If you’re starting a blog and your aim is to make money with it in the long-run or even turn it into a career, you need to be more prudent about it than someone that takes it as just a hobby. Part of this includes avoiding mistakes beginning bloggers make in the early days of their blog. Here are ten of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make and how to overcome them.
Choosing the wrong blog name
If you’re going to China to be an English teacher and decide to name your blog “Christy in China” for instance, it may seem like a good idea at the time, but when your contract expires and you decide to move on? What happens if you end up in Vietnam instead? Or travel the world? Or you move back home and decide to start a family? You’ll be stuck with a blog name that’s no longer relevant. If you begin to lose business opportunities you can rebrand and change your social media usernames and URL. The solution is to find a blog name that’s versatile enough to allow you to grow with time.
Your blog isn’t self-hosted
If you’re blogging for the fun of it and just for your friends and family, it would only make sense to have a free blog through blogspot.com or wordpress.com. In that case, you don’t have to be self-hosted if you’re absolutely certain your blog won’t progress past being a personal account for friends and family. If you want to be blogging seriously, and eventually earn an income from your blog, you need your blog to be self-hosted. This should ideally happen from the beginning, otherwise, you’ll have to go through the effort and work to switch over after you’ve already begun building your audience.
Choosing a host that’s BAD
New bloggers that aren’t really familiar with the different types of hosts end up buying hosting from companies like TSOHost, One.com, or GoDaddy – all of which are either well-known, cheap, or don’t have a decent quality. Consider this, One.com charges only £0.99 for hosting on a monthly basis. Not only is this price insanely cheap, but it also means that if your site goes down, you won’t be able to get it up and running immediately. You’ll be struggling to reach a person at customer service, which may even take days, resulting in the loss of traffic and new readers.
Siteground is a good option for starting bloggers as it costs £2.99 per month, and you pay monthly, annually and even pay for a few years in advance (ensuring that you get the best deal possible). The great thing with Siteground is that if your site goes down, it can be resolved quickly.
Writing long paragraphs
Almost all beginning bloggers make the mistake of writing long paragraphs without any dividers. The reality of the world we live in is that people on the web have an attention span that’s much shorter than a person that’s reading a novel or grading a college paper. People don’t have time or the attention span to read long paragraphs which aren’t broken down. Stick to paragraphs that are short and break them up with photos, headings, and bolding – making reading smooth and digestible.
Disregarding SEO
Search engine optimization may seem difficult, but the truth is you can’t disregard it. SEO can bring you significant traffic if you use it in the right way. The easiest way to get started is by downloading the SEO Yoast Plugin or Rank Math on WordPress. You can then start by targeting keywords you are aiming to rank in. You can also use URLs and post titles that contain the main keywords of the content you’re posting.
Introducing your blog too soon
As soon as you’ve gotten your first post up, it may feel tempting to immediately share it with the world so that you can get people’s feedback and approval. However, the smartest way to go about introducing your blog is by having a few posts up first, this will encourage readers to check out your blog and subscribe it they enjoy your content. Whereas, with just one post up, readers won’t take your blog seriously.
Not blogging enough
If you want your blog to get traction, you can’t expect to achieve it by just blogging once a month. You need to post regularly so that you keep your readers interested and wanting to read more, if you don’t and there’s nothing new – readers will tend to give up and move on from you. As a beginning blogger, you need to blog at least 3-4 times a week as a start, then after a few months, you can slow down gradually- but keep it as consistent as possible.
Not starting an email list
An email list is the most important thing any blogger has. There are two main services that you can consider making use of: Mailchimp or AWeber. Mailchimp is free for up to 2000 emails, from there on out you’ll be charged hefty amounts. AWeber is also paid for, but you’re charged depending upon the size of your email list.
Using a logo as a profile picture
The thing about bloggers is that we’re real people, we’re not corporations that are represented by branding. Most readers would prefer to interact with a real person rather than branding, so using your face as your profile picture gives you an edge. This may feel daunting, but it’s essential for your readers to see that you’re real and that way they can relate with you. Using a profile picture will impact your blog in a successful way.
Not setting goals
Important emphasis on this… if you don’t have goals set or plans made about how to achieve those goals, it will be easy to simply drift without actually getting somewhere. If you want to have growth and success in your blog, you need to start making goals and plans about how and when you’ll achieve those goals.
