When you have something in mind you want to start but don’t the thing that often gets in your way of pursuing your dreams is the fear of starting! We often tell ourselves it isn’t the right times so we wait but then realize we waste so much time waiting for the right time. For many bloggers that is what is holding them back from creating that first post because they tell themselves they aren’t good enough or what they would write about has already been thought of so there is no point. Every topic has been written about somewhere but what these topics don’t have is your voice because you can always add to the conversation even if a topic has been written about a thousand times. Topics can always be changed and you can put a different spin on to make it yours. It may seem pointless when there are so many bloggers out there writing about the same things but it’s not because everyone can bring something different to the table and open your mind in different ways that you would have never thought of. There are tons of competition when comes to blogging but even with the competition there are many successful bloggers so let that be a lesson to you that it is possible if you stay committed and just do it. If you have been wanting to start a blog but fear has been standing in your ways in here are some tips that may help you get over that fear.
Strive for progress, not perfection- Many bloggers including myself are perfectionists and we sit at our computers ten to twelve hours a day editing blog posts or creating new ones to try and make our blog posts better. I know I am guilty of this and sometimes I might do other activities but for the most part, I am addicted to my blog and don’t do many other activities that are not blog related and work on my blog all day long. When I launched my blog I was particularly bad with this because after I wrote for days I edited for hours trying to get the perfect grammar by putting my posts in five different grammar checkers which was silly because they all gave me the same result. I have dyslexia so there will always be more grammatical errors in my blog posts than there are for most people and it wasn’t until I realized I just needed to accept that and focus on making them understandable because it’s not a realistic goal to try and make them grammar free. I don’t think my grammar is all that bad anyways but I wouldn’t say it’s excellent and there are better bloggers that would knock my writing out of the park because they have had more practice and that is okay I do this not to compete against anyone but to help others. Strive for progress, not perfection and it doesn’t matter how many times you read over your post you will always find some kind of error. Work on making each post better than the last because if you try and make each post perfect you will just have a bunch of drafts that never get published.
Just do it- Sometimes when you have something you want to do you have every excuse not to do it because you create these scenarios in your head as to why it’s not a good idea. Your mind will believe whatever you want it to and you can make something seem way worse than it actually is so the only way you will have any chance of overcoming that fear is to just do it. You can make excuses all day long as to why you shouldn’t take a chance but at the end of the day you will never know if you will fall in love with something until you try it.
Ask your what is the worst thing that will happen?- When I first launched my first couple of posts I had a meltdown from the anxiety because I envisioned getting all this hate from my blog posts that I didn’t really get much of so I almost quit from literally creating scenarios in my head that never really happened. Yeah, I get some hate but so do all bloggers and I don’t get that much but most people that follow me are very positive and supportive of my work. In the beginning, what got me through is after I wrote every blog post I had to ask myself what is the absolute worst thing that will happen from this post? Basically, all that will happen is, people will either love it, hate it and send a bunch of hate mail, or it will be a total dud and no one will read it but that is all that can come of blogging. People that send bloggers hate mail just cause they can obviously have no life and you should never take these hurtful messages personally. Show up for the people that love your blog not for the ones that hate it and consistently bring you down because you are not writing for them.
Don’t try and be like other bloggers- If you are a new blogger one thing you need to realize is your writing does not need to sound like someone else to improve your blog but actually it shouldn’t sound like someone else because if it does you could be accused of copying someone else’s work if it sounds too similar. When you are a new blogger it can be so easy to look at a more popular blogger and compare yourself to them so you may think that if you just write like them you will have the same success but actually that is not necessarily true. There is no manual for blogging and different strategies work for different people and although you could be using the same strategy as someone else or using a similar writing style as them it doesn’t necessarily mean you will receive the same success. I can always tell the new bloggers from the pros because many of the new ones sound robotic and try too hard to be someone else which many pros know that is big blogging no-no and will kill your blog. Be yourself because people follow your blog to hear your voice not someone else’s.
Know what it is you want to bring to your readers- Bloggers that are passionate about their work and know what they want to write about will be more successful than the ones that are just trying to make money. You don’t have a niche to be successful but you need to have some idea of what you want to bring to your readers or you will have more anxiety because if you only write once every six months people won’t see you as a serious blogger so they won’t follow you. Figure out what it is that you want to bring to your readers and then launch your site because you don’t want to risk creating a bunch of content you hate and having to rebrand which will be even more work than if you just thought about what you wanted to begin with. Blog for the right reasons because even if someone else is crushing it at something and is extremely successful that doesn’t mean you will have that same success even if you duplicate that exact same strategy. Figure out what makes you happy and love what you do because if you can’t stick to it then why are you even doing it?
Every successful blogger has doubted themselves and thought they wouldn’t make it but you know what separates the successful ones from the others is they don’t quit when they hit a plateau and things get difficult. About five percent of bloggers can make full-time careers out of their blogs and it’s not because newbies can’t do it but many new bloggers give up after three months when they realize the article they read on Pinterest that claims to make them rich actually requires a lot of work before you can even begin to make even a part-time income. You doubt yourself as a blogger every day and wonder if that blog post you just published was helpful but waiting for that perfect moment will not get you any closer to landing the dream partnership and the longer you wait the more you will kick yourself for not going for it. I was writing blog posts two years before I actually launched my site and it wasn’t until my friend gave me the push to start my blog and at first, I thought she was crazy because I was not a strong writer and I felt more comfortable doing it in private but now that I have gotten over the fear I wish I would have started it sooner. Most of the content I wrote before I was online has been deleted and although I remember some topics I wrote before my blogging days can be rewritten a lot of it is a bit of a loss. It will be tough in the beginning but the more you do something the better you will get and what was hard in the beginning you will soon be able to do in your sleep. Your biggest regret will not be failing but not going for it because it may not be as scary as you think! Is something holding you back from starting your blog?
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