Ten Reasons Your Blog May Be Destined for Failure
A lot of my spare time is spent reading different blogs, I do this to keep up with all of the relevant news to me, the latest opinions and trends, and sometimes just to be a little nosey. Often I see some really great new blogs appearing and I look forward to seeing what they will become, as they grow with content, readers, and contributors, but before you know it they have become stagnant and uncared for.
I believe this is due to the common misunderstanding that a blog will lead to overnight success and take little time to run, when a person is creating a new blog. So if you are in the thinking stages or even early days of creating your own blog, please read the following reasons why your blog may fail and what you can do to ensure its success.
A Lack of Confidence
Having a lack of confidence in your idea or ability has got to be the biggest killer for anything, not just blogs. Before you get started, you must be prepared to except a certain amount of knock backs and rejection. Not everyone will want to read what you have to say, and not everyone will agree with you, but you need to be ready to accept that we are all lucky enough to have our own individual personalities and opinions. If someone leaves you a bad comment, try to accept it as constructive criticism by learning from it.
A Lack of Patience
Accepting that your blog will take time before it becomes a success is also very important, and assuming it will be an overnight success will also be the downfall of your blog. The greatest blogs are those that never intended to be successful, they were created by authors who have a genuine love for their blog topic.
Not Fully Understanding What a Blog Actually Is
There is a massive difference between a blog and a website, but this is also an unknown fact and a major stumbling block for many people. Blog stands for web log, and if you want to create a place which will act as an online diary for your niche subject and you plan to update it frequently, then a blog is the right tool for you. However, if you are wanting to create something much more static and formal, where people can either learn more about your services as a business, or purchase goods from you, then a website would be much better suited.
Not Enjoying Your Niche
You can really tell when someone has a real passion for what they are talking or writing about, and if you do not, well it will come across in the content of your blog posts. If you do not enjoy what you are writing about, you will find it much harder to overcome point one and two from above.
Cluttering Your Blog
This can be a problem which is much harder for you to detect for yourself and avoid. As we blog about our subject we are creating a wealth of information, but it can also be very easy to keep adding little bits here and there to our sidebar when we have enjoyed a certain blog post more than others, or found some really cool news that you believe everyone must know about. Adding too much information to your sidebar can make your blog look untidy and not very user friendly. Stick to a golden rule which I discovered the hard way, by keeping your blog nice and simple.
Unrealistic Traffic Expectations
As I mentioned above, your blog is going to take time and will not be an overnight success. You will not receive boat loads of traffic as soon as you publish your first post, it will take time, commitment, and perseverance before your blog is receiving loads of traffic. Try not to become too down hearted about this, knowing and accepting that your blog is going to take time before it becomes successful is half of your battle won already.
Failure To Highlight Your Best Content
You should really consider placing a list of your most popular blog articles in your sidebar. It is quite common practice to do this and a lot of people will look for this feature when landing on your blog. Allowing people to see what the current buzz is all about on your blog can work really well by diverting people to active blog posts, where they can join in on discussions.
Failure to Know Your Readers
You should analyse your traffic and really get to know your reader, discover what they like reading and what they do not like reading. This is an important time to also mention a key point about your content and who you are writing for. Always remember that you are writing for a human and not a search engine. By trying to make your content overly search engine friendly, you could make it hard to read, drawn out and basically very boring to the average human.
Failing to Get to the Point
There is a famous saying “quality is much greater than quantity” and this saying is also very true when it comes to blogging. By assuming that your blog posts all need to be a mile long, you’ll be prompted to stuff your post with content which is not really needed. Do not beat around the bush, just get straight to that juicy bit of information which you are blogging about.
Failure to Plan
We plan for almost everything we do in our lives in some way or another. Creating a blog is no different and creating your plan should be your starting point, do not just go with the flow and see how this blogging thing turns out. Ask yourself, why are you creating a blog? , What is its purpose?, How do you see your blog developing in the future? Etc. Try to create a short term plan as well as a long term plan, and do not overly worry if your long term plan changes as plans always do.
I hope the reasons above will help you to achieve your dream of becoming a fantastic blogger. The only other thing which could lead you to blogging failure is if you forget to use this blog post and all of its blogging tips!
Michelle Kirkbride, the editor of Kaplang has many years of experience as a web developer & consultant. She currently lives in Yorkshire, UK with her two beautiful children and loving partner. She spends far too much time at her computer and is currently addicted to her work & blogging. You can connect with her on twitter or visit her blog.
Definitely good points, I crashed my first blog but slowly building up new ideas and thoughts for the current one and getting traffic. Thanks
I think a lot of the points you made are why so many blogs come and go, but most of all it is because of the misconception that you can get rich quick with a MMO blog, even though you have never actually made money online!
MMO blogs are tough. I created two solely on one game each, and decided that maybe a general one was better. I am not sure it was the right choice. It is harder to keep visitors coming every day if you aren’t talking about the game they are playing.
I find I was actually happier with my mmo blogs that were only one game. It seems my comments were 1000% more, and now it just seems that no one wants to comment, and building traffic is now so much harder than it was before.
Another huge point you could add is “no concrete plan or method of monetization”. That is, if you consider making money to be what constitutes success in your eyes.
So many times I see blogs that show that the person is putting a ton of work into it, getting traffic and doing very well… but there’s no angle for actually converting it to dollars. Although many will default straight to the ad-based model, it’s quite obvious that method isn’t something that could bring you significant income – unless you *really* get a lot of traffic and know how to handle PPC like an expert.
I believe if any blogger tells you it has all been plain sailing without any problems I would have to call them a fibber :) I only just redesigned my own blog a couple of months ago and I am sat here having to redesign it yet again due to its textured background being far too heavy and taking too long to load with its increase in traffic.
So again another lesson learned for me, hopefully the new design will be complete over the next couple of days and things will start to run smoothly again :) but my point is…no one is perfect and we just simply need to keep learning.
Confidence is key! Thanks for the great post…
Sometimes I fall behind with my own posting…let me ask you what you feel is a general guideline in terms of frequency of posts?
I know it should be quality over quantity…but should it be daily?
I know what you mean here, its real tough to try and keep pumping out quality so often as we are all human and will have our days when we just cannot get past a mental block or feel ill. I try to post every day but it is hard and I have been known to leave it for 2-3 days when really busy with other work. At the end of the day if what you are writing is real quality, people will not mind waiting and even if they do…well they will still wait :)
nice one, for me as am abt to start my first online blog,
wud take this into consideration.thanks
I believe that the points mentioned are the reasons why a lot blogs are doomed from the start. I read several different blogs last year that had been around about a year or so. They did okay but when I talked with them personally they had exceptions that they could were unrealistic and they shut down their blogs without trying to work on them.
Very good and useful points Michelle! I really do like this article!
Great points Michelle. Blogging is a lot of work, more than most people think. I really enjoy blogging and hope that more and more people check out my blog. But I do it for myself, so it’s not a chore. Thanks!!!
Great Post, because I’m taking my time to develop my website! I took alot of time in thinking it through. I even planned two weeks worth of posts already. Mainly to make sure my content was enriched. I’ve done constant research on analytics and social media. I’m hoping to launch it on my birthday (June 25th)!! But I know it takes time but I’ll keep blogging it’s my favorite thing to do!!!