5 Reasons Most Bloggers Are Broke

Blogging IncomeBlogs are the oldest and perhaps the most mature form of social media. They’ve been around since ages, well before any of the modern social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and newer players such as Google+ were born. Several bloggers who started on a shoestring budget have since become household names in the technology and social media world. Most bloggers started broke but those who played it right have become millionaires.

Blogging isn’t a short cut to success in the social media world. In fact, it demands more perseverance and hard work as compared to other social media channels. I’ve come across a number of bloggers who’ve gone broke simply because they couldn’t get things right. They claim that traffic is good and so is reader engagement, then why is it that they go broke?

In this post, I walk through the top 5 reasons why bloggers go broke.

Quality

Setting up a blog is as easy as you’d like. While that’s good for businesses, it also means that anybody and everybody can setup a blog in virtually no time. I reckon 90% of all blogs of the Internet are below-par on the quality scale. If you do not provide quality content, you simply can’t engage users on an ongoing basis. The golden rule #1 of being a successful blogger who makes money – ensure the quality (content) and the quantity (readers) shall follow!

Frequency

While it sounds obvious, I’m amazed that a number of blogs aren’t updated at a well-defined frequency. The ideal frequency is to post at least once a day. Readers quickly tend to disassociate themselves from dead blogs. As a blogger, make sure you stick to posting every day. Any significant hiccups in the regular posting schedule and your blog’s appeal diminishes faster than you can imagine.

Conversation

Contrary to public perception, I strongly believe blogs are meant to be two-way communication. If your audience doesn’t engage with you through comments and trackbacks, there’s something wrong with your blogging strategy. If you can engage your readers in a meaningful dialogue for each post, half the battle is already won.

Excess Advertising

I’ve come across several blogs which are guilty of excessive advertising. While there’s little doubt that advertising is a valuable monetization channel for blogs, overdoing it annoys readers. The best policy is to make ads easily discoverable yet non-intrusive for readers. Avoid using too many flashy banners; they are irritating for most users.

Poor Promotion

It’s often said that a blog is only as successful as the promotion policy behind it. If you build a great looking blog with high quality content but you don’t promote it enough, it will never gain traction. Be smart in how you promote your blogs. Use email and social networks for virally marketing your blog.

What do you think are the reasons why most bloggers are broke? Please share your experience by leaving a comment.

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  1. Hi @douglasi:twitter Great topic! You could write a whole series about this. IMO bloggers are broke, cause they don’t know how to capture leads and generate sales with the right content strategy. I totally agree that advertising should be brought down to a minimum on the blog (on mine it’s zero). Revenues should be generated by selling own products and services. Know how to use an autoresponder and collect emails to build long term relations based on valuable content shared via emails. And use the same list to offer what you shave to sell. One other thing. Think about selling as “helping others solve their problems.” Good luck all bloggers. 

  2. An excellent summary, blogging successfully is far more challenging than meets the eye, it can be difficult to produce content daily though, there is ever increasing competition for attention.

  3. Bad Luck, sometimes you can write great content and just not have good luck.  I try to shotgun approach blogging and always try many different things until 1 fits and starts becoming successful, if you try one thing at a time you could be waiting years to find a profitable means.

  4. Douglas, I see bloggers who look to be more focused on monetizing their blog than providing services. If you are working on an emerging media company, serving an unserved or underserved niche, the blog may BE your business. For so many others, the blog is either under-resourced, and quality or frequency suffers, or it pulls focus away from core offerings. 

    That said, I would like to posit an additional role for a blog. It may not be a core source of inbound leads and net new acquisition if it doesn’t have quality, frequency and promotion. However, once someone finds you through another source, your blog can be how they get to know you and your perspective, better than an about page ever could.

    An example: One of my favorite people in B2B marketing is Maureen Blandford. Here blog is not regularly updated, it is not (I don’t believe) an entree for her into speaking engagements or a primary way she promotes herself. But if you met Maureen and wanted a quick view into her passion for B2B marketing and her perspective, her blog would communicate that better than any traditional about page. Here is Maureen’s blog: http://maureenblandford.com/

    The challenge in your view is the multitude of purposes a blog can how and how each is measured. Every perspective is unique, and for some, the benefit is difficult to directly, linearly measure. But that doesn’t make the blog (or any other marketing endeavor) less important.

    My unmeasurable $0.02 contribution.

    — @wittlake

    1. Thanks @wittlake:disqus for the expansive points. The overall purpose of a blog should be to complement and/or foster the vision of the blogger(s). Unfortunately, the blogosphere is littered with wannabe and me-too bloggers without a sense of direction or plan for their blogs. Just like any other social platform, a blog is a tool in a vision (news, marketing, lead generation, public relations, customer service, etc) tool box. The tool is not the end. The tool is just a means to an end. Unfortunately, many bloggers are still figuring out what the end really is for their blog. The ol’ maxim, “know thy destination and you’ll get there in time” comes to mind when you think of many bloggers.

      It’s not always about the money but a blogger should have a ‘why’ for her blog and should continuously measure her ROI, whatever that may be. Otherwise, the blog quickly becomes another victim on the minefield of abandoned blogs littering the blogosphere.

  5. I think you have broadly emphasized on major reasons why many bloggers don’t make it on the internet scene.

    I think another thing is, not too obsessed with SEO. Contents are meant for human, not computer. So, when writing content, focus on human. After all, with the emergence of social media, eventually our sites would appear on Google when it is properly capitalized. 

  6. Well For Successful Blogging You have to become more Consistent.. Keep Focusing on Fresh and Unique Content so You can grab the attention of Loyal Readers!! Agreed that Excessive Promotion always annoyed readers!!

  7. I generally post every weekday, but even so I disagree with the advice that you HAVE to post every day to keep readers coming back. There are a lot of blogs that definitely don’t post every day, yet they still manage to keep their readers and grow. A few examples are Tim Ferriss’ blog, Zen Habits, and Derek Siver’s “blog”. 

    I think the key is to make sure your content is great, and daily posting can actually get in the way of this. Unless blogging is all you do, you’re not going to be able to craft epic posts every single day. Sometimes you need a week or more to create a post. You can definitely lessen your post frequency as long as you’re focusing on that quality.

    If I had to make a rule for frequency, I’d stick with “just keep it somewhat consistent”. This means that if you blog just once a week, try to keep it that way – don’t drop off to once a month. If you’re blogging daily, you should try to stick with that too – which might prove a challenge to some. Make sure you’re comfortable with you posting frequency and then try to stick with it.

    1. You’re right @thomasfrank09:disqus . Frequency, although it does help, is not the issue, consistency is what attracts more eyes. We are not short of blogs with decent to high traffic, what we are short of are blogs that really make money or meet their goals because few have a system in place to convert those eyeballs into profits, however you choose to measure that.

  8. Very nice post specially for blogger. Personally  i believe that Quality and frequency does matter a lot. You need to be very consistent and you need to give something

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