Someday’s I have a hard time doing anything with my blogs, and it always makes me wonder if I might be suffering form blogger burnout.
Many bloggers can suffer from blogger burnout. It is easy to have exhaustion, diminished interests, and/or frustration when you aren’t getting the results you wanted from your blog. This can happen especially during the early days of your blog.
There are times when every blogger just feels like they aren’t living up to what was expected. Either what they expected out of themselves or what they expected because they listened to others who said they had huge numbers either in earnings or traffic early in their blogging careers.
Burnout is a common issue among any profession. It can happen to doctors, lawyers, influencers, retail workers, teachers, you name a profession and there is someone there with burnout.
What is Blogger Burnout?
Blogger burnout is when a blogger is feeling uninterested, frustrated, or just plain exhausted when it comes to working on their blog or anything dealing indirectly with their blog.
These feelings happen often when blogs are young, usually within the first 8 months of starting a blog.
Before you get good search results or have established a name of authority in your niche it can feel like a struggle to get your blog out there and get a dedicated audience.
Many bloggers start out with their blog and they are running full speed out of the gate. There is excitement, the mystery of something new, promises of riches that they have read, and lots of hope. But blogging is much harder and much more consummating than what most people have an expectation of.
This can lead to much disappointment for bloggers. And the disappointment leads to frustration when new bloggers find out that it takes many months to reach the numbers they thought they could get right away.
Blogger burnout can also happen even with blogs that are older. Perhaps you have plateaued on your success or you just aren’t where you wanted to be by that point in time with your blog.
How do You Know if You Are Suffering From Blogger Burnout?
If you find yourself feeling any of these things when it comes to your blog then you could be suffering from blogger burnout:
- Uninterested
- Exhausted
- Agitated
- Frustrated
- Failure
- Resentful
- Unappreciated
- Anxiety
- Overwhelmed
- Overworked
Yes every blogger might have slight and quick waves of these feelings when it comes to their blogs. But if you find you are feeling this way each and every day, then blogger burnout could be the cause of these feelings you are having.
What You Can Do if You Are Suffering From Blogger Burnout
Rethink Your Blogging Goals
Money Goals
You might have started your blog because you saw a post or bought an ebook where someone said you will have thousands of dollars in a few short months. That didn’t happen did it? For most bloggers it doesn’t happen.
Be realistic with what you want out of your blog. Realize that it takes time to get money from monetization. Start small with your goals.
If making money is your goal for your blog, then start with $5 by the end of month two and then double that for month 3, and so on. Don’t start off with $2000 by month 3, that’s just not realistic.
Traffic Goals
If traffic is your goal, again this is a stat that requires time to get.
Just to get SEO working good with Google is going to take 6 to 8 months for most websites.
I see many bloggers get some package with their hosting that says it will take care of their SEO, and by month 3 they want to know why Google isn’t sending them visitors by the thousands.
SEO doesn’t work that way. You can pay an SEO guru to come in and do a complete overhaul of your site. Guess what? You still have to wait for the search engines to determine when you are worthy of the traffic. There is no switch that can be flipped. You have to put in the work and effort to get good search results. Plugins can’t do it all for you.
Social Media Goals
Maybe you wanted thousands of followers on your social media accounts to help drive traffic to your blog.
Again just like with money and traffic from search engines, this too takes time.
Perhaps you tried to go all in and grab every social media platform out there to try to promote your blog. Take a step back and just concentrate on one or two social media platforms to build up when you are just starting out.
Overwhelming yourself from day one is a sure fire way to get blogger burnout.
Set a Schedule and Stick to It
If you are feeling overworked and feel like your blog is taking up too much or your time, setting a schedule might help you out of your blogger burnout.
Remember even if you have a full time job, your blog is like a second job. It takes a lot of time to get a professional blog off the ground and running.
Take days off. Don’t spend every free moment of your time working on your blog or on the marketing of your blog.
Figure out when you want to work on your blog and block out that time in a planner or on your calendar app.
The most important part of this is to make sure you adhere to this schedule, don’t add more time in that you did not slot for your blog or you will end right back at the beginning of blogger burnout.
Take Time For Yourself
Just like sticking to a blogging schedule, schedule time for yourself too.
Go to the gym, take a walk, play with your pet or your kids. Go out on a date with your SO.
Whatever it is you want to do, go do it.
Don’t stop because you feel like you need to work on your blog. If you start to stop doing the things you enjoy just to work on your blog you will start to resent your blog.
Take an Actual Break
Maybe what you need is some time off. Take a break from your blog and social media.
Go on a mini vacation, a full vacation, or just a stay-cation. Or just go about your life like you don’t have a blog for a week or two. This might be the refresher you need to come back and start adding more content and doing the marketing for your blog.
Write About Your Problems
Don’t think you are the only one suffering from this. Many bloggers go through blogger burnout, you are not alone.
Get out there and talk about it. You will be surprised at how many others are going through the same feelings you are going through.
Sharing what you are going through can be an amazing outlet to help you get rid of some of the feelings you might be having with blogger burnout.
Learn Something New
Sometimes, especially if you are having feelings of being uninterested with your blog, just trying to learn something new is what you need to get you over that hump.
You can grab an eBook, or perhaps jump into a course about blogging, marketing, or something to do with your blog’s niche. There are a ton of options out there. And learning something new is never a bad thing now is it?
Learn to Say No
As your blog grows, so will requests from others. Learn to say no.
If you are always trying to do everything everyone asks of you, you are going to get overwhelmed super fast.
Slow down, do only what you have time for. Don’t try to cram that task in after your scheduled blog time for the day because you feel like if you don’t you will be missing out.
You will be missing out when you don’t even want to look at your blog anymore because you tried to take on too much.
Be Realistic About What Can Be Done Each Day
We are only human and we all only have 24 hours in each day, along with other obligations that we need to keep to our work and families.
Stop trying to fit that one extra thing in, or taking time away from other obligations so you can get another round of keyword research in.
Stop Comparing Yourself To Others
Remember how we talked about setting realistic goals. I don’t care if that guru you followed made $4,231 in their first month of blogging. Stop trying to be just like others.
You are you, not the owner of LookHowMuchBetterNumbersIHave.com.
I’ll let you in on a secret, they probably didn’t make that much, but you won’t buy their stuff if they said it was actually $4.23.
Next time you start comparing yourself to some bar someone else set in your mind, remember that every blog is different.
Could they have made the numbers that they claimed? Nothing is impossible, but being in the right place at the right time could have helped.
They might have had access to other resources that your don’t. Different knowledge, different areas of expertise, you name it, it will always be different from what you are doing.
Unless you have a clone in an exact parallel universe you are comparing yourself too, you can’t set your bar to theirs. If you do have a clone in a parallel universe then feel free to compare away.
Anytime you start trying to set your goals to someone else’s claims you are setting your self up to start suffering from blogger burnout.
Do Less
That’s right do less. Stop running yourself into the ground day in and day out.
Maybe you are trying to post multiple times per week and be on every social platform each day.
Just Stop and Do Less.
Post less often. Stop trying to do so much on social media. Give yourself time to live and not be chained to your blog and all that comes with it.
Have You Suffered from Blogger Burnout?
How about you? Have you ever suffered from blogger burnout? What did you do to help you come back to your blog and enjoying it once again?
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How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome as a Blogger
How to Write Blog Posts When You Hate Writing
Great advice, I was feeling a little overwhelmed in the beginning lol and currently I feel slightly anxious but i think a good idea for me is to do less. I tend to do so much have so many tabs open. Now I’m going to close a few and just breath.
I can totally relate to the too many tabs open. I find myself just having to close it all and forget it, otherwise I get too many things at once I’m trying to do.
Glad to know I’m not alone – blogs are more work than they seem! I’ve been trying to swap around daily tasks in hopes of keeping things fresh but that only goes so far. Thanks for this article!
You are definitely not alone! It is amazing the amount of work that goes into trying to make a blog successful.
Thanks for the encouragement!
Definitely feeling some blogger burnout right now. I’ve hit a plateau and I’m not sure how to push through it so I just don’t feel like doing anything. Setting a schedule is a great tip, I don’t have one right now and that’s not helping. I’m going to work on creating a plan over the weekend to try and make some progress. Great tips!
For me I get most of these feelings every Sunday evening, or when I’m late typing up a post. Sometimes when I’m struggling with the technical side of blogging too because I’m just not computer minded to be honest. As much as I try to be, I’m baffled by a lot of the elements of running a blog!
I’m so glad that I’m not trying to run multiple social media platforms – although I have Pinterest and Facebook set up for my blog I mostly just focus on Twitter because I struggle to juggle them all. I’ve found having a tweet scheduler is an awesome way for me to be able to step back during the day without feeling guilty about not promoting my blog 😀