Writing online was one of my scariest nightmares. Despite being someone who can write decent sentences with manageable grammar, the idea of putting my thoughts on the internet haunted me for quite some time.
It wasn’t merely because of the fact that someone would point out my grammar or punctuation errors or question my poor use of vocabulary. It wasn’t even linking my social media accounts to the blog and revealing my identity.
Because unlike speaking to someone or an audience in-person, you can’t get away with poor sentence transitions, unorganized sentences and paragraphs, and a number of alike logic factors. Each and everything you say should make sense to the readers as every word you say is recorded in texts.
Any minor mistake you make will be easily pointed out. In this case, you have got only one place to hide behind, and that is nowhere!
I am certain that most of you still reading this article now would be wondering if this is an article that encourages readers to start a blog, or one that frightens them to never start a blog in their lifetime.
Of course, some of the soliloquies I mention here might sound intimidating to some of you. But I want to be as transparent as possible to you, because I believe there will be some of you out there struggling with the same self-doubt I once had. If this article helps at least a few of you overcome your fears and inspires you to take action, then the goal of this article would be accomplished.
***End of Ranting***
So how did I overcome that fear and start a blog eventually? What pushed me to write online anyway? Come on, let’s dive deep right in to find out.
Oh, and one more thing. For people who are anything like me, that swiftly snap out of articles right after reading intros (especially, after tedious intros as this one), here’s the short answer to the question as to what made me overcome my different fears and start the blog: the desire to earn money, network with great people, to think better and discover what I have to say.
(We will get to the part on how I overcame the fear of sounding illogical to the readers, later.)
There might be tons of other reasons why others decide to write online. As for me, these are the three foremost ones. Let’s look at them in detail.
You Can Earn More Money
Until last year, I was oblivious to the potential of earning from blogging. In fact, it was only in 2021 that I got to know we can actually earn from writing online. For many years, I thought creating content on YouTube was the only way people could make money on the internet.
Surprisingly, I had the epiphany of my life when I stumbled upon this video on YouTube by Ali Abdaal — a Uk-based productivity YouTuber. If you are reading my blog on this niche, you have probably heard about him. Over the years Ali Abdaal has risen to the status of one of the internet’s most sensational productivity gurus.
The video I bumped into was titled, “How Writing Online Made Me a Millionaire.” As someone who had for so long believed YouTube was the only way to make money online, I was caught off guard on seeing the title.
What I saw in the next 16 minutes of the video, laid the foundation for starting the blog you are reading this article on. Ali explained how putting his thoughts on his personal blog helped him earn income from it and also gather the needed courage to start his youtube and the series of other entrepreneurial ventures.
That was it.
More than any factor, money played a pivotal role in spurring me to start this blog. Let me tell you why and how. Most of us think it’s only through YouTube that we can earn more money. But, as it turns out, that’s not the case. Blogging has the potential to drive you more money than Youtube.
The CPM(cost per mille)-the amount an advertiser pays a website per one thousand visitors who see its advertisements-for a blog can be way greater than what you can possibly get from Youtube.
Given below are some of the income generating ways through a blog:
Affiliate Marketing
Ebooks
Courses
E-commerce store
Sponsorships
Google Ads
Third-party ads
Product blogs
These are just a few of the earning ways I have mentioned. In addition to this, there are countless opportunities that you can incorporate in your blog to expand your earning potential.
Network With Great People
I’ll be honest with you on this one. Initially, when I heard bloggers say you can network with great people through blogs, I laughed at that. I thought who in the world would read my blog, let alone reach out to me and network.
And yet again, the turn of events proved me wrong. Just after a few months into blogging, people started reaching out to me on social media platforms and emails for collabs, business offers and feedback. To my surprise, a few of them have also become more than online friends to me.
When I say you can meet great people by publishing online, I don’t mean only the big shots or your fans. It also means general people who share the same values, principles and vibes as you do-and believe me, this is the best part about networking online. By posting content online, you are allowing like-minded people to gravitate towards you.
In other words, as someone once put it perfectly, “Your vibe attracts your tribe.”
In a world where more than five billion people use the internet, the number of people likely to be attracted to your vibe may at least be in the millions. Never less than that, believe me. It may take a while to reach them, but you can definitely hit that mark (if you were to start a blog or something).
And who knows, if luck would have it, you could meet your future spouse, editor for your dream film, co-founder for your company, or even your future neighbour in a different country.
To Think Better
Many self-improvement gurus and psychologists emphasize putting our thoughts on paper as doing so will help us get clarity over things. Moreover, it gives us a multi-dimensional look at a problem and hence improves our overall understanding.
But more than all these things, another interesting thing happens when you write: you will think better. Oftentimes, our brain filters a number of thoughts that it considers are not that important enough. These are the thoughts you wouldn’t usually be aware of that you have. Day in and day out, they get ignored by our lower level consciousness.
Strangely enough, if you manage to catch those thoughts by any chance, they would seem as if you have zoomed in on your house on Google earth satellite image. The details that get unravelled through catching such thoughts surprise you often.
I’m talking about the kind of mode our brain switches to when it ultra focuses on something, wherein you would notice even the nuances of an idea or a situation in more depth. And the way you switch to this ultra mode is through writing.
The more often you write, the more refined your thinking process becomes. When I say “writing.” I mean anything as simple as maintaining a journal, writing things on sticky notes, or brainstorming on a white board.
Poets, writers, thinkers, artistes and business leaders, among others, understand the importance of this way of ultra focusing and to freeze these subtle thoughts, they write often.
The masterpieces you get to enjoy in arts, science, and technology are all, without any exception, born out of ultra focus-ing. You get the idea.
Discover What You Have To Say
During some interesting conversations with your friends, family members, or someone at a bar, you might have seen yourself talking about things you didn’t even realize you knew. Likewise, you have also probably experienced moments when you made perfect analogies out of nowhere, to simplify a concept or problem during conversation or stage talks.
These sudden flashes of ideas usually occur when we get the needed momentum or flow.
When you make writing your habit, you get 10X more flow and momentum and will discover things to say like never before. That’s because, most of the mental distractions are neutralised while you’re writing, and therefore it provides the right ambience and practice for your mind to reach out what’s deep inside.
In other words, you will train your brain as you would train your body muscles, to churn out ideas with ease.
Not to mention, your creativity skyrockets and you would be amazed at the kind of connections and interlinks your mind can create from different ideas and situations-more like, spiderman multiverse crossover.
Be it pulling out the ideas your brain already has conceived subconsciously, or coming up with new ones, you will become a pro thinker if you make writing your habit.
Final Note
Coming back to the question as to how I got over the fear of sounding illogical, I was struck by a realisation more than anything else. It’s the simple fact that whenever I talk to people about a topic, content flows, and I don’t overly obsess over being logical.
But when I sit to write, I do question my logic often-e it the transition of sentences or the logic of a sentence or a concept.
This excessive care to not be illogical to the readers while I write crippled my confidence with time. However, what changed my perspective towards the situation is this: if I’m able to talk to people logically, that means I can think logically, which ultimately means I can write logically too.
So, to overcome this, I recorded myself speaking about a concept and then used it to write an article afterwards. For some articles, I also uploaded my speech audio into free transcribing software online, got the transcript, made some tweaks with punctuations and vocabulary and published.
As I said earlier, of course you can write whatever that flashes in your mind in writing, but make sure to filter and edit those before you finalize the draft.
Again, this is something that’s worked for me. Maybe you could try this, but if doesn’t work keep trying out different ways to overcome your writing blocks.
Start That Damn Blog Now!
So what are you waiting for?
Apart from having a huge potential to make you rich, blogging also improves the quality of your life, your relationships and mental peace.
Just go and start writing your way to glory.