7 Signs You Are Not Ready to Earn Money with a Blog

Now what does that mean – not ready to earn money from your blog? Does the holy spirit have to come over you first, with epiphanic realization?

Not too long ago, my answer would have been something like this: “Stop the spiritual fuss! Blogging is a profession! If you don’t make money from your blog then go get the damned skills and off you go!”

Not as easy as that?

It is by far not as easy as that. Having all the needed blogging skills in place is not enough. Actually, your success always depends on more things than “just” the skills (don’t worry, it’s not a holy spirit thing, though).

These “things” I mean refer to our way of thinking, feeling and doing from a certain state of mind. Yes, it’s about our mindset and our habits making us do (or not do) things in a certain way.

What’s the one and foremost crucial thing finally deciding whether you succeed or not? You got it, it’s your mindset making you perform good or bad in your attempts to master blogging.

And, while we immerse into absorbing anything we can find about blogging, everything related to dealing with our mindset and that like doesn’t capture our attention. Even worse, we avoid looking at it, by all means.

Okay, that’s maybe too generally spoken… I know many bloggers who look for ways of self-improvement. But only the fewest pursue routines that really lead to mindset shifts and, more important, final blogging breakthrough.

Most bloggers never really deliberate if their mind setting might be the bottleneck in their business. And it’s very easy to turn a blind eye to it, since most of the troubles your mindset can cause, happen behind the scenes, within your unconscious mind.

This “not having your mind in mind” is a fatal misconception. It makes us fail, no matter how much knowledge we have inhaled about building a blog.

If you ever wondered why, no matter in what industry, there are always only a handful of top achievers leaving masses of people in failure or unrewarding mediocrity behind – unsuitable mindsets and habits are the answer. Blogging business is just a reflection of that.

 

Why should you care?

Well, if your success depends on the shape of your mindset, it’s worth looking at it, right?

I wish I had done it before consuming tons of the tutorials and courses available about blogging. I wasted a lot of time with desperate attempts of trying to apply the knowledge I gained, all not working out somehow. I collected lots of frustrations, leading to more unfruitful habits, finally leading to an all-time low of my self-confidence.

The moment I realized I have been “blind about my mind” throughout all my desperate attempts, things started to change for the better very quickly. I knew I had to fix my unsuitable mindset first to then deal with learning and applying blogging skills from a far better suiting mind setting.

That’s why I say STOP! Stop if you are just about to start out with your blog. And stop if you are already straight into blogging, wondering if the struggles will ever end:

Before you move on with busy-business-building, check if your mindset and habits are in a proper starting position (I will show you how to check in a minute). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be daunting. Maybe it’s all fine and you are one of the (few) lucky people who are blessed with a pre-given mindset perfectly suited for your blogging challenges. In that case, move on with what you do and feel invited to share your success story here Entrepreneurs Unstuck as soon as you like:)

But, in case it turns out that your settings are inappropriate, all your further efforts and discipline and hard work on your business will lead you to a dead end, sooner or later.

Fortunately, there are some pretty reliable signs that can show you if your mindset needs an upgrade in order to succeed with blogging.

 

7 signs you are not ready to earn money with a blog

In the following, you find 7 signs for mindsets that are not ready for blogging success. If you can relate to one or more of these signs, you really should stop doing things the way you were used to up to this point.

No worries, I won’t leave you alone with this stop alert. I will come up with some first aid later, so you can start working on your business again, but out of a different mode.

Let’s get started!

 

Sign 1: victim of paralysis

As a newbie, you can easily get lost in overwhelm with all you find about blogging. There is a plethora of business models, strategies, methods and formulas around and therefore many options to choose from.

For example: Are you into affiliate marketing or creating digital products, or own courses, or membership sites or a combination of some of them? Do you actively participate in one or all social media channels? Are you focused on writing content or podcasting or video or a combination of all?…

If you are not confident with making your own choices to specify your approach to blogging you will be unable to see the forest for the trees. (Find out more about business models for your blog here: 5 Best Online Entrepreneur Business Ideas) Without a specific plan and concrete goals to achieve, you are very likely to get stuck in no-progress-mode.

Building a blog simply is a pretty complex thing with way more than one way to skin the cat. Once you lose the thread, your attempts more and more turn into passive or precipitate behavior, all not leading to any helpful accomplishments pushing you forward.

 

Sign 2: caught in procrastination cycle

Procrastination can be a huge obstacle for your progress. It’s the steady fight of the fun tasks wanting to win over the not-so-fun-but-crucial tasks we all have to deal with in our day-to-day business.

If you have the choice to watch another sparkling video about becoming a YouTube star or to start writing your next blog post, it’s very easy to persuade yourself the video is the ultimately important thing to (while in reality your next post is long overdue).

If you find yourself watching others doing their business more than taking result driven actions for building your own blogging empire, you are a victim of procrastination.

I call it the cherry picker’s lack of execution. All the knowledge you collect is worth nothing if you don’t apply it properly. Once you start paying attention particularly to the things you tend to dodge and execute them, your accomplishments will rapidly start to increase.

 

Sign 3: walked into the distraction trap

Oh what a noisy world we live in, right? So many devices, all asking for your attention. What’s your average time to check Facebook or twitter for new entries?

Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or things like Skype, Slack, What’s App and of course, your email inbox… there simply are tons of constant invitations to interrupt your focused working.

The real darned thing about it is, that in blogging business many of these and other tools can be justified as “important business tools”. Social media are big part of the business. Communities are big part of the business. Exciting tools for research and analyzing are important to use as a blogger.

This leads to us (purposeless) overusing them under the guise of being busy in doing business. For example, we simply ignore the fact that the promotion of our new post in social media (focused business activity) is only a fraction of the time we spent in social media at the end of the day.

As soon as all these distractions are part of your daily habits, you will always remain performing way below your best in building your business.

 

Sign 4: lack of persistence and patience

Blogging is not a sport for sprinters. Actually, only the long-distance runners will make it to the final triumph (not only in this business).

But how should you know when there are so many shiny gurus and their get rich quick schemes promising you fortunes within weeks on autopilot?

And even if you say you don’t believe these dubious marketers, they will set some expectations within your subconscious mind anyway. Not to speak of the portion of pre-given lack of persistence we all carry within ourselves.

Fact is, huge parts of your efforts in building your blog will be nothing but an investment you can’t pick any fruits from for months or even longer to come. How come still so many people start blogging when it takes so long to earn money with a blog? Because once the first results come in, there is hardly a comparable business you can scale with so much momentum, up to a six-figure income or more (no guru talk).

If you don’t have a lot of staying power, if you can’t find ways to motivate yourself for hard and persistent work for a long time of no monetary rewards, then your endeavor is very likely to fail.

 

Sign 5: not following through

Unfortunately, this is a very common part of the failure-chain-reaction in our business: Packed with all the overwhelm, distractions and lack of execution (leading to lack of achievements), you are not following through to finishing the goals you’ve once set.

A clear proof of that are the high drop out rates all the training programs and courses have to deal with. Many people quit blogging with a BIG FAILURE etched on their memory before reaching the very end of the first program they attend. Even more people start a habit of jumping from one program to another, never following through to the end of a program, wondering why all the courses don’t work out.

If you feel familiar with this not finishing, you urgently need to change your mindset and habits first, before you can make any of your training efforts a success.

 

Sign 6: acting only within comfort zone

This leads back to your self-confidence: If you believe in yourself and your goals coming true, you are much more likely to leave your comfort zone and take risks than if you carry around a load of uncertainties with yourself.

Building a successful blog is impossible without leaving your comfort zone. Whether it’s having to reach out to other bloggers for marketing, or working disciplined on a consistent schedule, or creating controversial content to stand out from the crowd, or testing new ideas or techniques – there is no blogging empire to come without doing things you have never done before or, even worse, without doing things that you even are scared to do.

If you find yourself stepping backwards each time a new challenge occurs, leaving you not making that experience, you will never get beyond mediocrity, which is simply not enough to make it in our noisy blogging business.

 

Sign 7: lone wolf blogger syndrome

Back in the good old days, blogs were paradise for lone wolfs: Whatever the subject of your blog was, simply publishing your posts was enough to be granted with great traffic sooner or later. No connections, no relationships, no cooperation needed. A dream come true to all of those who don’t like to engage with other humans.

Today, the metrics have changed and whatever your topic is, chances are, there already are early adopters, if not masses of other bloggers, competing in the same niche. There might be some few niches left where a low hanging fruit keyword strategy is enough to slowly increase your traffic. But as time goes by, these few niches will only get fewer.

Fact is, passive marketing (where all your promotion is publishing your post on your blog) will never be enough to leverage the full potential of a blogging business. Active marketing in terms of blogging, though, is pretty much everything lone wolfs run from:

It’s mainly about building relationships in every respect. Relationships with a good balance of give and take. Where your helping others will be granted with them helping you. All in all, a very communicative thing with lots of real engagement needed.

If you have started your blogging career as a “lone fighter”, you are not doomed to stay that loner! Actually, it takes much less than you might think (speaking from my own experience) to change into interaction mode!

 

Got hit by one or more of the 7 signs?

I can imagine you might sit there now thinking about how much you are affected by these troubles that can keep you from succeeding.

Some honesty from my side might help to bring some relief: When I started blogging, I got hit by all of the 7 (and some other) signs. I was all in with dozens of unfitting mindset issues and habits. But what’s even more important for you to know is that I have overcome them all (okay, the major ones, I’m only human;).

It took me a while to figure out how to change the shape of my mind and some pretty adverse habits. But I got there.

So, if you find yourself affected by some of the troubles mentioned above, don’t panic, that’s not the end of your trip to blogging mastery!

You can get rid of these problems just like I did. I have created a free course you can join to break the cycle NOW and reset your settings, perfectly matching with a bloggers challenges. You can jump straight into the free course here: First Aid Against Failure For Bloggers.

I really hope you have found some helpful information about what can hinder you from breaking through with your blog. I would love to hear your story – what are your biggest problems? What did you do to solve them? Please leave your comments below.

If you have any questions, drop me a note and I am happy to help!

To your very blogging breakthrough,
Vera