People love blogging, but everyone will not be successful. There are hundreds and thousands of blogs which fail and finally close daily. I too faced the similar situation in the past and thought to share my experience with all Shouters. I am going to talk about 10 reasons why a blog may fail. This may not be a complete list, but I try to include as much as I can.
People put so much effort in writing and marketing their blog. You can understand how badly a failure will hurt the blogger. We have competition everywhere even in Blogging. So, when I say failure it means:
- Your blog is not getting popular
- The cost of maintaining a blog is more than the blog income and increasing every year
- Not much traffic to your blog
- Fewer subscribers and comments
- Because of above 4 reasons, you may feel disappointed, discouraged and less motivated to write
A successful blog does not only mean good money or income, it also means people look onto you as an inspiration, they want to listen from you, they wait for your post, and most important you yourself feel confident and proud of your work. I would like to quote this dialogue from 3 idiots movie:
Bachcha Kabil bano, Kabil… Kamyabi toh saali jhak maarke peechhe bhagegi
Be capable my son, capable… Success will follow you no matter what
So let’s now see the Top 10 reason why a blog may not be successful:
Where is the Money – This is the first question every new blogger tries to find. Quick money. And they search with this text “How to earn money from Blog” more often on the Internet. In my opinion when you start a blog, do not think about revenue.
Focus on your content, Traffic, blog designing and make friends. Some of my friends even ask how to use AdSense after 2-3 posts. The reality is what is the use of the ad if you do not have enough visitors. Some bloggers even try to promote a product, without even using it.
If you read the success story of successful bloggers, you will find they never start with the money factor. They focused on the content, visitors and money followed them.
You need to be genuine to your audience. Nobody is stopping you from creating a revenue plan but first focus on the important things.
You are Alone – Why alone, blogging is all about making friends, connections, Networking, share, follow and comment. A blogger who do not have connections and want to just work alone with his/her blog will fail eventually.
So create a list of favorite bloggers, follow them, leave a comment on their blog, create a connection with them and ultimately make them your friend. Do not feel shy to connect to top bloggers. My experience says, go ahead email, tweet or ping them if you like their work, ask them some question. You can even ask them to mentor you.
Ninty percentage of chances are they will help you, considering they have enough time. Most of time they also follow you back on Google plus or other social media and it will help you increase your traffic. But you need to be genuine and do not spam them.
Lack of creativity – If you as a blogger fail to add any original thoughts or creativity to your post, Nobody will devote time reading you. You will lose visitors and get negative publicity. Gone are those days when people like to read only words. You are not writing novels, make it interesting, funny and viral.
When I write a post, I consider I have less than 2 minutes to impress the visitor. If you fail in that time, you may lose that visitor. You should add more pictures, videos, Infographics in your post.
Research your article, invest time in collecting all info. If possible, read more blog post on the topic you are going to write. Writing more content or post is not important, but quality content is important.
I do not mind reading a post with 100 words and a video tutorial. Think of yourself as a visitor, read your post and check if it makes sense to even publish.
Lack of Motivation and Fear of failure – This is one of the biggest reason for failure. When a blogger does not get a suitable reward for his/her work, he may feel discouraged and demotivated.
He or she may feel web hosting expense is too much and not worth to pay. Ultimately they shut down the blog. The reality is for initial 2 years consider the expense of hosting and domain like a mutual fund investment, it will give your return after few years.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
You need to self-motivate yourself and continue working on your weak points. A successful blogger is one who never quits.
Failure to take it to next level – Ok so you have created a blog using a free blog platform, you are able to generate visitors, got new friends, they love your post and subscribers. What next, are you taking your blog to next level?
If you are not able to give a professional look to your blog, you may put your blog in the danger zone. You need to invest in your blog to get more returns.
If you already have a good blog, why not create some e-books or create some plugin for WordPress. It will help you to promote your blog as well as trust from other bloggers. Or create some new services/community and give it free to other bloggers.
You need to get your own hosting, good logo, and a good theme.
Failure to plan – Most of the blogger stuck with the issue of managing personal and blogger life. If you start giving more importance to one, you may start failing on other.
You need to make a perfect balance between them. I like the idea to create a timetable to manage personal and professional life. It may different for you. But to be successful you need to be disciplined. Many bloggers are working professional, so they have to manage work, personal and blogging life.
Do not follow people blindly – We all follow people, Guru and get inspiration from them. New bloggers create the blog and write content as per their suggestion and recommendation. My suggestion is, do not follow people blindly.
Just because a niche works for someone, same may not work for you. Select your niche or category for your blog according to your interest, your personal experience. Just because we have the more successful blogger for SEO, blogging tips, and other such niches, you do not have to follow same.
You will not be able to provide creativity or personal experience with the topic, you are not comfortable with. I have seen the successful blogger who writes on a wide variety of topic.
In short, if traveling is your passion; why in the world you want to write about iPhone apps.
Competition is killing – If you take the example of SEO itself, we have thousands of blog. Even if you will write an affiliate product review, It will take good time and hard work to come on the front page of Google search.
Many blogs are closing down because of tough competition in that particular niche.So what do you think? We should not write on that topic.
You are wrong, it does not matter if there are hundred people writing on the same topic. This is the place where you creativity and interest comes in the picture. People will still read you post If it is interesting as people want to learn and have fun.
This topic I am writing about, is it new? No. if you search on Google, you can find 11,700,000 items in the search result for this topic.
I want to write about it because the reasons are from my personal experience. People love to read about your personal experience. Nobody likes to read robot or imaginary article.
Fail to promote your product – Sometimes even after writing good content, people will not be able to get good traffic. The reason is simple, they fail to promote their blog.
You need to make sure wherever you write, whether it’s guest post, blog community, forum etc, you do not forget to mention your blog URL. Make sure email signature contains your blog URL. Every friend you make on the Internet should know your blog URL.
Fail to understand weak points – Whether it is a popular or new blog, everyone has an area of improvement. Every small detail matters. You should continuously monitor your traffic and check which area is your weak point.
Sometimes people think more about email subscribers and forget new social media like Instagram or Linkedin. You need to make sure, you open door to get traffic from every resource.
My personal advice – Never Quit. A quitter never win. It may be possible that you have selected a wrong niche or you need to change few things. Correct it, and start it again.
It is not wrong to accept that I have made some mistake. Everyone makes the mistake, correct it and then do it again.
Top 10 Reason Why People Fail in Blogging? How to Avoid Them
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— Zigreads (@zigreads) November 24, 2015
Remember failure and success is a part of life. The moral of the story is never stop learning.
The points I mentioned is not comprehensive, there are other reasons too. But this is my Top 10 reason and would love you know your input. Please use the comments section to provide your input and do not forget to share it.