5 Mistakes New Bloggers Make

Over the past 10 plus years of blogging, I’ve definitely made my share of mistakes! I honestly had NO idea what I was doing when I first started this blog. I had signed up on Blogger and just started writing posts. Thankfully I figured out what I needed to do to take my blog to the next level and make it profitable, but there are a number of things I wish I had done sooner, and some I wish I had not done at all! To save you from making the same mistakes I did, here is my list of the top 5 Mistakes New Bloggers Make:

• Not starting your blog on WordPress. If you are thinking of monetizing your blog (earning money from ads or sponsored posts), go ahead and start a self-hosted WordPress blog rather than using Blogger or WordPress.com. If you have no plans to monetize, WordPress.com is fine. You can always change your mind later, and it’s pretty painless to migrate a blog from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress blog.
• Not starting a mailing list. Almost every blogger wishes he/she had started a mailing list sooner. Followers can come and go on social media, but many of your most loyal followers will be on your mailing list! Having a list also makes it a lot easier to launch new products, e-courses or other ventures. The email subscription/marketing service I use and recommend is ConvertKit. I’m seriously AMAZED by how much their platform can do– from sending out a weekly digest of your blog posts to an automated sequence of e-mails to market an e-book or e-course.
• Not doing enough research when choosing your domain name. There are several reasons to take your time when choosing a domain name. First, while you may have a super fun and creative name in mind, it might not be what people are searching for on Google (SEO-friendly). Be strategic about the words in your blog name and domain name. Secondly, I still think it’s best to have a .com extension if possible (rather than a .net, .org, etc.), and this may require you to be a little more creative when choosing a domain name if your first choice is already taken.
• Not signing up for social media handles/accounts with your blog name as soon as you launch your blog (or before you do!). There’s nothing worse than having a domain name you’re in love with, but no social media handles to go with it! Do a quick search on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to see if there is a handle available that matches your blog or website name. It doesn’t have to match exactly. For example, this blog’s name is 30 Something Mother Runner, but my Twitter handle is “thisrealmom” I thought it would be WAY too long to use all of the words, so I opted for an abbreviated handle.:-)
• Not choosing a reliable hosting service. This is perhaps the biggest mistake new bloggers make. There are many different options you can choose for hosting your blog if you opt for the self-hosted route. That being said, there are very few I would personally recommend (and that I use myself). The two hosting services I recommend to friends and clients are WP Engine and SiteGround. They are both extremely reliable and offer great tech support. SiteGround even has hosting packages starting at $3.95/month!

Don’t forget to check out my favorite Blogging Tools!