Like most kids, I always got super excited for Halloween. By far, my favorite treat was candy corn. I’d start getting excited for candy corn as soon as summer started fading away. After all, you can get candy bars and lollipops any time of the year, but you can only get candy corn during October and, if you’ve lucky, in the clearance bin during the first few weeks of November. 

I’d get super hyped up for candy corn, and then, finally, the big day would arrive – Halloween parties, dressing up for school, trick-or-treating, and, for sure, tons of candy corn. Better still, all parents seem to look the other way during Halloween, letting their kids eat more sweets than normal.

Finally, I’d have my first handful of that sugary-sweet orange and yellow treat. Imagine me as a five-year-old, stuffing my face with candy corn, because it inevitably happened every single year as soon as I saw a bowl full of it available for the taking. And every year, half-way through chewing I would remember something.

Candy corn isn’t very good.

Don’t get me wrong; I like candy corn. But really, it doesn’t taste like much, just really chewy sugar. For some reason, though, I somehow would convince myself every year that I love candy corn. Every year, without fail, the actual candy corn wouldn’t live up to the hype I had created for it in my mind. Halloween fail.

Luckily, candy corn isn’t much of a problem, even to a kid. It was easy enough to move on to caramel apples, cupcakes with orange icing, and chocolate bars. I never had a bad Halloween because I was disappointed about candy corn.

Some adults treat blogs like candy corn.

As bloggers, we often forget just how hard it is to build up a new blog from scratch. We’ve moved past the infancy stage with the blog we have and suddenly start to get that itch, the urge to start a new one. That was so much fun, designing a blog that you love. That was so much fun, building up a readership. That was so much fun, carving out a place in a niche.

Yeah, that was so much fun. But have you forgotten how much work it was as well?

Have you forgotten how many late nights you spent tweaking your css or php to get the theme to look perfect? Have you forgotten being the new kid on the block, having to prove yourself as an authority among bloggers who are already established in the niche? Have you forgotten how it feels not to have your authority built up with search engines yet? Or about how you don’t make money right away? Or how you have no one on your list to buy your product? Or how advertisers aren’t interested yet?

Like my love affair with candy corn, if you are removed from something, like starting a new blog, you sometimes forget all the bad things and hype it up in your mind. It seems like it’s a good idea until you have a mouthful of sugary candy that you realize is actually not that great.

If you do start a new blog (or your first blog), please take some time to think about what you’re committing to do. Like with any business, it takes time to get a project off the ground, so be prepared for the time and dedication a baby blog needs to succeed.