12 Mistakes Amateur Bloggers Make and Ruin Their Blog
So you are trying hard to make your presence in this blogosphere and eventually getting no response and a little to show up as your blog’s income. You might be making some serious mistakes that most amateur bloggers make.
Blogging is a continuous process of learning. Not knowing how to be successful as a blogger, not implementing a proper approach will result in a common amateur blog.
Everyone who starts blogging thinks that they are going to make enough income through their blog so that they could quit their brain-sucking day job. But, only a few are capable of turning it into reality.
Blogging is no more like maintaining an online journal or diary. It is a lucrative career option nowadays. And if someone told you that blogging is easy to make money program, you are in a trap.
You might know how to make money through blogging, you have an Adsense account, you have a bunch of affiliate products to promote, but in the end very less or no income.
Why?
Because you are not even getting noticed. You might be doing some common mistakes that most amateur bloggers make and fail in blogging.
No one is perfect and people learn from their mistakes. You might be a victim of common blogging mistakes, that doesn’t mean that there is no hope.
Blogging is a long process of learning and implementing ideas. You can not be successful overnight. And yes, most of us start with an amateur blog.
Let’s have a look at the common mistakes done by amateur bloggers,
ARTICLE CONTENTS
1. Not Giving Enough Time
It needs time to be a successful blogger. Overnight success is not possible for a career like blogging. Passionate bloggers dare to face the reality that decent traffic to have something in their bank account must need a long and consistent journey ahead.
Many amateur bloggers will tell that blogging is just a passion for them and they are not after money. That doesn’t make any sense, really! Amateur blogs are dead now. Blogging is grown up now. It is a lot more than just writing anything irrespective of niche. If blogging is a passion, you need an audience to fulfill your passion. And without investing productive time into it, it is not going to happen.
If you are in a hurry and jumped into blogging just to make some quick bucks, you are just wasting your time and end up being an amateur blogger. It might take months to get your first 1000 visitors per month.
If you are launching your brand new blog, you must be prepared that you are not going to make money for the first few months. Blogging is not just writing something, it is an art, and to get used to it you need some time. And to master it you will need several years.
2. Revolving Around a Wrong Niche
Most amateur bloggers fail because they are in the wrong niche. Niche selection is a crucial part of blogging. The niche you are not enjoying, there is a high possibility that you are going to fail. All successful bloggers are just following their passions and doing what they like to do.
No matter how profitable a niche is, if a blogger does not have knowledge about that, if he/she is not passionate enough about the subject matter, the blog is going to fail indeed. A niche that is profitable to someone, does not mean that everyone will get the same result.
The best practice of niche selection is to first note down the topics that you are interested in. Search on google to find how other bloggers are performing on that niche. Research on a keyword research tool to find how competitive the keywords within that niche.
Jumping in a highly competitive niche as a newbie blogger is a serious mistake and the result is just another amateur blog. Rather you can narrow down that niche to a particular topic that you are really good in and you can perform even if you are half asleep.
Are you still confused about niche selection? Here is an awesome guide to choose perfect blogging niche that fits you.
3. A Bad Selection of Host
To taste the fragrance of blogging it is just okay to start with a free host like Blogger or a random cheap hosting. But, if you are really passionate and willing to take blogging as a career option, you must have to consider a better host.
Not selecting the right host is another common mistake that amateur bloggers make.
Speed and uptime play a vital role in evaluating the overall SEO score of a blog. No one likes to surf a slow website. An average number of users will wait for 3 seconds to load a site.
A blog with a slow host is also more likely to rank lower in SERP. Google itself recommends 2 seconds of loading time.
You might be wondering, what could be a good and affordable hosting to start with.
Bluehost and SiteGround both are popular and reliable hosting providers for a beginner. Both the hosts are recommended by WordPress itself. Though Bluehost is getting so much attention from bloggers for a long time, SiteGround has evolved as a better alternative to Bluehost from the last few years. Let’s see what are the points that influenced my mind,
- The very first consideration is the speed factor. The website loading speed of Siteground is much better than Bluehost. Bluehost is still struggling with a mediocre speed.
- Siteground provides free migration service and unfortunately, Bluehost doesn’t.
- Though Sitegound and Bluehost both offer 24/7 support, the support quality rating is much higher in the case of Siteground.
- SiteGround provides daily automated backups. Bluehost also does it but with a third-party tool called CodeGuard which costs $8/Month.
- In the case of Website Security, SiteGround provides better security like anti-bot AI that protects its customers from brute-force attacks. On the other hand, Bluehost still relies on Cloudflare to protect its customers from DDoS attacks.
The benefit of choosing Bluehost over SiteGround is that Bluehost is cheaper than Siteground and it also provides a free domain against an annual plan which SiteGround doesn’t.
If you are looking for a cheap as well as a reliable one, you may go for Bluehost. Else, SiteGround is a better option.
4. Frequent Change of Getup
The presentation of content is indeed an important part of your blog. No one likes to read a poorly designed blog with a poor navigation system. Selecting a good theme that reflects the purpose of your blog is essential.
Keeping this in mind many amateur bloggers change their theme frequently to meet their satisfaction level. This action not only consumes time but also has an impact on branding.
The design of a blog contributes to the brand around it. A long-lasting design got stuck in peoples head and that eventually builds your brand.
There are so many good themes and frameworks to use for your blog. Choose a theme that suits your personality and purpose of the blog and stick to it as long as possible.
I always recommend using a premium theme instead of a free theme.
Why?
Because
- Free themes lack support. Free theme creators offer support through the WordPress community forum, but they are not bound to do that.
- Free themes come with limited features and functionality.
- Free themes are used by a lot of blogs and websites, thus hampers the uniqueness of your blog.
- WordPress is constantly improving with each update. A free theme that has not been updated for a long time might not be compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
The best way to choose a premium theme is to buy it from a trusted source. I recommend using ElegantThemes, StudioPress, and GeneratePress.
The best thing about ElegantThemes is that it comes with an awesome Page Builder called DIVI. And over 800 pre-made website layouts come packaged right inside of Divi for free.
Read our complete review on Elegant Themes.
5. Not Doing Keyword Research
Keywords play the real game in blogging. Bloggers should emphasize on keyword research from the very beginning of blogging career and not doing so is a serious mistake of the amateur bloggers.
Keywords are simply, “what people search for”. A search term that has been searched repeatedly on a search engine becomes a keyword. For example, if thousands of people search on google “how to make a treehouse” in a month, it becomes a keyword. You should have to write both for people and google. Targetting keywords help Google to find your masterpiece and deliver it to a suitable audience.
But, which keywords to target?
Here comes the importance of keyword research. Targetting any keyword without knowing the difficulty level to compete will end up with zero traffic.
Singular word keywords are tempting because of the large search volume. However, those are extremely tough to rank. Blogs with high domain authority have already ranked those and to beat that you need to work really hard.
Moreover, singular keywords are unable to reflect the need for an audience. For example, if you are writing about the best android apps for children and targeting only ‘Android’ will make your audience as well as search engines uncertain about the subject matter. Here comes the importance of Long-tail keywords.
It’s always a better idea to target Long-tail Keywords. Long-tail keywords are a combination of three or four phrases. These keywords are very specific to the subject matter. Long-tail keywords are low competitive with a higher conversion rate.
Trying to rank highly competitive singular word keywords is another big mistake by the amateur bloggers.
6. A Bad Backlink Strategy
Have you ever heard about Link Juice?
In terms of SEO, Link juice is the value that passes from one site to another site through hyperlinks. Google and other popular search engines consider this as votes from other websites to evaluate that a website is worthy enough to promote.
Backlinks indeed have the power to rank sites in Google SERPs. But, without having a backlink strategy will result in negative SEO.
Most amateur bloggers think that backlinks are the only way out to rank higher and keeping that on their minds they try to make backlinks as many as possible within a short interval of time without having enough quality content on their blogs. This is a serious mistake by any blogger.
Let’s see what Google says,
“Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”
A newly launched blog with tons of backlinks seems to be spammy. As per Google, backlinks should be natural. Trying to manipulate the link profile will result in a high spam score.
For the first few months of the blogging career, you should try to produce quality content as much as possible. Along with that, you should regularly comment on other blogs for some Nofollow Backlinks. Try to get a couple of Dofollow backlinks by doing guest posting. Join a couple of forums to earn some do-follow backlinks by contributing valuable discussions.
As soon as your blog is filled with some quality content, you will start getting natural links from fellow bloggers. Also by commenting on other blogs and forums will help you to influence others and get opportunities for guest posting.
Useful Resource: Mistakes to Avoid while Commenting on Other Blogs
7. No Self Promotion
Being introvert is another common mistake done by most amateur bloggers. In this competitive era, self-promotion is the first step towards success. No one is going to discover what you are doing in your blog unless you guide them to do so.
Some bloggers hesitate to promote their content on social media, doubting the quality of the content. Even they do not participate in discussions on other blogs or forums. They simply leave a comment to get a backlink.
To those out there,
Hey, no one is a professional blogger from the very first day.
Everyone starts with an amateur blog. With time some of them become professional.
Remember you are not going to compete for the Pulitzer award. Simply write and share.
You are writing a blog to show your experiences. You are here to help someone needy for information. You should grab every opportunity to to share.
8. Plagiarised and Spun Content
Content is king and no content can become king if it is copied from another blog or website. Publishing plagiarised content is another blunder done by most amateur bloggers.
It is indeed a tough task to find a topic that no one has ever written an article on it. All the content ideas and keywords might be common, but without putting your own value to it the content will be just an addition to the information population. You should share your own experiences instead of coping or spinning content from others.
As per the guideline of Google, publishing content with a little or no original value is a serious mistake. Search engines are capable of finding duplicate content and thus resulting in low search ranking.
Google’s semantic search attempts to go deeper than words to deliver content with meaning and value. It attempts to improve on the search formula intended to produce relevant search results for web users by creating rules that define a searcher’s intent and the contextual meaning of search terms.
What does Google do when it finds a content which is not unique?
Well, Google simply checks the oldest version of the information and presents it to the searcher. The other copied content will either rank too lower or just omitted from the search results.
9. Getting Rich Quick Approach
Blogging is not a ‘Getting Rich Quick’ scheme. It is neither easy to make money program.
If you have jumped into blogging to make some quick and easy cash, you will end up being an amateur blogger.
Most of the bloggers fail just because of this approach. Blogging for a few days will not going to make you a multimillionaire. Any disappointment regarding outcome during the starting phase of blogging will demotivate you and the result is a failed blog.
To make a living with blogging needs time. It is also possible that you might not be able to accumulate a single penny for the first few months or even a year. To get decent traffic to have something to show in your bank account needs some time.
Search engines work in such a way that they try to deliver authoritative content to the users. To build an authority blog you need to contribute valuable and unique content on your blog and prove your presence.
You need to build a community around your blog by commenting, contributing to other blogs, forums, social networks, etc. With the increase in quality and natural follow links and social signals, your blog authority will grow.
Do you know Pete Cashmore of Mashable? He has dedicated 18 to 20 hours per day for Mashable during his starting phase. And due to his dedication and hard work, Mashable’s monthly readers grew to 2 million per month within 18 months.
10. Involving in MultiTasking
Another big blunder made by many amateur bloggers is to operate in multi-tasking mode. It is a slow poison.
To be a successful blogger, writing for your blog is not the only work you have to do. You need to build a community around you by participating in discussions on other blogs, forums, social media, etc. You also need to design your own blog and graphical elements. In simple words, a blogger is an all-rounder.
But, you can not concentrate on all the tasks at a time. To get the fruitful result you need to stick to a particular task. Operating in multitasking mode will ruin your primary task.
Multitasking is possible only when the tasks need less brain exercise. Every task associated with your blogging career is important and needs brain work. If something doesn’t it is not worthy enough for sure.
As a beginner, it is normal to get confused in performing various tasks. The best way to get rid of it is to maintain a time schedule for all important tasks so that they do not overlap.
11. Not Maintaining an Email List
An email list is that which is maintained to collect names and email addresses of blog readers who have given you permission to send them updates and promotions from your blog.
Many amateur bloggers just ignore this and eventually fail or start using when they observe the positive impact on some other blog’s profit.
Email subscribers are precious assets. They are those who really liked your content and given you special permission to notify them about your future updates. They are much precious than the random viewers who just visit your blog once in a lifetime.
The best thing about email subscribers is that if somehow your blog got penalized by the search engine, you still have the chance to collect revenues from affiliate products by sending a personalized email.
You should start collecting email subscribers from the very first day of your blogging journey.
You can start using premium Email Marketing Services like MailChimp and AWeber without investing a penny. Both these email marketing services offer a free plan to start with.
12. Getting Discouraged about Own Blog
Most amateur bloggers have the tendency to think while writing a blog post is that somehow this will go viral. It is natural because you have put much effort to create that content.
The real fact is that only a few blog posts got thousands of shares among the millions of blog posts published every day. And it is quite normal that your post might not be among those.
Getting discouraged about the fact that your well-researched post is not ranking higher will kill your enthusiasm as a blogger. Expecting every post to rank higher on search engines is unrealistic. Moreover, it needs time. You can not be a successful blogger within a few days.
The interesting fact is that each and every post written by successful bloggers do not go viral. Only a few does and those make them successful.
If you are doing proper keyword research, competitor analysis, and have the right backlink strategy, you will be able to run a successful blog.
No one is perfect and people tend to learn from mistakes. Every blogger starts with an amateur blog and as time passes they become professional.
You need to face multiple challenges as a blogger like struggling for traffic, choosing the right affiliate product to promote, building backlinks, etc.
Blogging is a continuous process of learning. To be successful you need to maintain consistency, passion, and dedication towards your work. If you are not enjoying being a blogger, this might not be the right career path for you.
I have noted down the above mistakes done by amateur bloggers and these are my personal experiences too. If you feel I have missed something or some other feedback please do not hesitate to share your experiences in the comment section.
And if this article helped you to understand the potential barriers to become a successful blogger, please share this to help others too.
After all, sharing is caring!
This is very helpful. I started my blog with intention of being an “amateur” as it was just to be fun. Yet, I am still striving to do some of these things!
I’m glad it helped you!