culled from:grassrootssuccess.net
So you’re an aspiring blogger that wants to be successful and earn cash from it, or maybe you’ve decided you want to get in on the ebook action and make some money that way. I’ve been at this blogging thing for a while. I started doing it 15 years ago more as an online diary than anything else, but started for an audience about 8 years ago. I love writing, but this can be a pretty brutal gig. For those of you who want to be a popular blogger or internet entrepreneur, here is a list of things you need to know before you start.
1. It will be harder than you can possible imagine
I spent 6 years in the army, 2 of which was in training. Most of that 2 years was utter hell – trying to create a popular blog is marginally better than this only because I’m not getting punished by corporals anymore. To get any kind of traction or popularity takes a very long time and requires skin thicker than elephant’s hide. Remember this is only when it comes to getting people to read a blog post. If you’re actually trying to sell something, it is exponentially harder. If you’re trying to make money off your blog, it is harder again. You might get to the point where you give away stuff for free, and people still won’t take it. I listen to a lot of motivational speeches every day, because the constant battle really wears you down. If you truly love writing you will have your bad days, but you’ll keep going. If you’re doing it just to try and make money or be popular, you won’t last a month.
2. People can be remarkably terrible
The internet is a complete contradiction of itself. On the one hand you have the potential to reach billions of people, on the other hand most of them are too lazy or apathetic to even click your link, let alone a like, a share or retweeting something. This will extend to your friends. You’ll discover that people you think you’re good friends with in real life all of a sudden disappear when you ask for something as simple as sharing a blog post on Facebook. Hell, sometimes even family members won’t help you out. You will feel more alone in the world than you ever have before, the only thing that will keep your spirits up is to keep in touch with a mentor or other people like you.
On the other hand, you really find out who your true friends are. The generosity some people display will almost bring you to tears when contrasted against the apathy of everyone else.
3. Social media is a bunch of crap
People think social media is a great way to promote something – that is absolutely true if you are an A-list celebrity or you have a huge amount of time on your hands. For the rest of us, it can be next to useless. People trawling through Facebook and Twitter aren’t interested in reading articles, they want to look at memes featuring kittens and fat people falling over. It’s a place for people with short attention spans for the most part, so expecting people to click on your article that discusses the current state of the US health care system is living in a fantasy world. The other thing is, to gain any kind of following on social media takes a lot of time and effort. If you have a full time job like most people, doing enough writing and gaining popularity with that is difficult enough.
4. It can make you hate the thing you love
I’ve been writing in one capacity or another since I was a kid. If the world turned into The Road tomorrow, I’d find a way to write. As I said above, I’ve been doing this blogging thing for a long time, and getting any kind of traction is difficult. Then one day you’ll see some jerkoff write their first or second article and it goes viral because it’s controversial, or because through blind luck their opinion tapped into something happening at the time. You’ll see it shared on Facebook tens of thousands of times, it will get published on multiple sites, and here you are struggling to get a consistent audience. People will often say not to compare yourself to others – when stuff like this happens though, it will absolutely infuriate you and make you hate the world. All you can do is keep plugging away and keep looking at those viral blog posts – eventually you’ll crack the big numbers.
5. Success often has nothing to do with the quality of your work
In most fields of life, you get out of something what you put into it. Hard work always wins the day. When it comes to blogging and trying to make some extra cash out of writing, you can be the greatest writer on the planet and toil in obscurity your entire life. People will give you formulas for success and earning money, as though if you just take their advice everything will fall into place. This works if you’re one of the first people to get the advice, because for a few months it will work. Then the entire internet jumps on board and causes the formula to stop working for anyone that tries it afterwards.
6. You need to become a jack of all trades
What, you thought all you had to do was create a blog, start writing good content and people would come? That’s cute. This isn’t the movie Field of Dreams. With billions of people on the internet, there are of course a shitload of people all vying for their own slice of attention. Trying to rise above this costs money or a large amount of your time, because while it is tempting to just pay someone to market for you there are no end of people charging for terrible marketing services. I asked one guy if 3 hours of his marketing time online would sell at least 10 copies of my book, he said no. My response was “well why the hell would I pay you? I want sales, I don’t want sunshine blown up my ass in the form of people clicking Like”.
7. Everyone thinks everything should be free
Thanks to Napster and torrents, everyone wants everything on the internet for nothing. “I can download Game of Thrones” illegally for free, so why the hell would I pay for an ebook?” is the general attitude of the internet. The answer? Because people that put out ebooks spend a shitload of time and effort on them, just because it isn’t physical that doesn’t mean it should be free. The price of a paperback book isn’t just made up of the material it is written on, you’re paying the author for their time. Would you walk into a bookstore and expect to just walk out with a book for free?
