How to Get Unstuck in Blogging

These days a lot of people are trying to learn how to make money blogging. Yet, they get stuck on the actual blogging part. None of the blogging help or blogging tips seem to help when you are get stuck. You can’t do anything with your blog if you are stuck!  So here’s how to get unstuck in blogging.

Have you have gotten stuck somewhere in your blogging journey?

Maybe you never got started? Maybe you started but quit actively blogging after a few weeks? Maybe you still post every month or two but can’t quite get it going? Maybe you are writing consistently but still feel stuck at a certain level?

What were your goals when you started? And where are you in relation to those goals?

So, what happened. How did a journey that started with so much promise, get derailed?

If you haven’t even started your blog, I suggest you also read this post, Ten Reasons You Haven’t Started Your Blog Yet.

I do know that many people start blogs and for some reason they quit blogging, sometimes right at the beginning of the journey or even a year or two into it.

How to Get Unstuck in Blogging

Blogging isn’t for everyone. It sounds so cool—just jump online set up a blog and start writing. What we all find out very soon is that there is way more to having a blog than simply writing about stuff we like.

Whether we want to blog for fun or to make money, we all write in the hopes that someone will read our words. So, part of the job of blogging is finding ways for our blog to be found and read by the people we are writing for.

And that’s that is just one of our tough lessons. We learn that we have to make our blog attractive. We learn we have to write blog posts that provide value. We learn we have to master at least a part of social media. We learn that there are millions of bloggers out there that are all clamoring for their part of the blogosphere.

Why I Care

I care because I have seen bloggers that had so much potential just disappear. And I always wondered what happened. A couple of years ago, I started a Facebook group for new bloggers because I wanted to help other bloggers get past that.

Yet, I see the same thing happening there. So, maybe that’s just how it’s going to be. Many people start and only a few stick with it. However, after talking to bloggers for two years, I’ve come to see that there are some common themes about how bloggers get stuck.

If you are a woman that is stuck in your blogging journey, then read on. There is no magic pill to be a successful blogger—only you can do the work involved. However, sometimes a little extra encouragement can help you get unstuck in blogging.

Creating a Blog is GOOD for YOU!

The other reason I care is because I know that creating a real blog versus having an online diary is a way to learn how to write with focus, create a body of work you can use towards a book or class to teach, and a way to learn valuable marketable skills. In addition, you can gain confidence and make new friends.

As you can tell, I love blogging and really believe it helped me create a better life.

Why Blogging can Seem so Hard

I was recently at a meeting with some financial advisors. And I had to explain that the equivalent time of a part-time job was going to my blog that was not paying like my real part-time job.

That definitely seems dumb to some people. Those are not people whose opinion I want to hear. I cannot over emphasize this: blogging has helped me grow, not into a new person, but into the real person that I was always meant to be.

It has provided so many incredible benefits to me, but it was not without effort. I have put the time and hours into this work and I am incredibly proud of what I have made of it. Read about How Blogging Changed My Life.

Blogging can seem difficult, because well, beyond just writing about your life and such, there is a lot to it and there are so many people telling you to do this and that.

I have no idea why people think they can pop on their computer and in a few weeks start producing income to replace a job that perhaps they went to college to get and have put in years of work. There are a handful of people that have perhaps done that but for the vast majority, it takes longer than a Nano second to get established online and earn an income.

Below are the reasons I that bloggers give about why they are stuck. Sometimes they don’t know the reason, they just aren’t writing or posting. This turned into a really long post, so feel free to skim the headings to find your stuck place and find out how to move on.

You Started but Gave up After a Month or Two

The first few months are difficult. It truly is overwhelming to figure out the technical side of blogging. Add not being sure about what or how to write and you’ve got a perfectly good reason to give up.

Everyone says it’s going to be easy.

They are lying when they say that. Blogging is hard and at no time is it harder than in the first few months.

It’s hard because you are truly on your own. You haven’t crossed over to the “real” blogger stage. You don’t know what the heck you are doing. And worst, the people in your real life, not only don’t understand but they can’t help you out at all.

The feeling of overwhelm and being alone and unsure of yourself is REAL. It’s real and it’s totally normal.

If you blog with purpose and you continually try to grow your blog, you will cross through this stage to feeling like a real blogger and getting some real traction.

Your Blog Sucks Compared to Other People’s

Everyone, even successful bloggers had to be a beginner and start somewhere. Everyone has gone through the ugly-duckling new blogger phase where your blog posts just don’t quite work, and your graphics are clearly a beginner’s.

Let me stress again—everyone has been there.

No one likes being there and some people work like crazy to push through that stage. Some people write a few posts and abandon their blog because they feel they will never be as good as the successful bloggers.

Let me remind you again. Every successful blogger has been there.

Here’s the thing. You do have control over how long you stay there. It takes work and commitment to get out of that stage. And the only way to get out is to write, learn from what you write, and write some more.

You Hate Being on Social Media all the Time

You get over your resentment that you spend so much time on Facebook or Pinterest and accept that it is a part of the job or hobby of being a blogger. I’ve read some people say spend 20% of your time writing and 80% promoting.

But promoting isn’t scrolling Facebook or Pinterest. Promoting means learning the ins-and-outs of both and really spending constructive time promoting your blog posts.

Successful bloggers create social media posts and graphics and schedule to go out day in and day out. They don’t just make one pin for a post and call it a day; they make a few and try different ones out and see what works best.

Successful bloggers see a new way of doing something and they give it a try. I was talking to Stacey @ thesocceermomblog.com last week and she had a video going viral on Facebook. It’s not her first video to go viral but this was the most successful so far. Stacey is a six-figure blogger who has been trying to perfect her Facebook video game for well over a year.

Why? Because the people that pay her to write posts or put advertisements on her blog like big Facebook followings. And so, every day she doesn’t just post content she finds from other people; she actively creates engaging original content as well.

Being on social media is part of the job.

Early in my blogging career, a successful blogger told me that you need to spend time pinning to Pinterest and posting to Facebook like it’s your job—because it is your job.

Like it or not, spending significant time creating content for social media is a significant part of a blogger’s job.

About a year ago, another blogger said something along the lines of that she didn’t want to sell her soul to Pinterest.

You don’t have to sell your soul to anyone. That being said, you are going to have to accept that Pinterest is hugely important to any blogger’s traffic strategy. It just is. While SEO and Facebook are important too, it’s Pinterest that sends the largest percentage of traffic to most bloggers.

Accept it and learn to deal with Pinterest.

You Gave Yourself a Goal to Make Money in Six Months and You Didn’t

This is a huge area for getting stuck—putting a goal on making money in a certain amount of time. Blogging is not an exact science though there are certain things that work in a fairly predictable manner.

However, there are so many variables. What is your niche? How many times a week do you post. How many hours a week do you put into your blog?

All of these things matter. Do not be fooled by people who say they only work a few hours a week and make six figures. Full time income requires full time work. Part-time work takes longer to make a part-time income.

It can easily take six months or more to gain enough traction to make some income. For almost every blog, you have to have significant page views to make ANY income. Even when you hit the magic 30K page views, the income is still minimal. And getting to the really magical number of 100K is daunting to say the least.

Some of this is out of your control. It’s not realistic to start a blog and expect to make money a few months in. It’s just not.

In any industry, there are always superstars. These are people that seem to do it without effort. Yet, they put in a lot of effort. These are the people that get up earlier than the kids to work, get support so they can write during the day, and stay up late still working.

If your goal is to earn money with your blog; you’ll have to put in the hours to earn that money. If your goal is to earn money within a year—then you will probably need to take some blogging classes to speed up your learning curve.

Money doesn’t just happen.

For the record, you probably won’t make money for some time if you just want to write about your life and such. You really have to have a strong blog focus, a target audience, and a money-making strategy.

What is your money-making strategy? If you don’t have one—money won’t magically come to you. Making money with ads and affiliates often takes lots of page views to generate real income. But there are other ways. People make money with products, books, printables, you name it.

My point is, that you really need a strategy to make money online and work consistently towards it. You can’t have a “I hope I make money someday” dream and expect that to work. It just doesn’t.

My Family Doesn’t Support Me as a Blogger

This is another big one. Many people expect that the people that are important to them will be supportive of their blog and will take an active interest in it.

They most likely won’t. Best case is that they won’t actively try to discourage you. A blog, even when it’s going great, can take a good six months to a year to get established. Even working on it part-time, you are going to need to spend at least 10 – 15 hours a week on it, every week.

So, let’s see. You are spending 10-15 hours a week on something for months and it’s not paying you more than a few dollars a month. Not too many people understand that. They just don’t. It will appear to other people to be a very time-consuming hobby.

Not only that, but most people in your day-to-day life, will not be that interested in your writing. Many people that you tell about your blog will not every read a single post. Ever.

Do NOT let this stop you. One of the most powerful shifts in thinking that I had about my blog was not expecting anyone in my real life to read or follow my blog.

There are things your family won’t see.

They don’t see that I have consistently worked on and have grown a blog out of nowhere and made it an established part of the online world. I have given up so many endeavors but not this one!

While my face-to-face tribes don’t get blogging, my online tribes do. I’ve made real friends and connections through my blog and my presence on Facebook as a blogger.

Blogging enriched my life beyond measure! Read here, How Blogging Changed My Life.

I can’t get page views!

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that from a brand-new blogger! Page views are what we all chase in some form or another. They are important to an overall money-making plan.

Getting page views is tough though It’s a noisy world online with millions of places for people to spend their time looking at interesting content. Not only are you competing with thousands of bloggers, who are perhaps writing almost exactly what you are writing about, but you are competing against professional writers as well.

Yet, you will see posts on Pinterest and group leaders on Facebook telling you about their massive page views each month.

Yes, people get there or have gotten there. Some quicker than you. Again remember, all those bloggers out there. These are people that have pushed through the noise. You don’t see them because everyone is doing it, you see them because somehow, they got their blog in front of your eyes.

Most bloggers who do that work really hard and really smart to do that. They pump out content and they work hard at mastering social media. Sometimes there’s an element of luck as in timing. There are bloggers who jumped on the Pinterest train early and built up followings before everyone was trying to do it.

However, even with a great niche and hard work, it’s still challenging. So, when you are reading and comparing yourself to another blogger that is successful, take a step back, and realize that they have worked incredibly hard to get where they are at.

It takes time and consistency for your content to cut through all of this. I don’t say that it’s hard to discourage you but to give you a better idea of what you are facing. Quit being so hard on yourself!

You Can’t Get Motivated

As much as I love my blog, I have to force myself at times to continue. And I do because I cannot over emphasize how proud I am of this achievement and how much it has contributed to my life.

Accept that you won’t be motivated all the time, especially in the beginning when it’s all new and it doesn’t make sense and you aren’t sure about any of it.

Find at least two hours a day and work at it. If you’re still setting it up, spend those two hours working on that. Write for two hours. Learn to make Pinterest pins. Use part of that time every day to work on your blog posts. Get one or two blog posts up, each and every week.

Take motivation out of the equation and just do the work every single day. If you are working on your blog at least two hours a day you will make progress.

It takes time to build up momentum on a blog. You are kind of working in the dark at the beginning, plugging away at something where you don’t really know what you are doing.

As your blog becomes a thing and you learn the ins and outs, you’ll always have plenty to do.

You Can’t Figure Out a Step

A year or so ago, I got stuck because I wanted to have an opt-in and a newsletter, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it all. I felt stuck because I had come up against a wall and I just didn’t have the time or energy to figure it out.

In the end, I hired a VA for a few hours to set it all up. Once it was set up, I could write my newsletters and schedule them to go out.

Many things I am able to figure out if I set aside the time and make it a priority to learn and do. Sometimes I ask another blogger for help. And once in a while, I pay for some help.

There’s no right answer, except to not stay stuck too long.

You Want to Change Directions

This happens, blogs evolve and that’s why I advocate giving yourself a few months to figure out what you DO want to write about. It doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch. After you write posts for a while, you will discover the topics that you are passionate about.

It took me six months to find my direction. I had to really pay attention to ideas that came to me and follow up with writing a post.

The idea for my most popular post ever, came to me during a walk. I got home and wrote it up quickly. It was different than anything I had ever written. It does well, still, two years later and got me writing about what I was really passionate about.

I changed direction for by blog and have never looked back. Stacey @ thesoccermomblog.com started writing with one focus and after a few months changed her tagline and the direction of her blog without changing the name either.

In the beginning not too many people are reading your blog, so write whatever you want and that is the best way to learn and discover what you want to write about that also resonates with readers.

How to Get Unstuck in Blogging

It is possible to get unstuck no matter what the reason is. In fact, it is in overcoming any of these stuck points that will cause you to grow as a blogger. You will get better at blogging by getting unstuck and moving beyond that point.

I LOVE blogging and love to write about it. Here are my favorite posts to help you become a real blogger.
How to Start a Blog for Profit and Fun
How to Write Your First Blog Post
How to Let Blog Topics Find You
How to Go from Beginner to Blogger
How to Use Pinterest to Grow Your Blog
How Blogging Changed my Life

Some day you will look back and even wonder why you let something hold you back. Here’s what I know. It takes writing and posting consistently for months or years to build traction, presence, and authority in blogging.

If you are putting eight hours a day into your blog, you will grow faster than someone putting in an hour a day.

If you only have an hour a day to blog—go for it! It’s still a really cool outlet and hobby. You will grow your blog, but it will be somewhat slower than someone who has more hours to put into it.

The KEY is commitment and consistency. Remember, commitment and consistency will move you through and beyond ever place you could possibly get stuck