The Three Ds That Will Make or Break Your Blogging Career – Desire

Photo by brilliantdandy.

In a few days this blog will be two years old. In internet terms, it’s not young anymore, and nobody would consider me a ‘new’ blogger. Now that the buzz of being discovered and rapid growth is moving into a new stage of maintaining and trying to build upon what has already been established, I’ve started to reflect on some of the insights I’ve gained through the successes and failures I’ve experienced as a blogger.

At its most basic, I believe what it takes to reach your full potential as a blogger is split into three key areas, or what I call ‘The Three Ds’. Like me, you’ll probably find that you’re strong in some areas and weak in others – and if you’re not hitting the goals you would like, it is probably these weaknesses that are holding you back.

I hope that you will go beyond reading the theme word of the post and assuming you know what it means, to digging deeper into the content. You might find some unconventional tips and ideas inside!

Desire

Long term success begins with an insatiable desire to write blog posts. If you feel this drive, you will blog prolifically, and you will make time to learn how to blog well. As a result, your reach and influence will grow.

You will have this desire because you love what you’re writing about, or you simply love the act of writing, or the end result, or some combination of these things. You will often hear that, as a blogger, you must be passionate about every single topic you write on. This is true for many, but it’s also true that some of those who love writing will enjoy writing about anything as long as they can flex their creative muscles. My friend and colleague Joel Falconer once told me that he felt he could write about anything simply because he loved the process itself so much. Others simply love feeling heard, being a leader, and having a captive audience. They feel like they could write about anything prolifically as long as more and more people continued to listen.

I’ve learned that we often place too much emphasis on picking the perfect topics when, fundamentally, it’s our attitude to the writing that matters. If you’re someone who craves large scale notoriety, blogging only about painting miniatures may not be rewarding, even if it is a passionate hobby of yours. You’d be better served picking a more mainstream focus with access to a bigger audience, and developing enthusiasm as you go.

Some bloggers who are very successful and prolific enjoy neither the act of writing or the subject of their posts very much, at least not in comparison to their enjoyment of the end result – whether that be income, profile or the simple pleasure of watching statistical graphs tilt skywards.

Maintaining an insatiable desire to write posts is not controlled by selecting the right topics. It’s determined by how well you are able to find and focus on what makes you tick as a writer – whether it’s the process, the topic, or the end result (money, fame, influence, legacy, learning, et al).

What makes you tick as a writer? What would stop blogging from being rewarding if it were taken away?

• What if you could never earn another cent from your blog?
• What if you never received another comment or email from a reader?
• What if your traffic and subscribers were frozen at their current levels for now and forever?

Which of these things could you push through, and which would defeat your desire to blog? By giving some thoughts to these questions you should be able to determine what really makes you tick. If you know what this is, you can nurture it and use it to fuel you over the many months it will take to reach your full potential. You may also discover that the blogging ‘job’ you’ve created for yourself is not actually oriented towards what you care about the most.

Keep the flame burning

The aim of the above exercise is to help you understand the central importance of having and retaining a burning desire to write posts on your blog. If you’ve lost this desire, something needs to change. If you no longer have it, hopefully you’ve felt it once and know what you’re missing. For many bloggers, this feeling is intense in the early stages of blogging, then wears off after you feel you have used most of your best ideas, then will come and go in bursts. I know this is something I have personally found challenging and still struggle with. As for excuses we might put forward, I don’t believe there is ever really such a thing as too busy, unless your life is actually filled with a steady stream of obligations you cannot get out of in every hour of the day. For most of us this won’t be the case. If you have a burning desire for something, you make time for it.

But if you’ve lost the desire, how do you get it back?

In my case, I’ve learned that I need breaks to refuel. If I force myself to write, I produce bad content, so I feel it’s better to wait until I feel inspired again. It’s not ideal, and I have tried for over a year to fix this, but now I’m starting to understand that some habits are just a part of who you are! Often the stress you feel about your bad habit outweighs the negative effects of the habit itself. Sometimes it’s best to just be at peace with your weaknesses and understand them as a natural counterbalance to your strengths.

For some, the loss of a desire to blog might be caused by the novelty wearing off. Particularly when writing in narrow niches, or writing timeless content that is not based on news or new developments, you can begin to feel over time that you have said everything there is to say on your topic, and that you are essentially repeating yourself. In this case, it’s important not to continue in the same way – particularly when writing blog posts begins to feel like a chore. The content you write will be poor and you will damage your feelings about blogging. Try to cover your topics from a different angle, or in a different style, or format. Try video blogging. Just try something different! And if that fails to rekindle your desire to blog, change tack and begin to branch into new topics. You will always gain more readers by writing with enthusiasm and vigor than you will lose by changing your focus.

The next D I’ll cover is Definition. And it doesn’t mean what you think it does!