Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank
Building a successful blog relies heavily on the long game. You can’t expect to replace a full-time income overnight, despite what some “experts” want you to believe. So, how do you keep a high level of motivation as a blogger for longer than three months?
There are a lot of factors that come into play when trying to build a site that brings in enough to replace a full-time income. And while some experts can point you in the right direction, you still have to be the one who walks the path.
This is to say that your niche, writing style, topics, and marketing methods will impact your success. With so much to worry about, it can quickly deplete motivation when you don’t see a massive return on your investment.
In fact, I’ve seen a lot of people give up on their websites after a couple of months because they didn’t have the thousands of visitors they were expecting.
One client in particular just kept buying domains in the hopes of getting one that was profitable. But like I told him, “You can’t expect to make money from a website with very little content.”
A single, 500-word blog post isn’t going to generate thousands of dollars per day.
15 Ways to Maintain Motivation as a Blogger
To create a successful blog, you need to be a self-starter. Unless you have a client tossing money your way to write a blog post, this isn’t always the easiest to maintain. Especially if you have the wrong attitude toward your website.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of people out there who seem to kickstart themselves every day. Unfortunately, not all of us can keep that motor running, let alone start it up.
So, how do I maintain motivation to keep my blogs running?
1. Have the Right Mentality
First of all, having the right mindset about your blog will do wonders for keeping motivation. Why did you want to start the blog in the first place? Are you trying to help others or simply want a cash cow?
There are quite a few people who will build a website for the sake of making money. And this is fine. But then you’ll also need to keep in mind that blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
It can take anywhere from six months to three years before your blog will generate any decent amount of money. Of course, this also depends greatly on your site’s niche, the type of content you create, how you promote the blog, and much more.
Generally speaking, though, the odds of you creating four or five blog posts centering around affiliate marketing to generate thousands of dollars each month in sales is slim to none.
My point is that you shouldn’t focus intently on instant gratification. This has led more people to quit blogging than any other reason. Have a purpose for your site aside from just making money or seeing millions of visits per month.
2. Don’t Compare Your Blog to Others
Keeping an eye on competition helps you in a variety of ways. You can see what content is working best for the competition while giving you ideas about how you can make it better.
However, you shouldn’t dwell on the success of another site. There could be a slew of variables that you can’t see that drive visitors to someone else’s content. For example, does the other blogger invest in PPC advertising?
Besides, if you compare your content too much to that of someone you perceive as successful, you start to lose the one thing that sets you apart…individuality.
Also, keep in mind that Google is looking for unique and helpful content. The search engine doesn’t want you to simply regurgitate the same info that is already available.
Instead, compare how your blog performs against itself. Worry more about your growth than that of someone else. This includes addressing the needs of your specific audience.
3. Treat Blogging Like a Business – Because it Is
One effective way to inspire motivation as a blogger is by treating it like a business. And when you think about it, your website is a business of sorts. This is especially true if you want it to bring in a certain amount of money.
When you start viewing your website with a business mindset, it affects how you view everything about it. There is more of a sense of urgency behind its maintenance and inspires you to take action.
After all, you don’t want your “business” to fail, right? And I’m not including eCommerce or selling products through affiliate marketing, which are businesses in their own right.
As a blogger, your business is that of sharing information. Are you meeting the demands of your customers (visitors)? Is your storefront (homepage) a mess and turns customers away before they start exploring your facility (website)?
4. Keep the Posts Consistent
If you focus on creating a consistent publishing schedule, it can help by driving up some of that urgency I was talking about a minute ago. You’re more likely to put in the effort to make sure your posts are published on time.
In reality, consistency goes far beyond helping a blogger maintain motivation. I’ve found that a regular posting schedule impacts the overall success of the site in Google. In other words, it’s constant growth across the board when you publish consistent content.
For me, though, it’s all about drumming up that sense of urgency.
For instance, I have a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday publishing schedule for WriterSanctuary.com. This impacts how motivated I am to create content because I have a few readers who rely on those dates.
This is in addition to how Google feels about an active site.
5. Set Goals You Can Control
Goals are meant to help you achieve more than what you think you’re currently capable of handling. For the most part, they play a role in self-improvement of all kinds.
Unfortunately, not everyone sets the correct types of goals, this includes those for blogging.
For example, a goal you have no control over is wanting 1,000 visitors to your blog post per day. You can’t force anyone to read your content. As such, this type of goal can leave you feeling frustrated.
A more realistic goal is to write a certain number of words for your blog post. When you start achieving goals you control, it motivates you to continue. Traffic and income are merely side effects of good content.
Not every article you write is going to hit well with the reader. All you can do is perform proper keyword research, understand search intent, and write your piece.
6. Get Excited to Break Personal Records
Every victory is still a victory, regardless of size. Get excited about those small wins as they can make a massive difference in motivation as a blogger.
What about breaking records for traffic and income? It’s OK to get yourself excited for those numbers as well as they demonstrate how your content is reaching a large audience.
One of my favorite things to do is to monitor how many words I write during any given month. Then, I’ll work to surpass that number, which demonstrates creating more content tailored to my audience.
Just keep in mind that longer blog posts don’t necessarily mean they’ll be successful. You still have to address the needs of the reader without filler and fluff. Remember, successful blogging is all about quality, not quantity.
Ultimately, breaking any kind of record for yourself as a blogger fills you with pride and inspires you to do more. Relish in those victories.
7. Follow Through with Keyword and Topic Research
Keyword research still plays a viable role in SEO today. However, it has changed massively over the last 20 years. And today, Google wants you to focus more on “people writing for people.”
In any case, keyword research will affect how visitors find your content in the first place. This includes knowing how they’re using the search term and what information they want most.
How is this motivational? Because knowledge is empowering.
The more confident you are about the content you’re creating, the easier it is to write. Plus, confidence can boost your reputation as a creator, especially if you’re trustworthy.
The most effective articles I create for any of my blogs all center around one absolute: I answered a question many people were asking in great detail.
8. Understand How Indexing Works in Google
When creating a blog, you can’t expect Google to index your pages as soon as you hit the publish button. In fact, it could take weeks or even months before your content actually shows up in search results.
Now, this depends on a lot of factors ranging from how much traffic you receive in general to how often you publish “quality” content. This means you need to have a level of patience, especially in the early days of creating your blog.
You can’t let Google dictate your motivation to blog because your posts haven’t shown up in search yet.
It is possible to manually request the indexing of a page sooner through Google’s Search Console. However, this doesn’t always work and it could still be quite a while before your content is visible to searchers.
9. View Data in 3-Month Intervals
Site analytics can help you come up with better topics for your audience while showing you what kind of content doesn’t work for your site. Google Analytics and Search Console can be your most powerful tools.
However, there is such a thing as over-obsessing about the data. This is especially true for those who want to see immediate and daily results.
The truth is that day-to-day monitoring isn’t exactly all that helpful. Instead of feeling accomplished, it could easily wipe out any motivation you had to continue blogging.
A lot of things can affect how a blog post performs in search within a 24-hour period.
Instead of watching your stats every day, try to run reports three months at a time. This will give you a better sampling of how content is performing overall.
10. Focus More on Your Audience
A great way to stir up some motivation as a blogger is by paying attention to your audience. I’m not just talking about tracking visits or on-page time. When was the last time you replied to a comment?
Interacting with your audience often turns them into repeat visitors.
In my case, I am often inspired to cover a topic based on comments from both the blog and the YouTube channel. Not only does it help me relate more to those who appreciate my work, but it might also help others who are looking for the same information.
As I’ve said before, I am more enthralled with comments about how I’ve helped someone over any amount of money I could generate. In many ways, it’s an extension of my social life.
Also, consider that if you really connect with your audience, you’ll find they are the ones who jump onto your blog with each published post almost immediately.
11. Don’t Be Afraid to Try Something New
Another method of motivation is to try something new to accentuate your blog. This could be anything from different styles of content to writing a review about a product for the first time.
Just make sure you’re trying something relevant to your blog’s overall niche.
Not only does this help you find topics and content that might perform better, but it can be exciting to try something new. For instance, I love trying out new writing software.
Take this blog, for example. At first, I wanted to help people learn how to make money writing by using content mills like Textbroker. Nowadays, I focus more on self-publishing and blogging.
However, all of the content still has a common denominator: writing.
12. Highlight Your Successes
This kind of goes along the lines of getting excited about breaking personal records. Highlighting successes can be a powerful motivator for writing of any kind.
Well, as long as you’re not coming off as being conceited or sounding like you’re boasting.
For instance, I often bring up how I wrote 90 blog posts in 30 days. It was a huge milestone as I wrote more than 128,000 words in September of 2021. I use it as an example of how it can be done while having pride in my accomplishment.
The bottom line here is that you want to kind of shine a light on your successes but not make others feel like they’re inferior.
13. Invest in Yourself and Your Blog
When you invest actual cash into being a blogger, it stirs motivation because you don’t want that money to be a waste. Of course, I’m talking about going further than just paying for web hosting.
Putting money down on premium plugins, themes, hiring writers, or any other element alters how you view the website. Instead of just being a hobby, it could lend credence to what I was talking about earlier about it being a business.
Besides, don’t they say, “you need to spend money to make money?” That’s not necessarily accurate as you can still generate a bit of cash without spending a single dime.
However, certain investments can increase how much you bring in and how soon that cash will come flowing.
Just make sure you’re putting money into the right tools, apps, software, and platforms. Luckily, a lot of things nowadays have free versions that you can try before you buy.
14. Find a Way to Make Blogging Fun
Even though you may view being a blogger as a business, you can still make it fun, which fuels motivation to keep going. This is because you’re more likely to keep doing something you enjoy.
This is why gamification plays such a big role for businesses today.
The moment you view blogging as some kind of mundane chore is the moment you start debating on giving up. Again, I see this a lot from people who expect instant success.
What makes blogging fun for me is the prospect of helping someone. And the fact that I’ve always been a writer in some form or another. Not to mention that I gamify writing by trying to break my personal record for the number of words written.
Overall, though, I think finding a way to make blogging fun is perhaps one of the greatest motivators.
15. Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
As a blogger, perhaps my greatest motivation comes from my tenacity. Sure, there are times when I doubt myself thanks to how much I handle throughout the week. But I always come back with a way to address the currently perceived problem.
In other words, I rarely give up on anything. And if I do, it’s because of an overly intense set of circumstances.
Even when one of my blogs was sunk by the Google algorithm in 2018, I still haven’t given up. In fact, I’m working on a strategy right now to rebuild the dead blog in 2023.
As long as the blogs keep bringing in more than what I pay for hosting, I’ll keep working on improving them.
Impostor Syndrome as a Blogger Can Kill Motivation
One of the worst issues for a blogger in terms of motivation is impostor syndrome. This is when you don’t have faith in your abilities to write a good piece of content or have doubts that you’re sharing information people want to read.
A lot of writers face this, actually. When it comes to a blog, you could ask yourself, “what gives me the right to cover this topic?” It’s actually something that has stalled my work on the health and fitness blog.
How can I write about weight loss if I can’t even lose weight?
Lately, I’ve been using this negative thought to inspire motivation to reach my weight goals. Not only is it better for my health overall, but it gives me content for the blog regarding my journey.
In this particular case, I was able to spin impostor syndrome into something positive. It’s not always easy to do this, and it really depends on your own set of circumstances.
In the end, not dealing with impostor syndrome will affect your motivation to keep being a blogger. You can’t let self-doubt take away from what could be an amazing experience.
What Motivates You to Be a Blogger?
As you can see, I have a lot of things that keep me hammering away at the keyboard. And I’ll probably continue to do so regardless of the level of my success.
Seriously, even if I won a two-billion-dollar lottery, I would still blog. For one thing, I would have more time to put into the websites without worrying about clients.
What do you find works better for your writing motivation?
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