Have you already run across one or more of the multitudes of articles (aka advertisements) that perpetuate the myth that you can make bunch of money from blogging. How your life will be awesome, how you can travel whenever and wherever you want and make loads of money while doing it. The truth is, a very small percentage of bloggers ever make any money from blogging, and even fewer earn a living wage. They are happy to sell you a course on how to be a better youtuber, instagrammer, or blogger (often for hundreds of dollars), or there’s a nice little commissioning link to buy your domain and pay for 1 or 3 years of hosting. But what most bloggers won’t tell you are the Disadvantages of Blogging.
This article is written from the perspective of a travel blogger, but what I surmise from forums of other genres (such as mommy blogging, automobiles, LQBT, personal finance, product reviews, beauty, politics, etc), these themes recur everywhere.
Disadvantages of Blogging #1 – It’s a Money Pit
Blogging is like being a musician. It’s something people like to do to share their artistic side. Many have dreams of making it big and making decent money and maybe even being famous. But most travel bloggers will never make a cent – they will spend much more on traveling, learning the trade, and blog costs than they ever will make in income. This is like musicians. Of all the kids that start an instrument in grade school or junior high… they all (or their parents) spend money on their instruments, band trips, lessons – some have dreams to join a rock band. Maybe they get a gig here or there, but do they ever earn enough to cover their costs? Like musicians, very few bloggers break even, and if they do, it takes YEARS. I make more in two hours of my day job than I’ve made in revenue on my blog in two years! And when you include my expenses, I’m still hundreds of dollars in the hole (and that’s excluding the money I’ve spent on travel, which puts me thousands of dollars in the hole).
Disadvantages of Blogging #2 – You are at the Mercy of Algorithms
Each platform, be it Google, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, or others, continues to tweak their algorithms. Sometimes it will increase your views but often it will reduce your traffic, and sometimes devastatingly. See these real-life examples:
Does anyone know if Pinterest changed their algorithm? I’ve lost about 100,000 monthly viewers in the last few days but haven’t done anything different with my pinning. I was gaining thousands per day until a few days ago. I know clicks and saves are more important, but it was still nice to see it & my engagement numbers grow. Any ideas?
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Who else has experienced a drop in traffic over the past couple of months? I’m hearing it’s pretty widespread and based on the August Google algorithm update. My traffic has dropped almost 50%. Who has insight on how to get the traffic back?
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Has there been an Instagram algorithm change? My Instagram stories went from getting 1500-2000 views per snap to just DROPPING to only 400-600 views ‘like this.’ This week I’ve been posting more engaging content than ever before that my viewers would LOVE and it is getting NO views.
Disadvantages of Blogging #3 – People Will Steal Your Stuff
This happens all the time, more than you might know. I’ve have seen so called “travel blogs” where the “blogger” was publishing dozens of new blog posts a day. I don’t care if you write content 24 hours a day, it’s not possible to publish this much new content without stealing it. Check out this post on stolen blog content.
Disadvantages of Blogging #4 – The Competition is Fierce
Did you know there are over 150 MILLION blogs! There are probably 10’s of thousands of travel bloggers and new bloggers start every.single.day. In the olden days, you could write a 300 word blog post about a place and google would send traffic to your site in the 1000’s. Now people write posts of 2,000 or 4,000 words hoping to rank high enough in google to get 100’s of visitors a month.
Disadvantages of Blogging #5 – You will Spend 100’s of Hours on the Stupid Stuff or need to Hire a VA to do it
Blogging isn’t just writing something and having loads of traffic running to your site to see it, and lots of money earned for you. There are 100’s of hours spent on Social Media, figuring out where you can share your material. Learning the tricks of the trade (I actually like the learning, although it’s slow going). Many of the more popular blogs hire Virtual Assistants, or VA’s who do their busy work, like engaging with people on pinterest and Instagram.
Disadvantages of Blogging #6 – You Are Likely Constantly Asking For Free Stuff
Sure, the best bloggers get offered free stuff all the time – from clothing and products to trips. But how can you gain the experience of working with businesses unless you work with businesses? How do you get noticed by these businesses without having content? Most bloggers don’t have a bottomless bank account to buy stuff and travel. There has been some widespread backlash against “influencers” who ask for free meals or stays on Twitter and Instagram. There has even been an article in the NY Times recently called “No, Your Instagram ‘Influence’ is Not as Good as Cash, Club Owner Says”.
If you do ask for free stuff, get used to rejection, which usually comes in the form of non-response.
Disadvantages of Blogging #7 – Get Used to Haters
Even though blogs are an expression of your experiences and opinions, it’s not uncommon to attract haters – people who disagree with your opinion. I the most extreme case, someone might target you online or in person for your opinion. Here are some real-life stories:
How do you deal with haters? This niche makes people seemingly want to distrust me no matter how much I approach everything with only good intentions. And because I do really care, it’s hard to switch off, even when I’m on my Christmas holiday. Sometimes I wonder if I have thick enough skin to be a blogger. How do you manage it?
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If haters are a sign that you’ve made it then I guess I’ve really made it big. Lol. “I’m sorry but this is the most insipid column I have read in years. Your bubbly inanities and your woeful lack of insight do a disservice to any thinking, sensitive person. Writing like yours seems to transform ignorance into knowledge and cluelessness into insight. Please stop this nonsense. Read some books, learn some history, master a language or two. Just stop publicly blathering and please stop calling your self-referential childishness “advice.” It is not. It is self indulgent drivel.”
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About a month ago, I got an email from a weird dude saying that he disagreed with one of my articles and sent me a link to a .blog site that he had set up to write about his thoughts on what I said. The article was all the way back from 2016 and was an opinion piece on teaching in a foreign country which I did before I blogged seriously. I worked for a corrupt school and wrote about it. That post is the only negative thing on my site. His article basically calls mine BS and accuses me of lying which isn’t the case but anyway. It’s not constructive criticism, just nastiness and he makes sentences like “so she wrote about the country for a large travel site, I don’t know how since she’s clearly culturally ignorant…” and the post title is the name of my article and “is full of lies”. Anyway I got mad about it, and let it go. Then last night he contacts me again to say he has written a second post adding more thoughts to his first post about me. In this one he says I am clearly incapable of teaching and was a classic example of someone who teaches English in this country so they can party (not the case and I don’t even drink). I’m feeling pretty upset about it. Worst of all, I actually met this guy twice at expat events and he seemed a little strange then, but I was super nice to him. I’m hoping very few people will find his hate site, and those that do will just see him as a bully. Funnily enough, he has started social media for his site and things like a work with me page, it’s my understanding that he’s unemployed now and maybe he wants to be a Blogger but who attempts that by hating on someone else? I just hope the posts about me don’t continue. wonder if I can report them.
Disadvantages of Blogging #8 – Hackers can Undo All Your Work
You spend 100’s of hours on your work, but then someone decides to wreck it or hold it hostage. In many cases, fixing the hack will cost $200 or more. This is a lot of money if you’re not making any money on your website. See these real-life examples:
So as it turns out my site has been hacked by something called the “japanese keyword hack”. All of the posts/pages I worked so hard to get ranking high on google have now been removed. Some that are still ranking are showing in weird Japanese characters. The reason that my files keep messing about seems to be because of that. I am restoring my site to one week prior and then switching hosts but I need to remove the hacked files. Can anyone recommend any malware/tech companies that can help me to clean up my site?
Hi all, my travel Instagram account has been hacked after I clicked a link and gave away my log in details. Now the hacker is blackmailing me. I had about 105k followers and now I’m unable to log into my account. Does anyone know what I can do? I’m desperate. Please help.
Disadvantages of Blogging #9 – Stay Compliant or Maybe Pay the Piper
Then there’s the European Privacy Laws that are CRAZY harsh – you can pay millions of Euros for non-compliance. Sure, I see the importance of maintaining secure e-mail lists. Even if you collect email addresses or even track page views, there are rules that must be followed. Now some of the US states are passing web privacy laws. It’s very difficult for an independent or hobby blogger to keep up on all of these rules.
Disadvantages of Blogging #10 – You Are Competing Against Fake Followers and “Engagement”
Have you ever noticed a seemingly boring Instagram feed that has tens of thousands of followers? Remember the story about all the fake followers, sometimes referred as “bots”? Or an Instagram picture that has a disproportional number of comments. There is no way an ordinary picture of a canyon can garner more than 200 comments. There are likely 1000’s of secret facebook groups dedicated to “I’ll follow you if you follow me” or “I’ll like or pin your photo if you like or pin mine”
Check out these real-life stories:
Are bots back? This Instagram “star” got comments like “nice beard’ and “ great video” ( when there isn’t one) and clearly it’s almost all done through power pods or purchases.
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A lot of likes are bots. Even if we don’t pay for them, some hash tags are more prone to bot followings than others so you can end up with a lot of fake likes. I got over 300 likes on a photo of my ceiling when using my best performing hash tags. I did it a few times as a dumb test over the period of a week last May, and each time I got over 300 likes. At that time, I got around 800 to 1k likes per proper photo.
Disadvantages of Blogging #11 – You May Get a Stalker
This is especially a problem for Female bloggers and influencers. See these real-life stories:
I stopped posting my IG stories in realtime because of stalker issues in the past, so I normally delay it 24-48 hours, and when I announced I was in a new country, who knew I’d already have an eager “fan” waiting and ready to “greet” me. Yikes.
I was stalked on social media and real life. Attorney did the trick. Guy moved to another city. Continued to stalk me on social media. Blocked him until he finally stopped.
I really don’t know what to do here. This dude on Instagram keeps soliciting me for nude selfies and every time I block and report him he just makes a new account. He’s been at it since April but lately his frequency is increasing. He’s found my email and is bothering me there too now. It’s really triggering and it’s getting to me, which I guess is his point. Honestly not sure what to do when ignoring him doesn’t work and neither does blocking him. EDIT: to those suggesting the police, if he were physically stalking me maybe I could do that, but what are the European police going to do about a guy in Australia?
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Do You Still Want to Start Your Own Blog?
I am not going to tell you blogging is the greatest thing ever. You should consider all of the disadvantages of blogging above and decide if travel blogging is worth it to you. If you are even a little bit unsure, do yourself a favor and save yourself hundreds of hours and dollars. If you still want to blog, I’m not going to sell you anything. I’m sure there’s another blogger that would love to sell you some hosting and a course on how to be a blogger. If I’ve convinced you not to blog, take a little bit of the 100’s of dollars you’re saving and buy yourself something nice!
Go Shopping at Amazon Now:
Can you think of any other Disadvantages of Blogging? Please leave your comments below.
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