7 Struggles of a New Blogger

It's been more or less a month since I decided to enter the "blogosphere". My first reason for blogging is to express myself by writing because it is one of my genuine interests and secondly is this "make-money blogging” career that I heard and read from other blogs. But my time spent as a blogger is obviously too short for me to succeed from this career and that period of time considers me as a newbie here. I know that to succeed in every field needs a lot of love, effort and experience, which I still lack from now. So I'm taking steps one by one and let's see if I could make it. I'm just like a transferee in a new school and fresh college graduates entering the competitive world of business, many things about blogging are stilled blurred for me. And just like a small child, who I'm not so far from, I have many questions in my mind still left unanswered. Being optimistic, I believe that as I got older in this "world of blogging" all these questions will be answered by self-experience.

Along with these questions come few struggles that a newbie like me encounters in his or her first chapters of blogging life. I put it in a list and called it "7 Struggles of a new Blogger". This list includes some solutions or probably suggestions that can be effective for everyone. The reason why I wrote this list is because I know that more and more newbie will come, write and goal "make-money blogging" and possibly could encounter same struggles that myself also experienced and probably most of the professional bloggers now, when they were also new to blogging. These information may be helpful to other present and coming newbie, and may put a relief in some of their burning curiosities.

I finished making the first five and will soon be publishing the other two.

1. Can't Find a Good Topic Idea
2. Can't Afford to Own a Domain Name
3. Do not Know What Externally Hosting Blog Site to Choose
4. Do not know how to use Adsense Programs etc.
5. Do not know the basic terms in make-money blogging.
6. No audience, Starts with low page ranks and can't be indexed.
7. Blogging Motivated by Money.


- Can't Find a Good Topic Idea -
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Finding a topic for your blog maybe is one of the hardest thing to do. I considered this a struggle because you have so many things to consider aside from your interests. You should also consider the interest of other bloggers that can be your potential audiences. Of course, you should also think about your future audiences even from the very start. What is that interest of yours that others could be interested also? That interest which you can not run out of ideas. Is that topic still not published by other bloggers? Because the less bloggers having the same topic, the more potential audience it can pull. Will that interest be marketable enough as you goal to be "make-money blogger"? Can anyone directly say that this topic will put somebody into success? No one. Sometimes, it is just really luck, and that luck should be mixed by hard work.

The known blogger Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com mentioned in his "Blog Profits" Blueprint:
"Browse through stores like Amazon.com and the auction site eBay and you will find a million ideas for blog topics on products which are great for making money from because you can sell the products as an affiliate. Try Yahoo Shopping and Google Product Search (was Froogle) as well."

Another great suggestion that Yaro Tarak also mentioned:
"See what other bloggers are writing about and enjoying success with and start a blog that covers a sub-niche of their topic. An example of this is the topic “search engines”, which can be sub-divided into blogs about each search engine – Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, etc. All markets break down into smaller niches if there is enough demand, with each new area catered to by a more specialized provider. There’s no reason why you can’t start a blog that is the best on just one aspect of a topic. - Instead of “Cooking” you can cover “Tibetan Cooking” - Instead of “Cars” you can cover “BMWs” - Instead of “Fashion” you cover “Shoes” Most topics can be broken down over and over into ever smaller niches (for example, from “Fashion”, to “Shoes” to “Shoelaces”). If it seems every topic you currently know something about is covered by other bloggers, pick one aspect of the topic and make the best blog there is about just that aspect." Maybe you reallyshould a little research.

Do you have so many ideas of possible topics in your mind? That stage is really confusing. Maybe you should put it in a list and try balancing all of it. And maybe you'll find the good topic for you.

- Can't Afford to Own a Domain Name -
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When we say that you own a domain name. It means that have your own website that you bought from sites like www.namecheap.com etc. for a certain cost per year. You gave a name to it, you are hosting it yourself and you are the server for storing files to your site. So you are secured that the files in your site are safe. And once it are lost you, as the owner is the only responsible for that. Another is you can customize every single part of your site, which is good because you can make your site very genuine.
So once you have the money to afford a site, you can have one. And unfortunately if you can't afford to buy one because of financial incapacity as a main reason, you can not enjoy that advantages that I've already mentioned. Another reason for not affording your own a domain name is the inability to design your own site yourself because of lack of knowledge about programming languages like HTML codes that most programmers are using today to improve the appearances of their pages.

So like me, who is just starting an independent living, I still can't afford to buy myself a site. Maybe I can afford one in the future from my potential incomes in "make-money blogging".Thank God, there are externally hosted blogs like wordpress.com, blogger.com, etc. So , one can publish their blogs for free. Presently, I am using blogger.com to publish my blogs.

Externally hosted blog sites are really the solution for these problems. Most particularly it is recommended for all beginners to use their services. One will find it easy to bring changes to his site's look, most likely the way he wanted and the best thing is it's for free.

- Do not Know What Externally Hosting Blog Site to Choose -
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Having no money to host your own domain name comes a solution which I've already mentioned. But another struggle appears but some suggestions may help you with this. Many externally hosting blog sites offers their services, but some find it a problem whether what will they choose. One should make a good decision in choosing a blog site he wants to be hosted by, some factors you should consider are your compatibilities to the templates they offer, the popularity of the site that can help you increase your audience and the security of your files to be published. The most popular are wordpress.com, blogger.com, typepad.com, livejournal.com and blogharbour.co. Presently I am using blogger.com, not because it is my choice but because it is the only blog site I knew before. But when I heard from others that wordpress.com is better, I became a bit confused from shifting my blogs to wordpress.com. But so far, blogger.com did not do anything to disappoint me, so I have no reason to go elsewhere.

So it's really up to you to decide, maybe this links may help you a lot. These are debates which discusses about the two most popular blog sites wordpress.com and blogger.com.
You should check it. It is very informative and it can help you decide.

Blogging Tips Forum
Blogging Tips Forum Debate Winners
Wordpress.com Forums
Advantage of Wordpress over Blogger
Blogger Forum

- Do not know how to use Adsense Programs -
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From few Advertising programs that can grant us as a publisher and advertiser, AdSense is the only program that I will be focusing on in this article.
The reasons would be, because it is one of the most popular advertising porgrams, most beginners starts with the services of this Program and
it is the first program that I became aware of. So eagered me to make-money blogging.

So for the sake of all who does not know what is AdSense Program and those who also wants to turn their blog into money, AdSense is a program powered by Google. It delivers ads which has the same content with your site/page. It can be text, image and video advertisements.
Website and blog owners or even those are still planning to blog can enroll in this program, just make sure that you are of legal age (18 and above).
These ads can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis. Per-click basis gives you an amount if a visitor of your page clicks one of the ads showed in your page while, Per-thousand-impressions basis gives you money when your site is visited by your audiences a certain thousand times.
And the best thing here is, you can enroll for free.

But because AdSense is most used by beginners, we encounter many problems are with it. So I included list of answers to the Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs) of new AdSense Program users found in the AdSense Help Support page.
Click here to view the list.

- No audience, Starts with low page ranks and can't be indexed -
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The last two struggles on my list results to blogger's dropping out of interest in publishing, and worse would be completely quitting from blogging. So, how can you be more eager to blog if no one reads your articles? How can you have readers if you have low page ranks? And how worse if you can't be indexed by search engines? Well, for a newbie to hear that is so discouraging. But the fact is all bloggers starts at zero, even the most famous one's nowadays. So, how can we be like them if we will just be shrouded by those discouragements? As a beginner like you, I have no right to give you tips on increasing the popularity of your articles or on making your page ranks high, because I am still in the process of building those things too. But I can recommend you something that will really help you a lot. The "Blog Profits Blueprint" by Yaro Tarak. This blueprint started it all for me. I could say that the contents of this blueprint are really essential to know particularly for us beginners. In fact this blueprint is the one that convinced me to enter the world of blogging, so many things I've learned from it and so many advices to apply from it. I think my complements are enough; it is still up to you to know what I'm saying about. You can download it if you want. It's absolutely for free. Here's the link."Blog Profits Blueprint"

- Blogging Motivated by Money -
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Our eagerness to things mostly comes at its peak at the very start. Unfortunately, we are not consistent and once we became frustrated, we lose the drive to continue. This applies to make money blogging, especially when we are motivated by money. It mostly happens when you can't get your targeted amount on your first month. Your thrice a week publishing before fell into once a week. Your enthusiasm sharply dropped, your interests are starting to fade. That is what you call impatience.
You're thinking that money is that easy here, think twice. When this happens to you, before you decide to quit, go backwards. Ask these questions to yourself.

- How long are you make money blogging? Is that time enough to earn money?
- How many articles have you published? Is that number enough for you to gain readers and money?
- Read your articles. Are they really convincing to others? Is it really interesting for you? Don’t be bias.
- Do you think that you have worked enough?
- Have you made actions to endorse your blog?

If most of your answers are ”yes”, then I’m sorry to tell you that maybe blogging is maybe not your way of earning income. But if most of your answers are “no”, then be patient baby. Write more blogs, endorse your articles, get your audiences and more importantly more patience.

If you yourself do not feel the interest to blog anymore, then what more will the bloggers feel. If you’re just forced to blog because of money and no love and interest incorporated with it, you can't produce great and interesting article. You can not gain audiences, so more chance of not reaching your goal of making money. Thus, it is really important for us to pick a topic that is in the bracket of our interests.

To lessen the possibility for these to happen to you, here are some mind-setting tips.
a. First thing you should consider is it's not easy money here.
b. Make your interests as your primary topic. So you may not run out of ideas to publish
c. Do not expect too much. At first place, you did not invest a lot of money for it. So, nothing to lose.
d. Work hard for it. The best advice of all.

I just want to make it clear that I'm still a newbie here and some of the struggles in the list are still my struggles. Therefore we can have common problems to encounter soon. So don't hesitate to share it to me, it would be helpful for the both of us.