You've worked so hard to build a thriving blog audience,
You did everything you're asked to do so your blog traffic will take off and perhaps, land you some paying clients yet, nothing happened.
Now, you're frustrated because these same tactics are working for other bloggers so, why is it not working for you?
Your friends and family are telling you that blogging is not for you, and thus, you should quit blogging and look for something else to do.
But, I'm here to tell you something you might not have heard before.
I need you to pay attention and listen to all I have to say to you on this post. In the end, you will discover the four major blogging mistakes you've been making that has held you back and what to do about them.
But first, I want you to realize something important. The fact you've tried most of the tactics which promised to make you a famous blogger yet none worked for you does not mean they're not working.
The same tactics might work for many other people so, why aren't they working for you as well? I'm glad you asked and here is the answer:
Having an idea of how to apply a particular tactic is not enough, you also need to understand why that tactic works and in what condition.
You need to understand something. Most tactics out there only work on a particular situation. No matter how comprehensive and easy to apply they made such tactic, it will most likely not work for you if you are unaware of what made it work.
After reading this post, you'll learn:
With all these out of the way, let's get to business. Avoid the four blogging mistakes below if you want to fast track the growth of your blog.
1. Putting The Wrong Things on Your Calendar In The Wrong Order:
This may sound wired but hear me out first.
Have you ever wrote a blog post you thought would be a bomb and everyone will start talking about it the moment you hit the publish button?. But after publishing the post, your traffic didn't shake even a bit.
Or, have you ever followed an interesting case study on how a blogger generated thousands of visitors in 30 minutes. This is by following a simple and new trick but at the end, you couldn't get even 20 visitors?
Again, what about trying to build your email list using the same method that's working for most people yet, it didn't work for you? I'm sure all these will sound familiar to you, I've also gone through it before, and the reason is simple.
For blogging, various stages exist which will guarantee the growth of your blog. If by choice or mistake you followed it in the wrong order, you will fail, period.
There are no two ways about it and not even an angel from Heaven will rescue you except the Almighty God himself intervened on your behalf.
The blogging stages of an average blogger go like this:
1. You read somewhere on the web about how a particular blogger is making tons of money blogging from the comfort of his home (Usually via Adsense). He tells you how easy the thing is and assures you can do it.
He also promised to help and build your "money making blog" if you buy a domain and hosting through his affiliate link. He assured you that once you do it, you will also start making money at once. You're now like "wow", why haven't I thought of it before?
2. So, you went ahead and used his link to pay for domain and hosting; he assisted you to install WordPress on your server and bingo! You have your blog. Congratulations.
3. He advised you always to update your blog with fresh posts. When you publish an article, share it on the social media, comment on other blogs. With this, you'll soon start getting visitors and the money will pour in like magic.
4. You're filled with excitement to the fact that you're now a "blogger".
You've gotten your Adsense account and filled every page on your blog with it. Now, you're hoping for the money to start barging in so you can also share your success story.
5. Finally, a year is gone and like your mentor advised; you've been churning out lots of articles. You're also sharing it on social media but then……… nothing to show for it, not even a single Adsense click.
You're now wondering what happened? Could it be that your mentor didn't show you the real deal? Next, you start chasing every shiny object on the internet that promised to solve your problem.
Sound familiar?
This was how I started my blog in 2012. I blogged for over two years yet, no sign of success except for the comments I often receive from each post.
This got me mad, and I threw away my laptop and then disappeared to an unknown place to regain my sanity.
Getting comments on your blog posts is good, it shows that people are reading your posts but, do comments equate to money?
Can it pay the bills? I'm sure you'll answer NO to this.
I want you to understand something here. It's not your fault; the problem is that you started the whole thing following the wrong process. That's also the same way majority of the bloggers that struggles to make it online started.
Until I realized the problem, I was dabbling all over the internet like a priest without a parish in search of a solution.
The Four Stages of Building a Successful Blog
According to my mentor, there are five steps to creating a successful blog that will not only make you money but will also replace your day job. Pay attention to this because getting it all right starts from here.
You can call them the 5C's as you can see below:
Stage 1: The Comprehension Stage
Stage 2: The Connection Stage
Stage 3: The Conversion Stage
Stage 4: The Content Stage
Stage 5: The Client Stage.
Let's also take a look at the graphic below which I got from one of Jon Morrows Webinars.
If you want to experience blogging breakthrough then, you need to follow these stages in the right order.
This was the exact stages that the king of blogging, His Royal Awesomeness (Jon Morrow) used to take his empty blog from 0 to 13,000 subscribers in 60 days and from $0 to $100,000 in one year.
The comprehension stage is where it all starts after which you'll enter the connection stage. Then, to conversion stage, to a content stage and finally to clients stage.
NOTE: I won't be able to explain the five steps well here because it will make this post too lengthy but:
I'm working on a free report that will walk you through the whole five stages of building a Six Figure/year blog ranging from the tools you'll need, what to do with them and how to go through every step of the process. Sign Up here to be notified when it's ready.
NOTE: It doesn't matter if you're a beginner or an intermediate blogger, there's something you'll learn from this report.
Back to the post: You should bear in mind that you're not advised to publish articles on your blog yet until you reach a particular stage.
You should bear in mind that you're not advised to publish articles on your blog yet until you reach a certain stage.
You should first focus on guest posting on other authority sites on your niche as I've already mentioned above. This will enable you to take a part of their audience and add them to yours.
Check out the screen capture below from Boost Blog Traffic for a better understanding.
Finally, to ensure that your blog will become popular and successful, you must skip none of these 5 stages. This is because if you do, it doesn't matter if you're selling an ebook, a membership site, coaching/consulting, building Amazon affiliate sites, or any other thing….. None of them will work.
2. You're Not Blogging as a Business.
This is no longer a new phrase on the internet, ut it's worth saying over and over, perhaps in a different style and manner.
The truth about building a popular blog is that you need to see it as your business and run it as a business except it's a hobby.
Let me make something clear to you here. That you have a blog does not mean you're a blogger, this is worth repeating.
"Owing a blog does not mean you're a blogger"
Now simply put…… You're only a marketer who has a blog. Until you get this into your skull, you will still struggle with majority of other bloggers out there.
The main purpose of your blog is to generate leads so you can sell stuff to those leads. It could be in the form of an ebook, membership sites, physical products, consulting or whatever. The way to look at it is, you are not a "blogger" in the true sense of the word.
"You are a marketer who has a blog".
This may come as a big blow to you because it might go contrary to what you learned before. But, this is the exact approach the successful "bloggers" always follow to build their six figure income businesses.
Your blog is the first port of call where people will find you.
The blog will help you to establish a relationship with your audience. This is by always churning out interesting and compelling contents they'll find useful and actionable. Soon, they will grow to like you, get to know and trust you then, you sell your products to them.
The problem is that most people are afraid to sell to their audience thinking they will get angry and probably walk away because of this. But, how long will you keep on writing great contents with nothing to show for it?
Do you still trust you can only make money via Google Adsense? Then, you need to rethink. Check out what His Royal Awesomeness has to say about this below.
Can you now see what I'm talking about? Also, check out Neil Patel's point of view below:
You must agree with me that two people cannot be wrong at the same time. I can go on and on to prove this point to you but I'm sure you already understand where I'm coming from.
Until you see yourself as a business man, and treat your blog as such, you will continue messing around with your friends thinking you're having fun.
Eventually, you'll also take the same smooth route other people like you often take: You'll quit. So, think about how to make money from your blog now.
Check out the links below to learn how to create your own products:
3. You're Not Ready to Spend Money on Your Business:
Agree with me or not, no business survives without capital and blogging is not exceptional here. Check out most of the popular blogs you know on the internet and you see they have one thing in common…….They spend money to build up their brand.
While starting out, you might be tempted to use a free or cheap host for your blog. While you might get by with it, it will only be for awhile before you hit your head on the wall in regret.
This is because sometime in the future, you will certainly start having endless problems with your blog. It will either slow down or get hacked and worst of all, it will disappear like magic and all your efforts will be futile.
Apart from the web host you choose, there are so many other things you need to invest in to build a successful blogging business. There are certain tools you cannot do without, you can do without them anyway but it will be like jumping out from an Airplane without a parachute.
You might land safely but it will be only by God's grace, in other words, your survival is not guaranteed.
The truth is that if you cannot invest at least in some of these tools then, you're not yet in business….Period.
Jon Morrow also said something about this:
There are exceptions to this, though. Maybe you're a beginner with little or no budget at all and in that case, you can start with the free stuff. The beauty of WordPress is that you can find so many good free plugins and themes to use, but once you can afford it, you need to invest in premium tools.
Aside from investing in tools, you also need to outsource some of the tasks associated with your business especially the ones you're not so good at. You can't become a Jack of all trades in your business; this will also make you be a master of none.
Delegating some of these tasks to experts will not only give you the best results, it will also enable you to focus more of your time on the most important aspects of your blogging business.
The internet has made it possible to outsource just about any task. Based on statistics, there are 53 million freelance workers in the US alone and it was also estimated that the global online workforce generates between $1 and $2 billion per year.
Let's use this screen capture from Noah Kagan blog to shade more light on this:
As a blogger who want to make a living from his blog like every other popular blogger out there, you need to develop the business man's mindset.
You need to be willing to spend on your blog because if you do everything right, it will be well worth it at last and the reward will be enormous.
4. You're Not Yet Building an Email List:
A research by Monetate shows that Email marketing drives more conversions than any other marketing channel, including search and social. So if this is true, why do most marketers ignore it?
What you need to know in today's internet marketing world is, you cannot build a profitable online business without getting involved with email marketing.
Most of the marketers who started so long ago when email marketing was not as popular as it is today regretted not building an email list from day one.
That was why one of the most successful bloggers on the internet (John Chow) made the confession below as seeing on Neil Patel's blog.
Not only him, a lot of marketers noted that their biggest mistake was not building an email list on time and I'm sure you wouldn't like to also tell such story soon.
You might also recall that some time ago, people were busy reporting on the internet that Email Marketing was dead but today, it has been proven to be a fat lie by so many statistics.
As you can see from the image above, email marketing is still alive and effective today even more than ever before. A recent research by Content Marketing Institute proved that 83% of B2B marketers use email newsletters for content marketing.
Most marketers still believe in marketing to their audience via the social media and while that is not bad, you need to know that it's not a long-term marketing strategy.
From a research carried out by Forrester, they discovered that 90% of email gets delivered to the intended recipient's inbox, whereas only 2% of your Facebook fans see your posts in their News Feed.
Noah Kagan also told a story in his recent blog post about how one of his company that was making $150,000 daily via Facebook ads six years ago suddenly went down to making $15,000 per day and they started losing almost $135,000 on a daily basis.
Now, you might be wonder what went wrong and I will tell you……. Facebook banned their account, simple. I'm sure you won't like to have such experience. He made the points below:
You need to start control your own business if you're not already doing so and that is by having your own email list as Noah also pointed out:
So How Do You Build Your Email List?
The simplest way to do this is to create an irresistible offer on your blog and give it out as an incentive for people to sign up to your list. You need to understand that, the rate at which your subscription forms converts depends largely on your offer.
Gone are the days when all you have to do is to just tell someone to sign up so he can be getting exclusive free contents from you.
Tell me; are you the only one offering good free contents on the internet? Of cause, they can get it elsewhere without subscribing.
If they must give you their email, you need to give them a relevant offer which will be impossible for them to reject. Giving out generic incentives no longer work too, you need to give them a good reason to take you up on the offer.
Check out the subscription forms below:
This one is from okdork.com and as you might have imagined, this form will be converting incredibly well because come to think of it, who doesn't want to learn how to build an email list?
It's not just because Noah is a trusted name in the internet marketing business but, the offer is really enticing and I bet you will also love to take him up for it.
Let's look at the next one:
As you've already known, this one is from Blog Tyrant and Ramsay is giving out a free domain to anyone who subscribes. Don't you also want to get a free domain? Of cause you do.
The last one is from Niche Hacks:
A lot of people find it difficult to come up with niche ideas to build their blog and that's exactly the problem that Stuart Walker just solved. An awesome collection of 1781 niche markets, I've already joined his email list because of this mouth-watering offer.
You will of cause agree with me that all these forms are converting really well and that's exactly what you need to emulate to build your own email list.
Offer them something they cannot turn down and then, place the forms in all the strategic places on your blog where they will always see it. Pop-ups have also proven to perform more than the other types of form out there.
You can use content upgrades to build your list as well, write quality guest posts for some of the authority blogs in your niche and provide a link to a landing page on your byline where their readers can easily access the incentives.
You can use the resources below to further learn more:
1.The Quick and Dirty Guide to Creating Your "Bribe to Subscribe" in Record Time: Jon Morrow
2. How To Boost Conversions by 785% in One Day (The Content Upgrade):Brian Dean
3. Why Content Upgrades Are The Single Thing That Will Rock Your Email List (Plus, the 2 tools that will make creating them a breeze):Authority Hacker
In the beginning, it's advisable to forget about wasting your precious time on social media marketing and put all the efforts to building your email list because you will enjoy it at the end.
Jon Morrow also said something about that here:
Aaron Agius who is a contributor at Entrepreneur also made a valid point about email marketing and how to go about it in one of his posts:
Bottom Line:
Blogging is a good and sweet business once you understand the rules and obeys them. B2B marketers that use blogs receive 67% more leads than those that do not.
You need to start seeing yourself as a marketer who has a blog.
Take blogging serious as well because marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI.
Check yourself and see if you're making any of the blogging mistakes I mentioned here.
if the answer is yes then, you need to stop it right away and start taking your blogging business serious. If you do what you're supposed to do, I assure you that you will start seeing tremendous changes in your business.
I'll love to hear your own take on this blog post on the comment section, let's take it further.
Thank you.
Source: Top 4 Blogging Mistakes that Make you Look Like a (Novice) in the Eyes of Your Audience
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