As I write this, I've been blogging for 13 and a half years now, you can read how it all started on my homepage if you're curious. In that time, I've personally known five people who started a blog and quit. Not read about online, actually known, watched them start with excitement and give up within a year or two, or even less.

In the blogging and online publishing community, I've seen way, way more quit or fail entirely, and it lines up with the research too, around 80% of new blogs fail within the first 18 months.

I don't really call myself a blogger anymore either. What I actually run is an online publishing and marketing business across multiple websites, which is a different thing entirely to what most people picture when they hear the word "blogger." That gap between perception and reality is, I think, the real reason so many people quit.

People think it's easy. It isn't.

I've had family members and friends ask if I could show them how to make money the same way I do. One had just lost their job and wanted to know what to do to replicate it. When I explained it could take years to build up to a proper income, they said "oh no, I need to make money now." That was the end of that conversation.

I never quite know how to take it when someone asks me this. Part of me wonders if they think what I do is so simple that I could just explain it in five minutes and they'd be off, as if the years of graft behind it don't really count.

But another part of me thinks maybe it comes from admiration, they've seen the end result and assume it must be achievable quickly because I've made it look that way. Either way, it's never quite that simple.

Another friend was tired of the long hours in their job and thought working from home would be a breeze, less hours, less stress. It's the opposite, running your own content business is closer to an obsession than a breeze.

Money doesn't fall in your lap, you have to maintain websites, fix tech errors, write fresh content, update old content, keep up with an ever-changing Google and AI landscape, and go out and find the work yourself through pitching, applying, and cold outreach.

It's the same as running any other business, and it's rarely glamorous. There are never-ending emails to reply to and send, and an insane amount of hours spent in spreadsheets, and unlike an employed job, nobody hands you the work, you have to constantly find clients and paid work yourself or you simply don't earn anything.

So many people think a website makes passive income. It couldn't be further from the truth.

As a solopreneur, there's no IT department to call when something breaks, no accounts team to send invoices and do the bookkeeping, no receptionist to answer emails and talk to potential clients, no marketer to promote the business, no SEO team to help the website show up in Google, no designer to create graphics, no developer to fix broken code, and no copywriter, proofreader, or editor to write and edit the content. You're wearing every one of those hats yourself, at the same time.

I was once at a beauty appointment and got chatting about what I do for work. The beautician said her teenage sons would love to do that, since they don't seem to want to work, as if what I do involves doing nothing at all. People genuinely think this.

What running a content business actually looks like

Every one of those hats gets worn across thousands of articles spread over multiple websites, the ideas, the emails (sometimes 150 a day), the writing, the fixing, all of it. The list is genuinely endless, a few years ago I had to force myself to take mornings off, otherwise I'd happily work from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep and still never get near everything I want to achieve.

These days I usually wake around 6.30am, and some mornings I'll squeeze in an hour or two of work before 9am if I can, in fact it's 8.25am as I'm typing this. Then, once the kids are off to school, I try to get out for a long walk, I'm lucky enough to live in a coastal area, or run errands before properly settling into work around midday, going until 9 or 10 at night.

With two kids, school runs, after-school activities, and the usual household chores in the mix, my working day rarely stays in neat blocks, I squeeze work into whatever hours are actually available. All told, I work anywhere from 40 to 60 hours a week, usually closer to the upper end of that, you can see why I publish income reports and how much I really work on my blog if you want the fuller breakdown. I take most weekends off, though a few hours often creep in on a Saturday or Sunday anyway.

Going forward, I'm planning to take a couple of hours off after school a couple of times a week too, for things like climbing and swimming with the kids.

If that sounds like a lot, it's because it is. Running any kind of home-based business comes with its own real disadvantages that people rarely consider before they start, blogging included.

Why I stopped calling myself a "blogger"

Most people assume being a blogger means brands reaching out to you, sending free products in exchange for a review. That might be true for some influencers, and it might be what some bloggers want, but it's not what I do. I run a digital marketing and SEO business, that's the service I actually sell, and it looks nothing like the picture people have in their heads.

That mismatch between what people think blogging is and what running a successful content business actually involves is, honestly, the core reason so many quit. It's a big part of what it actually takes to become a successful female entrepreneur, not just a hobby with a nice-sounding name attached.

The real reasons blogs get abandoned and bloggers quit

From what I've seen over 13 years, it usually comes down to a mix of these:

• People think it's easy, then realise how much time and effort it actually takes
• Plenty of bloggers start purely as a hobby, but still get disheartened when nobody's reading, sometimes there's a secret hope that readers, gifts, or money might come of it eventually, even if that was never the stated goal
• Content ideas run out faster than expected
• People expect to make money right away, not realising it can take years
• Some stick around for a while but simply can't figure out how to make any real money from it, or how to grow past a small amount, and eventually give up trying
• Nobody tells you it's a full-time business, and even then there are no guarantees
• You're competing with an enormous, ever-growing number of other content websites
• Success needs a business and marketing mindset, not just hitting publish on whatever you fancy
• Nobody outside the industry really understands the business model behind it
• Influencing and wanting to be "famous" is a completely different goal to earning through ads, affiliate marketing, or SEO, each needs its own strategy
• It simply requires more perseverance, consistency, and dedication than most people are prepared to put in, the same as any other business
• Burnout creeps in when it stops feeling like a passion and starts feeling like a never-ending chore
• Comparing yourself to bloggers who look further ahead, or feeling like an imposter who isn't "expert" enough, chips away at motivation fast
• It can be isolating with no colleagues, no office, and nobody around who really understands what the job involves
• Sometimes it's simpler than any of that, people genuinely try it and realise they just don't enjoy it, it's not for them, and that's fine too

Final thoughts

If you're thinking about starting a blog because it looks easy or like free stuff and quick money, I'd genuinely reconsider. If you're thinking about it because you're prepared to treat it like a real business, with all the unglamorous parts that come with that, then it's absolutely possible, it's just going to take a lot longer, and a lot more work, than most people expect.

I haven't quit myself after 13 and a half years, and there's a reason for that too, you can read why I think blogging is so brilliant if you want the other side of this story.