If you suffer from any one of these symptoms it could mean failure is looming on the horizon and now is the time to sink or swim.
I’ve been guilty of all five of these symptoms at one time or another in my blogging career so I’m sharing them now along with tips to help you avoid succumbing to blogging failure.
Here we go…
5 Symptoms of Blog Failure
- 1. You started a blog on a topic you aren’t passionate about
- 2. You don’t take your blog serious
- 3. You have no goals set for your blog
- 4. Your blog post frequency is erratic
- 5. You’re writing a blog in the “make money online” niche
Would you ever open a pet store if you didn’t even like pets? No, of course not. So why would you start a blog on a topic you can’t see yourself writing about on a daily basis 5 years from now? Unless you plan to fail before, your only option is to exit with a sale (if you’re lucky) or slowly fail as you spend less and less time focused on the blog. My suggestion is to either sell the blog and move onto something else unless you can truly see yourself writing about this topic you don’t care about. (Don’t try and fool yourself either)
The best way to get serious about blogging is to recognize that you’ll never be able to do it for a living unless you treat it like a business. If your blog isn’t making money how long will it take before you can start to make money? After you reach that point, what methods will you employ to make money i.e. Contextual Advertising, Private Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Sell Your Own Product? These are serious questions that relate to the viability of your blog as a money making venture.
On a daily basis traditional business owners ask themselves questions designed to shape the future of their business. I believe bloggers should do this as well. For example “How are we going to pay for this month’s lease (hosting fees)?” “What needs to happen before I can open up a new store location (new blog)?” “When can I hire on some new employees to help with the increased workload (freelance writers)?” What do you want your blog to look like in 1 year? 2 years? 3 years? etc. Do you want to be able to quit your day job? If so, how will you accomplish that with your blog?
Continuing the example from the first point. Let’s say you did open that pet store and you didn’t even like pets. Well you certainly can’t stop showing up to work unless you want your business to fail right? You need to consistently show up to work and get things done. Like a traditional business consistency with a blog is key. Find a schedule to be “open for business” and be sure to have something for the visitors that keep coming back to your “store”
This one’s a bonus and more of my own personal pet peeve but just bare with me while I explain. If you’re running around commenting on everyone’s blog and daily peddling the latest product from an internet marketer that gives you a 50% referral fee than you’re well on your way to failure (or at best – mediocrity). I know because 2 years ago I ran a blog like this. I was writing about a topic I enjoyed, but I never tried to take it serious enough to build a business where I could eventually quit my day job (besides, if I truly knew about the subject material then why would I even need to blog about it?). I had no goals and gradually only wrote blog posts when I felt like it. As a result I wasted countless hours and eventually stopped blogging.
Flash forward 18 months and I focused on another niche where I was able to dominate my competition and develop a full time income all while working a full time job at the same time. I later left my job in October 2009 and have been a full time internet entrepreneur ever since. After recognizing my mistakes, improving my knowledge and being able to truly speak from experience and with credibility I started my failed blog back up under a new domain name – Make Money on the Internet – and have been sharing my successes and failures while earning a living on the internet ever since.
Wrap Up
The problem with blogs is how easy it is to create them. The barriers to entry are set so low that anyone can start a blog and the symptoms I outlined above slowly creep in after that new blog excitement dies out and many people just let them fail. The worst part is that when the blog fails people aren’t ever truly that upset. The failure can be shrugged off as a mistake they “won’t make again.” But I guarantee if you had to get a business loan for $50,000 to open up a pet store you wouldn’t let your business fail so easily. I urge you to think about blogging like a business you paid to get into and not something that you started on a whim on a Saturday afternoon. With that in mind, hopefully we’ll see more successful full time bloggers and less failed blogs gathering tumbleweeds.
Image credit: Ashy Sheela
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