My Blog isn’t Earning or Making Much Money – Mistakes I did

So your blog isn’t making much money as you expected. Luckily, you’re not that one alone. I’m also one like you whose blog isn’t earning enough. But important is that you realize the mistakes you’ve done. Then you need to change the plan to let the blog monetize high.

You’ve checked seen reports from successful bloggers on the internet and amazed by their big figures. But trust me these are even far less than 1% of bloggers worldwide. Rest all are like us, getting money from the blog like doing a salaried job.

Reaching 999 dollars a month through blogging is quite common. $9999 in a month is also not a surprise. But having dollars in 5 digits or making much money than that needs a business mind, goals and focus, consistent analysis, and of course, harder work.

The 10 Reasons why the Blog didn’t Make Enough Money 

It’s more than 2000 days at the time of writing the post since the Fellow Tuts blog was set up. Like others, I had also expected money in five-figure monthly for such a way lengthy timespan. But it didn’t happen. Yes, the blog has earned me decent money but not at the level it could be capable of.

Tonight at the weekend I’m sitting on my usual work chair, doing self-reflection. I want to let you know what did I do wrong. What do I need to rectify for making much money through the blog?

No, I’m not talking about having a billion dollars valued blog in a month. Of course, achieving extraordinary success is a dream for everyone.

Rather I would share with you the 10 mistakes I did and trying to rectify. So that the blog could make the money it deserves. Read them one by one and do let me know how much are you agree or have an opinion.

Before we start, I recommend you read the article “Things to know before starting a blog“. It will guide you about every step and considerations in detail. Also, you will be better planned to make your blog successful and earn splendid money.

1. Sticking with Ad Network

Staying stuck with an Ad Network is the first major mistake that led us to quite lower earnings. Technically, you should think about alternative income sources from a blog once you have reached 25,000 monthly visitors.

For years, we’ve stuck with Google Adsense. Rather, we could join affiliate Networks. We use a number of programs, hosting, WordPress plugins, and themes during our course of development services for clients. We missed the opportunity to promote some digital products we trust and make more money by their affiliate selling.

2.Multiple Businesses

Multiple businesses are not a bad idea but for maximum profit, they should be related. I was like a guy who has earned from here and invested there without knowing enough about that field. This has given me a quantity of knowledge and probably most of those are inconsequential to me.

Programming and blogging are in my blood. So it would be better to expand the business through related services. Rather experimenting with irrelevant fields like property or hospitality. This isn’t a reason that I was unaware of. But I did and the performance of the blog suffered.

So I decided to cut down on this habit and stay focus on programming, blogging, and related services. Hopefully, it will help the blog to make more money with full capacity.

3. Chosen Niche – Programming

Fellow Tuts website was a blog focused on programming and coding. We’ve written a number of articles about specific programming issues and their fixes. While we have a good number of monthly visitors, it led us to a high bounce rate too.

Programming isn’t an engaging topic. Once a problem solved, the visitor won’t read another article. There is a limitation in building interactive internal links among programming articles as well.

Additionally, most of the visitors in the tech world are beginners and learners. These learners spend lots of time reading theoretical, how-to, step by step, or list articles.

Also, our most viewed articles here don’t fall in the programming category. So besides programming and coding, we started writing how-to, hosting, blogging, SEO, reviews, and other relevant articles equally.

4. Less Interactive Comment Form

Discussions from readers are integral and essential parts of a blog. They have a significant role in deciding the popularity and Search Engine rankings of a post.

We had used the Disqus comment form in our WordPress blog for 6.5 years. While it allowed us to stay away from spam in comments, it wasn’t suitable for the general audience.

While Disqus has rich features, it has issues like unwanted ads, authentication process as well as slower loading. Also, it’s a third-party service so we hadn’t full control over our comment data. An easy and intuitive comment form definitely incorporates making money through the blog.

That’s why later we removed this from our system. Currently, we have a much simpler AJAX-powered comment form with strong spam protection. Additionally, it’s also free from any third-party service.

5. Lack of Punctuality

It hurts but I have to accept the lack of punctuality regarding timely article publication. Once upon a time, we had the blog ranked in the list of the top 0.1 million websites. But we diversified our minds into other work to make more money.

Now we’re paying for that. Continuity in every kind of work is a must and blogs are not exceptions.

6. Not Utilizing the Power of Social Network

Every blogger is familiar with the capability of social media. Efficiently utilizing them can bring more traffic to the blog. It also establishes a better brand value. Thus social network plays a vital role in making much money through a blog.

Even being aware of this fact, we are far away from taking the utmost advantages of social media. It needs to adequately utilize social networks to engage more users and monetize the blog through it.

7. Failure in Connecting with Readers

Interacting with your offline users and encouraging them to read articles are important processes. Newsletters are the right tools for this. However, non-maintaining this has prevented the blog from earning as the capacity.

8. Avoiding productive tools

There are a number of tools that could help us to increase our productivity. Either we didn’t invest time in learning and applying or hadn’t taken maximum advantage.

Hard work matters but working smart is the rocket. For example, voice typing instead of manually writing the post could save a lot of your precious time. Earning could be better if we had upgraded ourselves with the tools.

9. SEO and Speed

While we have implemented the best SEO and speed strategies as per our knowledge, there is always more room to grow. Further, it also includes site design, hosting, etc. Similarly, updating content is also a key player for the same.

We have some unique SEO and speed optimization articles here. I highly advise you to surely look at them at least once.

it’s a continuous process. We believe that we’re still behind at this point. Keeping pace with time and technology is mandatory for making much money from a blog.

10. Avoiding Investment in the blog

Blogging is a business and businesses seek investment. Not only time but also money. If you don’t put enough time as well as capital then less return is the consequence.

Yes, definitely money doesn’t grow on plants. Also, it’s hard to see reducing bank balance without earning a single penny. But if you’re capable or have income from the blog then spending is an investment, not an expenditure.

For example, investment in buying the premium version of a plugin or service you’re using. We did invest the money but not enough time.

My Blog isn’t Making Much Money – Here is the Summary

To sum up, it’s a lack of time and monetization strategies. Further, consistency is missing as well. So I have decided to fix these with time and follow strategies. Also, we will introduce more posts on the Fellow Tuts blog besides programming stuff. Don’t get surprised!

Here we reach the end. I have described the reasons or mistakes I did and the blog couldn’t make enough money. Do you have any personal reason or your story to share regarding blogging and income? I would love to know as well as your feedback. Do comment and let me and others learn from them.