Blogging is a stressful thing to do in one’s spare time. Well… It can be. Naturally, we always put more pressure on ourselves than we should do get things done, and making sure that our blogs are up to date is one of them.

Having your own blog is supposed to be fun! I mean come on! YOU OWN YOUR OWN LITTLE PART OF THE INTERNET! How cool is that??!!

Since I’m a massive worrier when it comes to blogging, I thought that I would share the things that I’m constantly stressing out about when it comes to running this blog and my other one – Lushie UK.

1) “The page view counter is wrong! No one reads my blog! There’s no way I actually have 7,000 views! No one reads it!”

Yes. Those page views are correct. Sure, give or take a few but if it says 7,000, then you have 7,000. If it says 100,000 then it’s that. I know that numbers and statistics are important to a blogger but believe me, people are reading your blog!

2) “Oh my life, no one follows me on Bloglovin! If no one follows me on Bloglovin, then that means no one reads my blog!”

I have one follower on Bloglovin’. That’s right, ONE!! And seeing that lonely little figure every time I log on makes me super sad. But I try and forget about it. Sure, it would be grand if people followed me on there *pressure’s on now readers! – I’m joking… Sort of…* but I tend to go by page views more than followers.

Bloglovin’ isn’t the only platform in the universe where people can reach your blog. So if you have one (or two… or three…) stop stressing. It’s ok.

 

3) “It’s taking me foooorrreeevvvveeerrrr to read this book. If I don’t post something on my blog soon, people are going to get bored and not read my blog anymore!”

As a book blogger, I’m constantly stressing about how long it’s taking me to read a book. If it takes me more than a few days to read one, then I tend to work on the design of my blog instead or do posts like this one. Sure, it’s not a review, but it’s still new content!

 

4) “Tut, Kirsty. You should really have a more diverse range of book reviews on your blog. How are you going to cater for everyone?”

*shut up, brain* I only review teen fiction and sometimes the occasional crime book. I’m always worrying that I’m not diverse enough.

You review what you want to review. You write about what you want to write about. Yes, my blog mainly consists of teen fiction as those are the books that I enjoy reading. But every now and then, a classic literature book will pop up, a crime book will appear in the midst of nowhere and maybe even a fantasy book! Blogging is supposed to be enjoyable, so as soon as you start to think that you have to change what you like writing about to cater to others, that’s when it becomes wrong and not enjoyable anymore.

DO IT FOR YOU!

 

5) “UGGGGHHHHH! I haven’t bought my own domain and my blog URL contains ‘blogspot’. This means I’m not a serious blogger. What am I going to do?!!”

Seriously, don’t fret about this. Buying your own domain can be expensive. If you’re seriously considering buying one, then just save your money up or ask for the money for you birthday. Some of my favourite bloggers haven’t bought a domain but I still love them! My Lush reviews blog has nearly 50,000 page views and I haven’t bought a domain for that. I’m spending money that I don’t really need to spend.

6) “My blog design is rubbish, it’s boring, I hate it! It doesn’t look like other blogs do with their custom headers and fancy fonts with their fancy photography.”

I’m constantly comparing my blog to other people’s and it really isn’t healthy for me to do that. HTML codes are the best thing in the world. With the HTML codes, you can pretty much do anything on your blog (that’s how I got the drop down menu).

The one thing I really want to change is my header. But right now, I can’t afford to buy a custom one, so I just have to stick with that for now. As time goes on, your blog design will change. You might love the colours you’ve chosen one minute and then hate them the next!

If you really don’t like your blog name, you can change this as well! Just let your followers know that you’re changing it so that they don’t get confused!

 

7) “My bookstagram account is absolutely terrible! I don’t have any props to use in photos and I’m too dumb to think of photography ideas. And all I have is my phone. I need to have a ‘proper’ camera to have nice photos.”

I’ve been having these thoughts a lot lately as well. I want my bookstagram account to be really good and again (I keep comparing myself to other bookstagrammers and their photos). I keep thinking that in order to have a lot of followers on Instagram, I need to be a world class photographer.

And no, you don’t need a ‘proper’ camera in order to take nice photos. I have the iPhone 5S and I can still take some really good photos with it. There are also plenty of apps that you can download to make the editing process easier!

My number one rule for you?: DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHER BLOGGERS!

 

8) ‘I don’t do book giveaways! This means that people are going to lose interest in me as a blogger because I don’t do them!”

Ummmm… Hello? Have you seen the prices of books? They can be costly and to just buy them to give them away is expensive! Sorry to be selfish, but if I’m buying books, it’s not to do a giveaway. They’re going on my bookshelf, thank you very much.

You don’t have to do giveaways to be a popular blogger.

 

9) “I feel like I’m not interesting enough on Twitter… People will think I’m boring and won’t visit my blog.”

You don’t always have to be light-hearted, funny and happy to keep your followers on Twitter happy! `Having an off-day? Then just take that day to promote your blog instead. Use it to promote your Instagram or your Bloglovin account. The next day, you could be feeling happier and you might want to amuse you followers that day!

I feel the pressure all of the time to be interesting on Twitter. Sometimes I do polls to keep my followers engaged and during the day, if I think of a funny tweet, I’ll write it down and keep it. (Sounds sad I know, but I’m quite self-conscious about how I come across online)

10) “There’s already so many successful book bloggers out there that have a much much bigger following than I do? So what’s the point in me blogging when someone else is already doing it so much better and has everyone reading their blog instead of mine?”

For me, this is the number one thing that I worry about. I’m always thinking what the point of me blogging is when there’s someone out there that has thousands and thousands of followers on Twitter and their blog is amazing.

Your blog is YOUR voice! You’re writing because it makes YOU happy. Those 7,000 views? That’s you making OTHER people happy. Those 100 followers you have on Twitter? That’s YOUR voice that they want to hear.

You write your blog in your own style. You’re always going to do things differently to that blogger with thousands of followers. I know that this is a hard thought to let go of, but don’t keep comparing yourself to other people. What if we all compared ourselves to Zoella? Bloggers would get tired of comparing herself to her and stop writing. Then all of you amazing bloggers out there wouldn’t be sharing your voice!

 

So there we go, bloggers! Those are the 10 things that I stress about the most whilst I’m blogging. There’s actually quite a lot of worrying that goes on inside my brain whilst I’m doing my blogs but us bloggers have just got to remember that we’re doing our blogs for us! Because we love it!

Do you agree? Do you have any more that I could add? Don’t forget to leave a comment in the box below!