8 Reasons why bloggers fail in their first year

Though there are various reasons why people blog, the main ones are: Passion of writing i.e. to share with the world what you know and to make money on your blog. Successful blogging needs dedication and patience on the part of the blogger.  In this article we look at some of the reasons why bloggers fail in their first year.  

Failing to promote the blog posts

Writing quality content without promoting it to the desired audience is one of the biggest mistake that any blogger can ever make. Getting people to read your content should be your main goal after hitting that publishing button. You should have plans and strategies on how to drive traffic to your blog way before you even publish your content. This will ensure that your content reach the right audience. Promotion may involve sharing it on Social media (Facebook, G+, Twitter, Pinterest),  submitting your articles to news feeds on popular websites. You can also submit your articles to Bookmarking sites like Pearltrees Reddit, Digg, BizsugarFlipboard, etc. Promoting quality content to reach the target audience is the key to successful blog.

Choosing not to write on your core niche

Passion is what keeps a person going even when things don’t seem not to be working. When you pick a niche that you are not passionate about, you will notice that, with time your drive towards it slowly deteriorates, this may include number of your posts you write over a given period of time reducing, or the quality going down. This will translates to reduction of the number of visitors to your site, and in some cases, your readers may stop completely from visiting your site. Therefore it is paramount you pick on a niche that you are passionate about to ensure that you don’t get run out of content or drive to keep writing quality content.

Blogging only for money

Reasons why bloggers fail

Making money on your blog shouldn’t be the main reason why you started your blog. When you are starting out on your blogging journey, your main focus should be growing your blog through writing of quality content then promoting it to the right audience. With a good blog, that has enough quality content and traffic then you can think of monetizing it. Successful blogging requires discipline and perseverance.

Not learning basic SEO

SEO is one important part of successful blogging. Optimizing your site for search engines is one aspect that is looked down by most new bloggers simply because most of them believe that is a difficult area that only tech savvy people can handle. SEO is something that anyone can easily learn and start implementing it immediately on his/her blog. I would recommend you read the following articles on SEO:

Running many blogs

Running plenty of blogs can be a challenging and daunting task. Blogging involves so many tasks like: Coming up with articles to write on through say research, writing, publishing and promoting the content. All these tasks are time-consuming, and can be very challenging if you have many blogs that you are running at the same time. It is better you focus on one blog but if you must have more than one, then ensure that it doesn’t affect the quality of content that you publish and promote.

Writing just for the search engines

Though search engines play an important role in driving free traffic to your blog, it is not advisable to write your content just for the search engines. Your readers should be the main focus. Try to find a balance between writing articles that your readers can open & read and at the same time rank high in search engines.

Not putting enough focus on quality

Try as much as possible to write original content, that you have done enough research on and you can back it up with relevant sources.  Quality content is what keeps your visitors coming to your site since they know they will learn something new from your posts.

Not keeping up with the latest developments

When you stop learning new things, then you would not be at par with the current trends and latest developments in your industry or niche. What you know may become outdated. When your visitors recognizes this, then they may stop visiting your site. Therefore keep learning, especially on the niche you are writing about.

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Author: John Mulindi

John writes on a variety of topics. He blogs on topics ranging from social media marketing (SMM), search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, business, personal finance tech, entrepreneurship to personal development. In free time he likes watching football, reading, listening to music and taking nature walks.

132 thoughts on “8 Reasons why bloggers fail in their first year”

  1. Blogging only for money disrupts campaigns because bloggers who do this skip all the work – impatiently – required to actually earn income. Most become stuck in employee thinking that demands money for each action or for work completed, time-wise. Excellent blog post John.

    Ryan

    1. Hi Ryan, I concur with you, it seems every other blogger want to cash in very fast without putting in the work and dedication needed. It takes time, consistency and hard work to succeed as a blogger. Thanks for the insightful feedback.

    1. I was encouraged by this post and will do my best not to make any of these mistakes. And you’re right! As soon as I made more effort & spent more time building quality posts, my clicks simultaneously increased!

  2. Awesome article. I like how you said writing quality content without promoting it to the desired audience is one of the biggest mistake that any blogger can ever make. Getting people to read your content should be your main goal after hitting that publishing button.

    I agree that one should have plans and strategues on how to drive traffic to your blog way before you even publish your content.

    Angela Giles | http://www.angelagiles.com

  3. Very important points for new bloggers . Content is the king and everything will be in track. Thanks for such informative article .

  4. Fantastic article with extremely useful information! A highly suggested read for all new bloggers!

  5. Some good points here.
    I truly think that bloggers can’t ‘fail’ unless they lose sight of why they started in the first place. If you just write for you then failing is not an option. #globalblogging

  6. HI John
    Thank you for sharing this insightful article. I agree with all the point you raised, they all contribute to the failure. In addition to what you already mentioned, I will say losing focus, lack of commitment, spreading your self all over the place as well as stop learning could also hinder the progress to success for the blogger. You need to follow once course until successful and do whatever it takes to get the results you after, whilst tweaking, reviewing and improving the tactics you are applying in your business. It is a continuous learning process.
    Keep up the good work.

  7. I’m a firm believer in the value of organic traffic. I think that the quality of the traffic you drive to your blog is way more important than the quantity, so I aim to target an audience that is engaged and truly interested in our content. I agree that a good SEO strategy for a blog is paramount. I also agree that the main focus should always be the user experience and finding the perfect balance to write articles that would please both search engines and the readers should be the goal. Great post, John!

    1. Hi Lucrezia, am very grateful for your insightful comments on this post. Yes organic traffic is the best for any site, though it is the most challenging one to get since there are so many things you need to do make it happen, ranging from on-site SEO to off-site SEO. Also it takes time to build organic traffic but with good strategies in place and patience, I believe every blogger can benefit from free traffic from search engines otherwise, social media networks offers another good source of free traffic too but you need to be active and engage your followers to get and you have to write high quality articles that your desired audience can have interest in. So in a nutshell it requires a strategy with dedication to succeed.

  8. Very useful information!! I’m learning how important it is to promote my blog posts and keep up with the latest trends. I have a party ideas blog and the trends are always changing for sure.

    1. Hi John, I too when I was starting out, had hard time figuring out what SEO was, but with constant reading of blogs, and research, I started learning slowly, then found the Yoast plugin, that makes it easy to optimize content on your blog. Am still learning it, so don’t worry but keep searching for information on the same or take a training.

  9. I think the only real failure is to quit…
    But other than that, the biggest one is not writing quality content and not promoting it.
    Then, of course you need SEO.
    The main problem is that new bloggers have no clue how to do this.
    They have no comparison, and they give up, maybe just before they became successful…
    One of my blogs, where I didn’t use any social media, started to get organic traffic after 5 months. Google is starting to love it.
    So don’t give up, keep going.
    After your figure out, it is so easy!

    1. Hi Peter, yes, patience is a virtue that many people tend not to have, I think even if after doing everything right, you can’t get the results overnight, it takes time to build a reliable traffic to any site.

  10. Great tips! I have noticed some of my Facebook group aren’t promoting as well as they use to. I need to look into other ways to promote.

  11. A lot of these are true for me! I am about to start my 5th year blogging so I never actually gave up, I just didn’t take it seriously, until now. I finally found my niche and am starting to connect with my readers and am becoming more excited to keep writing. Now I need to work on sharing my posts more and learn more about SEO. Thanks for sharing!

    1. Hi Rebecca, am very grateful for taking time to comment on the post. Yes, building a reliable audience base for your blog is one of the keys to successful blogging.

  12. Thank you so much for sharing this. Thankfully I made it through my first year but still learning something new every day.

  13. I’ve only been blogging around 11 months now, and I always love reading these sorts of posts because the information is invaluable and helps the new people like me strive to do better at meeting goals. Thanks for sharing! Good stuff here!

  14. Great tips. It’s amazing how many people think that blogging is an easy thing to do and they want to make money quickly without investing the time and money into the process itself. I’m afraid it’s not all fun and game working on the laptop by the beach 🙂

    1. Hi Herlina, thanks for those insightful comments. Yes, many people get wrong only to discover later that it is not easy as they thought in the first place. You need to work hard and at the same time have patience to see really results.

  15. according to your article I have a good chance to survive my first year 😀 Great tips of things one should not do. The main thing for me is a lack of time to write more articles to give my readers fresh content on a more consistent basis. This is definitely a thing which needs to be improved. I hope I can find a way to post more regularly.

  16. This is a really helpful post, I am focusing mostly on content as I want to help people rather than make a business out of it, it is just so hard getting your content out to people.

  17. Thanks for the great tips, I am currently making th ontent my main focus as I am blogging in order to help others rather than monetise. It is hard getting your message out there.

  18. Very helpful tips for me as I am very new to this blogging world. Submitting sites to digg, flipboard and other which I was not knowing is truly a friendly advice. I am submitting now only.

    1. Hi Yukti, it is good to share content with as many social media networks as possible but try to find out the best networks that are bringing in most results, then focus on those.

  19. I have not even made it through my first months and I am already struggling with some of these issues. Yes I am blogging for money because this is a way that I can create income. My wife is disabled and I am her caregiver. I know that this is going to take some time. But I want to be able to create enough income where we are not struggling all the time. Thanks for the info.

    1. Yes, you can make an income from a blog, but all you need to know before hand is that, it may take time to realise some reasonable income from it. Some bloggers make it faster others take time but this should not discourage. Keep working, and money will find you on the way.

  20. Great tips! Being in my first year of blogging for my new website (www.emulatingemily.com), these are all really helpful in keeping my attention focused on mistakes I may be making. 🙂

  21. Hi John,
    Tweeted, following you, and I am off to read your SEO post you linked to. I am waiting for my tech guy to speed up my site. In the meantime, my SEO efforts seem to be pretty futile.
    Janice

    1. I think SEO is not a predictable way of getting traffic, but I understand it takes time to rank, In the meantime you can leverage on social media for traffic, though it requires so much time of promotion.

  22. Thanks for sharing this post. I am learning but I must say, I have learnt a great deal today. Promoting my blog is what I’ve failed to do since I started but now I’m catching up. I would love to monetise my blog but at the moment I feel there is a lot to learn and I am not in a rush. Again, thanks for the insightful post.

    1. Hi, its good you are taking time to grow your blog. That should be the main focus when you are starting out. Money will come with time, since it all depends on the traffic otherwise thanks for your comments.

  23. Great tips you are having here. I think failure to promote a blog is the major thing. Which is why I offer a free 7 days training on how to promote a blog.

    A great article you are having here.

  24. Great post! I used to make 7th mistake – not focusing on content quality. Later on I realized that my blog is basically filled with trash content and deleted all of the content. But I started it when I was like 14 years old and didn’t take blogging seriously at all. 🙂

    1. Hi, content is the king, if you get it right with the content, the only remaining hurdle is having it reach the desired audience. That is why quality content with right promotion translate to a successful blog otherwise thanks for dropping by.

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