5 Common Mistakes New Bloggers Make in Their First Month Blogging

When you first start out blogging everything can seem so overwhelming and foreign. Many of us come to blogging from backgrounds that have almost nothing to do with the work we’re doing now, and we experience a huge learning curve. For me, writing content is my favorite part about blogging. I come from a writing background so it is where I feel most at home. However, there are so many things about blogging I didn’t know when I first started out! There are only so many books and post you can read, but sooner or later you have to learn by doing which means making mistakes.

Mistakes are apart of any successful journey but I believe in setting yourself up for your best chance at success. Many of us start a blog because we are passionate about sharing our message and knowledge with our readers, but are also seeking freedom to stay at home with our families or earn a little money on the side. So today I’m going to share with you from my own experience and listening to others, the 5 most common blogger mistakes that new bloggers make in their first-month blogging and how to avoid them.

1. They don’t have an email list

So many big and six-figure bloggers attribute their success to having an email list sooner rather than later. When I started blogging I researched like a mad woman. I was up until 3:00 am digging through pins, googling, and signing up for email courses for how to create a money making blog. The thing that made every single person’s list? Have an email list. Social media is a great way to drive traffic to your blog, with Pinterest being a huge opportunity for traffic. Your social media strategy is defintley important BUT, you don’t own any of those followers. Algorithms change. Accounts get flagged and deleted accidentally. Things happen like this all the time and can sink your traffic overnight.

When you have an email list, all of those subscribers belong to you. They are loyal to you, they want to hear about your products, and nothing arbitrary like an algorithm change can stop them from seeing your content. I know in the beginning your mind is going a million miles a minute and the last thing you want to do is focus on an email list but doing this extra work can be the difference between a product selling like crazy or flopping.

Focus on creating lead magnets for your email list like printables, short email courses, and mini e-books. Make sure your freebie is something your target audience can actually use and that provides the same amount of value that a paid product of yours would. You want to build trust with your audience and provide them with something that is worthy of trusting you with their email. Focusing on your email early on is one of the best things you can do for your business, so get to work on those freebies if you haven’t already! In my opinion, mailer lite is the best way to go for a mailing service and is completley FREE until 1,001 subscribers but then is still super affordable.

2. They Underestimate The Power of Facebook

Almost every blogger knows about the power of Pinterest. Pinterest can provide consistent traffic and help you earn a steady cash flow. However, I don’t see nearly as many people talking about Facebook! Facebook in the younger crowd is kind of uncool now, but it can be a bloggers paradise for one reason: Facebook groups.

I’ll be honest, Facebook wasn’t even on my radar. I was going to initially focus on Instagram and Pinterest and then move on to setting up a Twitter account, and then maybe eventually a Facebook page. It wasn’t until a blogger I followed was promoting a free challenge in her Facebook group that I changed my mind. Being in her group was nothing short of amazing! The engagement, the support, and the amount of eyes you have on your content are all reasons you should be joining Facebook groups like right now!

After my experience, I found bloggers that were saying the same thing. I know at first it might seem like your brain is on a constant loop of worrying about traffic and then trying to convert that traffic, then selling to that traffic, etc, but don’t forget to build community! Having other bloggers in your corner cheering you on and supporting your content is invaluable and super important, so use the power of Facebook from the get-go and get building an engaged audience and blogger buddies for life.

3. They don’t bother to learn about SEO

Look, SEO is scary. At least for me it was. I wanted to just focus on writing my content, promoting it, and not really stressing that much about SEO. If you don’t know what SEO stands for, it is search engine optimization. It dictates what ranking your site shows up on Google. SEO is a huge factor in how much organic traffic a site can get and it is crucial you learn the basics of how it works.

Now, I don’t recommend you drive yourself crazy over it. SEO is complicated stuff, but there are a couple of things you can do to help your SEO score. One of the things being installing Yoast SEO, a free WordPress plugin that helps you SEO optimize every single one your post and pages! This thing was a life saver for me because all I had to do was follow its instructions and recommendations. This plugin and many others are why I urge bloggers to start their site with WordPress and not other sites. If you don’t have a blog yet and are curious as to how to install WordPress and why it is my favorite site out there, you can read my post on How to Start a Blog

The second thing you can do is make sure the images you’re using on your blog are SEO optimized, meaning they have titles and alt text. Don’t just upload your picture as Screenshot183829.jpg. It will not rank well with SEO and it’s a super quick fix. Instead, name all of your images and make sure they have alt text, which is simply the text what will show up if your image cannot load. So for example, if you are uploading a picture of a green bottle the alt text should simply be “green bottle”. These quick fixes can boost your SEO and help your site’s ranking a lot.

4. They think they need to post every single day

Content is the backbone of any successful blog. Behind the beautiful images, amazing logos, and the eye-catching title is the content. Having amazing content doesn’t mean uploading every single day though. When it comes to content, quality matters over quantity. Most bloggers, including myself, only upload about 3-4 times a month. Some even less than that. You can build a very sucessful blog even with a few uploads a month as long as you are doing two things.

One of those things is consistency. We all have things in life that come up and keep us from being on time to everything, but in the beginning, consistency not only tells your readers that you’re not going to up and abandon your blog but also helps SEO rank you better because it rewards consistency. No matter how many times a month you’re planning to upload, in the beginning, you should plan a schedule of when your new post go live.

The second thing is promoting. Promotion is arguably more important than how much you upload because even if you’re creating amazing and life-changing content, no one is seeing it if you’re not promoting it. That’s why you need to have a Pinterest method, uploads on social media, and be constantly focused on getting your content in front of new eyes. This is how you get traffic and ultimately make money.

 

5. They don’t monetize their blogs right away 

So many new bloggers make the mistake of not monetizing right away thinking that they’re not ready for it, or that they won’t make any money. The truth is, every blogger’s timeline is different. I know bloggers that made $0 for 6 months, and bloggers that broke $100 in their first month. Either way, not implementing monetizing strategies from the beginning means leaving money on the table.

Even if you’re not making the big bucks right away, you can start to monetize your blog with affiliates and ads. I really push for bloggers to do this in the beginning because it gives you time to learn from your potential mistakes and also because it is completely possible to start making money in the beginning. The days are gone where bloggers have wait 3 years to see any profit. If you are dedicated, putting in the hours, and learning every single day, it is possible to make money from day 1. You can read all about how to treat your blog like a business here where I outline how you can start making money with your blog ASAP.

I hope this list has been helpful, and saved you some time and error on your blogging journey.

I believe in you,

Jasmine