1. They give up before getting started

Take a look at all the blogs across the web. The majority of all blogs are either abandoned, non-updated, and not making any money online. What started out as a dream to make money quickly turned into an abandoned piece of work. Whether the person running the blog made a good decision to stop or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that if you fail to update your blog or “give up before you get the ball rolling,” you will not make money online. The people that have been making money online have been heavily involved with blogging for awhile. Many bloggers blog for months before they see their first adsense dollar. So what do I consider giving up early? If you have been blogging consistently for around 1 year, I’ll know that you aren’t giving up early. Anyone who posted consistently for around 1 year should be fairly successful in the blogging industry. So far, the quickest rise to fame that I’ve witnessed online was Alan Johnson’s blog that went from ZERO to 1,000 RSS subscribers in less than 30 days. You’ve got to be in the industry for the long-haul if you want to make money online. Time + Consistent Efforts (Posting & Promotion) are a formula for success. Check out my article Blogging: Short Term Investment Vs. Long-Term Investment Returns to enlighten yourself on the importance of “time” your blog has been online. If you want to survive in the make money online niche, or any niche for that matter, you must be willing to hang around for awhile! Give your blog some time, keep up your efforts, and keep pushing forward. With time comes valuable experience!

2. They don’t make an attempt to improve

As a blogger, it’s extremely important to evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. Evaluating your efforts in terms of: theme, content, and promotional efforts is always important. If you keep putting forth the same efforts, you will continue to see the same results. I am always looking for new ways to improve my site in terms of content and themes, and am always open to suggestions from my readers towards areas in which I can improve. Take a look at any blog that has been around for awhile, but hasn’t really done much to improve their quality of content or website traffic. It is bad logic to think that your website will continue to climb to the top of Google and climb to the top of the blogosphere if it doesn’t continue to improve. Look at John Chow’s website once. He always looks for a new way to monetize his blog through improvements and changes. One thing that John recently added was a “peel away ad” in the upper right hand corner of his blog. A few months ago, John added the MaxBlogPress advertisement bar across the top of his webpage. You can tell that John is actively looking for, and finds ways to improve his earnings. Try to get yourself into this same mentality for your blog. Ask yourself what you can do to improve. Even ask your visitors what they’d like to see improved! Download and put up a small poll asking them which area they’d like to see improvement. Then list things like: Theme, Sidebar, Quality of Content, etc. You get the idea… You’ve gotta be actively searching for ways to improve your website if you want it to keep growing!

3. Their writing style is lousy

Writing style can have a huge impact on building up a loyal community and getting visitors to consistently return to your blog! I’ve come across bloggers that have an absolutely terrible writing style: just scribble down a few sentences of regurgitated information from other blogs and then call it a day. If you are serious about making money online, you know that you’ve got to pack your posts with as much quality content as possible. Not only that, you’ve got to have somewhat of a personality that other bloggers can “feel” coming through their computer screen! If your blog post style can be compared to reading a dictionary, you probably won’t get many people to stay. Having a personality that others can connect with is what will get people to return to your blog and increase your website’s traffic!

4. They don’t promote their website

If you build a website, pray to God, and expect the organic Google search engine to cough up loyal readers and RSS subscribers, you’ve got to snap out of it! Promotion is essential to making any blog or website more successful. The only way you will make money online is by getting visitors to your website and getting them to return! Only when you build up a solid amount of traffic, will you be able to monetize your site successfully! Promotion is key to making any website successful. Do what you’ve got to do to promote: there are many great methods that you can use. I think some of the best are: buying advertisement boxes on other websites, buying reviews on other websites, being an active member of large forums, and commenting on other blogs. No one will know who you are or what your blog is about if you are lacking in promotion!

5. They lack purpose, lack goals

When building a website, you’ve got to have a reason or purpose for building the website. Setting goals is definitely a key aspect towards making money online. In my article: “Are You Afraid To Think Big?,” I explain the importance of setting goals and working hard to achieve them. If your blog has no goals, chances are it will go absolutely nowhere, no progress will be seen because you have nothing to work towards! You’ve got to have something to work from and stay motivated about. If you don’t yet have any quality goals set, do yourself a favor and get some! Make your goals known, let your readers know your online mission! You’ve got to have goals to work towards to constantly improve your blog, reader base, promotional efforts, and towards the amount of money you make. Realize that you cannot just set a goal and expect it to accomplish itself. You’ve got to do things such as: Get Into A Daily Blogging Routine and Create Timeless Content if you ever expect to make money online! To those who don’t have any online goals: Get out a pen and notebook and write down what you hope to achieve online. If you want to make money online, write down how much. Underneath each goal you wrote down, write a list of the steps you are going to need to take to achieve that goal. If you need to do some research, do some research! You’ve got to understand what you want to accomplish online and how you are going to accomplish it! When you develop a good plan, you’ve created a solid foundation of something to work off of!

6. They never learn from mistakes: never make changes

Whether you change your website or business model for the better or worse, you can learn something. Learning is a highly important ingredient to make money online. No one is born with knowledge about making money online - it takes some reading (i.e. digging through blog archives and ebooks) to learn how to make money online. No one really even knows what on Earth “Google Adsense” is until they decide to create a website and are looking for ways to monetize it! As an online entrepreneur, it is important to keep learning from your mistakes. Learning from your readers, learning from other bloggers, and learning from yourself are all important!

1. Learning from readers means asking them questions, interacting with them in the comments section, setting up polls, etc. Interacting with your readers can be extremely beneficial for your blog!
2. Learning from other bloggers means actively participating in other communities and learning from their mistakes, finding new WordPress plugins, etc.
3. Learning from yourself is extremely important if you have any hopes of making money online. As you journey as an online entrepreneur, you will learn your own money making strategies and find out what works best for you! Everyone is different, every website is different. There is really no “best” universal monetizing strategy… You’ve got to understand what works well for you!

Not only should you learn from your mistakes, others mistakes, and your readers, you should make changes. It’s okay to experiment with a new theme to see how it goes over with your readers (cough: it’s not like I’d do anything like that: cough, cough). Change things up, move your sidebar widgets around, try Bidvertiser instead of Adsense for awhile. Try letting others buy advertisement space on your blog instead of you putting up affiliate ads. When you make changes to your blogging strategies and experiment with new things, you create a win-win situation. Making change is always good because it will either: A) Teach you something or B) Improve your website.

7. They flood their website with “too many advertisements”

At some point, you’ve got to draw the line between creating a shrine of advertisements or a website with content that people can benefit from. Though your website may have great content, advertisements can be a huge turnoff to readers, especially if your site is newer. Newer websites have a lot less credibility than sites that have been around for awhile. Too many advertisements on your website can be an absolute traffic killer. When I see a “.blogspot” blog, or any newer blog with a bunch of different ads, I really feel bad because they think that just by putting up a bunch of ads they are going to make some serious cash. All new bloggers have the mentality that “they’ll get rich quick.”

Putting up plenty of ads can work out extremely well for some. However, most bloggers that display a lot of advertisements usually don’t make much progress. For some bloggers, like John Chow, advertisements can work effectively. Currently, John has more advertisements than ever before, yet also has more RSS subscribers than ever before! Unfortunately, many new bloggers think that they can put up the same ads as John (mimic his strategy) without first building up a loyal reader base. This will not work… I currently do not have “Google Adsense” or “Bidvertiser” running because I want to make a good impression before throwing ads around!

A couple of questions to ask yourself when placing ads on your website:

1. Do they clash with my theme? - When I see a website with advertisements that completely clash with its theme, I move my cursor to the upper right corner of my Mozilla firefox and don’t hesitate to click on the red box with the white “X” in the middle. You can’t just throw ads in random places if they do not look good.
2. Are they a good size? Yeah, putting bigger advertisements will probably get you more clicks, but they also look “spammy.” For newer blogs, the primary focus should be showcasing your content. I don’t want advertisements to “lure” readers away from my great content! I have seen new blogs that use all of the biggest possible sized ads throughout their blog’s homepage. Over 1/2 of their visible blog content consists of ads… Q: Who wants to read a blog that looks too spammy? A: Not even the owner.

8. They are unfocused

How can you expect to do well in any area of life if you cannot focus? It is important to be aware of how much time you are spending reading others’ blogs, checking e-mail, etc. in proportion to how much time you are spending working towards the development of your own blog. You’ve also got to be efficient when writing so you can enjoy the rest of your day! To help you (my reader) stay focused, I’ve written 2 great articles that you should definitely check out:

1. Blogging Productivity: Writing Concentrated Articles - This article will help you learn what it takes to write a great article in a short period of time. It talks about eliminating distractions while writing a new blog entry and great tips to help you stay focused with your online projects.
2. Make Your Blog Your Top Priority - This article discusses why people sometimes get more caught up with other blogs than their own and why it is a losing strategy.

It is extremely important to stay focused while online and properly focus your energy to be productive. Most people that fail online give up because they cannot keep a focus on their projects. They get bored, want to dive into a new project, or just cannot afford to do the work. If you have hopes of making money online, you’ve got to realize the importance of staying focused on your projects!

9. They lack self-discipline

It takes a lot of discipline to sit down and work on a blog post every day. It is extremely difficult to keep pushing forward and stay disciplined when you do not make much money after a couple months! I like blogging because it helps keep me disciplined. It is a daily routine that I try to incorporate into my schedule every day. Most people that give up with blogging cannot sit down in a chair, think clearly, and type for 60 minutes daily. In fact, most people probably have difficulty sitting in a chair typing for 30 minutes daily without getting distracted. Initially, when setting up a blog, bloggers get excited and update their content very steadily for awhile, then after a couple of months, move on to a different potential career. It’s not a bad thing that they moved on, but it goes to show that blogging is not necessarily an easy job and not for those who lack discipline.

10. They don’t want online money bad enough

In the end, it all comes down to wanting to make money online bad enough! To simplify: If you want to make money online bad enough, you will do it — period. When you feel motivated and really want to quit your day job, you will get results. If you really want to make money online, you will. You will take the time to sit down for at least 1 hour each day and write a quality, new article. You will take the necessary efforts to market like a madman. You will be excited about your project and enjoy every moment on the road to success! It’s those who feel comfortable with their financial status and don’t feel any urge to make money online, that probably will get bored quickly with their online projects!

THE BIGGEST REASON:

11. They don’t visit Andrew Pavelski dot com enough! - If you want to become a phenomenal blogger that makes money, you’ll need a few great resources to help you learn and gather advice. Andrew Pavelski dot com will provide you with a daily dose of quality content that will really help you take your blog to the next level. Do yourself a favor and subscribe to my feed if you haven’t already!

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