Most Frustrating Part of Running a Blog?

48 replies
Hi established blog owners,

Just curious to see what your biggest challenges/frustrations are running a blog? Are you using any software to help with these challenges and is it working well or not for you?

Thanks!
#blog #frustrating #part #running
  • Profile picture of the author TheMarketingLord
    I used to have a fairly big blog and apart from the first couple of months when I was constantly posting and trying my best, while the traffic was still pathetic, I haven't really run into any trouble... although I do remember comment bots being extremely annoying until I installed some hardcore anti-spam plugins.

    Running a blog isn't that hard.

    Cheers!
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  • Profile picture of the author MadeofSEO
    Posting a content constantly when you have a bunch of other work to do is challenging for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author workdfitness
    Running a blog is simple. Getting traffic to your blog can be a little more challenging. If you don't share your blog people won't see it.
    Also if you want to rank on the first page of Google you need to learn Seo and that can be real challenge. There is on page and off page SEO. For off page there are tons of tools you can use to get backlinks but I am not really sure how great they work to be honest with you. The ones I use are Social Monkey and I also have used Onlywire before but now I use Social Monkey. I have gone away from the SEO posting though and do more of a viral strategy. For that to work though you have to have people to share your blog with. If you don't have much of a following then it wont' work to well.
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    Don't use software to create content. That will kill your blog. Most bloggers' top frustration involves getting traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author BradVert2013
    I ran a blog for several years. I loved doing it, but it was not easy. At its peak it was getting around 9000 visitors per month. Then, for some reason traffic really dropped off big time.

    I also had a hard time keeping visitors on my blog and getting them to return. I think my stats were 90% new visitors and 10% returning on most months.

    Traffic was definitely the most frustrating. But I did pretty good with Adsense and even Amazon (until Illinois passed the Internet tax and Amazon dumped my affiliate account).
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    • Profile picture of the author DianneH
      @BradVert2013 I am no legal expert, but I know when I worked for corporations and was the point person for setting up those corporations, we would incorporate our companies in Delaware. Have you thought of doing this so that you be considered a "Delaware" company vs. an "Illinois" company for selling on Amazon?

      This may not be feasible for you but thought I would put it out there.

      Again, DEFINITELY NOT a legal expert, so don't hold me liable but as someone who worked in Legal for quite a while, this was just a thought.

      I don't know Illinois law or Amazon protocol, so I would start there first but it could be a way to re-establish your presence on Amazon...
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      Dianne Humphries
      www.PLRMiniMarket.com


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  • I currently have 3 primary blogs and most frustrating part is writer's block.

    Sometimes I just don't know what to write about.
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    • Profile picture of the author Naeema Anum
      if you can comment on other blogs with the link of your blog then it will work really good for your blog according to seo. posting unique content with the right keyword is the best receipe.
      or you can hire someone to write content. automation software ar not a best solution according to seo.
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    • Profile picture of the author writeaway
      Originally Posted by onlinemoneymakerguy View Post

      I currently have 3 primary blogs and most frustrating part is writer's block.

      Sometimes I just don't know what to write about.
      Have you tried soliciting guest posts?
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      • Profile picture of the author Michael Shook
        Its difficult to answer this question the way you have it worded, almost every answer must have something to do with being frustrated.

        Blogs are just websites that you can edit online. They've got some particular idiosyncrasies, but nothing really difficult unless you are using a badly coded theme.
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  • Profile picture of the author xpesos
    Frankly if you got the whole bunch of Traffic there would be none frustrations, traffic is which all matters, once you are good at traffic you might want to close comments, which was big problem for me, as i was getting literary millions of them
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  • Profile picture of the author Max Anderson
    Content writing, it´s so boring... However, SEO and user interaction are fun.
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  • Profile picture of the author automationhero
    probably the most frustrating part is consistently posting new quality content. there is software where you can get curated content but that isn't ideal for a solid business as a blog owner
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  • Profile picture of the author Akogo
    Getting spam comments. The frustrating thing about this would be deleting them on the dashboard. However, I know of ways to prevent the bots in the first place but did not implement on all blogs I have. Too bad the concept of user generated content isn't all you would like it to be.
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  • Profile picture of the author ElijahM
    In my experience, using an automated means to generate your blog posts absolutely kills the ranking of your pages. If I don't write the content myself, I purchase it from various, reasonably priced service providers and then I find an appropriate image and, sometimes, a video to post with the text content. Make sure you have your permalinks set to content specific terms ... not just page 101, page 102, etc.

    Also, as others have mentioned, get yourself a good bot comment killer or your scheduled maintenance time will increase exponentially.
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  • Profile picture of the author cyberzolo
    Getting traffic is the most frustrating thing to me and many other bloggers.
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  • Profile picture of the author twinkenterprises
    I get decent traffic. Whats hard is turning traffic into leads. Check out my blog I teach people how to make money through blogging. We also have a great blogging platform that will get your posts a high ranking without you having to do any work.
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  • Profile picture of the author biggerk9
    Posting a content constantly is really boring and challenging
    And I think the biggest frustrations is getting traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    Coming up with new content. The marketing and promotion aspect of it is easy though.
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  • Profile picture of the author AlbertBarkley
    Originally Posted by benzwm02 View Post

    Hi established blog owners,

    Just curious to see what your biggest challenges/frustrations are running a blog? Are you using any software to help with these challenges and is it working well or not for you?

    Thanks!
    I like blogging and its an important part of Seo
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  • Profile picture of the author brenda221
    The biggest problem for me, especially in the beginning, was finding time to manage my blogs properly. It's very frustrating, because you always have to add interesting, well-written new content if you don't want your blog to fade into the background, and when you have a dozen other things to do, time becomes a big issue.
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  • Profile picture of the author TryBPO
    I dig threads like this...

    Enterprising warriors will take a look at the frustrations, struggles, and problems blog owners have and come up with solutions (through products, services, or software) they can build to help and sell to said blog owners.

    And to list my frustration - Formatting blog posts, definitely. I just brought an apprentice out to the Philippines that will help me with this, but getting it right takes quite a bit of time and effort.
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  • Profile picture of the author JRJWrites
    Getting traffic to it, even after all the hard work of using optimized content, social promotion, etc. Traffic is the hardest and most frustrating thing, ever.
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  • Profile picture of the author Laura Raisanen
    For me the most frustrating part has to be writing great content on a regular basis and dealing with writer's block. It can sometime be quite a challenge to find ideas on what to post about and then write it up in an interesting way.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stuart Walker
    I rarely struggle to come up with new content ideas, just scour blogs, forums, Q&A sites, Reddit, book titles on Amazon etc and you've got all the ideas you can ever need.

    Finding the motivation to start writing on those subjects CAN be hard however.

    Frankly if you got the whole bunch of Traffic there would be none frustrations, traffic is which all matters, once you are good at traffic you might want to close comments, which was big problem for me, as i was getting literary millions of them
    Traffic isn't all that matters at all. You can have all the traffic in the world but if that traffic does not convert into subscribers and sales then it's a complete waste of time.

    Conversions and marketing skills are super important. More so than traffic. Even with low traffic you can make money if your conversions and marketing skills are good. If they suck all the traffic in the world won't likely help.

    Closing comments is the last thing you want to do. You need to engage your audience and make them feel part of the community whether it be through comments, social media, forums or whatever. Stopping them from being able to reach out and interact is not a good idea.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alan Ashwood
      Originally Posted by RockingLastsForever View Post


      Closing comments is the last thing you want to do. You need to engage your audience and make them feel part of the community whether it be through comments, social media, forums or whatever. Stopping them from being able to reach out and interact is not a good idea.
      Absolutely agree.

      Never close comments, it tells your visitor that you're not interested in their opinion.

      Getting some new traffic to your older posts is still good for the site anyway.

      Caveat:

      It's probably good to close a Comments section if the information has gone out of date, although I would rather replace the old info with the latest updated info.
      Gives you a chance to update all the SEO settings too.
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      Now where did I put that pencil?

      Time for a cuppa.
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      • Profile picture of the author benzwm02
        So I think we can agree that posting quality content constantly seems to be the biggest issue.

        What about posting quality content is so hard? Is it..

        1. Coming up with ideas
        2. finding the time
        3. finding the motivation
        4. something else?
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  • Profile picture of the author Stuart Walker
    Oh and for all the guys who finding having to 'post constantly' a struggle...who says you have to post constantly?

    All my favourite blogs rarely post (maybe once or twice per month at most) but when they do post they REALLY make it count.
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  • Profile picture of the author prithvitheprime
    Constant posting is must in every thing (even if it is a blog or a site) you should have to do it if you even got some niche community with you. I started writing before 3 years; after i got followers and readers from them; its really hard to maintain them. If you started writing on regular basis it will be fine than.
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  • Profile picture of the author bonesaj
    Im pretty much a perfectionist and my biggest troubles come from starting up the blog making it all look perfect.

    I recommend using plugins etc that share your posts on all the social media pages automatically when a post s published.

    I feel a blog has to be something your passionate about and never something you create in hopes of making $$ from it as that will probably never work out as well as blogging about something you truly are passionate about.
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  • Profile picture of the author jbthemummy
    The feeling of feeling like a robot with such repetitive tasks everyday. However, I think that is just part of having a successful blog. You come in, you do what you are suppose to and do it all over again the next day. Takes me a couple hours or less a day so I can't really complain.
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  • Profile picture of the author carlamae
    I find writing fresh content all the time very challenging, so I've gone another way, but if you have that nailed you're golden!
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  • Profile picture of the author Lena Williams
    Not getting enough traffic according to the effort. But you can never stop trying if you want to be successful.
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  • Profile picture of the author Hartmann
    Content can be frustrating because it never really stops...you always have to be coming up with new ideas although the more you work in a niche, the easier it gets to find new ideas because you know the niche. Monetizing the blog can also be a challenge without doing the same things that every other blog in the niche is doing.
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  • Profile picture of the author WriterWahm
    The first challenge I had was letting my personality come through so my blog wasn't sterile; I figured it out eventually. Right now my main challenge is content, content, content. I just don't have the time.
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  • Profile picture of the author masterqif
    The most tricky part is gonna be the content creation.. for me at least
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    • Profile picture of the author Enfusia
      Running a blog is super easy and there really are no challenging parts. The only thing that's ever happened is was running a WPMU with Buddy Press and the sploggers just hammered the site until I got that figured out.

      But really blogging is super simple.

      Patrick
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  • Profile picture of the author bertosio
    No challenges at all in making a blog! Making a website is easy, keeping it updated is easy. Getting traffic to it is the hard part and where you should focus most of your energy.
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  • Profile picture of the author brettb
    Spammers are a real problem with Wordpress. Now I've got spammy automated guest post submissions on one of my blogs!
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  • Profile picture of the author Riggs
    The demand to consistently update it with unique content whilst wasting my time administrating spambot comments.
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  • Profile picture of the author operationoffers
    I don't think running a blog is frustrating but what I do find frustrating is finding the time to manage a lot of sites and keep the content fresh. What I normally do is find out what is trending or popular in the given niche and find some articles that are posted within this idea. I will then normally take another approach at the idea or sometimes take a devils advocate approach if applicable.

    I try to get some sort of though provoking ideas within each post, but I also want to keep within the identity of my readers.
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  • Profile picture of the author clever7
    For me driving traffic to my blog is my biggest problem, even though my blog has a good ranking for its main keywords. Nothing is enough and I deal with strong competitors.

    Even though I have vast knowledge about my topic, my second problem is that writing something meaningful and different every time is not easy.

    My third problem is the fact that I cannot post guest posts. I have to write all articles myself because nobody else has the same knowledge I do. Those who have similar knowledge use different methods.

    My forth problem is that my topic is misunderstood by the ignorant public because of various distortions from various impostors, and many people cannot evaluate the real importance of my discoveries. This fact affects the bounce rate.



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  • Profile picture of the author JasonJason
    Traffic is no doubt the biggest headache and most frustrating part of blogging or developing a site. Part of what makes it so frustrating, is trying to keep up with all the various metrics of SEO and all of the different platforms that compete for our attention these days. Fortunately, software that targets these problems is available in abundance and has helped streamline my workflow in a major way. For example, Hootsuite has been terrific for cutting down the time I'm required to spend on social media. But regardless of how frustrating it is, at the end of the day you have to love what you do.
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  • Profile picture of the author drlelong
    Easiest way hands-down to get content for your blog is to consume content.

    Read daily.
    Listen to audio.
    Watch training.

    Blog about what you learn.
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  • Profile picture of the author kpmedia
    Security is always a PITA. Understand that plugins don't do squat.

    And then time to write is the other, especially when you have a day job. Or some kind of other work you do. Not a housewife mommy blogger with nothing but free time. Quality writing, based on original research, also takes time. (Anybody can pull an "article" out of their @ss, but to get something truly quality that others want to read, it takes some meaty content.)

    Not really frustrating. It just is what it is.

    Ideas are never a problem.
    Traffic is not really an issue.
    Pressuring yourself to write daily is stupid. Burnout is likely.
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