This scenario is common to new bloggers like you. You are excited about the whole blogging adventure. You are searching for expert bloggers based from the rankings of Kissmetrics or Blogmetrics. You think the top 10 blogs are worth following. You keep hoarding information what you think is good for you and your blog. You are in the mood of exploring overwhelming tactics provided by your expert bloggers you followed for a short period of time. Perhaps, you are taking notes of every word they said from their tutorials and webinars. “Hey, want to earn a stable income from your blog?” “Increase your blog traffic using my strategies that worked really well in my blog,” “The number one thing you need to increase traffic for your blog is this,” “Enroll to my course for $$$$ and I’ll teach you how to make your first $1K,” “Want to get 1K subscribers within X months?” Are these statements familiar to you? These are too good to be true promises from expert bloggers but a fool like you believe them. That was me last year. When I started serious blogging in 2015, I was in a rush searching for what is possible for me on the web. I was daydreaming all the time of what kind of success could I have through blogging. I searched for expert bloggers, studied their blogs, and followed them by subscribing them. I read at least 20 emails from them every single day thinking I could learn something from them, thinking everything they say are all true. But in the end, when I finally realized that only 40% of their words are trustworthy, I woke up frustrated. To avoid that, I’ll tell you the 17 lies expert bloggers love to tell you when you start blogging.
1. When you start blogging, planning will come after buying web domain and web hosting package.
This is the most common statement every expert blogger will say, “After purchasing a web domain and hosting package, it’s time for you to set your blog and plan your target audience.” However, what usually happen is, most new bloggers choose their domain name like they wanted to without really knowing the consequence of choosing a bad name mismatching their personality and their target audience. Most of the time, they ended up confused whether or not change their domain name because it doesn’t match their niche. But they have already spend a hundred bucks. It’s better to plan your goal of setting your blog before buying any hosting package. Better know what you’re spending for.
2. Blogging is a simple hobby.
When blogosphere was coined in 1999 by Brad Graham and re-coined by William Quick three years after, the act of blogging dramatically spread throughout the global community and massive production of blogs existed. That was when blogging is a simple journal writing activity. But now, blogging is a new form of business. When you opt to earn something from your blog, then, blogging is never a simple hobby. Try to ask the craft bloggers or tech bloggers, they love what they’re doing, it’s their hobby. But for sure, they will tell you that blogging is never simple. As a new blogger, you don’t have resources yet since you’re still learning. Lessons to learn from WordPress basics, plugins, setting your about page, contact page, and all the other important pages to set up, your first 10 worth-sharing blog posts, image editing or designing for social media sharing, replying to audience’s comments, setting up your social media links, so on. Imagine doing this alone for the whole month. Tell me if blogging is simple.
3. You can be a successful blogger if you start blogging alone.
This can be true. A lot of expert bloggers are doing this. The result? One of them was taken to the hospital due to fatigue and worse, complications brought by negative stress. I am not scaring you. But if you think you can be the jack of all trades and you can be successful like Steve Jobs by being alone, then you’re probably the most insane person I ever met. My blogging experience of doing everything alone was a huge mistake. I was thinking I can be successful without the need of everybody. I was too arrogant. At the end, I was a failure and now, started over again twice. Now, I’m with a team. I have my fiance with me handling the online shop and my sister for the videos and photos. We’re three of us working together in our site.
4. You can simply publish posts every day with almost anything to make the blog run.
If blogging can run as simple as that, I should’ve been taking vacation in Bahamas or perhaps in the Caribbean. Seriously, if every bloggers who have been writing blog posts five to seven times a week and telling everyone they’re successful, it’s idiotic. If a blogger encourages you to write four to five times a week to increase your blog productivity and traffic, it’s unbelievable. At all. To make the blog run, you should not just focus on creation. It’s always 80-20. Your 20% should be spent with creation and the rest will be for promotion. Promotion of your blog posts is a must. Be active on social media and make your audience feel you’re a human. These make your blogging highly leveraged. The number of blog posts is not the whole basis of a successful blogging venture, but the engagement of your audience is.
5. The more you posts you publish, the higher traffic you will have.
The higher the blog posts published in a week does not assure you for a high traffic. I did the same with my previous blog. I wrote five times a week with at least 900 words to 2,000 words maximum. I observed my traffic was just in the average of 50 page views per day or less. What is worse, I suffered from severe migraine and depression. It is not the number of blog posts that measure the successful blog, it is the number of times you promoted your post and the length of time you commented from other blogs answering their questions with an attached link of your site.
6. When you start blogging, getting a high traffic should be your first goal.
No. I have heard a lot of expert bloggers saying that all time when I started blogging myself. They always tell me to increase traffic to earn high traction from the audience. Yeah, it is good to have a high traffic. But it is not the assurance of getting income or authority from your niche if you only consider high traffic as your concern. The high traffic is a big help to Google indexing, ranking in Kissmetrics and Blogmetrics, but you cannot assure getting the “right” people to your email list and earn passive income if you only depend on this. I tell you.
7. You can defeat the power of SEO if you have a killer content.
Bill Gates’ famous statement “Content is king.” Yes, it’s true. You can create an epic post with 3,000 words. You can be so proud of doing it. You are thinking a lot of people will read it. You are thinking the importance of SEO will not be as highly considered because you just did an epic content. A lot of expert bloggers are telling this. Perhaps, you have encountered somebody saying “You can assure great traffic if you have an epic post. I publish only once a week but I always have high traffic.” Did you wonder how they do that? It’s the power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) folks! It’s not just your epic content that contributed to the high ranking of your post but the SEO. If your headline, meta description, your content, your permalink have the focus keywords is a great content.
8. You can always depend on guest blogging to increase your blog traffic.
This depends on the site. All expert bloggers out there will tell you to encourage guest blogging as many times as you can to assure high traffic. But no, I did the same for several times now but my traffic is the same. I don’t even see changes in the audience engagement after doing it. It is not the number of guest blogging opportunities that can help you with your blog, but it is the number of audience the site has.
9. Searching for guest blogging opportunities will cost you one friendly conversation with another blogger.
Oh, with the previous point, I forgot, you can’t just email a blogger “Hey, your blog is really awesome and my niche is related to yours. I’d like to guest post in your site about “[YOUR TOPIC]” that your audience will love.” once. You can’t just randomly send them an email for such a request from a stranger like you. To get in successfully, it’s not that easy. You need to have a conversation with them like real people and try to request. Build business relationship with them. If they find you really trustworthy, they will say yes. It will take you around a week of emailing or several Twitter or Facebook chats to make this possible (based from personal experience).
10. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to start blogging.
If you think you can start blogging for free and expect a huge return of investment (ROI) like huge traffic, high conversion rates, high income, throw that idea because it’s rubbish. Many of the expert bloggers I followed for the past 7 months are reminding me to enroll to their courses to make a fast growth of my blog. Each course costs around $300 for one payment and the other are around $700 for the whole year. It’s a lot of money! But they assure you everything inside their courses are valuable. The cheapest course I enrolled was Jon Morrow’s Serious Blogging Only for $1 for the first month and $47 for the next month. Imagine, when I started blogging, I thought I could have a huge ROI if I invested with nothing. I started with a free site from WordPress dot com (not the dot org) with a free theme. What is more ridiculous, I expected high results from my zero investment. That’s crazy. But that changed when I started serious blogging, spent almost $100 for the web hosting package, so on. I’ve learned a lot from my incredible and awesome craziness.
11. Their strategies are always effective regardless what niche you are in.
This was my thinking when I started blogging. Many of the expert bloggers remind their audience to enroll to their courses because they are highly valuable and results are outstanding. Some of them do. I have tried their strategies on how to increase traffic and make influence to the world through my blog, but only 40% of them are effective. The strategies will matter to what your niche is. I was in a writing niche, I have no progress with blogging at all using what they told me. I shifted to another niche, I still don’t have progress. It is because they taught strategies based on their niche “blogging.” Folks, before enrolling to a course the expert blogger is offering you, always keep in mind to see their results from other bloggers. Check what niche they are in whether she belongs to your group or not. Let’s say you’re a food blogger, most of the students who gave a good review of the course are blogging about blogging, then you have to doubt if it’s really effective to you as a food blogger, too.
12. You can earn from your blog easily if you create opt-ins.
Opt-ins are the sign up boxes on the site every blogger asks in exchange of something really incredible for free. If you see boxes containing “Sign up for our updated weekly newsletter” on the sidebar or in the top bar, these are opt-ins. Expert bloggers love recommending their audience of installing opt-ins to their blogs to create a huge list. Well, it does good to new bloggers. In fact, I encourage it to assure myself to have the right people to my services and to new bloggers like you as well. But, what is wrong is a lot of the new bloggers expect they could earn immediately from this list they just created for their blog. Let me tell you straight, you cannot assure great income from your list after you installed it in your site. You need to prove your expertise and consistent communication with your email subscribers before you could start earning from the people inside your list.
13. You can earn from your blog if you start creating services as soon as possible.
This another expert blogger fail. You cannot create services as soon as you start blogging. You are too fresh to create services. You don’t even know what niche is and how it affects your blog. It will take you time before you could think about the services you will offer to your target audience. Think about what your field of expertise is before offering anything to them. This was my huge mistake. I don’t know to whom am I serving or to whom am I talking to. Yet, I started a service which I think is cool. But it wasn’t.
14. Knowing your blog niche is easy.
Everyone thinks discovering your blog niche is easy. But it’s not. It took me months of searching my own creative niche before finalizing everything with a clear goal. It will take you a lot of experimentation and research before you can find your awesome target market for your blog. Without a clear niche for your blog, you will have a confusing blogging venture and blurry chances of success. Take time to know your unique niche to start with and move forward. I know how it feels like you are doubting your own expertise and it’s shown to your blog as well. I never noticed that but when I scrolled to my previous blogs, I saw my faults. Without a clear niche, I can tell you, you will not be a successful blogger. Seriously.
15. Your blog can survive for long time niche-less.
This is the major mistake every new blogger is doing. A lot of expert bloggers are encouraging this, too. Every year, there are around 150 million blogs published, yet they existed for some months and die. Out of the 150 million, only 25 million can survive. The reason? They all boil down with blog niche. If you don’t have a clear niche, you will have low chances of getting noticed and make influence against the other 25 million blogs exist on the web.
16. If your blog niche is well-established, you are ready for a passive income.
I always tell this to my posts that the results of blogging will not take effect after a week or even a month of blogging. It will take some time before your expected and desired results will be seen. The same thing with passive income. It does mean that as soon as you start blogging with your well-established niche, you are ready to earn your first passive income. It will take time.
17. They love you and they care for you and your needs 24/7.
“We really care about your business and your blogging needs.. so enroll to our awesome course because it contains all valuable modules that will really help your blog to boost online.” This is what they always tell you, right? Well, they say that to me, too, all the time. Just a tip, if you really want to know they are really concern about you and your blogging needs, send them a random email, a Facebook message, or a tweet, and see if they will reply. I assure you, out of 10 expert bloggers, only 1 or 2 of them will reply. Try it yourself and you will know what I’m talking about. Featured photo credits: Man highlighting tasks in front of PC, Two women working in front of PC, Men planning tasks Featured photo credit: Thomas Lefebvre/Unsplash via images.unsplash.com
