Starting a blog can be overwhelming, as there are so many advantages and disadvantages of blogging itself.
From positive aspects like flexibility, uncapped earnings potential, and learning new skills, blogging also comes with no guaranteed success and loneliness.
This article will share 12 advantages and disadvantages of blogging that I’ve found in the past seven months.
Like any job, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows all the time; there’s a lot of hard work and challenges involved.
Anyways, let’s get straight into the list of the pros and cons of blogging.
Skip to:
– Advantages of blogging
– Disadvantages of blogging
Advantages of Blogging
1. Flexibility
If you’d love to have a job with flexibility, then blogging may be the perfect job for you! Unlike a 9 – 5 job, you can blog at any time throughout the day.
Whether writing at 6 AM or 11 PM, blogging has no set instructions for when you can and can’t work.
This makes it perfect for college students, parents, or those with full-time jobs. You are your own boss, so you never have to worry about strict deadlines, because you make them yourself.
Haven’t started a blog? Be sure to read how to start a profitable blog in 2021.
2. Uncapped earnings potential
Another advantage of blogging is the uncapped earnings potential you can make from your blog.
Oppose to a regular job where you get paid an hourly rate or salary (with little room for bonuses or pay-rises). Blogging has no set earnings potential.
You can make $0 a month or $100,000+ a month. It all just depends on your niche, competition, quality of posts, and scalability.
Many bloggers can make over six figures a month, as shown in my highest paid bloggers article.
3. Learn heaps of new skills
One of my favorite advantages of blogging is the new skills I’ve learned in the past six months.
With blogging, you get thrown into the deep end and have to learn new skills quickly; otherwise, you’ll fall behind.
New skills you’ll learn from blogging:
– How to set up and customize a functioning website
– How to write valuable content that drives clicks
– Different ways to implement SEO
– How to market yourself and your blog
– How to make money online (affiliate marketing, ads, sponsored content, etc.)
Plus, heaps more skills!
Not only will you learn new blogging skills, but you’ll also become better at organizing your time and will develop the characteristics of successful business owners.
Recommended read: 9 ways a blogger makes money.
4. Not physically demanding
Compared to a trades job (like construction work), blogging is a whole lot less physically demanding.
People often talk about how hard blogging is, and I agree with them to an extent. But it’s no way near as tiring as waking up at 5:30 AM, leaving home at 6 AM, getting to work at 7 AM, and getting home after 4 PM.
I get it’s an unfair comparison, but as bloggers, we have to realize that people are working a lot harder for money than we are.
5. Help people
If you love helping people, blogging is a perfect job for you. The purpose of a blog is to help people find the answer that they are looking for.
Just like how you’ve clicked on this post, I’m sharing 12 advantages and disadvantages of blogging that I’ve found as a blogger myself.
Blogging is excellent if you love to help people solve their problems to questions they’ve asked, and it can apply to any niche.
An example of myself is that I love to teach people how to save money and blogging tips and tricks they can implement from the beginning of their blogging journey.
6. Low-cost investment
The last of the advantages of blogging is that it’s a low-cost investment, to begin with. Compared to a physical store that costs thousands upfront and in rent, blogging is on the other end of the spectrum.
Here’s the pricing of starting a blog:
Required:
– Domain name: $10 for the first year
– Web hosting: $10/month with Cloudways (get $15 credit through this link)
Optional expenses:
– Premium theme: $60+
– Logo: $10 – $100+
– Caching plugin: $60/year
– Content: 10 – 25 cents a word
Disclaimer: The Cloudways link above is a referral link, where I may receive a small commission on signups or purchases at no cost to you. You can read my full disclosure here.
As we can see, only a domain name and web hosting are technically required to start a blog. You can create a logo in Canva for free (precisely what I’ve done) and go cheaper in other ways.
Recommended read: How much does it cost to start a blog in 2021?
Disadvantages of Blogging
1. No set-in-stone pathway to success
The first disadvantage of blogging that I wanted to mention is that there’s no set-in-stone pathway to success.
Unlike moving up the ranks in a regular job, there’s no correct method to succeed in blogging.
Many bloggers can drive all of their traffic to their blog from Pinterest, whereas others drive all their traffic solely from Google.
Many bloggers have been able to go full-time within six months of blogging, whereas many have taken years to get to that point.
See the trend that’s going on. There’s no correct way to succeed in blogging, and it’s that missing structure and guidance causes over 80% of blogs to fail.
2. It takes a lot of time
If you had told me one year ago how much time I spend on my blog every day, I probably would’ve laughed at you.
Blogging takes so much time, and I don’t think non-bloggers understand bloggers’ commitment to their blogs.
It’s nowhere near like writing a post in an hour and publishing; so many factors and elements go into a well-crafted blog post.
Here are some time-consuming blogging tasks:
1. Writing: It can take anywhere from 2 – 10+ hours for a 1000+ word blog post.
2. Keyword research: 15 mins – 1+ hour. Without any DA as a beginner, you need to scour the internet for low-competition keywords that you can potentially rank for.
3. SEO: You need to ensure that your post follows SEO guidelines to rank on search engines.
4. Promotion: After the blog post is published, you aren’t finished yet. You still need to promote social media (like creating Pinterest pins) and email your subscribers list.
There are only four examples of time-consuming blogging tasks I’ve listed above. There are still many other tasks like email outreach, blog customization, product creation, and more.
3. No guaranteed success
The craziest factor in this advantages and disadvantages of blogging list is that there’s no guaranteed success in blogging.
You can do everything correctly in blogging, like writing high-quality posts, doing keyword research, promoting your blog, and still getting zero page views.
A significant factor that you must take into account is your niche’s competition. Unlike YouTube, where random videos can go viral, blogging is entirely the opposite in search engines.
If a DA >10 blogger writes about the exact same topic a DA 80+ is writing about, they’ll probably never rank number 1 on Google.
I’m not even trying to be pessimistic; it’s just the reality of Google trusting blogs that are older and more authoritative.
So how can you make sure that your blog won’t fail?
Try to stand out by writing the best content possible. Also, don’t go after keywords that are all heavily written about unless you plan on driving traffic to it by interlinking.
4. No consistent income
Another important factor of blogging is inconsistent income. One month you could have a lot of traffic and make $5000, and the following month you could make $3000.
While it’s a significant disadvantage compared to a regular stable job and income, there’s also heaps of room for higher pay.
For example: Let’s say you make $4500 in November. In December, due to the holidays and gift buying time, you may earn $8000 on your blog.
This shows that a negative aspect of blogging, like inconsistent income, can work in your favor during peak months.
5. Alone (a lot)
A big issue that a lot of new bloggers face is the loneliness of blogging. A lot of people will miss the social interaction from their job or miss talking to their colleagues. It makes it even more difficult if you’re a super outgoing individual.
Not only are you alone a lot, but you also don’t have someone to guide you in the beginning.
What do I mean by this?
I mean that you may not have someone who can critique your blog posts or push you to work harder (like a boss does).
Yes, family members or friends may be willing to help you out, but there’s also a bias because they won’t want to hurt your feelings.
How to overcome the feeling of loneliness when blogging:
– Reach out to other bloggers: Create a group chat where you can all discuss ideas and chat
– Go to a coffee shop and write: If you miss human interaction, a simple fix could be heading to a busy coffee shop for some ambiance.
6. Technical issues
The last of the disadvantages of blogging is that you’ll come across a lot of technical issues. Opposing from being in an office job and having technical support on hand, you have to figure out most of these things yourself.
The frequent technical issues most bloggers will come across are:
– Theme customization (a lot can go wrong)
– How to speed up your blog (super confusing)
– Web hosting/CDN issues
This isn’t to put you off blogging; it’s just to let you know that you’ll come across a fair amount of technical issues when starting and maintaining a blog.
In this day and age of blogging, the good thing is that at least one other person has experienced the same issue as you. There are heaps of YouTube videos and forums to help you solve your problem.
Conclusion
So there we have my list of the 12 advantages and disadvantages of blogging.
Remember to take my advice and factors with a grain of salt. These are the pros and cons of blogging that I’ve had in the past seven months of blogging.
Hopefully, you’ve found this post helpful or relatable as a new or seasoned blogger because blogging is a lot more work than first meets the eye.
What have you found to be the advantages and disadvantages of blogging?
Read next:
– How to Stay Productive in Blogging
– 15 Blogging Tips for Beginners in 2021