Here’s the cold hard truth: Blogging is not for everybody. In fact, the majority fail at blogging.
Many people are intimidated by the thought of starting their own blog, but it isn’t that hard to set up your blog. With the right dedication and smart planning, you can start a blog that will help you quit your day job and make you significant passive income. Blogging requires no significant risk-taking by your part, but the rewards are truly astonishing, if done right. The profit margin of blogging has no equal and that is why I recommend everyone to start their own blog right now.
But before you are run off to start a new blog and expect to make 10000$ a month, make sure you don’t commit the following blogging mistakes:
1. Having No Objective
This is probably the most important one, as the whole point of blogging, is to address people with an objective. For example, if your blog is meant to show people how to lose weight, then everything on your blog has to be related to that topic.
If you post articles of your recent road trip or cute cats, then the reader will leave your site faster than a Bugatti.
Solution: Before starting a blog, find a niche that you are interested in and have knowledge about. After that, make sure every single article you write is related to that niche. This is really important; don’t build a website that has no specific objective whatsoever.
2. Believing Blogging is Easy and Requires Little Effort
If your definition of easy and small effort is spending over 30 hours a week on your blog, then you are right; it is easy.
Blogging requires constant effort on your part from writing quality content to promoting that content. This can be extremely tiring. More importantly, blogging is growing at an astounding rate, so new bloggers have a higher bar to climb. There are a couple of millions of blog posts posted per day, which means that you need to be really unique in order to be successful. It can be hard, but the effort will pay off at the end.
Solution: Before starting a blog, plan out how much time and effort you are willing to put in your new blog. The more time and hard work you put in, the faster you will reach your goal of creating a secondary income or if you are daring enough, a full-time income.
3. Choosing a Niche Based on “How much money you can make”
Blogging is tiring and requires a lot of effort, sometimes as much effort as a full time job, so before starting your own blog, make sure the niche (topic) you choose is one that you are passionate about.
If you are not physically fit and don’t know anything about nutrition or exercise, DON’T jump into the fitness niche because it is profitable.Every niche is profitable, you just have to be more clever. Don’t think you can start a blog on something you don’t like writing about. You will tire out and eventually give up
Solution: Choose your niche sensibly. If you like fishing, start a fishing blog that teaches people how to fish efficiently; if you like soccer, start a blog about how to increase your speed, shot power…
4. Not Having Your Own Domain
This is the easiest mistake to avoid and the one thing you must do if you want to have a successful blog. But every single day people start blogs without owning their domain. If you don’t know what domain is – it is basically the name of your website. If you start a blog on a domain that you don’t own such as:
- www.nameofyourwebsite.wordpress.com
- www.nameofyourwebsite.blogger.com
- On Tumblr…
You are basically telling your readers that you are not a professional. Of course, there are people who have succeeded in blogging without owning their domain name, but they are one in a million.
Solution: Make sure you start a blog with your own domain. It is easy and low cost, but the rewards are plentiful.
5. Writing Quality Content and Just Sitting There Waiting For People To Find It
One reason why most new blogs fail is because they start a blog believing that the only thing they need is quality content. Blogging is 30% content and 70% promotion. If you aren’t promoting your content, how are people going to find your article? Google or any other search engine won’t rank you high when you launch your blog.
Solution: There are many different ways to promote your blog content. The most basic and important ones are:
– Guest Blogging (Which basically means writing a guest post for another well established site)
– Getting Syndicated (Which is relatively hard, but the rewards are amazing)
– On Facebook, Pinterest and other major social media sites.
6. Believing You Will Be A Millionaire in A Month
This is a major attitude mistake that will rip your dreams apart, if you don’t control it. Yes, there are blogs that make over 50000$ per month. But you know how long it took them? At least 3 years of constant dedication!
Your goal might not be that grand, but understand that you need to give it time and real effort.
Solution: Don’t give up on a blog until you have tried it out for at least 8 months or more. Make sure your dream is attainable and realistic. Don’t you think 50000$ per month salary is worth the massive effort of a couple of years?
7. Being An Inconsistent Blogger
If you want to be a successful blogger, you need to have a clear and regular schedule. You can’t be writing blog posts when you just “feel like it”. It is a job and if you don’t take it seriously, you will fail.
Every successful blogger that makes a fortune from his or her blog knows that the key to success is regularly publishing high quality content.
Solution: You have two options here. One, you promise to yourself that you will write at least a certain amount of posts per week and ensure that you do it. If you want to take it to the next level, get yourself an online editorial calendar and make sure you commit to your schedule.
8. Having An Awful Design
You know what hurts more than awful content, awful design!! You know what they say about first impressions; you only have one chance. So if your website looks like it was designed by a 5 year old, then that is how you are going to be treated. When choosing a theme for your brand new blog, I recommend you invest in a paid theme rather than a free one. Free themes are limited and look unprofessional to many reader’s eyes.
Solution: Keep the design of your theme to the minimum. You don’t want a website with red background, yellow links and blue text. It just looks spammy. So opt for a slick, but non-complicated design.
9. Using Ads On a Brand New Blog
When you are starting a blog and trying to increase your trust and recognition with readers, don’t use ads on your website. You know why? Because ads are spammy! Unless you are an established blog, the reader will associate your blog with spam. Not a good thing! If you want to make money from your new blog, start out with affiliate marketing.
Solution: Stay away from ads until you have at least over 50,000 visits per month. That might seem harsh to you. But, remember that for every ad click you get about 5-50 cents only. So unless you have massive traffic, it won’t bring you any significant money.
10. Having No Opt in or Subscription Forms
When you start your blog, start building your email list right from the beginning. Email is and always should be your priority. People don’t have time to remember each website they visit, and it is your job to make sure they remember your blog. So make sure they subscribe to your email list.
Solution: If you want to learn more on email list building, there are plenty of guides online. Collect email through pop ups, slide ins or sidebar opt-in forms. They might seem intrusive to you, but they work excellently, especially the pop ups.
Featured photo credit: Daniel Thomas via unsplash.com
