Blogging Insights: What It Is Like to Blog About Depression

What it is like to blog about depression? It’s quite a long read, so if you don’t want to read how I started blogging, what motivated me, what I needed to learn before I could start my blog, here is a brief for you.

Price:$110 total.
$11 (domain name) + $40 (shared hosting) + $60 (WordPress theme called “BeTheme”)
I chose Namecheap for buying the domain and hosting because they have the most responsive support I’ve ever seen on the web so far. So, if you’re planning to start your own site I definitely recommend Namecheap.

Time to build a website: 1-2 months.
I spent a lot of time learning how to use the WordPress theme. The settings were confusing at the start, and I had no idea what my website should look like.

Why I chose depression and self-development: I learned to manage my depression bursts, and I also helped more than 5 people including one person with suicidal thoughts. Self-development is what’s helping me learn about myself and keep moving forward when the times are tough.

What it is like to blog about depression: It’s scary. Each time I write a deep article I need to go back and live through those hard times again. It’s necessary to be empathetic and feel what others may be going through. It’s also very helpful because I dig into my fears again and again, so they are not that scary anymore and I gain a lot of insights from them which I try to share after I make sure they work fine.

That’s pretty much it. It’s not expensive to create a simple website without any programming skills and have it work pretty stably. Also, if you’re planning to start your own blog about depression or something similar to this, then start today. I’d recommend you go with “suicide prevention” topic which is yet unexplored.

Now, for those of you who really want to dig into the details here is my story and some facts about blogging industry.

Blogging industry overview

Today, the blogging industry is growing fairly quickly. There are over 440 million blogs registered on Tumblr alone, and there are many more millions of blogs on the web. Apart from Tumblr, there are also self-hosted WordPress blogs, Facebook groups, YouTube vlogs and many other platforms that are most popular among bloggers.

Seems like a rather competitive market, isn’t it? I thought the same. 3 years ago I’ve got that idea that maybe I could be a blogger one day. The same day I gave up on that idea because I went further to think about prices and realization of that idea. There was no way I could achieve that goal. It probably costs thousands of dollars and it’s just impossible to compete against the millions of bloggers who are definitely more successful and better than me.

I was terribly wrong, and you can see that from numbers I mentioned earlier. It costs only $110 to create a blog, and it also costs around $50 yearly to pay for your domain name and hosting. Sounds attractive, right?

Why people start blogging

There are quite a lot of reasons why people choose blogging, and according to Blog Tyrant’s survey, here are the major ones:

• 43.6% of respondents chose blogging as a hobby;
• 37.1% started blogging in hopes to make a side income;
• 32.2% devoted their time to turning their blog into a full-time job;

How I decided to start blogging

I’ve never considered myself to be a professional blogger, and actually earn my living writing articles. At first, the idea of becoming a blogger appeared in my mind some 3 years ago, when I was chilling during the summer holidays trying to make some money. I decided to honorably claim myself a freelancer, and started searching for platforms to find clients.

I found a few Russian resources such as textsale.ru and godsofcontent.biz. I thought it’d be an exciting journey of content creation and I’ll definitely find hundreds of clients right away.

Nope. It was a hell of a struggle to find clients because those platforms seemed to be dead. However, I managed to earn $11 in a week, and I was the happiest person in the world who decided to never blog again.

During those 3 years after trying myself as a content writer, I started looking for another purpose. I was desperately trying to figure out what I need to be doing in life because I didn’t know shit. I couldn’t do anything and I was pretty much useless for my country and any employer, I thought. I spent 2 years with that thought in my head. I almost became sure that I’ll never become anyone.

One day I decided that I need to learn something in this world and land, at least, some job regardless of what this thing is about.

I tried to become a waiter. Didn’t work out for me. I’ve landed a job of an English teacher and spent almost 1 year teaching kids and adults. It was a lot of fun, but eventually, I got bored and quit. I tried to become a customer support representative. Hell no. After 1 month, I fled in terror because I felt that my creativity was dying there.

During this 1 intense year of trying different things and learning about myself, I also made a lot of connections with other people, and half of them were also adventurers like me. Adventurers in the sense that they also had no idea what they want to do in life.

One day I was sitting in a pub, drinking orange juice as real men do. I met a guy there and thing led to another we found a common language, and he said: “I’m looking for a content writer, and I see that your English isn’t bad, would you be interested?” I said that I was busy and maybe I’ll contact him later. We exchanged numbers.

A month later I called him, and asked: “Hey, do you still have this position open?” He confirmed, and so we scheduled an interview. At the interview, he told me that they provide SEO (search engine optimization) services and specialize in developing SEO software. I didn’t get a word. I had no clue what he was talking about. Search engines, rankings, crawlers, what the hell are all these things?

He knew that I didn’t know a thing, and so he wrote 10 questions for me that I need to figure out as quickly as possible. This is how I spend my first working day. Reading about SEO, keywords, meta descriptions and all these things. I still didn’t get much, but I enjoyed researching and learning about it.

The next thing I realized changed my life

Here I was, a content writer for an SEO agency who learned quite a lot about SEO software, APIs, algorithms, website optimization, etc. I realized that I learned all that stuff just covering topics that I had no clue about. What else can I learn by simply writing about it?

I also learned a lot about blogging and its value in the B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-client) world. According to Hubspot, 55% of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority in 2018. Speaking simple English here, writing good content means attracting good readers that can and want to buy something while trying to sell shit in every post is a bad strategy. This is what more and more marketers start to realize.

For me, creating content working for a company meant something like: “If I’m creating content for them and they profit from it, why can’t I write something for myself? I may not make anything from it, but I can connect to more amazing people all across the world which may give me something bigger than money.”

According to Blog Tyrant, 69.4% of bloggers make absolutely zero income from their blog, and only 22.6% generate somewhere up to $10k per month. That’s not that bad if I can land somewhere in between. However, the idea that I can be doing something on my own, and share my knowledge which may help other people to change their lives was more attractive than money.

Why I chose to blog about depression

After 6 months working for a company and writing content for them, I finally realized that I can be writing something for my own audience, something that people can relate to. The only difference is that I needed to decide what to write about, when to write about it, and what impact I want to have on my audience. These were tough questions, but I had an easy answer.

I have my life, my struggles, and my experience, and I have my approach to solving those problems. Why don’t I write about it? The reason why I chose blogging about depression and self-development is that during my university years I was dealing with a lot of new things for me which have led me to almost having suicidal thoughts.

The drastic changes in my surrounding, being 125 miles away from my home, learning new things I had no clue about, living with a roommate that would distract me every day from studying and having health problems have altogether contributed to the growth of my depression that nearly killed me. Today, I know that these were not the problems that made me depressed. It was my thinking and my attitude which turned out to be the biggest obstacles to overcome.

So, I chose to write about it, and not only to write but to provide CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) services because that’s what matters to me and I’m continuously learning about it. According to World Health Organization, there are over 300 million people of all ages who suffer from depression taking to account that fact that these are the millions that were registered. How many more people are there fighting depression and can’t overcome it?

When I was struggling with my problems I was desperately looking for help. I tried to talk to different people, friends, family, but nobody could pretty much understand what I was going through. So, I tried the internet. I found many answers reading Quora, watching Charisma On Command, Mensutra, Project Life Mastery, and other great channels.

However, I also found a lot of rubbish which marketers, bloggers and other agencies are trying to sell to each other. These things didn’t help me solve my problems, they didn’t even give me a hint. I had to improvise, some things worked out other things wasted my time.

During that 1 year of teaching, I realized one thing. I help people learn something new as much as they help me. Helping other people made me stop concentrating on my own things and commit to serving others because I could see the impact I was having on them. When your students understand something that they did not understand yesterday, when they start speaking English saying that nobody has ever explained it simpler, you can’t help but smile, and say “You are welcome”.

I was proud that they are making progress towards their goals, I was more than happy to see people who are cheerfully thankful to you for helping them solve their problems. I understood that I have the skill. I have something that nobody has ever had before me, at least, within that English school. I was helping people solve deeper problems than simply teaching them how to read, write, speak and understand English.

I was confronting their fears, fear of public speaking, shyness, anxiety, depression and other mindset blocks. With that thought on my mind, Life to Make appeared. Life to Make is a website that I’m putting my best efforts into. Life to Make is about evolution of my and behavior. My approach is quite simple. I talk to people of different ages 10-60 to find out about their problems and how they deal with them.

Knowledge makes you move 50 years faster

It’s interesting when you meet people who are in their 40s and they are successful businessmen but they absolutely suck in romantic relationships and vice versa. It’s also incredible to learn what leads people to depression and what invisible powers they have that they could have used to become the greatest people on earth. There is an enormous amount of gold around you, and that gold is information and knowledge.

When somebody in their 60s shares invaluable insights you need to sit your ass down and listen. Don’t try to deceive yourself though. Sometimes those insights come to you when you listen to the bullshit people say which you interpret in your own way. If you’re 20 today, you’ll learn something that took somebody 40 more years to realize.

It works with self-development, it works with depression, it’s applicable to anything as long as it requires social interactions and communication. Mostly, what makes people realize things is the mindset. The mindset is what you need to work on regardless of your age whether you’re 5 or 90. It’s never too late.

Thank you for being with Lifetomake.com. I hope that you find the information on this site helpful. Stay awesome!

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