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Let’s look at my blogging history dating back to college:
- PTformom.com – Started right after college and lost about $1500 on website design
- Fitnessincollege.com – Started next with slightly more success (broke even)
- Health Blog #1 – Lost more than I’d care to share
- Health Blog #2 – Consistently earned $20,000/month
- Createandgo.com – This blog, which has earned as much as $100,000 in a single month
Honestly, there were a couple of other blogs in the mix there that had some mediocre success as well.
It’s safe to say that we’ve been around the block a time or two with this whole “blogging” thing.
The Difference Between a Thriving Blog and a Failure
Would you like to know the difference between a profitable blog and failed blog?
Lean in real close for the secret… It’s really simple…
The real difference between success and failure is the speed at which you move. Success comes from failing fast and learning quickly from your mistakes.
That’s the key.
You need to get enough momentum and wind behind your sails to propel you through the: “Is there anyone that even knows I exist?” phase.
And just as important, the “Why is no one buying from me?? I must not be good at this blogging thing” phase.
These phases can make or break you. They’re so important to understand that we’ve written an entire article on the blogging phases — what we call “poop to profits“:
So, how do you start off fast and furious!?
Well, mistakes are impossible to avoid and they’re a great learning experience.
But minimizing your mistakes along the way (and especially in the beginning) will still give you a huge headstart!
1. Using a Free Blogging Platform to Start
First things first, if you’re still using a free blogging site to run your blog, you’re making the biggest mistake of all.
If your domain name has a .blogger or .blogspot or .wordpress in the name, you’re in trouble.
Let’s illustrate the importance of this with a little story.
Some random guy walks up to you in a bar wearing a large black hoodie, cargo shorts, and 5-year old, beat-up sneakers. Unkempt hair and bear to complete the outfit.
He says to you, “I like your style. We should be friends…” in a gruff voice with no smile.
At this point in the story, you’d better be slowly reaching for your mental pepper spray.
This is a natural reaction to a bad presentation.
Now, same situation different guy.
This one walks up with an air of confidence, is wearing a nice white v-neck, some well-fitting blue jeans, and some sweet black Converse shoes (or Gucci, if you’re into that sort of thing).
He’s well-groomed from his hair to his slight stubble. With a confident smile and relaxed tone, he says, “I like your style. We should be friends.”
You’ll be like… “Here’s my number. And my heart…”
First impressions MATTER – in the blogging world just as much as everywhere else.
And if my first impression of you is that you won’t splurge for a $2.75/month for hosting and domain package, you are looking more and more like Hank Hoodie than you realize.
Owning your domain name and having a professional-looking blog is everything. It inspires trust and confidence.
It tells me that you’re serious about running not just a blog, but a business.
And there is no reason not to when blog hosting is cheap and you don’t need any coding knowledge or experience.
2. Not Building an Email List Right Away
The second biggest mistake most bloggers make is not building an email list as soon as possible.
It’s perfectly normal to feel like you might be bothering people by emailing them regularly. Everyone is afraid of this.
But the thing is… when you send people great content, they love you for it!
You cannot afford to have this mindset as a blogger because the longer you take to build your email list, the longer it will take to start earning real money from your business.
The money is in the list.
Here is a perfect example of how we make a lot more of our sales from our email list compared to our articles:
We used a software called ClickMeter to track links all over our website and email list to determine where our sales conversions were coming from.
It was a time-consuming process to set up, but we learned SO much from it.
Almost 3x as many conversions (sales) came from our email list compared to sales made directly from writing awesome blog posts.
This is the case with almost everyone I know earning six figures selling their own products or services.
Without a doubt, email is the #1 way to turn a reader into a buyer.
Your email list is your way to slide into your audience’s DMs. It’s how you can begin to establish a deeper relationship with them.
And it’s also an asset that you own.
Algorithms change rapidly and often without notice. You can lose most of your traffic overnight due to these changes.
But your email list? You own that. You can continue to sell products and market yourself or your company to your list even if your traffic dries up.
Our best recommendation (and what we personally use) for email marketing is ConvertKit.
Make sure to check out our article on building an email list if you haven’t gotten started yet.
3. Writing Poor Headlines
Blog headlines matter a LOT more than you probably think they do.
Did you know that there are full-time headline writers out there? No joke, people paid to sit in a room and think up the most compelling headlines all day…
Welcome to the 21st century, media folks!
Without a good headline, you won’t get any clicks to your site. And without clicks, there is no money. No subscribers. Nothing.
You can have the best content in the world, but if you don’t pair it with a good headline, no one will ever see it.
You should spend a fair amount of time planning out your content with great headlines that include some good keyword research.
Remember that it’s not just about having clickable headlines. They should also include keywords that can potentially bring you in some searchable traffic (Google, Pinterest, etc.) over time.
Make sure to also avoid clickbait. Your headlines should call out to your readers but not in such an irresistible way that they’re left feeling unsatisfied when they read your content.
4. Not Spending Enough Time on Marketing Your Content
This may matter a lot or not as much depending on where you are driving your traffic from.
We drive a lot of our traffic from Pinterest, so we’re going to use that as an example to illustrate this concept.
Headlines matter a lot, but if you’ve attached that headline to a crappy, uninspiring photo, you’re still not going to get the clicks you should.
Here’s an example of how much our pins stand on in the Pinterest feed when you search for yoga to lose weight:
And even if you’re not on Pinterest… If Instagram or YouTube is your jam, your photos and thumbnails matter just as much there too.
You can use free software like Canva to create beautiful images to represent your content.
Regardless of how or where you market your content, it should stand out against the sea of other content. You can do that with:
- Writing better headlines
- Large, clear, professional photos (stock or your own)
- Large, clear, readable text on your images
Try looking at other people’s content and see what stands out to you and why. If you need some inspiration, try looking through Canva’s free templates.
If Pinterest isn’t your thing or you haven’t yet spent much time on Google SEO, check out our article on SEO for bloggers.
5. Not Having Enough Confidence in Your Writing
It can be intimidating to put your content (and really yourself) out there for the world to see.
We all have these thoughts when we’re getting started:
- What if no one cares what I have to say?
- How much do I really know about this? I’m not an expert.
- What if people see through me and leave negative comments?
Do you feel any of those fears about writing? We certainly did.
Most people that don’t have an existing background in writing will probably start off pretty shaky.
But it will get better — with every article that you write. You will gain confidence and people will THANK you for your content.
Sure, you’ll still get the occasional nay-sayer, but the majority of your readers will leave you positive comments.
Just trust yourself.
Write like you’re having a conversation with a friend. When you write how you talk and how you feel, it gives people a better chance to actually connect with you.
And not everyone is going to dig your real, authentic writing voice. But that’s okay.
Because the people that do will latch onto you like a child in a thunderstorm. And they are the people that matter.
If you’re trying to please everyone, you’re going to end up sounding mechanical — like you’re writing to a bunch of acquaintances and not real friends.
And remember:
If a former personal trainer and tax accountant can write well enough to make two very different blogs successful, so can you!
If you need some additional tips on how to connect better with your audience, check out this article.
6. Blogging Anonymously
We hid behind our health and wellness blog for a WHILE. I don’t think anyone knew who was behind our content until maybe 4-5 months after we started it.
Guess what happened when we came out of hiding and put our faces on our blog…
- More subscribers
- More sales
- More overall growth
- And more personal pride in our blog
Are you hiding behind your blog?
Lots of pretty images, but no photos of your face to be found… Stop hiding!
You must be more than just a blog. People need to see a face to connect with you if you want them to spend money on what you are selling on your blog.
There are plenty of content publishers that get away with it but most of them rely on a business model of ad revenue from millions of views per month.
This is no easy feat and not the way that the average blogger is able to successfully monetize.
People need to know that there is a real person behind the words.
7. Spreading Yourself Too Thin
This is something that seems to be a rite of passage for all bloggers, but I’m going to warn you against it anyway.
It’s hard because as a blogger — you’re generally a one-man team. You’re in charge of everything from traffic to sales to customer service to marketing and so on.
It’s hard to do it all at once, and you really shouldn’t be to an extent.
When we started our first website that eventually failed, we tried to focus on writing and traffic and creating products and selling products all at once.
It was a mess and we ended up with a failed product and eventually a failed blog.
The second time around, we focused on traffic first and then growing our email list with that traffic and THEN on monetizing the traffic and subscribers.
We took the right steps in the right order.
Focus is key. And focusing on the RIGHT steps at the RIGHT time.
Focus on the #1 most important thing that you can do right now to help your blog succeed. Let everything else go, temporarily, until you complete that one task.
This has served us VERY well on our journey to six figures.
8. Not Paying Attention to Website Speed
This is another mistake that most new bloggers make because they focus so much on blog design and so little on the practicality and efficiency of their blog.
It took us several months to realize this too. But one day, probably from reading some post like this one, we decided to check our speed with Google’s page speed insights.
Results: Our blog was moving about as fast as 2 turtles trying to race through a vat of peanut butter.
Low page speed can be a HUGE reason why your blog isn’t getting much (or more) traction. Readers bouncing is no bueno.
Check your site speed with Google or Pingdom. There will likely be a lot of things that you can’t easily fix (related to your theme, javascript, and other things that only a coder can fix).
But there may be some things (like your images) that you can make improvements on!
Here are some tips for optimizing your images:
- Resize, crop, touch up, add borders, etc. using the free photo editing website BeFunky.
- Optimize all photos before you upload them to WordPress with a tool like Optimizilla or TinyPNG. These tools just compress the file size of your images so they take up less space on the server.
- Finally, download a plugin like EWWW Image Optimizer. This free plugin further reduces file sizes for images within WordPress once they are uploaded.
Turning your blog into a full-time business takes a LOT of dedicated time and effort.
We hope this article helps you avoid some of the common pitfalls that we fell into in the beginning.
If you enjoyed this article on the biggest blogging mistakes or have any questions for us, please leave us a comment below! We’d love to hear from you!