True blogging success comes from serving readers and staying humble, not from flexing your ego. Letting go of the ego leads to faster learning, better content, bigger audience, and more money.
I always wanted to be the cool lifestyle blogger that writes about traveling the world, lifting weights, and being manly. I always knew that type of blogging wasn’t for me but my ego couldn’t let the image drop and sometimes it’d even paralyze me from taking action. My ego’s vision was very out of line with what I needed to do in order to win in the blogging game. Talk about self-sabotage!
I knew the way to win the blogging game, for me, wasn’t to be a rockstar blogger, but rather a blogger who quietly built 20, 30, 50 little uncool blogs bringing in $200 – $500 each a month and to build a social worker blog because that’s my profession and strength. And none of those blogs would involve me wearing big sunglasses while flexing my muscles at the beach! Oh man! That’s a recipe for blogging failure.
Do You Want To Stroke Your Ego Or Do You Want To Win?
I talk a lot about “winning the blogging game” but I realized I’ve never clearly defined it, so here it goes: winning the blogging game is serving the reader and making money.
If you only serve the reader you will burnout and quit and will join the 80% of blogs that fail. If you only aim to make money you are a scammer. Paradoxically, the blogger who aims to serve the reader and make money serves the reader greater than a blogger seeking to only serve the reader and not make money, got it?
Put it this way: Can a local grocery store serve the customers long term if they give everything away for free? Of course not! They’ll go out of business and when they go out of business the customers will suffer because there is no food.
Now back to this section’s headline: Do You Want To Stroke Your Ego Or Do You Want To Win?
In the blogging game, stroking your ego looks like launching the cool blog you have no business launching. For most of us, it’s launching a blog similar to one of our favorite bloggers even if it doesn’t fit our personality, knowledge base, and skillset.
In the blogging game, winning looks like launching a blog in an area of expertise even if it’s not cool (such as that boring day job you work, which is blogging gold) or launching a blog in a micro-niche with little competition to consistently make $200 per month on autopilot. Boring! Yet, what’s not boring is when all those boring blogs add up to make $10,000 profit per month!
Amazingly, many people in blogging and in life choose ego over winning. That’s why you come across so many stupid people everyday in your life. Learning and self-improvement require humility. Too many struggle to say “I don’t know, please teach me.” So, not an IQ problem, it’s an ego problem; or as the Bible and ancient philosophers say: sin of pride. The very sin that got Lucifer thrown out of heaven! But many think they know better! Amazing!
What Does Letting Go Of The Ego Look Like?
I’m a Christian and there are about a thousand Bible verses on humility, here is one from Proverbs that illustrates what I’m trying to say here: With humility comes wisdom. Another: Its (humility) wages are riches and honor and life.
I’m no Bible scholar, reflecting on these verses can lead to many different insights about the human condition and how to live our lives. I want to talk about the meaning that jumps out at me in the context of letting the ego go and trying to achieve a goal.
Humility doesn’t magically translate into winning. However, it is one of the conditions that needs to exist. A person of humility is willing to admit they don’t know and need to learn, study, and get better. That attitude, of course, is what leads to positive outcomes. A person being led by ego is unable to gain the need knowledge and skills to get better. Letting go of ego looks like being open to learning and discipline and getting better.
What Are The Next Steps?
Examine yourself and consider areas in your life where ego is holding you back. It can show up in odd places. For example, maybe you’ve been wanting to get back in shape but haven’t been able to. It could be ego. Ego doesn’t want to you to look silly in the gym. Ego doesn’t want to admit that you got royally out-of-shape in the first place. Ego is weird and unhelpful like that.
I’d encourage you to find three areas in your life that ego is holding you back. Approach this exercise with openness and, yes, humility. You may find that you are unable to remove mental blocks that you have had in your mind for years. Also, you will find that ego is what holds you back in being able to achieve your potential with your writing. Every time you type a sentence ego says, “But what will people think?!” When you overcome allowing ego to do your writing, that’s when you’ll start doing your best writing because you will be free.
Okay, Now Let’s Get Back To Building Our Blogs
Now that you’ve overcome the limitations of your ego trying to sabotage your efforts, it’s time to get back to building your blog to earn your freedom! Your blog doesn’t have to be fancy and it doesn’t have to be cool. It just has to work by delivering what your audience needs and being profitable for you. That’s the key!
Keep the vision in your head of being free by writing words without ego getting in the way. Limiting ego will allow you to write the kind of words that you need to write for your blog and to launch the kinds of blogs that you should in order to win. Now get out there and start winning!
Blog on, friend. Blog on.