27 Blogging Mistakes For Beginners To Avoid In 2024
Trust me, I’ve been there – sitting in front of my laptop, fingers over the keyboard eager to get started but just completely stuck, wondering if only someone could tell me what blogging mistakes for beginners to avoid, then maybe I’ll finally get started on my first blog.
If you’re facing the same then don’t worry, because I know your struggles and I’m here today to share with you the blogging mistakes for beginners to avoid, so you don’t go down the same route.
These were mistakes and blogging basics that I wished someone had told me from the start.
Not only would it have saved me time, but also money.
So before you go off and spend all that money on blogging tools for beginners, read this first and then see what tools and courses you really need before you get started.
27 Blogging Mistakes For Beginners To Avoid
1. Overthinking
2. Choosing the Free Option And Not Self-Hosting
3. Spending Too Much On Blogging Tools And Courses
4. Writing For Everyone
5. Not Writing For Anyone
6. No Keyword Research
7. Grammar Mistakes
8. Non-Personable Writing
9. Beating Round The Bush
10. Not Organising Your Post
11. Not Providing Enough Value
12. Writing Too Little
13. No Call To Action
14. Fluffy Writing
15. Not Being Persuasive Enough
16. Poorly formatted content
17. Plagiarism
18. Using Copyrighted Images
19. Overediting
20. Not Blogging Consistently
21. Overemphasis On SEO
22. Forgetting To Create An Email List
23. Not Giving Enough Time
24. Little To No Promotion
25. No Monetisation Strategy
26. Giving Up Prematurely
27. Treating It Like A Hobby
Affiliate Link Disclosure
Some of the links on here are affiliate links, and I may earn if you click on them, AT NO EXTRA cost to you. I hope you find the information here useful! Thanks.
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27 Blogging Mistakes For Beginners To Avoid
1. Overthinking
The fact that you’re on this blog post probably means you’ve been thinking about the blogging mistakes for beginners that are out there and wondering whether you’re making some of them.
What to do next? Easier said than done, but stop overthinking this! As long as you’ve got a blog niche and a blog name, you’re already good to go. In fact, did you know all you need is one weekend to get your blog started?
2. Choosing the Free Option And Not Self-Hosting
You might want to keep costs low right at the start so you opt for free hosting which means that your blog would be on a site like LiveJournal or WordPress and would have the hosting site in your site address.
While this is free, it will be more difficult to monetize your blog eventually on a hosted site.
What to do next? Trust me when I say, get your own domain and use a site builder like WordPress. I use Bluehost and they have everything all-in, domain included, for as low as $3.95 a month.
3. Spending Too Much On Blogging Tools And Courses
There are a ton of blogging books for beginners, and you might be tempted to get them to learn how to be a good blogger. I also know I’ve told you to spend on hosting.
But you don’t have to spend in order to get access to some of the best blogging books for beginners.
What to do? As Janet Jackson once sang, the best things in life are free! I started out with free blogging courses and you can absolutely find free quality courses.
For example, Stupid Simple SEO has hands down the best blogging course for beginners ever. I share more similar courses here!
And it’s not just courses you don’t have to pay for.
There are a ton of free blogging tools for beginners like you such as Moz, Ahrefs, and Google Analytics. If it’s free it’s for me, and you!
4. Writing For Everyone
When you first begin writing it’s easy to want to write for everyone – you want your blog to be read and liked. After all, so why not go broad, right? Wrong.
What to do? While it is alright to write in a manner that is readable by the general population, you should have a target audience and a niche in mind. This will help you to better structure your content and strategize what to write about.
5. Not Writing For Anyone
Your blog shouldn’t be your diary or a monologue. Not if you intend to monetize it. Your blog should be written with someone in mind. Who are you trying to help or whose questions are you trying to answer?
What to do? Sit down and think about why you want to blog in the first place. What problems or questions were you trying to solve? Were they your own and could you help people like yourself? Write like you’re writing for them.
6. No Keyword Research
Now before you go off and start trying to solve all the problems in the world, recognize that you can’t help everyone but you can probably start from the most pressing problems that have yet to be answered online.
What to do? Look for topics or keywords that are frequently searched for, but have few resources available online. If you can bridge the gap, then people would want to read your blog. Simple ain’t it?
You can learn how to do keyword research here
7. Grammar Mistakes
Don’t even go there. Grammar mistakes make for disruptive reading – after all who likes reading through a page full of errors?
What to do? With free tools like SpellCheck on Microsoft Word and Grammarly as a Google Docs extension, you really have no excuse for grammar mistakes. Don’t let this be one of your blogging mistakes for beginners!
8. Non-Personable Writing
People want to know that there’s someone behind the words or behind the screen. You’re blogging not doing an academic paper or writing for the national newspaper, so don’t forget to inject some personality into your writing!
What to do? You can include an About Me page which tells readers more about yourself and inject some anecdotes or little phrases that you like to use. Just be sure not to make it all about you – remember it’s not a diary!
9. Beating Round The Bush
No one likes to read a piece of writing which isn’t going anywhere – it’s like getting lost in a maze with no exit. This is one of the common blogging mistakes for beginners as they have so much they want to include instead of getting straight to the point!
What to do? If you have a point to make, make it quick. That includes putting answers to your questions upfront and not making your reader wade through an entire blog post before getting to them.
10. Not Organising Your Post
When you read a book, it’s usually organized into chapters. Similar to a book, you’ll also need to organize your blog post.
What to do? Make sure you have your title, headers, and sub-headers down pat. These will help your readers as they make their way through your blog post.
11. Not Providing Enough Value
You can write a lot, but is your content helping anyone or are you just babbling on?
What to do? Similar to point 9, make sure you answer your reader’s question and make sure you answer it fast. Sometimes it helps to have another pair of eyes on your first few pieces to see if you’re actually answering the question you set out to answer.
12. Writing Too Little
It’s a blog post for a reason – there has to be substantial information for your readers to pore over and get their answers from. If it were a simple question, they could likely have gotten the answer directly from other sources.
What to do? Give your readers a reason to stay on your blog by writing enough, but also make sure you have valuable information. A good blog length is always about 1,500 words and up, allowing it to rank higher on search engines.
13. No Call To Action
Good writing persuades and converts. While you may have answered their questions and have substantial content, if you don’t have a call to action, you lost the opportunity for engagement and for people to come back to your blog.
What to do? Have an email subscription list for people to subscribe to if they liked your entry. Or get them to reply with whether or not your solutions in your article helped them. Encourage engagement and conversions wherever you can.
14. Fluffy Writing
Fluffy writing is when you put so many descriptors and complex language into your writing that the reader hardly gets what you’re trying to say – making much ado about nothing.
What to do? Write simply, and succinctly to make sure it’s readable for most of your audience. I like to use online readability tools to make sure I keep my writing sharp and attention-grabbing.
15. Not Being Persuasive Enough
If your aim is to eventually get people to continue reading or to even purchase items or products from your blog through affiliate marketing, then your writing needs to be persuasive.
What to do? When you’re in a beauty salon, don’t you always find yourself lured into the promises of the salespeople and almost on the verge of signing off on a three or four-figure package? It’s because they use persuasive words and tactics that convert.
16. Poorly formatted content
Now, this isn’t referring to organizing your content as we’ve already talked about that, but this refers to formatting your content in a haphazard manner such that there are illogical bolded, italicized, and underlined text within your writing.
What to do? Make sure you check your writing to ensure that what needs to be bolded is bolded and not bolded accidentally. I personally bold key points such as this to make it more outstanding but it wouldn’t make sense if I just bolded the word ‘this’ for example.
17. Plagiarism
Plagiarism is a sticky issue whether in academia or the blogging world, but it still happens regularly because people think they can get away with it. You cannot get away by just changing a few words.
What to do? Run your writing through a plagiarism checker and if you must, must, must use content from some other source, do ensure you credit or link to the source.
18. Using Copyrighted Images
There are so many free image websites out there like Unsplash or Pixabay that using copyrighted images shouldn’t even be on the list of common blogging mistakes for beginners.
What to do? Use royalty-free images or your own images where possible. Make sure you’re aware of the types of rights assigned to the images you’re using. Some image owners want to be credited even if the images are free to use.
19. Overediting
Now that you’re almost done with your blog piece and you’ve stopped overthinking things, you’re at the tail end and you may fall into another trap – overediting.
This is one of the typical blogging mistakes for beginners as they want everything to be perfect.
While you should take care of grammar mistakes and edit your work to make sure it reads easy, take care not to overedit as you may never finish writing.
What to do? Once you’ve done your necessary checks for grammar, readability, and plagiarism, do a once-over, breathe and click submit. Let it go out into the online world.
It is inevitable that you may miss one or two things, but you can always come back to fix them.
20. Not Blogging Consistently
It’s easy to get caught up in the adrenaline high of publishing your first blog post and then publish many entries in a row after you’ve got your first entry out.
But remember that it’s good to have a good consistency and cadence for your blog posts, much like a magazine or newsletter.
What to do? Aim for one entry a week at the start. But if you can aim for even two to four times within a week to ensure new content for your readers every time they come back.
For a more detailed guide, check out my article on how often you should blog!
21. Overemphasis On SEO
SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization and it is the process of optimizing your blog content such that it is easier for search engines to pick it up and to give your blog organic traffic.
When you first learn about SEO, it may be tempting to apply all the SEO best practices and use keywords everywhere in your blog entry.
That’s known as keyword stuffing and could cause your content to sound awkward and unnatural, and could even cause you to be blacklisted by Google.
What to do? Make sure you have the basics of SEO covered and use tools like Yoast to help you along. But don’t overdo it. Use your common sense and make sure the text sounds readable for humans.
22. Forgetting To Create An Email List
While this doesn’t have to be right at the very beginning but it’s always good to get this done early on as you’re building your site traffic.
Your first few readers might like your post and want to be in the know of new entries – give them a way to come back to you.
What to do? Use email subscription tools like Mailchimp to help you manage subscribers.
23. Not Giving Enough Time
So you’ve written your blog entries (make sure they are at least twenty!) and you’ve got your email subscription list set up, but you’re still not getting blog views. If you’re getting impatient, then that’s a mistake you’re making.
What to do? Give yourself and your blog time to be recognized by Google, a process known as indexing, and for organic traffic to come in.
24. Little To No Promotion
Whenever there’s a new business in your neighborhood, do you find flyers in your mailbox or perhaps you might even see the new owner standing outside their store, beckoning passersby to come in to patronise the shop?
You’ll need to do the same with your blog to get people to read it instead of just relying purely on organic traffic.
What to do? Tell your friends, family, or even those on your social media. If you’re shy about telling those around you, at least share your blog entries on social media platforms in response to questions, and you’ll slowly start to see traffic come in!
25. No Monetisation Strategy
If you’re reading this entry, chances are you’re not just blogging for yourself or just keeping a record of your daily life.
You want to make money off your blog and you’re here to find out how. This is why it is important to have a strategy right from the get-go. This is easily overlooked and is one of the common blogging mistakes for beginners as this is the long-term strategy of blogging.
What to do? If your aim is to get revenue through a display advertising network like Ezoic, which has no minimum page view, then apply to them once you’ve written at least twenty entries.
If you want to use affiliate marketing then plan articles that promote products to individuals and sign up to Amazon affiliates. Plan, then do.
26. Giving Up Prematurely
It’s easy to think that your blog isn’t bearing fruit after the first few entries and it’s even easier to just throw in the towel and give up at the beginning.
You can’t deny that it becomes a lot harder to give up after you’ve invested more time and effort so why not give up before you invest too much? You shouldn’t.
What to do? Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme and takes time to show results. If you’ve done things right up to this point then hang in there and don’t give up – give yourself time to make mistakes (not the ones I’ve mentioned, of course!) and for your content to grow and be recognized.
27. Treating It Like A Hobby
If you treat it like a hobby, there is a chance that your blog will stay the way it is – as a hobby.
What to do? If you’re serious about monetizing it and growing your blog, then start to think of it as a side hustle and put in some real time, effort and attention, and it may just turn into a profitable full-time income just like what this engineer did with her blog.
How To Start A Blog in 2022
Step one, pick a name. Once you’ve got your name down pat, it’s time to look for hosting. I go with Bluehost but there are a number of hosts around that you can go with.
Once you’ve decided on your hosting, you’ll need to install a website builder like WordPress where you’ll get to pick out a theme (my favorite’s Astra because it’s lightweight and simple) and install some plugins to spruce up your blog.
With your blog all ready, you can then think about monetization options for your blog which I also go into later on in this article, and remember to drive traffic to your brand-new site by being consistent with blogging and having good SEO practices!
What To Write About As a Beginner?
There are more than 600 million blogs out there so the sky’s the limit!
Lifestyle, beauty, travel, fashion – there are so many blogging ideas for beginners out there and because you’re starting anew, you can practically choose any one of them, as long as it’s something you’re keen on writing about!
I’ve plenty of resources and ideas for you, across topics, to get started if you’re feeling a little uninspired:
- Lifestyle Blog Post Ideas
- Blog Post Ideas For Beginners
- Beauty Blog Post Ideas
- Travel Blog Ideas
- Ideas For First Blog Post
- Fashion Blog Post Ideas
- Book Blog Ideas
- Skin Care Blog Topics
Blogging Tips for Beginners
The best tip that I can give you as a beginner is to just bite the bullet and get started.
If you don’t know what to write about, look online and see what types of questions people are asking. You can use tools like Answer the Public to see what people are talking about and asking online for a start.
If you’re still feeling the inertia, I break the whole process of starting a blog into very actionable steps for you – read it and give it a go!
How Do Blogs Make Money?
There are many ways that blogs can make money, even if you’re just starting out as a beginner. These are the ways that you can make money blogging:
1. Display Advertising
There are advertising networks that pay you to host their ads on your blog and they pay you whenever someone views or clicks on their ad on your blog.
Some ad networks require a minimum page view requirement, but there is a fair number that don’t. Some of them include Google AdSense, Ezoic, Mediavine, and Adthrive.
2. SponsorshipS
Some companies and people would also pay you to talk about their products and services on your blog. While I don’t encourage this because sponsored posts tend to be viewed as less credible to readers, and I don’t do so myself, many bloggers do so, so it’s really up to you as to whether you’d like to take this on.
If you do, make sure that you blog about things that are aligned with your writing and your niche, and always be authentic with what you promote.
3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing takes place when you receive a commission or a small cut of a sale of a product or service that you’ve recommended.
The buyer pays the exact same price as they would normally, but the seller would then pay you a small commission because they use your affiliate link.
Most of us do practice affiliate marketing in some form every day when we recommend our favorite hair salons to our loved ones.
So why not get paid for it? Some programs to start with include: CJ affiliates, Amazon affiliates, and the Rakuten network.
4. Digital Products
Digital products are products that you can create online and can be sold on your blog again and again.
These can be in the form of e-books, online courses, a template, or an artwork – basically, anything that can be created online, sold online, and then downloaded.
5. Writing
Your blog can also earn you money by getting you writing gigs from paying clients. Your blog is a portfolio of your writing work. Clients or companies looking for writers might see your style and ability through your blog. and ask you to write for them for a fee.
6. Coaching
Your blog can also be a starting ground for people to approach you as a coach.
Take my blog for example. I have positioned myself as someone who went from the corporate 9 to 5 to someone who now earns by working remotely, whether it’s through blogging, freelance writing, or teaching online, and those who want to make this transition have reached out to me to teach them to do the same.
The clients directly learn from my experiences, and I get paid in return for sharing my know-how and my mistakes – much like what I’m doing in this entry. Everyone stands to gain!
FAQs
What Should A Beginner Write On A Blog?
I get it, all of this information can be a bit overwhelming for a beginner blogger and you might think, I know how to get started, but what should I write about on my blog?
Here are some quick tips I found useful to think about when thinking about what or how to write when I started out:
- Always have your reader in mind
- Know what your reader wants
- Do your keyword research
- Make sure this keyword is in the title
- Write simply
- Be persuasive
- Know what you’re trying to convey
- Use H1, H2, and H3 headers for organization
- Use examples or stories to illustrate your point
- Give your readers a takeaway
- Don’t plagiarize, always cite your source
- Always edit
- Just click the publish button
- Be patient, organic traffic will take time
- Tell everyone and promote wherever you can
Why Do Beginner Bloggers Fail?
Most times, beginner bloggers fail because they fail to develop content that is engaging, value-adding, and high-quality. You may have started because of your love for writing or sharing information, but ultimately to succeed as a blogger you need to meet your audience’s needs and answer their questions.
You can have the fanciest blog in the world, backed with the snazziest and best blogging tools for beginners but if the content doesn’t engage and educate then you’re not likely to get returning readers.
Aside from that, it is important to dedicate adequate effort and time to your blog as you build it up – many beginner bloggers fail because they fail to recognize that success isn’t immediate and takes time.
What Are The Don’ts In Blogging
If you need a summary of the blogging mistakes for beginners I’ve highlighted earlier or just need a quick takeaway, some quick don’ts in blogging are
1. Don’t write in a complicated manner – your readers might not have time or the ability to make sense of your article
2. Don’t write about everything in one article – there should be some organization in your content across your blog
3. Don’t have grammar mistakes or colloquial slang that readers outside of your country may not understand.
4. Don’t forget your audience – remember their problems and what you’re trying to help them solve
5. Don’t plagiarize
6. Don’t over-stylize your blog – make it easy for your readers to get the information they need.
7. Don’t keyword stuff – SEO is important but make sure you use it properly
8. Don’t overthink it – blog first instead of over-preparing before your first post
9. Don’t be inconsistent – have a posting schedule and post regularly so your readers have something new to come back to
10. Don’t give up – it will take time before you see results
What Are The Most Common Mistakes Bloggers Make?
Of all of the mistakes, the most common blogging mistakes for beginners as a new blogger are:
- Not blogging frequently enough
- Not tailoring content to the reader
- Not value-adding to the reader
- Not linking outwards to other content
- Not updating outdated content
- Not putting effort into naming articles
- Not formatting content properly makes it unreadable
- Not having a content strategy
- Not giving the reader the next step
- Not doing their research
- Not knowing what to blog about
Conclusion
Blogging for beginners doesn’t have to be difficult. Everyone was a beginner when they started out, including me.
And as you’ve seen, those steps I’ve shared with you led me to where I am today with Out and Beyond and my other sites even!
No one is immune to blogging mistakes for beginners, but I hope that my article here has helped you realize that while there are many mistakes and pitfalls you could encounter as a beginner, there are also many solutions to get around these mistakes.
So just keep on hustling and writing, you know me and my blog are behind you every step of the way!
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