14 Mistakes That Every Amateur Blogger Should Avoid

An amateur blogger makes many mistakes in blogging. This is because an amateur blogger has little or no experience in running a blog.

I know about these mistakes because when I started blogging, I have also made some of these mistakes. There was nobody to guide me on blogging at that time.

However, with time I learned from my own mistakes. Now, I am in a position to guide people who want to learn Blogging. I have compiled a list of the common mistakes made by most Amateur bloggers.

If you read this post till the end you will be able to save your time by avoiding these mistakes made by an amateur blogger. Let us look into these mistakes one by one.

14 Mistakes That Every Amateur Blogger Should Avoid

1. Using a free domain

This is the most common mistake made by an amateur blogger. I have tried and tested this in my initial blogging days. I thought that without investing in a domain name I can get my blog successful.

I invested so much time writing articles on my free domain and I didn’t get any positive results after all my hard work. Then I invested in a custom domain and moved all my blog content over that.

This to my surprise started giving me good traffic after a few months of this move. So, having a domain name like this blog “achaltomar.com” gives you much exposure and control.

If you are an amateur blogger who wants to start or has just started blogging I would suggest you buy a domain name. This is because, in the long run, a free domain will not give you expected results.

A few disadvantages of using a free domain are:

• There is no control over the free domain. Your free domain provider has full access to delete your domain. This will result in a loss for your blog content
• Free domains are not very SEO friendly. If you are serious about your blog and want to make money from blogging. Then you should avoid free domains

So, for an amateur blogger, the first blogging tip from me is to purchase a domain for your blog. The best part is many good hosting providers provide a free domain for the 1st year of your hosting with them.

You can get hosting from Bluehost and get a free domain along with it.

Check Bluehost

2. Not investing in a good hosting service

Having a domain name is good. Along with it, you must also choose a good hosting service.

Disadvantages of free hosting service are:

• There are chances that you will lose your content if the free hosting company shuts down
• Limited resources: The free hosting companies often place a limitation on the server resources you can use. This creates problems when you try to scale your blog to the next level.

Now, how to choose the best hosting provider for your blog? There are so many hosting providers in the market which provide different features useful for blogs. Not all of them are good.

If you ask me I recommend Bluehost hosting because I have used them and they provide excellent speed, free domain for 1st year, FREE SSL, 24/7 support.

If you are an amateur blogger then you can start your blog using Bluehost and host WordPress on it. You can check my post on how to start a blog and make money to learn how to make money by blogging.

You can buy web hosting from Bluehost using the below simple steps:

Step 1: Click here to go to Bluehost and click on the “Get Started” button

Step 2: Choose your hosting plan

On Bluehost, you’ll get four Plans and you can purchase any plan according to your need but, If you are an amateur blogger then I recommend you to go with the BASIC plan this is because for a new website you don’t have less traffic so this plan will be perfect for you.

Once you choose the hosting plan you will be asked to choose your FREE domain name. 

On the next page, you can claim your free domain name. If you are yet not ready with your domain name, you can click on ‘I’ll create my domain later’

On the next page, you are required to fill in your contact information.

Moving down on the same page you can enter the payment information and click submit to buy your hosting plan from Bluehost.

Now it is time to celebrate! You just bought hosting with a free domain name for your blog. Here is the cool part of Bluehost: After you have completed the payment, Bluehost will automatically install WordPress so that you can start working on your blog.

This means that your blog is ready to use after just the payment is completed. Now you just need to log in to your Bluehost account and see your activated services.

3. Not building their Email list from Day 1

Believe me, ignoring email list building is one of the top mistakes made by an amateur blogger. In my initial blogging days, I also made this mistake and I lost so many subscribers that I could have made in those days.

Now, I use email marketing to educate my blog audience about blogging and tool used to build a better blog. Email marketing is the best way to reach your blog audience. This helps you build quality traffic to your blog over a long time.

If you are an amateur blogger and you are looking to boost traffic to your blog. I recommend you start working on building an email list. An email list will be your audience and you can promote your affiliate products and also your products with it. Now, the questions arise:

Which email marketing software should you use?

I use and recommend Convertkit. I recommend this because I have tried and tested it and their delivery rates are very good. You can get a Convertkit 30 days free trial. Using this free trial you can check their service quality before paying them anything.

Using this software is super easy and you can watch tutorials on their website to learn how to use this product to build your email list.

You can create an email subscription form using this tool. Add this form to your blog content/ create landing pages, pop-up forms, and much more to convert your blog, visitors, into email subscribers.

4. Not using the power of Social Media

Many new bloggers think that if they write quality content and ignore promoting it on social media they can still manage to get good traffic to their blogs.

While search engines like google can drive traffic to your website. Social Media is a channel that can’t be ignored. To increase traffic to your website or blog you need to share your posts on social media channels.

Sharing your content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other social media channels will increase your blog reach and hence boost traffic to it.

You should also comment on other bloggers’ posts on social media and share their content as well. This will help you connect with others and they will share your content as well.

You can create a Facebook page, Twitter profile, Facebook group, Pinterest profile and share your blog content there. Once you start gaining followers on social media channels they will come to your website again and again to consume quality content.

5. Building backlinks like Crazy

If you are an amateur blogger you might be thinking everyone says that building backlinks are good for a blog. Then why it is a mistake?

Most amateur bloggers try to get as many backlinks from other quality blogs once their blog is launched and has 2-3 blog posts. However, after putting lots of effort into this in the start, they don’t get any positive results. So, If you are making this same mistake, then I recommend you stop it right away.

Building tons of backlinks to a newly launched blog with a couple of posts is not a good idea at all. But this is the most common mistake that newbie bloggers make.

I suggest not to start building backlinks during the 1st 6 to 8 months of your blog creation. Just focus on creating good content and share it as much as possible on social media channels.

At most you should comment on a few other blogs (20-40) in the same niche you are in. This will create no-follow comments links that are still good. Doing excessive link building in the initial days of your blog will create short-term success and your rankings will get washed away in some a few weeks’ time.

Once you have 80-100 high-quality blog posts then you can start building backlinks. For creating high-quality relevant backlinks you can do a Guest Post, Broken Link Building, or Blogger Outreach.

6.  Non-Consistent Writing

This is a mistake most amateur bloggers do when they start their blogging journey. Blogging is a game of patience and consistent hard work.

I have seen amateur bloggers who start a blog, write a few blog posts, and after 3-4 months if they don’t see their expected results just stop working on their blog.

This is the wrong approach because for blogging to be a success you need to spend at least a year of your time and write articles consistently.

Ok! so what is consistent writing in blogging? I am asking you to write a blog post a week or 2 per month at least. Also, you can update your old blog posts as well with new updated information. This gives them a boost in rankings as well.

I have seen results from my blogs after 1 year of blogging and not before that. Sometimes depending on the niche, you are in, you can see good results after 6 months.

I want you to focus on keyword research and use long-tail keywords to rank for easier keywords in the initial days. Once you get traffic from long-tail keywords you can focus on the difficult keywords as well.

If you keep on writing consistently not only your writing speed will improve but it will become a habit and this will help your blog to be fresh with good content. This also gives a good signal to search engines and they reward you with better rankings.

Now, you may ask. I don’t know how to research keywords and write a good blog post. You can follow the steps below to write a good blog post:

• Keywords Research: Finding a topic for your blog post starts with keyword research. Suppose you have a blog about Yoga. Then you can use a tool like Semrush to research keywords. This is done by entering your seed keyword “yoga” and the tool will suggest keywords you can focus on to create content around them
• Once you get an idea of the topic and keywords. You can create articles like Top 10, Best, How-to, etc. This is best done by creating an outline of the topics you will cover in this article
• Finally when you have gathered all points to create your blog post. You can start writing it
• Also, check for grammar mistakes when you create your blog posts. You can use a tool that helps you to correct grammar mistakes. This tool is Grammarly.

7. Not Doing Proper SEO

SEO is the most important part of your blogging journey that cannot be ignored. You can create a good quality article but ranking it on search engines like Google and Bing without proper SEO will lead to lower visits and conversions.

Writing quality blog posts backed by strong titles, meta descriptions, keyword placements, and heading structure is required if you want to rank on search engines. You can check my SEO tips to learn how to do SEO correctly.

8. Not Sharing Others Content

An Amateur blogger mostly shares only their content. When it comes to sharing others’ content they avoid doing it. Why? What’s the reason behind it?

The reason is it’s the natural tendency of a human being to care about ourselves mostly. I am asking you to do the reverse go ahead and comment on other blogs and share their content on social media channels.

Why? Because you are expecting the same from others to do for you. If you don’t initiate something how can you expect others to do it for you?

At the start of your blogging journey, you need to build great relationships with similar bloggers like you. This will help you gain popularity and they will also read your posts and share them eventually.

This should not be stopped once you are popular you should still read other bloggers’ content and share them on social media channels. This will help you maintain the relationships for a long time.

9. Not Linking to Others

If you are not linking to others from your blog, there are fewer chances that you will earn a backlink from others. This is because if you start reaching bloggers to link to your content the response rate will be low as you never linked to any of them in the past.

I have done this mistake in the past and due to it getting backlinks for my blog was difficult. Linking to relevant content from your blog helps you to create content authority and make it more relevant for your blog audience.

So, my blogging tip for amateur bloggers is to start linking to reputed bloggers’ content and you will gradually see that most of them will share your content or link back to you eventually.

10. Too Scared to Invest in Premium Plugins/WordPress Themes/Tools

This mistake is the one I have made when I was an amateur blogger. I was too scared of investing money in premium plugins, themes, or tools to help me in blogging.

The result: this took me a long time to figure out that by not investing in the right tools I would never become a successful blogger.

I realized my mistake and invested in premium themes, my learning, and the tools needed to make my blogging life easier and boost my blog traffic.

Soon, I noticed a growth in my visits and my content reach. Now, the question is what tools should I invest to make my blog successful. Here are some useful ones for amateur bloggers:

• Semrush (Best All in One SEO tool)
• Grammarly (Online proofreading tool to check for grammar errors and correct them)
• Thrive Suite (A suite of useful tools to Design Your Blog)
• Convertkit (To build your email list)

WordPress Themes You Must Try:

• NewsPaper Theme (This is what I use on this blog)
• Generetpress

If you’ll take blogging as a business and invest your money in it. You’ll see good results sooner as compared to other bloggers who are scared to invest money in their blog.

11. Lack of Passion in Niche

Now, this is natural. If you don’t have passion for the topic you choose for your blog. sooner or later you will be bored of it. This will end your blogging journey before it reaches some expectations.

This is why I always insist to choose your blog niche/topic which is close to your heart. If you love doing “Yoga” and don’t get tired of talking about it then create a “Yoga” blog.

For me, my passion is blogging so I have created this blog to help others start their blog and become successful in the long run. So, choose a topic of your interest and you will never be bored of it and make it successful one day.

12. Bad Blog Design

A bad blog design is one mistake many amateur bloggers make. This is mainly due to the reason amateur bloggers decide to go with a free WordPress theme for their blog.

Investing in a good web hosting and WordPress theme is the most important part of your blogging journey. This is because if you decide to choose bad web hosting your website will have more downtime and you will lose business.

Next having a free WordPress theme will not give you the benefits of a premium theme. Let’s check why premium themes are better for a blog:

• A premium WordPress theme will have frequent updates to free it from bugs and make it work efficiently
• Premium themes are SEO friendly
• You get more options to better design your blog. This include design templates which help you to create your website layout with a single click
• Premium themes have a professional look and give a great impression to your blog readers

I recommend the Newspaper WordPress theme for new bloggers. This is a theme I use for my blog. You can get it here.

If you want to create a WordPress blog That Converts Visitors into Leads and Customers I recommend that you use Thrive Suite. You can check my Thrive Suite Review to know more about this.

13. Non-Secure Website

Most amateur bloggers choose to start a blog without an SSL certificate.

What is an SSL certificate, and do you need one?

SSL means Secure Socket Layer. It is a type of encryption that makes sure the user’s private information is not compromised. On my website you can see https://www.achaltomar.com/ it starts with “HTTPS” and has a lock next to the URL which ensures that the connection to my website is secure.

You want to make sure that your blog readers trust your website when they use it. It gives a green signal to the blog visitors that your website is secure and builds trust.

Chrome and other browsers mark all HTTP websites as “not secure.” So switching to HTTPS will ensure your website gets a green signal from the browsers.

These days most good WordPress hosting services provide SSL when you order web hosting. You can use Hostinger web hosting for amateur bloggers because it is budget-friendly and also provides SSL with the web hosting package.

14. Depending on a single traffic source

Amateur bloggers start a blog, post some content on it and start promoting this content on a single platform like Pinterest. This is a great way to get traffic but focussing on a single traffic source will not help you to gain enough traffic for your blog.

You must instead learn SEO (to get Organic Search traffic), build your email list, use other social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. This will help to build multiple traffic streams for your blog and get more traffic.

15. Doing Grammar Mistakes

As an amateur blogger while creating content it is very important to create content that is free of grammar mistakes. The content should be free of punctuation, spelling, and comma mistakes.

You should use punctuation checker tools to correct comma and punctuation mistakes while writing content online. I suggest you use Grammarly which is an excellent tool to correct grammar and spelling mistakes online.

Conclusion

At the last of this blog about Amateur Blogging Mistakes, I can say that these are the most common mistakes made by an amateur blogger. As an amateur blogger, you should be aware of these blogging mistakes. By avoiding these mistakes you can quickly turn into a successful blogger.

So, if you want to see your blog gaining valuable visits and conversions. You must keep these amateur blogger mistakes in your mind. Making the right decisions early and being consistent throughout your blogging journey is the key to long-term success.

If you have any more mistakes in your mind that an amateur blogger makes and I missed it, then don’t hesitate to comment down below.

Amateur Blogging Mistakes – Frequently Asked Questions

I hope you enjoyed reading this article about Amateur Blogger mistakes. Do share and comment if you have any queries.