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When you’ve just started a blog, you probably are extremely excited.

You’ve read all the income reports on Pinterest. You’ve seen the results people can get in just a short amount of time, and you’re ready to see those results for yourself!

But then, you realize after a few months your blog isn’t growing.

You’re putting out posts that no one is reading. Google Analytics is showing a big, fat zero on your blog day after day.

And you’re definitely not making the money you saw others make!

It’s frustrating!

So what is it you’re doing wrong?

There’s a lot that goes into blogging, and it’s definitely no easy task. But let’s talk about the top 7 reasons your blog isn’t growing.

Since I started blogging in 2017, these are the most common mistakes I see new bloggers making!

1. You aren’t publishing consistently

This could be one of the main issues with why your blog isn’t growing.

You need to publish content consistently if you want your blog to grow!

It seems obvious, but when you’re deep in the trenches of your blog, sometimes you don’t realize how little you’re actually doing!

I know for me, I thought I was doing everything I possibly could to get my blog to grow. And I was so frustrated when it wasn’t.

But then when I took a step back, years later, I realized I wasn’t really doing that much at all!

It turns out, I was working on all the wrong things and not even posting consistently!

I don’t think there was a single time in that first year of blogging that I posted once a week for two months in a row…

I’d be on schedule for one month and fall off the next.

And that’s not going to get you very far!

What to do instead

You need to instead come up with a schedule and stick to it.

This is something that’s going to take some discipline to do, but it’s essential to the growth of your blog.

One of the other mistakes I see new bloggers making is they’ll go super hard with content for a month straight and try to post one blog post every single day.

That may last for a few weeks, or maybe they even make it a month with posting every day.

But it definitely won’t last long!

If you try to do too much all at once, you’ll eventually get burned out. And it’s likely that the work you put out won’t be very good quality either.

I used to put out 3 blog posts a week, and now looking back… I realize how bad they actually were.

I also used to work really hard night and day to get my blog to grow, I’d burn myself out and then I’d stop for months while I recovered from the burnout.

That was not the correct way to run my business!

So you need to find a balance because consistency and quality are the main things you want to focus on.

If you can only put out one good quality blog post a week, that is going to be way better for you than putting out 3 blog posts no one wants to read, no one will ever click on, and one that won’t rank on Google.

You aren’t doing yourself any favors by putting out mediocre content on a larger scale.

So don’t be afraid to cut back on the content for the sake of better-quality posts!

Your blog posts should be well-researched, well-thought-out, and things people actually want to read.

How to write high-quality blog posts

Let’s dive deeper into this and talk about how to make sure your blog posts are high quality because that’s going to help your blog grow much faster than a lot of low-quality posts.

Research your content

Make sure you are doing keyword research on your blog posts.

The topic of your blog post is the most important thing because if you’re writing about something no one cares about, no amount of promoting is going to fix that!

So you want to research the topic to make sure people are actually interested in and searching for the content you’re writing about!

You can do this through a tool called KeySearch. It’s a paid keyword research tool that is really great for not only understanding what people are searching for but also getting keywords to help your blog post rank on Google!

Google is going to be one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog (With Pinterest being the second best place for traffic!).

So if you can get your blog posts to rank on the first page of Google for a search term people are looking up, that’s going to give you a healthy amount of traffic to your blog.

Plan out your content

You also want to make sure you’re planning out your content.

I roughly plan out my content a month in advance so I’m prepared.

You can use this content calendar I created to make sure all your content is planned and ready to go for the month ahead!

Otherwise, you may get behind in your content or realize the night before that you don’t have a blog post for tomorrow!

When I’m not planning out my content and don’t have it laid out for me in my content calendar, I frequently was missing uploads because I couldn’t manage my time properly.

A blog post may take a few days to write (over the span of a few hours) so you don’t want to be thinking up a blog post idea the night before. 

That’s not going to give you the high-quality blog post you’re looking for!

Format your blog posts correctly

You’ll also want to make sure you’re formatting your blog posts correctly.

And few things go into formatting your blog posts correctly to make them as easily digestible as possible

One of the main things you want to strive for is to make them easy to skim. Because the sad truth is, many people coming to your blog wont be reading your post word for word.

They may just skim over the information they want and then they’ll move on!

But, despite what you might think, we want to make this easier for people to do- not harder.

You may think it would be best to make people sit here and read the whole blog post instead of making it easier for them to skip through this, but that’s just not the case.

The truth is, you can’t make people read your whole post.

If they think it’s going to be too hard to navigate or too hard to read, they’re going to leave a lot sooner than if you gave them the opportunity to skim the post.

Also, if they leave right away (with no value given) they’ll be less likely to come back!

Verus if you give them the opportunity to skim the post, they’ll get value out of it and may stay to go back and read the whole thing, click through to another post, or come back to your blog when they see it again because you were able to provide them value quickly!

2. You’re working on the wrong things

Back on the topic of why your blog isn’t growing, it could be because you’re working on the wrong things! Which is a surprisingly easy thing to do.

When you sit down to work on your blog, there is no manual for what you should be working on first, second, and third.

You’re kind of just guessing!

But you need to be working on the things that are actually going to move your business forward, not just busy work.

You could also be avoiding doing the hard work and the things you actually need to do and be procrastinating.

I did this for a long time in my business.

Instead of doing the work I should have been doing (working on blog posts, or videos, creating new products, or promoting my business)

I’d work on things that made me feel like I was working but didn’t actually matter (tweaking my brand colors, updating useless things on my site, etc..)

And since this whole blogging thing really doesn’t come with step-by-step instructions on what to do, it could be difficult to figure out what work will actually move your business forward.

If you find yourself stuck on what to work on, or unsure where it is you need to go next, maybe you need a one-on-one session with a coach!

I’m offering one-on-one Zoom calls for new bloggers who’ve just started and are lost on where they should go next with their blog, what strategy they should have for themselves, and are overall just overwhelmed and confused!

My Blog Kickstarter Coaching is a 45-minute long session and is designed to help you walk away feeling confident in yourself and your blog!

| Check out all the details here!

What to do instead

But if you’d like to get started right away, give yourself a little work audit.

How do you know if you’re working on the wrong things?

When you start on a task, ask yourself “What will I get out of doing this task?”

• Is it content creation that will grow my business? (blog post, video, ect)
• Is it promoting my business in any way?
• Does this have the potential to make me money in the future?

If the answer is no, ask yourself why exactly you’re doing it in the first place.

Some things may need to be done, but maybe not given as much time and attention as you were planning on giving them.

For example, yes it is important that your theme looks nice and your About page is filled out properly.

But, that’s not going to be the end-all-be-all of your business success.

What will move your business forward however is creating a new product, researching new affiliate companies, going live on YouTube, or creating a new blog post with affiliate links in them.

Work on managing your time to balance out the admin tasks that need to be done, but don’t make money and the tasks that do!

It’s a skill you’ll learn over time!

3. You have no clear goals in mind

When it comes to your blog, one of the reasons your blog isn’t growing could be because you have no clear goals in mind.

Where do you even want to go with your blog?

Do you plan to make money with your blog and be self-hosted?

Do you want to quit your job and go full-time, or are you looking for a side income?

What about who you’re trying to reach with your blog? Who is your audience? What topics will you talk about?

I know that’s a lot to think about, but these are some serious questions you need to have answered before you really dive into blogging.

You don’t want to overwhelm yourself with way too much information, but it would be better to start with a plan and know where you’re going rather than to just wing it and hope for the best!

What to do instead

To get started, write down a few goals that you want to hit.

You can start out simple with goals like “Choose my niche”, “Find my blog theme” or “Write my first blog post.”

Breaking things down like that will be a lot easier and less overwhelming than just having a goal of “Start my blog.”

Because there is a lot that goes into that one goal!

You also may want to have some bigger goals that you’ll hit further out in the future like the amount of money you want to make, or maybe the amount of blog posts or followers you want to have.

That will give you something bigger to work towards.

And if you’re seriously struggling with goals you should create, my Blog Kickstarter coaching is perfect for you!

PRO TIP: If you haven’t started your blog yet, and plan to go self-hosted WordPress for your blog, you’re going to need hosting and a domain name! SiteGround is the place I always recommend for both. This is the best and smartest option if you’re looking to make money in the future!

4. You aren’t promoting your content

If you feel like you’re doing all of the above things correctly, and yet your blog still isn’t growing? It could be because you aren’t promoting your content.

Unfortunately, you aren’t going to get views to your blog simply because you posted something new. That’s not really how it works.

So you need to make sure you put in the work to bring the viewers to you!

Once you’re done with a blog post, that’s only half of the job completed!

What to do instead

You’re going to need to consistently promote your content all over social media if you want your blog to grow.

And this also means posting the same link more than once!

Just because you posted about your new blog post once on Twitter doesn’t mean your job is done- far from it.

Every week you should have one day dedicated to promoting your content. The best way to do this is by using my social media content calendar.

Organizing everything in a content calendar has made promoting things go so much quicker!

At the beginning of the month, I schedule 3 tweets a day so I don’t have to worry about one entire platform for the month. I also save room for promoting new content I’ll post throughout the month.

And it would be way too hard to do if I didn’t have this content calendar to organize everything!

You’ll have to figure out what schedule works best for you, but all that matters is you’re promoting your blog posts consistently!

The biggest traffic driver for me is Pinterest, so I would make sure to save some time for pinning as well! All my pins are done on Sunday, once a week.

PRO TIP: Pinterest is not an easy platform to get started on, but once you do it will bring you traffic for years to come! To help you get started, check out this amazing Pinterest course called Pinteresting Strategies It’s the information I use for the majority of my Pinterest strategy!

5. You have no money-making strategies

Maybe your blog is growing in terms of page views, but the area you’re struggling with is income. This is something I also struggled with for a long time.

And, the honest reason why is that I didn’t have strong money-making strategies in place!

Once again, it’s easy to get caught up in everything you’re doing for your blog and you end up thinking you’re doing everything you can when that may not actually be the case.

If you have a decent amount of page views, but it’s not translating to income there’s definitely a problem there.

Your marketing strategies could very well be lacking!

What to do instead

If you’ve spent any time researching how to start a blog, you’ve likely seen tons and tons of income reports of bloggers making good money online.

But, when you try to implement the same things yourself, you find you’re struggling!

Just in case you don’t know the different ways to make money online, let’s start there.

• Affiliate marketing

This is one of the most common ways bloggers like myself make money.

In theory, all you have to do is put affiliate links in your blog posts recommending products you love, and when people click on them and buy them, you get a portion of the sale.

Of course, though, it’s way more complicated than that!

You need to make sure you’re writing blog posts that people want to read, and recommending products people want to buy.

You also have to build trust with your audience so they know you’re recommending good products and not just cheap things to make a quick sale.

It’s important to be genuine when recommending products and to not sound salesy when you do it.

People don’t want to be sold to, but they will take recommendations from people they trust!

I try to incorporate affiliate links naturally into all of my blog posts, like for example the course that taught me how to properly affiliate marketing, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing!

I took a few different courses on making money and this one was the least expensive and the most helpful! So if you’re struggling with making money as well, I’d highly recommend it!

• Blog ads

This is something I’m sure you’re used to seeing.

We get ads shoved in our faces all day long, sometimes to the point where we don’t even notice them anymore!

And you can get ads put on your blog as well in order to make some money. If you don’t have a lot of pageviews, you’re not going to make much, but it does stack up over time!

Google Adsense is the big one many bloggers start out with, but if you want to move to a better ad network, Ezoic is the one I’ve been using for a long time now.

Ezoic is, in my opinion, a better overall network with better pay when you can move up the tiers and they have other features like a site speed app that Google Adsense doesn’t have.

The best part about Ezoic is they no longer have a minimum page view requirement to join! And, they have better rates for the more pageviews you bring in! Google Adsense doesn’t have anything like that. So if you’re interested, check out Ezoic here!

• Creating your own products

This is something you could get into a little bit later down the road.

Creating your own products is a great way to make more money off the things you’re selling because you get most or all of the commission!

When you’re recommending an affiliate product, generally the commission rate is pretty low. But this isn’t the case for your own products!

You still likely won’t make 100% of the revenue because of the fees of whatever platform you’re using, but it will be a lot higher than the affiliate commission!

Plus, you can create products on anything you want, and price it however you want as well so there is more revenue potential there as well!

You can offer your products on places like Etsy and Gumroad, or even create a shop on your site just like I did mine!

This is the best option because the fees are so much less than Etsy, and you can control so much more!

• Offer your own services

Another thing you could do later down the road is offer your own services. I’ve been doing this for years now.

I was a Pinterest manager for a long time. And now I offer Pinterest audits, blog audits, and a few blogging coaching packages as well!

You could do services for pretty much anything, and again you’ll be making more money since you can set the prices.

Doing a service for someone is going to be a good income source since the price is generally higher for commission-based work, however, if you’re taking on clients you’ll eventually hit an income ceiling.

Once your calendar is booked, you only have so much time on your hands… so the only way to raise your income with this stream would be to work more or raise your prices altogether.

The best case scenario is you would eventually branch out to a lot of these income sources and diversify your income as much as possible- and try to make that income passive as well so you can really scale.

6. You don’t have set hours or a working system

Starting a blog and getting it running into a successful business is not something easy to do, It’s going to take discipline.

So, the best way to keep yourself on track is to have some sort of work hours or a system to help you work.

I have a few productivity techniques I use and a morning routine in order to help me stay on track.

And something I think a lot of content creators don’t understand is you’re not always going to be motivated to work. Some days you won’t feel like working, but you still have to get shit done.

On those days, you’re going to need dedication when motivation leaves the party early.

| READ MORE: 7 Blissful Ways to Create a Mindful Morning Routine That will Transform Your Life!

What to do instead

So how do you make sure you’re getting work done no matter what?

The first thing to do is set up some sort of system, and there are a lot of ways you can do that depending on your schedule.

If you have set days or hours you don’t work, those can be your blogging days/hours.

Or your schedule may change often and you need to adjust each week. Maybe decide on the amount of hours you want to work on your blog each week.

This is the best system to use if you need to be disciplined and have a goal or set schedule to hit.

If you’re good at motivating yourself, you may be able to just work any extra free time you have throughout the week.

But, you still want to have some schedule in place. Like the number of blog posts you want to release each week.

I try to do 1 blog post a week, and 1-2 youtube videos a week.

This doesn’t always work out that way, and that’s okay. Life does get in the way sometimes and there’s not much you can do about it!

I just make sure to follow my routine as closely as possible each day and try my best.

Looking for a few productivity techniques? Try these!

• The 7-Step Pomodoro Technique To Crush Your To-Do List!

• The Ivy Lee Method- 5 Steps to Hack Your Productivity to Get More Done!

7. You’re trying to do everything all at once

As we’ve established, there are a lot of things that need to be done when you’re working on a blog, and it can be tempting to try to do all of them at once!

You may want to start more than one blog or start a blog and a YouTube channel together.

You’re likely excited to try all the different techniques for making money while also trying to promote your blog on every single social media site.

This, in the end, is going to hurt you more than help.

If your focus is all over the place, things likely aren’t going to get done as well if you just focused on one thing at a time instead.

Not to mention your business is likely going to grow slower because your focus is all over the place!

What to do instead

In the beginning, start small. Stick with one blog, one topic, and grow that.

Don’t try to start more than one blog before you even have one up and running, don’t try to have a ton of topics on your blog, and focus on one income source at a time.

I know it can be tempting to start a bunch of things all at once, especially when it comes to making an income!

But, making an income online isn’t easy and it’s going to be made harder if you’re trying to learn all the ways to make an income all at once.

Start with one thing, master it, and then move on to another!

This goes for social media as well.

It doesn’t hurt to have an account on more than one platform (Like Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest) but if you’re trying to grow all of them at once, you’re going to be pulled in so many different directions!

The thing you want to avoid is getting overwhelmed and quitting your blog before it has a chance to get going.

So, you need to focus.

But what should you focus on first?

• For your blog: Focus on one topic, one blog. Don’t start a second one, and don’t start a Youtube channel. At least, not right away. I started my channel a year after I started my blog, and even though I knew what I was doing, my blog still fell the wayside while I grew my channel.

• For making money: Start with ads. That’s the easiest to get going, but won’t make a lot of money. Next work on affiliate marketing. After that, you can work on your own services or your own products.

• For social media: Start with your favorite platform first, whatever it is you like to use the most. But Pinterest is going to be best for getting traffic to your blog, Twitter is going to be second and Instagram is more for creating your personal brand and connecting with your audience over getting views to your blog.

There is no one right way to run a business

And what’s most important to remember when it comes to business, it’s this. There is no one right way to run a business.

You are allowed to run your business your way.

Sure, there are things that you can do and advice you can take from others to help you grow faster, but you do have to do anything you don’t want to do.

Lots of people will tell you to start an email list. I personally hated having one. It was expensive and not worth my time.

But, I used it for years because everyone told me I should.

Just recently, I got rid of it. And instead, I started a Discord server!

I wanted a place where I could connect with my core audience outside of social media and make it a place where creators could come together to help each other and grow.

And while that’s possible on an email list, it wasn’t for me. But Discord is!

So, find your own unique way to run a business, try out a bunch of things but don’t force yourself to do them if you don’t like it, and most importantly have fun!

And if you’d like to join my Discord- check it out right here. Other wise, check out some more posts from me below!

You May Also Like:

• 8 Unconventional Business Changes I Made To Finally Start Growing!
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• I was Running my Business All Wrong- Here’s How