March 15, 2024

Why I Hate Blogs and Blogging – A Professional’s Insight into the Dark Side of Blogging

I have a confession to make. I hate blogging. Though I am an online
professional who makes a living out of managing and generating content
for clients worldwide; I still hate blogging – at least what it has
turned in to. I feel bad when I see people launching up blogs and
websites like anything with little or no dedication to the quality of
content, but would still have the audacity to dream of earning big
with Google Adsense.
Well, before I start sounding like a cynic, let me elaborative the
reasons for my hatred for the practice known as blogging, and bring
about the dark side of blogosphere. You are welcome to disagree with
me, provided you have gone through different experiences than what I
am stating below.

Blog-o-mania–Thousands of Blogs getting Launched Everyday

Every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to think they have the ability to
launch, run and maintain a blog and frankly speaking, every Tom, Dick
and Harry, was actually managing one before Google Panda upate. Blogs
are launched in hundreds every day and out of them, very, very few
happen to be original/authentic and professional blogs, providing high
quality content to users.

On a search of a particular keyword, you are given more than a million
results – and most of them are so called blogs; but who actually
goes beyond the first or second page of Google search results. The
rest of the blogs either go to waste or take up bandwidth but provide
nothing substantial. The same old redundant information or news;
copied & pasted. If you are deciding to launch a blog, STOP AND THINK
once more! What are you opening a blog for? To give the same old data
or will you be providing something unique to readers. Unless you
don’t have a very good plan or a very good reason to set up a blog,
DO NOT set up one.

English: USS Pivot launched at the Gulf Shipbu...
Image via Wikipedia

The coming of Search Engine Optimization – the going of Creativity

SEO is a craze that is gripping the online world and while bloggers,
web owners and web masters are going gaga over getting the first
position, they all miss out on a very simple point; you aren’t
catering the search engines. You cater to readers, who are real people
looking for good quality content when they decide to invest their time
and effort in reading your blog. Bloggers make the mistake of making
their websites highly search engine friendly, but not at all reader
friendly.

This is a horrible obsession that brings a straight end to creativity
and sets you on a crazy race of reaching top positions at Google.
Competition increases manifold and bloggers simply copy paste content
from one end to another, and aggressively push their website to the
search engine’s first page. Through these practices, your blog may
reach the first spot, but unless you don’t work on your content, you
can never get through the maintenance phase. Once you reach the top
spot, then it’s all about STAYING on top with high quality content.

Adsense – When Blogging is Done solely for Money

Anything done just for money is bound to fall short. Bloggers simply
want to have numerous blogs just to get a little extra cash from
Google Adsense or similar programs. Well, I partly blame all these
programs for the junk we have in the blogosphere. Every other blog
launched hopes to make dollars through Adsense and are in an endless
endeavor to get traffic towards their blog.

But it’s sad that bloggers don’t see the irony behind this….You
invest a huge amount of energy, effort, learning and writing as well
as technical skills into bringing traffic (visitors) towards your
blog, just so that they can click on any of the ads you hosted on the
website. With every click you get to earn a dollar or a couple of
cents. For the long term, you may get a passive income, but from where
I see, the proportion of effort input to monetary output is like 8 to
1. Not a very motivational figure for me. I’d rather toll through
the days as a full time employer rather than to go through such
hassles just to earn cents or a dollar or two.

Blog Failure – Another Reason to be depressed

The sad truth is very few blog setups actually grow BIG. Hardly 1 out
of 10 lasts for more than a year. The rest of them are lost in space
somewhere while their owners experience some setbacks in terms of
traffic or response. The initial few months of blogging are pretty
exciting; its only when reality settles in, do you know how much of a
naïve fool you have been. In come earning problems, content issues,
maintenance issues and most importantly TIME. Many bloggers are also
full time employees, who think blogging would simply be an hour a day
activity. That is a serious misleading thought. When they finally
realize the blog’s failure, a feel of low self worth erupts and you
start being envious of other progressive blogs. Please. The world is
already so depressed…Do we need another blogging reason to get all
sad and depressed.

Google Penalties – Shock, Surprises, Fear

Google has been intricate policies for all web owners and web masters.
People most often chose to skip reading Google policies and end up
making mistakes that gets their sites either banned, penalized or
their earnings withdrawn. Imagine one fine day, you open your adsense
accounting, expecting a grand figure, but instead having an error
message that informs about the shutdown of your ad sense account. All
your $500 plus you were supposed to withdraw by the end of the month
going down the drain. That’s fear, anger, shock and total despair
for you.

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16 thoughts on “Why I Hate Blogs and Blogging – A Professional’s Insight into the Dark Side of Blogging

  1. Haha, blogging is the most un-hobby like hobby I’ve ever had! Then again, like any new task I’ve sought to do well or make successful, it’s taken a lot more time, research, dedication and a lot of questions and mistakes before I’ve gotten it right. When I learned to knit or went to school for something, it is always more time than I anticipate to make my efforts successful, but for some reason people think they’re off the hook with blogging.

    When someone appears to be an “overnight success” it only looks that way since you can’t see their other failed startups, the hours they spent reading posts, editing, networking with others and reading content to fine tune their skills.

    It astounds me the rate of blogs that get started every minute, and how quickly people are disengaged when it doesn’t make money overnight. I know I had my “down” months, but you stick with it and decide if it’s worth it- eventually there’s payoff (depending on how you measure success).

    Also, I agree with Google- they are the Gods of the web and vying for page rank, adsense dollars or learning to manage accounts with different sites as they’re absorbed (Yep, my YouTube account for my blog is signed up with the wrong email address and I can’t change it since I was accidentally logged into my old account when editing my first video and didn’t realize I just locked my account into an old email) . Ugh!

  2. Great post and I share your sentiment but there is nothing we can do about it. Unless Google show some compassion, everyone is like lambs to the slaughter. Will bookmark your post to show my support.

  3. hello Arba, thanks for the great post. You really hit the nail with it. Talking about blogging for money, there’s the fallacy that making money on the web is only a matter of finding a smart domain name and launching a website. Then out of nowhere money starts coming in. People just don’t know that online business has the same requirements and specifications like every other offline business. Writing for the search engines won’t get you anywhere since Google has become extremely intelligent and knows how to deal with that kind of blogs. With 2011 Pandas’ clearings many crappy blogs lost their rankings since they had nothing to offer but useless content. Yes, blogging in many ways sucks. That’s why only professionals will get the top rankings and hobbyists will always be mediocre.

  4. I agree with you. Blogs started out as a way to communicate something a person felt was interesting and meaningful. Although the pendulum has swung the other way, I feel that the situation will eventually settle down. The worthwhile blogs will remain, and the pieced-together ones will fade away.

  5. Pingback: What is Blogging and How Can You be Making Money Doing It?
  6. Hi Arba,

    So many people think that they’re going to get rich by launching a new blog. Then they get despondent when they realise just how much work (and time) it takes to maintain a blog.

    To be fair, it’s not really their fault. There are so many internet gurus selling ebooks and courses and telling people how easy it is to make money online. It’s hardly surprising that some people fall for it.

  7. It is sad to see how people are taking blogging these days. I am sorry for you if you feel like you already hate blogging because each day there will be more launched with little or no interest to people.

  8. Very interesting post here. But, this other side of blogging. With proper education and don’t pushing to much with your blog you’ll most probably succeed. Nobody wants that things mentioned above happen, but that’s also part of life. After you fail, you ‘ll rise again. I’m totally optimistic about blogging and looking bright side of whole story. Anyway, very interesting and unusual approach in this post.

    1. That’s a great attitude and being able to try new things fail and try again is a key to being a successful blogger.

  9. Hmm, interesting discussion …

    I guess I’m fortunate that I blog from within a corporate setting, so I don’t really care about direct revenue generation, etc.

    However, I do get a lot of people who approach me who say they are interested in doing so, and ask “how hard is it”? The best analogy I’ve come up with is it’s like going back to school for a few years to get your MBA.

    A lot of time, a lot of money — and an uncertain payoff. But it can open doors for you if you make the commitment, and end up being good at it.

    That makes them think a while 🙂

    — Chuck

  10. Hi Arba, you bring up some very good points. In fact, even some very popular blogs seem to have the same concepts in their posts that everyone else is writing about. But, even so, I enjoy blogging more now than ever. I think I will keep on doing it. But you do have to balance the love for blogging with the need for an income.

    Thanks for a great post.

  11. First off, to me you are not even at a professional level simply because you never reply to any comment here, so what are you to even talk about dark side of blogging?
    You hate blogging and you still guest post, doesn’t that sounds funny?
    You hate blogging and you still had two review blogs for your niche, doesn’t that sound weird?
    The worst of all, is are you a women because on both of your review blog, the “about me” page are all male?
    Can I still listen to your dark side of blogging… well… not a single word anymore…

  12. I’m trying really hard not to become a cynic when it comes to blogging. I love blogging and I love everything that I’m learning about blogging. I think it’s fun. What threatens to taint the experience are the people who see me get something for “free” and decide to start a blog too. If someone really wants to blog, then great! But if they’re just doing it for easy money and free things – I get the pleasure of bursting that bubble when I explain the work that goes into each of my blogs. I feel like I’m telling people that Santa was beat to death by his reindeer.

  13. And yet you blog on… ???

    And, yes – I *was* dumb enough to comment in this boring-azz blog thread.
    (I promise to throw myself under the next passing train, okay?)

    Nah, just ribbing you. If blogging makes you smile, even just occasionally, then you could be doing worse, right?
    Hell, I even smiled. Isn’t that sick ?!?

    Enjoy, my friend…

  14. I do agree that there are blogs and bloggers out there who are creating accounts and contents that are not quality which is badly needed by readers. But the world of blogging revolve around the globe where there are people who are contented to do an article and not quality and people who willing to do quality contents and also people who wants to read quality.

  15. i was giving up my blogging career.And i make a search on google it takes me to your blog.
    But i think i have to work hard to continue 🙂

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