Should You Blog in English if It’s Not Your Native Language (& Why I Do It)

Wondering if you should blog in English or not? Below, you’ll find out why I decided to do it as a non-native English speaker, what the challenges are, how to overcome them, and how to make it work for any type of content. At the end of the page, you’ll also find the audio player so you can listen to the podcast episode. Today’s topic is inspired by the fact that I was featured in a roundup post by one of the members of our community and membership for bloggers, Fearless Bloggers. Her name is Sofia and she created this beautiful post on her website called Blogging in English for non-native English Speakers. She interviewed a few people on the topic and she asked us questions such as why we decided to blog in English when we first started, what the main benefits of that are, if non-native English speakers can actually make real money blogging, if our audience ever gave us any type of feedback about it, and just to share some tips, stories, struggles, notes of encouragement for anyone who is considering starting a blog in English as a second language. Here’s the round-up post if you want to see my answers and also those of other bloggers. But I also decided to talk about it on the blog a bit because it’s such an important topic for so many of us and yet it’s not discussed enough online. Why I Blog in English Blogging itself is hard. Any online business model is. But when it’s not your first language, when you feel like an imposter 90% of the time, it becomes even harder. I believe that’s one of the main reasons that many people who are not native English speakers don’t start a blog or why many others have so much doubt and fear before that and are not confident once they start their website. So let’s talk about that. I’ve been blogging in English since 2013, so that’s 11 years now and I never ever had any doubt whether it should be this or my native language, which is Bulgarian, if you don’t know. First let’s talk about why that is, why I blog in English. First of all, I didn’t feel that connected to my country and its culture. I don’t say this in a bad way, it’s just my experience with it. For as long as I can remember I was reading in English. It was mostly on personal development, which has always been my biggest passion. This is also the main topic I was covering on the blog when I started it. Now, it’s also business and a lot more, but that’s where it all began – with my love for personal growth. I was reading those books only in English. I was watching everything in English. Not that much was happening online back then as it is now, but still I was consuming almost all of my content in English and that’s how I wanted things to be. Eventually my brain started working this way and I began thinking in English. Especially when it comes to self-improvement, the topic I was writing about, all I knew was sort of in English. I only knew how to express myself on that topic in that language, so there was no doubt that this is the language I was going to write in online.