Many new amateur bloggers make lots of mistakes when they start out.

But the way to be good at something is to be bad at it first. Anytime we learn a new skill or start some new venture, we expect to be masters at it, but you become a master with experience and practice.

Both practice and experience come when you invest time, stay consistent, and don’t shy away from making mistakes.

Making mistakes isn’t the bad part; not learning from them is the bad part. Making mistakes and learning from these mistakes is the best thing you can do. The same rules apply to when you start blogging.

You have bought a domain name, purchased a hosting plan, and have started creating content and are also doing a few other things, but are you making mistakes?

Probably yes.

If you are new to blogging, you have a lot to learn and in the process, you will also make some mistakes. Irrespective, most mistakes can be corrected, and recognizing these mistakes early on will help you rectify sooner and get success sooner.

Amateur Blogger Mistakes That Every Blogger Makes

So, with the aim of helping you get better at blogging, here is a list of mistakes most amateur blogger make:

1. Not Choosing Good Web Hosting

Choosing a good web hosting matters a lot. But amateur blogger go with free hosting or any local hosting just to save a few bucks.

There are a lot of disadvantages to using these kinds of free or local hosting because they never give you proper support, their speed is awful and also there is no security at all.

So that’s the reason I never suggest you to go with local hosting or free hosting .

Now you have a question about how to choose good hosting.

So after analyzing and using different kinds of hosting I come to the point before purchasing any hosting, you have to look at these points carefully.

• Speed
• Uptime
• Price (first year and renewable price)
• Security
• Backup
• Customer Support

I always recommend going for Siteground hosting, but why? Let me tell you some important points why you should choose Siteground hosting?

• Speed: Under 1 second
• Uptime: 99.99%
• Price: vary according to hosting plans
• Security: They will give you a free SSL
• Backup: Siteground also provides a Free Backup Service.
• Customer Support: 24*7 live customer support

Siteground is also officially recommended by WordPress.org also.

Steps to Buy Siteground Hosting

1. Visit Siteground.com

2. Choose Your Hosting Plan

Choose a hosting plan according to your needs like if you are a beginner and just starting out then startup plan is best for you. If you have more than one site then go with GoGeek plan.

3. Choose Domain Name

If you don’t have a domain name then I recommend first buying a domain name.

However, if you have already bought a domain name then choose the “I have a domain name” option and fill in your domain name and proceed for the next step.

4. Fill In Your Personal Details

After choosing a domain name, the next step is to fill in your personal information.

5. Fill in Payment Details and Proceed

Fill out your payment details, accept siteground terms and conditions and click to proceed

That’s it. Congratulations, you successfully bought your hosting also if you are using any other hosting you can also move to siteground easily because siteground gives free migration service.

2. No Passion for the Subject

We have heard many times, make a career in something you are passionate about and you will never be disappointed.

Let’s say you feel you are passionate about writing or blogging and do some research on the subjects which are most popular and get the most visitors.

Depending on your research, let’s assume, you start a finance blog. However, finance is something which doesn’t excite you much. This is the same as wanting to be a writer but taking a job in the finance field, even though you are basically writing.

Sooner or later, you will not enjoy the process of growing your visitors and subscribers as much as you would have if you wrote about something you are passionate about.

When you write something you are passionate about, you will be driven to know more about that topic and your passion will show through in your blog and thus help you gather real followers.

Once you gain some followers, you want to be honest and realistic with them and thus being passionate about the topic you are writing about will help you write better.

You don’t have to give away the whole of your content, just show some teasers of your content to gather interest.

3. Not using Good Web Design

A lot of amateur bloggers just use the basic templates offered by WordPress on their purchased domain names.

This is clearly laziness. You need to put in time and effort to beautify your website and make it user friendly.

We are not asking you to spend money on building a website initially, what we are asking for is to research and experiment. There are 1000’s of free templates which are offered by WordPress itself, don’t settle for the ones you see just at the beginning of the list.

Even if you have to go through each of them to arrive at your ideal layout, do that.
Even if you use a free template, you get to customize it.

Nowadays, Elementor is trending so much. You can use the Free Plan for it.

Web designing seems daunting but is really isn’t anymore for bloggers at the very least. It’s very easy to use and a simple Google search helps a lot.

4. Copying off Others

While most bloggers know that plagiarism can get them into big trouble and avoid that at all costs, most amateur blogger find a shortcut to their writing by just re-writing or paraphrasing the same content.

Your readers will notice, no matter how smartly you think you have hidden that you have copied the content from some other website.

It is obvious that you will go through other websites to know more about the topic you are writing about, but go through that content as a part of your research and not as a way to copy content from their website.

5. Ignoring Social Media

Ignoring social media is one of the biggest mistakes that amateur bloggers make.

You’ll lose more than 20% of your blog traffic if you don’t focus on social media.

The power of social media can never be overestimated. While creating valuable content is the most important thing, making sure that is the content reaches people is also incredibly important.

What is the point of creating great content but it not reaching people and being seen, read or even used!

Social media is how you make sure your content reaches people. It’s 2020 and almost everyone has a presence on social media these days, no matter the age group.

While getting followers and subscribers is also difficult on social media, it is comparatively easier than getting people to your website without any social media presence. While some bloggers don’t like social media and stay off it, social media helps greatly when used effectively.

6. Ignoring Email Marketing

I never understand why amateur blogger avoid email marketing. Email marketing has a lot of power to drive traffic and conversion and build relationships.

Let me explain it to you.

Many times you might have ended up buying something from an e-commerce website because you received a sale email and just simply visited the site to check the sale offers out and ended up buying something.

This is what the magic of email marketing is.

While you may think it is too soon for email marketing if you have just started, remember you want a constant following and not one time visitors.

Always add the option to subscribe on your blog or website and constantly update your email list.

Email marketing is important as it helps you stay connected with your readers and informs them of the updates on your website. Take this from your personal experience, how many times have you visited a website just by itself unless it’s a social media platform? Not many.

However, when you see an interactive email in your mailbox or a write up with some interesting website, you are tempted to visit the website.

Of course, don’t bombard your subscribers with too many emails but keep them updated with what is going on with your blog and if you have come up with any new content

7. Writing just to Increase Word Count or for SEO

I know long-form content works great, but many amateur bloggers just write creepy content to increase the word count. This is not good.

Why? Let me tell you

While SEO is very important and should be taken seriously, the quality of your content has to be of utmost importance.

No one appreciates lengthy sentences, repetitive content and meaningless additions.
Make sure your content is helpful, to the point, precise and worth going through.

Also, a lot of writers just use keywords for the sake of using the keywords to increase their SEO score.

While you may gain SEO score, if the keywords are used unnecessarily and don’t make sense, or ruin your otherwise good sentence, the quality of your content will go down. Bad quality content will hold you back sooner or later.

Your visitors are looking for quality content and not just a random string of words.

8. Not Creating Interactive Content

People are looking to read content from a blog or website, not from a textbook. If your writing pattern is extremely formal, not easy to follow, and doesn’t have a personalized touch, readers will not be interested any longer.

Use personal pronouns, put in examples, make it interactive, research on the sort of content you like reading and create your content accordingly.

Also, pay attention to the feedback you receive in the comments. Use this feedback constructively and make better content keeping in mind your audience.

Don’t go through two or three websites and just copy bits and pieces of their content and put up, understand the content, research from various sources and then write your own content.

Remember, plagiarism is not only a crime but it is also stealing from someone else’s hard work and is heavily frowned up in the online community and also by search engines.

9. Relying Too Much on Backlinks

You read a lot on how to get a better Google ranking and realized that backlinks are a great way to get a better ranking and you put a lot of focus on creating backlinks.

Well, let’s assume you the backlinks get you a lot of visitors, and your ranking increases for a while, however with not too much content, no email marketing strategy in place, and no social media, you will not be able to convert those visitors into subscribers or regulars.

In the initial 6 months of blogging, your focus should be on creating quality content, showcasing it on social media, and making sure you keep an updated list of subscribers and send them updates about your blogs.

If you are someone who doesn’t know about backlinks yet, backlinks are basically links placed on other websites which are links to your website.

Google and other search engines are considering backlink validation for a specific page to help with ranking. Backlinks are a good way to have a high organic search ranking.

10. Disheartened by Low Visitors

Blogging takes effort for sure and those efforts also get rewarded but not in the very beginning. It will take time for you to have regular visitors, heavy traffic and a huge number of subscribers.

It’s not easy to stay positive when you don’t see a direct result of your efforts, but its important to stay positive and stay put.

Continue writing, blogging, and all the efforts that you are putting in, it will take time but if you put in work consistently, you will see results.

11. Expecting to earn even in the Beginning

Yes, you can make money blogging, and yes, a lot of people have made money by just blogging and have made blogging as a business.

So, you read a couple of success stories and think, let me start blogging and make money if this is the primary thought, please don’t blog.

Do Blogging as a Business not as a Hobby.

Remember that you see just the tip of the iceberg and not the whole story. You don’t know the number of hours, days, months, and years these bloggers spent on creating quality content and slowly and gradually building their audience and thus getting enough visitors for their websites and blogs to start earning money.

You don’t see the number of nights these bloggers stayed up while also working their regular jobs so that they have a regular source of income while building their website, which may turn into their future source of income.

Remember, I say may and not just turn. This is because the success of your blog depends on a lot of factors, just like any other business venture, the success of which depends on a lot of factors.

Stay patient, stay consistent, don’t give up too soon.

12. Placing Ads Everywhere

What was the last time you stayed on a website which had a lot of ads everywhere and ads just kept on popping each time you got interested in the website?

Not very recent, unless you were trying to stream some movie or series from a pirated website, right?

A lot of ad sellers allow you to place ads even if you have very few visitors and most of them don’t have a visitor number category, but a content category.

However, this doesn’t mean you make your blog an advertisement website rather than a content-based blog. I’ve seen that many amateur bloggers do it this way.

Sure, put up a few ads, but at a place that will not hinder the content of your blog or distract your visitors or ruin the basic layout of your website.

13. Not being part of any Blogger Community

While blogging is surely a personal experience for most people and is preferred for the freedom it provides to be anywhere and still work, however, it is important to stay connected to at least a few other bloggers.

Why? This will help you stay updated with other people who are going through the same experience as you and help you gain knowledge of stuff that you might have not come across yet.

It will also help you stay positive knowing the stories of other bloggers and all the steps they went through in their blogging journey.

Not only will this community be a lot of help in terms of knowledge base and moral support, what you will also get is collaboration opportunities, guest blogging opportunities, and spaces where you will be able to post links to your website and create backlinks.

Final Words

You might have made the mistakes mentioned above or you might have not, either way, stayed determined. Blogging, of all the other things, requires persistence the most. The mistakes you make in the initial stages of blogging are not irreversible and can always be rectified. Many amateur blogger make mistakes and learn from them, so don’t worry. Go ahead and learn from your mistakes. Remember, quality content should be your top priority, pay attention to web design and keep it interactive, it’s never too early for email marketing, don’t rush the process and stay connected with the blogging community. All in all, stay motivated, keep improving, keep researching and despite the mistakes, Keep blogging!