I’ve been a blogger for about 3 years now, but it’s been my full-time job for almost 6 months. It almost doesn’t sound like a real job.. a blogger? That term is just a word though, I don’t even call myself a blogger outside of people who actually know what it entails. Lately I’ve just been telling people that I’m a digital publisher, or that I own an SEO company. Both of which are true. In this article I’m just going to go over the 5 main benefits of blogging as I see them. In my opinion this is what’s most important, everything else is just icing on the cake and you don’t need to worry about.
Let’s have a look!
5 main benefits of blogging (from a full-time blogger)
As I sit here and consider what the main benefits are of being a full-time blogger, the following reasons come to mind first as the most important.
1. Own your time
This one may be the main benefit for myself and many others that are self-employed or business owners. I’ll never have to request off for a vacation, explain why I need to take a personal day, or let someone know when I have a doctor’s appointment and may be running late to the office. Those days are over. Now I decide how my time is spent and I report to one person… myself. To put it simply, I own my time now.
2. Work from anywhere
Some employers realized in 2020 that their employees can actually be productive working from home, however most employers still prefer you come into the office. As a blogger I can also work from anywhere with internet. That pretty much just translates to me working from home, but it also means that I can also go do my job from a beach hut on an island somewhere for as long as I need to.
I haven’t really taken advantage of this one yet to be honest. Any time I leave town I don’t really feel like working so I just break from work while I’m out of town. Then I’ll pick back up where I left off when I get back. I get paid the same regardless, that’s how passive income works.
3. Become a business owner
If you are able to create an income, even from a simple blog, you’ve created a business. If you decide to treat it like a business, that means you’re a business owner. You don’t have to incorporate your business, you can operate as a sole proprietor for as long as wish. To see some of the tax a liability benefits available to business, you may want to look into forming an LLC. That’s what I did.
Aside from the sense of creating something from nothing and being your own boss, being a business owner has many advantages.
4. Make more money
This probably shouldn’t be your number reason for wanting to be a blogger, but it’s certainly one of the main benefits of blogging. I’m not going to lie, from the time I hit publish on my very first article years ago I’ve been seeing dollar signs. I didn’t lose sight of what’s important, which is publishing high quality content that helps people. If you forget about that and try to take shortcuts to the part where you make the money, then you’re probably going to have a bad time.
Consider using the additional income to do things like pay off debts, save for retirement, invest in real estate or the stock market. There’s more money to be made online than ever before, you’ve got to find the best way for you to get your piece of the pie. For me it was blogging and niche websites.
5. Enjoy your work
If you’re a successful publisher that enjoys your work, then that surely qualifies as one of the main benefits of blogging. If you are or were unhappy at your day job like I was, then there’s nothing more rewarding than doing something you enjoy. There are many different parts to this business, simply writing blog articles is what people see on the surface. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes.
I don’t mind writing. I’m not the greatest writer but I think I’m pretty decent at it. I enjoy working with websites, those things are all fine by me. Whatever I dislike doing I can outsource, and I often do. But I do enjoy the topics I blog about, I made sure that I did.
The reason I think blogging can potentially great for almost anyone is that you get to choose what your website is about. Your niche. You can literally make a niche website about your favorite thing and probably make money from it. It’s not as simple as that of course, there’s strategy involved and skills are needed. But it can be done.
You could potentially end up immersed in your favorite hobby or even just an interest you have every day. What if you chose your 3 favorite things in the world, as an example: fishing, yoga, and baking. Then you made blogs about each one, and running those blogs became your full-time job that paid better than your old day job. Pretty sweet.
Final notes
Are there also downsides of blogging? Of course. There are usually pros and cons to everything, blogging included. In my limited experience though, the pros heavily outweigh the cons.