Originally published in 2017 and substantially updated in September 2026. The six original comments remain below because readers were candid about comparison, criticism and the emotional side of putting their work online.
Blogging can make ordinary business results feel surprisingly personal.
A post gets less traffic than expected. A brand says no. Someone unsubscribes. Another creator seems to grow faster. A critical comment arrives on exactly the wrong day.
None of those things automatically tells you whether your work is useful or whether your business is moving in the right direction.
The challenge is learning to separate feedback and business data from your sense of worth as a creator.
Do Not Turn Every Metric Into a Grade
Traffic, revenue, subscribers, search rankings, reach and conversions are useful measurements. They help you make decisions.
They are not report cards on your value as a person—or even complete measurements of your ability as a blogger.
A traffic decline may come from seasonality, search changes, a technical problem or content that needs updating. A rejected pitch may simply be the wrong fit or budget. A social post can underperform even when the idea is good.
Treat a disappointing number as a question to investigate rather than a verdict.
Compare Your Business to Its Own Goals
One of the strongest ideas in the original comments was to measure success against yourself.
That does not mean ignoring competitors or industry benchmarks. They can provide useful context. But another creator may have a different audience, business model, team, budget, publishing history, available time or revenue strategy.
A more useful question is: Are the things I am doing moving me toward the business I am trying to build?
That is why tracking meaningful outcomes matters. See Tracking What’s Working and Making Money.
You Do Not Have to Be the Biggest Voice to Be Useful
There may already be thousands of articles about your subject. That does not automatically make yours unnecessary.
Your readers do not consume every resource on the internet. They may understand your explanation better, trust your experience, appreciate your examples or simply discover your article at the moment they need it.
Usefulness is a better goal than trying to prove that nobody has ever discussed your topic before.
Learn to Separate Criticism From Information
Not all criticism deserves the same weight.
Some feedback identifies a genuine problem: a confusing explanation, inaccessible design, factual error, broken link or disappointing customer experience. That information can make your work better.
Other comments are personal attacks, vague insults or attempts to provoke a reaction. They do not become useful merely because someone typed them confidently.
Ask whether the criticism is specific, relevant and actionable. Consider the source and whether that person has enough context to evaluate what they are criticizing.
You can learn from feedback without handing every critic authority over your decisions.
Online Harassment Is Not a Productivity Problem
The original article referred broadly to “bullies.” It is worth being more precise.
Disagreement is not automatically harassment, and a negative review is not necessarily bullying. But targeted harassment, threats, impersonation and persistent abusive behavior can happen online.
You do not owe abusive people continued access to you. Use moderation, blocking and reporting tools when appropriate, document serious incidents and protect personal information.
A community can encourage disagreement without tolerating abuse.
Keep Evidence of What Is Working
When something goes wrong, it is easy to remember every disappointment and forget the accumulated evidence that you have made progress.
Keep a simple record of meaningful wins: helpful reader emails, testimonials, revenue milestones, successful partnerships, traffic growth, finished projects, media mentions, search improvements, products launched and problems solved.
This is not about pretending everything is wonderful. It gives you a more complete set of evidence when one bad day tries to rewrite the entire story.
Turn Comparison Into Research
If another blogger’s success triggers comparison, try turning the reaction into a useful question.
What are they doing well? Is there a strategy worth studying? Are they serving a different audience? Do they have a stronger offer, clearer positioning or better distribution?
Then return to your own goals.
Comparison becomes far less destructive when it produces information rather than a running internal scoreboard.
Build a Business That Does Not Require Constant Validation
If every post must go viral, every pitch must be accepted and every month must beat the last one for you to feel successful, blogging becomes exhausting.
A sustainable business includes experiments that fail, articles that never rank, offers people do not buy and strategies you eventually abandon.
That is normal business information.
Building Better Blogs is intentionally moving away from the culture that tells bloggers they must constantly perform success in public. Learn, measure, improve and celebrate progress—but do not let an algorithm, another creator or a single disappointing result decide whether your work has value.
For a related perspective, see Stop Letting Blogging “Shoulds” Run Your Business.
I must admit, trying not to compare myself to others is hard, which really does a number on self esteem. Its sad that there are bullies even in the blogging world…you would think we would have outgrown that by now!
Thank you for sharing Kathleen. I think the best advice is to measure your success against yourself. It's very easy to get sucked into comparing ourselves with others and we're all at different stages of the journey. Vx
What a great topic to write about! I think most of us bloggers go through this — some more than others. We are putting ourselves out there for the ENTIRE WORLD to see! Freaks me out if I overthink it! And bullies seriously suck. They hide behind their computers and spew hate.
Such good advice. We are our own worst critics aren't we. It's debilitating sometimes.
It is so easy to fall into the comparison trap. For me, it is often wondering why someone with a ho-hum site seems to be doing so much better than me.
There is a lot of food for thought here in this post. I had never taken the time to think that there are actually bullies online that can try to force themselves upon you. It is true, though. I feel that I have worked very hard to make my blog successful. I don't want some bully bringing it down.