I talked a little bit about this before, but the short answer is that I refuse to see blogging as my job. I'm up in the air about whether or not I'll register my own domain, but I probably won't ever migrate to WordPress or freak out too much about sponsors or affiliate links or so on. I think burnout happens when people convince themselves that they should be earning money from their blog. They start churning out content a little more regularly, even when they don't feel like it; after a while, the exhaustion begins to show. Normally they'd take a break, but because they feel like they need to keep posting regularly so they can keep readers and get those affiliate links/clicks/whatevers, they keep going.
Usually this is the point where I start thinking about dropping a blog from my feed. I read a decent "received a free whatever in exchange for a review" post maybe like 1% of the time; most of those posts don't enrich my life or give me information I wanted about a product I was interested in. They're just joyless and blah.
If you can't afford to self-host your blog, then don't. This is all for fun, not for being the coolest most serious most legit blogger on the Internet. You should be able to take a break when you want to and post what you want to.
It's okay to be a small fish in a huge pond.
+1 to allllllllll of this! I ended up leaving a handful of the blog groups I was in, because so many of them just focus on getting more views, follow-for-follows and how to get brands to notice you crap instead of building a fun community. I mean, obviously I've done some review/sponsored posts here and there when the product is something I'm legit interested in but might not have been able to afford otherwise. But I've never been paid money. Money sounds nice but that requires waaaaaaaay more work than I'm willing to put into a hobby blog @_@ Blogspot blogs for life! I find Wordpress a little intimidating tbh.
ReplyDeleteI never want to see or hear the word "brand" ever again! Uuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrgh. It's all the hype now but if you take the long view, it's fun community that wins over "image" or "brand."
DeleteI think a lot of this comes from the flip side of the "do what you love" career advice that gets doled out these days: that whatever you love MUST be your "career." No, thanks. I'd rather a job I like (or even just tolerate) and be able to enjoy my hobbies than ruin anything that I *love*.
Blogspot 'til I die wut wut