The 5 Obstacles to Success in Blogging, and What to Do About Them?

Creating remarkable content and a blog with great followers, was one of my last years resolutions. Still, while I was working hard, to figure out, how to master the art of blogging and starting to recognize the powerful impact a blog can have on my online business success, that didn’t mean that I didn’t have any obstacles.

See for any skill that you are trying to master, there are two elements, inner game, and outer game. The Outer Game in terms of blogging, may be the things that people see, like your blog, design, content, logo, tag line, and your message. But the other side of the coin is the inner game of blogging, which in my opinion, I believe is the most powerful, because that’s what drives you to become better, and to finally reach your goals.

And just to reiterate Stephen R. Covey’s words “  “Every public victory is preceded by a private victory”
Whether you’ve only just decided to launch a blog or you’ve been blogging for a while, I believe,
the techniques in this post will help prevent you from falling victim to some of the most common
blogging inner game mistakes and encourage you to move forward and to stay motivated.

Here are some of the obstacles that you might encounter during your blogging career, and what to do about them:

1) Not Taking Action

Don’t think that you are taking action and you are  going to learn by just watching the videos, reading books, or following up with blogs and online tutorials, NO.. But you need to actually go and do it..
Let’s face it, You won’t learning how to ride a bicycle, by just watching someone riding a bicycle you are going to learn it by actually doing it..

And remember Learning is not just watching it, getting it or reading it.. It is a behavior change, where the hand, mind work together to experience something, that’s when you conclude that you learned.

So if you want to master the art of blogging, go setup a blog, and start experiencing with it, that’s how you ultimately learn.

2) Perfectionism –

This is one of my favorite quotes that I once

heard from one of my favorite teachers Eben Pagan, that says “it is about
progress not perfection”
Just go do it, don’t worry about doing mistakes, and don’t worry about making things look perfect.
Me personally I have been stuck in this dilemma for a long time, till I decided, that
Ito just  get out of there and just do it…
Anything you are doing is just a test, and by hearing feedback, and improving, things got better for me, and you will gain more confidence.
And your paradigm, will totally change once you ask yourself this important question?

What’s the worst case scenario, in any situation I put myself into…  give it some thought, and you will realize that in most cases you can survive the worst case scenario in any situation.

Perfectionism can never be achieved, it is going to be little sloppy the first time, but go ahead and just do it, experience it, and learn from it, and then gather information and feedback, and do it again and again, and it will get better.

So for your blog, don’t think that it has to be the best looking blog, or the best content in the world, just go and get it out there, let people see it, get feedback and improve.

3) Not Seeking Coaches, Mentors or Great Teachers

Don’t think you can figure out everything on your own.

The time that you have to spend seeking and verifying resources, is not cheap, and will make it very expensive. Time is our most scarce resource, so we need to wisely decide what effort or activity is worth our time investment. Plus it is always to follow the footsteps of the giants who came before us.

Now in some situations we still need to try to figure out things on our own and be creative, but that can only happen after we achieve certain level of mastery.

So spending 10 hours trying to figure out something, while you can get the same result or maybe better, by a 1hour coach is priceless, or $80 online course,  not only you would have achieved what you want in less time and effort, but also you will learn what to avoid and what to look for, and it will be more experiential.

So in terms of blogging, aside from creating content, and publishing it online. Sometimes, you will get caught with some technical challenge, on how to set up something correctly, how to improve your blog/website performance, what’s the best plugin for x, or How to Setup a membership site.

Invest in your knowledge, learn from the experts, and imitate their success, that will make your reach your blogging goals faster.

4) Fear of being criticized

Gregory Berns in his book Iconoclast, talks about “the fear of being criticized, is one of the biggest obstacles to creativity and being an iconoclast”

And he says that what differentiate us and the people who made history, like Gandhi or Steve Jobs is the fear of social rejection.

Leaders and Successful people don’t fear putting themselves, their content, their thoughts, ideas and beliefs out there, no matter how awkward or different they are.

We will always think about what the others would say? Or what others would think of us.

But the conclusion, we will always be criticized; it is part of human behavior. Especially online where people can do it anonymously, so stick to your beliefs, and just do what you always wanted to do, and realize the more criticism you are getting the more successful you become.

So in your blogging career, it is OK to be controversial, and express yourself, in a way of-course that doesn’t harm others. And always try to get outside of your comfort zone, do video blogging, do pod-casting, and focus on spreading your ideas, and trust me at some point you are going to have your followers.

5) Persistence

We all give up very quickly, I guess we become bored, or other things come our way competing for our attention, or we just lose motivation.

And in my experience, Persistence and Will Power are very rare and highly overrate. But Habits and rituals are there to put us in that automatic mode of action.

Don’t you realize that you do 90% of the same things every day?

You have to create the habit to become persistent. And you do that by consciously and continuously focus on the new activity and do it on a specific time and specific days for a period of 30-60 days. Once you do that, it becomes part of you, and after a while, you will start doing it unconsciously, and without thinking about it, and it becomes a passion, and that’s when your success doubles and triples.

So let me give you an example in my own life. Writing something and Producing content was one of the most uncomfortable activities. I knew I had some descent ideas, but getting me to sit down, and write them in a logical manner was very hard. So I decided to build a ritual around that because I realized that in order for me to succeed in my online business, I have to master content creation, so I created a ritual around spending the first 2 hours of my day, 5 days a week, on content creation, and I am telling you it wasn’t easy. But doing it day after day for a period of month or so, now it almost became a second nature for me. And now on the days that I don’t do this activity, I feel like something is missing.

So think about these 5 obstacles and their solutions, and remember that success comes when multiple factors come in together, in complete synergy, work together all at the same time, for a duration of time, to achieve one result or goal, and that’s what you want to accomplish, and that what you should call success.

Tarek Alaaddin writes and teaches about Blogging and The Power of WordPress, and how to install, configure, and use your wordpress site for blogging, marketing and your online business.Visit GetYourBlogReady.com, to get his Beginner Blogger Bootcamp Video Course for Free