The stress of blogging can wear even the best of us down.  Events such as being accused of extreme marketing tactics or the inability to produce good, quality content during periods of extreme “blogger’s block”.  When you add in the stresses of everyday life, blogging becomes particularly harder, and at this point, you may begin to dramatically slow down posting or simply quit.

Basically, stressing out about blogging is something that no one should have to deal with, even if you have a blog that generates a significant sum or traffic/money each month and serves posts to a wide readership base.  Between the date your blog launches and the date you have reached your goals, the level of stress that you amass on a daily or weekly basis should not increase.  

I tend to heavily promote telling readers that you need to revaluate on a constant basis the true reasons you started blogging.  In most cases, this dream, goal, and aspiration, is dropped from the picture as the challenges of blogging are realized.  What one needs to materialize is the fact that blogging goals change over time, and we have seen that across the wider spectrum of bloggers as a whole.  While it may be best to stick to your original course of action, you are free to substitute it for a plan that makes more sense.

Change.  It isn’t right for you.

Finding the balance between what might work and what won’t is a challenge that every blogger faces.  In what direction will you go when you want to see your blog expand?  How will you deal with a rise in traffic, and the added burdens that come with blog costs and meeting the potential of your blog?

There’s no simple solution or explanation for the way you should expand your blog.  Try focusing on what pleases both yourself and visitors.  You’ll find that having a blog and meeting equilibrium between your growth and goals will never coexist entirely.

Having the ability to change is an important ability and skill that, as a blogger, you should be working on developing and adapting to meet unexpected demands and problems.

Stay organized.

Recently, I have been working on trying to keep all my blogs (and life) organized, minimizing the amount of clutter that I have around.  Staying organized as a blogger doesn’t just mean that you assign appropriate categories to each post.  It goes much deeper than that, to the extent of where visitors can’t see your organization methods.  

Personally, I use a folder hierarchy system for backing up, maintaining, and organizing all the files associated with my blogs.  The strategy is nowhere near flawless, as I still have duplicate files strewn in multiple places, but it is is a temporary fix for potentially bigger problems down the road.

A simple way to maintain your images is to use the same naming architecture as is on your blog – by date or type of post.  Store a backup on your computer or another offline location.  It may even be a wise idea to make carbon copies of your post to store as text documents offline.  Keep several backups of all your blog files offline too, including, but not limited to, plugins and blog settings/uploads.

Internally, you can post on a consistent basis, keep comments and plugins replied to and updated, and style all posts in a similar manner.  Down the road, there will be less stress to deal with, as everything is already in order.

Eliminate the clutter in your life.

Connected to the idea of staying organized, how can you eliminate possible distractions from your life.  To a greater degree, you may not realize it, but a cluttered desk, even if you enjoy living that way, will distract you from your online publishing goals.

Bills piling up on a desk by your keyboard is no way to keep a clear, non-preoccupied mind when trying to produce great content.  Remove this from your life, and you’ll immediately reap the benefits of knowing that your bills have been squared away/organized, leading to more productive days and less stress.

Blogging-Related Practices

Don’t overly participate in any one service.  While programs that may help (or hinder) bloggers come and go, the opportunity to be profitable and sell yourself as a leader usually only happens once.  Becoming too absorbed in programs that aren’t really useful will have little more benefits than causing more stress.

Secondly, don’t worry about what people say on your blog.  It’s your personal property, you are just letting others see it.  You have every right (provide you have established a Comments Policy) to delete or modify their comments to leave a better impact on your blog.  Depending on the type of comment, you can get a positive out of it – building a better blog to reflect their (hopefully constructive) criticism.  

Leaving comments and staying in touch with other bloggers is highly recommended by many bloggers.  However, it is a strategy that isn’t completely required, it simply brings you closer to other people who share similar interests as you.  Never exasperate doing something that you aren’t happy with.  By leaving thousands of comment (likely not contributing to the conversation), you are doing yourself more of a disfavor than benefitting your blog.

Setbacks are a natural part of life.  Without setbacks, progress can’t go forward.  Natural traffic patterns will occur, no matter how popular your site is.  When analyzing your traffic stats, don’t feel anxiety when you see a 10% decrease in the past week – it is the overall pattern of growth that you should be concerned about.

The Best Ways to Tackle Stresses

In the past month or so, some fairly reputable sources reported on the issue of bloggers developing health-related problems “due to blogging”.  Some of these were stress-related, such as chronic head aches, irritability, fatigue, changes in appetite, high blood pressure, and so on.  Staying active in the fight to relieve yourself of stress, especially while blogging, should be your main goal – not increasing readers or revenue.  Your health is more important than figures.  

1. First of all, identify what is causing the stress.  From the standpoint of blogging, is it the lack of success or the inability to meet your goals?  Is it minor elements that others don’t see, but you are worried head over heels about?
2. Next, determine what it will take to resolve this stress.  Begin with a five minute break to think about this, or try an activity that will take your mind off the stress.
3. Keep track of your methods used to combat the stress, so you can implement them again should you need to.
4. If none of these basic steps work, try other lifestyle changes, such as trying to get more sleep, eliminating hassles from your life, and overall, try to attain a balance between your online and offline worlds.