Mistakes are part of life; We all make mistakes. And I have definitely made zillions of them in my journey to create a successful online business.
Mistakes hurts… but we learn from them. Now, you don’t have to make the same mistakes.
I believe in learning from others’ mistakes, perfecting my approaches on them and – no, not on repeating the same mistakes.
Don’t REPEAT these mistakes…
1. Traffic from the blues
Setting up my blog a really long time ago, it was like oh weez.. let the traffic roll in – but alas in the world of blogging. Visitors don’t just come trooping in like the movie freaks would do to black panthers.
You want the traffic? You ‘ve got to pull up your denim and stand on the road.
No, I don’t mean that you have to stand on the highway literally, I mean that you have to go in search of your blog audience by going to where your target audience is and take your blog to them.
If your target audience on twitter, then jump on twitter and connect with them. Are they on facebook? Then you need to hop on Mark’s wagon. What of Pinterest? It’s time to roll your sleeves and start pinning like a wiz…
This is why:
For a new blog, your Google search traffic is still zero. You can’t just sit down and wait for Google – when you can easily take your message to your social media audience first and grow your blog.
You may also check out this post on how I increased traffic to one of my blogs from 844 visitors in October to 9629 visits with simple SEO Tips and SEMRUSH.
2. Choosing the wrong niche
If you get it wrong on this, honestly there’s nothing much you can do…
Picking a niche is the most important decision on your blogging journey. This is because your niche is the main theme of your blogging journey.
- Your niche determines every single topic you ‘ll spend the rest of your blogging journey writing.
- It tells the type of posts you ‘ll be sharing to your social media followers.
- Your choice of niche tells on your image – i.e the kind of opinions that people would develop about your person
- It determines the success potential of your blog – not all niches have many passionate readers.
But hey, I’ve been there…
Yes, I once chose a wrong niche when I started out with a celebrity gist – Well, for me it was a wrong niche. It was a niche that was totally opposite to my person. In fact, I was ashamed of sharing such posts on my social media pages.
You know such posts? Like…
- OMG! Rihanna is so awesome in blue denim jeans
- WTF! Johnny Depp just blocked a John Bull on Instagram
…and a whole lot of such! But I kept doing it, hoping that the readers would troop in, and then the money would follow. Fail!…
I will tell you why that blog failed…
Firstly, the niche was wrong. No product to promote – not profitable unless you’ve got good load of traffic and make money from Ads.
But most importantly, I had no real love for the niche – and hence I could not hold on to it.
3. Not learning SEO
Search optimization is the next important thing about blogging. Why? Because the RIGHT SEO = Search visitors which in turn translates to income on your blog.
I will go straight to the point.
Google referral traffic is one of the most awesome sources of traffic for your blog, such visitors already have high intent for their search topics and so are very likely to respond to your call to actions.
But, you won’t get google traffic without learning good SEO practices…
I once wrote a post on how I increased my Google search traffic from 844 to 9629 pageviews in just one month – a 1044.88% increase in Google referral traffic in just one month alone.
I did it just my implementing simple SEO tips. You may check out the post on this link.
4. Not Connecting with other bloggers
I see a lot of beginning bloggers falling into this ditch. Really! But the world of blogging is not an Island. Okay… You can’t do it all alone.
You need fellow bloggers to share your posts to their audience and send you visitors, you need them to link to your blog and increase your domain authority, you need them to recommend you to their audience as a niche authority. Right?
But, you can’t get these favors all out of a blue moon! You need to connect with them first and set yourself in their network.
You can do that by:
- coming up with a list of influencing bloggers in your niche
- Consistently commenting on their posts
- Sharing their posts and letting them know
- Emailing them on what you like about some of their contents
Once, you’ve launched yourself into their network, it’s easy to ask them for a favor like helping to share your posts, guest post opportunity or even linking to your posts etc.
5. Not Responding to Comments
Blogging is a lot like teaching. The main goal of blogging is to teach other peeps about certain skills you’ve got.
But imagine a teacher who runs out of the class every single time, after dumping those stuff he’s got upstairs. He’s scared of entertaining questions. Weird?
A blogger who doesn’t respond to comment on his blog is more weird.
6. Not Collecting Emails
Your Emal list is your blogging currency. If you fail to collect Email lists, honestly you ‘re already dumping your currencies in the bins.
This is why:
Google referral traffic to your blog is awesome, but you don’t own it. Google repeatedly comes up with new algorithms that change the game for millions of blogs.
We ‘ve seen it before: Hubpages was hit by Google. Facebook referral traffic is also cool – but you don’t own it either. ViralNova was hit by facebook.
But your EMail list? No one can take it away from you. Not facebook, not twitter, not even Google.
Setting up Email sign-up form is a lot simple. One awesome plugin for this is Mailchimp. The setup is simple, all it takes is for you to just sign up and create your lists.
7. Be patient
Finally, I have to admit that one of the ugliest things I’ve come to face in the world of blogging is the fact that your effort won’t always yield your needed result overnight. Sucks.. but it’s just the real truth.
In my blogging journey, I’ve jumped from one niche to other. If I thought a niche was not bringing forth the result I wanted I called it’s bluff and jumped off.
But hey: Every single time I spent doing the perky stuff was a Major Delay on my journey to blogging success. Don’t make the same mistake. So:
- Think deeply before picking a blogging niche.
- Pick a Profitable Niche that is in tune with your love i.e your passion
- Stick to your niche
- Be patient…
A toast of greatness to your blogging success.
