“I know what this guy is about; greed. He don’t give a darn about Bluestar or the unions. He’s in and out for the buck and he don’t take prisoners.” ~ Carl Fox from the Movie Wall Street
I am a huge Wall Street fan.
Almost 30 years after the movie debuted the money quotes still ring true today.
Carl Fox’s quote - directed toward his son Bud and Gordon Gekko - sums up one of the most damaging, disastrous, common newbie blogger mistakes.
This mistake is so pervasive that 81% of bloggers never make more than $100 during their entire online careers.
What is this terrible error?
Getting into blogging mainly to make money.
Physics Analogy
Imagine walking into a Physics class.
You’re a freshman in college.
This is the first time you’ve ever studied Physics.
After walking into the classroom you make a beeline for the professor’s desk.
You ask: “What’s the quickest way to make money through this Physics?”
Before you spend 1 second learning your first Physics lesson.
I mean, you are only taking Physics because you heard “the money is good in this industry.”
You’d be happy with $1000 a week.
Maybe you can make 6 figures down the road.
Buy you need to make money *now* and you can’t really be bothered with learning, implementing, experimenting, testing, studying, learning and doing all that stuff.
If you think about it for just a second, it sounds absurd to demand/expect money from this class/discipline before:
- Learning ANYTHING about that discipline
- Implementing a single Physics concept
- Studying what you’ve learned
- Experimenting, tweaking, testing, studying and learning the discipline of Physics inside-out, over the course of years
Professor’s Response
The professor would answer your question like this:
“First, spend 4 years studying Physics as an undergrad. Then spend 2 years getting your Masters. Then spend 2 years getting your PhD. In 8 years, you can probably earn $70,000 or $100,000 or more.”
Why do beginning bloggers completely lose their marbles, greedily (or desperately) getting into the blogging game to primarily get paid?
The ease with which you can pull out a credit card and buy a domain and hosting creates the unrealistic expectation that making money through your blog should be just as easy.
Beginning Blogger Mistake
The “I’m getting into blogging mainly to make money” mistake leads to a series of serious blogging problems.
Among them:
- Losing your motivation to blog when the money does not show up (and 99.9999% of the time it won’t show up for months)
- Resisting any urge to create helpful content or to build relationships with leaders in your blogging niche (you’re too busy trying to get money, than to be bothered with actually helping people or building relationships)
- Picking a blogging niche based solely on profit-earning potential versus following your passion
- Attempting to manipulate people to squeeze money out of them
- Seeing people as numbers instead of seeing them as human beings
- Falling prey to the “meal ticket” approach of blogging, where you desperately do whatever you can to make enough money today through your blogging efforts to eat, or to slowly save up money for your rent or mortgage
This disastrous beginning blogger mistake of blogging predominantly for the money is why most bloggers never make more than $100 during their careers.
If your attention is focused solely on *getting* money you can’t *give* enough value to earn the money. Not only that, if you’re obsessed with getting your giving energy won’t lend itself to promoting influential bloggers and other successes who can spread your reach far and wide.
How to Fix this Mistake
- Address and embrace your fear of losing money (most new bloggers who blog mainly to make money have anxiety about losing money)
- Blog predominantly to have fun
- Blog predominantly to free yourself
- Create your blog to address some pressing pain point suffered by your readers
- Get lost in helping fellow bloggers by promoting them and endorsing them on your blogs
- Double down on personal development
Stop chasing money.
Blog your passion.
Follow your fun.
Build your blog on a foundation of passion.
This energy takes you to places your mind could never envision.
New eBook
I recently wrote a new eBook on Amazon to cut your beginner blogging learning curve by years by addressing this “blogging mainly for money” error and other crippling newbie blogger mistakes.
Leapfrog over the nightmarish scenarios I faced.