Blogging can be tough if there is not enough passion behind it as it requires consistent output from you as a blogger day in day out. Along the way, we all learn from our mistakes and become better at what we do.
With in this post, I've decided to lay down some of the most common blogging mistakes that I probably did along the way and many beginners do, which you can avoid.
Hope the post helps you out. I would be looking forward to your comments on the blogging mistakes you made so that it would help others to tackle with similar situations.
My Mistake #1 Switching Niche
One of the biggest mistakes I made probably 2 years back was I switched over BloggingeHow's niches and it was a horrible decision. That is most likely, THE mistake I would like to undo if I would be having a time machine xD
My Terrible Decision....
With still fairly young into blogging, I wasn't seeing the results I wanted with BloggingeHow. Audience was growing, but I guess there was some part of me that wanted to be rich fast. lol
I guess every body has some kind of thirst to see their blogs start making some amount. Not that I ever kept dreaming of making millions overnight, I knew it would take time and I was totally prepared for it, still I wanted to see my Google AdSense start rolling as I used to read in the AdSense success stories.
Lovely isn't it. So, finally realising that my niche isn't a lovely garden for making big on Google AdSense, I made the biggest mistake . I switched my niche!
Horrible. Foolish to think of it now, I ran after mere AdSense pennies which I wished would be better off with other niches that I switched over.
Guess what, I made a timely decision and switched back. Deleted every single post that I wrote in the alien niche and become settled there after.
Solution
Solution is simple. NEVER switch niches after your domain is setup in search engines radar. Specially if you already have well performing content and high placed keywords in a certain industry.
Switching over would only drop your current image in the eyes of search engines. Every single niche in the world has a lot of prospects and by only taking smart steps, one can make his/her position firm.
Every niche is profitable.
My Mistake #2 Being Lazy on Blog Comments
I my self published tons of posts on how important replying to blog comments is. And the best part is, I've seen both sides of the story.
Long time back, I published:
5 Effective Ways To Deal With Negative Comments On Blog and
7 Funny Types Of Blog Commentators- Do You Know Them? Blogging is all about socializing with your audience after serving them the content they ask for. Each comment that goes un served create doubts in the persons mind who spends few minutes of his life to make your blog a better place.
Personally I get lazy sometimes or either I'd be involved with other projects that I would skip a certain comment either on the blog or social platforms.
As an Internet user we all know how rude it feels when some moderator would not reply to a thoughtful comment that you might have written after a deep thought process.
It happens and I still remember once commenting on an iPhone tutorials blog where I visited to learn more about customization options available with rooted/jailbreaked iPhones.
I never got a reply as there were hundreds of unserved comments already. It felt bad. Real bad.
Such experience give me more strength to reply back to my loyal readers who are either to learn more about blogging or are just leaving a valuable comment.
They mean a lot to me.
Solution
Don't be rude. Take out time and reply to comments. Period!
My Mistake #3 Compromising On Posting Frequently
For the first 2 years into blogging, I used to be dead sure that I schedule a post for a particular day before hand. There was a day where I had about 13 scheduled posts.
That day is a lesson for me now too! And for all of my brothers/sisters who are into blogging.
Compromising on your blog's posting frequency can be a call to a dead blog in the near future. Even if you think you would make a come back and regain the audience, it's hard to make considerable progress if you're not frequent on posting quality stuff.
It's just like working out in a gym for 1 day and resting for next 7. You might think of your self as the gym guy, though apparently you would be as skinny as a 9 year old.
Your efforts would be of no use as consistency is key in every aspect of life. No matter it's college life, your job or a mere fitness plan to loose that jelly like gut fat.
By products of Inconsistent Posting Schedule?
You might be wondering why your blog's traffic never grow when you tend to post every now and then. That 'every now and then' is the answer it's self. With out having a fix plan, whether it's a weekly posting schedule or 7 times a week, sticking to it is the key.
My Mistake #4 Pretending to be all Corporate
Ever went across those webmaster or Bloggers that pretend to be some
guy from corporate sh*t?I hate 'making out situations' and pretending to be a company rather than when you're a single person behind a web property.
There is nothing bad about being a single working force behind a blog. There are tons of successful Bloggers out there that have built their brands around their names and people know them as authority as to what they do.
They don't pretend to be somebody they are not.
Solution
Just be who you're and let people like you for that. Have confidence in your self and people would come by.
My Mistake #4.5 Relying on Google!
For an intelligent web master, relying solely on Google is not a wise decision to make. And yet again, I made that mistake for a long time and realized it pretty late into the journey. I guess I knew what I as heading towards and made the decision pretty late to building my own following in the shape of Email subscribers.
You would have read tons of resources by now online that would tell you the importance of building an email list.
That's about it. It is to the core of blogging and I feel now that I missed a lot. I would even go as far as by saying that I waster 2 straight years into blogging.
With me starting off in 2009, email marketing and building relationship with email list wasn't really talked about much. Gurus who are playing in millions now, kept that close to them selves I guess.
If you're not building an email list side by side on your blog, you'll find it pretty soon how costly it would be.
Solution
Build it as fast as you can. Build it to a point where Google is no more a threat to you. We all know how Google manipulates with it's search algorithms that can be sometimes costly to you if you're the one who's been following every single guidelines like religiously.
It just doesn't work that way and you're bound to get hit by these crazy Google updates in your career. Not that I've been through it, its a sad story that is heard all around.
I have few posts for you to read out when it comes to building an email list.
My Wishes
I hope that the post helped you out finding some of the key areas where you need to be very diligent. It's better to learn from other's mistakes before experiencing them your self.
Wishing you a very happy blogging. Looking forward to hearing some of the mistakes you did in your blogging journey so that we can all learn from each other's experiences.
Till next time,
Peace.
More Blogging mistakes to read:
