New Bloggers: How NOT To Stress About Blogging

• Updated on: 2019-10-04
• Read original article here

Let’s talk about your blogging journey and the things that can stress you out about it.

The idea for this post came to me the other night when I was looking over my stats before I logged off for the night since I don’t check them during the day.

But it wasn’t always like that.

When I was a new blogger, I was obsessed with my stats – and not the right ones. I’ll explain more in a bit.

I was stressed out because I wasn’t making money. Stressed because my writing wasn’t as good as other bloggers. And I was stressed because I didn’t have thousands of social media followers.

Those roller coaster emotions would throw a wrench in your whole day. And you can’t concentrate on anything because you’re zeroed-in on numbers.

Believe me, that crap gets old quick.

I finally caught my snap and told myself to just work my plan and not worry about the numbers or how other bloggers were successful and I wasn’t.

But it’s easier said than done.

You might have read from other bloggers that checking in on what the competition is doing can be a good thing – I encourage that, too.

But you have to be in the right mindset in order for your research to be productive. Meaning, that you are comfortable with where you’re at in your own blogging journey.

Because if you’re not, you won’t walk away with ideas like new topics to blog about.

There are three things that can make a new blogger start to question their own blogging journey and shoot down confidence. That’s reading blog income reports, comparing yourself to other bloggers and obsessing over those darn stats.

So let me break down why that is and how to look at things differently so you can do those things without it affecting you in a negative way.

There are mixed feelings in the blogging community about blog income report posts. Some bloggers like to read what other bloggers are doing to be successful. Other bloggers would rather not and focus on their own race.

Now if you are one of those bloggers who likes to read this type of blog post, the first thing to ask yourself is, what are you getting out of it?

And remember that these bloggers have been at it for years. So, instead of zeroing in on their numbers, take a look at HOW they did it.

A great blog income report is not only going to show you how much money they made and with what affiliates or products. It’s going to lay out the strategy they used to show HOW they did it.

This is the kind of information you can use, right?

In other words, if you walk away with ideas to implement on your own blogging plan then it was worth the read.

But if all it does is gets you stressed out or you start to second guess your own blogging journey then I would avoid reading them altogether to spare yourself the unneeded anxiety.

That leads me to the second bullet.

I was so guilty of this when I was a new blogger. I think I asked myself questions like “why don’t I have as many fans and followers as so and so?” Or, “what am I doing wrong?” at the end of every month for the first couple of years. I kid you not!

But let me give you some food for thought and I’ve had to remind myself of this as well.

You can’t compare yourself to other bloggers because:

And when it comes to your blogging journey, there is always something to celebrate.

You can still find something to toot your own horn for. Even on the months when no money is made.

Like, did you get more traffic? Did visitors stay longer from the month before? Maybe you got more engagement from the last month.

No matter what, always and I do mean always, celebrate even the tiniest milestones. Because those deserve the happy dance, too!

How often do you check your stats? Do you check them more than once a day?

Depending on what data you’re analyzing, checking your stats daily can be productive. That is, if you’re looking at your page views, bounce rate, which posts were read or what channels are driving traffic to your blog.

But if you’re checking how many fans and followers you have or how much money your Adsense account is making, can you imagine what that can do to your mindset?

Let’s say you want to get more social media followers – we’ll go with Twitter for this scenario.

Every morning you check to see how many tweeps you have. Then a couple hours later you check again and you notice you’ve lost a couple followers.

You check it again, and you gained two more. And at the end of the night you’ve lost three more followers. By then you’re like ‘aw, come on now’.

This is the kind of stuff that can distract you. And it can keep you from working your blogging plan. That’s what I mean when I say don’t focus on the wrong stats.

If it’s more followers you want to get, create a social media marketing plan and work it. Check your stats once a day (I recommend the end of the day) to see how your plan is working. Tweak it as necessary. And then check your stats to see how the changes did…you get my drift.

If you’ve been stressed out about your blogging journey, I hope you feel better after reading this post.

Do you tend to stress out over these three things? How did you handle it?

Is there something about your blogging journey that stresses you out?

Tell us about it in the comments below.

And before you go, I would really appreciate you sharing this on social media with other new bloggers who might be stressing out too.