8 Blogging Mistakes I Made That Can Kill Your Overall Success

If it’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that no one is perfect. Everyone make mistakes and this is especially true when it comes to blogging.

I say this because there are a lot of pro bloggers like myself, that are on the top of their game but it wasn’t always cherries and cheesecake. They’ve made mistakes, I’ve made mistakes; if you’re established, you’ve made mistakes and if you’re looking to get started, you’ll make mistakes.

It just a part of the game. It’s conveniently called the learning curve. I’ve experienced this in almost every aspect of my life when trying something new. I think my toughest challenge yet is trying to understand women. Still struggling with that, but that’s another story 🙂

Here are 8 awful mistakes I made that you can either reflect on because you’ve done the same or need to learn from to help you get a better grip on the wheel when you’re going into the learning curve of blogging.

1. Tried to do something I wasn’t passionate about

For those that know me, I’m in no way interested in weight loss. I want to stay fit but to write about it is a different subject. Please tell me why after hearing that weight loss was HOTT, I created a blog around the niche and bought some PLR articles?

You have to figure out what you absolutely love to talk about that you can never get enough of. Something that you will talk someone’s ear off about. Can you think of anything for yourself?

My site, although it gets traffic, is a major fail in my book but just because I’m not passionate about it doesn’t mean that it has to go to waste; which brings me to my next case and point.

2. Never considered hiring assistants

I grew up the only child so playing with toys and video games by myself reformed in my adult life as me wanting to build blogs and run them all by myself. Notice I said blogs. Talk about that a little later.

After reading an amazing book called The 4 Hour Work Week, listening to a few podcasts from other successful bloggers that used them a lot and having a great conversation with a friend, my mind was reformed. What did he say to me?

He told me that I had the potential to create an empire but my not having help would hinder my success.

I eventually got around to hiring assistants to run my SEO and run some other tedious tasks that I hate doing; now I get the feeling I’m becoming an assistant junkie.

3. Was trying to run too many websites

This is a problem I’ve had since my youth. Trying to do too much at one time. I at one point had 7 blogs I believe. I called myself running these all at the same time because I was creating content for them all.

As you can imagine this got to be way too much for one man. I realized what my passion was and broke away from each blog slowly. It’s like the scenes in the cop movies when they tell the criminal to put down the gun slowly.

I’ve since stopped working on 4, gave 1 to a family member and put my main focus on 2. The 4 I stopped working on will eventually be run by assistants that handle article writing. You may also consider selling blogs that you don’t want to focus on.

4. Didn’t do any keyword research

In running all those sites, I never did proper keyword research. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t know how to or because I thought I knew what I doing. If you have the same issue make sure you check our keyword research guide.
Either way, I didn’t get the results I expected.

As I said earlier, you don’t have to do all the work. I learned this the hard way after spending days putting together a blog in a niche that had no competition.

Later, I figured out it had no competition because the PPC costs were barely $0.00. I believe they were like 2 cents a click. For you newbies, that means I get a percentage of 2 cents every time someone clicks on an ad on the site. That was a fail.

My point is, I should have gotten an assistant that was experienced at keyword research to do it for me. Just a word of advice; assistants aren’t as expressive as many may think. You can get a good assistant on oDesk for $2 to $4 an hour that knows their stuff.

5. Tried to sell too many different products

Seeing that I had so many blogs, you can imagine the number of products I was trying to sell online. There are millions of products to sell but that doesn’t mean you have to sell them all. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that.

As time went on, I learned a bit of copywriting and gained the ability to spot a good sales page. This helped out a lot in finding good products to market. That’s part of the learning curve by the way. Just because it says, Buy Now doesn’t mean they’re going to do it.

In the beginning, I would focus more on delivering content and building a following. This is how you can open the door to ultimate blogging success.

6. Was too focused on making money

I believe I was so caught up in the hype of making money online, that I almost forced myself to commit blog suicide.

I was so focused on putting ads on my site and making money, that I believe it took away from my content that I was supposed to be providing to my readers.

After listening to one of the best-known bloggers in the business, I decided to remove ads from my website. This forces me to come up with other strategic methods of making money from my blog and its working.

I’ll eventually put ads on my site but just like a boyfriend and girlfriend’s first kiss, I’ll do it when I feel the time is right 🙂

7. Didn’t write my posts with the reader in mind

All that focus on making money really took away from my writing good content. I would go from writing a blog post to checking my affiliate accounts to see if I made a sale.

Granted, there’s nothing like waking up and seeing you’ve made money while you slept, in the beginning, you have to build up yourself and/or your brand. Once people know and trust you, they’ll buy from you. Would you buy a gold necklace from a guy on the street because he says its gold? Probably not. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes.

Once you can close your eyes and imagine yourself as the receiver of the content you’re producing, you will think totally different. I do this before each email broadcast and blog post.

8. Wasn’t interested in networking at all

As I said earlier, I grew up the only child who almost entitles me to be selfish and want to do everything by myself. It sucks, but that’s just the way it is.

Trying to become a professional blogger can be hard sometimes and it takes time but if you network with other bloggers, then you increase your chances of taking it to that next level faster.

This is my first post ever on another blog outside of mines and I must say, I put my all into it because I want the reader to feel what I went through. This is my first step in networking hoping to build lasting relationships across the world through blogging.

The purpose of networking is getting to know people and to have your name and/or brand on the tip of every tongue possible. The more people are talking about you the better; unless their talking bad but you get the point.

It may take stepping out of your comfort zone but 99% of all successful people have had to step out of their comfort zone at one time or another. Do you agree?

In conclusion…

These are 8 mistakes that I made from the beginning up until a few months ago. I guess you can say it’s been a wild ride for me. From creating blogs that make a half a penny a day to creating a blog that has no significant ads, yet I make money every single day on the internet.

It’s been a long ride but the learning curve was needed and now I’m headed for a straightaway.

What mistakes have you done till now? Share them with us and let’s discuss trying to improve ourselves.