Luke’s $10k A Week Blog

I was reading a blog post by Andrew Pavelski entitled 10 Reasons Why People Don’t Make Money Online. Here is my quick summary of each point:

1. Giving up too soon

   Most blogs across the net are abandoned, non-updated, and not making any money online. Instead of making money, they are just pieces of internet debris, collecting dust and never being visited. It’s hard to be certain whether their blog had enough potential in other respects, of course. But there’s no more certain way to fail than to quit when you’re not ahead.

2. Failure to improve

   For bloggers, it’s not just about writing nice articles. You have to constantly evaluate and improve the packaging. Great, daily content won’t trump a piece of garbage website. Check out the plugins and theme. Make sure the look and feel of your site is smooth, clean, and enjoyable to go through. And don’t stop looking for better ways to monetize, either.

3. Lousy writing style

   People come to your blog to read your writing. If it’s good, that will make them much more likely to come back. Make use of white space, bullet lists, and other simple tricks that beautify and enhance your writing. Write in a way that utilizes your personality to the maximum effect. If you’re a logical type, try to clarify things. If you’re emotional, show some passion. People want to feel that you are a real person.

4. Not promoting their blog

   You have to put yourself out there. Writing a new article every day will do you no good if nobody sees it. Leave some comments on other blogs. Get some trackbacks by linking to their articles. Be active on relavent forums. Write some guest articles. Just waiting around for search engine traffic is not going to work — remember, Google ranking comes from links, and links generally come from being popular to start with.

5. Lack of purpose, aims, and goals

   If you don’t have a purpose in mind, you can’t accomplish much. Define your goals as specifically as possible. I have $10k per week as my income goal. What is yours? Take some time to write down some goals. Whatever randomly pops into your head may in fact be your subconscious telling you what you really want. Are you into sci-fi? Programming? Sports? Define some of the things you like. This will reduce the work of creating new content later, as you will have already subconsciously worked out many of the details involved.

6. Not taking chances, making changes, or learning from mistakes

   There are hundreds of different ways to make a profitable blog. Don’t get stuck in the mindset that a given way is the only way. Adsense isn’t the only way to monetize your traffic. A better theme may exist out there. Learn from other blogs, learn from your readers, and learn from your mistakes. If you mess your site up, you can always fix it. Keep backups. Create a seperate directory with an identical copy of wordpress, then feel free to mess it up royally. It is making creative new, sometimes risky changes that sets your blog apart from the rest. The time to do this is early on; later you may not be so comfortable messing with your site that is making you money.

7. Too much focus on advertisements

   People don’t come to your site to read ads. They come for the content. Ads are not content. They are negative content, in fact. You have to make up for the fact that you have ads by creating really, really good content. The time to advertise is actually after you are fairly popular. When you first start, you have to focus on creating a cult of popularity. Put your best foot forward. Then sneak some ads in creatively.

8. No productive focus

   If you don’t focus in on what you’re doing, rarely will you excel. If you have a huge load of RSS and email to read, you may consider cutting it down. Triage, use your time effectively. Remember, you want a blog and a life, don’t you? Isn’t the whole reason for building up a blog income to have more time for your family and friends? See what works for you.

9. Lacking self-discipline

   Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is self-discipline for most of us. It is a lot of hard work to contribute usefully to the blogging world. Most people do not have that kind of inner drive. Can you sit down and type for 60 minutes every day? Sure you can do this for a week or two, but how about a month? Or a year? My first blog I did 5 posts a day. It’s easy to get over-excited at first, and not realise that this is a long-term investment of time if you want it to pay.

10. Not wanting to make the money bad enough

    Money is essential to living. However, most people find it easier to obtain it by working a traditional job under a traditional employer, rather than employing themselves and making themselves earn it. Ultimately you need to have enough desire for wealth and freedom to keep you focused on the blogging.

Related posts:

1. My goals
2. 3 Good Ways to Title Your Post
3. Is It Personal Or Business? Bloggers Must Walk A Line
4. Blogging For Fun:7 Ways To Have Fun Writing Blogs
5. Posting Daily: Success!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.