5 Signs a Blogger Will Not Succeed

Reading Time: 8 minutes

The same way there are signs that show you will soon become a millionaire, there are also signs to prove that you will never succeed as a blogger even if you are publishing 50 articles every day.

It’s hard but I have to say it anyway – not every blogger will succeed – many will fail. I’m not trying to scare you but the truth be told, many bloggers will fail, especially those trying to reinvent the wheel.

There’s no point wasting time, energy and resources on things that don’t work when you can rinse and repeat what’s already working.

Some blogs will drop in their ranking, some bloggers will feel exhausted and quit while some will go against all odds to succeed.

Having envisaged what will become of the blogosphere, I am here to share with you 5 signs to help you predict how successful a blogger or one running an online business will become if they continue doing exactly what they are doing today.

It does not matter your blog niche, if you are guilty of any or all of these signs, forget it, the ship of your blogging career is about to hit an iceberg few months ahead of you. Same way there are signs to prove your son can make a great lawyer, there are also signs that a blogger will either fail or succeed.

But by doing the reverse of whatever these signs are, you can overcome the danger?

5 Signs You Will Fail in Your Blogging Journey

Sign 1: You Don’t Care about Marketing Your Brand Offline

According to blogging statistics published by Worldometers and Technorati, on daily basis, not fewer than 4 million blog posts are published and 12,000 new blogs created. In a similar report made available by Little Jack Marketing, every single minute, 204 million emails are sent, 4 million search queries made on Google and over 2 million Facebook users share content on their timeline.

With the reality of these statistics staring at bloggers, it goes to show that the competition is very high, and for your brand to be visible in a crowded platform like this, you must be creative. Discover legal ways business owners are stealing customers (readers) from their competitors.

You’ve got to start thinking what other bloggers are not thinking. Ask yourself: How are top bloggers promoting their blog? What blogging lifestyle are common with top bloggers in my niche? How am I going to be promoting my blog in a way that will take my competitors unaware? And what’s unique about my blog (in terms of design, writing tone, and audience and monetization method) that will likely become my unique selling point?

Bring some element of creativity to your online business and watch your income and traffic grow.

One “out-of-the-box” style of growing a blog many bloggers don’t consider is taking their online business offline. And that alone may be making you leave hundreds of dollar on the table.

If you must reach your blogging goals, you must be ready to break that pattern of thought telling that an online business must remain online. It’s not true. Your online business can tap from the offline market as well.

Wondering how you can take your online business offline and still retain a high ROI…

Here are some of the things you can do.

How to Market Your Online Business Offline

• Print stickers, flyers and/or banners that promotes your online business
• Write for newspapers and magazines with your blog URL included in it
• Publish a book and include your blog URL to it
• Talk to your friends and family members to help you tell their friends about your online business
• Do a survey. Ask anyone you see on the street if they have ever heard of your blog – mention the name of your blog.

This design above is a flyer I did for one of my blogs which circulated around the city. I’ve had cases where so many people connected with me after reading my article in some print magazines, including our own magazine.

Sign 2: You Hardly Connect with Other Bloggers

Do you find it difficult connecting and building relationship with other bloggers, especially those in your niche?

If yes, then I hate to break it to you, your failure as a blogger has just began.

That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.

This is one of the blogging secrets many successful bloggers don’t share even though they implement it. If you fail to build strong business relationship with other bloggers, bear it in mind that you won’t achieve your goals for setting up a blog.

Am I sounding harsh on you?

Yes, I am. And I know it. But is that not exactly what syringes do to patients? It may be painful but it’s the only way to convey the soothing message that can help you build a multiple digit dollar blog business.

In order to start building relationship with other bloggers, you need to know who exactly you need to connect with and in what order.

Your decision will be based on:

• Bloggers in the same niche with you
• Bloggers teaching how to use SEO to drive massive traffic
• Bloggers teaching how to write effectively and ways to make money writing
• Bloggers displaying job orders, like Enstine Muki is doing at BlogExpose
• Internet marketers teaching copywriting like Ronald Nzimora did in his book, Sell Your Brain and Bob Bly.
• Bloggers teaching how to drive massive traffic and build a profitable brand online using social media like Rebekah Radice is doing.
• Bloggers like Tiffany Griffin that are very vocal when it comes to exposing secrets successful bloggers don’t share.

What Connecting to Other Bloggers Will Help You to Achieve

Connecting with other bloggers and internet marketers in your niche are not without benefits. A bunch of my result in building this successful business blog came from connecting with other bloggers. (You may need to read my blogging business plan to learn how I did it).

Amidst my busy schedule in coaching my clients on how to use social media to sell their products, how to increase their blog traffic and income and some key freelance writing work that I do, I still find time to leave at least 10 valuable comments on at least 10 different blogs in my niche every single day.

Doing this has helped me gain free referral traffic, expose my intellect to potential clients and helped to strengthen my relationship with top bloggers. Beyond that, you will also be getting guest bloggers and people you can synergize to launch a course or webinar with.

How to Connect with Influencers in Your Niche and Get Them Listen to You

• Draw a list of all the influencer bloggers in different niches you would wish to walk into their circle of influence
• Make lengthy and value-adding comments on their blog continuously and they will notice you
• Request to guest post on their blog
• Mention them on your blog by linking back to any of their blog posts that was helpful and relevant to the article you are writing on
• Share their quotes, blog posts and courses on Twitter
• Write an email to them, thanking them for the specific result you achieved in your entrepreneur journey as a result of reading their blog posts
• Request to feature or interview them on your blog
• Follow them on at least two social media platforms where they are very active and participate too
• Sign up for their webinar, coaching classes and live events (free and paid)
• Reach out to them for, “Expert Roundup Post.” Sue Anne’s blog post should guide you on everything you need to create an expert roundup post.
• And finally, create great contents on your blog. If they fall in love with your writing skills, they will search for your contact page

Sign 3: You Thought Keyword Research Was Not Necessary

How often do you consider your blog keywords before even drafting your post?

Probably you can’t remember, because you thought it doesn’t matter. Well, at the long run, it does.

A blog that is not optimized to rank for certain keywords will struggle to get traffic.

It’s not as if I’m asking you to sit there and write for one robot like that. No. That’s not what I mean. But what’s the need writing a blog post only you, your friends and family members will read, a blog with over 20 long form posts but none appears on Google’s first page no matter what you are searching for?

It doesn’t make sense, right?

Listen! Keyword research is an important blogging secret you MUST learn if you want to succeed. Otherwise, you will have over 966 million websites to compete with for relevance. And you know what? All your articles will continue to appear on the 78th search engine result page (SERP).

But wait a minute, who really visits the 78th page to find an article on Google?

Getting on the first page is possible and I will teach you how I did it.

But first of all, let’s know what the word, “Keywords” meant.

(You may need to check the keyword research strategies I learnt following the likes of Neil Patel, Brian Dean, Brian Clark and Jon Morrow)

Photo credit: FreePik

Sign 4: You Are Gradually Beginning to Publish Everything that Crosses Your Mind

The urge to go off your blogging niche will come but don’t give in to it. Stay focused. Resist that temptation.

It will sound so nice and creative.

But you know, what?

Don’t publish it. Your blog should not be a place where EVERYTHING goes. Stay focused on your goals. On several occasions, I have turned down some sponsored posts that are completely off-track my niche, especially those of them from the cigarette and betting companies just looking for where to dump their links.

No matter how creative, nice and financially rewarding the idea may sound, if it’s outside your niche and you can’t find a way to optimize it in a way it will become relevant to your readers, don’t publish it on your blog.

Doing that is simply forcing junks on your subscribers. Sure, you need not to be told what the consequences might become at the long run.

Sign 5: You Are Depending on Only One Stream of Income

There’s no guarantee anywhere in the world that your blog will start making money the first day it went live, except you already have a list of email subscribers, affiliate marketing programs or sponsors. So, depending on one stream of income alone as an online entrepreneur, especially on advertising networks like Google AdSense, PropellerAds, Media.net etc, is a sign of danger. You can get penalized anytime and yours as a blogger is gone.

The exciting thing about blogging is that there are multiple means a blogger can make money from their blog. Whatever income generating channel you decide to use should be based on what works well for you, your clients and your niche.

Beyond using advertising networks to monetize your blog, you can tap into any of the following income means…

• Affiliate marketing
• Sponsored posts
• Sales of ad space
• Freelancing (writing, blog setup, graphic design, SEO, etc)
• Social media management for corporations and busy entrepreneurs
• Coaching
• Sales of your own products (books and courses) etc.

It goes beyond this. You may need to take a look at Cori Ramos’ guest post on Donna Merrill’s blog that talks about side hustles for bloggers to make extra money.

Conclusion

What differentiates successful bloggers from mediocre are in the information they get and what they do with them. The growth of your blog will be unimaginable if you can follow these strategies I explained in this article.

Your relationship with other bloggers, how you promote your business offline, the rate and manner at which you handle keyword research before writing a new blog post, how conscious you are not to feed your readers with junks and the multiple ways of making money from the blog you have utilized are 5 signs that will determine if you will succeed as a blogger or not.

Now, over to you. Are there other signs a blogger will never become successful? Share with us in the comment box.