Almost everyone has a blog now. Over 150 million blogs exist around the world, and the dream that so many of those bloggers have is to make a living off their site and quit the 9-to-5 life. Having been a blogger myself for 17 years now, I will tell you – getting to that point is A LOT of work. Way more work than a traditional 9-to-5 job.
I put together a list of the top 5 blogging challenges that most bloggers don’t talk about – but they’ve all struggled with it. So let’s get the conversation started!
1. An Attractive and User-Friendly Site
Bet you thought the first one was going to be making money didn’t you? The truth is there is a lot that you need to have in place before you should even think about making money from your site. Nothing worth having is easy. Heard that saying before? It definitely applies to blogging.
But back to our first challenge. Having an attractive and user-friendly site is the most important challenge you have to overcome. When someone visits your site, they form an opinion about your brand in the first 3 seconds. So if you don’t have a visually appealing, device responsive layout and design – you’re going to make a bad first impression.
Secondly, if your site navigation doesn’t make sense, they can’t figure out how to do something on your site or get where they want to go – that’s another deal breaker. Be sure to poll your friends and family on your design and the usability of your site. They will likely pick up on things that you didn’t notice.
But please note, you won’t always want to take their advice, because you know your brand better than they do. Second opinions are great, but at the end of the day – it’s your site and your vision.
2. All That Technical Stuff
From WordPress themes and settings to html and plugins to knowing your UMV – or even what UMV means, there’s a large technical landscape that you need to have knowledge of to run a successful blog. If you personally don’t know how to do the technical things, then you need to make sure you have a resource that you can rely on that does.
The top 6 technical things that I see the bloggers have the most struggle with:
- Site Design & Layout
- Setting Up Google Analytics
- Setting Up and Branding Social Media Profiles
- Doing WordPress Updates and Backups
- Anything GoDaddy Related
- Knowing the Lingo
3. Creating a Content Strategy
If you have a handle on the technical aspects above, the next challenge you have awaiting you is figuring out your content strategy. What is your site about? How often will you post? Will you have photos – where will you source those photos from?
My other company, Excite Creative Studios offers a great Blogger Workbook to help you map out your content strategy for both your blog and for social media. Leave a comment below, and I’ll send it to you via email.
4. Getting Traffic
Once you have a great looking and great functioning site along solid content that is regularly updated, you have the hardest challenge yet. Getting traffic to your site.
If you really want to make a business out of your blog, you’re going to need to be getting a minimum of 5,000 to 10,000 pageviews on your site a day. Meaning 150,000 to 300,000 page views per month. Why do I consider this the magic number? Can you get by with less? Sure. But when you start out you’ll be making an average eCPM (effective cost per 1,000 impressions) of .50 to .75 cents per ad slot. Once you have more traffic, you’ll see those numbers increase drastically.
5. Making Money
I hope this helps to unveil some of the myths about making the move to being a full-time blogger. If you’re able to do it, you’ll realize you have a new 9 to 5 job, and that’s being a blogger. A successful blog is a business. You can’t go into it without the right tools or the business will fail.
Need any blogging help! Leave a comment below – I’d love to chat with you guys further.
The post 5 Blogging Challenges Bloggers Don’t Tell You appeared first on Fan In Style.