Every blog goes through different stages. First, as a new blog (beginning stage), then a growing stage, then maturity stage (and hopefully no decline stage). It is in beginning stage that many of us make mistakes. In this post, I would like to discuss some of these mistakes that new bloggers make. I will start the list, and hopefully you will complete it by contributing in the comments section.

Display RSS counter too early

Displaying your RSS count too early can have a detrimental effect on your RSS readership growth. Usually people will not subscribe when a blog has 10+ RSS readers. People like to follow the majority, because common sense tells them that, if many people are reading something – it must be interesting! On the other hand, when nobody (or less people) is reading a particular blog, they see no reason to subscribe to its RSS, neither will they visit back in the future.

Therefore in the beginning it’s better not to display your RSS count, it’s better to concentrate on writing good articles instead. When you have at least several hundred RSS readers, then you may put it up.

Display too many ads

Most bloggers want to make money with their blogs, and new bloggers are no different. One of the mistakes that new bloggers make is, putting too many ads on their blog. They think the more ads they put on their blog, the more money they will make. (Wrong!) They might make more money during the first few days, but later their blog will be cannibalized by their ads, thus generating very low income or no income at all.

The blog that have too many ads on it, simply cries out to new readers saying “Go back, and never come back to this blog again!”.

Start the blog on free blogging platforms

Making money from blogging is not an easy thing, so new bloggers take it with caution. Their caution results in starting a blog with free blogging services like blogspot. They don’t want to invest any money beforehand, rather, they want to see first if the blog will bring any money to them. They reason such: “If the blog starts to bring some money, I will shift it to its own domain name and hosting”. But often times that never comes!

If you really want to make money with your blog, you should make the initial investment in it. It’s not a big investment after all, because domain name costs maximum $9/year, hosting at godaddy is just $3.99/month. But this small step can make a big difference. Especially when it’s combined with good articles, good marketing and good design, which is the next topic of discussion.

Design their own theme

There are some new bloggers who instead of using some of the great free themes available online, resort to designing their own themes. I simply do not understand them. It is ok if they design a nice professional theme, the problem arises when they have a theme that looks like the websites of 90s. The graphics are most probably done in Microsoft Paint (funny video about paint).

So if you are not good at designing blog themes, just get the ready ones. Or ask someone to design it for you.

Not posting own ideas

What is the most important success factor for a blog? It’s the person behind the blog, more specifically it’s his/her ideas that make the blog successful and set it apart from other blogs.

Unfortunately, new bloggers make a mistake of talking only what the blogosphere is talking. If a big shot guy says A, new blogger will say A. If he says B, he say B… etc. Therefore if you want to be successful, then you should start posting your own ideas and thoughts. Because people want what is in your mind, not what is in someone else’s mind and that you just summarize it for them.

Posting irregularly

Imagine this: You are a new blogger, your blog just started with 1 unique visitor a day (that is yourself ;). After some time, you have gained quite a number of regular readers. In order to retain these readers and gain more readers, you need to post consistently. At least one post a day, but for the beginning 2-3 posts a day can be a good idea too.

If you post irregularly, and worse after missing 3-4 days you post something that is not even interesting, then you can be sure to your readers. And won’t be successful in getting new readers. Therefore posting interesting posts consistently is very important, and it is one of the things that makes your blog successful. (read my article on posting frequency here)

Your contribution

What other mistakes you think should be included here? Please share it with us. It can be your own mistake that you did in the beginning of your blogging career or a mistake that you see often on new blogs. Let’s make this a useful post for new bloggers.