Today, I want to suggest to you 22 questions which might sound a little overwhelming but it’s not; I’ll race through them. Twenty-two questions that you might like to ask yourself if you are considering starting a blog, to work out whether you’re the right kind of person for blogging. Now, these are not yes or no questions that you will determine whether you have success or not. These are 22 indicators to whether you might be suited to blogging.
I actually think that today’s episode is great for ProBloggers, but it’s also good for you if you are in the first year or so of your blogging as well, because these are things that you can work on. These are things that you can improve on to help you increase the chances of success with your blog as well.
I’m going to summarize all of the 22 things that I’ve come up with as well as some other suggestions for you from my readers over at today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/120. Let’s get in to today’s show.
As I said in my introduction, we’ve had a whole heap of people lately coming to ProBlogger who are in the early stages of their blog and even before starting their blog asking questions about how to start. As a result, we recently published a 5-step guide to starting a blog which walks you through some of the technical aspects of setting up a blog (which I’m not going to get into today).
Today, what I want to do is step back from that process of starting your blog and tackle an important question that really should come before you start your blog. Really, this question is more about should you start a blog? Is the blog a good fit for you, your personality, and who you are? Do you have what it takes to become a blogger? Or is there maybe another type of website that is better suited to you?
I was recently asked a question by a ProBlogger reader at an event that I spoke at. This particular person was about to start a blog. He asked me whether I could list some common characteristics of successful bloggers. There was a question I answered on the spot with five or six different things that I’ve observed about professional bloggers, people who’d had success with their blogs. Particularly building a business around their blogs.
As I went home, I realized in the car on the way home, there were a whole heap of other things that I could have said. That’s where this particular podcast episode comes from. These are things that I’ve noticed over the last 13 years that come up again and again in the type of people that I see being successful with blogs. What I’ve done today is I’ve turned these qualities or characteristics of successful bloggers. I’ve turned around a little and I’ve got some in terms of questions to ask yourself about yourself and about your own qualities to see whether they are a fit with the things that I’ve come up with.
Before I share the questions with you, I really want to emphasize though that if you don’t have some of these qualities, it is not the end of your blogging dreams. Even as I look at the list right now, there are aspects of what I’m about to share with you that are not in me. These are qualities that some of which I do not possess. I don’t know of any blogger who probably has all of these things. This is, therefore, a very idealistic list of questions. They’re really there to help you as a potential blogger or as a new blogger to enter into blogging with your eyes open and making a good decision about whether blogs are right for you. It’s probably more at getting expectations right as well.
It’s also worth noting that this is a list of qualities that I see in people who’ve built a successful business around their blog. It’s not really talking about personal bloggers who’ve had success. These are people who had built a business around their blog, who generated income from their blogs. Some of them will also relate to personal bloggers but really, today’s list is more focused on those of you wanting to start a blog as a business. If that’s your goal, then hopefully this is useful for you.
Let’s get into the 22 questions that I got. As I said, I’m going to whip through them fairly quickly. I haven’t really ordered them in any logical order as well. These are just 22 random things that you might want to think about, some of which relate to each other. Let’s get into them.
The first question you might want to ask yourself is, do you have a message? Do you have something that you wanted to say? While there are many applications for blogs, underline most of them is that there’s some sort of a communication of a message that the blogger wants to do. Do you have something just bursting out of you that you really need to say?
When I started Digital Photography School, my message was all these people have great cameras. I noticed that a lot of people have great cameras, but they weren’t using them to their full potential. I guess my message was you can get out of automatic mode. That was really essential to a lot of what I had to say and very simply, that was my message.
Now, your message will be different and depending upon the topic of your blog, but really at the center of what you’re on about as a blogger, most successful blogs do have some of a central message. It might relate to a passion that you have, or an interest, or a belief that you want to explore. Ultimately, I guess the question is, “Do you have something that you really need or want to communicate?” That’s the first question.
The second question is, are you a good communicator? Now, I don’t believe that only good communicators should have blogs because if the answer to you is, “No, I’m not a good communicator,” a blog may actually be perfect to you to help you improve in those particular areas. Certainly, it can be an advantage to have some communication skills.
When I started a blog, I wasn’t a great writer, but I have done a lot of public speaking. Communication was something that I did have some experience with and it was a bit passion of mine as well. So, are you a good communicator, is question number two.
Number three, and this is important, are you willing to be in the public spotlight? Are you willing to put yourself out there? Blogging is a public act. Every day or regularly, you are going to be putting yourself into the gaze of other people. Other people are going to be analyzing your words and the things that you speak about. They’re going to be analyzing what you look like, what you do, what you say, how you say it. They’ll be analyzing your lifestyle if you reveal some of that.
Some people will want to know more about you. Many people will just make casual observations about you, but you’re putting yourself out there. You may even get recognized in public. It’s only happened to me a few times. Particularly, when I go to conferences, obviously, but sometimes walking down the street, I get people randomly walk up to me. This is something that takes a little while to get used to and some people simply do not want that to happen to them.
A few bloggers make it to celebrity stages. I’m far from that, but all bloggers are putting themselves at their every time they post. This is something you need to consider when you are entering into blogging. When you put something online, it’s going to be there forever. You can delete your blog post but really, there will be remnants of it on the internet. Many of them archived in sites like the Internet Archive. Are you willing to put yourself out there and have your thoughts out there forever? That’s question number three.
That sounds like a scary question but it’s one that you need to consider. I should say, you can blog anonymously, but there are many instances that anonymous blogger has later on been identified. So, you do need to consider that as well.
Number four, again, is a little bit of a negative one in some ways, but I think it’s worth considering. Are you thick-skinned? If you start a blog, the chances are it would be found by others (that’s our hope) and the chances are that other people are going to make observations about you and are going to critique what you say. Sometimes those critiques are really positive and constructive, but we all know that the internet is not always a constructive and positive place. Sometimes, you’ll be critique in a way that perhaps are not fair and sometimes are attacking even.
My experience is that most of the critiques that I’ve had over the years have been fair, they’ve been positive, and they’ve been constructive. I haven’t had to worry about them at all. They’ve actually helped me in many cases when people have given me feedback. But there’ve been a handful of times where things have gotten personal and things have gotten nasty. It’s worth knowing that that is a possibility and to ask yourself, how do you take criticism? How do you take that type of critique?
If you’re someone who takes critique well, then that’s a good thing. If it’s not, then that may be one of those areas that you need to, entering to blogging, being aware of and maybe even doing some work on. I do find that over time, most bloggers do get thicker skin simply by the act of blogging. Maybe that’s a benefit of blogging as well, but it’s definitely a question you might want to ponder before you get into it.
Question number five, are you a self-starter? Just starting a blog is taking initiative. You are taking initiative by starting that blog, but that’s not the only time you’re going to start that. It’s not the only time you’re going to need to create. That’s not the only time you are going to need to take some initiative.
While blogging software these days makes it really simple to start a blog, they don’t run themselves. You obviously need to continue to feed that software. You need to create content. You need to respond to readers when they come. You need to be proactively promoting your blog. You need to be building community with your image. You need to be proactive about the way you monetize your blog if that’s a goal for you.
Successful bloggers don’t tend to be passive people. They build. They experiment. They don’t wait for success to come to them. They go chasing after success. Occasionally, opportunities land in our laps. I’ve seen that happened a number of times. Occasionally, it’s happened to me. Most of the times where I’ve built any kind of profit for my blog or where I’ve grown my blog audience in any way, I’ve done something proactive. I had to build it myself.
If you’re a self-starter, that’s a great thing. That’s something that really will help you as you build your blog. If you’re not, it may be something that you need to work on.
Question number six is going to be tied into the last one that I talked about. The question is, are you disciplined? Now, I want to say right upfront, when I started my blog, my first blog in 2002, if I had asked myself this question, I would’ve said no. I haven’t probably the most undisciplined person I ever met. Particularly, when I was 30 or so when I started my blog.
Blogs require regular attention over time. I didn’t know that when I started, but I very quickly realized that regularity was a big part of it and I do take a lot of work. For me, discipline came later and it came as a result of getting hooked on blogging and becoming passionate about blogging. It came as a result of me seeing the results of my blog on other people as well.
Discipline can come later, but certainly if you’re a disciplined kind of person, then that’s going to pay off for you as well. You’ll be able to motivate yourself to create new content for your blog, podcast, or whatever it is that you are creating on a regular basis.
If the answer is no, then you’re going to need to build something into place that’s going to help you stay on track and create content on a regular basis. Discipline is important. Sorry to say that for those of you who are like me. You’re going to need to find some way of disciplining yourself and being accountable. You may need to find some external accountability with another person or another group of people or you may need to, I guess, find some internal accountability as well and find out how you motivate yourself in some way.
Question number seven is really important. Do you have time? Do you have time to blog? Linked to the last point that I said, you need to be regularly updating your blog. Obviously, you need time to be able to do that. Do you have enough time in your schedule to write regularly?
This is another one of those questions that I’m glad I didn’t asked in the early days because I was a very busy person. I was working three part-time jobs, I was studying in the evening, I was doing a whole heap of voluntary stuff as well, but I managed to find the time and I’m glad that I did. If you don’t have much time in your hands, you need to think about where you’re going to find that time to blog.
There’s a whole heap of productivity tips that we could give you and we’ve done regular shows in the past on productivity tips, but I just want to put that question out there. Not only do you need to write content, you need to moderate your comments, you need to respond to emails that readers might send you, you might want to be reading other blogs in your niche and network with other bloggers. There’s your design, there’s SEO, there’s monetization. All of these things take time.
It doesn’t mean to say that you need to be a full-time blogger. Obviously, I didn’t have a lot of time when I started out, but I found it and I became disciplined. So, those two things are linked together.
The number eight question I was asked is, again, linked to this idea of time and that is, do you have the energy for blogging? You may have the time but you may not actually have the energy. I’ve got an email just a few days ago now from a reader who said that he does have time to blog but he got from his work at the end of the day where he’s being creative, where he’s been focused, where he’s done technical things, and when he’s being bombarded with questions from other people. He works all day in a really intense environment, so when he gets home, even though he has the time, he finds it very difficult to focus.
His questions are about, how do I get myself energized again to start blogging? This reveals a challenge that some bloggers have who perhaps have low energy levels because they are focusing their energy on other things, whether that be raising kids (which I know take a lot of energy), or whether it be really intense job or some other aspect of life. You might have the time but do you have the energy to be able to think creatively? This is one of the things I’ll talk about in a moment. You need to bring some creativity, you need to bring some focus, you need to bring some thoughts to blogging, so do you have the energy to blog?
Question number nine is not an essential but it certainly will help. Do you have any technical ability? If this was a requirement for being a successful full-time blogger, then I would never have gotten far at all. Many of you heard my story before. It took me three months to work ahead of my text bold on my first blog. I was the most technological Luddite that you’ll ever meet, but it is certainly an advantage to have some technical ability or the willingness to learn and to work on a technical level.
Now obviously, when you are blogging, you will be using a computer, or an iPad, or some other device that gets you online. You will need to be working in the back-end of a blogging platform like WordPress. You’ll be needing to use other tools, maybe some photo editing tools, or maybe some social media tools.
Obviously, all of these things, as user-friendly as many of these tools are today, the more you are able to grasp technical language and tools, the better off you will be. You don’t need to know it at all. You will need, though, to be able to learn some of these things or to find someone to help you and that could cost you some money as well.
Don’t feel you need to know everything, but certainly, one of the things that will be an advantage to you is to have some kind of technical ability, or at least some willingness to learn, or some technical intuition. A lot of people just seem to know how to find their way around the tools, even without really understanding them. There’s some intuitive type stuff going on there.
Question number 10—we’re almost halfway now—is, do you have a blend of humility and ego? This is a weird one. I wasn’t quite sure how to word it but I think a lot of the successful bloggers that I met have these. They’re able to walk the line between humility and ego. Certainly in the blogosphere, I’m sure there’s plenty of big-headedness around and yet, it’s often the more humble blogger who ends up on top.
Many of the, “Look at me! Look at me!” kind of bloggers that I’ve come across over the years have not lasted a distance and I suspected that maybe it’s for a couple of reasons. One, maybe because people didn’t look at them initially, they gave up, and because they needed that “look at me” thing that maybe they gave up, but maybe it’s also because that approach doesn’t tend to go down too well.
I know here in Australia particularly doesn’t go down too well. Maybe that’s a part of the cultural thing. But having said that you need to have some humility about what you’re doing, I think you also need to have a healthy ego and a good view of own self-worth as a person as well because there are times where you need to be self-promotional when it comes to blogging. This is a bit of a tension that many, many people feel.
I know many of my friends say, “I couldn’t blog because I don’t want to put myself in there. I don’t want to promote myself. I don’t want to make people look at what I’m doing because that’s sends a bit big-headed.” But you do need to be able to put yourself out there. I guess it’s a balancing act. You need to spend some time, building something of substance, but you also need to be able to get out there once that thing is built, have the confidence to promote it, and to show people what you can do.
Getting that balance right is not always easy and there have been times where I’ve probably going one way or the other too much, but it’s something that you need to be able to juggle and work on. Perhaps it’s more than just being aware of where your weakness is. Some people have no problem in self-promoting. Maybe they need to just be aware of that and pull themselves back whereas other people perhaps have trouble self-promoting and they need to force themselves to do that a little bit more. So, are you willing to walk that line? I guess it’s a different way of asking that question.
Question number 11 is, “Are you an organized person?” This really touches on some of that discipline that I was talking about before but I think there’s a little bit more to it than just being disciplined. I’m sure there are plenty of bloggers listening to this right now who have built some success in a fairly chaotic and unorganized way but there does come a point in most serious blogger’s lives where they have to atleast get a little bit organized with what they’re doing.
Most successful bloggers that I’ve come across end up having systems in place for things like moderating comments, incoming emails, monetization systems, editorial calendars, these types of things. There’s a whole spectrum, obviously, of how organized bloggers are and I’m certainly not someone who’s on the more organized end of the spectrum and I’ve managed to still muddle my way through it, but for me, it’s been really helpful over the last two or three years to begin to build some systems and to be able to put team members in place to help with that.
That may not be something you can afford to do right upfront but be aware of your weakness if that’s one of your areas. Whatever you can do, try to build some little systems. One of the things that I found really helpful in the early days was to build some little checklist and to build some little work flows which were based just upon what I was already doing but actually by formalizing those things, it put me in a great position to get a little bit more efficient with the way that I spent my time. So, are you an organized person?
Number 12. We’re over half-way now. Are you a social person? Are you a people person? Again, this is not an essential but there are certainly some advantages if you like people and if you like your readers. Great blogs, obviously, need to attract people to them. If you’re someone who shines through in the content that you create, then you actually do like your readers, that you are willing to engage with them, and that you want to help them in some way, then that’s a great thing.
I do find that a lot of the most successful bloggers, while many are introverts, many of them are shy, most of them have a genuine love for their readers and are interested in changing the lives of those who read their blog in some way. Are you the type of person? Do you like people? Do you like helping people? Do you like taking them on a journey? This is going to shine through in a way that you create your content.
Now, I do know even as something about this of some bloggers who are not people persons at all, but they have different style of blogging and their blogs are perhaps a little bit more technical, a little less relational, but they still can work. I think they work from the style that they have and the personality that they have. They don’t pretend to be warm and gushy just to try and connect with their readers. They’re just who they are.
I guess it’s partly about understanding your personality type but if you are more of a warm, social, people-person type person, that can certainly help you to grow a community around your blog.
Question number 13 is tied to that last one. The question is, do you enjoy virtual relationships? Some of those most social people, they’re really warm in person when they meet people. They can do really terrible when it comes to online interactions. It may actually be because that they are so good in person that they struggle online when they can’t see the face of the person they’re talking to.
Some of the people who really struggle with virtual relationships are much better face-to-face than via email, or in the comment thread, or in a forum, or on social media. Being comfortable with speaking to and working with people that you’ve never met before can be a real advantage if you’re a blogger.
This is something that I just really enjoyed early on. The first experience I had in mind was in Internet chat rooms. I just found myself very comfortable for some reason in that environment where I didn’t actually have to see the other person and where it wasn’t relied upon my body language, and perhaps where I could have a little more time to think about what I was going to say before I said it.
If that’s you, if you’re real