word. And they did, that audience of two otherwise known as my mother and my best friend. Not even my husband read my blog in the beginning.

The few rare exceptions aside, faithful visitors to your blog are built little by little, contact by contact. I have made some good friends through blogging, people whom I will probably never meet in real life, but whose words I treasure just the same.

4. Blogging is about nothing much in particular. Just write a couple of words about your latest thought, the cute thing your toddler said, how much you’ve managed to save at the grocery store or the cool new application you just discovered.

Sure, there are a whole slew of blogs out there that talk a whole lot about nothing, and some of them do it very well. But most successful blogs find their niche and then stick to it, becoming experts in their fields, through hard work and targeted, careful blogging. If you want to be successful too, find your niche, become an expert and write about that, and only that, while networking with other community members.

5. Everybody reads blogs. Your neighbor, your mother, the check-out clerk at the grocery store.

Surprising, but true: there’s a whole world out there that not only doesn’t know about your blog, doesn’t know about the internet. Let’s try to join them from time to time, shall we?

Those were my top five lies about blogging. What do you think?