Amateur Blogs Correct These 10 Mistakes in 2022 [Fix Inside]

Let me first congratulate you on your promotion from a newbie blog to an amateur blog.

Amateur blogs are in a very interesting phase where they are not new to the game but at the same time not experts.

And, hence make common but deadly mistakes.

These mistakes often cost 2-3 years before you realize what went wrong and give up blogging.

Blogging seems like an easier career path. When you start your blogging journey you get to realize that in this profession you are like a one-person army.

You are the content creator, content promoter, graphics designer, marketer and handle social media, search engine optimization, and many more things.

You don’t have to handle all things and could delegate most of the work. But you need to have a working knowledge of all the components that make blogging as it is your business.

To figure out blockages in your blogging growth, I have created a list of 10 deadly mistakes amateur blogs make and included quick fixes to steer your blog in the right direction.

Let’s fix them up:

[#1] Not getting a Self-Hosted Blog
[#2] Ignoring Blog Security and Backups
[#3] Not Optimizing WordPress for Speed
[#4] No Blog Design and Branding
[#5] No Blogging Schedule or Editorial Calendar
[#6] Not Considering Blogging as a Business
[#7] Not Creating an Email List
[#8] No Search Engine Optimization Strategy
[#9] No Promotion and Traffic Generation Plan
[#10] Using Only Ad Networks for Monetization

1. Not getting a Self-Hosted Blog

A self-hosted WordPress blog is the single biggest factor in your financial liberation.

By staying on free blog hosting like example.wordpress.com, example.wix.com or example.blogspot.com, you are limiting opportunities for growth.

Though amateur blogs on free hosting could connect a custom domain, make money with ads, install a paid template, optimize for SEO [with great difficulty].

But,

The biggest reason for being self-hosted is the total control of your web asset i.e. your blog.

When you have a self-hosted blog, it is not at the mercy of any free blog hosting options, where they could delete or suspend your blog as they deem fit.

There have been many cases where amateur blogs are deleted without providing any reason.

Fix

Get a self-hosted WordPress blog and a free domain name with Bluehost. They offer a 1-Click WordPress installation service. It is the easiest way to start a self-hosted blog.

If you already have a free blog set up, then click here and chat with Bluehost for migration to a self-hosted setup. They will migrate your blog for free, you need to pay for the hosting only.

In case you can invest more, I recommend getting a faster WordPress hosting by WPEngine. You will need to buy a domain name separate from Namecheap and connect it this way.

2. Ignoring Blog Security and Backups

135,298 is the number of websites hacked today. [Click here to check the live count]

You should consider taking regular backups and check your blog security.

After all, this is your business and the hard work you put in should be protected and secured.

Even though the blog hosting services like Bluehost and WPEngine provide security and limited backup. You should be able to check blog security and take backups yourself.

Fix

For robust security install Sucuri WordPress plugin on your blog. In case of any mishappening, they will take over. They will clean and fix your hacked site.

Sucuri is an industry leader in website security. Apart from security, they also provide highly optimized CDN [content delivery neywork] to decrease page load times. Hence, making your blog load lightning fast.

For routine backups install UpdraftPlus WordPress plugin. Having a backup of your blog is very important.

If you or your hired developer tweak something and the blog crashes, a backup is going to save your life and headache.

I highly recommend you to invest in these two plugins.

3. Not Optimizing WordPress for Speed

Speed optimization for WordPress is directly related to an increase in visitors, leads and conversions. It is one of the factors Google considers when ranking your page in search engine results.

A page load time less than 2 seconds is considered to be good. [Check your blog page load time here]

Fix

If you have a fast blog hosting like WPEngine and have installed Sucuri, then your page load time would be under 2 seconds and you don’t need to worry.

In case your blog page load time is more than 5 seconds, you need to change your blog hosting provider, get a fast loading theme and use a CDN like Cloudflare or Sucuri. Also, check this blog post from WpBeginner on WordPress speed optimization.

4. No Blog Design and Branding

Designing your blog with a free theme and a free logo [unacceptable] is not going to help build your brand at all.

Building your brand is going to take time and effort. In order for your audience to remember you for a long time, you need to capture their first view of your blog with great design and logo.

When you think of “McDonald’s” or “Coca-Cola”, whether good or bad, you get a feeling.

The same way your blog brand needs to instill a positive feeling and trust in your audience.

Fix

If you have WPEngine as your hosting then you are golden. Because with this Fastest WordPress Hosting you also get access to 35+ premium StudioPress themes.

If not, I recommend GeneratePress Premium theme. It is a fast, highly customizable and SEO-friendly theme with a site-library of 28 themes.

Note: Bloggermode is built with GeneratePress Premium. And I am happy to recommend it to my readers. If you need any help with customizing GeneratePress, do let me know in the comments.

For logo designs I recommend 99Designs, hiring a logo designer from Upwork or Behance. These are the best sources to get a premium logo design. You can also try Fiverr but from my experience the quality of the design is poor.

5. No Blogging Schedule or Editorial Calendar

Creating no blogging schedule or not having an editorial calendar made is the most common mistake among amateur blogs.

Amateur bloggers don’t understand but having a blog schedule is part of building value and gaining the trust of their readers.

Once you start publishing posts on a schedule your readers would wait for the next post. And the compound effect of this exercise would shock you in a good way.

Fix

You can take a physical calendar and put post-it notes with blog titles on dates you would like to publish. Or you can use Google calendar.

I personally use an editorial calendar on a google sheet created by Chris Von Wilpert. It has helped me in a big way. Now I know what I have to publish next without any confusion.

An editorial calendar could be used to assign a whole year of blog posts. This is the power of a blog schedule. This is one of the ways of doing smart blogging.

6. Not Considering Blogging as a Business

You are not going to cross the growth barrier if you don’t start considering blogging as a business but take it as a hobby.

Like any other business, blogging also requires investment.

But unlike traditional businesses, the entry to blogging is quite cheap.

Amateur Blogs’ Startup Budget:

– Bluehost WordPress Hosting + Free Domain Name [$3.95/month] click here

– GeneratePress Premium Theme [$] click here

– Sucuri Blog Security + Free CDN

– UpdraftPlus Blog Backups

– Email Autoresponder

Fastest Amateur Blogs’ Budget:

– WPEngine Hosting + Free Premium Themes

– Namecheap Domain Name with Free WHOis Protection

– Sucuri Blog Security + Free CDN

– UpdraftPlus Blog Backups

– Email Autoresponder

Fix

Choose any of the two options from above and start investing in your blog business. Once you start investing you will become accountable for your actions and begin to see your blog grow.

7. Not Creating an Email List

Not creating an email list from the start is one mistake that is made by almost all amateur blogs.

Email is the best communication medium to engage with your audience.

This is where you can connect with your audience 1-on-1.

Unlike social media followers from Facebook, Instagram, etc, Email is another one of your owned assets [First is your blog].

I use SendFox as my email autoresponder. It has a simple user interface but is full of automation features for content creators. And the best part, they have a lifetime deal going on for 5000 subscribers with unlimited email sends, email segmentation and many more features for $49.

Fix

Register for an email autoresponder asap. You can start with a free one like Mailchimp but the value to price ratio SendFox provides is impossible to find anywhere right now.

8. No Search Engine Optimization Strategy

Many amateur blogs struggle with SEO because of the vastness of the subject but doing proper SEO could be a boon for them.

SEO or Search engine optimization is the process of ranking your blog post higher in search engines. And hence driving quality traffic to your blog.

Though the efforts you put in today won’t realize in a few days but SEO is long term play and provides quality traffic for years to come.

You cannot afford to ignore SEO as it is going to be the main traffic driver to your blog.

I also didn’t like doing SEO earlier. But when I realized the benefits it offers in growing my business, I started practicing it and have become quite good.

Fix

If you would like to learn more about SEO, check out the blogs of Brian Dean, Ahrefs, Digital Deepak and Neil Patel. I am sure these blogs would make you an SEO Pro.

9. No Promotion and Traffic Generation Plan

Even if you have written the best blog post in the world on your chosen topic but if no one could read then you will forever be an amateur blogger.

If you go through a lot of effort to create good content, then do yourself a favor and share it, re-publish it, and pitch it to more places. Good content deserves to be shared with more people and the best way to do that is to share it in more places.
– James Clear

Most amateur blogs don’t have any promotion or traffic generation strategy in place.

As an amateur blogger, you don’t have enough audience to promote your new blog post. Hence, you need to have a promotion plan built.

Fix

Here are a few ways to promote your blog posts and drive quality traffic:

– Take part in discussions in industry-specific forums. Be sure you read forum rules before posting your link. Some forums are strict and don’t allow self-promotion. When you find a related discussion, you should write a detailed comment and link your blog post only if it adds value to the community. Once you start doing this on a regular schedule, you will have built an audience that you can direct to your blog and then to your email list.

Tips: Write posts on topics your target audience is having problems with and provide a solution. This way your blog post wouldn’t need much effort in promotion and your audience will share the post and love you for it.

To find your industry-specific forum type in google search,

“intitle:forum” + [your niche keyword]

– Build real relationships with people you are interacting with on social media, other professional and amateur blogs or anywhere on the internet. When you ask someone to share your post it usually doesn’t work well. You need to take out time to build relationships first as it would scale your business or blog better and you get better results in the long term.

– On social media rather than sharing your own posts only, you should share blog posts you like from influencers and other bloggers from the industry. And start interacting with them in comments. Make this a habit and you will start to form strong relationships and drive traffic through your profile links.

– Re-publish your blog post for different formats. Like PDF, image, video, infographic, podcast, short video for Tik-Tok, screenshots. This regular practice is going to massively drive traffic and help in getting your brand out.

Think this will be a lot of work? Check this slide deck shared by Gary Vaynerchuck which helps distill this process.

10. Using Only Ad Networks for Monetization

For amateur blogs, using only ad networks for blog monetization is the biggest factor that caps their blog growth.

2 years ago, my friend, Mike Stanley was struggling to grow his real estate blog. He had tried every possible ad placement but his revenue from Adsense was stuck at $400. He had an email list of 950 people and monthly visitor count was around 120,000.

When he started his blog, he had a dream of earning $10,000/month in passive income and working from anywhere in the world. Which was slowly getting crushed by the reality of low revenue from ads.

All this changed after he watched this video on How to create a Digital Product by Neil Patel:

He created a Digital Information Product for real estate agents on how they can increase their commissions while providing more value to their customers.

The day he launched his product to his email list he received 20 orders with each product priced at $97. He earned $1940 just by sending one email to his list.

By creating own product for his target market, his business soared and broke the shackles of limiting revenue and growth.

Later on, he also created an affiliate program for his product where an affiliate would get 50% of the sale when a referred customer purchases his product. This strategy created more revenue for his business.

And he finally achieved what he dreamt and now works from his home and travels frequently.

You can too create multiple streams of income for your blog or business.

Fix

Creating your digital information product doesn’t have to be a full-fledged video course. You can start by creating a simple 5 page PDF file and collect payments via PayPal.

Note: If you are serious about starting your first online business then I recommend this 30-Days Live Training. It is going to teach you everything from scratch and will force you to take action.

If you do not have an idea for the product now, you can start by promoting other people’s products i.e. do affiliate marketing. The commission from affiliate marketing ranges from $5 to upwards of $5000 for each sale.

To search affiliate offers in your industry type this in google search “intitle:affiliate” + [your niche keyword].

You can also go to Offervault.com and type in your industry and you will get all the current affiliate programs in search results.

Then apply for these programs. Once approved, write blog posts and link to these affiliate programs for your readers to check out.

Did you find growth opportunities for your blog while reading this post on Amateur Blogs?
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