You’ve seen the posts and recommendations: blogging is promoted as a simple way to make money. All you have to do is start a blog, write a few posts, share them online and voila! You’re making money. But is this really how blogging works?
The truth is different from what most beginner bloggers expect. Yes, blogging can be profitable. I know firsthand that you can turn a blog into a successful online business.
However, for many beginners, the disconnect between blogging expectations vs reality is one of the top reasons they quit their blogs far too early.
I always say:
“Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither is a successful blog.”
Have you ever wondered:
- What is a blog?
- How does blogging actually work?
- Why does it feel slower than I expected?
- Am I doing something wrong — or is this normal?
In this post, as a seasoned blog coach with over 15 years of experience in both personal and professional blogging, I’ll share how blogging works.
You’ll learn what most people expect when they start, and what actually happens behind the scenes for blog growth and long-term success.
DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you click on a product or service, and decide to purchase it, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. All recommended products and services are based on my positive experience with them. For more information, please read my Disclaimer.
How non-bloggers perceive blogging is like
When you’re researching starting a blog, it can seem deceptively simple. The gorgeous websites with beautiful photos and authoritative advice…
Some even have income reports and “how I quit my 9-to-5” stories. You’d think that successful bloggers:
- Write a few posts that rank easily on Google
- Grow an audience quickly
- Monetize within a few months
- They figure out things as they go
Afterall, that’s what many of them claim they’ve done in those pins you see on Pinterest – “How I Made Six-Figures Within 6 Months of Blogging”. Yeah, those.
Just like the “If you build it, they will come” from the film Field of Dreams, you may be thinking, “If I build it, keep consistent for a few months, I’ll be raking in the cash.”
The expectation is only partially correct.
What you don’t see is all of the work behind the scenes, which we’ll explore next.
What is a Blog and How Blogging Actually Works
A blog is a website where you regularly publish content around a specific topic to share ideas, teach, or inspire your audience. Over time, a blog becomes a strategic platform that builds visibility, trust, and long-term growth — whether you’re growing a personal brand or an online business.
Blogging is about providing digital content that solves problems for a specific audience.
While you CAN have a personal blog, ultimately, it won’t rank in Google searches or be Pinterest-worthy. This makes it very hard to market it.
From my experience, this is one of the hardest things new bloggers have trouble grasping.
Your blog about your personal story isn’t going to make it without a massive amount of marketing and promotion. Personal blogs tend to have a small audience.
That means blogging works when you:
- Create helpful, search-focused content
- Organize that content strategically on your website
- Build trust over time
- Connect your content to clear goals (traffic, email growth, monetization)
Consistency isn’t the only thing you need — your blog grows when you have a strategic plan that you implement carefully and with intention.
When you take your blog seriously as a business from Day One, great things can happen.
This is what many new bloggers fail to know before starting a blog.
Let’s look at how blogging works and some of the expectations bloggers have.
Expectation #1: “I Just Need to Write Good Content”
Think that the process of blogging is just writing and publishing blog posts?
The Reality: While good writing matters, your blogging structure, strategy and creating content for search intent matter more.
A common misconception is that all you need to do is pump out 50-plus blog posts and you’re a bona fide blogger.
Sometimes you wonder why nobody is reading your blog, and it may be that your blog isn’t discoverable just yet.
The reality is that blogs grow when content is:
- Aligned with your reader’s search intent
- Written with your reader’s problems in mind
- Organized into categories and topic clusters
- Optimized for SEO
- Properly interlinked so search engines understand your site
If you haven’t made your blog content discoverable, you’ll never get organic traffic.
The process of blogging is when you blend writing and SEO work together.
PRO TIP: Use tools like Keysearch.co — an affordable keyword search tool — that’s great for beginner bloggers. It helps you find the best high-volume, low-competition keywords to use in your blog content. This helps you get ranking and be discovered faster on Google and other search engines.
Expectation #2: “Traffic Should Come Quickly”
You’re producing optimized blog content and promoting it on social media and Pinterest. You expect that traffic should grow as you publish more posts.
The Reality: Blog traffic will be slow at first, but that’s 100% normal.
Your new blog is going to take time to be discovered. It can take Google and other search engines several weeks to a few months to crawl your site and index it.
Even then, if your content is on competitive topics, it may not rank high in search results. Before you start wondering, “Is blogging worth it?” know this: it’s OK for blog traffic to take time. It doesn’t mean your blog is failing.
Remember, search engines are:
- Discovering your site
- Learning what your blog is about
- Deciding whether to trust your content
Your new baby blog is completely new to search engines. Before they can start ranking your content high in search results, they need to deem your site as authoritative and worthwhile for readers.
PRO TIP: What you publish today can start to rank and produce traffic months later. If it still doesn’t generate organic traffic through Google or your Pinterest activities, adjust our titles to attract clicks.
Speed Up Blog Traffic With Scheduling Tools
Save time promoting your blog by scheduling things like:
- Blog post promotion on your Facebook page
- Instagram posts
- Pinterest pins
Tools like Tailwind can do many of these things and are a content marketing hub. Even if you use Tailwind to schedule your pins to your optimal times when your audience is using it, it’s much better than winging it without consistency.
Expectation #3: “Consistency Means Posting All the Time”
You believe the process of blogging includes posting two or more blog posts on any topic that interests you, which gets you more traffic.
The Reality: Blogging consistently AND strategically matters more than frequency.
Without a plan, you have an unorganized blog, and you’re on the road to burnout.
Blogging works best when you:
- Create a plan with cornerstone/pillar posts and sub-topics for topic clusters (it doubles as an SEO win)
- Blog content is on the core topics your audience is interested in
- Publish fewer but better-quality blog posts
- Update and improve your existing blog posts
When you’re not just writing and publishing randomly, you’re blogging with intention.
Having a well-structured blog with 30 to 50 relevant blog posts will do much better than one with more content that’s all over the place.
PRO TIP: Always ask yourself: “Does this blog post topic work for one of my categories? Does it add value to a cornerstone or pillar topic? How can I interlink it with other blog posts?”
| Related: How To Write Quality Blog Posts Like A Pro Blogger
Expectation #4: “Monetization Comes After Traffic”
If you believe that you need to wait a year before monetizing your blog, you’re missing out.
The Reality: You should start monetizing your blog early on, even as your focus is primarily on building your blog’s content and audience foundation.
A mistake many bloggers make is to wait too long to start thinking about building a monetization plan. You don’t have to implement it immediately, but it’s good to start planning.
If the idea of selling feels overwhelming when you’re a beginner, you can breathe a big sigh of relief.
Monetization planning as a beginner means:
- Researching and understanding how your blog could make money
- Creating content that works to support future offers, services or products
- Choosing topics that align with strategies like affiliate marketing
The sooner you have an idea of how you’ll monetize your blog, the easier it is to build the foundation for quicker success later.
For example, when I was building this blog, I focused on topics that built my authority as a blogging expert. This creates more credibility as a blog coach.
Expectation #5: Wing It Without Investing In Your Blog and Your Skills
Think you can scale your blog without investing in key resources and tools? You may be a dreamer.
Key Investments That Protect And Grow Your Blog
To grow your blog into an online business, there will need to be some key investments made in tools and resources that greatly help. These include:
- Legal pages to legally protect your website and you from potential lawsuits, fines and content theft. You need this before you start monetizing.
- An email marketing platform to build a community with an owned email list of newsletter subscribers. This is how you grow traffic, your personal brand and ultimately an income.
- Website upgrade, including changing to a hosted WordPress site, or updating key things to make your blog look professional.
- Getting professional help from a blog strategist and coach who can see the big picture, help you get organized with a plan, and provide insights and teach you the online skills you need.
The reality is that every business needs a solid foundation of tools and resources to take it to the next level. Free ones can only take you so far.
What Blogging Really Requires That No One Talks About
Let’s look at how blogging works in the real world and what you need:
Patience As Your Blog Grows
Blogging is exciting at first, but the feeling fades over time. If you’re patient, always experimenting and adjusting your strategies and tactics, you’ll see success.
Progress can look like:
- Small traffic increases over a period of time
- Blog posts ranking on page 3 before page 1
- Little wins that don’t feel impressive yet
These are signs your blog is growing, even if you don’t feel like it is just yet.
There may be factors outside of your control that limit how fast you reach your blog goals. These can include:
- A full-time or part-time job
- Family commitments (parenting, taking care of an elderly parent, etc.)
- Your health limitations
- Skill set and blogging knowledge
- Budget for investing in blog growth tools, resources and coaching
How blogging works for you is going to be different from how it works for another blogger.
To sum it up, understand that it will take time to grow your blog to a point where you’re seeing success.
Open To Learning New Blogging Skills
There are many blogging skills you’ll need to learn over time to see success. Blog writing and SEO are just a small part of blogging like a pro.
Over time, bloggers learn:
- SEO basics
- Website structure
- Branding
- Content planning
- Content marketing and promotion
- Email marketing
- Analytics and analysis
- Monetization strategies
You’ll learn these blogging skills over time, applying them as you go.
Clear Blog Brand Positioning
Think you don’t need to worry about branding your blog? You certainly do, and it’s not as difficult as you think.
Branding is more than choosing a colour palette and creating a logo.
Blogs grow faster when readers know:
- Who the blog is for
- What problems it solves
- Your experience: why should readers trust you
When your blog brand messaging is clear on your home page and About page, you’re much farther ahead than most amateur blogs out there.
It’s easier to grow when you’re clear about who your blog audience should be and how you can help them.
Need help with your blog brand messaging on your About page? Here’s a free workbook that can help you with this:
How A Blog Actually Grows Over Time
How does blogging work in the real world?
The process of blogging and growing your blog depends on many variables (like your available time, other commitments, and skill level). However, in general, here’s a growth timeline for successful blogs. Here’s a successful blogger’s timeline:
Months 0–3:
- Setting up your blog
- Learning how blogging works
- Creating your “foundational” blog content (pillar posts, cornerstone posts)
- Getting set up on Pinterest/social media and joining Facebook groups for bloggers
- Submit your sitemap to Google via Google Search Console
- Almost no blog traffic (except for family and friends)
Months 4–9:
- Search engines begin indexing your content
- Blog traffic increases, even if it’s in small increments (like 100 more site visitors/month)
- Continue to create blog content and promote it
- Early signs that your activities are working
- Confidence is increasing
Months 9–18:
- Your content starts to increase, and you’re producing topic clusters
- Traffic is more consistent
- You may be getting an affiliate sale, or you’re working on a small-ticket offer
- Blogging is less of a mystery to you
- You’ve got systems and a “rhythm” of content creation and promotion that works for you
- You’re feeling more confident
This timeline isn’t guaranteed. However, it’s one that is realistic, and many bloggers will experience.
Remember: the longer you blog consistently, the more you’ll be rewarded. For example, my 10+ year old lifestyle blog can rank pretty quickly due to domain authority, even for more competitive keywords. This means more traffic and more ad revenue, and sponsorship opportunities.
Is Blogging Still Worth it- Even with this Reality Check?
Here’s the truth: when done correctly, the process of blogging does work, and it can help with:
- Online visibility for yourself and your blog brand
- Control over your content and platform
- Income opportunities beyond a full-time or part-time job
- Your own business asset that grows over time
- Sense of satisfaction that you’re building something successful
What I’ve learned is that blogging as a business is a slow burn. It works best when you have a plan in place, you’re consistent, adjusting as needed and thinking long-term.
PRO TIP: My mindset that you may want to adopt: under-promise yourself when it comes to goals, and delight yourself with successes.
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What I Tell New Bloggers
Anytime I work with a new blogger as a blog coach, I have to explain blogging expectations vs reality.
Blogging works when you:
- Treat is like a long-term project
- Focus on helpful content
- Build a foundational content structure before focusing on growth
- Take the time to learn blogging skills and adjust strategies as needed
Is blogging worth it? Is the hard work worth it? Absolutely yes. Don’t quit your blog before you have had enough time to adjust and grow it.
Reminding Yourself of Blogging Expectations VS Reality
Take all of those blog posts about making money within six months of blogging with a big grain of salt. They are not realistic when it comes to blogging expectations.
As a new blogger, you’re wondering how blogging works and if it’s all worth it. The truth is that it certainly is, but like with any business, it takes time, effort and a solid plan.
Once you understand the reality and keep it in mind when things are tough, you’ll succeed in the long run.
Need help figuring out how blogging works and how to create a strategic plan? Let’s work together:
Need Expert Help? Time To Work With A Blog Coach!
Hey – it’s Margaret here. I’m a blog coach, working with new bloggers like you, helping them launch and grow their blogs. Learn more about my blog coaching services.
Let’s get started!
QUESTION: What do you think – is blogging worth it? What’s stopping you from blogging?
