In blogging, delusional levels of outrageous optimism beat negative realists every time. Believing you already won the blogging battle in your mind is over half of the battle. It is what will keep you pushing forward all the way to success.
It’s been said that 80% of bloggers quit within the first 18 months and while I don’t know if that is a perfectly accurate stat, it seems to carry a kernel of truth with it. Many blogs begin with excitement, which is okay, but then excitement fades into pessimism, which is bad. It is my goal to build an army of successful bloggers, mostly so we can create our own tribe, live free, and live life, baby! So this post is about maintaining outrageous optimism because it’s a prerequisite to winning the blogging game.
Bloggers Who Break Through Aren’t The Best
Surely, you have had the experience of perusing a super successful blog pulling in $10,000+ per month and spent the whole time thinking: But I’m a better blogger than them!
Guess what? It’s true. You are a better blogger than many of the successful bloggers that are out there. They are just more delusional than you. It’s the crazy people who make it through and win. Getting 9 views a month for years didn’t stop them from moving forward and spending all their free time building. They endured through suffering to build a better blog. More posts, more social media, more knowledge, more everything. Then, all at once, BREAKTHROUGH. Like a dam breaking and water pouring through, so goes the traffic to a blogger who was delusional enough to never give up.
Outrageous Optimism: Blogging Rocket Fuel, Not Toxic Positivity
First, outrageous optimism in the blogging game is not:
- Blindly thinking you’ll be rich in 3 months (or 6 months, a year, two years) This is why outrageous optimism is so important. Blogging is the LONG game, not the short game. You need motivation and optimism to carry you through the blogging valley of despair. You need to overcome blogging hopelessness when success seems impossible. Because when you overcome the negative feelings and keep on going, fighting, learning, and posting eventually you will find success. But you gotta be a believer! Optimism comes in handy for this!
- Ignoring data Being optimistic doesn’t mean ignoring what the data and trends are telling you. You still gotta play the blogging game correctly. You still have to build your blog the way readers and search engines like. You still have to build authority by writing “cluster articles” (articles that hit a similar topic again and again and again from different angles and then interlink them). Pay attention to what is working and not working and then doubling down on what is working. You can’t blindly blog, you have to follow best practices and what the data tells you.
- Not putting in the work and expecting success While I am preaching delusional optimism, not even my brand of optimism will work if you never put in the work. You have to put in A LOT of work for a LONG TIME. No way around hard, hard work.
Second, outrageous optimism in the blogging game is:
- Believing You Will Win Maybe it will take 2 years or 6 years. Most likely to “win” (making $10,000 per month consistently) will take between 3 – 5 years. Which seems like a long time but it’s not a long time when measured against not doing anything to try to improve your lot in life. You must BELIEVE you will make it from Day 1. Sure, there will be doubts. Of course there will be. But you must always lean into optimism that your blogging vision will come to pass and you will be free through the power of writing words. Which will be absolutely amazing. In your mind, act like massive success is inevitable.
- Setbacks are just temporary bumps in the road Didn’t get approved for that affiliate program you badly needed? Didn’t get the guest post you pitched? Dropped in the SERPS? Outrageous optimism knows this is simply the universe testing you to see if you really want to be a blogger who wins. Accept setbacks as challenges to overcome. Call the affiliate on the phone that declined and build a relationship instead of trying to fill out the stupid form again that gets an instant decline. Pitch guest posts for somewhere else. Keep working the SEO. Optimism knows all of these setbacks are really opportunities to get better.
How To Tap Into Outrageous Optimism For Blogging
The most important thing is to cultivate a vision for what blogging success will look like and then holding onto that vision until you have made it into reality.
- Set An Unshakable Vision Champions from all different disciplines and walks of life have used this practice since the beginning of time. You hold onto the vision of success in your mind so strongly that your mind believes it and will start to work to make it become a reality. Since we are all planning on being champion bloggers, it is important to hold onto a vision of massive blogging success.
- Set A Goal That Feels Outrageous (But Kinda Doable) “I will be a full-time blogger making $10,000+ per month within three years.” Then get to work making that goal a reality: tons of posts, studying SEO, building a fundamentally solid blog, reading a lot on relevant topics, copywriting, joining blogging groups, etc.
- Find A Tribe: Us bloggers tend to be…introverted. Okay, fine: we’re awkward and antisocial. Yet, it is important to join a blogging tribe on your blogging journey. Champions never become champions in a silo. Even athletes in individual sports train with a team. This is as simple as joining X (typically where bloggers hang out) and joining the informal blogging community there. (I hope to someday launch a more formal blogging tribe, but I only have vague ideas at the moment of what that will look like.)
- Read Motivational Books From The 1950s And Earlier While there are sure a lot of good motivational self-help books from the current days, the foundation of it all was built in the ~1950s and those are the best motivational books I have ever read. Here’s a free ebook of one of the best motivational books I have ever read, An Iron Will, even older, written in 1901. Get fired up, baby!
Talent Matters, But Optimism Leads To Winning
Winning blogs aren’t run by just talented people, they are run by people too unreasonable to quit. All signs pointed to quitting, but they kept pushing with outrageousness until they win. Then others will say, “Gee, I sure wish I could do something like that..”
Next Steps To Winning The Blogging Game
- Sign Up For The Austin James Email List–this list not only keeps you up-to-date on the latest posts, you will receive insider information that is not on the blog for what I am currently doing to win the blogging game, about what trends and strategies are working right now.
- Read More Articles On The Austin James Blog—this is the most up-to-date blog that you will be able to find as to what is going on in the blogging world. Most other blogs are telling you to do stuff that last worked 10 years ago.
- Leave A Comment Here About The Blog You Are Building–I want to check it out and see how you are doing. My goal is to build a blogging tribe that wins the blogging game.
- Start A Blog Using My Bluehost Partner Link–If you haven’t started a blog yet, then I highly recommend using this Bluehost affiliate link. Get hosting (required for blogging) + a free domain. (The link will bring you to a page with three different options, pick the cheapest option because that’s all you need). I’m a Bluehost partner, which means anybody signing up through my link gets a discounted rate on hosting.
Let’s win, baby!