Being a blogger is every young person’s dream. From one’s perspective, blogging may appear really simple since all you have to do is write about your travels, post awesome photos on social media, and tweet about it. Despite what our Instagram, Pinterest, or Snapchat may portray, those exotic locations and fabulous trips are far from what you would probably call a holiday. Blogging may be overwhelming, being a full-time blogger requires more work than you could possibly imagine. Being consistent helps one to build strong relationships on social media, here on the blog, and through emails.
1. You Need to Love What You Do
If you’re passionate about your work, it will show! You can tell when someone is blogging because they feel they have to, not because they want to there is a major difference between the two. When you’re working for yourself, you don’t have anyone chasing you up if you don’t meet deadlines or produce work of high quality. If you love what you do then you’ll always be pushing yourself to work harder, create better content, and it will show. One may not receive any money as they start out blogging, it’s going to be hard to woo readers to your blog. Like, really hard. And you’re going to get upset and lose sleep, and question this decision, but it’ll be worth it.
2. Holidays Do Not Exist
Whether you are on a trip or vacation with friends or family, going abroad is never a real holiday. Partly because when you’re your own boss, it’s impossible to switch off from work, especially when the nature of your work means you always need to be connected, but also because often the locations you’re visiting offer the best content. A blogger must always be photographing, Instagramming, Snapchatting, and filming the beautiful locations that they visit, as well as writing posts, editing, and replying to emails, it never gets easy.
3. Not Everyone Understand What Blogging Is About.
Those who don’t blog just don’t get it! From the outside, it seems like bloggers just take photos, write about things online, go on holidays, and have a super lifestyle. There is more to this as the admin that goes with it, there days spent in different countries for meetings, the long hours, it’s something you only understand if you’re a blogger yourself.
4. Emails Are Endless.
A full-time blogger’s inbox is like a never-ending nightmare. Once you think you’ve replied to them all, you go back to page one only to see 20 more unread emails. One could easily spend two days or more just responding to emails and still not have made a dent.
5. Bloggers Don’t Actually Spend Much Time Writing Blog Posts
Most people assume bloggers write blog posts about their super lifestyle or lavish holidays while in reality, most of their time is spent in meetings, at events, editing, promoting posts, or organizing products. Only 5% of their time is spent actually writing blog content, and at the moment it’s mostly while they manage to make time for their busy schedule.
6. Blogger Mail May Become Stress-full
A beauty blogger’s duty is not only to tell you about products that are great but also to edit out those that aren’t quite so great. They like to test skincare out for three weeks before writing about it so they can give an honest and thorough review, which means they have a huge backup of cleansers, moisturizers, serums, etc. yet to test, and the list is growing! Equally, with beauty, there simply isn’t enough time to write about it all! It is actually fairly stressful when they have to organize at least 20 deliveries a week or more. They mostly spend a lot of time prioritizing which products they’re going to try, and then which to feature.
7. No Time Off
A blogger is constantly thinking about what article to write next which photo to post next on social media or how to improve their blogs better. On their free days, they try to write as many articles as possible. And when they are traveling, they are constantly taking photos and thinking about how they can use them to get the most engagement out of their readers. It’s truly a nonstop process.
8. Travel Blogging Is an Extremely Competitive Industry.
Writing services explicitly add travel opportunities to your resume and it’s clear to see why traveling is considered a skill most hiring managers will give priority to those who enjoy their vacation traveling over your traditional applicant. There are several thousand people who take travel blogging seriously in the world. They are all working toward the same goals to build a massive following, to travel the world, and to make an influence on people’s lives. Therefore, one has to constantly ask themselves, how can they stand out from the field? What will make people want to read their site?
This is perhaps one of the biggest challenges of travel blogging.
9. Blogging Is a Vehicle, Not the Primary Source of Income
One of the biggest light bulbs for bloggers is realizing working full-time solely on blogging is not how to maximize your income. Most blogger’s models differ quite a bit from each other. For example, design bloggers could make money from ads. Many bloggers will offer sponsored posts where they promote a product in exchange for a fee. There are affiliate fees, where promoting a product or service with a special link will result in a small percentage of that sale paid to you. Putting your artwork up is a great way to gain new freelance clients. You’re sharing your personality and artwork at the same time and appear more human than just a portfolio site.
The hardest part about blogging is the start. Getting used to jargon, tools, and widgets can be a pain. Once you get the ball rolling, the momentum builds quickly and you’ll make adjustments to improve. Everything takes A LOT longer than you think and patience is important.
But before you start your blog, know what your overall goal is. There’s a huge difference between a travel diary and a travel blog. It’s called an audience and if you choose to have a diary, then that requires comparable little work other than writing. However, for those who want to have a public website and grow to connect with travelers around the world, consider yourself warned of what you are getting into.
Most people who start travel blogs with the intention of building an audience will give up easily after a year. They’ll quit when they wonder why they’re not getting as much attraction and recognition as other bloggers. Most people just aren’t willing to put a lot of hard work into it. You must have what it takes to be a blogger because it never gets easy.
Bloggers love talking about what they love doing most, this may be talking about cats or traveling. Most of their closest real-life friends and family members are just not into it the way they are. Blogging allows one to connect with similar people and they get to gush to their heart’s content about all the things they love in one place. Being full-time is a by-product of building relationships and sharing love, passion, and education.
About the Author: Janet Anthony is a blogger from Kansas City who has been writing professionally for five years now. She mostly writes about blogging, social media, and SEO. Her motto is “What you do today can improve all your tomorrows”. Find Janet here: twitter
