5 Mistakes To Avoid When Monetizing Your Blog

Having a blog is fun, but the real fun comes when you begin to monetize it. Before you take that next step in monetizing your blog, be sure to avoid these 5 costly newbie mistakes.

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Having Too Many Display Ads

When you start a blog or monetize your existing blog, it can be tempting to put as many ads on there as possible. After all, more ads is more revenue, right?

Not exactly. The opposite is actually the truth.

The best blogs appear to not have a single ad placed throughout the entire site! The money comes from subtlety placed ads within the content.

Nothing turns readers off more than a banner farm. Readers want a blog that feels well-designed, sleek and user-friendly, and authentic. None of those things can be achieved if you’re packing it with display ads. Be selective in the number of ads you show and make sure they’re not going to overwhelm your reader as soon as they land on your site.

Lack Of Engagement

A lot of new bloggers starting their first blog focus so much on driving traffic to their site that they neglect the core of what’s going to make them money: engaged readers.

You want to have content and posts on your blog that are compelling, entertaining, and engaging because that’s what’s going to drive people to take action. Yes, traffic is important, but if no one is reading, commenting, and sharing, it’s irrelevant how many hits you have every day.

No Set Strategy

If you were starting a traditional brick and mortar business, you wouldn’t go into it without a solid strategy, so why do that with your online business? And yes even a blog about cats is a business.

A lot of bloggers launch their site with the idea they will just “wing it”, but without a clear strategy, you’re not going to be able to define your goals or what you hope to achieve.

To be successful as a blogger, it’s important to sit down and map out a larger and more comprehensive strategy.

Putting Money Before An Audience

You need to build an audience before you can work on monetizing your blog. Even if that audience is small, it needs to be there. A good format to follow is to set up your blog, get some strong content on there, and develop a social media presence.

Then, once you have the foundation, you can start moving toward really monetizing it.

Otherwise, you may risk becoming deterred because you’re not seeing immediate results, even though you’re just starting from scratch.

Giving Up Too Soon

This might just be the number one problem bloggers face.

Making money from your blog sounds great, but unfortunately, a lot of bloggers become discouraged when they do not see results right away.

There are hundreds of millions of blogs in the world, which can feel daunting when you think of them as being your competition. It takes time to build a following and implement a strategy that will allow you to earn revenue, but that can be worth it.

Even if you don’t see the results you want right away, keep working at it. Be consistent. Be valuable and deliver engaging content and you’re likely to see results more quickly than you might think.

Do you have a blog you are monetizing? Share it in the comments section and let me know how you’re making money with it!