In this content, we will discuss the subject matter of amateur blogging and how to get to the top in your blogging career. In recent time, blogs continue coming up daily and as such, there is an increase in the competition level of every niche. As such the quest to grow your blog is on the rise.
People go into blogging for several purposes but for this content, we will focus on our scope. There are some personal blogs which the owners create to share certain information about themselves. An example of such blog is gatenotes. This blog is owned by Bill Gate, the owner of Microsoft. Here, he shares a lot of information about his personal life, his books and some of his ideologies. As such if you want to follow him, the visit his blog.
Like Bill Gate, many other people have set up their own personal blogs so that people can read more about them. This is what personal blogs do. As such, the aim of setting up a personal blog is not to make money.
What is Amateur Blogging?
Amateur blogging can be looked at from two perspectives.
First is that Amateur blogging is setting up a personal blog that takes in a lot of your effort and finances and yet does not yield any profit for you. In the case of gatenotes, we cannot tag it amateur blogging because Bill Gate is a brand himself.
But then, suppose there is someone who just creates a blog and continue sharing information about himself, he may be tagged and amateur blogger. This is because he is not a popular figure and such, people will not bother reading about him.
Secondly, Amateur blogging can be defined as the processing of running a blog and putting in much effort yet, you do not achieve the desired goal. At first, every blogger starts as an amateur blogger and then move to a professional level of blogging.
Every top blog started small. I am not sure that there is a blog that started getting as much as 1000 page views from the first day of setting up. With this in mind, you will clearly understand that blogs starts by getting 10 page views. Then it moves to 100 and the to 1000, till whatever level they are now. Although, it is possible to move up the ladder very fast and quick.
With this in mind, you will agree that there is nothing wrong with amateur blogging. The only thing is that as a blogger, ensure you do not remain an amateur for long. Pay attention to getting relevant skills and acquire knowledge to help you grow your blog as quickly as possible.
Causes of amateur blogging
We want to look at the causes of amateur blogging. Seeing that as human beings, there is need to always grow. We need to move up the ladder from bottom to top. It becomes necessary that we must not remain amateurs for long. If after two years and you have not started seeing some favorable results in your blogging efforts, then there is something wrong. Here are few of the causes of amateur blogging
#1 Your blog is still new
The first thing could be the fact that your blog is new. It does not happen by magic as ranking on search engines is not automatic. Therefore, at least for the first two months, your blog may not be having up to 500 daily organic pageviews. As such, don’t think your blog cannot do well.
Take your time because Rome was not built in a day. At the early stage, do not pay much attention to your analytic dashboard. Rather pay attention to SEO, Link building, Keyword research, content marketing, writing quality contents etc. These are what will bring the required result in months to come.
#2 No clear vision and goal
The second cause of amateur blogging is when you do not have a clear blogging vision and goal. You just want to have a personal blog and nothing more than that. A friend of mine has a blog that has lasted for more than 6 years. Till date, the total number of contents on the blog is less than 20. To him, he has a blog.
If you must delve into a business, its important you draw your plan and vision and make it very clear. As such, ensure you do not blog because others are blogging. Setting up a plan will help you itemize the kind of effort you need to put into your blog. It defines your niche and type of contents you will write. You will also be able to set up a content publishing strategy. This will determine the frequency of which you will publish contents on your blog. It helps you to be consistent in your blogging career. Another good reason to set up a clear vision and goal is that it spells out the monetization strategy you will adopt. It helps you know how to do your keyword research and many other things.
#3 Inconsistency
One of the biggest and greatest causes of amateur blogging is inconsistency. Many blog owners are not consistent with their efforts in the blogosphere. There are several of them that did not see result after 6-9 months and as a result, they quit. There are some of them that may stay for months before publishing a content. Then after publishing that content, they still take long time to publish another. No business ever grows with such a spirit. As far as blogging is concerned, consistency is key. Develop your strategy and work toward it. Put in much effort. Even if you are a part-time blogger, put in enough effort that will give you the kind of result you want.
#4 Just an online presence
To many, they just want to have an online presence. They just want to have a website where they can publish contents about themselves. This is most common among politicians. During elections, their websites become active and there media unit continue to publish lots of contents. But after election, there is no other information to be published on the website. With this, those kinds of website never grow. There is actually nothing wrong in having a personal website. But then, you need output for your input.
#5 Lack of adequate knowledge
If you are not knowledgeable enough, you need to go for more knowledge. Infoducation is fully available for consultation as our contents are written to help you grow your blog. Also, there are several videos on YouTube you can leverage to achieve your desired blogging goal. For more emphasis, follow, Neilpatel, Brian dean and Ahref. These three channels will help you with relevant and practical knowledge to grow your blog.
#6 Doing beyond your capacity
In blogging, do not attempt to do beyond your capacity. Do not be a Jack of all trade and in turn, a master of none. You want to blog about news, scholarship, technology, animals, religion, etc at the same time. How will this work out for you? Of course you cannot achieve any meaningful result in the end. As such, just get a niche. Then narrow all your efforts into that niche and watch your blog grow.
As much as content is key, originality matters more. Originality will help your contents match search intent. It is better to publish 10 original contents every month than to publish 100 poor contents. You will not like it. If you do a thorough analysis of your website, you will find out that there are some contents to delete. This is because there is no quality at all and as such, they may not rank. What is the benefit of having a content that will never rank? With this, in mind, you will find out that in contents, quality should be more than quantity.
#6 Lack of funds
Another strong cause of amateur blogging is lack of fund. The truth remains that we use money to look for money. But unfortunately, several upcoming bloggers may not even afford to renew their hosting at the end of the year. If this is so, it then means that they may not even be able to afford the cost of hiring an expert SEO agent. They may not be able to hire a digital marketer and even run adverts. But then, when these seem to be your case, then you must leverage YouTube and blogs like this to be able to do it yourself. Learn and keep learning and with time, you will be a pro.
#7 When you blog as a hobby not for business
I have always recommended that your blog should be your business not your hobby. Until you begin to see your blog as a business, you will not see the business side of it. You will only do it as a hobby and nothing profitable may actually come from your hobby.
What is the way forward?
Having stated these fact above, bear in mind that the focus of this content is to help you move from amateur blogging to pro blogging. It has also been stated that several bloggers started just like you. They applied some strategy and were consistent with it. Before long, they arrived where they are today.
It is also very important to know that several of the big blogs in your niche has been into business for more than 10 years. This is a very important point for you to know. So that you will not think you can outrank them overnight. There were times when some of those blogs never had any single post on the first 5 pages of search engines. There were times when nobody ever reckoned with their blogs. But today, you want your blog to be like theirs. Anyways if you are not seeing much progress in your blogging life and you are sure that you have done everything you should do, then there is nothing to worry about. Your success is around the corner.
I want to share some practical steps to help you move from amateur blogging to pro blogging. These steps were actually taken by the big guys you want to be like.
#1 Choose a niche you can do very well
The first thing you should do move from amateur blogging to pro blogging is to choose a niche. Choosing a niche is not just about sniffing into what your friend does. Choose a niche that even in the next 10 years, you would will not be exhausted in rolling out awesome contents.
As bloggers, we believe that there are some niches that are more profitable than others. Although that is very true, yet it should not influence your choice of niche. For example, insurance niche is more profitable than scholarship niche. Yet there are some scholarship blogs that generate far more than insurance blogs. Knowing this, look out for a niche you will be very good at. In the long run, you will begin to see dividend in your effort.
Also, in choosing your niche, look for a niche you can work on independently. As much as we cannot fully say that you should avoid copy and pasting, it will be meaningful to say that 75% of your contents should be original. What this means is that you need a niche you can develop contents for with a high level of originality. For example, in the news and scholarship niches, there is a high level of copy and paste. That notwithstanding, professionals still work out originality out of a copied content. You too can do that, instead of just looking for a niche that all your contents are copied almost 100% from another site.
#2 Set a schedule and be consistent
Secondly, in blogging one simple secret many people ignore is scheduling their activities. If you want to move from amateur blogging to pro blogging, then you must set up and actionable schedule for your blog. For example, I post only 2 contents a week on this blog. With this, I ensure I achieve it weekly, no matter how busy I may be.
There are some blogs that posts more than 20 contents daily. As an amateur blogger, you may not be able to afford the services of freelancers. This means that at this stage, you are doing it alone. As such, ensure you set a schedule to help you post new contents, edit old contents, do content marketing, do your keyword research and so on. If you don’t do this, you may end up spending all your time on creating contents without thorough keyword research. You may end up only writing new contents without updating the old ones you have.
As such, if you don’t have a schedule for your blog, then start now. This may be the reason why you are still at the amateur blogging stage, even after putting in several years into your blog. Also, ensure you are not a seasonal blogger. One thing is to set up a schedule and another thing is to be consistent with your schedule. One of the things Bing search engine considers in ranking a website is the frequency with which contents are published. When you leave you blog for long without posting contents to it, it send a negative signal to search engines.
Also, when visitor visits your site after a month and finds out that the contents on your blog are the same contents he saw a month ago (no new content has been added), it also registers a negative message in his mind. You may not be taken serious. As such, ensure you are consistent in following your schedule.
#3 Learn always
In blogging, you do not have all the knowledge you need. Even professors in schools still read books by others. As such, if you want to go from amateur blogging to pro blogging, ensure you are always open to knowledge. There are lots of resources and platforms to learn from. Leverage YouTube, visit other people’s blog for more knowledge. You also need to be active on forums (especially those related to your niche), be active on platforms like Quora. Another thing is to ensure that you buy eBooks and read them. Go all out for knowledge. The more you learn, the more relevant you become.
#4 Understand keyword research
Do not just post for the sake of posting. In my first blog, I had a schedule of publishing 3 contents daily. At that time, I never knew about SEO, keyword research, link building etc. all I knew was to publish contents. At that time, I also never knew that websites are submitted to search engines for ranking. There were lots of things I never knew. All I was interested in was just publishing contents. I published tons of contents in a short while that nobody ever read.
But then, if you must move from amateur blogging to a pro, your keyword research should even be taken more serious than writing contents. It is the keyword research that will determine what to write. Having this in mind, you must ensure you do keyword research before writing a content. Except if your traffic source is not organic. If you want to get traffic through social media and forums, then keyword research may not be too relevant for you.
But it is important to know that organic traffic is the best type of traffic for website owners. As such, to achieve this, you must be good at keyword research. Keyword research will give you insight into a keyword to rank for. You will be able to know the search volume, keyword difficulty, etc of a said keyword.
In order to do keyword research, there are several tools like, ubersuggest, Moz, kwfinder, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google keyword planner, etc. There are free versions of these tools but you will not enjoy it. For example, with SEMRush, you only have 10 attempts daily. With Ubersuggest, you will only have 3 attempts daily. As such, subscribing for the paid version will help you achieve matchless result.
#5 Build links
One of search engines ranking factor is backlinks. As a blogger, you must ensure you build quality backlinks for your blog. Be mindful of the word “quality backlinks”. As such, you should not get backlinks by spamming comment sections of blogs. Backlinks tells search engines that your contents have quality.
When several websites points to your own website, it simply means that a particular information on your blog has quality. As such, the content with much backlinks tends to rank well. Also, as you build backlinks, ensure you build physical links as well. Network with other bloggers. Join forums and groups where other bloggers share ideas. From there, you will get helpful tips to push you from amateur blogging to pro blogging.
#6 Edit old contents
Don’t just pay attention to writing new contents, ensure you edit older ones. This will help you rank them better. Also, you will be able to fix the issue of broken links on your blog. There are new ideas to old matters. As such, editing old contents will make them look new. For example, if you still have a content like “how to make money in 2021” on your blog, then you are wrong. Always edit your old contents. It gives them more opportunities to rank better.
#7 Write Quality Contents
You are aware that content is key in blogging. Yes, you’ve heard that over and over. Here it is reappearing again. Let’s assume that every content gets 50 visitors daily. If you have 20 contents, it means you can only get about 1000 visitors. If another blogger has 200 contents, he will get 10,000 visitors daily. This is why it is believed that contents is key. The more contents you have, the more chances of ranking for various keywords.
But then, above getting contents is the need for quality. We cannot overemphasize the need for quality contents. If you must move from amateur blogging to problogging, then, it is no longer about you. It is now about your readers. Your contents will now be more reader-centric than before. There are several people online of various demography and as such, your contents must be able to attend to their various enquiry. Choose quality above quantity.
In the example above, one quality content can do what 100 contents cannot do. For example, Backlinko has less than 100 contents even after been in business for more than 10 years. Yet, these few contents generate more than 500,000 visitors monthly. As such, put effort into content creation, quality and originality. Avoid copying and pasting as much as possible and watch your career grow from amateur blogging to pro blogging.
#8 Work with Patience
One of the top amateur blogging mistakes is the fact that amateur bloggers want to start making money immediately. They also want to start pulling massive traffic immediately. Blogging does not work that way. It is not magical and you cannot start getting massive traffic overnight. As such, you must be patient in your career. Funny enough, you may not even be able to make 1$ within the first 12 months of blogging. That does not mean that blogging is not for you. You may not be able to start getting upto 200 organic traffic daily within the first 1 year. This is the more reason why your blogging career must be accompanied with a high level of patience. If only you will be patient and consistent, your career will move from amateur blogging to pro blogging.
Conclusion
In my quest to help you grow from amateur blogging to pro blogging, I have listed some issues that must be consciously addressed. I have also listed some solutions as a way forward for you. Ensure you do not remain in the amateur blogging level for long. If you apply these tips recommended and follow other tips I have written in other contents on this blog, your blogging career will have a smooth transition in a short while.
Cheers and happy blogging!!!
