6 Terrible Mistakes Every Beginner Blogger Makes

Are you new to blogging? If you are, congratulations! Blogging is a great way to share your thoughts, build relationships with great people, and even make a bit of money. Just be sure you get off on the right foot by avoiding the following 6 mistakes.

1. Failing to Get Your Own Domain Name

The good news is that thanks to a variety of free blog and website hosting options, anybody can start a blog. The bad news is that thanks to a variety of free blog and website hosting options, anybody can start a blog. The problem is this, too many people take advantage of blog hosting services to create blogs that are extremely low quality or are nothing more than spam sites used to redirect people to malicious websites or that simply exist to sell some rip-off product.

This problem is so widespread that when people see a blog the hosting sites name in the URL they become suspicious. What this means for you is that if somebody sees your blog in search engine results and the URL looks like this: mygreatblog.bloghostingservice.com, you’ll get less traffic than if your URL looks like this: mygreatblog.com.

 

2. Monetizing Way Too Early

There are many problems with early monetization. The first is traffic. You won’t have much at first, and the traffic you do have will likely be people you know. Do you really want to jump in and start selling things to them right away? It’s not like you would stand to make a big profit. Next, as a new blogger you haven’t established relationships or fostered a sense of trust. Monetizing at this point will make it seem as if your blog was started only for selling.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making money from your blog. It’s simply best practice to wait until you have a decent amount of traffic, and have published enough posts that you new visitors can see that you have an established track record.

3. Jumping on Trending Topics

If there is a trending topic that dovetails neatly with the purpose of your blog and your audience, that is like finding gold. Unfortunately, too many inexperienced bloggers will post about any trending topic regardless of its relevance to their audience. Usually this is done in hopes of getting a post to go viral.

This almost never works. Instead, followers become confused or annoyed at one more irrelevant posts, and traffic doesn’t go up either. After all, why would people come to a blog to read a post that doesn’t belong there, when they could simply read about the trending topic where it makes sense.

4. Overuse of Widgets And Themes

If you use WordPress or other similar hosting service, you know that there are thousands of widgets, plugins, and themes available for you to use. Many of them are really neat, and you can use them to make your blog a great place to visit. The mistake that many inexperienced bloggers make, however, is using too many of these.

Overuse of widgets, themes, and plugins result in a blog that is too busy and too distracting. If your visitors are focused on the bells and whistles of your blog, they are going to miss your content.

 

5. Inconsistent Publishing

The problem with blogging is that there are so many blogs out there, and people are extremely choosy about which ones they will read or follow. As a result, people are quick to unfollow a blog if the content is not consistently high quality, or if the blogger goes too long between posts.

If you do not have the time to dedicate to posting on a regular basis, it may not be the right time for you to begin blogging. You may want to wait until you have the resources that you need.

 

6. Writing That is Too Academic

People who are new to blogging, often make the mistake of writing as if they were producing essays or reports for school or work. They write in the third person, they use long paragraphs and maintain an almost formal tone. Unfortunately, while this type of writing is academically correct, it doesn’t go over well while blogging.

Before you begin publishing your own blog posts, it’s a good idea to take a look at other blogs in your niche. Chances are, you will see lots of white space, lists and bullet points, and writing that has a conversational tone. Bloggers use these techniques to ensure that their posts are readable on smaller devices, to ensure that their blog posts are scannable, and to be more relatable to their audience.

Daniela McVicker
 

Daniela McVicker is an author, psychologist and educator. She believes that success depends on knowing the ideas that allow you to manage and master the universe of information. Currently Daniela provides master classes of public speaking, has got psychological practice in San Francisco and writes.