More than once I ghosted a blog for months and then quietly let the domain expire, allowing massive amounts of work to simply vanish from the internet.
Why?
Because lack of confidence got the best of me.
It was the #1 thing that killed my development as a blogger. If I would have overcome my confidence issues it is likely I would have already achieved my goal of being a $10,000 per month blogger long ago.
Frustrating!
Do not follow in my footsteps of timidity, dear blogger. Overcome these 9 confidence killers and be free.
How To Overcome Nine Confidence Killers
1. Low To No Traffic (“Nobody Is Reading”)
Intellectually, we know starting a new blog from zero means our audience starts at zero too, regardless of how good the writing is.
Yet, confidence starts to get shaky (for me, anyway) when I’m six months in and traffic trickles in at 7 readers a day–3 of the views is me googling my blog to make sure Google knows I exist, 2 are spam bots, and the last two are actual readers…and one of the readers bounced.
The Fix: Say to yourself: “Good, now I have more time to perfect my craft without the added pressure of performing for a large audience. And then when I break through, I will have an enormous backlog of material for my readers to devour. Like Dory, keep swimming.
2. Blank Page Paralysis (“I Have Nothing To Say”)
I remember thinking: “I’m gonna do 100 posts in 100 days!”
Should be easy, right? Because I love writing and bloggers blog, baby! And every success story I’ve ever read goes “I just repeatedly hit publish, publish, publish, publish and then one day everybody showed up to my blog!”
Then reality sets in…I open a Google Doc and that dang cursor just blinks and blinks without it writing any words! It must be broken, I think!
The Fix: I actually have a 5 step process to handle this: (1.) grab one of your favorite books on the subject you are blogging on. (2.) grab 10 good quotes from the book. (3.) turn each of those quotes into an article and now you have 10 articles. (4.) Publish! And now you have a 10 article series. (5.) Take the 10 articles and re-purpose them into a 10-Point Mega Listicle Article.
3. Imposter Syndrome (“Who Am I To Write This”)
People are only interested in reading articles written with authority and that have a strong opinion.
This is doubly tough because nowadays literally everybody online is a PhD, former Navy SEAL, NYT Bestselling Author, Kung Fu Master Extraordinaire who holds a minimum of 37 Guinness Book World Records in the weightlifting category and we are just, well, guys with names like Kevin, or Austin.
The Fix: First, recognize that most of those accounts you see online are liars and scammers. Second, recognize that you are an authority on at least two subjects–you day job and your favorite hobby. Then, you can become an authority on nearly any subject by starting a blog and writing about it consistently. Don’t worry about feeling like an imposter and certainly don’t worry about internet trolls calling you an imposter.
4. Comparison To 7-Figure Blogs (“They Have Teams, I Have A Toddler And Full-Time Job”)
If you’re something like me, you’ve googled something like: “Is blogging still a path to full-time income?” and Google AI is like: “”Yes! Blogs like Nerd wallet, HuffPost, and The New York Times make millions per year! Blogging is absolutely a viable path to full-time income! Hope this helps!” And the you feel defeated.
Is there ANY path to making money online? Everybody talks about it? But where are the examples for people like us–family, job, real-life commitments?
The Fix: Remind yourself that we are NOT trying to make millions per year blogging. Our goal is to make $10,000 per year, which is obtainable for a one-person blogging operation. Remember too that your blog doesn’t need to be fancy, 90% of your readers will be reading via phone, which essentially just displays the text. So don’t worry if a 7-figure blog has a cooler homepage than you, it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, it comes down to words. And the niches we want to operate in are too small for big operators to be interested in–that’s one of our advantages.
5. Negative Self-Talk Loop (“This Draft Is Trash”)
Maybe one of these days I will post a side-by-side article that contains my first draft vs. final draft. You will immediately see the two drafts look absolutely nothing alike.
In fact, the first draft is always, always absolute garbage and bears little resemblance to the final post. So, when getting started, and you type a few lines and think…dang, this isn’t even remotely close to the quality of my favorite blogger Austin James. I must be awful. I’m never gonna make it. Well, I am here to tell you your first draft is ALWAYS trash.
The Fix: Recognize that your first draft (and probably second, third, fourth…) are usually trash. It’s not unusual for me to be in the neighborhood of thirty drafts by the time I hit publish (not recommended, I’m working on letting it fly earlier). View your first draft essentially as a very detailed article outline. Also, if you stick to blogging for a year, there will be light-years difference between your first articles and most recent articles. Editing is gold!
6. Fear Of Trolls (“What If They Ratio Me”)
I remember when social media really took off and a ton of bloggers said “social media is stupid and I’m sticking to blog only!” Those blogs are dead. Also, there were other bloggers that went ALL IN with social media. Those blogs are dead too.
Social media is a dangerous thing for bloggers.
It’s a nasty place and is intentionally designed to suck you in like a black hole; it’s goal is to make you angry. But that’s where the people hang out and you need to get them to your blog.
And yes, there are trolls. I don’t know why, but there are full grown men and women that spend most of their waking outs on social media apps trying to get negative reactions from others. They will find you.
The Fix: If you are new to social media or have social media but don’t post much, start by creating an anonymous account and GET IN THERE. Also, do not share your ID with the social media company. If you make any missteps as you are learning the app (like unknowingly violating terms and conditions) you can easily delete the handle without it being personally linked to you, meaning when you start your real account you won’t have any strikes. To make progress, you eventually will have to share your ID, but don’t do so at the beginning. When I started to learn X, I fell for bait countless times. I didn’t understand the game that was being played, but now I do. Also, understand that the social media companies are incredibly selective in enforcing their vague terms and conditions–meaning they ruthlessly enforce T&C on small accounts while large accounts can do whatever the hell they please. It’s just how it is. But don’t fear social media and don’t fear the trolls. Be the light in a dark place.
7. Perfectionism (“Needs Just One More Edit”)
Yes, above I said I do around 30 edits per article. It’s not a confidence issue, I think. It’s more of a I-know-I-can-do-better and I want the article to hit the top of my writing ability, which sounds good but it’s not. Often, it’s best just to let it fly. Even Steven King says that.
Sometimes perfectionism is a confidence issue. If you find yourself in an editing loop, making the same change back and forth, then it’s confidence.
The Fix: The beat fix is by hitting the publish button. We tend to get stuck on the first articles because often had them in our minds for a long time and want them to be perfect. The only way to overcome perfectionism is to let your articles fly by hitting the publish button. If you are truly stuck, write 5 articles in 5 days and post them anonymously on Medium or some other platform. There is no way you will be able to write 5 solid articles in 5 days. This will force you to overcome perfectionism and it doesn’t even need to be linked to your Christian name, which I get. All of us envision our names being emblazoned across the next Great American Novel, and we don’t want that name attached to slop!
8. No Comments (“Crickets = Failure”)
It breaks my heart that nobody comments on blogs anymore, not even on mega blogs. An active comment section is the exception, not the rule. So, don’t take it as a sign of failure if your comment section is nothing but crickets.
My main suggestion is to remove the comment counter that usually appears at the head of blog posts, no need to have every post say “0 Comments.” The comment section has moved to social media.
The Fix: Somebody famous, Michael Jackson, I think, said: “Be the change you wish to see.” I’m not delusional enough to think we can single-handedly bring comments back, but we can leave a comments for blog articles we read. This will help to somewhat rebuild the blogging community and will help us make connections. Also, most comment forms (like mine) allow you to link back to your own blog. I’m 100% okay with you leaving a comment that uses your comment name as a link back to your blog. In fact, I’ll check out your blog if you do so.
9. Radio Silence From Revenue (“No Dollars, No Point”)
It’s okay to be honest and say you desire to make money and be free via writing words.
I don’t understand why there is that expectation that bloggers should blog for free, even when we provide about 99% of our material for free. Apply that expectation to any other profession and we immediately see it’s ludicrous.
Anyway, it is disheartening to work so very hard and not have any revenue to show for all your efforts. If we don’t make any money via blogging or writing efforts, should we quit?
The Fix: There is a universal truth about writers: we cannot not write. Whether you have a blog or not, you will be writing in a journal or in some other form. Recognize this fact, and then recognize you might as well at least attempt to get paid for your writing–hobbies that make money are the best hobbies! Anyway, we all know if you stick with it eventually you break through.
10. BONUS: Don’t Be Like Me! (And A Super Secret Tip)
I have about half-a-dozen abandoned blogs in my wake and I let the domains expire. Stupid! Those blogs took a lot of work and when I hit a wall I just quietly gave up. I could of at least slapped some adsense on ’em and made a few extra hundred bucks a year! Obviously, not life changing, but it would have been the start of something.
Would you turn down a few hundred extra bucks per year for work you already did?
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I know.
I think it was a culmination of frustrations and being disappointed with myself for not sticking to a consistent writing schedule. But a large part of my issue was lack of confidence: Who am I to think I can make a living as a blogger and writer and be free?
That question was the crux of it. I didn’t have the confidence.
But let’s talk about a super secret, something your really need to know about confidence:
CONFIDENCE IS OVERRATED
This is 100% true.
While confidence isn’t bad, it’s an extremely overrated attribute, especially in the writing game.
What what is the key, then?
Simple:
Showing up day after day after day even when you don’t feel like it–especially when you don’t feel like it. Confidence is overrated. Motivation is overrated. They key is to show up every day and write words.