By James Adams
Don’t give up if your blog isn’t making money. You hear blogger success stories all the time where they brag about making thousands or millions of dollars blogging, and here you are making zero. It doesn’t seem fair. Before throwing in the towel read about these 8 reasons why your blog doesn’t make money. By addressing just a few issues you could open the door to your own blogging success.
- Update regularly – Erratic updates are a turn off to your readers who come looking for recent information only to find that you’ve not published a post for months and your last post was apologizing for not writing for so long. Establish a routine and make sure your blog features new, fresh, and exciting content.
- You get hung up on the negatives – As your blog gets more attention, you will find that some of your competitors will try to preserve their turf. You might get hacked or spammed and your name might even be disrespected in the community. You can get all uptight about that if you want, but focusing on the negatives will keep you from ever making money. Stay focused on creating quality content. Reflect an upbeat attitude and take the bumps in the road in stride: they are just part of the terrain.
- Lousy content – The quality of your content will determine much of your success in the blogosphere. Visitors may come to your site regardless of quality, but they won’t stay, giving you less opportunity to close a sale or attract clicks on advertising. You must give visitors a reason to come to your site and stay. That means that your blog will not make money until you make a commitment to offering valuable content that your visitors find useful.
- Wasting time – Every blogger needs to spend some time in training, learning tips and tricks from the pros, but if you spend too much time “learning,” you won’t have enough time to actually do anything to make money. Make sure there’s a balance in your life so you have enough time to work on making money.
- Your revenue stream doesn’t work for your format – With blogging, one size does not fit all. If you’re focusing all your attention of affiliate sales and you haven’t made a sale in months in spite of solid traffic patterns, perhaps the affiliate thing isn’t for you. Stop the insanity of believing that one day your approach will magically work and try something new. Pay per click advertising, for example, might work better in your case.
- Lack of community – Perhaps your blog doesn’t make money because you don’t encourage a community atmosphere. Ignoring visitor comments will discourage participation. First, if you never allow comments to appear on your blog visitors will think that you don’t get much traffic. If you actually do approve comments, you need to post a response to get a discussion started. People like a lively, active environment where participation is welcome.
- Where’s the mailing list? – Offering your visitors a chance to subscribe to your email list gives you the chance to develop a loyal following. Also, because only those interested in your material will subscribe, a mailing list offers a list of pre-qualified leads that can be converted to sales. Take some time to create an invitation to join your mailing list and put it where people can easily find it: you won’t be disappointed.
- Write for your audience – Many blogs don’t make money because they don’t have material people care about. Even if you use all the best tips and tricks, you won’t make money if no one cares. Use article marketing to put long tail keywords on your site that will attract visitors who are ready to buy. Be sure to do your research though, and write about keywords and key phrases that are active on the net.
By aiming to earn money from your blog, you have set before you a challenging goal which few bloggers ever achieve. These 8 reasons why your blog doesn’t make money will help you identify issues you can address today to turn things around.
This post was written by James Adams who is an in-house blogger and analyst at an online store specialising in toner cartridges. Much of James’ time is spent reviewing new hardware releases such as the CB540A.