Got a blog? All excited to pump out content & make a killing as a blogger?
Well, let me level with you. Let me tell you some hard truths that I wish someone told me when I started my blogging journey.
Here’s 5 reasons why your blog may not last the year! And how to tread carefully!
I am a master of building failed blogs!
Over the last many years, I must have built at least 20 different blogs. And I am quite sure a minimum of 15 are absolute failures.
Why?
Well, due to numerous reasons which we will see in this post. Looking back, I now realize the mistakes I made. I don’t count these now non-existent blogs as failures, but as learnings. Because each of the failed blog taught me something. It taught me what works and what doesn’t. And why I am doing all these things in the first place.
It’s a post of my introspections & lessons from my failures. I hope it helps you avoid some simple mistakes that usually lead to horrible results or even end of your blog.
5 reasons your blog will fail within the year
You might resonate with 1 or more of the below points, maybe even all. But know in mind that if you feel your blog falls in any of these categories, you should do a deep dive into your blog’s future & undertake measures of course correction.
1. You fail to move or inspire people & follow the robotic content path
Listening is an art we humans love.
In the digital world, people listen to you through your content – to what you have to say.
And it helps if you are a good communicator. It helps if you can put out inspiring, helpful content. It helps if you have a voice of your own.
AI-generated, ghost-writer written content are boring & bland. At times, confusing also. No one enjoys reading such posts, they could just Chat-GPT instead. You are not offering any real value to your readers – just regurgitating what machines already do.
If anyone reads something for over a minute today, it’s really because they enjoy it. They cherish it and feel that it’s something valuable, something not easily available elsewhere.
You should talk to readers as “you” & have an authentic voice – that’s what makes you stand out today in the world of AI content. Write from your heart. Tell people who you are, why you blog, what they gain from listening to you, and how you are helping people.
Go read through your entire blog and see how it sounds. Is it robotic? Is it spammy?
or is it inspiring? it’s informative? it’s authentic?
If you fail to inspire people, you fail to retain people -> which means less time spent on your blog by visitors -> lower rankings in search engines -> and low earnings!
Have a helpful, authentic & personal voice. Each of your post should inspire people to be better at something.
Make people want to be better & help them be better – that’s what your blog should do!
2. You didn’t start with the end in mind
I’m a huge fan of the book “7 habits of highly effective people” – I highly recommend every aspiring blogger to read this wonderful book. In this book, the second habit is called “Begin with the end in mind”. It means that whatever you do, you should have a goal that you are gravitating towards.
The same applies for blogging as well. It’s very important to have a direction, a destination that you are driving towards. An destination-less journey might be fun, but you will end up not getting anywhere. Go places instead!
In short, define your goal, visualize the end & work towards it.
Here are some goals that you can adopt:
- Reach 100K monthly website visitors
- Publish 100 high-quality blogposts
- Make $100K per year from my blog
- Build an eye-catching, awe-inspiring website
- Build an email list of 100K subscribers and so on…
What happens if you do not set a goal?
Well, for one, you do not know when to celebrate or when to call it quits. For example, you might just quit too early if you do not have clear goals.
Second, goals set the tone for your journey. It helps you plan & prioritize things better. Anything that is not taking you towards your blogging goals is not worth chasing – as simple as that!
For example, if your goal is to attain 100K monthly visitors, you will realize making Instagram reels are not going to help, instead having a laser-focus on SEO & Pinterest might!
Third, as business leaders say, once you start tracking something, things will improve automatically. Having a goal & continually tracking the progress is important to achieve blogging success!
In short – having clear, fixed goals makes your life easier!
3. You fail to ask your readers what you want, you forget what’s important – and thereby fail to get results!
There is this famous quote that resonates with me a lot – “If you want something, go get it!”
I believe it’s an apt quote for this point I’m trying to convey.
You must have set a goal while starting – could be getting more subscribers, getting more pageviews, increasing sales, etc.
But if you actually want these goals to happen, you must ask your readers for help or nudge them towards the goal.
Want more subscribers?
Ask your readers to subscribe. Add an email capture form in a visible part of your blog. Add pop-up forms that encourage people to subscribe.
Want more pageviews?
Recommend good pages to your readers and ask them to go visit it. Tell them how these pages will help them!
Want more sales?
Tell people what you are selling and how they’ll get benefited. Talk about your product in your blogposts. Have a visible part of your blog dedicated to promoting your product. Send a mail to your subscribers.
And what happens if you forget to ask your readers? if you forget to promote something that’ll take you towards your goals?
Well, you’ll never reach your goals.
Or you’ll be progressing so slowly that you’ll gradually lose motivation.
This is something that happens to a lot of bloggers actually. Do not write content to benefit your readers alone – use content to your benefit as well, to reach your goals. It should be a win-win scenario.
In blogging, if either party fails – both fails! Both you and your reader should win!
4. “I have no time” paradox
Personally, one of the most common reasons why I had to drop several of my blogging projects is that I couldn’t find enough time. Be it in college, be it while working – time was limited.
This will be the case with almost all bloggers who are just starting out. Time is the bottleneck.
But you know what?
Time is actually not the issue here. Our priorities are!
I had to drop my projects because I prioritized something else – maybe studies, maybe chilling out, maybe watching movies, maybe playing sports. The reality is that there is only 24 hours in a day and you have to prioritize what’s important to you.
So, if you feel that there are many priority items in your life that you really truly do not have time for blogging, please drop the thought of being a blogger – you’ll never make it. Blogging is hard – it requires a lot of effort, dedication & time. And if that’s something which you cannot prioritize, we know how the end result would look like.
My genuine recommendation is to prioritize your blog over all the low-value activities you do – cut that doom-scrolling time, cut the Netflix & chill time, half your phone calls, etc. There is always a way to find more time!
5. You depended on a single source of traffic & fell on the death-trap!
Too much of anything is never good!
Your blog gets a million visitors from Google & nothing from others? You have a Pinterest-traffic only blog with 100K visitors?
Well, you should be extremely careful because that’s the worst situation to be in according to me. I mean, it’s of course good to have a lot of traffic. But it’s never to have too much traffic from a single source.
Why?
Because if this source decides to go nuts, you’ll be left with nothing.
You must have read about the recent Helpful Content Update (HCU) from Google where hundreds, if not thousands of bloggers lost their entire traffic overnight. I have read about websites getting millions of views going to zero. Companies getting bankrupt, people getting fired.
All for what? Because Google decided to revamp their algorithm!
And it doesn’t stop with Google alone. Very recently, one of my Pinterest accounts was getting about 800 visitors a day. Not too big, but not too shabby either, I was making a few hundred dollars from Mediavine Journey.
And all of a sudden, over a course of a week, I had a 99% drop in my traffic. BOOM!
From 800 daily visitors to single digit visitors! I got wiped out entirely. This was a Pinterest-only blog & got totaled. I checked with Pinterest support if it’s due to some penalty, but not. I had no idea what happened, but that was the end of the site. I continued pinning 24 pins daily with a VA for 2 consecutive months, but for no success!
The point being – do not depend on any one source for your traffic. It’s the most risky thing in the world.
Diversify. Have multiple sources of traffic.
I highly recommend going for all the 4 key traffic channels simultaneously so that you are always safe – Google, Pinterest, Facebook & email list.
And complement the above with YouTube, courses, books, digital products, etc. Try to have multiple sources of income & traffic!
What do You Think?
Blogging is an ever changing endeavor. Only someone passionate, someone who keeps themselves on top of what’s happening can move ahead. Others will get left behind because what works today will not work tomorrow, you have to keep evolving continuously.
By default, most blogs are destined to fail, because hey, a large number of people fall on at least 1 of the below categories. Personally, I had blogs failing due to all of these reasons, I am a master of failing!
- You might have decided to go with bland, boring, freelancer or AI written content
- You might have just started out of a moment of excitement without any clear goals or plan
- You are not engaging with your readers, not nudging them to do what you want or is not asking your readers for help!
- You have no time for blogging (in other words, it’s not a priority)
- You get traffic only from one source (and is bound to get hit sometime in future)
My two cents is to understand these reasons for failure & avoid it. Just do the below things and you are golden.
- Write from your heart. Write helpful, informative content that people will cherish. Have a voice of your own.
- Have a clear goal that you want to achieve. Be it no of visitors, income, pageviews, email subscribers – define it. You must have goals set in stone.
- Ask your readers for help. If you are helping them with awesome information, they will help you out by spending time in your blog and purchasing things from your blog. Ask them openly or nudge them towards it. No one get’s results by wishing for something, we have to go get it.
- Prioritize blogging. Cut out TV & social media, blog instead
- Google, Pinterest & Facebook are not your friends. Do not depend on a single source, you will get impacted sometime. If not today, but sometime in future. Have a diversified source of traffic & income!
That’s what I feel. What do you think?
What do you feel are the other reasons why new blogs do not make it to the 1 year mark?
Let me know in the comments section below!