5 Questions to Ask Before Quitting Your Blog

This post is based on Episode 90 of the ProBlogger podcast.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking about two of the most important things you will ever do as an entrepreneur:

• beginningThis is about responding to your ideas instead of just thinking about them
• persistentwhich is about not giving up when things get difficult.

Unfortunately, no matter how long you try to get it working, not every idea you have is going to be a success. And so I want to wrap up this little series by talking about when it is better for you to quit.

Dig in the wrong place

in the Last week’s post I told you about the Cavanagh brothers and how they made a fortune in gold by not giving up when so many others have. It’s a great example of perseverance, but only because they’ve been rewarded for their hard work. If you Not Find gold, it would be a story about how to give up and go up the stream with the rest of the miners instead of wasting all that time and effort.

Like it or not, some ideas will find you digging in the wrong place. And no matter how long you stick with it, you will never find the gold you are looking for.

But how do you know when to stop and move on instead of digging into your heels and moving on?

Question time

As I said last week, there have been times over the years when I’ve felt like quitting. And to help me decide whether to stop or continue, I asked myself four questions.

1. “Am I enjoying it?”

Is the blog, project, or business you’re working on giving you energy? Do you like it?

Now, I’m not saying that if you answer “no” to any of the questions, stop immediately. (That’s why I’m asking myself the other three questions I’m about to tell you about.) But if you feel like what you’re doing is sucking all the energy and joy out of your life, it may be worth considering.

2. “Am I good at it?”

Look at your work objectively. Do you think you are good at what you do? Are you producing a high quality product or service? (It is probably worth asking other people what they think at this point as it can be difficult to be objective about your own work.)

When the consensus is you are good at what you do and you are If you’re making a good quality product or service, it may be best to keep going despite everything else.

3. “Is there a demand for what I do?”

You may be a little desperate about your blog. But try to forget about that for a moment and think about its potential. What could How will your blog be in the future? Is there a demand for what you produce? And is that demand likely to grow?

You may not be very lucky with your blog right now just because you’re a little ahead of the curve. Wouldn’t it be worth sticking to if everyone else catches up with yours? the Blog everyone comes to help and advice?

Of course, if there is not A demand for what you do, or that demand will eventually fade because you’re blogging about something that has disappeared or is about to disappear (e.g. Google+). Then it may be time to stop.

4. “Do people react to what I do?”

What do others think of your blog? How are your audience numbers? Do you get a lot of comments? Are your posts shared on social media?

Now is the time to go beyond the feedback you get from people and the cold hard facts (or statistics) of how much traffic you are getting and how much you are making.

Let’s face it, if you’ve blogged for 10 years hoping to become a full-time blogger but still not making enough money to quit your job, this may be a sign that you need to think of something else. I know a lot of bloggers who probably should have given up years ago because they put all of their time and energy into very little reward.

Weighing up all the answers

The idea behind these questions is to get an overall picture of how you and your blog are doing. I like to combine every question with one word:

• “Am I enjoying it?” – Energy
• “Am I good at it?” – quality
• “Is there a demand for what I do?” – potential
• “Do people react to what I do?” – Results.

And it’s important to look at all four of the answers when deciding whether to stop or not.

For example, many bloggers just give up because they don’t enjoy it and it uses up their energy. But they may not know how good they are and how many people are attached to each word.

An alternative to quitting

If you’ve asked yourself these four questions and quitting is still your best option, I want you to ask yourself one final question before you unplug it: “Could I pan instead?”

Yes, it might be time to end this blog, project, or even business. But chances are it still has a lot of value, and you may be able to use some of it in another project.

I have met many successful entrepreneurs over the years. And I can’t imagine anyone who achieved their success by traveling in a straight line. Most (if not all) of them did this by panning and changing directions.

I believe in order to be a successful entrepreneur you have to be able to not only hold on to the task at hand, but also identify new opportunities and quickly change direction to pursue them.

Over to you

Are you thinking of finishing something? What were your answers to the four questions? And could you pan instead of stopping altogether?

Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash