This is a guest post by Ryan Biddulph. He shares smart blogging tips at Blogging From Paradise.
One of the toughest lessons to learn in blogging is that you need to BE a successful blogger before becoming a successful blogger.
Thinking, feeling and acting like a pro before going pro feels like an uncomfortable quantum leap for most bloggers. How can you feel like a pro and blog with posture if you see virtually no positive returns for your hard blogging work?
Work comes before getting rewards. Most of you know this basic blogging truth. But dealing with emotional turmoil during the work process feels overwhelming sometimes. How does it feel to work gratis for 5 months to see zero profits?
Sometimes you feel OK working for free. Part of the game. Other times, you feel frustrated working for free because people feel accustomed to getting paychecks for work completed. We tend to be employees during some stage of life.
Goodness knows I was in that blogging boat for a bit. I felt OK working for free sometimes. But I felt frustrated to work for free, most of the time. I thought like an employee; work to get paid. Blogging is a different game, though. Work to gain skills, exposure and credibility. Pay days arrive down the road.
Blogging is being a successful blogger and doing as success does before seeing tangible, real world success. Bloggers work like millionaires before making millions. Bloggers work like millionaires while earning 0 bucks or 100 bucks or maybe 10,000 bucks.
Put in work. Be patient. Be persistent.
All this pro blogger BEING leads to you SEEING pro blogging results down the road. How far down the road? Who knows? Not decades. But suffice to say, months to years pass because going pro requires thousands of blogging hours before your skills, exposure and credibility increase to professional levels.
I developed the skill of seeing a few trees growing into a forest, blogging-wise. I counted seemingly small wins to feel good about being the pro before becoming the pro. Feeling good about every visitor and penny in blogging profits influenced me to feel successful. Feeling successful goaded me to keep doing as pro bloggers do: create, connect and self-promote my multiple streams of income.
Sure I ran into blogging bumps in the road masquerading as my fears but I faced, felt and released these energies to continue being a professional blogger before going pro.
Do you BE a pro blogger daily?
If you see success you BEed a pro for many thousands of hours. Being a pro means generously creating, connecting, opening multiple income streams and trusting in self and process. Imagine having immense posture. See yourself succeeding well before physical, actual, tangible success finds you. Cultivate a knowing that success is yours.
Patiently keep being a pro well before you go pro. No one goes pro and sees pro dough until you work like a pro for a sustained period of time. Being precedes seeing. No way you see pro blogging success in traffic and money terms until you be the pro for years.
Imagine you intend to maximize your blogging profits.
Being preceding seeing means you BE the pro generously and genuinely for a time before seeing the profits boost. Nothing happens overnight. Expect a hefty lag to exist because lags bridge being and seeing. Lags give clarity to the process. Lags weed out lazy bloggers. Lags allow blogging cream to rise to the top. Lags cull deluded bloggers who try to get rich quick or seek overnight success.
No such fallacies exist. You BE as successful bloggers BE, generously creating and connecting, then, over time, you SEE more traffic, profits and business from your blogging efforts. The process is logically simple to follow but emotionally uncomfortable to follow sometimes because facing fear is never comfortable, pleasant or seamless. No one enjoys feeling fear. But….welcome to going pro.
Keep being and you will eventually keep seeing. Be the pro and pro blogging results find you after working diligently and persistently. Nobody takes free rides. We all put in work to blog successfully. No shortcuts exist. Never let bloggers fool you. Hacks do not exist. Good old fashioned hard work exists. That’s just the way that it is.
Be it before you see it.
🙂 Ryan thanks for the awesome post friend! So many rich lessons here we can all learn from. So true that the income streams and becoming a pro blogger do come much later as we have already discovered. Those who practice to develop skills learned from other pro bloggers see results eventually. If these bloggers don’t give up before their breakthrough! I always say every blogger needs to develop patience for the process.