The reality of blogging over the years

#Collaborative post

I’ve been blogging for a while, in fact, 9 years it has been a part of my life. Over the years there have been changes in blogging, some good and some not so much. In this post, I am going to share my reality of blogging over the years.

Now more than ever bloggers and influencers are becoming more popular and dare I say it a bit more influential? Tik Tok this year has taken off and so many people are using different platforms to make themselves an income.

You only need to look at the reality shows on TV now to see that a lot of these celebrity style programs include influencers. Of course, the amount that makes it to this level are a few in every thousand but this doesn’t stop you dreaming about quitting your job and moving into blogging full time.

If you are still looking to blog but are unsure if you can or want to, here are the answers to a few of the frequent questions I get asked:

Do you actually make money blogging?

Yes you can, not everyone chooses too and some (like me) don’t set out to create the blog to do this but sometimes it happens. The one thing I say to everyone is don’t expect it to happen overnight, in fact, I think it was about 4 years before I made my first bit of money. Obviously there are lots of sites you can sign up to bid for work, these include sites like Intellifluence. Not only are you able to sign up to bid for work through their site, but you can also read posts on their blog where other influencers share their journey.

Making money from your blog really all is about what you put in and where you take your blog. You won’t make money by building a blog and only posting a few times a year, it needs to be a regularly updated blog to get it noticed.

Do you get lots of free stuff?

Personally, I hate this question but get it all the time. People assume that when you blog you get “free stuff” however, what is free about receiving an item then spending time using it before investing time in photographing it, writing the review, preparing the SEO on that post and sharing it once published?

Some posts can take a few hours to prepare and get that all done, so for what could be an item worth a few pounds, you could be spending 2-3 hours of your day working on it. This is why for me now I limit the reviews we do. It takes up a little bit too much time for the value of the items.

If I start my blog tomorrow will I get the same as you?

Possibly but highly unlikely straight away. When you are working with brands and PR’s, they are looking at various stats such as traffic, domain authority, interaction etc. All of these take time to build up and every blog is different.

This is not to say your blog won’t be successful, just don’t expect everything to happen overnight.

Over the years I have spent hours and hours getting to grips with many aspects of blogging. Things such as how to work on my DA for the blog (this is a great guide to DA to get you started) to how things such as keywords work. Everyone will learn differently and have different successes.

I don’t share these to put people off blogging, in fact, I encourage people to have a social outlet. Whether that be via a blog or another social media source, it is a great way for people to be themselves. I just want to be realistic about the reality of blogging.