You have started your blog for a purpose, right? And if you have just started your blog, you are a newbie blogger (duh!).
The “newbie blogger” status is a very crucial stage in your blogging journey because the initial steps and decisions you take at this stage will decide the course of your blogging business. And blogging in the beginning stage is quite a challenge.
And its usually normal to make a lot of mistakes while starting out. But that need not be the case with blogging, especially these days.
A while back bloggers had no clue about what blogging is and how it could help their businesses. So they did lots of mistakes through their journey and learned things by experience.
Of course a lot of time, energy and probably money is wasted while you make mistakes. Even though you learn lots of stuff via the experience, making mistakes is no joke, especially when your time and money are involved.
But these days are different. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel because there are lots of blogging advice on the internet. Even if all of them are not helpful, you can still find genuine advice of established bloggers who share tips with you on a day today basis.
You could leverage on that information these days.
Yet, I find that most bloggers keep doing the following mistakes. Let me open up my mind!
Don’t start a blog without a clear plan
If you have been following my writing you can find me saying this often. Why? Because in my opinion this is one of the most deadly mistakes a blogger could do.
I did that and I wasted about 2 years of my blogging time without any meaningful progress. The time, money and efforts invested on those 2 years were merely wasted.
This is no joke! And this is why I urge newbie bloggers to wake up and identify their blogging purpose and get clarity.
If you can’t see what’s ahead you won’t be able to continue your journey and certainly, you won’t be able to succeed.
That might be a negative, discouraging statement but it is plain truth. I don’t want to give you a fake sugar coated encouragement saying that it will be OK. It won’t be.
If you start a blog without a clear purpose, you will lose big time. And these days, you cannot afford to lose years in experimentation because the competition is pretty high and the online world is moving forward pretty fast.
Beginner bloggers! Don’t quit your day job, yet
If you have just started a blog and if you are still on your day job, don’t quit it just yet. In my case I waited for about 3 years into blogging before I gave this a thought.
I understand that it will be pretty hard for you to manage your time across the various blogging tasks while at the same time working on your day job.
Your regular job will take out the major portion of your day and if you blog alongside, your blogging-related tasks will be taken towards the side.
Your main focus would be your day job as it will demand so.
Especially in the last 6 months of my part-time blogging period I found it extremely challenging to keep up with both my day job and my (substantially increased) blogging activities.
However I waited until I found the time to be right in order to make that decision.
I see many newbie bloggers jump into making a bold decision of quitting their day job. Of course quitting your day job and becoming a full time blogger makes you an entrepreneur where you run a real business in a dedicated manner.
But initial times are rough and the tide is usually high and unpredictable.
You could have earned $1000 a month in client services or product sales, and the next month it could be $100 or even nothing.
As a newbie blogger, you have not yet established a stable online business that will bring you a stable income. It is a phase where almost everything fluctuates erratically.
And if you make a decision to quit your day job just by getting excited by seeing your 2 months’ income, you are making a mistake.
As I said, I waited 2 years before I made the decision to quit the job (and the additional one year was because I could not officially leave as my then project was running and my boss was not happy with the idea of me leaving research for business - even now he is not happy :))
So there are 2 things:
- You have to wait until your business becomes stable and starts giving you a consistent income.
- Initially, the money you get from your day job will help cover your blogging expenses so you can invest wisely and build your business much faster!
Serious advice for beginner bloggers - Don’t ignore SEO
Newbie bloggers often think SEO is scary. I can relate to that, given that there are numerous, unexpected search engine algo updates that are released quite often. Things have changed a lot and they continue to change.
But with SEO, the basics are always the same. And it is never this easier to please people and search engines at the same time without having to learn shady techniques or having to invest in software that cost you a leg and an arm.
All the search algo updates have made it easier for the genuine bloggers. Now, if you create high quality, useful content, you will be good to go.
But that doesn’t stop you from ignoring SEO totally.
You should be aware of the on-page SEO techniques, keyword research, and stuff like that.
Invest time to learn the basics and implement them in your business.
Do not ignore SEO just because you are a newbie and do not convince yourself that you will learn SEO at a later time.
Stop creating value-less content
Newbie bloggers are very excited. It is because they have started something new. While I understand the urge to publish as many blog posts as you can, it is really important that you make sure the content you publish is of very high quality and that it provides value.
Every value-less content you publish is like garbage you add-on to your site. And you will come back later to delete it or update it. That is waste of time.
And think about how people will react to your useless content when they land on your site!
When you are building your blog, especially in the “newbie” stage, you need to be very cautious about keeping a high quality standard throughout your blog - across all of your content.
Even your static pages should be of value to the readers. They should be useful to them somehow.
If there is a page or a blog post on your blog that is of sub-par quality ditch it or update it.
And, if you are about to hit that “Publish” button, analyze the content carefully to verify its quality. If it does not keep up with your standards (and I hope you have your bar set quite high enough) don’t publish it.
Take your time to improve its quality before publishing.
Don’t ignore networking
This is yet another crucial thing newbie bloggers ignore. They think that they can start building a network after they become established. They think that the most important thing right now is to add content to their site.
While it is true that you should be focusing a lot on building your blog, you cannot succeed without a community.
With blogging it never is a one man/woman show. You need people. Coz as I often say you are building your blog for people and real people are the ones who will be doing business with you.
If you neglect to make contacts you are missing out big. And the earlier you start connecting with people, the faster will be your blog’s growth.
You could do blog commenting to make connections with the blogger and his/her audience.
Guest blogging is another smart way to make new connections.
Online world is a wonderful place to connect to a lot of like-minded people - you will never run out of options.
But the point here is to NOT ignore networking and you should start doing it right from the beginning.
Blogging for beginners: Are you making these mistakes?
As I said, making mistakes is an unavoidable thing with anything, and blogging is no exception. But times have changed a lot and you have enormous (even, overwhelming) advice on the matter.
Since you don’t have to re-invent the wheel, you can avoid a lot of these mistakes.
Making these mistakes will not only slow down your progress but will also ruin your investments (your time, money, efforts etc.).
I hope I have covered the most common mistakes. Let me know what I missed. And let me know if you are doing any of these mistakes right now!
Hi Jane,
Awesome advice for the beginning blogger, especially #5 - networking.
It doesn’t matter how good your content and/or products are, without a community you’re doomed.
Just one tip I’d like to add. Something I’ve learned just recently.
DON’T try to learn from everyone! Select a few successful bloggers who are achieving similar things to your own goals and implement their advice.
I say this because everyone has their own unique way to build a successful blog and too much input from others will leave you feeling frustrated and overwhelmed.
And that’s not a fun place to be - I can tell ya.
Thanks for sharing Jane!
Kerry
Hi Jane,
Definitely don’t quit the day job. Smart tips all around.
I’m a better blogger when I’m blogging from a detached, fun-loving space. Quitting your job as a newbie is a huge mistake, because once you’re blogging only to make money, or if you’re depending on your job to pay bills, as a newbie, you desperately make each one of the mistakes noted above in most cases.
Keep the day job, build your savings and learn how to blog intelligently without any financial burdens hampering you.
Thanks for sharing Jane.
Tweeting now.
Ryan
Quitting the day job very soon will not only make it hard to progress in business but will also jeopardise the financial safety of the family. The day job can pay your bills as well as help build your business. So why not keep it until you are confident about your blogging income?
Thanks for stopping by Ryan
Hey Jane,
You made some really valid points and gave some sound advice for new bloggers.
it’s definitely smart to wait until you have a stable month to month income before quitting your job and SEO i still valid today although it’s not on the level it was some 4 years ago. But on top of this, networking, engaging, and creating quality useful content for your visitors is the actual cake before the icing and the cherry. Without these three things then it would be hard to get traffic, leads, and sales for your business. This is highly vital if you want to be successful in the blogosphere!
Thanks for sharing and I hope you having a great week!
Well said Sherman - networking, engaging and creating quality content are the top 3 things in my strategy now
Hi Jane,
Couldn’t agree more with all that you’ve written - it sure brought back good old memories of the time when I started off as a blogger too
You are SO right about not quitting your day job unless you really start earning from your blog or online. This is one major mistake - more so, new bloggers tend to see other bloggers earn and want to do the same, not realizing that it takes time and effort before you start earning or showing results.
Networking and SEO are other important points, just as you mentioned. I don’t really blame the newbies there because it takes time before they can reach out and connect with other bloggers, but as they say, you need to build your relationships before you really start blogging, while we do it the other way round. And of course, learning SEO is another task for the way it keeps changing nowadays
Thanks for sharing these tips with us. Have a nice weekend
Networking is important at all times, Harleena. But at the newbie stage it is highly important because when your blog is not yet recognized on the internet and when you have no search presence yet, the connections you make will help you take off the ground.
Hey Jane,
I do agree with all these 5 beginning mistakes by the bloggers. Having a proper plan, optimizing the blog posts for search engines, networking with other bloggers and creating quality content with 1000 words are the keys to get succeed in blogging. I’m familiar with these concepts. Blogging is not my full-time profession and I don’t have a day job! Being a homemaker, i do have a lot of responsibilities. But some of my friends are performing blogging all with their day job and I strongly suggesting them not to leave that regular job for blogging.
Again a superb post Jane, I got surprised while reading your earlier time blogging mistakes. Keep writing for us.
Don’t say you don’t have a day job Nirmala. Being a homemaker is more than having one day job. I am now a homemaker too after I quit my day job and I can see how challenging it can be to cope with the non-ending chores of the household and still find the time to sit down to do business
Hi Jane
Thanks for this bunch of wonderful advices to become a full-time blogger. It is right one should not do haste to quit day job for doing full-time blogging but equally he must not linger on to resign fearing several ifs and buts. This happened to me personally my one blog stood on its own feet very strongly one year ago but I took almost two years to quit my day job to make my full-time living from blogging.
Not creating value-less content is another wonderful advice but many newbie bloggers turn a deaf ear to this and just participate in the race to publish more and make their archive heavy. But ultimately they fail to lift the page rank of their blog posts and just keep sharing even the oldest posts very frequently at social media.
Thanks a lot for sharing another wonderful post that really is a guidebook for both newbie and struggling bloggers.
See? 2 years! That’s what I’m talking about. You have to be sure that your blog will make a decent consistent income, generally more than you are making from your day job - even then it is better to keep the day job for quite a while to cover blogging costs and to save money for the days immediately after you quit the day job.
Ah the content race! It is one of the major reasons why many new blogs fail to survive.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Muba
Steven Stuart says
Hello Jane,
I guess I would be considered a newbie blogger since I had a blog going for a couple of years, and took it down after it got hacked. I then took a break for about a year before I started a new version of my blog a few months ago.
I definitely agree with you on all of these points, especially the not quitting your day job yet.
I don’t think I would even consider quitting my full time job until I had at least 6 months of salary in the bank. You also have to consider if you have company health insurance and other benefits, you will have to cover these expenses on your own when you are self employed.
You are so right about making connections with other people and not going it alone. No one is an island.
SEO is one of my weaker areas of expertise for sure, and one that I’m going to have to work on.
I’m sure I’ve created plenty of mediocre material in my previous posts, but hopefully I’m getting better at that.
Really informative post.
Thanks, Jane. - Steve
I started my blog without any plan this was my first mistake but now i have realized my mistakes to read these kinds of articles it help’s a lot for newbie
Hello Jane, Those are some good tips for newbie bloggers. I agree with your tip about don’t quit your job yet part. That’s especially true if you are totally dependent on your job for your income. Last year I quit my job to follow my interest in business. And I was able to do it only because I have a real pharmaceutical business.
Regarding the SEO part, agree that a newbie blogger should learn the basics.
But at the same time it’s also a true that a newbie may not necessarily understand the right way by simply doing a search on Google. Especially because majority of the immediately accessible SEO advice are focussed on manipulating the search engines and getting a quick result, which then will then come back to bite the blog.
The best thing to do will be to stay away from any technique that appears to be focussed on twisting Google’s hands. Because there are no such techniques that Google is not aware of and even if someone finds a new loophole focussed on getting a higher rank, Google will soon be releasing new algorithms focussed on neutralizing that technique.
Great post…
Kevin Duncan says
Hi Jane,
Nice tips you have here!
I especially like your networking suggestion. “You cannot succeed without a community” is too, too true. You need mentors. You need accountability partners. You need bloggers to give you feedback. And, yes, you need your fellow bloggers to link to and share your content!
I know for a fact Be A Better Blogger wouldn’t be where it is after 2 months without networking.
Keep up the great work, Jane. Hope you’re doing well.
Hi Jane mam,
Blogging mistake for a beginner is always a learning experience and a lesson to learn many thing from the mistake.
But if one would refer this article which had listed not only the mistake but the acceptable solution too, then he/she can really do good even at their starting stage of the blogging.
I agree with your points of Putting quality content which don’t act as waste after sometime on the blog.
Building quality relationship with fellow bloggers is really always an advantage to everyone.
As you have mention that many newbie quit their day job with dedication to work on blog and they should not do this at their initial age. I would add up one thing that, many newbie quit their day job because they see some blogger doing great in blogging and earning good figure but they only get impressed by their current status they don’t even bother to look in their past to check that for how many day they were struggling with their blog before achieving their current status.
So before quitting the day job one should think not twice but thrice
>SK Lohar
Durga says
As you said adding the content is not the thing that can develop your business, but the connections with many people from beginning is most important.
We need to be specific about the blog that is to be started, so that we can avoid wasting time in thinking of what content to be added after the blog is started.
Your tips on these are very nice
Networking, the most important thing one have to keep in mind while blogging. If one don’t engage well with other fellow bloggers as readers or on social networks its quite hard to let others know that you exist. And I agree with the fact that one has to be clear before taking a step into the blogging. Without direction no one can lead to anywhere.
after starting a new blog ,every new blogger wants to promote his blog to increase traffic to their blog.to increase traffic they will do more mistakes because they don’t know the things they are doing is wrong.your post will helps a lot for them how to mange their blog and how to improve traffic to their blog.thank you for your post.