10 Tips on How to Overcome the Fear of Starting a Business Online Blogging

One of the most common questions we get asked by new bloggers who follow us is how to overcome the fear of starting a new business online.

How should you overcome the nerves, anxiety, and feeling of being scared, when trying to get started.

In this post, I hope to help you overcome your fears and to explain to you why starting an online business can be the most rewarding thing you might ever do.

It can lead to real freedom and enable you to work for yourself, choose your own hours, travel more, and spend more time with your family and friends.

1. Worrying That You Are Not the Expert Yet and That Competitors Know More

This is a completely rational fear and cause of anxiety for many of you when first considering starting an online business that relies a lot on blogging (creating good high-quality content).

How can I be the expert when there always seems to be someone who has already written about this online?

There are always going to be competitors online and many of them might well be highly knowledgeable about your chosen subject area.

In fact, whatever niche you choose to develop your online blogging business around, others will have done it before.

The more people though, who write about your niche online, the more likely there is to be a market for this topic. Take competition as proof of a need for your subject area online.

Solution:

In terms of expertise, there is one key to realize and to remember throughout your blogging business journey.

Understand from the start that the more you write and develop your business, the more knowledgeable you will become. Within a few months or a year, you will become the expert you want to be.

So – simply do not worry about being the expert on day one.

You have to start somewhere. You will also probably know far more than you realise about your topic area, if you have chosen a niche which you are passionate about.

Tip: Choosing a niche for your business will mean that you can really focus on one topic area and this will mean you develop your expertise.

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2. Being Nervous of Opening up to the World

When you put content online, it is true that you are in effect opening up to the world. Your content can potentially be read by millions of people and this might seem scary.

You will be open to critique from people from vastly different locations, backgrounds, ages and so on and there is always someone more knowledgeable out there, than ourselves.

But, being able to publish your ideas and thoughts online to a worldwide audience, means you have a voice in this world!

Blogging means a chance to develop your business by building good content that leads you into being respected and seen as an expert in your subject area.

Solution:

Realize that you can develop confidence as you start blogging and adding content. Gradually build your expertise and find your way.

Try to embrace the fact that you have a voice that can speak to anyone worldwide. Try to see blogging as a therapy of sorts.

You can put down your ideas, develop a network and friendships through your online business and find freedom financially.

If you are worried about what friends or family might think of the things you write online, do not be worried!

The friends who support you in this new endeavor are friends you will want to keep and who matter. Your family may take time to win over but just go for it!

3. Concern about the Cost of Starting an Online Business

Starting your own business online really does NOT need to cost very much at all!

You can literally start with nothing by using free hosting and a domain name.

Generally, though, Valeria and I always advise using paid hosting because this means that you will be much better off in the long-term in terms of flexibility with your site (we talk about this in our previous post on common beginner blogger mistakes).

It is very cheap to start off as a blogger building a new online business!

Example costs are:

• Domain Name – No more than £10 a year ($14 max)
• Website Hosting – You can start off on hosting for as little as £4 a month (USD$5)
• Website design – £0. To start off, if you need to, you can use one of the free themes that WordPress comes with. Just try to ensure that the theme is responsive! This means that the theme is programmed to show nicely on all device types such as on a laptop computer, mobile phone, and iPad. Most themes now are already responsive designed ones.

Total = £14 a month (about USD$20) to start an online business! 🙂

If you can afford to and certainly at least in the longer term, you should also think about investing time and money in further training i.e. invest in your own future.

Furthermore, there are a number of great tools that can help your productivity and streamline your online blogging business (see the top blogging tools post we did).

Solution:

Simply do not worry about the cost because, even with paid hosting (recommended) and your own domain name, it is so cheap that it is not likely to be an issue for you.

4. Not Having the Technical Ability for an Online Business

It is impossible to know how to solve every issue that will arise when you are blogging and developing your own online business.

I share your frustration if you are wondering how you are meant to understand all about hosting, doing backups of your blog/website, knowing how to use WordPress, install and manage themes etc. There is a lot to take in.

The great news though is that there are just so many resources you can use.

Solution:

Be smart! Do NOT try and be an expert in everything! You do want to be an expert in the niche that you are blogging about.

Your focus should not be on trying to be a programmer or IT technician and there is no need to. Use the resources available to you.

You can hire someone from anywhere in the world these days and two sites worth using are:

• Fiverr.com – for very basic tasks such as creating a logo or video intro for any YouTube videos you might want to make.
• Upwork.com – to hire whatever skillset you need, be it a copywriter, graphic designer, virtual assistant, or web designer.

5. Running out of Ideas for Creating Online Content

You might worry when you are first thinking about getting started blogging, that after writing posts for 1, 2 or 6 months, you will run out of ideas. I believe that you will be quite surprised by the reality though.

The reality tends to be that the more you write and the more you yourself learn as you do research online, the more things you will want to write about. It is very often the way it works!

The key to always being inspired to have new things to write about is in your choice of niche at the start. Blog and start a business that you are passionate about or have a deep interest in, and you should find it easier!

Solution:

Think carefully about the niche you will blog about. In one year’s time, when you are still writing about your topic, do you think you will still be passionate about it?

If yes, you should have no problem finding things to write about.

Make sure to read what others in your niche are also writing online and take inspiration from them.

You can always take ideas from what others have done and try and write something even better than what has been done previously by others.

Take it a step further in terms of quality and your followers will build!

6. Wondering if You Can Make Money Blogging with Your Own Online Business

It is not actually that hard to make money online at all. Install Google Adsense, for example, on your blog/website and you can instantly start to get advertising income.

If you have a batch of high-quality blog pages (aim to get 20 good ones to start with) then you will begin to get some income.

Enough let’s say, to cover your core business costs i.e. for the hosting, domain name, and some other costs.

Adsense is not a great way to make money if you want to make a lot of money, but it can be a start for beginner bloggers.

Not all of you will necessarily be looking to become a £6 figure blogger (£100,000+ a year) although I am sure you wouldn’t mind being.

Making an extra £100 or £200 a month can indeed be extremely helpful for some of you. It pays a bill or two or adds up very nicely to cover a good annual family holiday or vacation.

If you are looking to make a living eventually from blogging, you can do it! To become a £5 Figure or £6 figure blogger, there are a number of things you will need to learn in order to reach this goal.

The great news though is that you can build a successful business online these days.

The best way of all to make money online as a £5 or £6 figure blogger is by teaching online and you can learn about this in the Promarketing “How to Make Your Own Online Courses” course.

Solution:

Understand that you can make money quite early on but it will be little. Like any business, to really make money from blogging you need to put in a lot of hard work, learn certain skills (so invest in training), and to be focused (choose your niche carefully).

7. Having Writing Skills for Creating Online Content

Much like with the expertise on your niche that you will develop over the course of the first year of blogging, you will also naturally develop writing skills. I have a few tips though, and they are as follows:

• Take time to read your competitors’ posts. You will learn not only from the content but you will also begin to understand what works and what doesn’t in terms of writing style.
• Get the Grammarly plug-in installed on your computer. You can also get it installed on your browser. You will find that Grammarly makes your life much easier as it highlights spelling, grammar, and other errors in your writing. It’s brilliant and I wouldn’t be without it.
• Read the post we have previously written all about How to Write effective Posts for the Web!

8. My Blog / Website Is Not Ready

Before you put your website live, you might think it has to be perfect. The things is though, that building a website and blogging are organic processes. By this, I mean that it is an ongoing process and one that never really ends.

You might have this idea of going live on a certain date but the truth is that, if you have not marketed your site (such as through Pinterest Marketing or via SEO), your posts are not going to be read by many people, at the start anyway.

What I am saying is that now is a great time to get content live. Just start!

9. Uncertainty over How to Get Started

This is a common fear and I get it. It can be very overwhelming trying to understand exactly how to get started. So let me jump straight to the solutions below to help guide you.

Solution:

My recommendation to you is to just follow these steps :

• Decide on your niche
• Then buy a domain name and hosting
• Next, write one blog post a week (two a week if you can). Aim for 1000 words or more and include images. If you cannot do one in a  week, just do it whenever you can, in your spare time.
• Aim to get 20 high-quality posts written and then look to develop a schedule of pins on Pinterest using Tailwind to start to build traffic to your site. Read our new post on Blogging Scheduling, Examples and Get the Planner to understand how to create a schedule and to get a blogging pattern. Almost immediately, you will begin to build your traffic and develop your blog.

10. Afraid of Failure

We all suffer from this fear in some form in our lives and it is a natural phenomenon. None of us wants to be seen to be a failure.

What though is the worst that could happen if you start blogging?

You can start off with very little investment (as discussed above) so the cost of getting started is not a valid reason. What do you have to lose? You can blog and add content at your own speed, Develop your website and learn at your own speed. Just re-invest money as you make it.

Rather than asking what you stand to lose, you might want to focus on what you stand to gain!

The freedom to work from home or as you travel around the world?

The freedom to spend more time with friends and family (once you start to make passive income whilst you sleep)? The opportunity also to work for yourself more and to rely less on a 9 – 5 job?

If you focus on what you have to gain, rather than what you have to lose I am sure you will realize that it is worth pushing through any fears you might have.

So, in terms of how to overcome the fear of starting a business online, be assured that you can do it, it is rewarding, you will gain a voice, it is cheap to get started, and you can learn as you go!