12 Harsh Truths of Starting a Blog in 2022

It's an amazing feeling to start a blog it's an opportunity to express yourself and expand in ways you never know you could and just like starting a business a lot of effort is required.

You don't become successful in blogging by accident, you need to put a lot of intention and work even when you feel like quitting actually, especially when you feel like quitting.

Here are 12 harsh truths you'll learn in your first year of blogging, please take these truths with a grain of salt i say this with love:

1. No one cares about you, no one knows who you are and i say this with love you're entering a sea of bloggers in a world where no one knows you, you need to make yourself stand out from others by asking yourself what am i good at, what kind of advice do people go to me, for what am i passionate about what can i go hours on end talking about. This is an opportunity to create your voice based on your strengths, what you're naturally interested in and use that to help people and then people will start noticing you.

2. You'll be blogging for months and months creating amazing content and not everyone is gonna see it, something really important to know is that every time you publish a blog post out, it takes 90 days in order for it to rank on google and this is if your blog post is seo friendly or search engine optimized meaning it's searchable on search engines like google by using certain keywords so don't feel bad if your posts don't immediately get views, the moment you put it out into the world it doesn't work that way but what you should do is assess each post 90 days after it's been published that way you know if it's working or not. 

3. You will be spending most of your time on your computer or your laptop or your phone not actually traveling that much a lot of your time will be spent researching destinations writing posts learning how to use creative programs editing photos and videos, if you're putting them out on youtube designing graphics posting on social media replying to direct messages and emails contacting brands the list is endless.

4. Not everyone has the mindset to be a blogger and you're going to find out the harsh truth if you're one of them or not a lot of people think they need to be a good writer to blog or a good photographer or a good filmmaker or a good whatever it is but what they don't realize is that these are skills they will learn as soon as they start blogging, what's actually hard is having a mindset to push through and quite honestly eat for a very long time and it's just a matter of really holding on even when you don't feel like it, you have to be willing to be clumsy messy and embarrassed when starting something new you can't expect yourself to be skillful and graceful right off the bat.

5. You'll get frustrated by how painstakingly long it is to get your first 1000 followers like it could take six months, this does vary from platform to platform and it also depends on how much you've made your posts optimized for seo and how much value you put into it but know that this journey can take a while and the more followers people see that you have the more likely they are to follow you so the more you have the faster you'll grow it's just going to take a little while to get your first 1000. actually when i started i actually cheated and renamed my personal instagram account to my blog name so that i didn't really have to start from zero and my other followings on facebook and on pinterest number.

6. You'll be spending more time promoting your content than creating it because if no one's going to see the valuable content you're creating for them why create them in the first place.

7. You'll get a lot of followers and also un followers and that's the nature of growing a following it's never linear your fallen will go up and then it'll also go down just remember that when it goes down you're not losing your followers your following is actually becoming much more loyal and stronger to you and that's much more important than having a larger number of followers who aren't genuinely interested in you so why tag them along in your journey.

8. You'll be comparing yourself to other bloggers it's not fair to them and it's especially not fair to you, you can't compare yourself to someone who's level 70 when you're only level 2, when this happens you might enter a not so good place and begin putting yourself down so mute their accounts or stop following them.

9. You'll find many reasons to quit and it's up to you to let those reasons get in the way most of the time we get in the way of our own success as we usually tell ourselves in one version or another i'm not good enough, i'm a disappointment, i'm a failure, i'm doing everything wrong, i'm not special, i'm really bad, at this i'm ugly, i suck, i'm unlovable and it's okay to have these thoughts that's what it means to be a human being and it's natural to go through these motions just remind yourself that this inside voice is only a voice and this voice is not you and whatever it's saying is not true just remove that thought and toss it out.

10. You'll be confronted by all these harsh truths and it'll be worth it. 

11. You're gonna meet amazing people like you and instantly become friends because not only do they understand the struggles first hand but you also helped lift each other up and i'm talking about the community you're building and the connections you're making with the people in your industry 

12. You'll be admired for your generosity because you're willing to share your knowledge and experiences for free without asking anything back 

you'll learn in your first year of blogging and this is relevant for bloggers of all niches too. I hope you found this article helpful and let me know which harsh truth stuck with you.