Overcoming Blogging Barriers

Blog­ging throws so many dif­fer­ent chal­lenges at you every day, and you need to learn to over­come them in an effec­tive man­ner. In this arti­cle, Jack Bum­stead goes over what these chal­lenges might be, and how to over­come them.

When blog­ging you face many bar­ri­ers. Bar­ri­ers are prob­lems that come up in your blog. They can also be things you want, but are hard to get. Some are big and some are small, but you can fol­low the same steps to beat them.

In this post I will cover how to face some of those bar­ri­ers. You will find that even though bar­ri­ers are hard and annoy­ing you will find pride and accom­plish­ment when you get past them. And that’s an amaz­ing feel­ing for a blog­ger to feel.

Exam­ples

Too many blog­gers give in to bar­ri­ers and don’t truly get the blog they want. These blog­gers often take the easy way out and suf­fer for it. They also know deep down that they didn’t truly beat their bar­ri­ers. Has this ever hap­pened to you? Maybe you don’t think it has but many blog­gers do it with­out know­ing it. Here are some com­mon ways blog­gers give in to barriers.

Your logo may be good, but is it what you truly want? Think about if you chose this logo just because it was easy to make or cheaper.

• The tem­plate on your blog does not have every­thing you want on it. “Oh well,” you think,“It’s still a good tem­plate, I don’t need every­thing I want in it. Besides, I don’t know CSS or HTML”.
• “My Perma­link struc­ture is fine, no one really cares if the URL is just a lit­tle ugly.”
• “Every other day is fine. No one expects me to blog every day” (note it is com­pletely rea­son­able not to post every day. Bar­ri­ers are things you want to do. I am assum­ing you want to do these things).
• “Sure I could make my blog faster. It’s fine, though, I don’t lose that many visitors.”
• “Who needs a bet­ter domain? My domain is a lit­tle long and con­fus­ing, and I can remem­ber it. It’s not my prob­lem that peo­ple have such bad memories.”

How To Beat Barriers

1. Iden­tify the bar­rier.
This could be a many, many things. Maybe you can’t fig­ure out to change your perma­link struc­ture, or you don’t know how to make a logo and can’t buy one. The most impor­tant part is to iden­tify it.

2. Think about it.
What solu­tions are pos­si­ble? You need to turn over all the solu­tions in your head. Brain­storm dif­fer­ent ways you can get over the barrier.

3. Ask.
Many peo­ple keep their trou­ble to them­selves. You will find that many peo­ple are will­ing to help you for free. Ask your fel­low blog­gers, post your on forums, or use Yahoo Answers. There are many ways to get good help.

4. Start solv­ing it.
Once you have fig­ured out the best method pos­si­ble get started. Don’t pro­cras­ti­nate, this will only make it harder.

5. Don’t back down.
You can’t let the bar­rier beat you. Bar­ri­ers can be very hard and stress­ful; The harder the bar­rier the more pride you get when you achieve it. Going back to what I said above, that pride you get when you achieve some­thing blog­ging wise is just the best feel­ing you can get from blog­ging. Work hard for that feeling.

6. When you achieve stop and look: has it been com­pletely fin­ished?
Make sure you didn’t half-ass it. For instance, (just speak­ing hypo­thet­i­cally) you fig­ure out the perma­links, but your blog looks like www.blog.com/category/post. How­ever, you wanted it to be www.blog.com/post. You may think you did it, but in the back of your mind you know you didn’t do what you set out to do. In this case, keep going.

Don’t Ever Get Dis­cour­aged

You have tried and tried while get­ting help, and you still can’t get past your bar­rier. Per­haps you just can’t find any way to do some­thing with­out money, and you can’t make any money yet. Some­times, after putting in a long, good try you need to take a break from try­ing to get past a bar­rier. This doesn’t mean give up, just do some other things first. You can’t get caught up in one thing, or your blog will suffer.

You will find, as time goes on, that more things hap­pen nat­u­rally that can help you break that bar­rier. For instance, on my site, I have a rat­ing plug-in wouldn’t work when I had a com­ment plug-in. I tried and tried but even­tu­ally decided to wait it out. One day while brows­ing plug-ins I saw another com­ment plug-in that had just came out. I tried, it, and it worked!

Have you beaten any bar­ri­ers? Given up on any? Please com­ment below.

Photo by Tearsandrain

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