Starting a blog is easy. Becoming a successful, profitable and well-known blogger is not.
With over a billion sites on the Internet today, it’s easy to find yourself lost in the mix. Why? Plenty of reasons, including how dead-simple it is to start a website these days. All it takes is a free account at a site like Blogspot or WordPress, or even $10 to register a domain name, shared hosting and installing WordPress with a single click.
Just because something is easy, it doesn’t mean you should do.
However, if you have the passion, time, and effort to make something of value, the world of blogging and content creation has a lot to offer. At the same time, thousands of people start a new website or blog daily, only to leave them for dead after a few weeks or months. Why? Usually, because they are frustrated or not seeing the results they were hoping for.
The good news is that there are plenty of resources to help you along the way.
Editor’s Note: To learn more about how to succeed in blogging, listen to this Marketing Nerds episode with Zac Johnson.
7 Guides to Overcoming Common Blogging Obstacles
To find success in the world of blogging, you must first understand the many obstacles and frustrations that bloggers and content creators deal with on a daily basis. It’s not just about knowing what you might be getting yourself into, but also how to become a better blogger each and every day.
Here’s a list of seven common obstacles bloggers and content creators have to deal with on a daily basis, plus seven resources to help you along the way.
1. What to Blog About
Lots of bloggers start a site without thinking about what they are going to ‘blog’ about in the first place. This is the best way to go wrong with your site right in the beginning. Before registering a domain name and starting a site, take some time to think about what you are interested in, ways you can provide value, start an online business and creating something you actually want invest the next several months and years into.
Resource: 50 Can’t-Fail Techniques for Finding Great Blog Topics
2. How to Make Money With the Site
For every successful blogger you come across, there are thousands of bloggers who never made a dollar that you also never hear about. What you need to understand about blogging is that it’s a longterm game. Sure, there are some ways to make money with a blog, especially if you already have a following or brand in place — however, in most cases you are starting from scratch, and no one is going to buy from someone they don’t know or trust yet.
Resource: How to Make Money Blogging: A Quick Guide
3. When to Monetize a Site
Another common misconception in the world of blogging is that it’s easy to make money — once again, it’s not. With blogging, you not only need to create content that provides value, but you also need to have a monetization method in place as well. If you are going to rely solely on advertisers and Google Adsense, you are going to need to have a lot of traffic. Other options to explore are services you can offer, affiliate marketing, and creating your own products or online courses.
Resource: 34 Experts Reveal 3 Best Blog Monetization Tips
4. Finding the Right Niche Focus
The most important component of a successful blog is knowing the focus of your site content and giving your audience what they want. In most cases, you are going to want to niche down as much as possible. This will allow you to potentially become the ‘authority’ and source of information for whatever it is you are blogging about. This will also make it easier for you to understand what your audience wants and how you can provide it to them.
Resource: What to Do When “All of the Good Ideas are Already Taken”—Tips to Help You Pick a Niche
5. Blogging for Fun, Profit, or Passion
Before starting a blog, you need to know why you are creating a site in the first place. If it is for fun, perfect — start a blog, create content and have fun with it! If you want to make money with a blog, then you need to pre-plan your site content, why you are creating the site, how you are going to market, the focus of the site and much more.
Resource: 11 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My First Blog
6. How to Rank in the Search Results
Content is great, but it’s not going to bring a flood of traffic to your site like many people think. With so many other sites and blogs in the world today, you not only need to have great content, you also need incoming backlinks to your site and content being shared on social media as well. Many bloggers give up too early because they think the traffic is just going to come to them. Instead, you need to focus on your content promotion, just as much as your content creation — if not more!
Resource: Passion or Profit? How to Choose (or Reassess) Your Blog’s Niche
7. Using Social Media to Grow Your Following
There are currently over 2 billion users spread across all of the major social networks. This is a perfect opportunity for you to bring more awareness and traffic back to your blog. Share your content with friends, family, and followers, but also create dedicated profiles and fan pages for your blog or brand. Social media is one of the best ways to bring traffic from existing platforms back to your site.
Resource: 25 Ways to Grow Your Social Media Presence
With all of these resources in hand, it’s a perfect time for you to take a step back from your blog and see where you might be going wrong. Whether it’s having jumped into the wrong niche market, not being able to convert your audience into real revenue, or being stuck with a site that simply won’t rank or generate any traffic, the resources and guides above will help you get on the right path for success.
Image Credits
Featured Image: g-stockstudio/Shutterstock.com
All screenshots by Zac Johnson. Taken March 15.
