6 Reasons Why Your Blog May Be Failing

This is a guest post by Ethan from MyCollegeDebt.org. MyCollegeDebt.org is the story of how Ethan is using the internet and his entrepreneurial spirit to pay for his college education.

1) Your niche is too narrow. Each niche has a potential market. The MMO market is huge, and the possibilities for blogging about making money online are almost endless. While the “get paid to search the Internet” market is not nearly as big as the MMO market, there is still a market for this niche. However, the get paid to search the Internet niche is simply not sustainable. Take a look at this blog. It has declared its niche to be “get paid to search the Internet“. As you can see there are 8 posts there, and there has not been a new one in the past 10 days. What’s more, the posts are atrociously repetitive, in addition to the blogger sounding as though they are begging for referrals. It seems that the 8 posts are about as far as the blog is going to go. The reason - the topic is too narrow and could have been covered in one well written article rather than in 8 posts in a blog.

2) You lack focus. You may profess to have a niche, but your posting is all over the place. I see this frequently amongst new bloggers. The blogger will start the website with a niche in mind, but in an effort to gain more traffic and popularity will post about what is popular and trendy at the moment. There are two reasons why readers hate this. First, the reader approaches the blog with a mindset of gaining valuable information on a topic. It is quite off-putting when the reader is met with a post on a completely different topic. Second, if it is popular and trendy - chances are we have all read it at least once already. Keep it on topic, and keep it fresh - readers like that.

3) You lack writing skills. Fact: not everyone was created with equal writing skills. This might not sound very “tolerant”, but it is the truth. The redeeming factor here is that good writing can be learned. The blogging world is full of people with excellent writing skills. Take a look at the dominant bloggers in the industry right now. What do they all have in common? They are all phenomenal writers. You might know all that there is to know on a topic, but unless you learn to convey your thoughts to readers in a compelling way you will get nowhere. Conversely, good writing is one of the biggest draws for new readers and will keep them coming back time after time.

4) Your design is bad, obnoxious, or just doesn’t fit the topic. For every well designed blog on the Internet there are at the least 2 poorly designed ones. When it comes to blog designs and layouts, less is more. Excessive sidebar plug-ins and widgets become obnoxious and ultimately slow site performance. Colors are a big deal as well. It is best to pick one which is neutral rather than one which is bright and will make people’s eyes hurt. The only exception to having a poor theme is having top-notch, high quality, and completely phenomenal content.

5) You don’t practice what you preach. Have you ever been to the Search Engine Optimization Tips blog whose site title is SEO Tipz? #1 in the SERPs for that keyword no doubt. How about the Authority Directory that has a PR of 0? You can find more authority on most spam blogs. Maybe you have seen the Make Money Blogging expert who routinely posts about blenders for PayPerPost? Making $4 to post about blenders does not make you a Make Money Blogging expert. Just when you think you have seen it all, someone else manages to do something even more creatively ignorant. It never ceases to amaze me that the human mind is capable of such things. Do these people even realize what they are doing? 9 times out of 10 - they don’t. Please, be doers and not writers only.

6) The competition is too good. The blogosphere is tough to break into, but easy to get engulfed in. If you wish to be taken seriously, it is better to make your success somewhere else first and then blog about how you did it and how you are continuing to do it. Take a hint from the most popular bloggers. Darren Rowse didn’t just up and start ProBlogger out of nowhere. Rather, ProBlogger was a sort of off-shoot of another blog where the readers were getting annoyed about him posting blogging tips instead of other posts related to the topic. Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney made a killing doing PPC and other affiliate marketing before he rose to prominence as a blogger. John Chow made a good bit off of his hardware review website before he started making money online telling people how much money he makes online. Zac Johnson made a lot of money in affiliate marketing before he started his popular blog which earns him about $5000 per month now. This is not to say that you can’t build your blog success from the ground up, but it sure helps if you can go in with some expertise and some good connections already established.

You read the list. Are you guilty of any of these? What is your plan of action?