You can’t make money blogging if you are desperate!

I’ve been so desperate many times for various reasons during my earlier days of blogging. It is certainly no good to be desperate, right?

Especially, when you are desperate, it keeps you from making money blogging.

Frustration causes desperation. And many newbie bloggers get frustrated quite often for various reasons.

When you don’t see any results with your blogging efforts, or if there’s no money that comes in, it’s natural to get frustrated.

And as a result of frustration you could become so desperate and might end up doing crazy stuff in order to see the results.

Let me give you an example: During the early days of blogging, if you don’t see the traffic coming through, you will be frustrated and become desperate to get traffic in some form.

You know what I did in my early days when I got frustrated with lack of traffic?

I joined sites that could let me browse a few sites to earn points so I can “use” those points to get traffic to my site(s). You realize how dumb is that?

All the other people on those sites are site owners like me who desperately want traffic and none of us didn’t care if the traffic we were working for was the traffic that was interested in our content or not.

Of course we only cared about the numbers but we didn’t care who we were inviting to our blogs in order to get that traffic number.

Bloggers like me are not the traffic that would convert. Besides, they were only stumbling on sites to get points.

Not just this, I’ve also done many dumb things like loading my site with pointless ads and writing “buy this now from me” kinda emails to my list and so on.

That’s a period when I was at the height of frustration and had no clue what I was doing.

Now, I clearly understand what “caused” those frustrations and forced me to do dumb things desperately.

In this post I am going to share what I learned in this context and how you can avoid frustrations and make real money via blogging.

For the record, making money blogging is not a fairy tale and is SO doable – here’s some proof if you’re not yet convinced!

Take the time to find your business goal

If you sit down and think deeply you will find out that 95% of the contribution to your frustration comes because you still haven’t found out your business goal!

If you

(i) don’t have a business goal or

(ii) if you are working towards a wrong goal or

(iii) if you are simply working with no goal at all,

you will soon be frustrated.

It is because you will be working really hard but your hard work is simply being wasted because your hard work has no point.

You are not working towards a goal, but you are working with no goal and your work is pointless.

But pointless work also drains your energy, makes you to spend money on unnecessary stuff and simply sucks the life out of you!

When hard work pays, you won’t find burned out or drained when you work hard. But when hard work doesn’t pay, it is certainly frustrating.

And hard work won’t pay if you are not working towards a clear goal.

So before you work hard and become frustrated, make sure you find out your business goal in a crystal clear manner.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Before you get frustrated, check if you’ve got a crystal clear blogging plan!” quote=”Before you get frustrated, check if you’ve got a crystal clear blogging plan!” theme=”style4″]

Analyze your current blogging strategies

Let me assume that you already have identified your business goal. And let me assume you have devised a working strategy and you are working really hard.

[clickToTweet tweet=”If your hard work doesn’t pay, change your strategy!” quote=”If your hard work doesn’t pay, change your strategy!” theme=”style4″]

Now if you are not seeing results, then you should not keep doing the same thing over and over again.

There is no point in following the same strategy for months when it is not giving you results or if it is giving you negative results.

Now, before you declare a strategy to be useless or that it doesn’t give you results you have to first see if you have followed the strategy consistently for the reasonable amount of time.

For instance with blogging, things are usually long term. If you implement a particular SEO strategy you cannot expect to see results in a week or two.

Some strategies might give you results in 4 weeks while some others might only give you results in 6 months, provided you follow those strategies consistently and apply them properly.

But even after waiting for the reasonable amount of the time for a strategy to work, if you still didn’t see the results, you should simply change your strategies instead of spending your time, money and hard work on the same strategy and getting frustrated about it.

Stop obsessing on numbers

Be it your subscriber list or your traffic numbers, it is important that you keep an eye on them to know what strategies work and what doesn’t. But it is not good to obsess on those numbers.

Obsessing will lead to frustration quite soon.

As they say, a watched pot never boils 🙂

If you keep on checking your subscriber number and Adsense earning every hour, you will be frustrated to see the pace of its growth.

Instead of looking at the numbers and feeling pathetic about them, find out how you can make the most out of those numbers.

For instance, if you have a very small list, rather than watching that static subscriber number, find out how to can effectively connect with those small number of people you already have.

Work on providing value to those small number of people.

Develop a killer autoresponder series that can convert your subscribers into your loyal fans and repeat customers, even if they’re a small group of people.

This way, when your list grows over the time, you can convert more people from those autoresponder emails you wrote without looking at the small number of people you had in the list.

Similarly without worrying about the small number of traffic you get per day, work on improving your conversion rates.

This way, when you traffic number increases over the time, you can convert more number of those causal visitors (traffic number) into your repeat customers/loyal fans.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Watching numbers and obsessing does no good to blogging!” quote=”Watching numbers and obsessing does no good to blogging!” theme=”style4″]

Keep a close eye on money that comes in and that goes out

Money is usually one of the major reasons for frustration. Either you don’t make enough money.

Or you spend more than you make. Or you don’t make any money at all.

In any case, you should closely watch how your business is making money and how you are spending it.

You should keep a journal of your income and expenditure over a month of your blogging income.

I have spreadsheets for income and expenditure separately for each month.

I know how I earn my dollars – what sources and what streams get me income. This way, I can work more on those streams that make me money.

For instance, Let’s say my subscribers are buying my ebook.

I should work on increasing the number of subscribers and/or the number of books/products I sell.

This way I can increase the income I make from that stream.

Similarly, if one of my sites earn quite good from adsense, I should focus on Adsense-related keywords and content and I should also work on improving ad placements.

Hope you get the idea.

More importantly, you should work on reducing the unnecessary expenses you are making.

Before you purchase another software and another ebook or a course, think twice.

I usually do a 24 hour test before making a purchase (to make sure if it was an impulse decision or not).

Mind you, I am very weak when it comes to making purchases out of impulse decision a.k.a impulse buying.

I can control my urge to make a purchase when I do real physical shopping.

But when I shop online, I used to make a lot of unnecessary purchases.

After I found out my weakness, I started doing a 24 hour test.

If I want an ebook or a course or a software so much, and when I have already pulled out my credit card, I command myself to pause.

I wait to make that purchase exactly 24 hours later.

I set a reminder exactly 24 hours later in my task management software (Wunderlist), include the link to purchase and write a short 2 line description of “why” I need that product by all means.

I forget about it and then continue doing my work. When the reminder pops up after 24 hours, I review my reasoning.

And, if I still felt the same urge to buy that product I go ahead and buy it. And 60% of the time I’ve decided I don’t need that product!

[clickToTweet tweet=”Do the 24 hour test on your blogging purchases to save money” quote=”Do the 24 hour test on your blogging purchases to save money” theme=”style4″]

Eliminate the stuff that causes frustration and makes you desperate

This is the whole point. You have to be smart enough to identify the root causes of “things” that makes you frustrated and desperate.

If you don’t identify and weed out those element, you will be demotivated soon. And you might even be forced to quit blogging (no surprise).

We all know that blogging is a long term commitment that demands consistent hard work for quite a long time before you start seeing results.

It is quite easy to get demotivated soon for various reason.

It is your responsibility to keep all the stuff that will cause frustration off the fence. Be smart in this area.

Remember, with blogging, everything should be in your control.

If you let frustration happen, you are not in your control. You will then make decisions out of desperation and your business will be ruined in no time.

I hope I made my point clear and that you got my message! I seriously hope so.

Coz I don’t like bloggers doing all crazy circus stuff to succeed and to make money, simply out of frustration and desperation.

Stay sane and stay in control. Happy blogging.