What happens when you STOP blogging for 6 months

Today we’re going to try and answer this question, and show how no input activity influences your blog – from traffic to comments ( spammy and non-spammy), and what happens to social media, and of course - Pinterest. If you're a new blogger, or you want to start, or even if you've been blogging for a while but sometimes get overwhelmed and feel like you want to quit, keep reading! You'll be surprised by what you might find.

Good morning, lovely dreamers! How've you been? After a long, long time being AFK we are finally ready to pick up our laptops one more and continue our journey to fulfilling our dream, reaching freedom, and of course - bring YOU with us, every step of the way.

Because we’ve been away for so long, today we’re talking about all that we’ve been through in the past 6 months, why we disappeared, and what will happen next, to our blog and our personal lives! We’re full of surprises, so grab your drink and keep reading if you want to learn more.

For those of us who have no idea who we are, or forgot (hell, more than 6 months away in this day and age seems like 6 years, so we don't blame you!), let us introduce ourselves to you. We are Maya and Andy, a couple of crazy, geeky, 20 something-year-old gamers, with a big dream, freedom.

‍Our lives are an adventure, filled with life lessons, so we decided to start blogging and share our mistakes earned wisdom with the world, especially with the young adults that are now starting their life journeys on their own.When we first started this journey back in March 2017, we had some idea about how it would be, and what it would imply.

Back then, I, being Maya, was an unemployed, bored out of my mind, a stay at home fiance, with no friends, suffering from depression and in dire need of a change in my life. We were living in Spain, and still adapting to the climate (hot, hot, hot!), learning the language and the people.

Andy, my one and only, my beloved husband, was working 6 days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day, for so little money that we could barely put something aside. Don’t even think about traveling somewhere further than where we were staying at the time, or buying nice clothes, or having a hobby.

‍Blogging was a real financial sacrifice for us back then, but we made it anyway. Now, we're in Scotland, we both have jobs, and now we're adapting to life here. Traveling and our new life has changed our priorities a bit, blogging going from the first thing on our list, to the last. Now it's time to change that back!

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Related:

‍The Ultimate Pinterest Guide to help you Skyrocket your Blog

‍How to manage Pinterest Group Boards the Simple Way

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But enough with the chit-chatting! Let's get to it!

What happens when you STOP blogging for 6 months

As we’ve said in previous articles, blogging is not like a “normal people” job - the 9 to 5, or like a shitty MLM situation where you make money only if you bring others into the mix and they start making money. Having a blog is a long-term commitment, that takes A LOT of time, focus, imagination, and patience.

This is a FACT: Blogging is not for everyone.

We've talked in previous articles about the 8 questions you need to answer before starting a blog, also 10 reasons why you should do it, and ultimately, how to start a blog, so we won't do all that again today.If you want to go on this road or are already on it, be prepared for a rollercoaster ride - ups and downs, filled with emotions and very satisfying in the end.

Now let's break it down by category

The Blog

Even though we stopped posting articles, that doesn't mean that we stopped writing them, or checking in from time to time to see how things are going. We've thought of a list of subjects that we would love to have here on the blog, and we'll be uploading them soon enough.We also noticed some things.The first very important thing that changed was the number of spammy comments that are still coming in - about 30 per week, compared to 15-20 per week from when we were posting articles regularly.The views maintained a daily average of 114 views, sometimes breaking the 300 views barrier, DAILY - this is without using schedulers or manual pinning of any kind in over 6 months. That is just impressive.

Social Media

Our social media presence was virtually non-existent for the past months, but even so, we've maintained our Insta to 122 followers, our Facebook page to 170 followers, Twitter says 61 followers, and we even have 2 followers on Google + (LOL).

Pinterest

With Pinterest, we have a whole other situation. Our monthly views change from over 100K to over 300k, and our follower base keeps growing with each passing day. We've pinned other people's stuff from time to time, more and more often now, for the past two weeks.

‍Our follower base doubled in the past 6 months without doing anything. Our secret weapon? Group boards. To be more specific, our two group boards: Bloggers Unite - Let's help each other, and The Shop - Product Promotion Board.

Money

When it comes to money, we'll be real. With no activity, almost no money came in. We say almost, because the only money we've made were, as we used to say, "cigarette money". As in so little we could only buy a pack of cigarettes and that's it.

ADS

Media.net : 35.52 $Adsense: 8$Friendly advice #1 (because Pro tip sounds stupid at this point): If you're blogging and suddenly you stop posting articles regularly, don't expect ad systems like Media.net or Adsense to keep rewarding you with good ads, even if your daily views are not very low.

Simple ads mean small earnings, so be careful with that.

Affiliates

SendOwl: 9$Tailwind: 15$Friendly advice #2: If you stop helping your affiliates grow, they stop rewarding you. If we would have continued to promote, review and share everything on a daily basis, our earnings would have been much greater, no doubt. So even if you stop blogging, if you still want to make money from affiliates, don't forget to promote them!

Conclusion:

Life does not stop when you stop blogging, neither does the blog itself. It still goes on, and on, but instead of climbing up that ladder, it's stuck trying to go up in an escalader that is clearly going down.

If you're someone who wants to go to big places and do big things with your blog, and fast, commit to it like you would to a loved one. Give it your all! You will succeed.

On the other hand, if you are in a situation like ours, and get overwhelmed and really need a breather, be reassured that you can take a break from it all, but please, don't take as long as we did. A couple of weeks is more than enough and easier to recover from.

‍Remeber: Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.

It may take a while to get there, but you don't have to rush it. So don't ever get discouraged if you won't make it to the 1K $ mark in the first 3 months from starting it, or even the first year. You'll get there.

Aaaaaand, that’s all for today, lovely dreamers! If you found any value in this post, be sure to pin it, share it on Facebook, and Tweet it, of course! We won’t stop you!

Our question for you is: How long have you been blogging? And if you haven't started one yet, why not?