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In just a few years, running a blog has gone from being an unusual hobby to a legitimate career choice. If you are determined to make the running of your blog generate an income, then you will be able to experience one of the most dynamic and interesting careers in the modern marketplace— but the problem is, that’s a big if.
While everyone knows it’s possible to create a successful blog that generates enough revenue to live off, the percentage of blogs that do make it big is relatively small. If you’re determined that running a truly professional blog holds the key to your future financial and business success, then realizing that your blog is struggling is never a pleasant experience.
While blogging will always require a certain amount of luck, there are four key reasons why a blog languishes behind the competition and never quite reaches its financial potential. If you’re struggling to get your blog to generate the kind of income you want, then ensuring you’re avoiding all of these mistakes is a good place to begin…
#1 – You’re not taking it seriously enough
If you want to generate an income from your blog, you have to see your blog as a business. In essence, a blog is a publishing company in and of itself, and it should be promoted and treated accordingly. That means you have to be willing to invest in your blog as you would with any other business.
Bloggers that earn a living from their blog don’t do everything themselves. They have a budget for services, and their levels of expenditure might surprise you. If you want your blog to make it big, you have to be willing to outsource, to work with others, to try services that can help boost your views, and even to make small changes like paying for images rather than using stock photos. All of these things are indicative of a blog that understands it is a business rather than a fun hobby to make a little spare cash from.
Essentially, before you make any decisions regarding your blog, ask yourself: “what would I do if I were running a brick-and-mortar publishing company?” This should be your guide: a blog might exist solely online, but it’s a business, and to make it big you have to treat it as such.
#2 – You’re not capitalizing on all available opportunities
If you want to monetize a blog, there are a few tried-and-tested established ways to do that: sponsored posts, ads, Google Adsense, and so on and so forth.
If you want to make a living from your blog, and treat it as a business, then it’s highly unlikely that these elements alone will be sufficient.
You have to branch out. Again, seeing your blog as being like a business helps with this; it’s essentially like opening up a new product line for a standard company. Your blog is your base range of products, but you now need to add something extra to help generate the revenue you review.
Big bloggers use their blogs as a platform to also…
- Sell ebooks they have written.
- Sell goods they have made themselves.
- Market their services as a blogging or social media consultant.
- Run an ecommerce store as part of their blog, selling items made by others.
- Run workshops for other bloggers.
- Run workshops on their specialist subject.
- Start a podcast (and monetize it, using advice from the likes of www.Rachelrofe.com/19-ways-to-monetize-your-podcast)
The truth is, if you want to generate an income just from the basic means of monetizing a blog, you’re always going to struggle. You need multiple revenue streams that expand beyond the core of the blog itself.
Your niche will usually offer you an answer on what associated services you can offer. If your blog is about photography, then you can sell photography workshops or your own photos. If your site is about natural living, then you can sell handmade products or write an ebook full of your best (and not available on your site) recipes, and so on and so forth.
You should still focus on sponsored posts and hosting ads, but they can’t be your only monetization strategy. Expand, think differently, and reach into areas related to your blog to generate the income that you require.
#3 – You’re using old-fashioned marketing and SEO techniques
Despite being a relatively new industry, blogging has many established methods of creating traffic and working the way up search rankings. These tend to include a range of the following:
- Guest posting on other blogs
- Posting in the comments section of popular blogs (along with a backlink to your own blog)
- Joining professional blogging forums and groups on social media
- Joining comment or Instagram pods to help increase visibility
These are all tried and tested marketing techniques, but in truth… they’re not worth a huge amount. They’re useful if you’re a hobby blogger who wants to generate a readership, but your thought process is focused on generating an income— and that means you’re going to need to think bigger.
Again, we return to the base fact that your blog is a business. If a business wanted to improve their SERPs, would they leave a few comments on blogs with a backlink to their website? No, they’d bring in SEO specialists. If a business wanted to generate a buzz in the marketplace, would they see joining an Instagram pod as a good use of time? No, they’d bring in marketing specialists.
So if you’re going to treat your blog as a business, you need to do the same. Contact digital marketing firms such as COFORGE now to give your blog the boost it truly needs, which is especially important given how saturated the blogosphere is. The old techniques are fine in and of themselves, but they’re unlikely to drive enough traffic to your blog to generate an income you can live off.
#4 – You see your blog readers as friends, not customers
One of the major upsides of blogging is that you build a unique rapport with your readers, but if you’re going to make it big, then your readers are also your customers. This small change in thinking means you should approach your readers differently, employing basic customer service tactics and listening to their feedback.
While it’s wonderful to be able to write “for you”, the truth is that blogging just for you isn’t going to be enough to generate an income. As a result, you have to see your readers as people you have to keep happy if you want to generate revenue.
#5 – You’re not creating valuable content
Finally, we come to the crux of the issue. It’s not a particularly pleasant one to discuss — no one likes to think that they’re not creating good content — but the issue tends to be at the heart of why a blog doesn’t succeed.
When it first became a “thing”, blogging was largely an extension of sites such as www.Livejournal.com— people wrote about their lives and other people responded. Some blogs are still like this, but blogs that are able to generate a full-time income for the blogger… aren’t. Or at least, they aren’t all the time.
Ultimately, a blog has to provide content that is useful to the reader. By telling the story of your life or your latest travel adventures, you’re able to establish a community and a small dedicated readership— but that’s unlikely to be enough to sustain an actual business. Instead, you need to create a readership who see you as an authority source within your niche, who visit your site to try and learn from you.
You can still maintain that personal element, of course— lifestyle blogs are still popular and can indeed generate an income. However, if you look at popular lifestyle blogs, you’ll notice that the lifestyle content is intermingled with other content that is genuinely helpful to readers. For example, rather than just writing about your latest shopping trip, you could write a review of where you went shopping and what future visitors should know when visiting the same location. This combines an authentic post with information that is genuinely useful to a huge number of readers, rather than just a small group of dedicated fans.
Your site doesn’t have to lose its personal nature to be successful, but it does have to incorporate elements that are helpful to others. This will not only increase your readership, but also provides you with SEO-friendly content that can boost your traffic.
In conclusion
Blogging is still a relatively youthful market, and as a result, it’s inevitable that you will make a few mistakes along the way. However, by taking care of the obvious issues (such as those mentioned above), you can set about making your own luck with your blog and generating the revenue you want.
