Newbie Blogging Mistakes Not To Make At Any Cost

This is my second time writing a blog, My first one failed, by making newbie blogging mistakes!

After spending 8 months writing it and thinking it was going great, I found out it wasn’t.

I made some money from it, but not a lot, I started to speak to more experienced bloggers asking why is my blog not successful like yours?

They pointed out a few big mistakes and then I had to accept that all that work was for nothing. So, I picked myself up and started again and changed the way I did things.

At the end of the day, we need traffic that is going to convert.

If You haven’t started a blog yet, You can follow how to do it from Here.

Now I’m going to go through the most common mistakes new bloggers make, I know I made a lot of these myself!

Please note that some of the links in the content below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. When you purchase a product or service using my affiliate link, I’m compensated, which helps make content like this free of charge for you.

 

Free Themes

Don’t use free themes, upgrade to the premium version.

They are generally free for a reason, it’s okay to use while you get the hang of it. just don’t keep it forever.

The benefits of having a paid theme are

1. There are free updates forever. This means the website’s theme will be upgraded to accommodate the latest WordPress updates.
2. Themes can help Google with Indexing, therefore helping Google to index and rank your pages faster.
3. Paid themes help with SEO. SEO plugins need the theme to be co-operative.
4. Lots more features to choose from. Like very cool landing page demos and lots of different color palettes and much more.
5. More Unique appearance. If you go to a website, you can generally tell if the person is running a free or a paid theme. It often stands out. And having a paid theme will tell your readers that you really care about their overall surfing experience. Which will help you further down the line by building trust and making you stand out from other bloggers who are using free themes.

I am using the paid version of Generate Press. It’s light so loads fast and it’s very customisable.

Your Niche Isn’t Narrow Enough

This is one of the mistakes I made and is one of the biggest blogging mistakes that new bloggers make.

I used to write about things in the health niche.

It is okay in the beginning if you don’t have a final destination in mind.

What’s not okay is if you go off on a tangent and start blogging about things that are totally unrelated.

Your readers will soon lose interest if you don’t stick to the topic.

 

Not Paying For E-Mail Marketing

Don’t sign up for a free e-mail responder and especially not Mailchimp. They don’t like affiliate marketers.

Mailchimp has a free service for up to a couple of thousand subscribers.

Sound great, but it’s not. Here’s why.

Think about having two different things the subscriber can opt into.

For instance, you offer a free Ebook on blogging. And another one for the fitness enthusiast.

These subscribers would go onto different lists. Bloggers and people into fitness.

Here is where it goes wrong.

If a person signs up to both lists from an offer of both items, Mailchimp counts them twice. Then you have to jump through hoops so Mailchimp doesn’t count the same subscriber as more than 1. This takes a long time to do and can also be very difficult.

Imagine if you got lots of people this way and they signed up for every list you had. One person could be counted as 6 or 7. This can become expensive very quickly.

Not Having A True Purpose For Writing The Blog

When writing a blog post it should set out to solve the reader’s problem and be intentional.

There has to be either a what, a why a where, how or a who.

Your calls to action need to be clear, in order for the reader to click on them.

 

The different types of call-to-action for Blog Posts

1. To bring attention to your brand – Posts like How To’s, case-studies or list posts are perfect for helping you to raise the brand awareness for your blog. These normally get a lot of interaction in the form of comments and shares.
2. The collection of leads – These post types are used for the sole purpose of collecting leads. It is also best to include a freebie with these posts in order to get more email subscribers. One thing not to forget is tagging the subscribers so that you can market to them somewhere down the line!
3. To make affiliate sales – product tutorials do very well when aiming at affiliate sales. Be sure to include a lot of screenshots as well as adding a video to help to promote the affiliate product.
4. To sell a product – You have just launched your first product! So you create a free email marketing course which also doubles as your sales funnel to the product. Now all you have to do is write some blog posts about the topic in order to collect leads.

Not Giving Enough Away

A lot of new and seasoned bloggers save all of their best tips for their eBooks and courses.

Please don’t do this, Just give it away in your blog posts.

People do not know you or for that matter your Blog. They cannot see you and read your body language.

And it can be very difficult to sway people with the written word and a couple of pictures. This means, In a nutshell, that you are starting from scratch.

You need people to trust you in order for them to purchase anything from you.

They need to think to themselves, “This blogger gives so much away in the details. She doesn’t hold anything back, she is different.

This is what you should be aiming for.

By the time your reader is finished with your blog post, they should be so in awe with you, that they go to another post on your site or they leave a comment or send you an email.

And trust me, if you can crank out a 2000 word post, that explains everything step-by-step, it will be much easier to convert them into subscribers and sales. This is a great way to increase the chances of your blog post going viral!

People will be queuing up to buy your products.

Because they will know you are going to over-deliver.

They will know that your posts are super helpful and full of detail. They will also know that they will get extra value for the money they spend on purchasing your products.

This is a great strategy for your Brand.

Even, if you don’t have any products, but you consistently write beautiful reviews of products that you are an affiliate for, they won’t have any reason to doubt you. And you will find it a lot easier to make money with your blog.

They will like and trust you and click “Buy.”

So, give it all you have got.

Write your fingers down to the bone.

And give as much detail as humanly possible.

your blog will grow like you have never seen it before.

Not Using Google Search Console Or Analytics

If you don’t know which of your posts are performing well, and where your traffic is coming from, you will not be able to grow your blog. It’s the second most common blogging mistake, that newbie bloggers make.

How to Find your best performing posts:

Go to your Google Analytics and then simply click on Behavior>Site Content>All pages.

This will bring up a list of your most popular posts

Now, use the list of popular posts and make 3-5 different pins for each of your popular blog posts, changing the title a bit. And post them to Pinterest.

Awesome!!

You have just learned a way to double your Blog traffic!

These tips will help you to grow your posts even quicker! And don’t worry, we have all made some of these mistakes. What matters most is that we learn from them and keep moving forward.

Blogging can be like being on a giant roller coaster!

And once you see the likes, comments, and sales start to pour in, all of your hard work will have been totally worth it.

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LISA.