First of all what is blogging? Blogging is the act of writing and compiling posts which appears chronically and most times with links to other websites; blogs are meant to be updated frequently to keep it live and active unlike a static website which might have just one or few information displaying for decades. Blogs are the main type of site that news and other media house use to deliver information to the public on hourly and daily basis
Some blogs are updated weekly, daily, hourly and sometimes in minutes with new contents and a blog is more popular and progressive if it is regularly updated with quality and unique contents for its readers. The below bitter truth about blogging is for bloggers that want to make money and get quick popularity with their blog and those that think blogging is a bed of roses.
BITTER TRUTHS ABOUT BLOGGING
1. Time Consuming
This is arguably the first and main thing you have to consider before you make up your mind to start blogging. Someone that can't stay in one place for hours can't succeed in blogging. If you are the type that travels often and like chilling out every now and then, my brother, my sister forget about blogging. If you are a bank worker or any other jobs that takes most of your time, better remain on the job unless you are blogging for fun and not for money and quick popularity. Sometimes it takes me hours to compile and publish a post this is because my job gives me enough time to do my blogging.
2. It Is Not Easy As You Think
Blogging is one of the hardest job to do if you want to standout among your peers in the blogosphere. The process of sitting down and finding new articles that you will write which will be of interest to your blog followers and readers is not a joke. You must be willing to pay the big price of sacrificing some of the best and happy moments in life in other to satisfy your audience across the globe who are visiting your blog. During a research, it was observed that 7 out of every 10 persons that started blogging quited it after three months in the blogosphere. This is as a result of the challenges bloggers face in other to be relevant and active.
3. You Must Spend Money
Owning a blog is one thing and spending money to maintain it and make it professional is another thing is another thing. Gone are the days when you just create a blog and start making money with it without spending on custom domain names, adword, web hosting and so on. Now the competition is too high and the higher adverts and awareness you create plus your energy, the better your blog.
4. You Must Have a Custom Domain Name
Yes it is a must. For you to remain professional and serious about your blogging, one of the first thing you will spend your money on is getting a custom domain name like www.mysitename.com or .net or .org these are the most popular and recognized domain in the world. You might be asking me why Linda Ikeji did very well while still maintaining a .blogspot free domain. Yes the time Linda started blogging, the competition is not as fierce as it is now and many bloggers on .blogspot and .WordPress where doing well without custom domain. They even got approved for Google AdSense program in few days after applying which is not achievable now.
Some of the sites where you can get custom domain names are:
>>> www.goddady.com
>>> www.namecheap.com
>>> www.name.com
>>> www.dotster .com
>>> www.enom.com
And many more
5. You Must Have a PC
I know some bloggers that are still doing well in the average without a PC of their own but if you are really serious about blogging, if you take it as a business, you must spend on laptop. You cannot be going to cyber cafe every now and then to do some stuffs on your blog. Just imagin yourself sitting at the comfort of your office or room writing that beautiful post you want to publish. You will have more privacy, more and freedom and your brain will be at a relaxed manner to do whatever you are doing at that point in time.
6. It Is Not A Get Rich Quick Business
Some people jump into blogging thinking that it is the easiest way to make money. Some don't even have passion or knows much about their blog niche rather they started blogging it because some bloggers are progressing from that particular niche. My dear don't be deceived from what you read both online and offline about blogging and how to make millions of dollars in one month of starting your own blog. They write all these to get traffic to their sites and possibly sell ebooks on blogging to you. The bitter truth is that there is no way you will start making instant huge money from a new blog of just 3 months. There must be patients and you must have some quality and unique contents on your blog to attract real visitors that will have trust on you and do business with you.
Let me use myself as an example, I have been a phone and PC tweaker and generates free and cheap browsing cheats for a very long time now. I have been doing it and making some income from it and people started knowing me for that both the ones residing in my state and other states including china where I belong to one of the smartphone tweakers forum. Some of my friends suggested I should start a blog on Tech niche focusing on free browsing cheats, tweaking, and smartphone reviews to rich everybody across the globe. I thought about it and after serious thinking I made up my mind to open a blog just for the passion I have for tech and cheap browsing with my eye slightly opened to monetizing the blog. But my major strength that made the blog a success was my passion and I was already into tech so I know what I was doing and can attend to different need of my readers who asked questions on the comment box. This grew my audience and the trust they have on me. Most of the income I get from my blog is like a thank you from readers I helped in some ways and few I get from Google AdSense program.
7. You Must Be a Geek In Your Niche
Like I said earlier, if you borrowed a niche just because others are doing well on it, you might fail. Just concentrate on the niche you know very well. As a tech blogger, I can't force myself on entertainment niche because it is not my thing.
8. You Must Have Good And Unique Contents
This goes to bloggers that think copy and paste is the way out. This type of bloggers are the lazy ones that doesn't want to stress themselves much but want to publish as many as possible posts in a day. The bitter truth is no one will take you very serious if he or she notice that all you do is to still posts from other sites and repost on your blog. You might be getting small traffic but no geniune follower will do business with non-serious blogger.
Another advantage of good and unique contents is that your posts will rank very high in search engines. I have discovered that the best way to rank high and increase your site SEO is to be writing post with huge contents that people like.
9. You Must Be Brilliant
Before you venture into blogging, you must be at least brilliant in some cases. A complete dullard can't blog and you must know little basics about simple programming for you to spend less if not you will be paying programmers to be designing your blog for you.
10. Some Money Making Pattern Takes A Very Long Time
If you are not patient, you can't remain in the blogosphere. Imagine monetizing with infolinks and revenuehits where the earning is as low as $0.01 per click or target completion.