11 Mistakes Of Amateur Bloggers You MUST Avoid!

Statistics show that only 5-10% of blogs bring their authors a significant profit. This means that few people manage to make a living from blogging. The competition is so fierce that you should limit your mistakes from the start if you want to be in a narrow percentage of high-earning blogs. If you don't want your blogging effort to be wasted, be sure to learn about the 11 most common mistakes made by amateur bloggers and make sure you don't duplicate them. To help you start blogging like a pro, I have also prepared a checklist for you, thanks to which you will take your blog to a higher league!

In 2020, there were over 31.7 million bloggers and 500 million blogs worldwide. Are you wondering if it is even profitable to start a blog when the competition is so big these days? It is true that although anyone can start a blog today, not everyone will be able to turn this passion into a business. 

Living off blogging takes a lot of dedication. In order to earn the first money on it, and then successively increase your blogging income, you need to understand the principles of website optimization for search engines, content marketing and online business development. However, if you dream of a blogging career, it is worth preparing for it.

About 70 million new blog entries appear on the web each month. If you want your blog to start generating the expected profits, you need to stay ahead of the competition. For this, it's best to transform from a novice amateur blogger to a professional as soon as possible. The process will be much faster if you can avoid beginner mistakes. How to check if you are not committing them? See the list of the most common mistakes below. Then download our checklist at the end of the guide. It will guide you through the most essential stages of blogging, saving you a lot of time!  

Many of the best bloggers (and not only), at the beginning of their journey, made a lot of stumbles that others today warn about. Even if you're new to blogging, you're in a better position - you can avoid all of them. What should you especially be careful about?

One of the common mistakes newbie bloggers make is setting up a blog on free platforms. Although it seems tempting due to the lack of a starting fee, it can be a terrible limitation in the long run. Why? Using a free website to host your blog - limits your sales and marketing opportunities, depriving you of future earnings. Typical limitations of free platforms include:

a) Visible name of the domain provider - the name of the service provider will appear in the address of your blog, e.g., www. YourBlog.freedomain.com. This is not conducive to online branding and can automatically make your blog less perceived.

b) Limited functionalities - in free platforms, applications supporting sales and marketing are almost always unavailable. In the long run, this prevents you from successfully promoting your blog.

c) Mediocre design - free platforms offer a small range of nice templates. To improve your blog look, you need technical skills, help from a specialist, or buy a paid template.

Of course, you can try the free platform at the beginning, but it's not a good solution permanently. Especially if you don't want to remain an amateur blogger forever.

Choosing the right blogging platform is very important in terms of ease of use, promotion, editability, and search engine positioning. Before you make up your mind, however, consider the pros and cons of the different options. If you are wondering which blog creation tool will be the best solution for you, read our article in which I compare two options: website builders and CMS - WordPress. 

Obtaining a security certificate (or SSL) for your blog is essential if you want it to be considered a secure site. SSL certificate through data encryption ensures privacy protection for your blog users. It is imperative to keep your website safe when running a blog to:

a) increase your blog's credibility and gain the trust of your readers,

b) prevent data leakage or hacker attacks,

c) improve your search engine rankings - secure sites rank higher on Google than sites without an SSL certificate.

You can simply check if your website is safe by search engines. All secure sites have a visible padlock icon in front of the URL. If instead, a warning sign with an exclamation point appears in front of your website, your website is not secure.  

Beginning bloggers, trying to stand out from the competition, come up with names too complicated or inadequate for the topic blog. It also happens that amateur bloggers choose a name that seems simply pretty to them but does not convey a clear message to the recipient. This is also a mistake that is better not to duplicate, especially at the beginning of the road when you are just building interest around your blog. If Internet users have doubts about the type of content on your blog, it will be harder for you to encourage them to visit. 

Here are examples of less successful ideas for a blog title:

a) too long - fantastictripsandjourneys.com

b) excess of numbers and special characters - Ann!L06coding.com

c) too many dashes - Julia-is-drawing-paintings.com

d) challenging to remember - ldkazsinfo.com

e) too banal - Kitchen.com

f) a misleading name - if the name of your blog is cheap-cooking.com, but you can also find recipes for exquisite dishes on it.

Your blog title, like your brand name, is a promise you can't break if you want to gain the trust of your audience and build a loyal community. If readers feel misled because they were looking for a different type of content than the title said, they will quickly leave your blog.

When coming up with the blog title, it is worth following the principles of minimalism and catchiness. The blog's name should be simple so that you can easily remember and enter it into the search engine. On the other hand, a catchy term that refers to the subject areas of the blog will effectively attract the recipient's attention. For more tips on creating a name for your blog, check out our checklist!

A big mistake when starting a blog is to ignore SEO and optimization. Thanks to SEO, your blog can be at the forefront of search results. Therefore, before publishing your blog, you should optimize it for search engines. SEO optimization is a very important but broad field, so if you want to learn more, check out our guide.

If you do not want your blog to be lost in the depths of the search engine, it is worth learning the basic techniques of blog optimization and taking care of the most important SEO principles. You can learn more about this in our checklist at the end of the article!

Underestimating the power of good blog design is a big blogging mistake. Often, bloggers focus on creating exciting content and completely forget about the visual sphere. Every website, including a blog, must be well-designed to attract an audience. Readers no longer accept ugly pages and will not read your blog if its layout is not inviting. Therefore, ensure that your blog's graphic theme is modern and legible.

In website builders, you can use ready-made templates that are fully editable. Thanks to the easy modification of the output template, you will quickly gain a unique look for your blog. A significant advantage of ready-made tool templates is their excellent design, on which whole teams of specialists work. 

In addition to your blog's artwork, its UX, which is the overall impression of users on your site, also counts. The UX of your blog will consist of, among others: 

a) intuitive navigation through your blog entries, 

b) legible font,

c) appropriate headers,

d) bullets,

e) text formatting

f) visual presentation of content (e.g., in the form of infographics)

f) clear layout, i.e., page structure. 

Any errors in these areas (e.g., unreadable font or unclear text structure) severely reduce the UX of your blog, which becomes less user-friendly. Bad UX makes the blog hard to read and readers won't want to be on it.   

UX at a high level will positively impact the user experience of your blog. See how you can choose the perfect font for your blog, which will look good and make your content easier to read.

Many bloggers ignore regular blogging at the beginning of their journey. Sometimes amateur bloggers create a few welcome posts and take no further action while waiting for the first interested readers to arrive. 

Statistics show that bloggers who post more often are more likely to get better results. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula that will suddenly increase traffic to your blog. The only solution is to create new content regularly. 

One of the common mistakes of beginner bloggers is the lack of a niche, i.e., a blog topic. Bloggers who take their first steps often focus on too many issues. The easiest way to fall into the diversity trap is to run a lifestyle blog. Do you combine your blog's healthy eating, fashion, parenting, and cooking subjects? Writing about many issues isn't a good solution at the beginning of your blogging adventure. Instead, it is better to focus on one area and become an expert in your field. 

When you start blogging, choose the area you feel best in. Only over time, if you feel confident, can you expand your blog with other topics. But remember, it's good to still stick to your niche! For example, if you run a cooking blog, you can expand your blog with entries on healthy eating or diet in the future. However, if you suddenly start talking about the automotive industry, you will lose your faithful readers interested in cooking.

A frequent mistake of novice bloggers is too much… independence. Of course, this is a good feature, but sometimes (especially at the beginning of your career), it's a good idea to turn to more experienced bloggers for help. Thanks to this, you can meet interesting people, hear advice from colleagues, and establish fruitful cooperation that will pay off in the future. 

Exciting cooperation with other bloggers or influencers is an excellent way to increase interest in your blog. Cross-posts, recommendations, or sharing your content on the channels of other specialists are good ways to develop your blog. Such activities will help you generate more visitors quickly. 

Most new bloggers don’t take action on social media. This is a big mistake because social networking sites help to establish personal contact with those interested in almost every niche. So you should immediately join all groups that connect people interested in your blog and publish articles there. Moreover, you should also publish articles on your profiles. Otherwise, your readers may not take your amateur blog seriously. 

It's best to start with Facebook and Pinterest for a good reason. This is the easiest way to increase traffic to your website. Later, you can expand your business, but it's good to expand your activity to Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or TikTok. This will allow you to increase traffic to your blog and reach different audiences. Another place where you can find a community and drive traffic to your blog is social platforms with various information, such as Reddit and Quora

Andrew Keen in his book “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture” writes that the main problem of modern blogs is the lack of valuable and substantive content. Unfortunately, many aspiring bloggers duplicate content from other blogs without adding value. 

Use only verified information in your blog entries. It is worth referring to statistics from recognized sources. Remember - you don't have to do it in a boring way! You can present facts and figures on your blog in an exciting way, such as with infographics.