Why blogging is bad

Their message falls short. Ideally they understand your space, specifically what your customers are looking for and how they communicate online. If you want to learn more about hiring an intern for your business, read this post. The goal of a blog is to attract potential customers to your website, so you can build relationships with them and convert them into customers over time.

There are other ways to do this. For example, if you love taking photos you can do the same with Instagram. Photo courtesy of Maderas Village. Business Insider showed us that engagement from Instagram users is 10x greater than engagement on other platforms. So, if you love photos, why not give Instagram a try? Once you know where your customers are online, you can brainstorm ways to create content that you both love, and will continue to love creating and sharing.

I was missing a critical component of our inbound marketing strategy. Now I have a routine for promoting every post. The rules are guidelines which come after the study of usage.

By the time they have been formulated usage has moved on. Could not help smiling when I read split infinitive in the same sentence as expletive. I assume you explete new usage every time someone is tempted to creatively use one.

Oops sorry! Great post full of thought provoking ideas. In the end writers will decide which is so much better than leaving it to academics. That turned into a bit of a rant. A rant with a smile on my face. I love language good, bad and no not indifferent. I disagree. Of course language follows rules. But it follows rules like music does. The rules are created as a loose structure to contain the art. As such, the rules can change, and do. Writers should regularly ask for feedback from trusted sources.

They can always improve and should be asking for ways in which they should. If you spend time building a community with a blog, you can build this in as a norm. And you should give them this permission. Tough call. The slightly longer answer is people whom you trust. If you blog, I would begin by picking of your most loyal readers who also are writers.

I was just last night whining about how Snooki, the Kardashians and now a big dog all have book deals. They all have huge followings. Total envy.

And so immature of me. Yeah, I feel you. Glad this helped. Celebrities are a great example of people who build huge tribes with seemingly little effort. It drives me crazy that so many pundits shout how social media has opened up the publishing world. For now, good writing is undervalued. You can make all the videos, podcasts and infographics you want, but nothing can replace quality writing in the end. I like to think that I can write, but I often question that claim. Just wave your magic wand, or alter the punctuation.

That oughta do it! I was going to reply with a very similar comment. What about those so called bad writers, who would love help because they truly want to get better, but yet are unable to find help because the really good writers are too important to waste their time on them. They can take writing classes, read books, find writing blogs, learn by reading others, but sometimes there is nothing like that hands on critique.

Where do you find these coaches that have a passion to help others be better? I live to teach people to write better. I agree. There are LOTS of resources out there, including coaches and books. Seeing that kind of writing hurts my eyes! Everyone starts somewhere and the smart people work to improve all along the way.

Fake it till you make it. If people listen, then you probably have something worth saying. Great to see you here, Jeff! Writing has never been so attractive. I wanted perhaps to correct something about 2.

The playing field is just way more crowded now. Good clarification. I like that. Excellent post! I just recently got up enough nerve to offer writing consulting but this topic has been a thorn in my side for a long time. Very interesting post Jeff i thought i was alone and from my opinion i think Honesty will make your bad writing to be Good. Love it. Why I never thought of this before is beyond me. Thanks Jeff. Similarly: I am a graphic designer and in the early days, many in the industry were riled because Macs and new DTP software meant that anyone could create their own designs.

Whilst many felt threatened I saw this as a positive thing — i was confident the work I did was good and felt having lots of bad work out there was bound to make it look even better! I am still employed in this industry so there must have been some truth to the theory. These are great points Jeff.

I can see how frustrating it must be for good writers to see other less talented people becoming more popular than they are online at least. We need you to move, not lock up out of protest. We need your voice, and we need it now.

Amen, Lisa! I struggle with this, as well. Hi Jeff, great post. This gives me something to think about. Thanks for the great post and for commenting on my blog yesterday. I look forward to keeping in touch. My pleasure, Joseph. As someone who works with nonfiction authors to help them strengthen their original concept, write to a structure as opposed to a stream of consciousness and keep their readers in mind at all times, I so appreciate this post. All that happened was that those of us who actually knew what we were talking about got shouted down by a minority of blog-bullies who seemed intent to speed up the race to the bottom.

Now my market is the professional with something valuable to say who cares about saying it well. Some people will always be attracted to low-level crap did someone mention Snooki and the Kardashians? In my mind, innovation is a form of competition. Thanks for the comment. Thanks, Jennifer. Competition is a funny thing, but can ultimately be good if we have the right attitude about it and are confident in our own abilities.

Great post, Jeff. I feel like I need to tip-toe here, for fear that the upper class of writing society may send me back to clean the stables. You need my help. Is the need to compete and the feeling of envy evidence of an underlying insecurity? Why does anyone write? Hopefully, for the love of the creative process. Hopefully, to share something in our stories that will resonate with others; to teach, inspire and encourage. I prefer the company of the horses. I was hoping that there was something I was misunderstanding.

Thanks, Jeff, and congratulations on your guest post. I appreciate the push-back, Lynne. The point of the post that I was trying to express was this: Bloggers who may not be the strongest writers can still teach good writers something about getting their content read.

But I do think that most writers struggle with this. The fact is that being a good writer and succeeding online is not enough — you need to understand how ideas spread, which is a topic that Copyblogger addresses quite well.

Perhaps the point could have been made without the high-minded and slightly mean-spirited tone, which tended to overshadow the points you were trying to make. As i mentioned to you, it shocked me a bit. Thank you for the thought provoking discussion. You sure have generated quite a bit of it—pat on the back for that! Thanks, Lynne.

Appreciate your thoughtful responses. You may be right about the mean-spiritedness, but honestly, that was intentional. They knew how to promote. The first is craftmanship. And the second is community. These feelings of failure are further compounded by the legions of seemingly successful bloggers.

Surely the dysfunction must be in you. That, or maybe they really can see the holes in your footie PJs. Whispers of doubt starts to nag at you each day.

You try to fend them off like stray bits of grass caught in a weed-whacker, but some stick. And, I think, they still probably feel these doubts even still. For some people, absolutely. Blogging is one long Olympic-length marathon in persistence, adaptability, and conquering mindf ks.

Blogging: A mental version of climbing a mountain when you just might be out of shape. But, for those who are able to stick with it, there are big rewards or so the leprechaun told me. What do you think? What reasons can you think of that blogging would be a terrible side hustle? Leave a comment below! I just launched my site earlier this month and have found all of the above points to be true. Despite having virtually no expectations, I still found myself sucked into checking my site stats daily.

Stats checking IS addictive — I figured out how to pull a webpage Google Adsense onto my iphone screen just like an app, and I think I pop open that sucker for a peek about 12 times a day — lol. I would imagine the same goes for many others?! It always amazes me how many people eventually migrate into the Blogging For Money realm.

It makes sense; on one hand, it CAN be a great way to make money. I thought it was a rather clever way of addressing it. And, for the most part, it rings true with my own experiences as someone who has been running websites for a living. My favorite type of posts are the ones where someone points out something contrary to the herd, and I think I accomplished that with this post. You hit the nail on the head. I am a new blogger 1 month in and I am starting to realize the things you mentioned.

Definitely not a get rich quick type of thing. Side hustles are meant to bring in supplemental income.

If you are not doing that, then it is just a time consuming and possibly expensive hobby. Like you said, it takes time to build up content and an audience. Which means there is a huge time and effort investment upfront before you see any return. Many of the Blogger Pros teach that you are to approach your blog like a business.

Well if you were a business, and you had to pay rent for many months with no income, you will eventually end up out of business. Something to think about. But approach it as a business you still must, unless you really are trying not to be successful.

Good luck on your journey! The first few months are always the weirdest. Blogging takes A LOT of time and can be exhausting, especially when you put in so much work to see a very little return in money. Those who make it big, good for them.. I would love to learn how they made it! Me too! For example, a lot of people used Pinterest to skyrocket their blogs to fame, but the tricks they used back then no longer work thanks to algorithm changes.

Absolutely agree! Yes, yes, yes! And with thousands of new blogs popping up daily, I sure hope you are a competitive person…. No shock there. I am certainly not interested in making more friends for the sake of getting a blog visit , or marketing myself to death. Why should a good writer waste their time trying to market their blog and engage in pointless conversations, if marketing is not their interest the writing is? It is really pointless for writer types. I know that I suck at all of them.

I missed the domain rush, so my domains get almost no type in traffic, and I have no desire to network or SEO my blogs. It is boring and counterproductive to what I enjoy doing. This is another annoyance of mine, as I am more of a writer than a socialite. If I want that, I visit a large online forum like yahoo answers , where that is mutually expected.

I write to get an emotional release. I write to see the thoughts in my head expressed in a more coherent way. I write because sometimes I just like to write. I write thinking my article may help someone down the road who gets referred by a search engine to an article I labored on. I enjoy it. Plus, I may even make a buck or two…Yippee.

So the last thing I want after I pour my heart and soul into an article, is some ignorant person commenting and making a good or bad comment about what I wrote.

In fact, I have found that people only comment for one of the reasons below:. Big whoop. There are 6 billion people in the world, all of which would probably disagree with me on 1 given topic or article. I know this, but I am still entitled to my view or my opinion. So what! And if you ever blog on politics or religion, you will soon turn comments off or risk losing your sanity.

Because every single post you make will draw the most negative and critical comment flames you have ever seen by anyone who disagrees with your views. They liked your article. Of course I want people to like even love my articles.

I want them to take something useful away from it whether it be entertainment, information, etc. So while people think they are doing a good thing, it actually ends up making more work on my part, which leaves me less time to write. That is so pointless to me, and because so many people are trying to do this, they will leave comments on your site thinking it will gain them an SEO benefit.

Seems silly and impractical. People should come to my blog for the same reason I go to theirs: It has something useful or interesting on it. I write to write. I want my articles to be read because they were worth reading. Not because I played a cat and mouse game with other bloggers and search engines. People love to feel superior and smart, so they put your sentences under a microscope and really enjoy finding an improper spelling, or other mistake. My textbooks in school often had errors, and I can have errors too.

I fully admit that I am a flawed writer. They have a question. The last reason people tend to comment, is if they had a question raised in their mind after reading your article. The only problem is this: Who wants to spend their entire day answering every possible question about a subject that you probably wrote about last year and no longer think about , while getting paid squat for it?

When your blog gets any traffic at all, you can easily get comments per day sometimes more. Most of which, are not easy to answer and half are spam. They require almost a whole separate article to reply. If you ignore the comments, people get offended. Someone has to lose: either the blogger loses by wasting time moderating them, dealing with flames, etc.

I would prefer it be the commenter that loses no offense. Okay, moving on to other reasons why blogging sucks…. Most bloggers me included , do not earn a full time income, despite putting in a nearly full time effort.

Not a lot of money for sure. Most bloggers have full-time jobs, or at least, work part time or do freelance projects on the side or have a spouse that works full time.

Why do they work while blogging? Is it because they are workaholics? No, it is because blogging makes you peanuts for an income. They have to do other things to supplement their income, or else they will starve to death in about 6 months time.