It was not until very recently that blogging was identified as a viable way of actually earning money online. However, there are still people that do not recognize it as a career.
For those who understand the power that this work has, they work hard day and night to ensure that their blogs reach their full potential.
One of the first steps of starting a successful blog is identifying your niche. You can’t blog about anything, and everything as that will make everything very confused.
Once you have that in place you have to grow the number of readers and subscribers to your website, learn how to monetize it if that is your goal.
That is not an easy task as many would believe since it requires a lot of work, planning, and the best execution so you can reach your target readers.
Many bloggers start by growing so many things at once and following every single advice that they pick up too fast. However, they forget about those little blogging mistakes that may prevent them from reaching their full potential.
So you need to first of all slow down and have a look at these blogging mistakes that you may be making so that you may fix them.
Click here to learn how you should earn money with your blog
Mistake #1: Failing to Plan Is Planning To Fail
Many people wake up one morning and decide to start a blog for no reason or because you saw someone be successful at it.
While impromptu ideas are great and even potentially genius, you still need a plan for what you are doing. You have to plan for your content and everything that you will need to do in the coming days.
Have a clear vision for your blog site and stick to that vision until you are sure that you have to change it to succeed.
Do not merely adopt one idea in one week then wholly do away with it the following week without trying to figure out whether it can work.
The best thing you can do is come up with interesting ideas on your niche and start developing them. Choose items that you are passionate about and that you can follow through to the end.
List down potential partners that you would want to work with and come up with proposals for them. You have to put in the work with you want to be successful otherwise yours will be another blog that someone started and abandoned.
Mistake #2: Stop Focusing Only on Things That Draw Your Attention
Having a passion for something at the beginning is mandatory. It allows you to establish yourself and attract people that have similar interests to your blog.
However, as time goes by you have to honor the wants and needs of your audience which may mean adjusting your content a little bit to suit the market.
Many times when you are starting, ideas may come from random places, and that is a great thing, but with time you have to listen to your audience or trending topics related to what your page is about.
Identify those ideas that you could incorporate into your content and find a way to make it unique so that your audience can have something that they will relate to in your blogs.
Learn to create solutions for your readers so they will always have a reason to go back to your page every time they need information on a particular thing.
For a great guide on making money with your blog in 2019, check this article.
Mistake #3: Ignoring the Comments and Suggestions on Your Posts
You may want to seem busy and not readily available to your readers just like those successful bloggers do. That is a huge mistake since as a beginner you have plenty to learn and who better to learn from than your consumers.
When building your blog you want to be as in touch with your subscribers as ever. Talk to them, engage them in the comments, and other social media make them your family.
That is one of the best ways of creating for yourself a loyal following of people that will always come back to your blog even when they are not looking for any information.
Do not make the mistake of turning off the commenting feature even if you get negative responses. If it is terrible, you are better off deleting those horrible comments.
As a better option, you need to learn how to deal with negative comments by responding to them. That engages them, and with a bit of luck, you may manage to turn some of the haters into loyal readers.
See also: Beginners guide on how to start a blog
Mistake #4: Feeling Discouraged and Digressing
As earlier mentioned, having a vision and purpose for your blog is excellent. It ensures that you are consistent in your work and it will be quite remarkable when it pays off.
However, people may not get what your vision is in the beginning so you can expect a lot of negative comments and even a few readers.
It is easy to feel discouraged, and it’s perfectly reasonable to do so. The most important thing not to do is to digress into different ideas which will work against you since you will deviate from the plan.
Make your point and insist on it over and over, then practice a lot of patience. Do not lose hope if you do not get encouraging comments; soon it will all be worth it when you reach your target audience.
The world of blogging is vast, and there is a place for everyone. Just because something is working for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you.
So unless there is undeniable evidence that what you need is a change of plan, stick to yours and try as much as possible to better your content and learn. You also have the option of seeking help through Fiverr.
Mistake #5: Procrastination
As a blogger, it is quite easy to become an avid procrastinator since you are working from home. This is more so common once you know that the work that you need to do isn’t quite as much.
In your mind, you may start thinking that you can complete it in a couple of hours without realizing that time is passing by yet you aren’t doing any work.
To avoid this, plan your work and break it up into various parts such that every day you have a more straightforward task to complete. You can use a planner such as Evernote to help you get on top of everything.
By the end of your deadline, you will have so very little work that you can dedicate your time to completing.
Remember that the more you procrastinate and not produce new content the more your readers forget all about your blog such that even when you post something, it may get so much fewer readers.
So try and be consistent so that you have time for everything. If blogging is your part-time job, create adequate time for figuring out your next posts and working on them.
Mistake #6: Focusing on Quantity Rather Than Quality
Many new bloggers like releasing a lot of new blogs within a short period in a bid to look more active and to attract readers.
Doing this has one significant effect, and that is that you won’t focus as much on the quality of blogs that you are publishing since the most important thing is to release as many as possible.
You have to be very deliberate about the quality of content that you are releasing, take time to see how well or poorly every blog performed before publishing the next so that you can learn from it.
Provide useful information for your readers rather than merely telling a story about what you have been up to lately.
If you are running a travel blog, rather than writing about how amazing the trip was, and filling your post with countless photos, talk about how your readers could enjoy a similar journey.
Provide actual information that is useful to anyone reading your posts and with time people will start referring their friends to check out your blogs and going back to them when they need help with something.
Click here to learn a good way of building a sales funnel for your blog
Mistake #7: Poor Headings and Introduction
The heading should be attention-grabbing and should spark some curiosity in the reader so that they may open the link to read what you have to say.
That is why the heading has to be bold and medium-sized. The best title should be between 7 and 12 words.
Your introduction also needs to grab the reader’s attention so that they may continue reading. So you should use humor, relaxed language, and even some sarcasm to make it juicy.
Very few people thoroughly read through a blog post so having an attractive heading and introduction will boost the chances that you will attract those few interested in reading.
Mistake #8: Not Investing In Your Blog
There are many blog platforms that you can start your blog on without having to pay a single cent. That is what many people use these days, and that is perfectly fine.
Free blogs offer an opportunity to start a blog and see whether it is something that they could do. However, moving forward, you will need to make an actual investment in your site.
The biggest problem with free sites is that they are very restricted so you may not make as much money blogging as you should be whether your blog is new or not.
There are a lot of restricted features that you will need to get your blog to where it could be. One small mistake could lead to your blog being taken down.
Another issue is that if you want to go pro with your blog and attract all the right partners, you need to show that you are willing to take risks and invest. Operating from a free blog doesn’t do that.
That is why you need to get your hosting and domain name that you can do with as you please. You can do affiliate marketing and selling ads which will elevate your site to a different level.
See also: 25 Best Blogging Tools for 2018 (For Bloggers at All Levels)
Mistake #9: Not Creating an Email List
Many people do not know the importance of email lists so they never really bother with it. However, it is an important feature that allows you to access more readers and profit from them.
Any experienced blogger will tell you that their email list overturned their whole blogging business since it gave them ownership of their subscribers.
While many people may not read every blog post from what you send them, at one point they will look at them, and they may be drawn in to keep checking what you have published.
That is why you need to start building your list as soon as now. Start an account with an email provider and start working on getting more people to sign up.
One of the best ways of doing that is by giving a reward to those people that sign up to your blog. It doesn’t have to be anything significant since many people will just signup because of the promise of getting something. However, do not dupe them as that will instantly mess you up.
Mistake #10: Believing In Overnight Success
No matter how great your content is, there is a considerable chance that your blog will take quite some time before you can get up there.
There is no way that you can ensure that you get the traffic you need overnight and anyone that promises you that is a fraud.
There are too many blogging mistakes you have to make, learn and grow from to achieve the kind of success that you are envisioning.
Do not start comparing your blog to others since they are not the same and you are not like those other content creators.
The best thing you can do is stick to your plan and explore as much as you can so that you learn how to better yourself and your blog.
If you concentrate on how much someone else is making purely from blogging and focusing too much on why yours isn’t the same you will lose sight of what is essential.
Click here for the essential tips for increasing traffic to your blog
Mistake #11: Not Utilizing Affiliate Programs
Direct clients and sponsors are a great way to make money through your blog, but before you get a constant supply of them, there is a likelihood that you will wait for very long.
That is why you need to start learning about affiliate programs since they are quite simple and can earn you a ton of cash within a short period.
It is as simple as recommending something with a backlink to your code such that every time someone clicks the link and buys the product, you earn from that.
Research the best affiliate programs such as Amazon and learn how to make money through them.
Mistake #12: Not Establishing Trust with Your Audience
Most people’s motivation for blogging is usually to make money without putting in as much effort as going to the office every day.
However, do not be led by that mindset and dupe your readers by advertising faulty products or publishing incorrect information.
It may get you the readers, but once you lose trust with them, it is the end of your blog. In this digital age, news spreads like wildfire so you may be brought down by making few blogging mistakes.
Ensure what you are feeding your readers is of value depending on the purpose of your blog and interact with them so that they know you and you can learn about what they like.
Click here to learn how you can become a six-figure blogger
Mistake #13: Not Writing In Simple English
Now you may be a literature major with impeccable English, and you want to show off your skills. That is okay but save it for something like a writers competition.
Your blog posts need to be in the purest form of English possible. Even when you have to use compound words try to simplify them as much as possible.
Simple English encourage people, and they will keep doing so. If they can’t understand what your posts are about, then they will not bother reading.
Write in plain text as if you were directly speaking to them so that they can understand you.
If you have a problem doing that various sites allow you to check the level of English in your work that you should check out, it will help in simplifying your content.
Research and being open to learning new things is the only way you will make it in blogging. Successful bloggers have an unquenchable thirst for information, new ways to monetize their blogs and to improve themselves.
You need to do as much as you can to attract as much traffic to your blog but do not forget to remain true to your purpose. Make the mistakes, learn from them and grow your blog into what you imagine it can be.
What blogging mistakes have you learned not to make in your blog business?
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