We partner with bada$$ companies that offer products that help our readers achieve their goals! If you purchase through our partner links, we get paid for the referral at no additional cost to you! Read our disclosure for more info.
If you’re asking should I start a blog, chances are that are you already have some inkling of the financial freedom and time freedom that come from blogging, but it’s so much more than that.
I started out no differently than probably most of you. I was working full-time as a personal trainer in Dallas — trading my hours for dollars.
I think the most important thing you can understand about our story at Create and Go is that there is nothing inherently special about our backgrounds.
Other than being pretty motivated and hard-working, we’re average joes. There is nothing that we have that you don’t that can attribute to our blogging success.
Anyone can succeed in blogging as long as they are committed to their goals, want it badly enough, and put in the work to get there.
Here are the 10 reasons you should get started!
1. You are more in control of your income.
My business partner was a Certified Public Accountant before she became a blogger. She was doing pretty well for herself, but she was climbing the corporate ladder just like everyone else.
Translation: slow growth.
In just two years of blogging, she was able to more than quadruple her annual salary as an accountant and she now makes close to 7x her annual salary!
That’s pretty incredible, right? It’s all because she is now in DIRECT control of her income!
As a blogger, you decide when you want to work and how much you want to work. At some point, the more you work, the more money you can make.
It does take work to set up, but now that we have created the courses that we sell, written the emails that help sell them, designed the sales pages, etc., most of the work is done.
All we HAVE to do is create some new content, send a few emails, and do some customer service support to maintain most of our income from our online business.
Now, we choose to work a lot more than that because we LOVE the work and are still trying to actively grow our blogs, but it can generally be as passive as you want it to be!
If you really hustle your butt off, the sky is the limit as far as income is concerned.
2. You can travel while working on your blog.
You know what sucks? Working your life away for two weeks of vacation a year.
You have friends, family, and unexplored countries… How can you possibly see it all while you’re still YOUNG?
No one wants to wait until retirement to see the world.
We traveled to 6 different countries in the first two and a half that we started our blog: Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, Portugal, Nicaragua, and Bali
During this time, we were still working and making money with our blog. But we were able to while we traveled and take time off for fun activities whenever we wanted to.
But here’s the really crazy part…
We wouldn’t have been able to afford to travel internationally on the salaries we were making at our previous jobs. Blogging freed up our time AND paid for our travels.
3. You can completely design your days.
One of my biggest complaints while working as a personal trainer was deciding between sleep and having a social life.
Clients often want to train at the butt crack of dawn (think 5 am or worse), and it was really hard to justify spending time with friends when you feel like you have to go to bed at 9 pm every night to get adequate sleep.
This doesn’t exist in the blogging world. Now, I wake up whenever my body feel good and ready to.
And for those of you who are moms or have other early morning obligations, having a blog will allow you some time to nap too!
This is just a little taste of what it means to be able to “design your days:”
- Wake up when you want to
- Go to bed when you want to
- Grocery shop when the aisles are empty
- Workout when the gym is empty
- Shop when the stores are empty
- Drive without traffic
- Buy the cheapest flights available during the middle of the week
- Etc.
You get the idea! It’s something that VERY few people in this world get to do and it makes ALL of the long, lonely hours that we put into our blog worth it.
4. Blogging will challenge you (in a good way).
Looking back on our time blogging thus far, there were good times and bad times.
It wasn’t all sunshine, roses, and pretty photos, and I hope that isn’t the message I have conveyed thus far.
There have been some serious highs AND some serious lows and a LOT of blogging mistakes along the way.
Blogging will help you overcome fears and continually challenge you to be a better person. There is so much personal and professional growth that comes along with it.
There is no growth in the easy-going. True growth comes from facing challenges and learning how to overcome those challenges.
Some of the challenges that I faced along my blogging journey include:
- The first blog failed.
- Created products that no one wanted.
- Spent thousands of dollars on things that didn’t work
- Spent a couple thousand more on copywriters that didn’t improve sales page conversions
- Quit my soul-sucking job before making a dime from the blog
- Gave up my social life and said “NO” for many months while trying to get the business off the ground.
- And so many more…
The thrill of the challenge is trying to make all of the pieces of the puzzle work together, and it is actually quite a rush when it does!
5. You will learn new and transferable skills.
I’ve also noticed an improvement in the clarity of thoughts and conversations from blogging. It has helped me become a better thinker and writer.
Condensing thoughts and ideas down into actionable information others can use will sharpen your mind.
If that wasn’t enough, writing is a great way to clear your head. When feeling stressed, it allows for a mental release from other activities.
Now, it wasn’t like from day one. Writing didn’t always come that easily to me. There were days of staring at the wall, wondering what to write about and how to say it.
But the amazing thing is that the more confident you become in your content over time, the easier it does come to let the words flow right out of you!
6. It will give you confidence and help you make better decisions.
Expanding upon the previous point…
Publishing your thoughts and feelings about something to the world is a little scary the first time you do it.
At least it was for me, and you WILL have nay-sayers trying to bring you down along the way. There will be ignorant people calling you names and nasty things because it’s the Internet.
But you ignore them because 99% of people will THANK YOU for what you do and how much you changed their lives.
This is definitely one of the cooler “bonus benefits” of blogging that I’ve noticed.
Both the positive AND the negative feedback that you receive as a blogger will help boost your confidence and self-esteem over time.
You begin to adjust to the feeling and have more confidence in your decisions because of it. This will have both an impact on how you write but also in your day-to-day life as well!
The feedback brings us to the next point…
7. You can help others.
The weight loss program that we sold on our health and wellness blog impacted the lives of thousands of women.
We helped women around the world lose an incredible amount of weight and learn how to live happier and healthier lives.
Some of the women in our community group for our program have lost over 100 pounds with our program!!!
ONE HUNDRED POUNDS!!!
We got new testimonials about our challenge daily and the impact it made on the lives of others. Here is one of our favorites:
When we started, we had no idea what this health and wellness blog would and that it would end up having such an incredible impact on us.
On this blog, we have now helped people quit their jobs, begin blogging, start earning money and even helped some bloggers double and triple their income.
This is the kind of positive feedback were talking about in the point above!
While you may blog to make an income or for any of the reasons that we outline in this post, the purpose of your blog should be to serve OTHERS.
THIS is how you find true success as a blogger.
8. Blogging creates opportunities for other projects and businesses.
My blogging journey started with a health and wellness blog. But since then, I’ve started several websites, including this one, and a few side-project-turned-business YouTube channels.
I used the first health blog’s traffic and email list to cross-promote a new YouTube channel and the success to provide credibility for this blog. I’ve used this blog to cross-promote yet another YouTube channel.
Some of those side businesses have since been sold. But my point is:
Once you find success in one area, you can use that success to leverage the growth of new projects or businesses that come across your path.
It has allowed me the experiences to be able to teach others how to achieve what we have achieved and opened doors that I had only ever dreamed of.
9. You can be your own boss.
Need I say more?
I mean, being a badass blogging boss isn’t without its downsides. You are responsible for generating your own paycheck and must shoulder all of the responsibility associated with that.
Many bloggers never make it out of the “hobby blogger” stage and actually make real money. But when it does happen…
Well, we don’t need to repeat the other points in this post. Just remember:
- Financial freedom
- Time freedom
- The ability to design your days
I think that covers the major benefits of being your own boss!
10. It costs less than a typical startup.
Forget investing your life savings in a new business. The cost to start a blog is MUCH lower than most other traditional start-ups.
There are free blogging platforms out there, but most people need to start with a paid version if they want to get paid!
Free blogs in a nutshell: You have no control over the content, it looks super unprofessional, and you are limited in how you can monetize them.
How can I get started?
If you already know what you want to blog about, this is our step-by-step process of how to get started: → How to Start a Blog (Step-by-Step Beginners Guide)
Create something awesome today!
If you enjoyed this article or have any questions for us, please leave them in the comment section below!