There’s no doubt that blogging can be incredibly lucrative for those who can master SEO and content marketing. There’s virtually no limit to your earning potential, revenue, and sales.
I’ve been blogging for almost four years, but I haven’t made any money.
I keep blogging anyway because the experience has been more than invaluable (and it’s still fun!).
A few weeks ago, I shared 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Blog To Make Money.
In no particular order, here are 5 Reasons Why You Should.
First: Through blogging, you get to create your own brand.
Think Steve Jobs = Apple.
Jeff Bezos = Amazon.
Elon Musk = Tesla.
Wait, bad timing…
Creating your own brand forces you to really hone in on your vision and craft your mission statement.
You get to think through what you’re trying to achieve and why.
What makes what you’re offering compelling, distinctive, or more useful than your competitors?
A successful brand can carry you above and beyond any short-term setbacks.
Second: You can cultivate, support, and be supported by a unique, online community of other artists, bloggers, writers, and creatives.
You can make real, lasting connections with a diverse group of people from all over the world.
Through these connections and, arguably, through your brand, you can positively impact your (virtual and real) community in ways you never dreamed possible.
Third: You’ll learn (and hopefully perfect) new, highly marketable skills.
These newfound skills should provide more opportunities for you to create passive income and increase your earning potential.
Blogging has helped me learn more about keyword research and search engine optimization.
I’ve become a better writer, proofreader, and editor.
I’ve learned more about self-hosting, self-publishing, and video production.
I’ve learned more about freelancing and consulting—creating my own opportunities in this current gig economy.
Blogging even led me to take greater stock of my knowledge of personal finance.
Fourth: You’ll constantly challenge yourself to learn something new, and your long-term, professional goals will become infinitely clearer.
When I started my first blog in 2014, I wasn’t interested in making money.
Now that I’ve made connections with other bloggers who’ve experienced real success, the “snake” and the pressure of making it lucrative are closer.
This pressure to monetize quickly has forced me to learn things that I’ve never been willing to make time to learn. It’s forced me to create a timeline and stick to it.
From plugins to affiliate sales to troubleshooting new software, every day I learn something new—something that is immediately useful.
More importantly, I force myself to push through the learning curve that in any other circumstance would make me give up. I aspire.
It’s enough to make the former teacher and aspiring librarian in me get goosebumps!
Fifth: You’ll become intentional about creating passive income, and you may be inspired to become an entrepreneur as a result (if you want to).
Not every blogger sees himself or herself as an entrepreneur. For the first three and a half years, I definitely didn’t.
I never really aspired to own my own business. I’d been a teacher and tutor; it was always simpler just to teach at established schools.
Learning more about personal finance has encouraged me to create passive income.
Learning how to create passive income has encouraged me to consider entrepreneurship—blogging as entrepreneurship, but also creating a community center.
Conclusion
Blogging is tedious and time-consuming. Successful bloggers often have enough resources and skills to outsource much of the labor-intensive drudgery. Some even use ghost writers to create content and hire professional marketers to oversee all marketing and advertising.
But don’t get discouraged!
Blogging allows you to develop your own unique brand identity, to create an online community of like-minded peers, to learn and perfect marketable skills, to constantly refine your professional and personal goals, and to be intentional about creating passive streams of income.
In my own life, blogging has helped me make an important out-of-state move (back home!).
It’s helped me finally create and FINISH my first children’s book (coming soon!).
It’s even made me seriously consider and actually develop a strategy for creating my own tutoring center.
The experience has been truly invaluable.
You should blog!
Ready to get started?
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