Blogging is a great thing. Blogging for a living (or for a partial income) is really great! however, it does come with frustrations. Here are some of the more common frustrations that happen while blogging. I’ve provided solutions for each frustration in an effort to make blogging less stressful for you!
Problem: explaining to your friends and family what it is that you do.
It can be tough sometimes explaining the fact that you earn an income from a blog. A lot of people simply don’t understand how that is possible and many don’t even know what a blog is. It really is tough to explain anything about the blogging world to anyone who is not in it themselves.
Solution: I like to keep it simple and just say that we own and operate a few websites. Usually people just nod and say something like, “cool”. If they start asking questions, I just say we make money via online advertising. That usually satisfies their curiosity.
Problem: websites that are down.
Solution: stay calm and try and find something else productive to do. If your blog is down, go to other blogs and leave comments, or interact on social media. If a social network is down, go to a different one for the time being or again, go blog commenting. Also, check DownforEveryoneOrJustMe to make sure it’s not something on your end that is causing the site to be down.
Problem: high resolution product photos
I used to hear several bloggers complain about this happening and didn’t think much of it. Then it started happening to us. PR companies send a great pitch and by the end of the email, we’re all excited to work with them only to find out the sole source of “compensation” being offered are hi-res photos of their products. Not only is this a ridiculous offer, but we like to take our own high-quality photos to use on our blogs to have a more personal feel. I truly hope these pitches don’t work very often.
Solution: we respond to the ones that interest us telling them that we’d love to work with them, followed by our rates. We usually don’t hear back, but there have been a few cases where we have turned it into a nice business relationship.
Problem: surprise visits
Just because we work from home, doesn’t mean that we are available 24/7. I’ve talked with a lot of bloggers who say that this is their biggest frustration. It takes a TON of discipline to be self-employed and when your income relies on hard work, you can’t just go do this and that at the drop of a hat. Bloggers who earn a full-time income spend upwards of 60 hours a week working and it’s frustrating when others don’t realize this.
Solution: I feel like this is the toughest one, but you just have to keep reminding whoever needs it that even though you work from home, you give yourself a strict work schedule and you have to stick to it or your business will suffer.
Problem: bad lighting
A huge part of many blogs are high-quality photos. It’s tough to make that happen with bad lighting and photos in perfect daylight are not always possible.
Solution: if you can’t do everything during the daytime try and at least stock up on photos at that time. Now, when you go to write your post at night, you’ll have nice, well-lit photos to go with it. You could also invest in lighting systems, but that might not be in your budget. We have “daylight” light bulbs in many rooms in our house which provide a nice, natural-looking light.
Problem: changing affiliates
Companies have their own agendas, which is fine. That doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly frustrating getting an email saying “our company is moving from x affiliate network to y affiliate network”. For a blogger who uses their links, this means applying for their program with the new network, getting links and going back and changing out all of their old links. You see, the old links will no longer generate income once a company has moved on from the network, so it has to be addressed.
Solution: WordPress has a nice Find and Replace plugin to handle the changing of the links, but the rest doesn’t really come with a solution – it’s just annoying.
Problem: writer’s block
This one kinda speaks for itself. When your business is based on writing and you can’t think of things to write, it sucks.
Solution: don’t force the issue. Make sure to stick to your quality standards when it comes to content. This list of 101 blog post ideas should jog your brain a bit.
What is your biggest frustration when it comes to blogging?
Click “deactivate” and the screen will re-load. Scroll back down to the plugin to see this:
Click “delete”.
Wherever you want to put an AdSense ad, click the “add gadget” text to get to the gadget list. Find the AdSense gadget:
After clicking the AdSense option, you’ll be brought to a screen where you can quickly customize the look of your ad.
Note: if you don’t have an AdSense account set up, you will have to do that first.
This will bring up a box where you can enter some HTML code. There will also be a box at the top for “Name”, just leave that alone.
Always make sure to preview your changes before saving arrangement!
As with Blogger, avoid the title box unless you want your ad to be titled on your site.
