11 Reasons Why Your Blog Isn’t Making Money and What To Do About It

By: Theodore Nwangene     Topics: Blogging     More posts about: Blog Creation, Productivity

Does Your Blog Make Money?

I mean does it thousands of dollars per day / month – not a few measly cents!

Would you like to the ranks of Top Earning Blog owners?

What is stopping your blog make money right now?

In his book, The Richest man in Babylon, George S. Clason stated that:

1. Money is the medium by which earthly success is measured.

2. Money makes possible the enjoyment of the best the earth affords.

3. Money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws which govern its acquisition.

OK, I know that some of you will point out that money is not the only measure of success (and I would agree) – but when it comes to the blogging business…

Money is the medium by which blog success is measured.

I meet a lot of bloggers and I review a lot of websites and when a blogger is not earning the reward they hoped for, chances are very high they are making a number of the following mistakes.

Do any of these apply to you?

11 Mistakes that are Preventing your Blog make money.

The following are the main reasons why most people fail to make money from their online business.

1. They Lack an Adequate and Workable Plan:

It’s not just enough to say that you want to be rich; you must also map out plans on how you want to achieve that. Saying that you need money is nothing if you don’t know how much you need and when you’ll need it.

The first thing is to desire the money and then, know how much you want.

Sometime ago, I asked some of my blogging friends what they want to achieve from their blogs and how they plan to make money from it. To my utmost surprise, most of them don’t even know what they want.

Before even starting your blog, it is pertinent that you map out your plans. You must first of all know how you plan to monetize it based on your chosen niche. Do you want to make money by……..

a) Creating and selling your own products

b) Selling other peoples products as an affiliate

c) Running Amazon associate program

d) Using contextual ad networks

e) Niche sites marketing

f) Offering your own services

g) And many more.

It all depends on your chosen niche. But the main thing is to know what you want and how you want to get it.

Apart from knowing how you’ll monetize your blog, you also need to have a content marketing plan and schedule.

If you want to succeed with content marketing then, you should always know when and what to publish at any given time.

Content marketing is no more all about writing articles either…

If that’s the way you’re still doing it today then, you will fail woefully. If you want your efforts to pay off then, every article you publish must have a goal. Its either you want the article to give you:

=> Social media shares

=> Get you some backlinks

=> Get you email subscribers

=> Land you some consulting gig

=> Help you to connect with some of the influencers in your community.

As Brian Dean said, just keep on producing the right type of contents and with time, your efforts will pay off.

One thing you need to be cognizance of is the fact that no successful blog on the internet became successful by accident.

As Social Media Examiner once said: Those who “wings it” when they blog are usually setting themselves up for failure.

Brian Harris noted in his recent post that one of the worst mistakes he made in 2015 was not having a content marketing plan. That mistake cost him so many ways.

So, the first thing to do right now is to get an Editorial Calendar and start learning how to use it to plan for your posts. Once you’ve known what your plans are, you need to ensure that you stick to it at all cost.

Bottom Line: The article should achieve something for you and your blog. If it does not, your time will be a waste.

2. They Do Not Properly Research Their Niche Before Starting:

Will your Blog Make Money?

This one is synonymous with most bloggers including myself. Fact is, many of us (including me) started blogging without knowing anything about our niche.

It usually goes like this:

You were kind of broke and was searching on the internet on “How to make money on the internet”. After all you had heard about all these success stories!

You see an article that talks about how the author made $$$$$$ in one month from the internet.

You then decided to try and see if you can make something similar (If not more).

You also notice, that most of the people showing their income report on the internet are in the internet marketing and blogging niche. So, you also decided to venture into the same niche even without carrying out any research to know how it works.

So, you create your own blog and start struggling and praying for miracle to happen………Sorry, it doesn’t happen that way.

If you’re going to create a popular blog in any niche, you must start from researching and knowing what’s happening in that niche. This will enable you to know if it’s worth your time or not.

The internet is inundated with so many *fake* information on how to make money blogging. That’s why so many people usually give up after awhil..

Most people are too lazy to do the necessary underground work needed to build a lasting and sustainable business on the internet today. If you’re one of them, you will always get scammed.

Side Note: Talking of scams – Neville Medhora has produced a blog post on scams that would be funny – but for the fact there is a lot of truth in it!

And just as important – beware of the Fake Guru!

To Build a Popular Blog you Must Research Your Niche Thoroughly.

Before starting any business both online and offline, adequate research is needed to ensure that you’re really servicing a need. (a hungry market)

In carrying out market research that you will know the best niche to enter and how to best monetize it.

You will also be able to know if people spend money on the niche and what they are buying.

Each niche has its own way of monetization. If you don’t research the market well, you might end up monetizing your site the wrong way which will give you zero result.

Furthermore, in carrying out your research, you will be able to know what is going on in your space and what to do better to stand out.

With Google, you can find out about just about anything on the Internet.

For example:

Assuming you’re thinking of going into the Hair Loss niche and you typed “below image is what you’ll see.” into Google – depending on your country location, you will see something like this:

Now as you can see, this result shows that hair loss treatment has been searched 33,500,000 times in Google.

This shows you that people are actually looking for information about it.

Also, it has some advertisers which is a good sign showing that people spends money in that niche. It’s also a good fit for Google Adsense in case you’re thinking of using it as one of your means of monetization.

The next thing will now be to check the sites that are ranking for that terms and see if there are ways you can outrank them.

With tools like Open Site Explorer, Similar Web, Buzzsumo, etc, you can find out all you need to know about these sites.

For example, I used Similar Web to find out more about one of the sites ranking in the top 10 – mensfitness.com

They had an excellent article on 6 best fixes for hair loss.

Below are the stats I discovered using similar web.

From the screenshots above, you can see that the site had over 7 million visitors last month which is really mouth watering (Imagine if you’re the owner). Majority of their visitors are also coming from the search engines as you can see below:

One interesting thing I discovered using Open Site Explorer (image below) was that the page on Hair Loss did not have a significant number of back links. Now to be fair, Mens Fittness is a powerful and highly reputable website – and back links are not everything, but it is conceivable I would suggest that you could create an article on “Hair Loss’ that would attract more back links – allowing you to compete with a huge website like this.

My point is that if you are prepared to invest the time in SEO and creating worthwhile articles that people will link to, then sooner or later, you will be in money!

3. They Think They Can Do it Alone:

Every successful business has a good team. Of course, you can single handedly build a successful business both online and offline but, you will need the help of other people to grow.

You can never be good at everything. Instead of trying to do all the things that your business requires to grow on your own, why not hire some smart people to help you out while you focus on the tasks that you’re good at.

You may decide to learn it all but; it will only be costing you lots of time. A far better strategy is to outsource!

Check out most of the successful bloggers out there, you will find out that they mastered the acts of team building from day one. That have taken their blog to a greater height over time.

So, why not imitate them!

When you start – money may be short, but as soon as you can afford it makes sense to hire people to do the tasks you find time consuming and challenging. As a side note, one of the most successful bloggers I know barely knows any technical stuff with regards to blogging and hosting – he lets others do that.

4. They are Not Willing to Invest in Their Business:

This is like the step 3 above, unless you’re running a hobby; every business needs money to grow. There are so many necessary investments you must make on your blog if you take it as a business.

If you want to become a successful and influential blogger, it will be a waste of time to use free blogging platforms like blogger and the rest of them.

You must be ready to pay for your own domain and host. Also, you cannot afford to use a free theme.

While starting, you will be tempted most times to use any of the cheap hosting companies out there but you must resist that temptation.

This is because if you don’t, you will regret it at the end. Sometime in the future, your blog will start slowing down. It might also get hacked because of poor security and worst of all, it will just disappear mysteriously.

Apart from investing in your business, you should also be investing on yourself. Joining a Mastermind Group is one of the best things any growing blog owner can do!

Learn how to invest in your business, no good business can survive without proper investment.

5. They Lack Focus and Concentration:

One of the main reasons why people always fail to achieve their desired result is because; they’re confused and less focused.

Popular author, Robert Kiyosaki defined focus as….

F: Follow

O: One

C: Course

U: Until

S: Success.

If you want to make it with your blog, you must learn to avoid all the distractions out there.

Do you plan to make money by creating your own products? Give it all your attention and forget about every other method of making money on the internet until you’ve achieved that.

If after all your efforts it didn’t work out, you can now try another method knowing that perhaps, the first is not good for you.

Doing all the things people tell you to make money from your blog at the same time and not focusing is a bad idea!

Focus on one strategy first and burn all the bridges to ensure that you achieve your aim. If you want to make money building micro niche sites then, focus on that alone and forget the rest.

SPECIAL NOTE: If you are someone who struggles with focus and getting things done – we highly recommend Craig Ballantynes Perfect Day Formula.

6. They Are Not Setting Achievable Goals:

Research has proven that the best way to achieve anything in life is to set goals.

After setting your goal, you need to write it down and paste it at a place you will always see it so that you will not forget what you’re pursuing.

This will help you to put more efforts into what you’re doing to make sure you achieved your goal at your stipulated time.

According to: What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack, 3% of Harvard MBAs make ten times as much as the other 97% combined.

Source: sidsavara.com

Then in 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. You can guess the results:

· The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.

· Even more staggering, the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.

Writing down your goal is also important.

Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in California, did a study on goal-setting with 267 participants.

She found that you are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down.

Finally, you have to make goal setting a habit. According to Brian Tracy, Goal setting has been called the master skill of success.

You have two choices in life: You can either work on your own goals, or you can work for someone else.

When you learn the master skill, you take complete control of your life and jump to the front of the line in your potential for great achievement.

7. They Associate With the Wrong People:

Remember you are the “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with“

There are some kinds of people you should avoid at all cost if you want to achieve any meaningful thing in life.

The people you hang out with will always determine your future whether you believe it or not.

If you stay with failures then, you’re bound to fail as well because; you will always be like those you move with.

One of the things that added to my success today is because, I’m always mindful of those I listen to and those I keep company with.

Surround yourself with the right minded and positive type of people and, you will always get what you want in life.

Don’t stay with people that will always try to belittle your ambition.

In the business of internet marketing, we need motivation almost all the time to keep us going.

One of the reasons why people fail is because they lack those motivations due to the people they hang out with.

8. Not Having Enough Time for Your Business:

Time is an important factor in any business.

Every business needs time to grow and for you to reap the rewards of your efforts, you will have to map out enough time for your business.

Set aside some time on a daily basis to work on your business unless it’s a hobby like I said earlier.

a. Check to see if your blog is loading normal

b. Check the loading time of your blog

c. See if you have any email messages or requests

d. Check your blog’s stats and find out if your traffic and income is growing or if you need to make any changes.

e. Update your blog always

f. Promote your posts well

g. Connect and build relationship with the authority bloggers in your niche

h. Guest post on other authority blogs like never before.

These and many more are the things you need to be doing to ensure the growth of your business. You also need to know when you’re wasting time. When it comes to blog promotion, it will be a waste of time to follow all the promotional techniques out there.

If blog commenting, guest blogging and social media marketing works well for you then, continue with it and forget about others.

The wise thing is to chose a few marketing strategies and focus on them instead of following all the marketing techniques out there and getting little or no result.

Jon Morrow advised that you channel all your time to building your email list while starting.

Now this may surprise you – but Social Media does not need to be your No 1 priority at the beginning. Sure it is good to have social media accounts, but far too often people confuse being active on social media with building their business. There are exceptions of course (think celebrities) but until you have built a list of active subscribers (1000+) there is little benefit in spending a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. Again Jon Morrow has plenty to say on this subject – and others that are a waste of time for beginners.

9. Not Connecting and Building Relationship with your Readers:

If your readers don’t like and trust you, they won’t make you any money. You must earn the trust of your audience if you want to buy anything from them.

For people to click on your links and buy the things you’re promoting on your site, you must be someone they know and believe in.

One way to do this is to always show them you like and care for them.

It could be by responding to their comments on your posts

Answering their questions, interacting with them on the social media and many more. Don’t forget to always write interesting and engaging articles on your site because, good content is king.

Just find ways to earn their trust and, they are more likely to buy when you recommend something. They will believe in your judgment but, don’t forget to always give them more in value than they give you in cash. Something to aim for is to always deliver ten times more value than cost as a minimum.

10. Not Connecting with Influencers in your Niche:

When you’re just starting out, the fastest way to grow is to connect with the influencers in your niche and they will help promote you.

Its even better to build this connection before starting your own blog.

The concept is to start first by writing for some of the top brands in your niche to gain recognition. You can just set up a simple landing page for email collection and then, provide the link on your byline.

If you do this right, you will have a huge audience in no distant time and this will boost your own blog once you create it.

But in a case where you already have a blog, the best thing to start doing from now is to write for those influencers more than you write for your own blog.

Dishing out hundreds of articles on your blog every now and then when no one is reading it will not do you any good.

Why not build the audience first? This was the same way Jon Morrow took his blog from 0 to 13,000 active subscribers in 60 days.

11. Not doing anything after reading this post:

My dear friend, reading is never enough

You need to put into practice what you learn.

A lot of people read just for reading sake but, that will take you nowhere.

Remember – it is not what you read that counts, it is not even what you know that counts – ultimately reading this article will have been for nothing, if you don’t take ACTION!

After all, the distance between your dreams and reality is called action!

Remember sharing is caring so, don’t forget to tweet and share this post with your friends.

Author Bio

Theodore Nwangene is on a journey to help bloggers and entrepreneurs build a better and profitable blog, increase visibility and boost their online authority. Follow Theodore and his website here.