Millions of aspiring bloggers fail every year despite all of the information needed to succeed being readily available on the internet for free. So what is the reason behind most bloggers’ failures?
In this article, I’ll be going over the common reasons why bloggers fail, and what you should be doing instead. This will ensure that you get on the path to success and not on the one to failure.
The good news is that blogging is simple and that there are many strategies you can implement to become a successful blogger. The important part is that you take your blog seriously and put in the necessary time and effort.
If you want to build muscle, there are certain things that you need to do to get results; a workout plan, a diet that is conducive to your goal, and sufficient time for your muscles to recover. It’s a lot of work, but it’s not as difficult as you might think.
By following the advice in this article, you’re not only going to not fail, but you’re also going to dramatically increase your chances of success. But don’t just read this article and go back to your old ways. Takes notes. Bookmark it and come back to it. There are too many bloggers who fail. Take your blog seriously and create good habits that set yourself up to win!
Top 12 Reasons Why Bloggers Fail
1. Not being patient
One of the main reasons why bloggers fail is that they expect to see quick results. Growing a blog takes time, and more importantly patience. Your blog isn’t going to be an overnight success. It’s going to come slowly. Knowing this at the very beginning will increase your chances of success since you’re not expecting to see any traffic anytime soon.
In fact, most new bloggers don’t see any significant results for many months due to the Google sandbox. This is the time period when new blogs or websites do not receive any organic search engine traffic because they’re not seen as reputable or trusted sites yet.
Take advantage of this time to get comfortable with blogging tasks such as creating engaging content, learning search engine optimization, and just putting yourself out there.
2. Inconsistent publishing
Consistency is key when it comes to growth. Think about your favorite TV show, podcast, or YouTube channel. Does it release new content consistently? Do you get excited on certain days of the week because you’re looking forward to the next episode?
Imagine if content creators did not publish on a consistent basis. If YouTubers posted once every 3 months. Or if your favorite TV show only released a new episode whenever they felt like it. Chances are, you would slowly lose interest, and you’d most likely find something more consistent.
This is the same with blogging. You need to give your audience something to come back for. I recommend publishing a minimum of one blog post per week, to begin with, and once you’re confident with that, increase it to twice a week. The more you post, the higher chance you have of being noticed, and the higher chance your blog has of finding success.
3. Never monetizing your blog
Not prioritizing the money-making aspect of your blog is a huge mistake. If you’re making money off your blog, you have a better chance of being able to spend more time and effort into growing your blog and therefore making it more successful. This has the potential to be your full-time job one day, so it’s good to focus on monetization to alleviate any financial stress.
4 popular ways to monetize your online business:
1. Display Ads
The easiest way you can start monetizing your blog, in the beginning, is to place display ads on your website.
You can get started with display ads by signing up for ad networks like Google Adsense, which you can implement almost immediately. Google Adsense pays around $10 per 1,000 page views so don’t expect to see a lot of money until your traffic numbers pick up.
2. Affiliate Marketing
This is also a great strategy because it really doesn’t require that much effort. Affiliate marketing is done by recommending products and services to your audience via affiliate links. When someone clicks on your link and makes a commission, you get a percentage of the sale.
To get started, sign up for affiliate networks in your niche. An easy way is to find networks is to Google [ your niche + affiliate networks ].
3. Sponsored Posts
Selling sponsored posts can also be an effective monetization method once you’ve built up some traffic first. This is when a company pays you to write an article about their product.
Sponsored posts typically pay between $50 to $2,000 depending on the amount of traffic your website receives.
To get started with sponsored posts, join an influencer marketing platform such as:
4. Digital Products
One of the best ways, and often the most profitable, is to create and sell digital products such as eBooks and eCourses.
After you’ve built a small archive of blog posts, try creating a small eBook to sell to your audience. Find out what your audience is struggling with and create a short eBook that solves their problem. Create a landing page, and use SendOwl for content delivery. It’s that simple.
The next step is to take any feedback from your customers and improve your eBook; updating it, adding more sections, and anything else that will make your product better. You can also throw in some bonuses such as a checklist or a template to entice them.
After you’ve had success with creating and selling eBooks, it’s a good idea to then turn it into an online course. Take all the information from your eBook and create a course using Teachable. The great thing about a course is that you are able to sell it for more than an eBook.
For example, if you sell your eBook about weight loss for $17, and then make improvements, you could then sell for $27. And if you turned that eBook into a course, you could increase the price to $47 and then $97 after more improvements.
While this strategy isn’t the only way to make money, it definitely is one of the most lucrative ones, and worth trying out. Especially if you’ve been blogging for a while and have already mastered easier monetization strategies.
While the success of your blog isn’t totally based on the amount of money you can make off it, it is one of the major reasons why bloggers quit. And unless you’re truly a hobby blogger, you need to be able to generate an income from your blog.
4. Not having a plan
Another reason why bloggers fail is that they don’t have a plan. You need to have some sort of plan if you want to find success through your blog. You probably won’t have much luck if you go into this blind.
Blogging is very simple but still requires a lot of work:
- Keyword research
- Brainstorming blog post ideas
- Topic research
- Writing blog posts
- Optimizing your content for SEO
- Content marketing
- Monetizing
- Checking your Google analytics
- Email marketing
With so many tasks, it can be easy to get lost if you decide to wing it.
Form a plan and stick to it. Take some time to plan out your blog, and make sure it’s something that you can stick to.. weekly!
One thing that has really helped me produce better results and something that I highly recommend is to create a blog content calendar. This will not only keep you more organized but will also keep you more consistent and on track.
Ideally, your blog plan should cover:
- What blog posts to write (Doing keyword research in bulk saves time!)
- When to publish blog posts (Once a week? twice a week?)
- How you’re going to promote your content (Facebook groups, Instagram, Twitter, SEO, paid ads, etc.)
- How you are going to monetize your blog (display ads, affiliate marketing, selling digital products, etc.)
5. Writing content for yourself
While this is your blog, the blog and its content aren’t for you. Just because you’re interested in something new this week, doesn’t mean you need to write about it on your blog that has a completely different target audience.
And while you might enjoy writing on a particular blog topic, make sure the blog post serves your audience well. Is it teaching them something that they need to know? Will this article provide a solution to an obstacle of theirs?
Sticking to the content that your readers are interested in as sudden changes can result in a loss of readership.
It’s okay to change your content over time, but don’t do it abruptly.
Don’t go from being a travel blog to a construction blog overnight.
Your travel audience probably isn’t interested in learning how to build a house 🙂
6. Blending in with other blogs
It’s okay to find inspiration from other blogs, but you never want to make your content look just like theirs. It’s much easier to find success when you’re unique. This is what is going to make it stand out in the crowd.
If you watched a TV show which was scripted word for word as a different TV show, just using different actors it wouldn’t be very exciting because you already know what’s going to happen. It might look similar, but chances are, the outcome won’t.
The more time spent working on your blog, the more ideas you’re going to have about its direction and look. In the beginning, your wordpress blog might not look great, but that’s ok. Your blog’s look and layout will improve over time.
This blog actually looks nothing like it did when I first started it. Be inspired by other people’s blogs, but also be yourself.
7. Not investing in your business
Having a blog, you’re essentially running your own small business. You’re putting time and effort into something for other people’s enjoyment, and hopefully, you’re making a slight profit from all this hard work (remember the monetization step!)
If you want your business to grow, you need to invest in it. Likewise, if your internet is so slow it takes an hour to upload a single blog post, it might be time to think about an upgrade so you can eliminate this upload time and put those hours to better use (such as writing more articles or advertising your blog!)
And if your keyboard is covered in crumbs and half the keys don’t type properly anymore, take this as your sign to invest in a new keyboard. It’ll be worth it in the long run, and all these businesses expenses will pay off.
Even before your blog starts taking off and earning an income, these expenses become a business expense and can be claimed back on taxes. If buying a faster laptop is going to significantly help your writing and allow you to post more frequently, then I’d recommend you do this and invest in your business.
Being frugal, I get not wanting to spend extra money, but as the old saying goes, it takes money to make money. Not always the case, but it seems to be quite true with blogging.
If there is a blogging course that costs $300 that will walk you step-by-step how to create a profitable blog in 90 days or less, then buy the course. Remember, you are much more likely to succeed as a blogger when your blog is making money. Lots of time can easily be wasted figuring out things on your own which could lead to blogger burnout.
When I first started blogging, it would take me weeks (no exaggeration) to write a blog post.
Now I can write an entire blog post in just a couple of hours using an AI tool called Jasper (formerly Jarvis) to help outline my blog posts, and RankIQ for keyword research and content optimization. Each cost around $50 a month, but it’s totally worth it because I’m able to work on other parts of my business instead of staring at the screen figuring out what I’m going to write.
You don’t have to go all-in, just know that these tools can really give your blog a boost. Spend money when it makes sense.
8. Striving for perfection
Another reason why blogs fail is that they spend so much time trying to write the perfect blog post, create the perfect website layout, or the perfect (fill in the blank).
The truth is, your blog doesn’t have to be perfect. And if you strive for perfection in every single post, you could very well be holding yourself back from making the blogging progress you’re hoping for.
Yes, your blogs need to be good. They need to be well structured, have proper grammar, be easy to read, and be entertaining. But they don’t need to be perfect.
If your blog is about the top 10 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, as long as your readers leave with a better understanding of all these restaurants and are inspired to try one out, then your job is done. You’ve communicated what you need to, and your reader is leaving happy. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t perfect.
Part of your blogging duties will be to revisit old posts to update and improve them. Just know that with each time, your less than perfect post will eventually blossom into the type of content that ranks well and drives more traffic.
9. Chasing shiny objects
Distractions, distractions, distractions. This was probably my biggest challenge when I first started blogging. I would go through someone’s blogging course, start to take action, and then get distracted by someone else’s shiny course.
My advice to you: once you’ve chosen a niche, a traffic strategy, and a monetization method, it’s time to get to work.
There are about as many shiny objects on the internet as there are stars in the sky.
Don’t stray away from the plan. If your traffic strategy is Pinterest and you watch an exciting YouTube video on how to drive massive traffic using TikTok, do yourself a favor and stick to the original game plan. Chasing shiny objects is a good way to kill your momentum.
10. Not optimizing your blog for SEO
Not optimizing your content for the search engines is one of the top reasons why bloggers fail. Your blog is basically wearing a cloak of invisibility preventing anyone from finding you.
So that your blog posts have the best chance of ranking:
- Choose low competition, high-volume keywords
- Write an enticing headline
- Add LSI keywords to your posts
- Link to other great content
- Write at least 1,000 words
- Answer questions from Google’s ‘People Also Ask’ section – This section can be found near the top of Google’s search results. Answering these questions is a great way to help get your articles ranked.
- Add relevant images and videos to your content
Note: There are numerous ways to optimize your blog content for search engines. In the beginning, implement what you can without stressing yourself out. Revisiting and updating older blog posts will eventually become part of your blogging routine. This is when you can go back through your posts; improve them, add word count, images, etc. Over time, these blog posts will become high-quality content that ranks. Till then, take it easy and do what you can.
11. Not Promoting your Content
If you’re relying solely on Google to send you traffic, you could be waiting a while so you really have to be proactive in your promotion efforts. Promote your content through social media marketing; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. If you have already started building an email list, be sure to email your list and let them know you have new posts out.
If you have a new blog and want to get traffic more quickly, Pinterest is a fantastic way of getting readers to your site without having to wait for your articles to rank in the search engines.
12. Giving Up
And the number one reason why bloggers fail is that they simply give up. Creating a successful blog takes time, and if you give up, then you have a 100% chance of failing.
Someone who posts their first video on YouTube isn’t going to get a million views overnight, just like your first blog post won’t either. But maybe their 12th video will. If they gave up after their first video, they never would’ve created those 11 other videos which finally lead them to a successful video.
Don’t give up on your blog, no matter how much you feel you aren’t seeing success. It could be waiting right around the corner.
Two important things to remember:
- Progress in your blogging journey can take a long time so don’t focus on results, but rather on getting better.
- Take massive action on a daily basis (if you can) and the results will follow.
Key takeaways of ‘Why Bloggers Fail’
I understand how frustrating it can be for a new blogger. There’s a lot of competition out there and sometimes it feels like you’re not getting the recognition your hard work deserves.
If you find yourself making any of the common blogging mistakes mentioned above, implement the changes and you’ll see growth in your blog.
You’re running a business, and you need to treat it like one. Put in the work, and you’ll reap the rewards.
If you are reading this blog, chances are you have a blog and you’re worried it’s going to fail. Being worried is a great first step, it means you care and have the passion to grow and succeed. Now get out there, and post some consistent, original, valuable content.
Are you currently struggling to find success with your own blog?
If so, what obstacles are you facing?
Even if you haven’t launched your blog yet but still have some questions, ask away!
Leave a comment below! I’d love to hear from you.
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