5 Blog Fears & Obsessions You Can Solve Today

This is a guest post by Amino Zawawi of Freelancer 2.0 – Making Money Sans The Early
Mornings

During the six years I’ve blogged, I’ve seen all sorts of fears echoing in the blogsphere crawling and intimidating bloggers. Like any problem in the world, it’s easier to solve it when you’ve got it written down. Here are 5 fears that have grown over the years into a nightmarish obsession for bloggers.

Am I Doing It Right?

I’ve previously discussed this phenomenon and it’s probably one of the most dangerous on the list because of its grave consequence: most bloggers quit blogging because of this fear.

To dissect this fear, we notice that bloggers start wondering why X blog has grew into a superblog during the last year, while their 6 month blog is still struggling to keep its two loyal visitors. The blogger starts asking “Am I doing it right?”

How can you get rid of this fear before it grows into an obsession?

1. Understand that different blogs have different traffic, visitors, and revenue.
2. Try to educate yourself on SEO, ranking, traffic, etc.
3. Work on your website both content wise and networking wise. Don’t expect people to read your blog if you’re not a blog reader and commenter yourself

Will I Ever Be On Digg’s Main?

As far as I can trace, the Digg fear started in 2007. More people were concerned about getting their stories dug after the news spread about an unbelievable traffic surge for those featured on the main page. Suddenly, everyone started dreaming nonstop of the famous main page. This only led to shout spam, unknown friend requests, and digg vote sales. Bloggers began to feel frustrated after some time, since their stories did not get past the 20 diggs.

How can you get rid of the Digg fear?

1. When it comes to social networking, you have to make friends and network in order to get the results wanted.
2. Try to mingle with people in your field via forums, groups, etc. You’ll be surprised by the number of diggs you’ll get once you feature it on your forum or add your new group friends to your digg list.
3. Post interesting, controversial, or useful content. No one loves to digg a story about how your second cousin Willy got a nose job.

Is It Because I Don’t Have A Domain?

This is once of the most widespread fears in the blogsphere. The debate between free hosting and hosted blogs has been only growing larger nowadays. You’d probably wonder whether your blog is not faring well because of its free hosting. You might start to feel inadequate between all those hosted domain; you will start feeling nauseous every time you login via the main blogging platform you’re using. Not to mention feeling utterly humiliated when that famous bloggers wouldn’t even consider a guest post by you.

How can you get rid of the free hosting fear?

1. Consider buying a domain and a hosting package. Why is that? I’ve explained this before using a company office analogy, you won’t get as much customers with your office located in a 120 generic offices building. Considering a domain will not only end your fear, it will pay off later on with all advertising you can embed.
2. If you’re not up for a domain, remember that content is still king (though some have valid points in claiming it’s not anymore). Your guest posts, comments, and features aren’t based on design as much as they are on content. No one would want an empty post from a fancy domain!

Is My Blog Being Scraped?

Blog scraping, or duplicating blog content for advertising revenue, has been on the rise lately. Many bloggers started fearing this incident will rob away their readers and advertising revenue alike. Splogs, or spam blogs, fetch your content using copying bots and make your life a living nightmare.

How can you stop your blog from being scraped?

1. Since most splogs are free hosted, one way is to constantly monitor your content by googling it and reporting splogs copying your content.
2. Including local links to previous relevant posts inside your post will turn the tables, since the visitors will be instantly redirected back to your website.
3. Including a copyright note in your feed is yet another way. There’s a useful plugin that can do this for you (http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-plugin-to-automatically-add-copyright-message-to-your-rss-atom-feeds/).

Will my blog ever make money?

More bloggers are becoming concerned about their modest Adsense revenues. If you google Adsense, you’ll notice there’s at least 12 websites giving you the latest secret recipe for Adsense profit. Not that it’s not helpful, but this is only making bloggers fear that they’ll never be able to monetize their blogs.

How can you assure yourself that your blog can make profit?

1. Review your optimizing techniques. More optimized, naturally keyword saturated posts tend to garner more profit than artificially keyword stuffed content.
2. Try blending your Adsense with the design of your blog. Odds are no one would click if you use the default Adsense format (with the border and blue links). Opt for harmonious colors that won’t stand out.
3. Network with other blogs and create readership. You cannot monetize your blog if no one is visiting.

Those were the most common blog fears, feel free to add more fears you’ve come across. Whatever happens, remember that blogging is about passion: don’t let anything come between you and your blogging.