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7 Mistakes I Made My First Year Blogging

7 Mistakes I Made My First Year Blogging
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There is no doubt that blogging with the intent of making a full-time income is an uphill battle.

Finding success in this industry takes time, the more you put in, the more you get out.

Don’t waste any time your first year by avoiding these seven mistake I made.

7 Mistakes I Made My First Year Blogging

7 Mistakes I Made My First Year Blogging

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please read my disclosure here.

I launched and promoted my blog with no content

I am so embarrassed to even admit this one, but it’s true.

Once I finished setting up my blog and making it look pretty I hit the launch button.

Then I wrote one blog post and shared it on Facebook and Pinterest.

I had a few page views come in and essentially I was invited customers into a store with nothing on the shelves.

It likely confused them and just embarrassed me.

If you’re looking to start a blog, first I recommend you check out my tutorial here.

Then, once you’re all set up, create at least 20 solid helpful and informative posts before you launch your site and start promoting them on social media.

I didn’t focus on growing my email list

Before I started my blog and I was doing reasearch I must have come across this piece of advice at least 100 times.

It was the one piece of advice I knowingly decided to ignore.

I almost never use my email and I figured either does anyone else, so I wouldn’t  focus on trying to get email subscribers.

I believed anyone who cared to get emails from me, actually read them, and come back to my blog, would subscribe on their own.

Do you want to guess how many email subscribers I got my first year with that tactic?

EIGHT.

Your email subscribers are your loyal followers. The people who care what you have to say. The people who are most likely interested in buying the products that you recommend.

All bloggers who are making good money blogging put a lot of effort into nurturing and growing their email list.

The best way to do this is to offer an incentive. Host a giveaway, offer a free resource like an ebook or printables in exchange for signing up for your email list.

I thought social media followers would come on their own

Social media followers are a lost easier to get than email subscribers, but you should still be making extra efforts to grow these number if you want to speed up your success in the blogging world.

A great way to do this is to be active on your platforms.

Post daily and reply to comments. Engaging your audience will increase your chances of them sharing your content, getting it in front of a larger audience, potentially gaining you more followers.

 

RELATED READING: How To Start A Mom Blog

 

I put off signing up for Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great free resources with insights on your blog.

They show you how your website is performing, tracks your visitors and other stats.

I had read about it and added it to my mental to-do list, where it obviously got lost.

I say this because in my fourth month blogging I had one post perform very well. My traffic jumped from 100 views a day to almost 2000 everyday for about a month.

I’m pretty sure I probably qualified to apply for Mediavine (a higher paying ad company than Google Adsense) that month, but I didn’t have the Google Analytics report to prove it.

I’ve since sign up for analytics but of course, because of other blogging mistakes I’ll talk about, I haven’t had the same traffic spike since.

The takeaway, sign up for Google Analytics. It’s free and, as a blogger, you’ll need it.

I waited to get Tailwind

It cost a little bit of money to start a blog, with no guarantee that you’ll make that money back anytime soon.

I wanted to believe in myself and I did. I paid for my hosting and domain, but I was so afraid of failure that I didn’t want to invest any more money until I saw potential in my blog.

There are a lot of resources out there that will help you grow your blog, but you can live without them.

Some bloggers will disagree, other will be on my side, Tailwind is a bloggers resource I can’t live without.

Tailwind allows you to schedule your posts on Pinterest and Instagram. It saves you HOURS, allowing you to use that extra time to grow you blog in other ways.

As a mom with little to no free time, I know I would have given up a long time ago with it.

I didn’t take any blogging courses

As I mentioned, I didn’t want to dump a bunch of money I didn’t have into something I wasn’t sure about.

Now that I have been blogging for over a year I am looking into purchasing some courses to take my blog to the next level.

Their nothing wrong with waiting, I’m just saying I know my blog would be further along if I had taken some blogging courses in the beginning and I’d probably not have made as many blogging mistakes.

I wasn’t consistent

By not being consistent I mean I didn’t put out content regularly at certain times throughout the year.

When I started my blog I started off strong. Working on it every spare second I could because I was determined to turn this into a career to build a better life for my family.

But then life happened, as it does. We moved into our new house, we got married, etc.

There were times when I didn’t put out any more content for weeks.

Let me emphasize something, losing consistency in your blog is the absolute surest way to kill your success.

Like I said, I started off strong. Posting high quality helpful blog post twice a week. Following all of the expert tips and my traffic grew and grew and grew.

I was almost there. By there, I mean that goal blogger sets for their website.

I was almost where I needed my traffic to be to bring in the income I needed to blog full-time.

Taking those breaks I took killed me. I thought when I could get back at it, I’d pick up where I left off traffic wise, but that was not the case at all.

If you follow any of the tips I’ve given you today follow this one:

Always post consistently, at least once a week.

If you follow that rule and you put in the time and the effort, it will take time, but you will achieve your blogging goals.

How is your blog coming along? Have you made any of these mistakes? I want to know in the comments below!

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7 Mistakes I Made My First Year Blogging
7 Mistakes I Made My First Year Blogging
If you’re trying to learn how to start a blog so you can make money online then you need to avoid these blogging mistakes. #blogging #startablog

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About Sierrah Schmidt

Hi! I’m Sierrah. Welcome to Another Mommy Blogger. Subscribe now and follow me on Facebook and Pinterest to get all my mommy tips for making life easier on this journey called motherhood.
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2 thoughts on “7 Mistakes I Made My First Year Blogging

  1. Thank you so much for writing this. These are awesome tips! It is so easy to get lost in every day family life that we forget we need to focus on growing our email list and keeping our readers engaged. I have been blogging for over 2 years and I am still trying hard at growing my email list (even with different, free opt-ins). Blogging is hard work, that’s for sure!

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