Should you quit your job to be a full-time blogger?
8 Concrete reasons why quitting your job for blogging can be a bad idea.
Blogging is undoubtedly a tremendous way to reach people and to make money. There are numerous people around the world who have created fortunes out of blogging. No matter how common blogging has become today, still there are unique methods and strategies which you can adapt to win. You need to be keen on learning and accept the fact that everything takes time. Considering the old saying ‘Rome wasn't built in a day’.
Okay, so that was the inspirational part. Now I want to talk about something really crucial. It is the chaotic question of many youngsters and people in pursuit of making money online. I’m not repeating the questions as you already have read the title.
You might be thinking of quitting your job out of your excitement for being a full-time blogger. And the reason why you've reached to this notion is the stories of successful bloggers you read. Back in the days when I started out as a blogger, I wrote an article '7 Secrets Successful Bloggers don't tell'. And today I'm really proud that I wrote it. At that time, I myself was unemployed and looking for building my fortune with blogging. But eventually, I found out that not everybody is telling the complete truth and tactics of successful blogging, not even the greatest names in the blogosphere, not to point them out here.
Here are some concrete reasons which can turn your mind back towards your job or finding a better one.
1. Blogging is not considered as the mainstream career option
As already said earlier, people have crafted out fortunes out of blogging. But due to lack of awareness or generation gap, our elders don't realize that. Did you ever try telling your parents that you are leaving your full-day job in pursuit of becoming a successful blogger? If you did then you already know what I mean to say. But if you haven’t then you are really lucky :P Don’t get me wrong, I myself build blogs and websites for people as a service and train them with Content Marketing tactics and monetization. But nothing is considered worthy unless you make it profitable.
A successful blogger is not just a blogger, something more than that, an entrepreneur to be exact. He is not actually in pursuit of full-time employment; he is running a business and deploys all his ability and knowledge in it. On the other hand, an unsuccessful blogger when applying for a full-time job needs to follow the same route as any other candidate would do. And in professional terms, there are very fewer chances that his experience as a blogger would get considered as a metric to get employed.
2. You won't be able to make it from home
Working from home sounds great but it will hit you bad as the time passes. Personally, you will feel stuck inside the 4 walls with no exposure to the professional world outside. And in some regions especially in India, working from home is not culturally accepted. Eventually, your parents and other people at home would start questioning your work, the growth factors and earn and so on. I’ve had a terrible experience in the good old days when my family used to ask me the same questions time and again.
3. Doesn't guarantee financial security and recurring returns
Doing a full-time job as you know comes with the benefit of equated monthly returns. But as a blogger, you can’t ensure the same. You yourself know that you can’t earn simply by talking on your blog and posting things you love. I hate people saying these toxic sentences ‘Choose your passion’, ‘Do what seems interesting to you’ or ’Write from your heart’ etc. The reason why I call these statements toxic is that these are incomplete in terms of reflecting the complete meaning. You need to consider blogging as a business. After all, you want to make something out of your effort. And if you aren’t talking about a product or not infusing a business model within your blog then monetization will be really hard for you.
4. Your exposure to the industry may get diminished
Doing a full-time job gets you industry exposure and getting networked with like-minded people. A job, especially in marketing, teaches so much as you are learning while doing, it’s everything practical. As far as my experience is concerned, sitting inside four walls, exploring through the web and reading the success stories of the bloggers won’t teach you much.
5. Most monetization tactics don't actually work
No matter how boastfully the blogging gurus are pitching the affiliate programs, you shouldn’t believe it until you test those out. Go through the conditions and challenges of affiliate marketing. This will help you choose the right affiliate channels and methodology for yourself. You would need to be consistent and limitless trials to attain success with affiliate marketing.
6. You need finance to run your blog
You not only need money to build your blog but you need it to spend on marketing. You may start out with a small spend on building your blog but sooner you need to spend on marketing activities like social media marketing and other sorts of online promotional activities. While you’ve quit your job, you will gradually undergo fear of running out of the bucks you’ve saved. This may result into over agitation and sleepless nights which won’t give any returns.
7. You become insanely busy
Remember, you are giving up a 9 to 6 job but what if you find yourself working for 15 hours or even more than that and not even getting any returns equivalent to your job? The answer is simple ‘you are in trouble’. Being busy doesn’t always mean being successful or profitable.
8. People quit Blogging without trying much
What if everybody quits jobs and start blogging? What will happen? What will these brands, MNCs and institutions will do to operate? This clearly states that the world isn’t run by people who desire to make living out of sharing their daily experience on the web.
I have seen people immensely excited before starting blogging. But as the time passed and they didn’t get the return out of their work, they lost interest and left their domains to expire. That is something I really pity. People quit too soon, before even creating a strategy and taking guidance from the right people. If you want to succeed in building a full-time career in blogging then you need to be open to failures and experimentation.
The Right Advice
I tried discussing almost everything related to the challenges one might face if he or she chooses to give up the employment to be a full-time blogger. I’ve been reading many articles convincing people to quit their day job and opt to be full-time bloggers.
Considering my 5+ years of experience in blogging; being full-time employed with Asia’s one of the top digital marketing training companies, all that I want to recommend is: DO NOT quit your job for blogging, instead, manage time and do blogging as a parallel activity.
Let me know about your story and views on this article in the comments section below.
