Surfing some of the biggest blogs out there, for example those of Kate McCulley and Daniel James (from Dan Flying Solo), and reading about how they gave up full-time jobs to start traveling and ended up living a life of luxury, earning a fortune writing about their adventures is guaranteed to be either a highway to hell or a stairway to heaven.
Either way, before shouting out to the world that “blogging is the easiest thing on earth” and “anyone can do it” I suggest you think twice.
In reality, blogging is a full-time job and requires dedication, patience, creativity, commitment, marketing skills, and so much more.
The sad reality is that there are lots of problems bloggers face and they cause most of the beginning bloggers to fail. Especially it is a drag to browse already popular blogs and see the whole range of skills and talents on display: excellent writing, brilliant photography, fun videos and witty debates in the comments. And yet, if you ever feel discouraged from starting something just because other people are far ahead, remember to have the courage to suck at something new. Besides, those blogs probably have a whole team of professionals working for them. No one has all the talents.
Anyway, now that we’re past the initial pep talk, let’s talk about the absolutely necessary quality for a beginning blogger: optimism. It’s indeed true that mostly whenever there’s a problem, there is also the solution! So, let’s identify the 10 major blogger issues and discuss the solutions in more detail.
- Not having a clear topic and niche for the blog
- Lack of quality content
- Writing style
- Voice
- Plagiarism alert!
- Not keeping on topic
- Not enough traffic
- Absence of feedback
- Few or no repeat visitors
- Low income
1. Not having a clear topic and niche for the blog
Finding the right topic for your blog website is the very first and probably most important step in blogging. A lot of beginners fail here because of the unwillingness to narrow down their blog’s focus.
You might want to blog about makeup, hairstyle, fashion, and photography all at the same time but not having a concrete topic is in no way going to bring you success.
Think of all your favorite blogs or just the blogs you know. Notice how you can clearly differentiate blogs on current issues in your country from blogs dedicated to, say, Katy Perry’s fashion choices? Exactly. Readers need to know what you’re promising. That’s why all those wishy-washy personal blogs get categorized and branded as soon as they gather even a small readership. Wondering which 7 blog niches are growing in popularity recently?
Here you can read about all the pros of having a niche while blogging, from attracting a specific audience to better-planned SEO.
Solution: When building a house the first stones are chosen most carefully and constructed with extra caution. It’s the same with blogging: selecting your focus should be done very carefully, so that you’re able to stick to it.
You better start by making a list of all the things that you love/are passionate about.
Then start the process of evaluation: consider the importance of each of the topics for yourself personally and your knowledge about each, do a bit of research to identify the competition. That way you can narrow down the list until you reach one single topic.
Make it as specific as possible. But again, make sure it’s not so specific it becomes boring for you or you’ll abandon your readers halfway through.
2. Lack of quality content
Nothing matters as much as quality content. It’s your biggest weapon when attracting readers and trying to keep their attention.
Lack of high-quality content can be a hell of a problem.
Also, pay attention to the very real tradeoff between quality and quantity. There may be exceptions, but typically the well-researched original piece of reporting you spent three days writing is better than the genial shower thought.
Solution: In order to create an outstanding piece you need to take real interest in the topic and feel inspired to write it. Ask yourself those important questions: Why am I interested in this? What’s the value or uniqueness of this particular narrative angle?
On the other hand, you shouldn’t forget the readers — in the end, you are writing for your audience. It might be useful to settle for yourself why the post will be important or engaging for the target audience, how trendy or important the topic is, and how your ideal reader will be transformed or moved by reading your piece.
I’d also advise doing some research: reading the top-ranked posts on the same topic to assess the competition so that you can bring something new and interesting to the table.
Finally, quality content depends on media use, too, so try to include more than plain boring text.
Videos, images, links, polls, and games will liven up your blog and make it more unique. Medium is the message after all.
Wanna know where you can find free images for your blog? Click here for a list of the 10 best websites that’ll help you beautify your blog.
3.Writing style
You don’t need to be a professional writer to blog, but your writing style might become a blogger problem if it’s too dull, monotonous, academic or something along those lines.
Ultimately, you don’t target yawning readers, do you?
Solution: It might seem like a cliché, but the best thing you can do to improve your writing is write the way you talk.
Keep it simple and short: the simpler your speech, the more attractive it is.
If your readers felt like reading complicated words and elaborate sentence structures, they’d probably pick up Ulysses, instead of visiting your blog.
Here you will find detailed tips on how to write the way you talk.
4. Voice
Your blog is your brand and you need to have a unique voice to keep your readers interested.
As it goes, fans of Taylor Swift would hardly listen to your Metallica, and lovers of romance literature probably wouldn’t appreciate your sci-fi!
Having a specific voice in all of your posts is a way to define yourself and your blog, as a result attracting readers who truly care about your content.
However, finding that one specific fitting voice might be quite hard sometimes because you definitely have more than just one style of expression.
Solution: Think about your target audience. Whether you’re targeting angsty teenagers, photographers or professional cooks is quite important when choosing your voice.
Once you’ve specified the audience, you need to research their culture and check the specific terms and slang they use, the style they like. Some bloggers even advise to write for one ideal reader.
5. Plagiarism alert!
Sometimes it’s hard to get rid of the impression that all the best music has already been composed, the best books written, and the best drawings painted.
Whatever you do, it eventually turns out that someone somewhere already had the same idea, realized it, and you were messing with someone else’s intellectual property the whole time. And there is no way to prove you never even heard of the dude!
So, plagiarism is a big threat to your blogging career.
Solution: This is one of the hardest issues to face.
One general piece of advice would be reading more to expand your mindset and be more aware of what’s been said already. Paraphrasing, if used properly, is also a powerful tool. But that doesn’t mean that using the same idea and replacing a few words with synonyms is going to work.
Another important aspect is making sure to stop and check whenever you’re suspicious about a certain idea or formulation and not being afraid of quoting and referencing, if it comes to that.
We are indeed standing on the shoulders of giants, after all! Finally, online plagiarism detecting services, such as quetextand edubirdieare quite helpful.
6. Not keeping on topic
Once you’ve established your niche, you should stick to it. Consistency in topics is crucial for keeping your readers and followers: they started following you for a reason.
Failing to keep on topic is one of the reasons some bloggers fail to maintain and grow their community.
Solution: All you have to do is stay loyal to your niche and restrain from getting too broad. If your blog is about progressive metal music, writing a post about a new great garage rock revival band can be considered a betrayal.
Consider each post before you start working on it, make sure it belongs to at least one of your blog’s categories. Try to think like your readers again.
If your blog is aimed at marine biologists, become one! Just kidding, try to think as one and decide whether the topic is interesting for them.
If your answer is ”hardly,” you are better off without that post.
7. Not enough traffic
Here comes one of the most heartbreaking problems: you work hard on your posts, you have informative and interesting content, but your blog gets no traffic. The search engines just hide your blog from potential readers.
Solution: Self-promotion is key to being successful in the blogger world. You need to make yourself visible to the engines.
You might have heard of SEO. Maybe you’re already sick of it and think it’s overrated, but the thing is that SEO can pull you out of the shadows. You need to know the basics of SEO to adjust your posts and content in a way that Google never passes by without noticing you.
Self-promotion nowadays is such a vast realm that there are almost too many things you can do to get your blog read. Besides working on your blogging website’s SEO, you can write guest posts and link back to your blog, buy an ad spot in a similar blog, make a special effort to write on the trendiest subjects, optimize your website’s performance, make friends with influencers and get a shoutout. But none of these will work out that well if you don’t work on your site’s SEO.
Yet another thing that you can do to increase your traffic is social media promotion. Opening a Facebook, Instagram and/or Twitter page and spreading information about the existence of your blog might not be a bad idea.
8. Absence of feedback.
How do you interpret the silence of your readers? Is your content just “no comment” cool or are they indifferent? It’s disheartening (ha!) to put your heart into your the posts only to get 0 attention in return!
Solution:Well, for now keep in mind that most readers who read your blog will not leave a comment no matter what. You see, that’s just the most common way people browse. So, one way to get more feedback and that boost of serotonin that comes with it, try to devise other ways visitors can participate. Can they just “like” or click a specific emoji? Vote in an online survey? Take a test or play a game?
If you’re dead set on getting more comments, remember that give-and-take works both in life and on the blogosphere, so commenting on others’ blog posts is one option. The important thing though is to show your readers that you value their say.
Be responsive; try to reply to the comments you get as quickly as possible. Engage your readers by explicitly asking for their opinion, encouraging them to leave you feedback.
Finish your posts with a question for your readers, asking about what they think on the topic, etc.
9. Few or zero repeat visitors
You might be read but not consistently. If very few are willing to stick around and follow your blog, something is definitely wrong.
Solution:It’s important to consider the fact that most people these days browse everything through social media sites. Mostly, people don’t type in URLs, they “like” a page on Facebook or “follow” it on Instagram or Twitter and then if something that content creator posts sparks their interest, only then they click. Meaning it is absolutely crucial that you foster you social media presence. Even better if you form a community that will like and share your blog posts in exchange of, well, you liking and sharing their posts.
In general, I do believe that once you fix all the above-mentioned issues — especially the ones regarding consistency and quality of content — more and more people will be eager to return to your blog and subscribe/bookmark.
Finally, You can also invite your readers to subscribe to your blog or suggest they register for a newsletter and keep them updated on any new posts or events. If you’re not sure how to create a newsletter, check this article out.
10. Low income.
Finally, last but surely not the least painful problem, if your initial motivation was money, is low income.
Solution: First thing to keep in mind is that you need to be patient. Nothing happens right away. It’s reasonable to have other income sources to rely on until you gain popularity.
Don’t stick to just one platform — promote yourself on many! Then, after your blog develops and flourishes, there are lots of ways to make money through it, most connected with monetization and selling ads.
One of the most widely used methods is monetizing the blog with CPC and CPM ads. Here you’ll find valuable advice on how to make money with your blog.
Dotcomonly has a detailed article on how to start a blog and make money, or you can consider building and selling a course with an online course platform.
Blogging isn’t easy, but now you’re prepared to handle what’s coming at you. To have a quality blog you’ll need to invest a lot of effort and stay patient.
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Now you know all 10 problems awaiting almost any beginning blogger. Luckily, you also know how to solve them. So, be patient and the work will ultimately pay off and you’ll find yourself in the company of the biggest blogs you know. And don’t forget to share with us your stories about the blogger problems you faced. How did you tackle them? Leave a comment down below!
