How to Succeed at Blogging Long After Everyone Else Quits

The big secret: Keep showing up

In a world where literally millions of blog posts are posted everyday, just how the heck are you supposed to rise to the top and get your work read?

Millions of new blog posts everyday. Let that sink in.

How does it make you feel? A bit overwhelmed? A bit challenged? Maybe it’s a holy crap moment? Maybe the difficulty of the entire thing you’re trying to accomplish is starting to take hold?

Good. It should feel this way. Nothing worth doing was ever easy to start with. Hell, most of the giant things humanity ever pulled off was once considered impossible. No, worse than that, people were made fun of, some even killed, for having ideas larger than the limits of their age.

The size of a challenge shouldn’t scare you off. If it does, well, it wasn’t your task to take on, I reckon. But for those of you who look at that number and say, “Yeah, so what’s the plan?” I like you. You just might have what it takes.

Put your thinking cap on, make sure you have the nine-volts in your brain fully charged, cause we have some learning to do.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win” — John F. Kennedy

Have a mission

When I say mission, what are some of the first things that come to mind?

Probably goals, maybe adventures, possibly an expedition or a military maneuver to accomplish something? I hope boring mission statements and lifeless watered-down corporate paragraphs don’t. I hope those stay far, far away from what you think because that’s not at all what we’re talking about.

Mission is what drives you. It’s the passion that fuels you, the purpose that sustains you, the discipline that doesn’t let you quit, the drive, and responsibility that will carry you across the finish line.

Mission is a combination of the goals, the systems, the process, and the person you have to grow into in order to accomplish the things you’re after.

So, let me ask you, what are you after? What puts a fire in your soul and gives you the chill down your spine all at the same wonderful moment? That’s what you need to tap into when it comes to next-level success as a blogger, as a writer and as a person.

You tap into that and you’re going to kick some serious ass with what you accomplish.

Stop competing with everyone but yourself

You want to compete with yourself. You don’t want to compete with anyone else.

Why? It’s a spiral, and it lends power to excuses and justifications. Stop judging your progress against what you can’t control, shift your thinking back to what’s within your means to influence and you will absolutely go farther.

Here’s the thing, you can’t control other people and you don’t know their story or what specific things had to occur for them to get where they are. That isn’t your story, and you should want it to be, anyway. You have your own story and trust me, it’s more than worth your time to learn it and share it.

What you want to do is to compare who you are today against who you were yesterday, last week, last month, last quarter. Set down a goal, build a system, chase your mission, and measure your progress. Be brutally honest, but kind, and pay careful attention to where you wind up and why.

This might all sound like self-help, and if you can apply it to other parts of your life, go for it. But the thing is, it directly applies to your work as a writer too. Writing, creativity, the arts — they’re all a journey, a story of your progress. When you set the right intentions for your work, the goals and systems you put in place for your work will transform you as a writer, as a creative, and as a person.

That’s how you know you’ve succeeded. Not just by accomplishing your goals, but by becoming the kind of person it takes to do so. The goal becomes secondary compared to that. The prize is the person you become.

Learn nothing else but that, and you’ll be miles ahead of every other writer on the internet.

Like Ayo says…

I’m going to connect you with some real rocket fuel with this one. Everyone else is running around on unleaded but if you haven’t heard of Ayodeji Awosika, or watched his YouTube channel then I’m about to introduce you to some really powerful fuel that will definitely level your writing up.

I stumbled on his channel a few weeks ago and I wound up watching everything he had available that same day. Now I impatiently wait for more each week. He’s good, he knows what he’s talking about and I can’t recommend him enough.

All that aside he shared some logic that really stuck with me.

There’s a lot of people that like to run around the internet like Chicken Little, yelling the blogging sky is going to fall. They like to remind everyone, just in case you haven’t noticed, that things are a bit crowded on every platform. Some of these same folks like to yell that blogging is dead, that you are getting started too late, and a bunch of other scare tactics.

Enter Ayo. He says he’s not worried about all these naysayers because of one rock-solid truth. He knows he can outlast them. Mic drop. And there it is.

If you tap into your Mission, you put in the work, you stay hungry for what you’re after, and you keep showing up no matter what, you have staying power. Staying power means that when the naysayers start dropping off like flies, they stop writing new stuff, they keep moving on to the next thing, they constantly start, quit and never really grow any roots, then you will outlast them.

Learn this skill and you will beat the internet. I don’t care how fancy their start, how solid they look, or what kind of ads they run, if you stick it out longer, keep showing up, keep working on you, you will outlast them. You will outlast whatever comes.

Staying power is the secret to blogging success. Put out regular work, develop that work, grow as a writer and person, and keep showing up. Feel like? Show up. Don’t feel like it? Show up. Doesn’t matter. You just keep showing up. In the end, you will still be here and they won’t.

Keep coming back for more

At the end of the day, you want to build sustainability. Whatever else you build, infuse it with something that can be continued over the long haul. This means that you keep coming back for more.

There’s something to be said for satisfaction, and you should learn that skill when it comes to quality of life. But when it comes to blogging, never stop being hungry. Keep coming back for more, keep showing up to do a little more, to become a little more, to write a little more.

Sustainability is all about building the systems, the process, the lifestyle that makes it easier and easier to keep choosing to show up. No matter what, you just keep coming back. When others are tired and take a day off, you’re hammering out a little bit more.

But sustainability is also about choosing progress, which means accepting the whole picture of what you need as a person in order to meet and carry out your blogging success over a long period. That means scheduling breaks, half days, naps, good meals, time away from the screen, time with those you love, and building a good life.

Sustainability is a balancing act. But ultimately it comes down to being honest with yourself and what you want. Build something that can endure without grinding you into nothing. Balance. Keep that word close when you build a system and process to carry you to success and you will accomplish real sustainability.

Now it’s your turn

Sure, the odds are stacked against you. But they’ve been stacked against others before. We still managed to steal fire, build cities, learn to write, build the printing press, prove impossibilities possible, and eventually even fly to the moon.

The odds are just strength training, and all you really need to worry about is showing up for practice. Keep coming back for more, keep giving more, and keep learning. You will find the success you’re after, but you have to keep showing up. You have to endure.

Do that enough and you will show the world who you are, you will outsmart your challenges, you will find your readers and you will defy the odds.