New bloggers often approach blogging with high hopes and visions of a bright future. While it’s true that some bloggers become successful and have become rich because of blogging, millions of others are struggling or have given up because they realized at some point how challenging blogging can really be.

Although it helps to approach an undertaking with a positive mind and to believe in your impending success, it also helps to keep your feet on the ground and be conscious of the real difficulties of blogging. You don’t want to have to be told I told you so.

Some real issues and challenges you might have to face include:

1. Steep Competition – There are millions of bloggers out there and there’s bound to be others blogging about your topic. This again is a good reason to be an authority in your topic. Also, you need to be able to present a unique angle to your topic so you stand out from the rest.

2. Technical Issues – Unless you have a formally organized business with a budget, chances are you are a one-man blogger with few resources. This means, you will not have technical staff to help you out so you’ll have to figure out such things as pointing domains to servers, installing WordPress, understanding permalink options, installing plugins, customizing themes, etc.

Add to these initial technical concerns, issues that just pop up at different points in time such as the need to transfer to a new registrar or host if your current one suddenly goes nuts on you.

3. Hackers/Trolls/Destroyers – One issue many bloggers have had to face is attacks from malicious entities that are out to destroy. These include hackers and creators of malicious scripts and software. These bad entities can get to you if you fail to take steps to keep your blog protected or if your host’s safety precautions fall short.

Trolls, or variations of these entities, are people who will dislike you, hate you or publish demeaning remarks about you for no other reason than they just want to. Encountering these people can pose an internal challenge to you. You’ve got to find ways to keep motivated when you encounter negativity.

4. Lack of Manpower – The tasks involved in blogging can build up through time. As a professional blogger, you’ll have to dish out regular content, perform maintenance tasks, engage with followers, look for better monetization models and entertain proposals among other things. Not having people to help you out would again mean you’d have to do a lot on your own.

Even if you’re able to financially support an employee or remote worker, you’d have to put some effort into finding the right person. Otherwise, you’d get burned.

5. Low Funds – Initially, you just need money to pay for registration and hosting. A domain is around $10 a year but most reliable hosting providers will charge monthly fees of about $5 or so. Depending on your economic situation, this may or may not be affordable for you.

Once your blog starts to grow, you might find the need to spend on support services and tools that can help make your blog better.

6. Minimal Income – A common challenge for bloggers wanting to make money out of their blogs is the inability to make enough cash. This may be because they may not be in a profitable market, they don’t know who their market is, they aren’t reaching their market or they have a bad product.

Even if you’ve touched base with your market with a good product though, keep in mind it’s not always realistic to expect that you’ll retire rich because of blogging.

7. No Readers – Just like the inability to generate a good income stream, having no visitors can stem from several different factors including not knowing your target market or incorrect promotional tactics

These are only some of the possible challenges you might have to face as a blogger. There are many more. Keep in mind that these are presented here not to discourage you or convince you not to blog. These points are meant to help you prepare for possible issues you may encounter and to keep your expectations realistic.

To summarize, preparing to blog involves defining your objectives, identifying interests, determining aptitude and staying realistic. In the next section we’ll tackle the all important step of market research.