How to Become a Successful Blogger and Solopreneur

Become a successful blogger and solopreneur

Blogging is not an easy task many beginner bloggers make common mistakes which we can see on various blogs. This post will answer why bloggers fail and how to avoid the most common mistakes bloggers make. This post will be helpful for newbies as well as for bloggers who are struggling to increase their ranking and people who want to start a blog (aspiring bloggers).

No Planning and Market Research

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail! 

Benjamin Franklin

Most bloggers and online businesses fail because they don’t plan. A business plan must be done at the beginning of your blogging or business setup. with a blogging plan or blueprint you know what to do and not do, what your competitors are doing, what can differentiate your blog or business, what’s your USP (Unique Selling Proportion) etc.


Without planning bloggers struggle with blog ideas, content creation, marketing strategies, etc. Many newbie bloggers make the mistake of choosing either a very competitive niche or a narrow niche in which very few people are interested.

How to Fix

Plan your blogging strategies like content creation, content distribution, marketing strategies, designing, layout, etc. Analyze your competitors – what they are doing, what you can do/cannot do and how can you be different. Make a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of your niche.

Planning makes you productive, focused, and determined on your business goals and market research (Competitor Analysis) makes you focus on market weaknesses and differentiate (strengthen) your blog or business website by distinctive value.

Choosing a Competitive Niche or Multi-Topic blog

This is the most common mistake bloggers make (I also did),  they choose a competitive niche without research and knowledge base, and at the end of the day, they fail.  Bloggers do everything to get on the first page of Google but because of their competitive niche, they fail and quit blogging.

Everyone loves Movies, Gadgets, Fashion, Internet (etc) and bloggers think they could provide everything on their blog, it would be a one-stop destination for everyone and they end up with a multi-topic blog. But bloggers forget, there are tonnes of blogs and giant companies like Yahoo, Times of India, MSN, and AOL who are already doing it, which are unbeatable unless are until you are a millionaire.

Bloggers enter a highly competitive blogging niche and because of a lack of time, resources, tools, money, and knowledge they FAIL!

How to Fix

Choose a low-competitive niche that has enough searches and there are only a few blogs or websites currently focusing on.  Write quality content and optimize it for SEO and target the right audience. Search for interested people and build your community.

Focusing on Quantity over Quality

Bloggers focus on quantity because they think filling their blog with lots of irrelevant and poor content will help them to succeed. The quantity could result in traffic but your content will not be able to convert that traffic into return visitors and a loyal audience.

How to Fix

Don’t think blogging is just copy-pasting.  Blogging is helping your community with informative and engaging content which means your content should give value to the reader’s precious time. Write about what will solve your audience’s problem; make them aware of your products and services.

You are President Of America and Everyone Wants to Know About You

(Not Applicable to Those who are Blogging for a hobby and don’t care about traffic, making money, search engine ranking, etc. Go ahead! Keep on posting those funny cat pictures and videos)
Grumpy Cat

Your blog should not be about YOU, YOU, and YOU only; no one cares about what you had at dinner except your mom, friends, and family. Don’t make your blog an online brochure of your products and your services.

How to Fix

Use the “About us” page to write about you and your business (Business Vision and Goals). Convey your expertise concisely and write what you want to share with your audience. Business websites can write about the team members and assign static pages for your products and services pages.

Not Leveraging Social Media (Choosing the Wrong Social Media Channel)

There are two types of bloggers, one who doesn’t utilize social media to promote their blog and one who chooses the wrong social media. Social media takes time to show results, especially if are not targeting the right audience on the right social media.

How to Fix

Analyze which social media is the best fit for your business website or blog, form communities, engage with your audience, exchange ideas, and build relationships. Use free social media automation tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and TweetDeck to schedule (Auto-Schedule) your posts, analyze your CTR and plan your marketing strategies accordingly.

Audience engagement is an absolute necessity of any blog. Engage your visitors by asking questions/feedback and commenting back on each and every comment on blog posts.

Content Is King, Really?

Content is king so you have to produce lots of content to increase your search engine visibility and don’t need to promote your blog through social media marketing or other forms of marketing. Bloggers spend hours and hours writing great content but don’t promote it because they think the battle is over.

How to Fix

You have been reading content is king, yes it is! but that is a half-truth and half-battle-win situation. Marketing has equal importance most of the time and works better than content to spread your content on the internet. Don’t just publish your content spread it across your targeted audience by marketing.

Consistency is Vital

[su_quote]Small daily micro-wins when done continually over time lead to staggering results – Robin Sharma[/su_quote]

No matter what you want to achieve, consistency is vital. There are many reasons bloggers fail to be consistent in writing and posting blog posts like lack of time, lack of writing skill , lack of blog ideas et cetera. Not getting blog ideas is the most common problem bloggers face.

I know, many bloggers work full-time and blog part-time but they are not going to succeed until and unless they devote a few hours to their blog.

If you are not getting ideas for your next blog post use these free blog topic and title-generation tools

Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator

TweakYourBiz Title Generator

Seopressor Blog Title Generator

Use these tools to get blog title suggestions to brainstorm your brain with blog ideas.

WordPress’ editorial calendar plugin helps you schedule, and remind you to finish, and manage future and guest posts.

Lack of SEO Knowledge

Bloggers start blogging without understanding how Google works and what things Google seek in the content and what things they need to consider before publishing the content.  Without an SEO knowledge base, your content fails to get ranked on Google searches.

How to Fix

If you are using WordPress WordPress SEO by Yoast and All in One SEO Pack are the best solutions. It ensures you are focusing on the keyword and helps us to add Meta descriptions, tags, and alt tags and optimize the content for search engine optimization and ranking.

Non-WordPress users can optimize their content by ensuring the title, first paragraph consists of the keywords you are targeting.

Website/Blog Designing

Website designing is a small term but it consists of blog layout, color schemes, navigation, sidebars, headers footers, and lots more. Bloggers fail to understand which theme is the best fit for their business website or blog.  Most bloggers clutter their sites with Facebook, Twitter, and many such widgets which makes their sites slow and clumsy.

How to Fix

Add what’s necessary don’t clutter your website with widgets and scripts it will affect your website and distract your audience from content.

Be simple as much as possible here are two great examples of simplicity Labnol.org and Jeffbullas.com they have great content and a simple yet effective blog layout.

Too Much Advertising

The first impression is the last impression, Most bloggers start blogging to earn money and there is nothing wrong with that but they run advertisements everywhere. Bloggers want to earn from Google AdSense, Infolinks, Chitika, and affiliate marketing and they put lots of irrelevant ads on their blog or business website. Business websites and blogs put ads all over the website which adds lots of calls to action and which confuses your visitors.

How to Fix

If you want to earn from Adsense, Chitika, and other sources, For WordPress there is a plugin that rotates your advertisement programs and gives you insights on which program is working well and without advertisement widgets on your blog or business website.

Promoting Competitor’s or Low-Quality Products/Services for Few Cents

In order to earn more money bloggers promote low-quality programs, products, and services which not only affect their brand profile but they are missing out on opportunities to build a loyal audience base that trusts them blindly.

Promoting Competitor’s Products – I have seen many bloggers have the potential to start their own business but they promote affiliate programs for a few dollars. If you have the expertise you can create your own product and services and earn five to ten folds more than promoting affiliate products and services.

If you have the potential to create a product/service don’t promote your competitors because you are losing your potential buyers who can own your products because they trust you.

I am the Best I can do everything

Not Outsourcing Things Which Others Can Do Better

“You can do anything, but not everything.”

David Allen

Blogging is not about writing only there are lots of elements involved such as marketing, content curation, market research, search engine optimization, web designing, etc.  These tasks can be done by a person but it will take lots of time and affects productivity. Bloggers try to be perfect in all of these elements and they lose most of their time in learning and executing which reduces their enthusiasm and energy.

How to Fix

With sites like Fiverr, Elance, and Upwork you can outsource your tasks at affordable rates to Freelancers who can do it better and on time. These people are not only trustworthy but they are experts in various niches, you just need to find out a perfect match for your work and get it done for a few bucks.

Not Using WordPress

There are many blogging platforms like Blogger, Joomla, Tumblr, etc but there is no match for WordPress unless and until you are a developer. Bloggers choose Blogger and other Content Management systems to run their blog which is a bit difficult for non-developers. CMSs other than WordPress lack SEO optimization, plugins, and themes which reduces your ability to customize your blog and business website.

How to Fix

It’s simple, always choose WordPress CMS. In this article itself, I have mentioned three WordPress plugins to increase your productivity.

As a solo entrepreneur (Solopreneur) you don’t want to burden yourself with website development tasks. WordPress is the simplest CMS for everyone if you need any solutions there are hundreds of plugins that work as a magic wand, install the plugin and your problem is solved. WordPress is Free and Google loves WordPress because of its crawlability.

Conclusion

Everyone does mistakes, I did and I am still doing. If you did a mistake this is not the end of your blog and it is not a failure at all. With this list of fixes on common mistakes bloggers make, with a few tweaks you can reform your blog or start your blogging journey.

Have you done any mistakes I have mentioned? Did I miss any and are there any fixes that I MISTAKENLY FAILED to cover? Please let me know in the comments.

Comments

  1. Pingback: How to Overcome 6 Obstacles & Start to Blog When You Feel Demotivated - a Solopreneur

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