Deciding to start a blog is one of the best things that happened to me.
Why?
Simply because with my blog, I’m free to do what I want, say what I want and write what I want.
Thanks to my blogs, I have been able to build an audience of people who follow me and who love what I do.
Since over time I have managed to build a certain relationship with this audience, from time to time, I would recommend some products or services that I use and since they trust me, they buy and I earn money.
With bloglovemeeting.com, my first blog, I earned over $5000 in my first year of blogging.
This sum is ridiculous compared to the tens of thousands of dollars earned each month by renowned bloggers such as Michelle from making sense of the cent or Lauren and Alex from Createandgo.com.
For example, according to their income reports, which they publish each month on their blogs, Michelle earns between 50,000 and 100,000 each month, mainly thanks to affiliate marketing and the sale of their own digital products.
Even if I do not earn such money with my blog, for me, having won this sum of $5000 was a total success since initially, when I decided to create my first blog, I had absolutely no intention of making money with it.
It was not my main goal. With this blog, my goal was to help my audience find solutions to their problems.
did I reach my goal?
Well, if you consider that people have visited my blog, that they clicked on my ads and that some even used their credit card to buy my affiliate products, yes we can say that I rather achieved my goal.
But despite this small victory, in the end, I still failed with this blog.
Yes! That’s true! I failed miserably.
Even though this blog brought me some money, I really never managed to take it to the next level because of some mistakes I made all along.
Today, this blog is still online. But I hardly manage it anymore. I continue to pay for my domain name and my hosting each year but it is a blog that I no longer use. It serves me as a case study and I leave it online to show other bloggers the mistakes not to commit when you start a blog.
And in this article, I’m going to share some of the mistakes that new bloggers make, and prevent them from taking their blog to the next level.
Knowing the mistakes that can kill your blog, that’s why you came here, right?
So without further ado, I’m going to share some of these mistakes with you so you won’t make them on your own blog.
But before that, let me ask you:
Do you have a blog yet?
If you don’t have one yet, you can read my article below on why you should have a blog in 2019-2020 :
17 Reasons you should have a blog in 2019-2020
At this point, if you don’t have your own blog yet and would like to start one as soon as today, go here to start your blog with Bluehost.
Many successful bloggers use Bluehost and it’s considered as one of The Best Web Hosting.
with them you’ll get a:
- FREE Domain Name for 1st Year
- FREE SSL Certificate Included
- 1-Click WordPress Install
- 24/7 Support
It’s the exact hosting provider I use to run this very blog you’re reading right now.
Ok! Great! Let’s move on…
Now let’s assume that you already have a blog and that you work your ass out day in day out to make it take off like crazy.
But despite all your efforts and commitment, it seems that the results you’re waiting for never come.
Your traffic never gains momentum, and worse, the more you blog the more it decreases.
Your income never takes off and there’s literarily no comments and no engagements from your readers.
Well, if this happens to you, maybe it’s because when you blog, you commit one or more of the 10 mistakes below, and this is killing your blog softly.
How can I pretend that?
I know from my own experience, and after reading more than 10 blogs daily for years to find inspiration for my own blogs, I have seen so many blogs that today I know the type of mistakes many bloggers make.
Here is my top 10 list of the most common mistakes we make when we blog and how to correct them.
1: You don’t blog daily
The other day I published a blog post explaining why blogging daily was so important. But still, many people don’t take this exercise seriously. They only blog from time to time and once they have published a post, it can take weeks before they publish their next post.
Come on, guys!!! Do you really think doing that will help you elevate yourself as an expert in your industry?
If you don’t blog daily, this means that you don’t post enough. Since the internet works on search, your lack of frequency will kill your traffic and your income potential.
With the latest changes made by Google and the majority of the search engines, those who post regularly are recompensed with better rankings while others are penalized.
So if you don’t want to kill your blog by being an inconsistent guy, correct this mistake. The more you’ll post, the greater your traffic and exposure.
2. You post too much and for no reason
Here you may think that I’m crazy. How can I say that posting too much is a mistake when I just said that not posting enough could also damage your blog?
Yeah, I know. This might surprise, even shock you. But it’s true: posting too much can kill your blog.
Firstly, your readers might be overwhelmed with all your posts and leave your blog, especially if they subscribed to your newsletter and that they receive your updates in their inbox.
Secondly, this may alert Google, which may then penalize you because they may consider your blog as a spamming blog.
If your blog is very popular, you can post once per day or a maximum of 3 to 5 times a week. Your readers will still come to your blog because they know that you’re consistent and that they will find value in what you’re giving them.
But many people make the mistake of posting too much. They can post like 3-5 times in a day so that each time you refresh their blog, you find a new post.
Is your blog a news site?
If no, why on earth would someone want to read your stuff more than once a day?
So, if you post more than once a day for no reason, consider reviewing your frequency post schedule.
3: You post very long and boring posts
Are you an essayist or a blogger?
When some bloggers really lack inspiration and can’t write 5 sentences in a row, others, on the other hand, can’t stop writing once they start. They can write a full essay, publish it on their blog and then wonder why nobody is reading their blog.
Time is money, for you as well as for your readers. So make sure you go straight to the point when you treat a topic. Give value, provide interesting information and advice that can benefit your readers.
There’s not a perfect length to take into account but you can shoot for a post between 500 and 3000 words to please both your readers and the search engines at the same time.
Nobody has the time to read a 5000 words post that is not relevant to them. Posting too long posts can have a very negative impact on your blog stats, such as your bounce rate which may decrease its ranking because once again if people leave your blog too fast, Google may consider it as of poor quality.
When you’re very inspired and that you need to develop a very long topic, the trick is to break your content into 2 or 3 parts.
To encourage your readers to read your full article, you can just tell them something like :
Click here to continue reading part 2 (Don’t forget to provide the link that will take them to the second part of your article when they click on that link).
4: You don’t promote your content
What’s the point of having good content on your blog if no one can see it?
Most bloggers think that their job ends when they publish their posts.
It’s a no, no, no my friend.
As a blogger, your goal is to attract new readers on your blog. And you can only do that by letting people know about what you’re doing.
So once you’ve posted your content, this can be a post or a video, you need to go and tell the world about it. There are too many ways you can use to promote your content and I will not develop them all here.
There are free methods, which include doing a lot of SEO to get organic traffic and paid methods which include investing in paid advertisement campaigns, buying tools to submit your content to directories and so on.
Find the methods that best suit your situation and start promoting your content. Your traffic will thank you for that.
5: You don’t produce engaging content
Engagement is very important in today’s marketing environment. If you want your content to be noticed, you must create engagement. The best way to do that is to be controversial and treat subjects that can challenge the conscience of people and lead them to start a conversation with you or with other readers.
To measure this kind of engagement, you can use a tool like postrank.com.
So are you ready to be controversial?
6: You don’t respond to your comments
This mistake goes with the one above. When certain bloggers don’t have any engagement on their blog, others are oversaturated with all the comments they get daily and don’t know how to deal with them.
They then focus so much on content creation that they forget to participate in the conversation and don’t respond to people commenting on their posts.
This behavior can have a very negative impact on you since your readers may think that you ignore them or you don’t consider what they have to say.
Your readers want to have a conversation with you. So do not disappoint them by ignoring them because they might get upset and go comment on other blogs. I think that that’s not what you want, do you?
7: You don’t use social media to promote your content
Google pays very close attention to social media signals to determine the popularity of your blog. But do you use social media to help people interact with your content?
If no, start using social media right now. You must consider Facebook, Twitter and the many others like your partners. They must play an important role in your marketing strategy.
Today most blogs have at least one social icon button on most of their pages so that readers can share the content with their friends at the click of a button.
So if it’s not the case for you yet, you need to put a social sharing icon on your blog to improve your social signals.
There are many plugins proposing these icons in WordPress. Find the one that you like and place it on your blog. Do it today…
8: Your headlines don’t catch people’s attention
If your headline is not appealing, why would I want to click on it? Like it or not, your headline is the door that invites your readers to enter your blog.
Imagine one second that you are hosting a party, you ask people to come but once they arrive, you don’t welcome them, you don’t smile at them, you don’t do anything to make them comfortable. Will they want to stay?
I don’t think so. They might want to run as fast as possible. This is exactly what happens when people see a headline that is not attractive. They will not want to click on it to see what is behind.
So in order to correct that and improve your clicks rate, you must work on creating attractive and powerful headlines.
9: You always talk about you
When I visit a blog, I want to get a piece of advice or a solution to my problem. I don’t want to waste my time reading how your life is fantastic or tons of other things about you, you and you.
Does what you’re saying about yourself provide me value?
If no, I won’t read your stuff. If I want to know about you, I’ll search for the “About You” section on your blog and read that.
But if you talk about yourself in every piece of content you publish, I’ll run away from your blog.
So make sure you always give valuable information to your audience. You can always talk a little bit about you to introduce yourself or to use yourself as an example to teach your audience how you managed to overcome a certain situation though.
But never forget that your audience comes to your blog to find solutions to their own problems. So it’s not about you. It’s about them!
10: You do not build an email list from the start
As a blogger, you have probably heard the phrase “money is on the list”.
Neglecting to build your email list early on is probably another big mistake new bloggers make.
Yes! believe me.
I see so many people who make the huge mistake of not starting building an email list right after they started their blog.
Just in case you’re wondering why starting an email list is so important, here’s what you need to know: ” No matter how great, beautiful and fancy your blog is, if you really want to make money online with your blog, you need a list.” Period!
Why?
Because your email list is for sure one of your best tools for making money online through affiliate marketing and selling digital products, for instance.
But if you haven’t started building your email list yet, don’t worry! It’s not too late.
You can still fix that. To do so and fix this mistake, just decide to start a list today. Don’t keep on procrastinating. Even if you feel like you’re not ready yet, do it today. All you have to do is to choose a good email service and start building your list.
Depending on your budget, there are so many email service providers out there such as Aweber, GetResponse and so on and so forth that finding a good one will not be an issue.
The one I recommend is Convertkit because it’s a tool that was built by a blogger for bloggers. I read so many positive reviews about this tool and I think that you’re going to love it too.
Conclusion
Well, I can go on and establish a list of hundreds of more mistakes that may kill your blog but I guess you get the point.
Many people make mistakes but they don’t even know their own mistakes because they really never take time to think about what they are doing wrong.
Here’s a list of some extra mistakes that you may be making as a new blogger without knowing it.
- 11: You don’t know your own mistakes
- 12: You’re not really treating your blog as a real business
- 13: Always comparing yourself with other bloggers
- 14: You only focus on making money
- 15: You want to be everywhere at once
- 16: You’re not willing to invest in blogging education
- 17: You spend too much time on the design of your blog
While this list is not exhaustive, I encourage you to take a few minutes and think about the common mistakes that YOU make and correct them yourself.
Doing that seriously will help you to improve your blogging experience, get more traffic and build a better audience that you will be able to monetize.
Have something else to add? Please comment below and let us know…
To your success
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Jose Blogger