7 Things you should never focus in the initial stages of blogging

Blogging is no more an old-fashioned hobby any more. It actually started as an online dairy where people are supposed to write about their daily life and share it with some of their close friends and relatives but now the story is different it has grown in leaps and bounds. People now blog or write content not focusing on family and friends but to a global audience and of course if you write well your voice will be definitely heard.

Though there are people reaping millions out of their blogs still it stands as one of the most misunderstood art. Though people leave their full-time jobs still, it is not accepted by many people as a career choice. In this post you will learn about things which a newbie blogger should not focus on.

1. Money:

First and foremost reason why most of the people blog is to make some money out of it. Blogs do serve the purpose of earning money but it is not all for what we should blog. In the initial stages a blogger should focus more on creating content rather than monetizing. Even if we get approval for Adsense account within one month of starting a blog its OK but we can’t earn six figure income straight away.

We need to build good readership, subscribers and loyal followers who actually love the stuff which we post. People are often too quick to apply for Adsense or some other advertising networks to monetize their blog. But it is advisable to do so after gaining some good traffic then you can think of monetizing your blog. After all it is traffic what one need’s in order to earn some decent amount of money.

2. Stardom:

Hey did you land up with a blog after watching an interview of Amit Agarwal or Harsh Agarwal? Do you also expect the same status in an overnight, then you are wrong my dear friend. Blogging is not an overnight business, it actually takes time to reach a respectable status in the blogosphere. When Amit Agarwal had created a blog there were very few blogs but now we have more than 450 active English blogs and nearly 1 million blogs being created every day.

Technorati has estimated 200 million blogs in the beginning of 2009. So now where would you stand in this race by creating a blog and expecting thousands of followers. You might have also started to create Facebook page, Google plus page and a twitter account for your blog but don’t expect followers the very beginning of your journey. Don’t even check for stats on daily basis or try for some quick ways to gain them. People these days are buying some fake followers just to make their blog look popular but that doesn’t add an inch to your success.

3. Multiple blogs or Multiple niche:

Are you into creating a network of blogs or are you writing articles on multiple niche. Then wait a newbie blogger just can’t imagine his/her blog to be a Huffington post or Engadget. One needs to focus on one blog and single niche until you reach to some landmark in your blogging career. We might have knowledge on variety of topics but don’t be too quick in posting it all in a single blog or starting various blogs at a time.

You might actually reach to a point of saturation with your blogs or niche. You might not be able to focus on all the blogs or can’t bring about an equilibrium in all the topics you write in your blog. So be wise in choosing a niche before you actually start writing your blog. Single blog and a focused niche is all enough to kick start your blogging journey.

4. Giveaway’s & Contests:

Too quick too run a contest or a give away in your initial stages of your blogging career, why don’t you just hold on. Yes, this is surely a good way to earn few subscribers and visitors but how long would they stay? As your blog is new people who participate in the contest too would be less. There won’t be any healthy competition among the visitors. These days people are smart enough they see your Alexa rank, page rank etc before they actually start believing in your blog. You might well spend some money and you really did plan to give some thing for genuine but people wont come in so soon and trust in your giveaway. You need to build suitable audience before you actually plan for a giveaway.

5. Affiliate Marketing:

Did you read that people make good amount of money from affiliate marketing rather than the third party advertisements. You actually found a great truth but do you know the other side of the story? Do you actually know how many visitors come to a successful affiliate marketers blog? Do you know what kind of traffic does their blog get? Have you ever thought what kind of stuff does an affiliate marketers promote to their visitors? If you don’t know answers for these questions then drop the idea of affiliate marketing but instead start research on in and out of affiliate marketing.

You could master the techniques soon but before that you need to be patient as you don’t know what kind of traffic visits your blog. You have a blog on web-hosting and you just can’t start promoting books or mobiles as people who visit your blog actually came for web-hosting not for books or mobiles. So be an expert blogger before you start off with affiliate marketing.

6. Premium Stuff and Plugins:

Before you spend some money on buying premium stuff have an eye on your requirement. Do you really need that plugin? Try searching for an alternative to suit your needs. You don’t need to buy an email marketing service(like Aweber or mail chimp) when you actually don’t need one as you would have very less subscribers in the initial stage. One can have feed-burner which is free and also serves the purpose of sending updates of your blog to your subscribers.

You need to do an extensive research on each and every premium plugin on which you need to spend few bucks. For pro-bloggers these premium plugins do work but for a newbie blogger there is no point in buying a paid plugin. There are many free plugins to try, learn and implement. After mastering about various plugins and depending on the requirement of your blog you can plan for going with some premium plugins or stuff.

7. Alexa Ranking:

This is one of the least thing a blogger should ever consider focusing on that is the reason why it is last in this list. It does have some importance in the blogosphere, but most of the time it does not give an accurate statistics of a blog. Even then don’t worry if your Alexa ranking is not accurate, just rely on your traffic stats. More the visitors you get automatically your Alexa rank would come to a respectable figure but don’t try for methods to manipulating your Alexa rank. Only thing you need to do is just verify your ownership of you blog with Alexa, install the tracking code in your blog and forget. As you keep on getting more and more traffic automatically you Alexa rank would be lowered, their is nothing much you need to think about Alexa.

Conclusion:

I would recommend a newbie blogger to keep the above discussed points in mind in the initial stages of their blogging journey. Blogging is not just for fun but you can actually learn many things from it. So learn to create content before you actually think of the above said things. Is their still anything which you feel I have not discussed then you can speak your opinion by submitting a comment.