The blogging community is a huge place, bigger than you would expect. But a lot of people underestimate us, they think it's 5 minutes of writing, a couple of photos and the click of a button and then the cash and free products come rolling in. We all know that's not how it works and so I wanted to discuss some of the main things that people don't really understand or know about blogging, because all they see is the end product.
If you are a blogger yourself reading this, you can probably relate to most if not all of the things on this list, and if you aren't a blogger, you will either feel sorry for us and decide that you never want to start your own blog, or it will pull you into the idea more!
So, I think I'll just get into it now! I think I'm going to make a series called '10 Things...' We'll see, I'm not sure yet.
One
Writers Block
I have this problem all the time, however since gaining more inspiration from Dana Fox's book I am not struggling as much anymore. Writer's block can put a blogger out of posts for days, weeks, months, sometimes longer. I've never had to leave mine for much longer than a few weeks but I know the feeling. Sometimes we just lose motivation all together, and sometimes we have all the motivation in the world, but nothing to talk about and that is the most frustrating thing ever. It's more disappointing if we can't think of anything to write about when we know there are people waiting to read the things we post and we do feel like we let people down when we have a bit of a mental block, as well as feeling like we're letting ourselves down.
Two
We Are Never Happy With Anything
That sentence above literally describes me personally, and I would imagine a lot of other bloggers feel the same way. I'm never 100% happy with a post, there is always something I feel I could've done better but I'm just never quite sure how I would've made it better with the equipment and skills I have. It could be photos, lighting, layout or even just general content of the blog. There is always something we aren't happy with, for me currently it's the layout of my blog as a whole but I hope that at some point in the near future I will be able to have more of a play around with it and I will eventually become happy with it. I guess you could say it's all about bettering yourself and your page but sometimes it's just plain frustrating.
Three
Light Is Our Worst Enemy
I don't know one blogger who doesn't have issues with lighting. I have a window at both ends of my room which makes it extremely difficult to get the lighting right as natural light is the only light I have access to. Lighting will make or break an image and the amount of time I have spent just trying to get the lighting right for a photo is ridiculous and I'm sure many other bloggers reading this can relate to that. One day when I am rich and famous - a girl can dream yeah - I will invest in the most high tech lighting arrangement ever and my photos will be on point, I hope...
Four
Finding A Background Is Like Looking For A Needle In A Haystack
I'm not sure if anyone else has this issue as badly as I do, but I feel like the backgrounds of the majority of my photos are awful, I just don't have anywhere in my room where I really like as a background. I've never really been happy with a background that I've used, I think I might do a post about different backgrounds and ask you guys for some feedback, is that okay? I look at some of my friend's blogs and I look at their backgrounds and I just envy them all the time, I just find that whatever I use as a background I'm not happy with! But, I have to get on with it or none of my posts would ever have photos! Sometimes I find I push myself too hard to make things perfect and I know a lot of my friends from the Secret Blogger Project do the same because they're always stressing about their photos or something on our chat and to me, they look perfect and I just want to shake them and tell them how great the photos are! I guess other people's perspective is sometimes better than your own! Little shoutout to my girls from the SBP there hope you's don't mind ;)
Five
Hours And Hours Later...
Blogging takes up so much time, more time than you would think. As I said at the beginning of this post, some people seem to think a post takes us about 5 or 10 minutes to write and then we press publish and we're done. The truth behind that is it actually takes us hours to completely finish post. Some may not take as long as others, especially if we're on a time scale but that doesn't mean all of them take that little time. Makeup tutorials for example, doing my makeup normally takes me about 30-45 minutes if I'm doing a full eye look, which I often do when I do a tutorial. To take photos of each stage in order to be able to write a post about it takes at least double that amount of time, at least. And that's just taking the photos, that doesn't include editing time or time to write the text that is going to go with it. We also spend a really long time coming up with ideas for posts and scheduling when they are going to go up etc. Don't underestimate how much time we actually put into this part of our lives!
Six
We Have To Keep Up With Life
Blogging is only one, really very small part of our lives. Quite a lot of bloggers are still in full or part time education or work, and some are in full time education and part time work. And some are part of groups and clubs outside of everything else, and we also all have family and friends. For me, blogging is an extra to the rest of my life. I absolutely love it and I really don't want to ever have to give it up but most other things come first for me. I guess this links to the last point about time because even along with school, work and other parts of life, bloggers still find the time to sit down and write. Mostly because we enjoy it and we want to because it's a hobby, although for some it is a full time career, but not for a lot. I realise the heading for this paragraph sounds extremely serious and deep but I don't mean for it to be, I just want to show that our whole lives aren't based around blogging, it isn't the only thing we do!
Seven
We Stress Like There's No Tomorrow
I'm a complete stress head, and if I forget to put up a post or realise that I don't actually have a post ready to go up on a day I'm meant to put something up, it will stress me out even though it shouldn't because at the end of the day, this is just a hobby for me. Like other things I discussed in this post, photos, content etc. are all things we have a little stress about every now and again, or for some all the time because we want to please everyone and even if there isn't anyone expecting there to be a post, we still feel like we're letting people down as well as ourselves. We try to be super organised but sometimes things slip our minds just like anything else would, but we still try super hard to get content up regularly for our readers.
Eight
What People Think Is Often Wrong
I think one of the biggest assumptions about bloggers is money and free products. People seem to think that one post earns us loads of money and we have a constant stream of emails coming in about free products, but I promise you this is definitely not for the case. I have been sent 1 free product in my whole 18 months of blogging and I have never earned any money from this page at all, as I don't have any ads on my page. One thing that I also don't think people know is that if a blogger is sent a product, they are often sent it in the hope or on the condition that they feature it on their page in the form of a review or something along those lines, so we don't just get sent things for no reason. Also, we don't blog because we want the free stuff and the money, we blog because we want to. If you're a blogger and all you care about is money and free products, you might want to rethink what you're doing because this isn't what it's all about.
Nine
HTML Is Our Worst Nightmare
Saying HTML is like summoning the devil. I can't even explain my hatred for HTML, I just don't even touch it. I have tried to play around with it a few times after reading up on it and watching numerous videos on it but I just can't get my head around it. Another shoutout to my SBP girls, some of them are amazing with HTML and one day I am going to get them to teach me everything there is to know about it because it frustrates me so much that I can't use it! I'm sure I can't be the only one who absolutely hates HTML, I know some of you know exactly how I feel!
Ten
You
We all write our blogs because we enjoy it and we want to, but we also do it for our audience. I originally started my blog thinking it would go nowhere and it would just be for me, I never thought I'd be nearing 300 followers! That might not sound like a lot to some people as I know that many bloggers have much more than that but for me that is a hell of a lot and I couldn't be happier or more surprised! Most people probably started out not expecting it to take off but we couldn't do some of the things we do without our followers. For example, I have been writing for the Silent Secret Tumblr page and I would never have gotten that opportunity without you guys, it's not all about us!
And that's everything I wanted to discuss today! I hope this post was either relatable for you or you found it interesting to get inside a blogger's head and understand a little more about the world of blogging!
See you soon!
Love, Becca
-xoxo
