Hey guys!! I hope you all are having a fabulous weekend! This spring jumping foreword an hour is really throwing me off and frankly I hate it. Like where did my hour of sleep go?!? I need my sleep people!! (I am not much of a morning person if you could not already tell...)
Any how lately I have been seeing a lot of blog posts discussing the pressures of blogging and how difficult it is to stick to a schedule and that kind of thing and it was really inspiring to see other bloggers open up about what they’ve been struggling with when it came to blogging! So naturally I was inspired to open up about my own blogging journey.
I started this blog last year around August and I believe my first post came out in October (Things I hate about fall and how the books I read change with the seasons) I was just starting to discover what the book blogging community was like and I discovered so many great blogs that I loved and never would have found if I myself had not started book blogging. Being a new blogger I didn’t expect to become an overnight sensation or anything like that so I continued posting and commenting on other blogs in hope that I would gradually gain my audience.
Over the months my page views grew and it has now been several months since my first post was published! This however doesn’t prevent me from feeling insecure about my blog from time to time. Even though I love blogging and wouldn’t want to stop, I can’t help but compare my little blog to other bigger, more popular book blogs out there.
Even though I know stats aren’t everything when it comes to blogging and I shouldn’t let others growing numbers get to me I can’t help but feeling I’m doing something wrong when I see a blog with more followers or more page views than mine. I start to overthink what I’m doing wrong:
- Is it because I don't schedule my posts?
- Is it because I’m not on Wordpress?
- Do I not get approved for enough ARCS?
- Is my content not engaging enough? Is my writing style too boring? Too quirky?
Theres also all the pressures surrounding ARCS. For those of you that don’t know an ARC is short for Advanced Reader Copy and are given out to bloggers for review in order to create hype before a book is published.
I only recently learned about ARCS and decided to start requesting them a couple of months back on Net Galley. I’m excited to say that I have been approved for a few (and even posted my first ARC review a few weeks ago you can check it out here)
and I absolutely love the opportunity arcs provide bloggers theres again that feeling of competition between bloggers!! Its like I can’t help but look at my small amount of approved books and feel overwhelmed but then I look at another blog and see that they got approved for way more and they received physical copies of the book! When will this endless comparing end?!?!
As you can see I totally have my moments where I get in my head and completely over analyze things but at the end of the day I don’t want to stop blogging!
Blogging has amazing perks!
- You meet other book lovers!
- You find book blogs you really connect with!
- You discover loads of books you never would have other wise (hence our overwhelming TBRs)
- You get the chance to review ARCS (advanced reader copies of BOOKS!!)
- But most of all you have an outlet for all your bookish thoughts and ideas!!
As a relatively new blogger its hard for me at time but I wouldn’t give it up for the world. Sooo if you have any tips or tricks you’d like to share with me about expanding my blog or how to gain more followers, or improve my design I’m all ears!!
And finally a big THANK YOU to all the readers out there who read my blog and who support the blogging community without you guys we wouldn’t be doing what where doing!!!
-BubblyBooks
Aww, I'm sure you're doing fine the way you are doing (but I totally get the pressures since I feel it myself sometimes)! I find Twitter and other social media platforms to be an amazing way to connect with other bloggers, along with commenting/commenting back (very hard to do, so no pressure on doing it immediately - I take days to comment, haha).
ReplyDeleteIf you ever want to talk though, feel free to chat with me! :)
Sophia @ Bookwyrming Thoughts
Thank you!! and I SO understand taking a few days to comment back! Sometimes I just get busy and then forget about them?!? (maybe I shouldn’t be admitting this..) but I totally appreciate the support! Its nice to know I’m not the only one :)
DeleteI really don't think that those insecurities every fully go away, but they do kind of... diminish eventually. Here's the thing: No matter who you are, there will always be people with MORE followers/ARCs/views and people with less (I mean, I guess except for the person at the very top or very bottom of that hierarchy, but we are neither of them ha). So it's kind of a thing to try to put in perspective- like you are an inspiration for new bloggers, just like someone else may be an inspiration to you! Oh, and ARC envy is totally legit if you ask me- we're only human :D
ReplyDeleteYes arc envy is SO annoying! But then again I guess there are downsides such as having to actually read and write all those reviews by a certain time (stressful!!) Thanks so much for the support!! Glad I’m not the only one who compares myself to other bloggers stats :)
DeleteI do agree that it's so hard not to compare yourself to other bloggers. I sit there going omg, they're so cool. How do they get there or that? I'm a total overthinker as well when it comes to it. And ARC envy gets so real. D: I do love how you ended with the blogging perks, because even though we do have some pressure on us from certain things, we certainly have a lot of perks that makes it pretty epic. ;) I loved what you said here, Jamie, and it was fun to read. :D (And I didn't know you were pretty new to this - you seem like such a pro with every post I read!) Great post, Jamie! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks!! I thought it would be good to end on a positive note because there are so many AMAZING things about blogging! And thanks so much! I don’t really know what I’m doing most times (just trying to figure it out as I go) and it means a lot that you like what I post :)
DeleteOh this is such a great post, Jamie, thank you for your honesty and for sharing your feelings about the topic. It is so, so hard not to compare ourselves to other book bloggers - I know I do it all the time. It's also really hard not to feel any kind of envy, but I also think that it's only human to feel this way, every once in a while. We always should remember that, we all have our own pace to blog, we all have a different definition of success and we could think that another blogger is successful, while they are not thinking that way, at all. I am rambling anyway but, I just wanted to tell you that you are doing brilliantly, and I know how hard these feelings can weight on you sometimes. Always here if you need to chat! :) x
ReplyDeleteThank you its good to know that other bloggers (even bloggers way more popular than mine) still struggle with the pressures of blogging and occasionally feeling envious... I will try to pace myself when it comes to my own blog (and hopefully get out of my head a bit) Thanks for all the support :)
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