Why You Won’t Make A Full-Time Income From Blogging
Many don’t know this, but blogging success requires more than creativity.
It also requires practicality. Tim Rettig wrote about this just recently and it was beautiful.
His article along with a recent Gary Vee video inspired me to write the following…
The only way you’ll make a full-time income from blogging is if you spearhead that magical zone where creativity and practicality overlap.
I’ll give you an example.
There’s A Fine Line Between…
Someone recently told me that some of my headline strategies “prey on the weak” and take advantage of “weak spots in human psychology” to get clicks.
I mean, damn, I got a lot of really smart readers that I myself look up to so I guess that makes me pretty weak, too?
Either that or what they said isn’t true.
I’m not going to focus on whether that’s true or untrue. What I will tell you is this person says they’ll get followers on their own.
They’ll get blogging success on their own. They’ll “do it their way.”
Which, by the way, is fine.
I respect them for doing that. There’s just one thing..
Don’t complain that you aren’t getting views and that bigger bloggers are “gaming the system” to get them when you’ve decided not to make practicality part of your strategy.
And “gaming the system” is a little harsh. Last time I checked, people still have to read your words, decide they like you, and resonate with what you wrote.
If they don’t resonate with your stuff, you won’t win.
It doesn’t matter how many people you follow or how many tags you put in your posts or how many articles you go and comment on.
At the end of the day, you still have to write well, and you have to write often.
ONLY when you do all of these things at the same time will you have a chance.
Blogging success requires practicality.
You’re Actually Making Excuses When You Do This
Saying you won’t practice *insert tactic here* because of *insert reason here* is actually you just building in an excuse to protect your ego when you fail.
Let’s say you decide to toss out practical ways to build an audience (aka inserting CTA’s at the end of your article), that’s fine..
You won’t grow as fast, and you’re sacrificing a lot, but you want to do things in a more, I guess ethical manner? CTA’s aren’t unethical by the way, but there you go.
What you’re actually doing is protecting your ego.
“At least I’m not THEM. They’re gaming the system with the personal development articles and the headlines with ‘science-backed’ in them. That’s why they have so many followers.”
This is cleansing yourself from the blame.
And by the way, it’s okay to not do what we do. It’s okay to go against practical ways to get more clicks/views. I don’t mind that — in fact, I think it’s quite honorable. But don’t blame us and tear us down when your stats suck.
Blame you.
Guess what? Benjamin P. Hardy’s articles are actually really fucking good. Go read them! If you just took a second to cut through the hate and actually read what he’s writing you’d see genius. You’d understand why some people print out his articles and literally read them later on.
Here’s what Gary Vee said in a DailyVee video yesterday…
“Just don’t complain when your business doesn’t grow that much over the next decade. You’re not feeding your business. You’re feeding yourself. Good! But you better shut up about not growing. You’re not feeding it.”
That quote rings so true right now.
When we forsake the dreaded blogging tactics that great writers give us (just because they want to help us, by the way) in the name of having “character” or being more “real,” just understand that’s probably you making one big fucking excuse to shield your ego when nobody reads.
“Oh, well, I’m not super successful because I didn’t do what they did.”
No, maybe you’re just not good enough yet. Maybe you haven’t given this as much time. Maybe you need to publish for a year or two more.
But you don’t want to hear that you’re not good enough.
This realization can be soul-breaking. I honestly don’t blame people for doing this. But just realize that if you’ve sworn off certain blogging tactics as “cheap” or “fake,” you’re probably just making excuses…
When you stop doing that, only then can you make real progress.
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