Most people still have a hard time learning that blog writing is a serious business. For them, blogging is nothing but a spare time activity that you do for fun. But they couldn’t be more wrong – successful bloggers are highly-skilled professionals who earn a lot of money.
This is also the reason why Tumblr alone has more than 370 million blog accounts. However, it doesn’t mean that all of the bloggers are rich. On the contrary, it takes a lot of skills to become a great blogger and most of the digital authors make substantial mistakes in the process without even realizing it.
Avoid These 7 Mistakes and Earn Money from Your Blog
Blogging can become a profitable business if you prepare for it properly. Namely, an average blogger’s salary in the U.S. is $30 thousand per year. It sounds nice but it’s impossible to reach this level if you make some common blogging mistakes, so let’s check out what it is that you have to avoid here.
1. Blogging without a plan
If you want to run a profitable blog, you have to approach it as a real business – and you can hardly launch any business project without a good plan. But it turns out that the vast majority of writers actually don’t think about their blogs, topics, and audiences. To put it simply, they don’t conduct a research before they start writing.
What you should do is find the niche which is popular but not overcrowded. Make the balance between these two factors and you’ll be able to grab the attention of target readers relatively soon.
At the same time, don’t write about something that you don’t know. You ought to post often and you will lack inspiration in case you are not ready to write about the subject from all angles. Of course, you are going to need an occasional help to find the hottest topics and we suggest you use online tools like Google Trends or Answer the Public.
2. You’re not in it 100%
The worst thing a blogger can do is to focus on everything else more than his or her blog. According to the recent survey, longer and in-depth blog posts generate 9 times more leads and engagement than short ones. It’s a proof that you can’t make money off your blog if you’re not in it 100%.
To prevent this from happening, you should make a schedule of activities and publish posts according to your own calendar. The frequency of posts depends on the peculiarities of your niche but it’s definitely not enough to write one post a week.
Additionally, you don’t want to run a blog from one of those free blogging platforms – it looks cheap and chases away a lot of users. Instead, you should invest some money to create your own website. This way, you’ll get a better-looking webpage and you probably won’t have any security issues along the way.
3. You don’t engage in online discussions
Creating a blog post is only the first step in your work process. The second step is a follow-up work: you need to participate in online discussions and maintain good relationships with your readers, especially on social media platforms.
Hopefully, you’ll receive a lot of shares, likes, and comments. You should answer each comment and give additional information about your ideas and the statements you made within articles. It will help you to strengthen bonds with your readers, thus generating a wide base of loyal followers.
4. Poor blog page design
Although your job is to reach users who feel like reading some high-quality content, it doesn’t mean they won’t be looking at your website design. Try to use appealing colors and don’t burden your followers with too many details. A minimalistic approach is usually the most productive.
Besides that, text structure also plays an important role. A study revealed that the ideal blog post length is around 1.6 thousand words. This is a lot of words and you have to make them look clear and scannable. Use bulletins, numbers, short sentences, and active voice to make your posts more interesting. All these factors are small but relevant for the blog authority and for its money-making potential.
5. You avoid networking
In each business, networking is paramount if you are aiming at big career achievements. This is even more important in the blogging business, where the most influential authors support each other and boost the authority of their colleagues. Avoiding this will only make you isolated and you will hardly ever make money from your blog that way.
You need to be open-minded and establish good professional relations with other bloggers. You can start by mentioning them in your posts; professional writers will receive alerts about your mentions and you will probably receive a counter-favor from time to time. One by one and you will make yourself quite some network soon enough. You may even get your post viral.
6. Ads overload
Okay, we know that ads are your best chance of making a profit from the blog – at least in the beginning of your work. But it doesn’t really give you the right to surround posts with dozens of commercials all over the page.
Put yourself in a position of an average reader – would you enjoy watching ten banners with glittering ads on someone else’s website? Of course, you wouldn’t. Be reasonable and allow one or two ads to be displayed on your blog page. This is more than enough for you to gain some money but it also won’t chase away a single user.
7. Bad writing
This is our last but definitely not the least important advice for you: don’t expect to make a profit from the blog if your writing is just bad. This is something that you can’t fix with beautiful design or a thorough niche analysis. Users are clever and you can’t fool them. They will always notice the difference between a good and a bad blog post.
Therefore, your job is to practice and become a good writer. It doesn’t take a natural talent, although it couldn’t hurt you. You just need to keep trying and you’ll find a unique style of writing. In the meantime, you can also look for professional help. Editing services like Hemingway App or Best Essays can assist you until you master the art of blog writing.
Conclusion
Bloggers can make a lot of money these days. You just have to be good at what you do and avoid some common blog writing miscalculations. In this article, we revealed seven most common mistakes that could prevent your blog from earning money. Always keep them in mind and feel free to let us know in comments if you need additional explanations about any of these issues.