Blogging is tough too and it’s a long term strategy. Some blog for fun but many blog as a business lead generating tool for their existing businesses. If you’re blogging to make money online through affiliate marketing, you’ll have a lot of competition out there. There’s many niches out there too for blogging. Depending on what individual niche you go for, the level of difficulty will vary. But there’s other things at play too, and many of them passed me by for years.

Is Blogging A Waste Of Time – Why Blog?

If you’re blogging for fun it’s never a waste of time because you enjoy it. But if you’re planning on making money from a blog, you can spend a huge amount of time blogging and not get very far. Anyone can build a blog and that’s part of the problem. There’s literally millions of blogs out there in all kinds of subject areas. To make money from a blog you need to blog in a certain way.

I blogged for a long, long time and nothing happened. That’s because I was writing for myself and not my audience. I didn’t get my posts in front of the right people. It was part for myself that I wrote a blog and part to learn how to blog too. But ultimately I wanted to make money from my blog and this proved difficult for a long time.

The main problem when you are a beginner in blogging is that you don’t know what you don’t know. I thought naively that I could post an article and people would see it immediately! I sat back, folded my arms behind my head and waited for the money to come rolling in. But nothing happened. No one could see my posts because I didn’t promote them.

I assumed Google was going to rank my posts because (in my eyes) they were so awesome! But whenever you hand over responsibility for something, nothing happens. You know what they say about assume too – it makes an “ass” out of you and me!

Why Blogging Is A Waste Of Time – It Isn’t

Blogging isn’t a waste of time. No it’s most definitely not. Checkout some blog statistics here. But it can be a very frustrating experience, especially if you don’t do it in a certain way. When I started writing blogs I wrote for me and not my audience. I didn’t know who my audience was even and just assumed they were me. So I wrote for the “me” who hadn’t yet learned what I had.

The problem was I didn’t get ranked on Google and I didn’t share my content. Partly because I didn’t know how to share it, or where, but also I was a little shy about putting myself out there. So I just wrote content and posted it off to the abyss of internet cyberspace.

After months of blogging and no real traffic or sales to show for it, it’s easy to give up! But I was curious about blogging and after all I enjoyed it and it seemed like a cheap way to generate sales online. But it wasn’t cheap because it had already cost me hundreds of hours with no results!

No, the main problem for me was that I didn’t know how to write a blog that got traction. You don’t know what you don’t know. So I carried on for months without changing my strategy and paid for my naivety in the cost of time.

Why Blogging Is A Waste Of Time – Get More Traction From Your Blogging

Of course it all starts with quality. Without quality in your writing, you’re not going to get people to read your content. They won’t like and share it (get social media plugins for this), and they will click away if they even find your content. This adds another signal to Google who will mark it down in the SERPS – search engine results page.

With a quality post which helps your target audience, people will read and share it. They may even subscribe to your email list, if you have one. This is a good signal for Google who will give your content more credit when it comes to the search engines.

Why Blogging Is A Waste Of Time If You Don’t Share Your Posts

I used to just publish post after post without thinking of sharing them. I lacked confidence too which was partly why I wanted to hide away. But after a long time of not getting anywhere with blogging I started building an audience through email marketing and sharing my posts there.

You can also find groups on Facebook in your subject area and share to the groups. Use article marketing sites like Ezinearticles.com to write more content and link back to your existing content. I used Ezinearticles, Hubpages and other free blog sites to link back to my content.

I now use an article sharing plugin which automatically shares my posts throughout my social media accounts. Social share buttons also help make it easy for others to share you content too. Postplanner is another software I use and that lets you queue up old content and post it regularly on social media accounts.

Keyword Targeted Niche Websites

I worked for a long time on my main site here. For some reason I definitely got penalised by Google and couldn’t find my site for even my name! Despite putting several years into blogging on this site, (on and off), it just wasn’t getting anywhere! So I started a new blog site and built a site around specific keywords in the hope they would help me rank the site.

You can read about the building of this site in my article Create Free Website and Earn Money. This is also a good strategy (that link); “deep link” to your older article titles through your new content. It’s a signal to Google about keyword relevancy and what you want those titles to rank for on Google. Deep linking just means linking in your own content to your other content with a keyword focused backlink.

Affiliate Links In Your Blog Posts

Google’s not a fan of affiliate links. The Google SERP’s (search engine results page) have thousands of criteria for ranking content on it’s results page. No-one knows exactly how they do it. For a long time, you could write an article and get a listing on the first page back when there was little or no competition. But times have changed and now there’s thousands of pages of content for nearly every topic you can think of. Plus, Google has massively improved their search algorithms over the years.

So throwing up a small website with one page on it is near impossible to have any effect on the search results nowadays. You can’t “trick” Google either so don’t bother to try. Instead give Google what they want – quality content. Write for people not the search “bots”.

Use Links Sparingly

Affiliate links are ok to put in your posts. However, Google knows when you do this and it has a bearing on how it perceives your content. For a long time I was in a rush. I was in a rush to make money through blogging. So I would throw up a post and stick a load of affiliate links in it. It wasn’t complete crap but it was close. I was just learning really but I suspect this had a bearing on why my site disappeared for a while.

So when I built this site, I used affiliate links much more sparingly. For a good while I didn’t use them at all. I just created content I thought would be useful to people. Before long this site was getting more traffic than my old site which had hundreds of posts on it.

Of course there’s many factors at play here too. But I’m sure this one thing is pretty powerful. If you write with the intention to sell something, Google knows it. If you write with the intention of helping people, they know it too! So write quality posts and focus on giving not getting, because Google is watching!

Start With Why – Why Start A Blog

Some people blog for fun. Others use it to generate free traffic to their business. Still, others use it as the sole source of traffic for an online business – to make money. If your intention is to make money from a blog, it’s easy to put the cart before the horse. The main problem here is if money is the main intention, why would people visit your blog? Does the content you offer them draw them in or put them off? Are you genuinely trying to help them, or just link to affiliate products. Be honest. Is your blog offering any real value to anyone?

I like to use the example of Martin Lewis’s website Moneysavingexpert.com. This is an extremely successful website which works because it helps people genuinely with their problems. It’s also an affiliate website.

Check Your Intention For Each Post And Write For Your Audience Not For Yourself

It’s nice writing a blog because you’re in charge. I suspect many bloggers waste time writing blog posts and don’t get the readership they deserve or would like because of this fact. Blogging can be a tool to get your thoughts out. Not everyone writes a blog to make money or even to build a huge following. Some just write because they enjoy it.

This is a good thing but if you want to also make money from the thing you enjoy, you’ll need to focus on your audience and not yourself. WIIFM? What’s in it for me? People have busy lives so why would they spend half an hour reading your blog post? They have a problem they want to solve and your blog posts should solve problems for people. If they are nothing than a cathartic exercise, or an ego trip, they will do nothing for your audience and you’ll never get the traction you need to make sales from it.

Why blogging is a waste of time? Blogging can be a waste of time when you’re doing it with the intention of selling affiliate products – solely for self interest. There’s lots of ways to find people for your products other than blogging, so why blog? To make your blog posts serve you and acquire leads and make sales, focus on the people you want to help with your products.

The “Avatar” Of Your Perfect Customer

Maybe you’ve heard of the term customer avatar. I always ignored this massively important concept but it cost me dearly. I wrote what I wanted and about the topics I was interested in. What I forgot to do was to think about my customer avatar.

The customer “avatar” is your perfect customer. It’s the person who’s problems you’re going to solve both with your content and your affiliate products. This isn’t “you” anymore because you’ve moved on since you were that person. If you’ve built a successful business, for example, after finding online coaching programs to help you; you’ve solved a major pain and problem in your life.

Your problem might have been not having a second source of income, or working in a job you hate. But now you’re working on your blog and promoting programs or courses which can help people. The only trouble is you’re talking about things they don’t understand in your blog, like customer avatar!

Blogging And Ikigi

Ikigai is a Japanese term which means “reason for being”. I didn’t know my Ikigai when I started blogging. I was just wanting an income so I could pursue other avenues. But that was all backwards. I should have been pursuing what I loved within my blogging!

One of my mistakes/learnings was creating a blog about a topic I had zero interest in just for the money. I found a keyword which had a number of monthly views and little competition. So I built a blog around that keyword. It was “When To Harvest Mushrooms”. My site did at one point rank at the very top of Google for this keyword. Whoop de do! It made zero money and was pretty difficult to monetise. I had to work doubly hard on all my posts because I knew nothing about the topic. Each article I wrote was a massive chose as I had to research everything.

Eventually I ran out of steam because I was so uninterested in the topic. Another (better) blog took over top place and mine fell down the rankings eventually to page 2 of Google. I dropped the site eventually but it taught me a lesson – don’t pursue a blog you have no interest in. See also best micro niche for blogging.

Blogging Is Slow – PPC Is Fast

If you’re thinking of starting a blog, but really want an online business, pay per click advertising is far faster. See PPC affiliate marketing for beginners. If you don’t have the patience for blogging there’s many other ways to generate traction with an online business besides a blog. Many people who are new to affiliate marketing don’t want to blog. So what are the alternatives?

• PPC – Direct Response – is fast but more expensive than blogging
• Social media marketing – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Linkedin etc. can all be used for marketing purposes
• YouTube is a less competitive platform than Google SERPS – but still has a massive following

The trouble with paid advertising is it is expensive and you’re going to have to spend money while learning. I think of blogging in the same way only it’s your time which you’re spending not your money. So if you’re time poor use PPC and if your money poor or time rich, use blogging or other free strategies.

See also top ways to generate website traffic for free.

BackLinking To Your Blog Posts

Of the many signals Google uses to rate your blog and rank it, (or not), in the search engines, links are up there. Quality should be the primary goal when you write a blog post. If you write quality posts they should stand the test of time. People will naturally share and like them and you should get a natural link profile over time as other bloggers link to your content.

Linking is something I never really did, again to my detriment. It involved countless hours of guest writing, blog commenting, forum posting and writing more articles on article marketing sites. I did a little of it, but just didn’t have the patience for it. As time went on and I built a few blogs, I was able to link to my older content in my newer posts.

Links tell Google something about your content – who is linking to you, the keywords they use to link and the time over which your link profile is built. You domain age is of course a factor too. A new site can’t usually rank as highly as one which has lots more links is older, and has more authority for the same keywords. But saying that all content will drop off over time, however good it is.

Blogging – A Waste Of Time?

If you’re frustrated with your blog, perhaps it’s worth reevaluating your marketing strategy. Use some PPC or shift to something else. But do blogging too! Blogging is a slow burner for a business but it isn’t a waste of time. It can take months or even years to generate traction with a blog. But once it starts working you’ll want to go back to it. Free traffic leads and sales means you’re making 100% profit on your products and not spending a penny on advertising.

At the start it can be super frustrating. But keep going and just do something little every day. Over time you’ll have a heap of content and if you stick long enough free traffic too.

Blogging is definitely not a waste of time. But it is a long term strategy. If you’re hoping to get fast results and you’re impatient, I wouldn’t recommend it. Do something else instead!

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