Almost a year ago to the date, I decided that I was going to start a blog. I really had no idea what I was doing, but with a few resources and a lot of work, The Orthodox Mama went live in March 2015.
Now, one year older (and hopefully one year wiser!), I can look back at some of my early mistakes and cringe. What was I thinking? 🙂 Here are:
5 HUGE Blogging Mistakes I’ve Made
1. I Set Zero Goals
I am usually Ms. Go-Getter when it comes to goal-setting. (If you’re not convinced, check out my Goals for 2016.) That’s why it is fairly shocking that I set no clear goals for myself when I started The Orthodox Mama. I had a vague idea that I wanted to encourage Orthodox Christian women, share things I’d learned about living faithfully in the modern world, and–hopefully–make a little money. But, I didn’t set any specific goals to help me along the way.
2. I Wrote For Myself Instead of My Audience
In the beginning especially, I wrote for myself instead of for a particular audience. I chose topics that I was interested in and expounded upon them. However, I didn’t pause to consider if those topics would interest other people. In fact, when I did a reader survey nine months into blogging, I found out that one of the topics really wasn’t relevant to most of my audience!
3. I Tried to Do It Alone
On the surface, it might seem that blogging is an individual sport. I mean, it is just one person at her computer writing about what she likes, right? Not so much. There is actually an amazing community of bloggers out there with a wealth of knowledge, ideas, and experience. Ignoring that community was a fairly stupid mistake. Now that I have begun to reach out to more bloggers, I have learned so much and made some great friends.
4. I Didn’t Start an E-mail List Right Away
For the first few months of blogging, I didn’t have an e-mail list. I didn’t send any newsletters out to people–because I didn’t even have an account with a subscriber service! If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’ve heard it a million times: you need to build your e-mail list. It’s the best way to connect on a deeper level with your audience, to update them on recent posts and events, and to make them aware of great deals they might enjoy. By the time I finally got around to starting an e-mail list, who knows how many of those relationships I missed out on!
5. I Ignored Pinterest
This may be my biggest mistake of all. For the first nine months of blogging, I basically ignored Pinterest. Sure, I would “pin” a new post. But, I really didn’t get the whole Pinterest thing. Consequently, my traffic from Pinterest was almost non-existent. However, since Christmas I have put a TON of effort into understanding and utilizing Pinterest more effectively, and I have seen amazing results! Now nearly 50% of my daily traffic comes through Pinterest, and that number is climbing each day. I could kick myself for not starting this earlier!
How I Fixed Those Mistakes
Fortunately, I was able to fix those mistakes and learn from them.
How? I registered for The Elite Blog Academy.
The Elite Blog Academy (EBA) is the most comprehensive blogging course out there. It is taught by Ruth Soukup, the founder and writer of the Living Well, Spending Less blog. Ruth absolutely knows what she is talking about. In addition to running her own blog (from which she earns a full-time income) and teaching EBA, she has also written best-selling books and speaks at conferences around the country.
The Elite Blog Academy is by far the best investment that you can make to ensure your blogging success. Through the in-depth lessons, hand-outs, assignments, and the community forum, you will learn:
-How to write killer content
-How to organize your blog’s layout
-How to use Pinterest to grow traffic (my favorite unit!)
-How to monetize your blog
-How to work with brands
-How to create your own products
-And much more
My Experience with Elite Blog Academy
I signed up for EBA last September and am taking the “slow route” through it. Because of all of the time commitments that I have, I have decided to really focus on one unit each month. I dig in to that unit, make sure that I implement each strategy, complete each assignment, and evaluate my progress at the end of each month.
So, I am currently finishing up Unit 5 (out of 12). With that in mind, I thought I would share my stats so that you can see how EBA has positively impacted my blogging. I am actually pretty nervous to share these with you. So many big bloggers out there have 100,000 visitors each month and earn a full-time income from their blogs. That is just not me—YET. However, by continuing to work through EBA, I know that I will see continued growth and progress.
My Blogging Stats
| September | January | |
| Average Daily Views | 185 | 450 |
| Views Per Month | 8,540 | 13,677 |
| Pinterest Followers | 542 | 1081 |
| Facebook Followers | 247 | 419 |
| E-mail Subscribers | 106 | 305 |
| Total Income | $30 | $230 |
Update: I had to let you know about my crazy traffic growth this year! I have been faithfully implementing Ruth’s advice from Unit 5 (Pinterest and other social media). My page views (as of September 2016) are over 45,000 per month! I now have over 5,000 Pinterest followers and 700 e-mail subscribers. That is huge for me! If you’re looking for proof that EBA works, those stats alone are enough!
As you can see, I have experienced consistent growth since beginning Elite Blog Academy. Even taking the slow route!
Is EBA Right for You?
So, is EBA right for you? Maybe.
If you have a blog that you want to take to the next level, AND if you are willing to work really, really hard, then yes. This course requires serious effort. Consider it a graduate level class in blogging.
If you are in a place financially where you can invest money back into your business, then yes. EBA is a significant investment. (It will cost $499 this year. They will be offering, though, a 12 month payment plan, which can help in your budgeting.) However, Ruth also guarantees that you will see growth and income from your blog–or you get your money back. Again, considering the class like a graduate course in blogging will help you understand the cost.
In the end, you’ll need to make the decision as to whether EBA is the right fit for you at this point in your blogging career. If you are interested, you can sign up for the waiting list HERE. Doors are open for a VERY limited time.
I wish you the best of luck as you begin (or continue) your blogging journey. And, like I said, it’s a great community. I’d love to hear how you are doing and answer any questions that you might have. Feel free to e-mail me at: theorthodoxmama@gmail.com any time!
Have you made any embarrassing blogging mistakes? Do you have any blogging questions for me? Leave a comment!
(Linked to Small Victory Sunday, Share the Wealth.)
(This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and purchase a product, I will receive a commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting The Orthodox Mama!)
Blogging mistakes?! Absolutely! Sometimes I think that is all I ever make…the biggest one being that I lose confidence and feel defeated a majority of the time…
My question for you: How do you stay motivated and keep going (or writing) even when you don’t see results?
Thanks too for sharing your stats…I love it when bloggers do this – so encouraging!
~Karina
Hi Karina! I definitely understand you about the confidence issue. It can be discouraging when we don’t see the results that we would like to. I remember reading an article by Crystal Paine from Money Saving Mom. In it she described her early days of blogging and said that each day she asked herself, “What can I do today to increase traffic?” That single question helped her to focus on one manageable task per day. Some days it might be joining a link party. Others, writing comments. Others, submitting a guest post idea to another blog.
I’ve taken that approach as well. Instead of getting overwhelmed (and then losing confidence), I try to focus on the one small thing I can do right now. Those small things add up to big things. For example, a couple of weeks ago I joined a certain Pinterest group board. I began pinning three times a day to it. Then, one of the biggest bloggers on it linked to my article on her Facebook page. That day I had 7,000 views! It all started with that small step of joining a group board!
Thanks for the encouragement. One small thing at a time…so much better than comparing ourselves to others and getting overwhelmed… 🙂
I’ll give your advice a try!
Thanks again~Karina
Best of luck, Karina! (And, if you ever want to write a guest post for The Orthodox Mama, just let me know.)
Sarah, first of all thank you for posting your page views and revenue, that is inspiring to me. I am a new blogger too, I started out August but didn’t start promoting my blog until Nov 2015. I love seeing income reports but am used to seeing bloggers sharing how they are making $2 grand or more and I would be happy with making $10 lol. My highest month was January with 450 page views but no income yet. My first mistake was not knowing how to make my images pinterest ready but I am working on that. Plus I am so new to twitter and I secretly hate facebook. Lol. It’s so much social media that I feel overwhelmed at times. Just taking it one day at time! Have a great night.
Hello, Crystal! Welcome to the blogging world! I completely understand about the steep learning curve–social media, technical issues, not to mention writing. I’m glad that you found my stats encouraging. It can be easy to get discouraged by the big numbers of established bloggers, but it’s important to compare yourself only with yourself. I try to improve little by little each month. Thanks for stopping by!
Congrats on the impressive growth. I was just working on my 2016 budget and budgeted for Elite Blog Academy for this year. My blog is seeing great growth traffic wise so I need to capitalize better on my growing email list and monetizing. Thanks for the inspiration and linking up with Small Victories Sunday. I agree Pinterest is huge. I took pinning perfect last January and now most of my traffic comes from Pinterest and I haven’t even done everything I need to optimize old posts yet. It’s been amazing!
Thanks, Tanya! I’m excited that you’ll be taking Elite Blog Academy this year. You may finish before me. 🙂
Lol, fat chance of that. First I need to make a list of all the blogging resources I have and have not read/taken. I got a Blogging Concentrated BC Stack more than a year ago with all kinds of videos and STILL haven’t done it! BTW, thanks for sharing with Small Victories Sunday Linkup. Pinned to our linkup board, hope you join us again this weekend.
Hey Sarah! I would say that’s definitely significant growth that you can be proud of!! Bravo!! =) So exciting to be moving towards your goals!
Thanks, Ciara!
Congrats on your first year of blogging! I learned so much from EBA and met some great people that have helped me out too. I love the idea of doing a chapter a month. I kind of skimmed and skipped through some of the chapters and am getting ready to redo the course again.
Thank you, Julie! It has definitely been a steep learning curve, but a lot of fun!
I have made plenty of blogging mistakes, but I have learned from them too! Thanks for sharing this at the #SmallVictoriesSundayLinkup!
Hi Sarah
Indeed a great post about blogging mistakes.
I am glad that you have covered major blogging mistakes and It is a fact that these are those mistakes which almost every blogger do.
But We can’t deny that these mistakes helped us a lot to learn something new. Imagine without doing any mistake, do we able to learn something new?
Absolutely not, because doing mistakes create questions in our mind and when we have a new question in our mind then we always try to get answer of these question which help us to learn something new. 😀
I had also did so many mistakes when I started my blogging carrier and still doing. I used to copy articles from other blogs which is very much common for almost every blogger.
Every new blogger publish 1st article by copying it from other site and same thing I did.
Later I learnt that Google never ranks duplicate articles and then this mistake helped me to write articles by own. It taught me that how to write articles by yourself and also improved my english a little bit.
Sometimes doing mistake become turning point in our life so I love doing mistakes. 😀
Thanks for sharing such a great piece of content. 😀
David, thanks for the excellent reminder that our mistakes can lead to learning!
Hello Great Post Indeed about Mistakes, bloggers make these days.
Personally, when I started my career in blogging, I was not sure, for whom I am writing for and what I need to provide to attract readers.
Also, i was focused on writing for search engines as I wanted my posts to rank, but actually it was a big mistake from my side.
As, I have learned over the past few months, we just need to cover the topic by maintaining quality and rest will be ok itself..
But I sadly believe, many still not aware of this fact, they are still making tons of mistakes in blogging.
So, they need to start reading more to get more knowledge and then proceed in blogging the right way.
So, brilliantly described points.
Keep up the good work.
Content is definitely the most important thing. Thanks, Rubel!
I would must say that you just rocked in this article. 😀
It doesn’t matter, In which field you are working. You would definitely make mistakes and these mistakes will help you to learn something new. So we should never afraid of doing mistakes.
In this article, the blogging mistakes which you have mentioned above are very much common which most of the bloggers or webmasters make when they start their blogging career.
When bloggers like me do mistakes then It is obvious that they can’t generate that result which they want because of that mistake. When It happens, they again start doing all the things and tries to find what they did wrong in previous turn and then they find their mistakes and learn from that mistake.
So some how, mistakes helped us to learn new things. Right? 😀
Most of the people think that doing mistakes will give them failures which they never want but they should understand that every successful person makes mistake at their initial stages and learn from them.
Every successful blogger copied others article once in their blogging journey but later they learned and started writing by themselves.
I would like to give a great Thanks to you for covering these amazing blogging mistakes which people can use to learn from them. 😀