This article is very long, it may consume time reading this! Consider listening to the audio version on my blog!
This article has been migrated from my old blog. Things may have changed since that time. If you find any wrong content in this post, please mail that to gouravkhunger18@gmail.com or write in the comments below. Thank you :)
Are you going to start your own blog? Do you know what mistakes will you face? If no, then wherever you are right now, just sit down and just think over what I am going to explain in a few minutes.
First, let me introduce myself, I am Gourav and I write articles on Genics Blog. I am a blogger and I have been blogging for the past 3 years and have a good experience where the beginner bloggers lack and what makes their blogging journey a bit tough at first.
I am going to present you with a list of mistakes that I did, and most beginners tend to do while first starting out their blog. The list goes like this:
- Starting with Blogger
- Using Google AdSense a lot
- Auto-Blogging in WordPress
- Multi-Niche Blogging
- Starting Multiple Blogs at once
- Quality over quantity
- Avoiding SEO
Here, after reading this article, I am pretty sure that if you are going to start with your own blog, then you won’t make the same mistakes that I made and went through that slowed my progress in blogging.
1. Starting with Blogger
Yup, I know blogger is very simple, flexible, and easy to use and most people tend to go with it to have their start in a blogging career.
Even I started with Blogger. But, over time, I came to know the difference when I moved to other CMS platforms and tried my hand over them.
The thing I want you to understand is that it has been outdated. You have no control over how your site looks. There is no customization available on the permalinks of the articles, the structure of pages, and the UX(User Experience).
Also, the theme depends on a single huge XML file which becomes difficult to navigate through when you want to make any customization.
I had been using Blogger for about a year and I could not make out why it was not good for making great business. It was until I moved to better CMS than Blogger.
I have tried WordPress, Wix, Medium, Dev, etc. But nothing suited my need for a developer-oriented blog.
In the end, moving to hashnode from other CMS or platforms, was the best decision I had made, though I was late.
If you love Blogger, you won’t be able to tell why you should leave it until you broaden up your vision and move to other systems.
I won’t dig into the topic of other CMS since they are all available on the internet. What I would rather suggest is, don't think anything, just move to hashnode, signup and start blogging right away.
hashnode is really simple to use, and also it provides really nice level of customizations and options for free, which are not comparable to any other platform.
I am not promoting or demoting anything over here, I just present what I have experienced from my past.
2. Using Google AdSense a lot
Since I am talking about my mistakes, I would rank this mistake at number second. This does not apply only to Google AdSense but all Ad providers.
Also, this is not just for me, but I also want to make everyone aware of it.
At first, many new bloggers get fascinated by Advertisements and earnings. But, these things do not matter. Earnings aside, I would want to put forward the concept that many people overlook.
It is the load speed of their blog. It really matters a lot! And here, I am going to do some Math for you!
For that, I would assume two cases. Suppose, you have 1000 unique monthly visitors. The first case is that you have 3-5 ads on the home page and the second, has no ads on the home page.
Now see the first case:
Each ad increases the load time by 0.5-1s(for my testing with 50mb/s network speed- it may vary on various factors such as connectivity, the theme of the site, etc). You have 5 ads, and this implies you have increased your site load time by at least 2-3s. This impact is huge.
Now, some would argue that if I earn $0.4 from each ad, and 1000. A hundred people click that, I earn an average of $40. How can I let that go?
There’s a solution for everything. I will tell its answer in the second case.
Second case: In the beginning, you are going to earn nothing, whether you have ads or not! You need to build traffic. But now, you have 1000 visitors a month.
Let’s calculate for that. You have previously increased your load speed by 2-3s on average (because you cut off the ads). This will improve the UX.
Bonus: this would increase your Google rankings and this, in turn, would imply greater reach to people. Now, if you contact for sponsorship, you get much more money compared to normal ads.
This is much better than those ugly ads.
A better way would be to run your own ads through a CDN or site storage. What I mean by this is for people interested in advertising through your blog, ask them to make the ad banner and place it in your content without any 3rd party interference. This will look neat and clean.
You can utilize reusable blocks in WordPress, or widgets in hashnode, or anything like that. Every platform may have something set up like this for dynamic content serving, using which you can show a single piece of content to multiple places throughout the blog and replace it anytime and it will reflect up everywhere.
3. Auto-Blogging in WordPress
One of the other silly mistakes that I made was to use auto blogging.
If you don’t understand what auto blogging is, let me explain to you. There are WordPress plugins that allow you to sit and relax and let it do the blogging for you!
What it actually does is that you first configure it to import articles of a particular niche at a set interval of time. Then this plugin will automatically import articles based on their relevance to your blog.
But, it does not do the blogging for you! It just copies articles of other blogs and pastes them to yours. This was another mistake that I did. During the period from January to February in 2019, I had been using an automatic plugin to import posts. This was a huge mistake that I did and I severely regret it.
Such things may generate if you use copied content. Though I have not been infringed for copyright, but have understood what this would have cost me.
So, I recommend you not to auto-blog, instead publish relevant and quality content through your site. Remember, original and high-quality articles rank higher!
4. Multi-Niche Blogging
This is what turned my blogs down even with three years of efforts with multiple blogs(this was my other mistake, you can read that below). It is not wrong that all-in-one-blogs are great resources, but if you are setting it out alone as a personal blog, it would be one of the worst ideas.
I did that mistake with my first blogs. I blog as my hobby and since I am set out alone, multi-niche blogs did not fit my schedule, after all, I am a student and have to do a whole set of other works too.
Also, even if you are a full-time blogger, and have much time for research and to write about different topics, How many topics could you cover?
Consider this case, you know great stuff about Technology and can write tons of articles on that. But if you set out with a multi-niche blog, and start writing about wildlife along with the tech stuff, how will you continue writing?
Remember, only quality stuff matters.
This is the reason I say, for a multi-niche blog, a team is necessary so that each person can handle specific areas of interest. But then again, there are a lot of niches out there- you cannot rank #1 in all.
5. Starting Multiple Blogs at once
This is almost the same as the previous point. Having one blog about Photography and the other about cooking will mix up everything (these are just arbitrary examples, not that I used to do it 😛️).
It is the same as having one single but a multi-niche blog. It is better to think about the areas of your interest and the topics that you can write articles that are better and worth the search of a person.
On the whole, multi-niche or multiple blogs would be waste of time and money if you don’t write quality content or are not consistent!
6. Quality over quantity
This is another major factor that holds power for the rise of a blog. The articles published on your blog should have quality on a high weightage than the quantity. Quantity matters too, but while starting, you must work on the quality of the articles.
Suppose, you have a blog about music. You are making 10-15 articles a day, but on the whole, they are just 200-300 words, don’t explain stuff properly, are not worth the search of a person- then your business would be a total waste of time.
Instead, you should be utilizing time properly. It is not compulsory to have 10-20 articles a week. If your content has quality over quantity, then it does not matter if you publish either a huge amount or even just 1!
To understand it more deeply, suppose this example:
Remember, each day, there are a lot of posts being published, and just think out of the amount of content, being produced, why would a person prefer your site?
If and only if, it would be the one that has all the information needed and can provide enough data and is useful over time, a person would prefer your site over others.
So spend time writing, formatting, and understanding yourself about what you are writing! Because if you can feel like the audience of your blog, then only you can understand how you can convince your audience and turn them into loyal customers.
7. Avoiding SEO
I had a lot of ideas but never did I write and publish them and promoted them. Also, what I wrote was poorly optimized and had not optimization for ranking higher.
SEO is Search Engine Optimization. It is the technique of providing search engines the necessary information that what the article/page is about and how they should be dealing with it.
Only writing quality content does not work if it isn’t properly optimized! I really recommend using plugins like Yoast, if you are on WordPress- I have been able to rank higher than usual within months of its using it and it works well!
The thing is, you should strive to make each of your articles the best possible. When you do it, people would love to read it. But after that, SEO must be done, so that search engines can understand your content and make it available for the larger audience out there.
I also recommend you to start using web tools like Google Search Console and Ubersuggest. Make sure you understand how to utilize them. They will surely help you grow and succeed with your blog.
The Conclusion
This was one of my longest articles! But I wished to express my concern for all of you so that you don’t do the same mistakes as I did!
I hope that you learned lots of new things, from this article. I also hope that this would provide a better understanding of the amount of effort blogging takes in and what is the outcome.
I also hope that the examples used in the article were very realistic and relatable to your experience. Please do comment telling me about the examples too!
What did you learn from this guide? Comment and let me know!
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