Successful Blogging – Reasons Why 99% Fail At Blogging

This is a guest post by Karo Itoje

What is successful blogging? And how many people are successful in blogging?

You can be said to be a successful blogger if you have followed the right steps to building a blog and as a result now have a blog doing well with good number of regular traffic and monetization models.

Several thousands of people come online everyday to set up a new blog. But I can guaranty that at least 80% of the blogs set up everyday do not succeed.

1. The owners probably get frustrated or lose interest. But why?
2. Do people set up blogs just to abandon them? Or is there something wrong?
3. Why are there so few successful bloggers and millions of failures?

These are some questions I am sure you have pondered about at some point. And this article wants to look deep into them.

Successful blogging : A look at why people fail using myself as an example

I have failed at blogging before. My very first blog didn’t do well. And when I ponder why there are so much failed blogs I look back to what went wrong with my first blog. Comparing what I know now to what I didn’t know before.

My first blog was set up for me by a friend. I used to run a series on network marketing in a local newspaper. And one day a friend just called me to say he had set up a blog for me that I should bring my writing online.

So I came online and started publishing on the blog. The blog only got few visitors a day before I got frustrated. I took sometime off to learn about blogging. Then I realized why I failed.

Successful blogging : Proven Reasons why people fail

1. Lack of proper education on what blogging is about and what awaits them.
   1. I started publishing online without even knowing what Keyword meant. Talk more of how to properly optimize a page with a chosen keyword.
2. Many people rush online to set up blogs for the wrong reasons.
3. Everybody is setting up a blog, why don’t I set up one? Or wow! Alvin Phang made a 5 figure income from blogging I must get on board!.
4. Whatever field you are interested in, you have to first learn the techniques or how to achieve success in it before going into it.
5. Buy some books when necessary and learn. Not everybody gives the real valuable information for free. The little investment will save you time.
6. If you want to make money, be ready to spend money.

Lack of the right information

Some of the pros in blogging are not telling it how it really is. And how it really works. What you always hear is “I made a 5 figure income from blogging, you too can”. Then what follows next is what every other person is talking about. Set up a blog, drive traffic to it and so on.

And you go on to do the things they claim they are doing, but you don’t achieve same success as they are did. So what could be wrong? What is wrong that people hardly talk about or emphasize are what follows below.

Steps to successful blogging that people hardly talk about

Failure to plan

Before you set up a blog, you must take sometime to ask yourself: Why do I want to set up a blog? What purpose will it serve? Will it be a personal blog? Or do you hope to make money from the blog?

If so, will it be just an extra means of income or a major means of income? Once you have provided clear answers to the questions above, then the next question should be, what do you write about?

Now this is the time you look deep into yourself and find areas you are really good at. Your goal is to come up with 2 or 3 topics that you can comfortably write on and then do a detailed research on all of them.

How to do effective keyword research

When you have identified 3 topics you can write on, then do a proper research on the three topics. I say three because after an effective research you could realize that some of the topics are not profitable enough to pursue and drop them.

Moreover it’s always good to have other options to compare with so that you end up with the most profitable topic for your blog. Your research is to determine if your topic has:

1. Good amount of monthly searches.
2. The level of current competition for that topic.
3. How much the keyword is worth (you want to be sure the keyword that forms your site’s overall concept can be monetized in different ways).

From your research, you pick out hundreds of profitable related keywords that will form the content for your blog. So you don’t end up looking for what to write on after starting your blog.

And also spy on your competitors to get general ideas. In other to know how to better position yourself to stand out in the niche.

Meaning before setting up a blog, you should have detailed information about your primary keyword (topic), including the major monetization models that you will use on your blog.

I couldn’t go deep into how to actually do the research for each data you seek because that will run the article into too many pages. So I’ll direct you to the article how to start a blog. It provides detailed explanation on all that is involved in effective keyword research and more.

The kind of research involved takes time. Well, depending on the research tool you use. But it is very necessary that you complete this step before starting your blog.

Some Benefits of Effective Keyword Research

It saves you of so many headaches later, such as properly optimizing your blog for your primary keyword and always wondering what next to write about.

You find high profitable keywords allows you to focus on what is important – providing content for your blog. You also end up with a much focused content based blog.

And spying on your competitors gives you a upper hand over them.

Lack of proper on-page optimization

If you don’t plan your blog, you will probably fail in this aspect.

Your keywords should be used in specific areas of your blog (blog title, blog post titles and description), as well as in your blog posts (body). Each post you write should be keyword focused. And do not digress from the theme of your site. You could confuse the search engines. Always stay on topic.

Lack of proper link building

Yes you need links to your articles to help them rank but you need the right links too. It is better you get 5 real good links from related sites to your blog than buy 50 links from link farms.

In whatever you do on your site, keep it real.

Your priority at all times should be to please your readers and the search engines. Get links from some related sites, directories and social networking sites. And link out to sites that provide value to your readers.

These are the major steps to successful blogging and these are the areas where most people lack. If you get these steps right, every other things will fall into place. And nothing will stop you from becoming a successful blogger.

About The Author

Karo Itoje is a full time online home business Infopreneur. She has a website where she provides a step by step tutorial guide on blogging for beginners. Subscribe to her feed here by Email to follow her updates.