Monday, March 05, 2007

10 Worst Fears of a Newbie Blogger

This march 22, I will celebrate my first anniversary as a professional blogger. So, I am not exactly an experienced blogger and I rather like to consider myself as a newbie blogger as I know that there are many bloggers who are in this field for 3-4 years or even more. Starting a new blog is a very easy thing. Anyone can do it anytime without spending any money. However, many newbie bloggers regret the decision of jumping in the blogging bandwagon and then stop posting within a few weeks or months.

In the last one year, I have come across many blogs and bloggers in the blogosphere. I have also visited many forums on blogging. When I started blogging, I had fear too and I am stating here 10 worst fears of a newbie blogger based mostly on my own experience.

1. Fear of a new Thing: Most of us are afraid of new things. Blogging is a new field and even 3 years ago, hardly any of us had any idea about blogs and blogging. About my own fears, I wrote in SouthAsiaBiz:

Getting some traffic was the toughest part for me and in my heart; I got totally frustrated and scared. What if no one reads my blog? What if I do not get hits even in 6 months? What if no one links me? What if I receive a lot of criticism for my entries? I wrote 15-20 comments in other blogs but some days I did not have even one comment in my own blog. My fear and frustration intensified because South Asian business is not exactly a very popular topic that would attract a lot of visitors.

Yes, fear can take away much of your energy. Getting readers is not as easy as many people think. You have to try a lot to get readers everyday.

2. Over expectation: We often read fantastic stories of ordinary people earning thousands of dollars by blogging. Just think of Darren Rowse’s story of Becoming a ProBlogger. He was a very ordinary person before becoming a successful problogger. Now, he is one of the richest bloggers on earth. Many newbie bloggers want to earn more than $5000 or $10,000 per month right away. However, 99.99% of the bloggers even cannot earn this money even after one year of blogging.

3. Shame: I really sometimes feel that blogging is not for shy person. You cannot satisfy everyone with your writing and often you will get severely criticized. It has happened to me often- especially when any of my entries could make into the home page of Fark, Reddit and Shoutwire. Some of the attacks were too bitter and personal to swallow. Sometimes, I felt much ashamed to be criticized in such a bad way. Don’t forget the fear of making a mistake.

4. Google: Yes, getting the attention of Google was a big fear for me for many months. Now, after one year, I know how to attract traffic from Google but in the beginning it was like an impossible task for me.

5. Blogging Daily: Well, blogging is supposed to be a regular work. In fact, bloggers have no holiday and at the beginning, posting regular entries was a big obstacle for me. I did not want to miss blogging even for a single day. I felt that may be some readers would come and would not see any fresh entry in my blog.

6. Adsense earning: Having less than $10 income in your Adsense income after the first month of blogging can scare you a lot. Specially, if you have entered into blogging with the idea of earning some extra money then it is a terrible feeling. I know that some bloggers get frustrated and even leave blogging.

7. Nothing to write: I did not have this fear at all but I know that some newbie bloggers have this fear. They are afraid that someday they may discover that they have covered everything on their field and there is nothing to write. Well, I do not agree with this fear. Knowledge is endless.

8. Getting lost: There are so many successful blogs in almost every area that it is not impossible for a newbie blogger to be afraid of getting lost in the blogging crowd. And, do not forget that it takes a lot of time before a newbie blogger can attract some traffic and comments in their blogs.

9. Blogging jargon: If you read some blogs about blogging and visit some forums then often you can find that many bloggers and visitors are talking in a language that you are not familiar with. They are talking about SEO, design etc and using many words that you never heard. Well, this is a big initial shock for many newbie bloggers.

10: Programming and Coding: For many newbie bloggers, design and programming may be a big fear- especially if you are using your own domain and hosting instead of a free blog host and software then it can give you a tough time. That is why, I always recommend everyone to use Blogger. Google has really created the easiest platform to blog.

Are you a newbie blogger? Are you afraid of anything? Then let us know in the comment section.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:43 AM

    Many of these points fit pretty well with the concerns I also face. I still face these to an extent, I've only been doing this for about a month now. Obviously, traffic/readers is a difficult thing that I have yet to really tackle in any form. One of the larger issues though for me really, was the fact that whatever I write or place on my site is open for criticism. Whether or not the person criticizing is even qualified to be stating that something blows, etc, doesn't stop me from obsessing over whether something I've created/written is "up to the task" so to speak. Fortunately I'm getting quite a bit better at this, in fact one of the benefits of a blog is that it's a sort of a self experiment, it's an interesting experience.

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  2. Anonymous1:44 AM

    I'm looking at getting into the blog world. I tried a few years ago, with very limited knowledge with HTML and a free Yahoo account (needless to say it didn't work out). I've used my Myspace blog as a way to get my feet wet but that too didn't really do it for me.

    My idea is for a blog that will evolve into a much bigger idea. I want it to be more of an interaction with the web community. Something more than just leaving comments.

    Articles like these really help me get motivated to do something I know I could be very good at. All of these items are ones I’ve been worried about. So thank you for posting this.

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  3. Anonymous8:26 PM

    Personally, I'm interested in finding ways to help newbie bloggers and nonbloggers find their way into the blogosphere. There's a number of barriers for people, especially the non-techie types. But I wonder if the biggest barrier isn't us. Is the blogosphere too cliquey? What do you think? You're certainly welcome to view the post I've written and add your two cents to the conversation.

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  4. Anonymous8:19 PM

    Thanks for nice post; I have also faced some similar fears when I started blogging first time two years back. Really people are very sarcastic and bombard you with dirty messages. www.thoughtsofanordinaryman.com

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  5. Useful tips. Its not fear of shame or anything that blocks me, but fear of futility as readers are so hard to come by.

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