Many new bloggers get upset or frustrated when their blog isn’t the smash hit they thought it would be.
“The time and effort I put into this blog article should be getting more comments, more page views, more Stumbles or Diggs, and I should be making 100s of dollars a month by now,” says blog noob to his subscribers. I thought this myself when I started blogging. I thought I had the killer domain (moneyandblog(dot)com actually is a pretty killer domain for a make money on your blog niche), I thought I put up quality posts, and I thought I was doing everything I could to get control of the blogosphere. Notice the keywords? “I thought.”
This is a challenge new bloggers will have to get over. No matter how enthusiastic you are about your material, no matter how much you paid for that hosting plan built for Wordpress, and no matter how much you might think you are encouraging you blog readers to comment, don’t expect too much. Your time and effort you exhausted to post a blog is not pinged. Unless you just wrote the most comprehensive list of Adsense alternative affiliate programs (hehehe) or a 20 page report on the human rights issues going on in North Korea (hehehe), don’t start believing your readers will understand that amount of time. No one sees what goes on behind their computer screen. In the end you are the only real judge of the amount of effort put into your blog
A tip to new bloggers: High expectations lead to disappointments, while low expectations have exactly the opposite effect. Aim low and you might see your effort be all worthwhile. I’m not saying you shouldn’t aim for high goals, but don’t think you are a blogging rocket being propelled into the upper reaches of the blogosphere. Building a successful blog will take time, effort, pain and loss. After a little over a month of serious blogging I can already tell you this.
Outside from myself, I get very little from blogging. My affiliate programs are miserable right now (why are you more willing to click on Google ads?), so I am not making very much money. I’ve spent nearly 14 hours on weekend days troubleshooting my blogs, writing posts, editing blogs, configuring advertising, commenting other blogs, and setting up links to my contest. Lately, I’ve been sleeping only 3 – 4 hours a night because I want to get in one more post or one more link before I sleep. (You don’t have to remind me how unhealthy this is. Don’t worry. I took a nap at school today, and took 1 hour off of work every week) Honestly, I have never ever been so dedicated to anything in my life. Not even my girlfriend (No, I have never cheated on her, and yes, that is my supermodel girlfriend 
… ) The time and effort I’ve put into this blog is staggering, both a loss, but it all still feels like I am gaining so much from the experience.
There is this thing called satisfaction. Satisfaction is what should drive any writer, bloggers included. This is what keeps me up those sleepless nights. The money and success possible from it is all something I put on the sidelines. Learn to be satisfied with your blogging, without the need of others, and I guarantee you will start to see a change in your blogging. Comments and links should never really be in the back of your head when writing a blog entry. Pretend you are the only one that will ever read the post, and any extra subscriber is just a little surprise in your Feedburner stats. It is their way of saying I appreciate the way you write.
I will write more on how to gain satisfaction from your blog in a future post, but first, I want to know what you blog for. Fame? Wealth? Satisfaction? Men that pretend to be young women over AIM (we all know your chances of dating an attractive woman you met on Myspace is 1 in 34 million. Funny I am saying this when I dated 3 of my 4 serious girlfriends from Myspace)?
Tell me your story. Remember, all comments will be considered in a giveaway for a free month of advertising on this blog!
