Getting into blogging, especially as a full-time business, can be a scary thing. There is a risk that you will put your heart and soul into your business only to have it fail. Full-time blogging comes with numerous doubts and concerns such as:

• How will I make enough money to support myself and my loved ones?
• What if I fail and I have to go back and beg for my job?
• What if I fail and I have to face people who told me I was making a mistake?
• What if I waste 2 to 4 years of my life working on something that will fail?

Entrepreneurship, in general, can be difficult and risky. With a blogging business, just like in any other business, the chances are high that you will fail in your first few attempts.

The great thing about a blogging business is that the cost of starting and running the business is very low, meaning that you can fail and start again several times.

Blogging has many other benefits that make it worth investing your time and effort. But that doesn’t mean that there are no risks.

Therefore, you need to figure out a way to protect yourself so that failure does not complicate your life. You need to come up with a ‘no-fail’ blogging strategy to ensure that you end up winning even if you fail.

In this article, I will explore some strategies that will help you to reduce the risk of failure in your blogging business and help you to successfully overcome failure should it occur.

Some of the topics I will cover include:

• How to diagnose some of the major issues that cause blogs to fail.
• How to use learning to accelerate success.
• How you can protect yourself financially should your blog fail.
• How to stay motivated despite failure.
• How to pivot and take advantage of better opportunities.

Strategies to protect yourself against failure in your blogging business

Let us examine, in detail, the strategies that you can use to deal with failure in your blogging business.

1. Anticipate and Fix Issues That Can Cause Failure

Issues that cause blogs to fail tend to be common among many bloggers and they are well-documented. It is well worth your time to study the mistakes others have made so that you can get an idea of the mistakes you are likely to make in your blog.

What will cause your blog to fail?

The major causes of blogs to fail broadly fall into the following major categories:

#1. Technical issues with your blog

Technical problems can make or break your blog. It makes no sense to spend a lot of effort and money attracting visitors to your blog only for them to bounce off due to technical issues.

Some of the technical issues you should watch out for include:

• Starting your blog on the wrong platform with the wrong web hosting company.
• Having a blog with slow-loading web pages.
• Having a blog that is easy to hack.
• Having a poorly designed blog that makes it difficult for your visitors to find the information they need.

You can avoid these issues by starting your blog the correct way. If you are not sure about how to go about this, check out my article on how to start a blog the right way.

#2. Inability to attract enough visitors

No matter how good your content is, if you are unable to attract enough visitors to your blog, you will not make money.

The best way to attract visitors to your blog is to get good at Google SEO.

Google is the biggest referrer of traffic to blogs providing about 66% of their traffic (Blogging Statistics).

Google traffic has many other advantages such as:

• It is cheap.
• It can have a long-lasting effect especially if you target evergreen topics.
• It can deliver highly targeted traffic.

#3. Poor monetization strategies

If you want your blog to make money, you need to treat it as a business from day one. If your blog is not making any money, you may quickly get discouraged and give up.

Luckily, there are a few easy things you can do to ensure you increase your blogging income:

• Be clear about how you will monetize your site from day one. Which Ad networks pay well? Which affiliate programs should you promote?
• Diversify your blogging income. There are many ways you can make money from your blog. Don’t leave money on the table.
• Don’t be too greedy when monetizing for example by promoting shady products or constantly spamming your audience with scammy offers. Aim to make a customer and not a sale.

#4. Inability to provide sufficient value through your blog

Creating valuable content is the key to creating a successful blog. Why would anyone spend their hard-earned money on your blog if they are not getting enough value from your content? You need to ask yourself:

• Have you chosen a niche where you can provide value?
• Do you understand who your target audience is and what their needs are?
• Is your content relevant to your audience?
• Are you willing to learn and grow within your niche?

 

Many of the mistakes that cause blogs to fail can be easily fixed. To find out more about how to fix common blogging mistakes, read the article below:

• Amateur blogging mistakes that cause blogs to fail

2. Prioritize Learning How To Do Things the Right Way

Right now, and for the first time ever, a passionate and committed individual has access to the technology, minds, and capital required to take on any challenge. – Peter H. Diamandis, Entrepreneur Quotes

If you have never done blogging before, it is not very realistic to expect to nail it on your first try.

Investing time in learning how to do things the right way is probably one of the most powerful things you can do to find success faster.

Why you should invest in learning about blogging

• It will help you to avoid other people’s mistakes. If you do not know what other bloggers have done wrong and the lessons they have learned, you are bound to repeat their mistakes.
• It will cut down on the time for success. Success in blogging can take a long time if you try to figure out everything by yourself. You do not want to re-invent the wheel. Follow what has worked for others
• It will give you a competitive advantage. Learning the best ways to carry out various blogging tasks will give you an edge over those bloggers who think that learning is a waste of time.

Strategies to learn about blogging

To succeed in blogging, you need all the help you can get. Here are some strategies you can use to give you the best chances of success.

#1. Taking advantage of free and paid resources

You can take advantage of the numerous resources (free and paid) to learn valuable skills that will help you in your blogging journey.

With a platform like Skillshare, for example, you can get access to thousands of courses for an affordable monthly payment.

Some of the skills you can learn on platforms such as Skillshare include:

• How to use WordPress.
• How to get Google traffic through SEO.
• How to design  graphics.

#2. Learn from the experience of others

You can learn a lot from the experience of other bloggers. You can do this through:

• Reading income reports. Blogger income reports reveal a lot of information regarding how much bloggers are making, which methods they use to make money, and the opportunities and challenges they face. Check out a list blogger income reports here.
• Joining groups and forums. Find out where other bloggers hang out and join those groups. You can ask questions about any challenges you face.

#3. Learning from your own mistakes

Most of what you learn about blogging will be through through personal experience. You will make mistakes and learn from them.

You should view your mistakes as a source of learning rather than a source of distress.

You can learn by:

• Regularly testing things out, for example, different headlines or call-to-actions.
• Updating old blog posts. Go through your old posts and correct mistakes you made while you were a beginner blogger.

#4. Using data to discover opportunities or uncover hidden mistakes

Without data, you are a hostage to opinion.

Data will enable you to test out different strategies to find out the most effective ones.

There are many data tools that you can take advantage of.

• Use Google Analytics and Google search console (free Google tools) to see where your visitors are coming from and which keywords are getting them to your site.
• Use keyword tools (such as Semrush or Keysearch) to look for easy keywords you can rank for. They can give you a wealth of information on good keywords for attracting visitors.

3. Protect Yourself Financially

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes. – Zig Ziglar, Entrepreneur Quotes

A blogging business is a great business to have because it is profitable, cheap to start, and easy to run, unlike many brick-and-mortar businesses.

However, in a blogging business, much like in any other entrepreneurial venture, there are some risks:

• It takes long before you start making an income that can support you.  A blog can take anywhere between two and four years before it can fully support you.
• The income will vary a lot initially especially if you are in competitive niches.
• An algorithm change to Google or a cut in affiliate commission rates can take away a chunk of your income.

As your blog grows and you get more experience in blogging, your income will become more stable.

In the initial stages, you need to protect yourself financially from these challenges, especially if you intend to do blogging full-time and you have no other source of income.

How to protect yourself financially from blogging failure

There are several things you can do to protect yourself.

#1. Do blogging part-time

Given the challenges mentioned above, it may be better to start with part-time blogging rather than full-time blogging.

A part-time job will help you pay the bills as you grow your blog. However, you need to choose your part-time job well so that it leaves you with enough time for blogging.

• Look for a job with a lot of downtime for example, as night manager or receptionist at a hotel. You can use this downtime to work on your blog.
• Look for seasonal jobs such as working in a summer camp and use this money to support yourself for the rest of the year.
• Look for jobs where you make your own time, for example, taking up gig jobs (such as Uber, pizza delivery)

You can use sites like Flexjobs to check for flexible work opportunities.

 

For a deeper exploration of the challenges of full-time blogging, check on my article: Should I quit my job for full-time blogging?

#2. Have an emergency fund

You need to have an equivalent of 6 months to one year in savings so that you don’t put yourself under unnecessary pressure. If you plan to do blogging full-time and you have a family, you may need a bigger emergency fund.

Some of the strategies you can use to build up your emergency fund include:

• Reducing your monthly budget by sacrificing luxuries you don’t need.
• Selling stuff that you don’t regularly use.
• Working extra hours in your current job.

#3. Do freelance work

Blogging enables you to build several lucrative skills such as web design, copywriting, and SEO. Since you have to learn these skills in your blogging journey, you might as well get good at them so that you can earn money through freelancing.

Freelancing can win you back a lot of your time and freedom. You can take advantage of this to build your blog.

You can kick-start your freelancing work by:

• Using your blog to market your services. Provide a phone or email contact where they can reach you. You can also use a Livechat service to capture leads.
• Offering your services on a platform like Fiverr. Fiverr can be quite useful in building your initial customer base. You can also find freelance jobs on sites like Flexjobs.
• Reaching out directly to businesses and potential clients. For example, you can approach local businesses in your area and offer to create a website for them.

4. Set Yourself Up To Fail Forward

Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward. – John Maxwell, Entrepreneur Quotes

Whenever you fail at anything, it can feel like you wasted a big portion of your life. This is especially true when working on a long-term project where success is not guaranteed.

How do you deal with this?

You can take the sting out of failing by setting yourself up to fail forward.

When you fail forward, you keep moving ahead even when you fail. It means making the best use of your mistakes to ensure that you benefit despite failing to achieve your main objective.

With blogging, it can take a long time before you start to see results, and results are not guaranteed. Planning how to fail forward can help you cope with the prospect of failure.

How to fail forward in blogging

Blogging has many benefits besides monetary gain so it is not too difficult to plan how to fail forward. Here are some ways you can set up your blogging business to ensure that you fail forward.

#1. Work on something you enjoy

When choosing a niche, choose something that you are interested in.

If working in your niche brings personal joy, it will make you a happier person overall. Even if you fail, at least you had a blast doing it.

To choose a profitable niche that you will enjoy, you need to ask the following questions:

• Will you enjoy writing at least 50 articles in that niche?
• Are there enough people interested in your niche?
• Do you have adequate skills to provide value to others in that niche or are you willing to learn these skills?
• Are there examples of people making money in the niche?

#2. Build skills and domain knowledge

If you spend the next five years blogging about a particular topic or niche, you are naturally going to build up a wealth of knowledge and skills in that particular field.

However, to benefit fully from the knowledge and skills you acquire, you need to choose what you learn carefully. As you learn skills, ask yourself:

• Can you re-use these skills in another business or job?
• Are these skills in high demand?
• Can you learn these skills quickly and cheaply?

The best skills to learn are transferrable skills. These are skills that can be transferred from one job to another or from one industry to another.

Luckily, blogging skills such as content writing, copywriting, SEO, graphic design, and web design are not only highly transferrable but also in high demand.

#3. Build life skills

Blogging can teach you valuable life skills that you cannot learn from any book or course. Life skills are crucial for success in life and you get them through personal experience, usually through making mistakes and learning from them.

Some of the life skills you learn from blogging include:

• How to fail without losing hope.
• How to create habits and routines that help you to become productive.
• How to be persistent.

#4. Provide real value

As a full-time blogger, the main purpose of your blog is to provide value to visitors while providing you with an income that can sustain you.

When your blog is new, you may find it difficult to make a decent living despite providing good value.

Does it mean you have failed? If people’s lives are made better because of your blog, then it is not a waste of time.

For example, if your blog gets 100 visitors a month, you will probably not make a full-time living from it. However, you still have a chance to change and impact the lives of 100 people every month.

Here is how you can provide real value:

• Understand people’s problems, needs, and pain points then try your best to give them solutions.
• Provide what your competitors are neglecting to provide.

If you do this, the few visitors you have will keep coming back and bring others with them.

5. Set the Right Expectations Right from the Start

Many people come into blogging with some pretty high expectations, mainly because bloggers tend to emphasize the rosier aspects of blogging while glossing over the challenges.

The problem with unrealistic expectations is that you can quickly get discouraged if your expectations are not met. You may feel like you are failing when in reality, you are on the right path.

Before you get into blogging as a full-time business, you need to weigh the pros and cons.

Common unrealistic expectations of blogging

Here are some of the common expectations that might lead to failure.

#1. Thinking that you will make a lot of money quickly

People are attracted to blogging when they read of bloggers making $50k, $100k, and even $200k every month. They believe that they will be making this kind of money in no time.

However, you will probably not make anything near that, especially at the beginning. In fact, 50% of bloggers earn less than $100 a month through blogging.

It helps to set your expectations straight right from the beginning. You can do this by:

• Reading income reports from bloggers in your niche including those who are just starting out. Pay attention to how long they have been blogging before they start making good money.
• Look at website marketplaces like Motion Invest or Flippa to see how much money blogs in your niche make.
• Use keyword tools like Semrush or Keysearch to estimate how much traffic bloggers in your niche get.

#2. Thinking that blogging is easy

Blogging as a hobby can be easy and stress-free because there is no expectation that the blog will support your lifestyle. However, if you plan to live off your blog, you need to put in a lot more effort. This means that:

• Your blog will consume a lot of your time, especially at the beginning. Your social life may begin to suffer and this can lead to a feeling of isolation and loneliness.
• You need to do a lot of learning. If you enjoy learning, then this is not a problem. However, you can easily get overwhelmed by how much learning you need to do.
• You lose certainty. With a regular job, you know that your income will come at the end of the month. You work a certain number of hours and make a certain amount of money. With blogging, nothing is guaranteed. You need to be comfortable with uncertainty.

#3. Thinking that success will come quick

Some bloggers write a handful of articles and conclude that blogging does not work when they don’t see much traffic.

It will take time to get decent traffic especially if you rely on SEO traffic from Google. Don’t give up and delete your blog before:

• You have a critical mass of content on your site. Aim to write at least 50-100 high-quality articles that are SEO optimized.
• You have given your content enough time to rank. If you have a new blog, it can take up to 6 months for your articles to start ranking if you have done things well. It can take longer for competitive or YMYL topics.

If you do these things and decide that you still want to quit, you can sell your site in marketplaces like MotionInvest or Flippa and make some money instead of deleting your blog.

6.  Adopt a Long-Term Mindset of Success

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. – Bill Gates, Entrepreneur Quotes

Given that success in blogging is more like a marathon rather than a sprint, you need to plan for the long term.

Give yourself enough time to succeed as you work patiently and doggedly on your blog.

How not to give up too soon

You can rob yourself of success by being too impatient. Here are some strategies you can use to cope with impatience:

#1. Motivate yourself to embrace delayed gratification

Many people sacrifice large and important long-term benefits for small short-term benefits. It is how our brains work; we lose motivation when things seem to be taking too long. You can re-wire your brain to pursue long-term benefits by:

• Having an exciting vision. Your goal for having a blog should be exciting enough to keep you going even when you don’t see immediate benefits.
• Creating and celebrating small milestones. When you are working on a long-term project, your end goal can seem too far and this can be discouraging. Deliberately set and celebrate smaller milestones that contribute to your final goal.
• Resetting your expectations. When you have the right estimate of how long it takes to accomplish something, you can prepare yourself mentally.

#2. Consistently take action

When you are not consistent in taking action, you can easily get frustrated at your lack of progress. Create consistency by:

• Building habits. When you build a habit, you don’t have to rely on willpower to do things. You can build a habit by doing a task every day, for example, by sitting down to write every day.
• Starting small. If you find it difficult to consistently take action, you can start small and build from there. For example, if you cannot write for one hour every day, you can try writing for 30 minutes.
• Tracking your progress. You will be more motivated to work on something as long as you see some progress.

#3. Go at your own pace

When you try to rush towards success, you can easily get overwhelmed and suffer burnout. You need to:

• Avoid comparing yourself with others. Comparing yourself with others will only leave you feeling frustrated at your slow progress. Be comfortable with the fact that some people will start blogging later than you but make more money faster than you.
• Enjoy the process. The journey matters more than the destination. If you don’t enjoy many of the activities that come with running a blogging business, you are better off doing something else.
• Avoid doing too many things. Focus on the tasks that will have the most impact on your business. If you do too many things, you will end up with many half-finished projects.
• Take regular breaks. If you find yourself getting bored or losing interest, it is okay to take a break and work on something else you enjoy. Once you feel rejuvenated, you can come back and put in 100% of your effort.

7. Have a Pivot Plan

Your blogging business will sometimes fail despite your best efforts.  Rather than giving up on blogging entirely, you should explore ways that you can change your strategy to take advantage of other opportunities in blogging.

Don’t wait for your blog to fail before you develop a pivot strategy.

As you progress on your blogging journey, you will come across new opportunities and ideas. You need to capture these ideas and record them somewhere for future use.

Examples of how you can pivot effectively in your blogging business

There are several simple ways you can pivot in your blogging business.

#1. Change your niche

Your niche can make the difference between a thriving blogging business and a blog that is barely scraping by.

If you are unable to make enough income from your blog, you can pivot by tapping into more profitable niches. When choosing a niche, ensure that:

• You can monetize your niche. It is easier to make money in some niches compared to others.
• You can get traffic. Some niches are too competitive and getting traffic is a chore. If you are a beginner blogger, it might be better to go for the low-hanging fruit until you get more experience.
• You are interested in the niche. If you are not interested in your niche, you might find it difficult to create content even if you are in a profitable niche.

You can pivot your niche by tapping other related sub-niches or you can go into an entirely different niche by starting a new blog.

#2. Diversify your income sources

Many bloggers, especially beginner bloggers, do not take full advantage of all the ways of making money from their blogs.

You could be leaving money on the table by failing to diversify your sources of income. You need to:

• Explore and test other monetization methods. Apart from Ads, there are many other ways to make money with your blog including affiliate marketing or offering your own products and services.
• Look for higher-paying offers. For example, if you use Google AdSense for your ad revenue, you can increase your income by signing up for a premium ad network like Ezoic.

#3. Tap into other sources of traffic

Google traffic is one of the best sources of traffic. If you can master how to leverage Google effectively, you can have access to cheap, long-term traffic. However, you should also think about diversifying your sources of traffic by:

• Starting a YouTube channel. Competition tends to be lower in YouTube and you can use it to drive traffic to your blog. The other advantage of YouTube is that it can generate additional income through YouTube ads.
• Building an email list. The great thing about an email list is that you own it and it is not affected by algorithm changes. You can use a beginner-friendly email service like Systeme.io to get started for free.
• Targeting social media. Some kinds of topics do well with social media traffic. For example, where images feature prominently, leveraging Pinterest can be an advantage.

8. Keep Your Motivation High

Failure, especially repeated failure, can crush any motivation to keep going. You may start to feel like you are wasting your time on something that will probably never work.

When you lose hope, you become vulnerable to quitting. You can get out of a quitting mindset by looking for different sources of motivation.

How to motivate yourself when facing failure

Here are some simple things you can do to keep yourself motivated when things don’t seem to be working out.

#1. Remind yourself of your why

Blogging has numerous benefits if you are willing to push through the initial hurdles. It is important to remind yourself of these benefits from time to time.

If you are struggling to see why blogging matters, check out the following articles:

• Is blogging worth it for making money online?
• How to use blogging to change your life

As you go through the benefits, ask yourself:

• What are your core values?
• What kind of lifestyle do you want?
• What kind of income do you want?
• Who do you want to impact?

You can structure your blogging business around your core values and intended lifestyle.

# 2. Clear your doubts about blogging as a way to make money online

When you are starting out blogging, you will probably have doubts as to whether you can make a living through blogging in the long term. You may have questions like:

• Does blogging work as a business model?
• Are people making money in blogging?
• Does blogging have a future long term?

I have written extensively about these issues so I will point you to the articles below if you have doubts about the long-term viability of blogging.

• Is blogging dead? Why blogging is still a great opportunity
• How much do bloggers really earn?
• Future of blogging

#3. Read blogger success stories

Your fellow bloggers have probably gone through or are going through the same problems you are facing. You can follow the journeys of other bloggers by studying their income reports. The advantage of reading income reports is:

• They give a good insight into the growth and progress of a blog.
• They are great for identifying challenges that you are likely to face and solutions to those challenges.
• They are inspiring because they give hope that you too can succeed if you put in the effort.

Check out my article with over 70 blogger income reports here.

In addition to reading income reports, you can join groups and forums where bloggers discuss their challenges and successes.

#4. Read inspirational quotes and biographies

You can get a lot of insight on how to be successful by reading the biographies and quotes of successful people. The benefits of doing this are plenty including:

• You start to adopt the mindset and belief systems of people who have succeeded despite big hurdles.
• You begin to appreciate the value of struggling for something worthwhile.
• You get free coaching from some of the world’s top minds.

Check out my collection of over 230 inspirational quotes for entrepreneurs. You can also check out my collection of over 170 inspirational quotes for writers.

9. Avoid Personalizing Success or Failure

Personalizing successes sets people up for disastrous failure. They begin to treat the successes totally as a personal reflection of their abilities rather than the result of capitalizing on a good opportunity, being at the right place at the right time, or even being just plain lucky. – Brendan Moynihan, Entrepreneur Quotes

Tying your self-identity to the outcome of your efforts, whether good or bad can be a double-edged sword.

When you succeed, you gain a lot of confidence in yourself because you believe that you are the source of your success. Similarly, when you fail, you lose confidence in yourself and blame yourself for the failure.

With blogging, as with most other worthwhile ventures, you are likely to spend most of your time failing. If your self-identity is tied too much to the outcome, failure can end up destroying your confidence and make you hesitant to take risks.

How to fail without viewing yourself as a failure

#1. Dissociate your self-identity from the outcome of your business

You need to find a balance between taking responsibility for your failure or success while at the same time avoiding basing your self-identity entirely on your successes or failures.

Failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night. – Zig Ziglar

It is futile to base your self-identity on your outcomes because:

• Success or failure can come from many other factors that may have nothing to do with your abilities. Many of these factors may be out of your control. Similarly, you can succeed despite your failings.
• When you work on a difficult goal, chances are high that you will spend most of your time failing. If your identity is tied out outcomes and you experience repeated failure, your self-worth will be damaged. It helps to remember that failure is an event, not a person.
• If you fear failure, you will try to protect your ego by avoiding difficult things. You will only work on things that you are assured of success and this can limit how far you can go. What is more important to you, achieving your full potential or protecting your ego?

#2. Do not berate and constantly beat yourself up

One result of personalizing failure is that you end up punishing yourself by berating and beating yourself up in your head. You think that by doing this, you can shame yourself into success. But this is the wrong approach because:

• You reinforce your sense of being a failure.
• You develop a fear of trying new things and taking risks.
• It can take a toll on your mental health and leave you feeling beaten and drained.

A better approach is to be kind to yourself.

You don’t train a child to walk by beating and berating them every time they fall. Instead, you encourage and applaud them every time they make progress.

Use the same strategy when dealing with your failures.

#3. Re-frame your narrative about failing

There is a lot of stigma regarding failure in many cultures. Failure is seen as something to be ashamed of. You will need to do a lot of work to re-frame your mental narrative regarding failure. Here are some examples of narratives you can re-frame.

• I’m afraid people will laugh at me. Those who laugh at you when you fail will call you a genius when you eventually succeed.
• If I fail, people will think I am stupid. If a goal is important enough to you, you should try and accomplish it even if the chances of you failing and looking stupid are high. Don’t let what people think deter you from pursuing something that is potentially beneficial.
• Failure will make me lose confidence in myself. You have the power to choose how you react to failure. You can choose to beat yourself up or to embrace failure and look at growth opportunities.

10. Persevere through Failure

Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. –Samuel Johnson, Entrepreneur Quotes

Ability to persevere through failure is the biggest differentiator between those who fail at blogging and those who succeed spectacularly.

When you look at bloggers making a full-time income, you are struck by how normal they are. They are former teachers, nurses, paramedics, or stay-at-home parents.

They were successful because they persevered through failure. They all went through a phase when nothing was working out for them but they chose to stick it out. They worked hard and patiently over several years, delivering valuable content to their visitors.

Success in blogging is like rolling the dice. The more times you roll the dice, the more likely you are to hit a six. Most of your rolls will be misses but you only have to be right once.

Why you are likely to fail as a beginner blogger?

Here’s why you are likely to fail as a beginner:

• You will make beginner mistakes. If you have never done something before, expecting to succeed on your first try is unrealistic (see common beginner blogging mistakes).
• You will have unrealistic expectations. If you get into blogging without doing proper research, you may be blindsided by its disadvantages. It is important to be mentally prepared for the challenges of blogging.
• You have not developed the skills, habits, and mindset necessary for success. These take time to develop.

Given that failure in blogging is almost guaranteed, you might as well embrace it.

Why you should embrace failure in your blogging business

Embracing failure in your blogging business is beneficial because:

#1. Failure is the gatekeeper to success

Failure only lets through the people who are willing to pay the price of entry. If you are willing to endure failure better than most, you will break through the gate.

Adopt the attitude that failure is part of the process rather than the end of the process. You are not a failure but a success in progress.

#2. Failure teaches valuable lessons

You can learn more from failure than from success. Failure can be an indication that:

• You need a better strategy. Failure exposes bad strategies. Sometimes it can be difficult to spot a bad strategy because some bad strategies will work well for a while before eventually failing. The faster you get off the wrong path, the better.
• You have found your limits. Recognizing your limits will prompt you to collaborate with others who are good at what you are weak at.

#3. Failure reduces your competition

Blogging, especially in some niches, can be fiercely competitive. The competitive niches also tend to be the most lucrative. This competition can be a good thing if you can persevere through failure because:

• It can act as a barrier to entry. It kicks out those people who get into blogging expecting quick wins.
• You can beat your competition by simply outlasting them. Your aim should be to be the last person standing.

#4. Failure keeps you sharp

When you are always successful, you can start to take things for granted and complacency will start to creep in.

This prevents you from attaining your maximum potential and when strong competitors come in, they will annihilate you. Failure is beneficial because it will:

• Keep you on your toes and eager to improve.
• Help you to develop the stamina and mental strength needed for extremely difficult tasks.
• Protect you against developing a fixed mindset where you start to believe that you are naturally gifted. That success is guaranteed even if you slack off. For more on fixed and growth mindsets, read Carol Dweck’s excellent book Mindsets

11. Use Failure for Personal Growth

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles have strengthened me. – Walt Disney, Entrepreneur Quotes

Would you be happy if you could succeed at everything you do on your first try?

Everyone would probably consider you to be a talented genius and you would make a lot of money. So what’s the catch?

The biggest problem I see with effortless success is that it could stunt your personal growth.

Effortless success can rob you of the benefits of having to struggle for something worthwhile.

While no one would deliberately want to fail, if it happens, you can use it to grow yourself and become a better version of yourself.

Explore how you can use failure to move you closer to the person you want to become.

How failure can help you grow in life and business

Here are some of the ways that failure can help you in your life and business.

#1. It forces you to tap your creativity to overcome obstacles

Creativity, just like any other skill, requires regular practice. However, when things go smoothly, we tend to operate on autopilot and our creativity lies dormant.

However, when you meet a challenge that you have never faced before, you are forced to look outside the box and use your creativity to find solutions. In your blogging business, for example, you can practice using your creativity to:

• Solve your audience’s problems and meet their needs.
• Come up with innovative products and services.
• Create effective marketing campaigns.

#2. It can help you develop mental toughness

If you want to get stronger physically, you go to the gym. If you want to get mentally strong, you expose yourself to challenges.

Failure puts a strain on you and strengthens you so that you can grow and handle even bigger challenges. Through trying and failing, you learn how to:

• Think for yourself and take responsibility for your actions.
• Persevere and press on even when the odds are against you.
• Develop techniques to cope with the stress of failing.

#3. It desensitizes you to the fear of failure

The fear of failure can prevent you from taking advantage of new opportunities that could be beneficial for you in your personal and business life.

If you regularly put yourself in a situation where you are likely to fail, you start to lose the fear of failure.

You can manage your fear more effectively because you:

• Learn to trust yourself to handle challenges. You become aware of your capabilities and limitations.
• Develop mechanisms to control your fear.
• Develop faith that you will come out the other side because you have done it before.

Final Thoughts

Given that 50% of bloggers will fail at making money in blogging, you have to be prepared to fail your way to success.

Learning to fail, therefore, will be one of the important skills for you to master as a blogger.

If your blog is failing, understand that failure is not the end of things but rather the beginning of bigger and better things.

Given the immense benefits that come with running a blogging business, it is worth pushing through your failure.

The strategies I have talked about in this post will help you in your blogging journey and in any other difficult venture you undertake in life. They will give you a foundation from which you can overcome failure and the fear of failure.

When it comes to making money online, it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the options that are available out there.

Should you open a store on Shopify? Fill out online surveys? Write an e-book? Make an app? Start a YouTube channel? Start a podcast?  Become a social media influencer?

It is not that easy to distinguish between what works and what is a complete waste of time.

Why you should start a blog

Blogging has been proven time and time again as a great way of making money online. There is a lot of evidence (in form of income reports and income surveys) that will show you how much you can earn from blogging.

Also, check out the following statistics (source: Blogging Statistics)

• In 2020, there were 31.7 million bloggers in the United States (an increase from 27.4m in 2014). This means that roughly 10% of Americans are bloggers.
• The content marketing industry was estimated to be worth US$300.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to US$723.6 Billion by 2026.
• Nearly half (47%) of Global shoppers say they use Google before buying something new.

What these statistics show is that blogging is still very popular and that there is still a lot of opportunity for growth.

Described as the ‘Stephen King of children’s literature’, R.L. Stine is one of the most prolific authors of children’s horror novels. In this article, we explore his insights and advice on writing through quotes from several of his interviews. Some of the topics covered include:

• The reality of a writer’s life
• Advice on what it takes to write a bestseller
• How to turn fear into success
• His writing process

 

If you want to learn how to write from R.L. Stine, check out his writing course on MasterClass. Learn more about MasterClass courses here.

Quotes on the Writing Life

1. I knew when I was nine that I wanted to be a writer. I don’t know why it sounded so interesting, but it did. – The Verge Interview

2. I always knew I could make a living as a writer; it’s only thing that I’m really competent at. I wanted to be a cartoonist but I really can’t draw at all. – The Village Voice Interview

3. I just love to write. I love the feeling of putting stories together and coming up with new, surprising ways to say things. – Family Education Interview

4. I like being in my room, writing books and not collaborating. – Collider Interview

5. I never planned to be a kids’ writer. I always wrote these funny novels for adults, but no one ever wanted them. I never wanted to be scary, either. I only wanted to be funny. – The Verge Interview

6. I always tell kids- I always tell them there’s no way to plan your life. You never know where you’re going to land. There are always going to be all kinds of surprises. – NPR Interview

7. Most people know when to quit. I’ve never done anything else. I’ve never had a real job. I just love it. – Collider Interview

8. A friend of mine once asked me, “How long can you go without writing? Writers don’t retire do they?” I said, “Well, maybe 10 days.” – The Verge Interview

9. I start to feel uncomfortable if I’m not writing, after like two weeks. – The Verge Interview

10. I don’t think authors retire. I think of Robert B. Parker, who just dropped dead on the keyboard. I think that’s the way to go. – GEN Interview

Quotes on R.L. Stine’s Writing Process

11. I do a chapter-by-chapter outline for every book that I write. I really believe in outlines. If you have an outline, you can’t get stuck. You know where you’re going, you know where the ending is. – Entertainment Weekly Interview

12. For all my books, I always come up with the ending first – because if I know where I am heading, the plotting and writing are easier. It puts me in control. Then my main job is make sure that I distract and fool you enough that you don’t know where you are going and you can just take the ride. – Waikato Herald Interview

13. It’s funny because I never really learned to type. I’m totally left-handed, and I just started typing with my pointer finger, nothing else, just one finger, not even two. And I’ve now written 300 books on this finger. – The Strand Magazine Interview

14. I have a couple hours of writing, every day. It’s the best part of my day. – Collider Interview

15. I write every day from about 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. – The Village Voice Interview

16. It gave me so much time to write. It helped with my schedule because I write 2,000 words a day, which is about ten pages (On writing during the pandemic). – GQ Interview

17. I love the writing part. All these people that say writing is hard, I never know what they’re talking about. Everyone says, “Oh, writing is so hard.” I don’t think it’s hard. It’s fun. – The Verge Interview

18. When I’m on a writers’ panel or something and these guys say, “Oh, writing is so hard. My kids aren’t allowed anywhere in the room when I’m writing.” I hate that. I just hate that. – GEN Interview

19. I think writers just have their own speed, and I don’t think slowing down or speeding up or changing the process would really change the quality of the writing. I really don’t. – The Verge Interview

Quotes on Writing a Best Seller

20. I work very hard to keep these books from being too real. The real world is much scarier than what I write about. My books are just meant to entertain … I don’t do drugs. I don’t do child abuse. I don’t really ever do divorce.” – The Strand Magazine Interview

21. When I write, I try to picture kids that are the age of who I’m writing for. So, if I’m writing a teen book or a YA book, like Fear Street, I have teen faces in my mind. I try to picture them as teenagers. And then, when I’m writing for younger kids, I picture younger kids. – Collider Interview

22. I never give advice to young writers. They don’t need someone to tell them to write something every day. The one thing I will say is: have fun with it. – GQ Interview

23. I don’t try to put any messages in these books: the only lesson is to run. Adults have the right to read something just for fun, and I’ve always thought kids had the same right. Why can’t a kid just pick up a book and be entertained? – The Guardian Interview

24. I say to kids, “I’ve written 330 books, not a single one from my heart. Not one! They’re all written to entertain an audience. – GEN Interview

25. When you’re writing a story, you’re just writing a story. It all comes as a surprise. All these parents at book signings come up and say, “You changed my kid’s life. They didn’t read before you.”- GEN Interview

Quotes on Fear

26. I was a very shy kid – very shy – and not social at all. Maybe this is one reason I just stayed in my room, writing this stuff. I would bring it in to school and try to get attention from the other kids. – Reading Rockets Interview

27. That’s a painful way to go through childhood, I think, having all these fears and being very shy. That was hard. But in a way, it’s kind of lucky. It helped me out later, because now, when I write these scary books for kids, I can think back to that feeling of panic. I can remember what it felt like, and then I can bring that feeling to my books. – Reading Rockets Interview

28. I want the scares to be fun, not disturbing. I often use the example of a roller coaster. If you listen to people riding a roller coaster they scream and they laugh. They are scared, but rationally they know that they are safe. – Waikato Herald Interview

29. I use humour a lot: whenever I think a scene is getting too scary for younger kids I throw in something funny, so that it doesn’t become too intense. – The Guardian Interview

30. My one rule is that they have to know that what’s happening in this book can’t happen. They have to know it’s a fantasy. And then I can make it pretty scary. There aren’t any real-world scares in the book. There’s no kidnapping, or divorce, or anything. No real-world stuff. It’s an escape from real-world stuff. – GEN Interview

Quotes on Getting Ideas

31. I don’t start with an idea. I start with a good title, and that leads me to an idea. – Entertainment Weekly Interview

32. It’s always a miracle to me when suddenly I have an idea for a new one (a book) – NPR Interview

Quotes on Reading

33. I read all the time. I’m a very big reader. I read every day. – Collider Interview

34. My absolute favourite writer is Ray Bradbury. As a child, he showed me the vast world of creative writing and imagination and turned me into an avid reader. – Waikato Herald Interview

35. I’m more proud of the kids who learned to read on my books and the kids who didn’t like to read, and then discovered my books and did like to read. – Collider Interview

36. You can’t really force kids to read something they don’t want. – The Verge Interview

Bonus Quote

37. Writing for kids, everyone says: “Oh, it must keep you young.” That’s a total lie. It keeps you feeling really old. – The Guardian Interview