Imposter Syndrome and Blogging: You Don’t Need to Be an Expert

I put off starting this website for longer than I’d like to admit.

My houseplant blog — Planet Houseplant — used to get 100,000 clicks a month and make a tonne of cash.

By the time I started building carolinecocker.com, it was getting 15,000 (and making a couple of hundred quid). And I had somehow convinced myself that the drop made me unqualified. That the 100k was the credential, and without it, who was I to teach anyone anything about blogging?

I eventually decided that actually, the drop was more useful than the peak. I know what it looks like when a site gets hit by an algorithm update and you have go back out into the job world (I got hired by an accountant, to be an accountant – that is mad).

I am not pretending to be an SEO. I don’t want to rank and rent, or [NOTE: add other things SEOs do when you find some out]. I just want to write on the internet and make money from it, without scamming anybody or schilling Athletic Greens.

I know how to keep writing anyway. I know what the recovery looks like. That’s not a lack of expertise. That’s a different kind of expertise — one that a blogger currently at 15k clicks would find a lot more useful than one who’d only ever seen the good times.

That’s imposter syndrome for you. It takes real experience and finds a way to disqualify it.

What is imposter syndrome in blogging?

Imposter syndrome is the feeling that you’re not qualified to write about your topic — that someone is going to find you out, call you a fraud, and expose you as someone who has no business having a blog.

It’s extremely common. It affects beginners who haven’t published anything yet, mid-stage bloggers who are starting to get readers and suddenly feel the weight of that, and experienced bloggers who compare themselves to people further along than them.

Here’s the thing though: having imposter syndrome is actually a reasonable sign that you care about your audience. You’re worried about letting them down. Unlike the people who confidently publish rubbish without a second thought.

The problem is when it stops you from starting, or publishing, or saying useful things you actually know.

Do you need to be an expert to blog?

No. But you do need to be honest about what you know and don’t know.

There’s a difference between writing confidently about things you have experience with, and making claims you can’t back up.

You don’t need to be the world’s leading expert on your topic. You just need to know more than your reader did six months ago.

That’s it. If someone is searching “how do I stop my pothos leaves going yellow,” they don’t need a botanist. They need someone who has had yellow pothos leaves, figured out why, fixed it, and can explain the process clearly. Maybe they posted it on Reddit and got a bunch of circumstance-dependent answers.

That person might have only been growing pothos for a year. They’re still the right person to write that article.

What is EEAT and why does it matter for bloggers?

EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s Google’s framework for evaluating content quality, and it’s worth understanding — not because you need to game it, but because it reframes what “qualified” actually means.

The crucial word is Experience. Google added it to the original EAT framework specifically because lived experience is a form of authority that formal credentials don’t always capture. A person who has actually grown 40 houseplants, killed half of them, and learned from it has something to say that a horticultural textbook doesn’t.

It’s worth noting that EEAT isn’t a ranking factor in the sense that Google can algorithmically verify all of it. What it is is a useful lens for thinking about the kind of content that earns trust — the kind people bookmark, share, and come back to. That’s what builds a blog long-term, regardless of what any algorithm update does in the short term.

Plenty of SEOs scoff at EEAT but it’s because their job is getting eyes on websites. Our job is to create useful content. Sure, it would be awesome if it ranked on Google, but we’re gonna go out and get traffic later.

The personal finance problem (and the Google update that stopped me)

Here’s a more concrete version of the imposter syndrome trap, from my own history.

I ran a personal finance blog while working in a restaurant. I was genuinely frugal out of necessity. I had real, practical things to say about living cheaply — not theoretically, but because I had no other option. In hindsight, I had solid EEAT: direct personal experience, specific knowledge, and an audience I genuinely understood because I was in it.

Then Google rolled out an update targeting YMYL niches — Your Money Your Life — the category that includes personal finance, health, and legal content. The update emphasised the importance of demonstrated expertise and credentials in these areas. And I panicked. I had no formal finance background. No qualifications. No letters after my name. I didn’t even have a credit card with rewards.

So I walked away from a niche I was actually well placed to write about, because I confused “credentials” with “experience” — and assumed Google did too.

I don’t think that was the right call. If I’d been more transparent about my position (a person managing on a low income, not a financial advisor), focused on the experiential angle rather than trying to sound authoritative, and linked to qualified sources where technical accuracy mattered, I think it would have been fine. Possibly good.

The lesson: YMYL niches do require more care. But being a real person with genuine experience in a topic is not the same as being unqualified.

What I should have done was start a website about living frugally as a vegan that can’t be arsed to cook. Although it would have consisted of these articles:

• Frugal vegan chilli recipe that feeds 12 hungry people (iron and calcium rich)
• 10 ways to eat vegan chilli (so it doesn’t feel like you eat chilli every night)
• Homemade chilli spice mix (£50 for a year’s supply)
• I think that’s it

(I actually only eat chilli four night a week).

The houseplant problem (and what “six months ahead” actually looks like)

When I started Planet Houseplant in 2019, I wasn’t an expert. I’d been obsessed with houseplants for about six months, which meant I’d done a lot of reading, killed a few plants, learned from it, and was enthusiastically acquiring more.

In those early articles, I was mostly parroting what I’d read elsewhere. I hadn’t yet formed strong opinions of my own. I didn’t have years of experience to draw on. I was writing things like “make sure to water when the top inch of soil is dry” because that’s what everyone said — not because I’d tested it extensively and formed a view.

And that was fine. Because my reader was someone who had just bought their first pothos and had no idea what they were doing. Relative to them, I was ahead. I knew which problems were common, which advice was actually useful, and which was overcomplicated nonsense — because I’d been the confused beginner six months earlier and had done the research they were now trying to do.

Over time, those opinions developed. I started disagreeing with mainstream advice. I formed views through actual experience rather than repetition. The writing got better and more distinctive. But that happened because I started, not before.

For example, I only ever propagate in propagation boxes now, because I tend to forget, er, everything, and cuttings can live in propagation boxes for a good couple of years before drying out completely. If you prefer to bably your plants, you can get awesome results by changing the water every day. I know this because I did it – running cute little experiments is an awesome way of creating unique content.

You develop expertise by doing the thing.

What you actually need to start a blog

A brain, a hobby and a device, and about £60.

Not a degree. Not a certification. Not years of professional experience. Certainly not gear (other than a computer, or a phone if you’re younger than me).

You will also need:

Interest in the topic. Not passion — interest is enough. You need to care enough to keep reading, keep researching, and keep writing when the blog is still small. My plant special interest faded so I ‘only’ have around 100 now. I still like writing about them though (in fact, fewer plants making picking topics easier).

Honesty about your position. Be clear about who you are and where your knowledge comes from. “I’ve been growing houseplants for two years and here’s what I’ve learned” is a completely legitimate framing. You’re not claiming to be a botanist. You’re sharing what you know.

A willingness to be corrected. If you get something wrong, acknowledge it and fix it. This is actually one of the best trust signals a blog can have — it shows you’re a real person who cares about accuracy more than being right.

Links to better sources where needed. If a topic goes beyond what you know, say so and point readers somewhere useful. This isn’t weakness — it’s exactly what a trustworthy source does.

How to articulate your own experience-based authority

If you’re stuck on what you actually bring to your niche, try answering these questions:

What were you searching for six to twelve months ago? The questions you were asking then are probably the questions your future readers are asking now. You know those questions from the inside.

What mistakes have you made in this area? Mistakes are some of the most valuable content you can produce — they’re specific, they’re honest, and they’re exactly what people are searching for when they’re trying to avoid the same thing.

What do you know that’s hard to find? Not secret knowledge — just things that took you a while to figure out that could have been explained more clearly somewhere. That gap is your opportunity.

What mainstream advice do you disagree with? This one takes time to develop, but it’s worth thinking about. Disagreeing with received wisdom, and being able to explain why from your own experience, is one of the things that makes a blog worth reading.

You don’t need all of these to start. One is enough to write the first article.

Frequently asked questions

→ Next up: How to Stay Motivated When Your Blog Has No Traffic Yet — because knowing you’re qualified and staying motivated through the quiet early months are two different challenges.