Why Is Blogging Popular? | My Experience

People ask me, why do you blog? Is blogging worth it? Well, 2021 marks my 11th year as a blogger. So blogging must have been a big deal for me right? Over the decade I've seen new bloggers coming and old bloggers retiring, so I can say blogging is not for everyone. What does it take to be a blogger? Nothing much, only passion. Read on to know what it takes to become a blogger and my experience being a blogger over the past decade.

Passion is the most important thing if you want to call yourself a blogger. It's okay if you don't know how to write properly, you will learn over time. It's okay if you start without a nice and fancy blog, you'll get there soon (unless you hire someone to do it). And it's also very very okay to not know what to write about because once you know you have a passion for blogging, topic ideas come naturally. If you start your blog with the aim of generating money, well I can say you'll flip soon. Because that won't come easily, it might take over a year before you can start earning and it won't start with the amount you expect it to.

Blogging is to be enjoyed. Write what you are passionate about. If you like beauty like me, write a beauty blog. If you love reading life tips, write about life tips and make your blog your resource of information. Blogging should help you first before it could help other people.

When I first started blogging, the blogger world was very popular. Social media was just starting to take place but at that time blogs were highly followed, especially personal blogs. But nowadays, people have Instagram to check out someones personal life, so writing a personal blog is not relevant anymore, even I don't fancy reading about someone's life anymore. I only read blogs when I search for something in google like reviews and tips, I tend to look for blogs instead of established websites because I want real thoughts from people, not posts that are mostly ads. That's me now, but during my early blogging days,  I loved followings beauty gurus that talked about makeup and fashion.

Some of my favourite beauty gurus where Hanna Tajima, Michelle Phan and Huda Kattan.

Huda Kattan is one of the beauty influencers I adore until now. Not only has she become super successful but she's still humble and she engages a lot with her fans too. Here's Huda Kattan's latest update.

However, most of the beauty gurus I followed has mostly moved to social media since its faster and gains more exposure to build an empire. Being a blogger nowadays is totally different. Blogging before did not take such a big part in social media, but nowadays its somewhat necessary for a blogger to have social media to gain more exposure.

In fact, not only bloggers but most careers nowadays are mostly dependent on social media. I myself worked with a company for a social media position and every day I imagined what will happen to me if suddenly all the social media platforms suddenly such down. I'll definitely lose my job. PERIOD! That did scare me.

Even though I do earn some revenue from social media but I don't highly focus on it as I can't call myself an influencer. There are times where I've wanted a high following as I've read success stories of influencers and how it changed their lives. Of course, I've dreamed becoming like that but another thing that comes in the package is criticism and I don't believe I'm ready for that. In fact, I don't think I'll ever be ready.

Throughout the years I find that writing has been most comfortable for me. Creating content on social media sometimes pressures me as I have to compete. Some people are more likeable, prettier, richer and have an amazing life which honestly I would question and compare my life with them. I know it's not healthy. There was even a time when I tried following tips on how to gain more followers on social and it did not succeed and was very frustrating indeed. It did take a toll on my mental health so I stopped.

What I did after that is I focused back on blogging. It was during late August last year that I realised that I should just do what made me happy. The reason why I didn't focus on blogging the past few years was that my blog didn't seem to pick up as much as it did with social media so I needed back up in monetary terms as I still had to pay my bills. So I started doing research on how bloggers actually earn revenue because I've heard from friends that some bloggers earn a monthly wage by focusing on blogging only and that sparked my interest.

Turns out, all this while I've been blogging wrongly. I blogged without SEO techniques and these techniques are what makes a blog rise. So for the year-end of 2020, I fully forced myself to get my blog on track. I was in front of my laptop almost every time I had my eyes open and indeed it was a tiring process as there were so much to be done. A decade worth of write-ups, a lot has to be changed but it was worth it as I was already seeing results for the first 3 months. I even managed to get triple of my usual income with advertising on my blog.

However, my earnings are still unstable yet but its definitely showing positive signs of stable income as my blog visits are increasing every month. My analytics graph has raised quite a number and still raising. I can't wait what this year awaits for my blog.

I started going back to social media once I saw my blog was showing a bit of success with my efforts. However, I did a major makeover to who I'm following on social. I muted unfriend and blocked toxic people in my following, including family and friends. I followed influencers that influence positivity and people that help me learn what I want to become instead of people of what I want to become. It was way better and I felt less anxious too. But still, I don't find social media as interesting as I found it before, most probably because I have a clear goal of what my blog is now to me.

When I first started, my blog was a personal diary, (you won't be able to find these posts because I've transferred them to a private blog ;p) then I joined the blogging community here and I got active in writing about events and reviews which then changed this blog more to a beauty blog. But at that time I didn't yet have a clear goal and my blog was basically most of sponsored content, so it wasn't that meaningful.

However, when I started SEO, I found a purpose to write. Blogs are platforms where people can find answers to what they are searching for. Instead of putting myself in the writer's shoes, I put myself in the shoe of someone who is asking the question. So I write by answering that answer and somehow it flows naturally. For example, before this, I've been writing skin care reviews just for the sake of a review but I didn't really study what people are looking in a skincare review. Turns out I missed all the important points that people are looking into which are elaborations of the main ingredients of a product, what it does and how it affects the skin.

So since I've decided to focus my blog on beauty again, I did a bit of study on what people search in beauty and it turns out there are a lot of questions that even I don't know the answer but would be interesting to know. So my goal for my blog nowadays is learning and sharing at the same time. It makes me feel like I'm in school again, because every time I want to answer a question, I'll have to do research before I could post it out. Because of these kinds of postings, my blog has been gaining more visitors monthly and it feels satisfying because I know my efforts are not in vain.

Blogging has also made me eager to want to learn more and it's also the place where I could go back and refer to because I don't have quite a good memory. By writing it down, it became somehow like my very own textbook. LOL... I also got a few messages thanking me for my posts and it definitely burns me to write more content in the future.

So to me, why is blogging popular? Well, my answer is because it's pleasing. If you're passionate about it, no matter how busy your life gets, you'll still turn back to your blog and write. I've had that kind of relationship with my blog for ages and I can never seem to completely quit even though there were times I was determined to. But that thought is long gone now because as I mentioned above, I found my purpose. 

Till then peeps!