Late in 2011, when I was in college, created my first blog on Blogspot. Just in 2 months, I had written a dozen of posts without care whether people are finding and reading my blog posts. In fact, I started a blog without any intention of making money online. But a single Blogging Advice changed everything for me.
It was almost a successful blog because I was getting everything for which I had created the blog. I was listing assignments and projects with solutions. My friends were getting helped and referring other too.
After some time, students of other colleges also discovered it and they were also referring other without any push from my side.
One day, I saw every day almost more than 100 unique students were coming to the blog and after few weeks it becomes 200/day and finally 900/day. I never expected such a great hike.
I was feeling great, so started adding more useful and interesting contents. So that I could help more and more people.
Honestly, I didn’t know I can make money from my blog.I was feeling proud of my blog, ever morning I had something different to check and something different to feel. But one day, a disaster happened:
First Mistake: I Discovered I Can Make Money Through My Blog
After ending of the 2nd semester, most students were going home, but I decided to stay in the hostel to expand the reach of my blog. One day I was having dinner in hostel’s mess, suddenly, a random guy came and said due I heard about your blog, it’s damn awesome. It was normal for me so I said thank you, sir.
But, after few minutes, he said dude my brother’s friend have a blog like you and he is making more than $1000 every month from his blog. It was just like someone is going to give me $1000 check every month because I had a blog.
I asked him how he said I will ask him how exactly you can too. After few hours he connects me with his brother’s friend. He went through my website and tell bro you can make more than me. I said wow! but how?
He replied, apply for Adsense, I said what is Adsense? He screamed like I committed a sin. Whhhatt! you are a blogger and you don’t know Adsense. People should know it far before he/she start a blog.
I said, bro somehow I couldn’t know, but can you please help me. He sent a youtube channel link and said follow them to apply and get started with Adsense.
I followed and wasted my complete vacation just to get Adsense approval and nothing else. Fortunately, they approved my website after 2 weeks.
I called that guy, bro Adsense has approved my account and I am able to run ads on my blog. What should I do the next?
He replied, wow congratulations now you will become the rich bro. I said, is it? But anyway thanks for your help.
In fact, he was not making money through his blog, as Adsense never approved his blog. He was helping other to get hosting service through his affiliate link: the sources of income for him. As his blog was not generating traffic, so he was relying on personal contacts and relations.
I was his next prey:
He was talking to me because he wanted me to buy web hosting service through his affiliate link. I did not know why should I do this instead of writing and sharing more content, that I have left for weeks ago.
The Biggest Mistake: I Migrated to WordPress
But somehow he convinced me to migrate my blog from BlogSpot to WordPress. So, finally, I bought web hosting and started again with WordPress. I imported everything from my BlogSpot blog to fresh new WordPress and in the next couple of minutes, I added Adsense code.
But this process took almost 2 months and around $500 quick investment at that time. So, my first priority became to get back my $500 as soon as possible, so I started focusing on how to increase Adsense income.
Now I had an active Adsense account with few dollars per month. But the fact was, I lost everything one by one.
- First I lost traffic because URL was changed.
- I deleted BlogSpot blog due to avoid duplicate content which was recommended by Adsense and that smart guy too.
- I lost 15K natural and highly active unique traffic per month.
- Now, I had only 3-4K unique traffic that was 5 times less than the actual.
- That helping guy never picked my phone again.
- I was making around $23 per month by instead of $100 on Blogspot.
- I lost feeling wow every morning.
- A single blogging advice made me greedy and directionless.
Finally, I lost everything and changed the niche of the blog just to recover that small $500 investment. I changed the topics, again and again, to see which is working or not. But at last, I could never feel like before when I started my first blog.
Finally, I Gave up Blogging Because:
It was last 7th semester of the 4th year, I was completely broken with my blog and blogging. I spent more than 15 hours per day for nothing.
I knew now time going to change completely, college will be over in next few months. So, I should get a job like normally people do.
So, I did. Although I failed in blogging, but I learned a lot and a lot enough to get my first job as marketing manager in a startup on 30 minutes phone interview.
Now I forgot the word blogging and continued life as an employee. Apart from day job, I was proactively helping startups set up their blog and marketing on weekends for free most of the time.
Meanwhile, I was getting lots of job offers from startups through Angellist but never switched. But after few months, a new startup from Bangalore offered me a job that was the best offer I could get so far. So, after a long time I decided to come Bangalore not only because the offer was great, in fact, I was looking for any opportunity from Bangalore to kick-start my startup journey from here.
So finally, I came to Bangalore on March 3rd, 2016, and started a new journey as a full-time employee. Everything is fine, I have a job with an extremely handsome salary.
How I Come Back With My Unconditional Blogging Passion?
But today, I have started again, like I did it in my college. This time my intention is same helping others first.
Although I am going to start yet another blog: How to Start and Market You Blog? But I promise, its far apart from just selling an affiliate product.
It’s far apart from trapping people to go directionless. Here are modern and startup and growth hacking style techniques that I have been using as aggressive marketer.
Apart from blogging, here I am sharing how I helped many startups including, WIWGO, Uninstall.io, iService and lots of other to take their business to the next level.
Besides a wrong blogging advice, I made lots of mistakes that caused friction to get anything from my previous blogs. Here are 10 blogging mistakes that I committed before getting the real success at blogging. Hope this will help newbie struggling blogger and startups to kick start their growth from scratch.
10 Blogging Mistakes done by me.
After getting a great success at blogging without knowing the blog actually, I become directionless after a wrong blogging advice. I never ever blame the people who have given me suggestions and advice, because it was me who took their advice in wrong way.
So, these are my own mistakes that you should never make to start a successful blog.
1. Started Blogs Without Any Plan:
After my first undesired failure, I started so many blogs in next two years with a hope this work instead of focusing on one. Unfortunately, I made the same mistake again & again with every new blog. I was doing blogging something like this: Got an idea, I will start a new blog, wrote some new posts with a hope of money will roll into my account. Nothing happened, changed my mind and start with new one.
If you do not start with a fixed plan and journey, you can’t go ahead after a certain limit, even if you have a great idea. But if you don’t want to give up, you will restart again, but this time I don’t think you will start with the same topic.
So, if you want to create a killer blog, start with a great plan first. Be crystal clear, what do you want to achieve through your blog. Make weekly, monthly and yearly plans.
Pro tip: Extremely Important Things To Do Before You Start a Blog
2. Lake Of Consistency:
This was another biggest blogging mistake done by me. I never stick with a single blog for more than 6 months, but success at blogging requires a long and highly focused consistency throughout the journey.
If you are serious about your career with blogging, never do this like me. Take you blog like your life changing project, start with a solid plan and always stick with whatever you have fixed to do.
3. Never Decided Audience First:
Before or during the creation of 6 blogs unsuccessful blogs, I never minded considering a perfect audience first. I could not realise its most important part of blogging. So, I got no one is considering my blog even search engine.
Therefore, if you want to start a successful blog, decide your audience first. Then create a list of their problems that you are going to solve through your blog.
Then start seeding the content based on what they need and want, not what you wish to share.
4. Never Told Something New:
I had been sharing the same thing that thousands of other people already saying. I remember when I started a news blog, I was sharing the same content with small changes.
Although the website was getting good traffic, but the quality was very poor and most of them were never coming back because there was nothing new that they should care.
That was another wrong turn to become an another failure blogger. So, if you want to get a quality traffic, tell something new that was never told. Share things that are different and very useful for users.
5. Copied Others Ideas:
As I told I started 6 blogs before this openthrive.com, So you can guess how many time had copied ideas from other bloggers. Whenever I saw a blog is doing great, I started a clone of that. But finally, I got nothing except start a blog again.
So, if you want to be a professional blogger, come up with your own brand new idea. You can use others ideas just for the inspiration only.
6. Less Conscious For SEO:
In the beginning, I was thinking blogging is just about sharing ideas and magnetising it for money. But that was a complete a misconception and also one of a big mistake. I never consider what search engine want to be on my blog and posts. So, I failed due to ignorance of search engine optimisation too.
By the way, if you start a blog, never compromise what the search engines want on your blog. Write every piece of your content for both search engine as well as real people. SEO is not easy as people think, but also not harder like rocket science.
Pro Tips:
How to Create WordPress Blog Professional and SEO Optimised
On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page
Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List
7. Compromised With Webhosting Service:
The Blog is just like a machine, it needs lots of quality resources to run smoothly. Web hosting comes first to run it smoothly, wrong selection can destroy your blog anytime. I started my blog on Blogspot, that was fine because I had not a credit card to buy hosting for WordPress.
Then after few months, I migrated to a shared hosting sold by a reseller, that killed my blog and they never replied to my email. I lost my blog due to poor customer service provided by the web host.
Then I moved my blog to BlueHost, that I am still using, it’s better than whatever I tried. So, to launch and run a. successful blog, select your web hosting service wisely who has great customer support.
8. No interactions With Other Bloggers:
Actually, I am not an introvert or shy person, but I never understood the importance of connections with like-minded people of the blogging community. I never explored out of the box, and the result was nothing except became directionless.
If you want a special recognition in the logging community, you must have to connect with others. Get involved in their jobs, make some sure fire connections with them. This will always help you to make right decisions for you.
9. Never Write For Others Blog:
I never wrote a single post on blogs other than mine. Even I knew guest blogging helps a lot, but couldn’t realise it practically. In fact, it introduces you to a completely new world.
So, whether guest blogging is importance for search engine optimisation or not, you should do it anyway. It will help you to meet completely new people and also bring new readers to your blog.
10. Did not Collect Email Address:
This was not last but another big blogging mistakes done by me. Some of my blogs had thousands of traffics, but I never used an opt-in form to collect email address. At last, I have added one here on openthrive.com, which is the main traffic source for my blog.
So, for a great outcome from your blog, you should use an opt-in form to collect email address. Use a lead magnet, that is something for free to leave their email address.
Bottom Line:
If you want to start and grow your blog from day one, start with a solid foundation plan. Be consistent, regular and active everywhere in the blogging community.
Before implementing any advice or suggestions, think twice whether that is use for your blog or not. If you are honest and writing useful content regularly, your blog will get traffic and you will make money.
Are you still reading? That’s cool buddy, let’s take the conversation further through the comment below. HAPPY BLOGGING!
The post How I Destroyed My Successful Blog and Start a Blog Again appeared first on OpenThrive.