3 Common Blogging Myths That Are Holding You Back From Earning Money

There are a lot of blogging myths and mistakes out there (trust me, I’ve either believed them or made them) and they are holding you back.

Did you know that more than 90% of internet businesses fail within their first 120 days?!?

Whether you started your blog as a hobby, or you did it make money, you need to push past these myths otherwise you will end up in that 90%.

I don’t want that to happen for you and I’m sure you don’t either.

Blogging Myths

Myth #1 - Believing you need to work more to make more

I’m sure you’ve been told to hustle in order to make more money. I was taught this at a young age and believed this for years when it came to my blog.

I thought that if I could put in as many hours as I possibly could that I would magically earn more money each month.

I worked before my kids got up, during naptime, and until I couldn’t keep my eyes open at night.

Guess what… my blog was barely covering my expenses and I definitely wasn’t paying myself. 

Everyone online was saying that I needed to put in more hours and hustle otherwise I would fail.

But… I was physically and emotionally drained and my bank account was sad.

I was putting in more than 40 hours a week and bringing in less than $500 per month.

Working more hours and keeping ourselves busy doesn’t equal success or money.

Our society has become obsessed with being busy to the point that it has become a competition. 

We are bombarded every day with all of these new marketing strategies and tactics that it makes us feel like we need to do #allthethings.

Do you feel like that?

Do you get caught up in all the busywork trying to earn money with your blog?

It’s not about working more hours, it’s about how you use the time you have.

If you are someone who is always saying, “I don’t have enough time,” then you need to evaluate how you are spending your time each day.

The key isn’t to just work more, but to focus your time and energy on the projects and tasks that are generating revenue for your blog. 

I wish I would have done this years ago.

Instead of hustling to the point where you are ready to give up, spend 2-3 hours each day on revenue-generating tasks and eliminate all the busywork in your schedule.

If you need help identifying revenue-generating tasks you can check out this post or learn my secret to having a profitable blog.

Myth #2 - Believing you need to have a big audience before you can make money

Have you found yourself caught up in the page views or followers rat race?

I have!

It can be easy getting caught up in thinking that we need more email subscribers, more social media followers and more traffic to make more money.

Most bloggers come into the online world and feel that they have to focus all of their time and energy on increasing their views and social media followers before they can make any money.

I did.

I spent years on my blog, Frugal Fanatic, trying to increase my monthly page views. I did everything I possibly could to increase that vanity metric because I believed it meant I would make more money.

I wasted years doing this.

Yes, I was able to get more than 700K people to my blog every month, but these people weren’t sticking around to read my posts, they weren’t signing up for my email list and they definitely weren’t buying my offers. 

You don’t need a big audience to make money nor does it mean that you will earn more money.

Having a small, engaged audience is much more beneficial than a large audience that doesn’t care about your content or what you have to offer.

Once I shifted my focus away from believing I need to have a bigger audience I was able to increase my monthly revenue because I stopped wasting my time and energy on things that weren’t important.

Stop worrying about vanity metrics and focus on relationships and connections with your audience.

It isn’t about who has more followers or pageviews. Those numbers don’t equal more sales.

Don’t waste all of your time on growth tactics and increasing your Instagram followers, but on engagement and serving your audience.

You can start serving a small audience and make money now instead of waiting until you have a big audience as I did.

Myth #3 - Believing you need to do everything to be successful 

Do you have a never-ending to-do list of blogging tasks that all feel urgent?

What happens over and over again is we start listening to online gurus telling us we need to try a new marketing tactic for our blog, or they have a magic pill that will lead us to a profitable blog. 

So here we are with a ridiculously long to-do list of marketing and blogging tasks that we feel we HAVE to do in order to be successful.

Or, once we complete everything on this list we’ll make more money.

But… all that does is leave you with an overwhelmingly long list of tasks that aren’t doing anything for you except keeping you in the spot you are stuck in right now.

If you want to get results and make money from your blog, then you need to focus on what actually brings in money, not every single task on your to-do list.

Stop trying to do everything and start prioritizing profit.

Start by evaluating your to-do list and crossing off the items and tasks that either aren’t working or aren’t getting you results.

Your time is valuable. Don’t waste it on things that *might* work.

Make a plan for HOW you are going to earn consistent money from your blog and prioritize tasks and projects.

I hope this post helps you to stop believing these 3 blogging myths that are holding you back from making money from your blog.

Comment below and tell me what blogging myths held you back.