Posted in lists, Uncategorized

My Biggest Challenges as a Blogger

Hey guys! It’s been a while but I hope you enjoyed my last blog post. If you haven’t read it, go check out 5 Things I do in Korea that I Wouldn’t in London.

Today I come to you with a blog post that is kind of hard for me to write! I find that it’s easy for people to talk about the things they are good at, but it’s a bit harder to admit things that you find challenging or that you are not good at.
Since my school has closed for the 3rd week because of the Coronavirus outbreak in Korea, I have a lot more free time than I would normally. So, I should blog right?!

Let’s begin! Here are my biggest challenges as a blogger.

Finding Time to Blog

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As most of you know, I am currently an English teacher in Korea. I’ve been here for 6 consecutive years, 3 of those years I’ve been at my current academy. Since I have been here for so long, I’ve been offered several promotions by my boss. I have accepted all of them as I want a pay rise, and I like having more responsibilities.
While this is good for my current career, it means that I keep putting off my dreams of becoming a journalist or blogger.
It has also left me with a super busy schedule, where I do a lot of overtime. So, I find it very hard to fit in time to blog with my work schedule, social schedule, spending time with Aurora, and sleeping!

What I am going to do to overcome this:
Since I have a very good relationship with my boss, and she considers me as her business partner more than her employee, I don’t usually ask for overtime pay. So, I am going to try to cut down the amount of overtime I do to put my hobby and life goals first.

Coming up With Blog Posts

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A few years ago, I used to post about my dating life in Korea. It was so popular and very easy to write as I would just write a blog post after each date! At that time, I was in a job which wasn’t as busy as my current job, so I had a lot of time to date. However, I felt kind of bad for writing about these guys because they had no idea that things that happened on our dates were published online (not that we did anything inappropriate). I also had really bad luck with the guys I wrote about (maybe they found my blog), so I decided to stop, even though there was high demand for new content!
After that, I have had a few ideas like sharing information about myself, reviews and suggestions, and other posts that are often covered in the blogging world. While this went well when I had more time, I have hit a writer’s block!
I know that there’s a lot of “blog post ideas” that I could find and follow, but I want to be a bit more original. I want to write things that you guys would find interesting!

What I am doing to get over it:
I am using the “blog post ideas” that I can find online… haha I know I just said I didn’t want to, but until I pass this writers block, I think it’s what I need to do. It would still be interesting to you guys if the content I give is good, right?!

Finding a Theme I Feel Confident Using

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When I was younger, I was really tech savvy and I even knew html codes, but when you don’t use something, it is very easy to forget it. So, my blog looks so basic and I don’t feel confident with using themes. I also feel like my lack of skill has made your view of my website boring and a bit hard to navigate.

What I am doing to get over it:
This feels like a challenge that I can take control of and take action with immediately, so I have a lot of solutions!
I have watched tutorials and reading instructional blogs about how to use certain themes and how to customize my website better. I am also trying to relearn html codes. Although it’s not necessary, I feel like it would make me feel more confident. On top of all of that I am experimenting and using trail and error with one of my inactive blogs.

Making Money From My Blog

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This is a given challenge because of the previous 3 challenges!
Obviously if I work harder on my blog, I could make money from it. I just need to make better content and work on advertisements and monetizing my content.

What I am doing to get over it:
I am trying to blog more, look more professional, invest more time and effort, and be continuous. As well as all of that, I am researching into partnerships, advertisement, and monetizing.

Well, there you have it! Those are my biggest challenges as a blogger.
If you have any tips on how I can get over any of them, please let me know! I need all the help I can get!
If you are a blogger, please write a blog post about your biggest challenges and leave the link in the comments below. Or, let me know if your challenges are the same as mine, I am curious about your challenges and solutions!

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Posted in Korea, Uncategorized

Why I am starting again.

Hello, guys!

Welcome back to British Eritrean Girl in Seoul.

As some of you know, or probably picked up from my blog name, I am living in South Korea. When I first moved here, I used to blog on Dina Daily. However, because I wanted to start fresh, I created this blog. This blog was more personal and about my experiences in Korea. I did gain a lot of followers but due to work, I wasn’t able to blog as much as I would like to. Whenever I did have time I would make a post saying that I was going to start blogging regularly again. I never stuck to it and I have finally realised that the reason was writers block.

On this blog, I gained most views and followers when I would post about my dating experience. As fun as it was, I am now in a serious relationship and I don’t really want people knowing my relationships deepest, darkest, secrets. The problem was I kept finding myself not knowing what to write about because I wasn’t going on dates and I kept focusing on getting views.

Thinking like that clouded my mind and I couldn’t think clearly about why I began blogging and what being a writer is about. I shouldn’t care so much about views. Instead I should be focusing on writing what I want to write about and improving my writing skills. If I gained a loyal group of followers along the way it would be a bonus!

I also realised that I was setting unrealistic goals for myself. Yes I wish I could blog 3 times a week, but that is what some full time bloggers do. Instead of comparing myself to others I should have thought about what is do-able for me. Juggling work, a relationship, maintaining friendships, a cat, blogging, time for myself to relax and sleeping, is not as easy as it may sound to some people. (I am a firm believer in sleeping for 12 hours if possible!) Although writing is my passion, blogging seemed like the easiest thing to push into a corner to collect dust. Ideally, I would quit my job, since it is the most time consuming, and take on blogging full time, but that is just not possible. (I have a spending problem so I am terrible at saving money.)

I want to change. I want to be able to blog about whatever I want to. I hope that my post will interest other people, but the amount of views I get is not going to be something I will focus on. I believe it will come in time.

So, back to my problem. Writers block. I thought about the last time I had writers block, my dissertation. What did I do? I stepped away from writing for a few hours or even a day and then went back to it. Obviously time away from blogging is not working out the same for me. So I looked for other ways to get past my writers block and I thought, a writing challenge!

I found a lot of blog challenges and I was kind of stuck for choice. But then one stood out to me, Blogging Abroad!

So I will start this blog challenge and hopefully get myself out of my writers block!

Stay tuned for my first blog challenge post!