9 Ways To Stay Motivated When Your Blog Is Earning $0.00

Every time I launch a new blog I get a jolt of electrical excitement, joyous joy, and, of course, thoughts of making a lot of money!

Inevitably, though, the thrill fades and I’m left with the reality of holding a blog, a long grind, and zero dollars coming in.

Depressing!

I know commitment to consistency will turn any blog into a money-making machine, but it sure is hard to keep an eye on the ball during the Year 1 and Year 2 slog!

We all know the magic formula for blogging is the 4 Ps (PUBLISH, PUBLISH, PUBLISH, and PUBLISH).

Yet, even with this knowledge sometimes despair rains down upon me: “WHEN WILL THE BLOG MONEY COME???”

Well, I have good news.

We’re all gonna make it, baby!

We’ll all get to that full-time blogging income!

I admit past blogging failures are my own dumb fault because I failed to commit to the 4 Ps!

NEVER QUIT! NEVER THROW IN THE TOWEL! WE ARE CHASING DESTINY, BABY!

Now, it doesn’t hurt to have some motivation tricks in your back pocket to help get through the dark blogging times, I am here for you my dear blogger friend!

Let’s rock!

9 Ways To Stay Motivated When Your Blog Is Earning $0.00

1. Find External Motivation And Let It Drive You Like Michael Jordan

You ever watch Last Dance? It’s about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

Even His Airness used tips and tricks to stay motivated.
I always figured he was massively intrinsically motivated: superhuman motivation us mere mortals could never tap into, but I was wrong.

After watching the mini-series, I realized MJ frequently found external things to motivate him.

He would intentionally find criticisms of his game (“MJ can’t play defense!” So he went and won Defensive Player of the Year). Or other players who trash talked him, real or imagined, he’d use as Motivation Fuel.

I always thought “external motivation” was a dirty word.

“A REAL MAN is internally motivated, undisciplined LOSERS rely on external motivation.”

Silliness.

If even The Greatest Of All Time* used little tricks for external motivation, surely us bloggers can too.

What does that look like?

• Remember the girl who dumped you? Well, she’ll sure know she made a big mistake when you are living free and jet-setting because of your successful blogging!**
• Until now you’ve always been on the lower end of the financial ladder and your family, friends, and peers would patronize you. “You sure are doing good for you!” Well, you are about to upset the social order, my friend, and it will be delicious.
• Think of not needing to punch the clock for The Man anymore, no more sitting in a cubicle, or begging for a day off!

2. Reframe The $0.00: You Aren’t Making $0.00, You Are In Training Like Winner Rocky Balboa

If you recall, in Rocky 1, Rocky Balboa was a washed up boxing loser. But he was given a chance and he decided he was gonna lock in and go for it.

He wasn’t getting paid big bucks. In fact, all that hard training was done for free, $0.00!

If you are like, “Rocky is a FICTIONAL character, hardly inspirational.”

Then you should read up on the broke nobody named Sylvester Stallone and how he wrote a script called Rocky and refused to sell it for BIG BUCKS unless he got the lead role. The story behind the story might be even better!

Anyway, make the reframe: “I’m not making $0.00 from the blog, I’m in training like Rocky Balboa and I’m gonna win big!”

That reframe will pay off big, baby!

Will you do what it takes to win, like Rocky? If not Rocky, how about like Rambo?

3. Keep The Blogging Vision In Your Mind Like Arnold Schwarzenegger For What Life Will Look Like After Your Success

Arnold Schwarzenegger knows the importance of vision. If you read any of his books like this one or this one or this one you’ll know he constantly keeps the vision of what he wants to happen in his head.

Then he makes it happen.

What’s your vision for being a Pro-Blogger?

Keep that Vision in your mind.

I’m a pretty simple man so my vision is pretty simple:

• Pay off my house
• Be able to go to Planet Fitness at 11:00 AM on Tuesday
• Buy a brand new, tricked out Hyundai Elantra
• More camping trips with my family
• A high-end coffee maker
• Make a full-time living writing words

Your Vision probably looks different from mine.

But whatever your Vision is, keep it locked in your mind and let it motivate you.

4. Gamify The Blogging Grind

We’ve all heard about “gamification” a million times and the reason you’ve heard it a million times is because it works.

Level Up your blogging game.

Just like we all used to grind for hours in a videogame to level up a character, we need to grind for months and years to level up our blogging game.

We grind by publishing 3x posts to the blog per week (and sometimes squeezing out 5).

We grind by commenting on other blogs 5x per day, for 5 days a week. (What I call the C-5/5 Challenge).

We grind by awkwardly posting YouTube videos to drive traffic.

We grind by posting Pins on Pinterest.

We grind by posting on other social media and third party platforms.

We reward ourselves when we hit certain metrics. Those rewards will be up to you to set, maybe it will be buying that blogging course you wanted after you make your first $1,000 blogging dollars. Maybe it will be paying a pro to redesign the blog. Maybe it will be buying new software to help with your blogging game.

Up to you how you wanna gamify.

5. Keep Kicking Butt For Your Kids!

Kids are the greatest motivation of all time!

When you feel like quitting or you feel your spirit slump, just take a look at your kids and feel the fire return to your belly!

It’s a tough world out there and your kids are gonna live in it someday, best to stack extra resources through blogging to give them a leg up!

Help with school, downpayment for a home, or build out a blogging business and hire them!

Give them an advantage!

Keep on writing those words! Do it for the kids!

6. Don’t Betray Yourself: You Have Wanted To Be A Writer For A Very Long Time!

For me, I dreamed of being a successful writer since my teens and I started to do my first real writing in my mid 20s.

I have had a dream for a very long time to be a blogger and a novelist. And not just a one-hit wonder, either, but rather a prolific blogger and novelist.

Like many men, it was Hemingway that really lit the fire in my belly to be a writer (Stephen King and John D. MacDonald get credit too).

I still have that vision in my mind. It still have that drive.

And you have the same vision, don’t you?

Although we primarily talk about blogging around here, let’s be honest–we all envision writing a novel. The blog is just a piece of the overall writing game for us.

Right? We envision several different blogs, novels, and maybe a few writing gigs as different pots of money. And when we add all those pots together it equals full-time writing and freedom, baby.

Can you be a successful blogger, writer, author?

Absolutely.

But you gotta keep your eye on the ball!

Do not betray yourself!

You must keep going.

Every post you publish, every 1,000 words you complete on that novel, every gig you complete is one more hammer strike to the chisel that is tunneling you out of Shawshank.

7. Just Envision Yourself 20 Years From Now Still Working As An Office Drone

Just how much do you really like that cubicle?

Can you envision yourself working there 20 years from now?

Because that’s the future beholden to you if you give up on your blogging and writing and decide all this effort is silliness!

Yeah, you will have 2, maybe even 3, nice vacations per year.

But that’s all you’ll have to look forward to, except perhaps for your annual bloodborne pathogen training and the all-staff meetings in which you are reminded that “we are a family here!”

I once worked for an agency for 8 years and went “above and beyond” and they missed no opportunity to remind us that we were “family.” Then they fired me shortly after going on paternity leave with my newborn son! Some family!

You owe it to yourself to escape whatever Human Zoo you are stuck in, or at least be in a position where it’s no big deal to be canned because you were only working for the health insurance.

And don’t forget the retirement goalposts keep moving. They say you can retire at 62, 65, 67, 70…

“That’s the top of the mountain,” they say. “Oh wait, not that mountain! We meant that mountain! But when you get there in another ten years you can retire. We promise!”

8. Imagine What Your 80-Year Old Self Will Regret

I read the very interesting Jeff Bezos book Invent & Wander and a thought-exercise Bezos mentions repeatedly throughout the book is to imagine being in a quiet moment when you are 80, reflecting on your life.

What do you wish you would have done differently? 9 times out of 10 it won’t be something you did, it will be something you didn’t do–ommisions.

“Wow,” thinks 80 year old you. “I sure am glad I didn’t stay consistent in my writing efforts and that I didn’t finish that novel I always wanted to write!”

Eighty year old you will never think that, of course. So keep your Vision in your mind. Eighty year old you depends upon it!

9. Think Of That Person Who Desperately Needs The Knowledge You Are Sharing

The #1 reason that I’m a missionary for the blog is because of how immensely positively blogs have impacted my life, and I believe there is no better platform for sharing thinking and lifeing knowledge than the blog.***

So, a big motivator for me, in continuing to write, is I envision somebody like me, perhaps a bit younger, searching for knowledge that I have that will unlock another level to their life, helping them move in a more positive direction.

Blogs have done this for me many times in the past, and I want to do the same for others.

It motivates me!

10. BONUS: Humanity Needs You To Keep Blogging

You need to keep on going, baby!

Humanity depends upon it!

Because you are adding to the overall knowledge, wisdom, and experience of humanity! Not to put your knowledge and understanding on a blog, and perhaps later into a book, is doing a grave disservice to all 8.5 billion of us!

We are on this ride together and it is vital that we share what we know to make the world a better place!

That’s right, by continuing to blog, you are doing nothing short of making the world a better place!

So keep on writing, baby!

Humanity needs you!