What started out as a hobby to hardcore Internet wanderers looking for a way to express themselves electronically has ultimately become a popular way to make money online.
Blogging is one of the more popular ways of generating alternative income and it is not really surprising. You can blog about practically anything under the sun.
Starting a blog is also inexpensive or even free in some instances. However, that does not mean that blogging success is easy to achieve. Most bloggers quit within their first few months. Based on most bloggers’ experience, there are five common mistakes when starting out a blog.
 Mistake 1: Not focusing on the things that matter
Most bloggers focus too much on the design and appearance of their blogs – that’s probably the biggest mistake when you are starting out as a blogger. Believe it or not, the look of your blog has nothing or little to do with the amount of viewership it attracts.
The most important factor in the success of a blog is its content. Content is king is a true axiom and should not be, in any way, taken for granted. Focus on posting quality content whether it’s an article, a video or a podcast interview.
Mistake 2: Being impatient, inconsistent and lazy
Being impatient, inconsistent and lazy won’t get you far in the blogging world. In 2008, there are more or less 180 million blogs scattered all over the Internet. Based on that figure, it is quite safe to assume that the number of blogs today has surpassed the 200 million mark. It’s easy to get lost and get drowned in such huge competition.
For that reason, it is imperative that bloggers display a high level of patience, consistency and hard work. Patience in sticking to the plan, consistency in posting blog content and updates and hard work in researching and promoting.
Mistake 3: Posting duplicate or spun content
Posting duplicate or spun content is another critical mistake many bloggers make. If you want to rise in Internet searches particularly in searches through the search engine Google (which accounts for more than half of Internet searches worldwide), you should focus entirely on posting high quality original content.
Over the last few years, Google has made a strong stance against low quality duplicate content. The Internet behemoth has constantly changed its algorithm to enable high quality and original content to surface. The only thing that is constant is the need for useful content.
Mistake 4: Not enough effort to promote and network
Most new bloggers also stand by the belief that “build it and they will come.” Well, that is not the case. As pointed out above, the competition is huge. How on earth can you compete with 200 million other blogs if you do not promote or network?
Bloggers need to realize that their job does not end after they’ve posted their blog post. In fact, it’s only the beginning. The biggest challenge is attracting readers to your blog. Fortunately, the Internet itself provides various ways on how to reach an audience – a global audience that is.
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter provide you and opportunity to introduce your blog and interact with your readers.
Mistake 5: Blogging about a topic you are not familiar with
Blogging about a topic you are not familiar with is another critical mistake. Blogging requires passion, something that many bloggers fail to see. While blogging is a way to make extra cash online, the very foundations and intent of blogging is self-expression – no more, no less.
Image Credits: Click True
11 comments
Thanks for such an informative post. The reasons you have described are well enough to make a blog vein. Bloggers should be careful about these while blogging.
Hi James,
All the points you mentioned are really effective ways on how to kill your blog. Other ways to kill it is to stop updating your content and/or not updating or tweaking out your website, resulting to slow loading of pages, broken links, outdated plugins, etc. These will definitely also kill your blog.
Blogging is about latest trends and topics so whenever we are going to start writing a blog post we have to do some research on going trend or latest news and then write post on it
Good article. All bloggers must avoid all these bad habits, otherwise like what you have said, their blogs will RIP!
Mistake number 3: Using duplicate or spun content is the worst blogging crime in my opinion. I hate legitimately looking for information only to find some half language gibberish. I know blogs get punished for this behavior and rightly so.
Great article by the way…
Great informative content! All new bloggers like me must know these common mistake in order for us to improve our blogging. Thanks for sharing this..
@James: Excellent post. You have nailed it with first 4 points but I don’t necessarily agree with you on point 5. While passion is important, I think passion can be developed. You not be familiar / expert in the topic of your blog. Most of the times you can start by being a novice, learn the ropes and become an expert.
@ZK: Mistake one looks a bit indented, can you check?
seriously this helps us to write a quality assured blog i.e. the one which is not duplicate and elaborate the information looking for (related information with which you are familiar with )
Nice sharing, James. These are certainly mistakes we should avoid in order not to kill our blogs!
Thanks for sharing these, James. These are really bad habits and mistakes to stay away from! For example, I really do not like mistake #3, spun contents are really bad for a blog. That’s why I always write original and useful content for my blog! All bloggers should know and do this.
Good article. All bloggers must avoid all these bad habits, otherwise like what you have said, their blogs will RIP!