7 Things Holding Your Blog Back From Making Money

7 Things Holding Your Blog Back From Making Money

The question that I get asked more than ‘how can I make money blogging?’ is ‘why isn’t my blog making any money?’
And, I don’t blame you for feeling like you’ve gotten the short end of the stick.
The marketing ‘gurus’ out there said that it would be easy, that you wouldn’t have to spend a dime, and that you’d have your own fleet of luxury cars in a matter of a few weeks.
For every blog that I’ve looked at (and I’ve looked at a TON of them), there’s not been a single answer to why the blog isn’t making any money.
I can’t simply say, “oh, change your blog to THIS theme, and you’ll triple your readers, your subscriber rate, and money.” Like most things in life, it’s not that easy.
If you’re not making money from your blog, there’s a big chance that you’re making one of these seven HUGE mistakes.

1. You have the wrong toolset
Think about the master chef: before they even get started, they have their tools laid out and within easy reach. The business blogger, even before creating their blog, needs to have several items in place: a way of generating solid leads, a killer sales funnel, and a method of content distribution.
Having those right tools in your toolbelt will save not only time and money, but it will save hours and hours of frustration.
Finding tools and learning how to outsource freed up my time and alleviated some of the frustration. In the beginning, I was spending a LOT of time writing my own material, performing niche analysis, creating lead pages, and more.
Here are 10 tools that have immensely lowered my stress and blogging frustration.
Some of these great tools do cost money, money which ‘m happy to pay because it frees up my time to do other things. This brings me to the next mistake that people make when they try to make money blogging.

2. You’re not willing to spend money on your blog
The myth in the business blogging world is that you don’t have to spend any money to get the profits. After all, you can get yourself a blog for free from one of many sites, and then all you have to do is write about whatever you want, right?
If only it were that easy.
There are get rich quick marketing systems out there which say that all you have to do is pay a few paltry dollars and have the only traffic generation system that you need.
While I’ll be doing a report on the real cost of business blogging in the future, let me just say that money’s necessary to get the sales. What business doesn’t have at least a nominal monthly investment?

There are three places where spending money will enhance your site:
Back End – These are the systems that you have in place for your blog, including hosting, an autoresponder, a lead-capture system, and plugins.

Content – Content is important. While you are perfectly capable of creating content, you might want to create a video or something that is out of your wheelhouse.

Distribution – This is marketing, including advertising, link building, and other arenas. SEO is extremely important to the rise of your site.

3. You’ve been given bad information
One of the first things that I did when I got an interest in making money blogging was to do a search for ‘how do I make money blogging?’ on Google. The first page of Google gave you around ten organic entries and at least three paid ads. Most likely, each of those entries gives you part of the puzzle about how a blog should be run.
Combine all of the information together, and you have vast conflicts. Some blogs will say that you should put all of your time into social media. Other blogs will tell you that you really need to hammer the SEO. Still others will teach you link building techniques which may or may not be viable.
When you’re new at this, the only way that you can find out whether you’ve gotten good information is to test it, and that takes time. Some techniques will outright get you banned on Google, and some will be the key that unlocks the key to vast amounts of traffic and sales. It can still get to be extremely frustrating to sift through all of the advice.

4. You’re impatient
Impatience has been deadly to more blogs than I can count. Basically, the owner sets up a blog, excited by the get rich quick visions that the marketers have been feeding us all these years, puts everything in place, and nothing happens. Absolutely nothing happens. There are no sales, no visitors, no nothing.
And, after a few months of not making any significant headway in the traffic department or any of the other departments, it’s tempting to give up. Most folks don’t realize that just a few changes can mean all the difference between an underperforming 90% blog and a 10% making enough to live off of blog.
Success isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s not going to happen in the blink of an eye. Droves and droves of clients and customers aren’t going to come streaming to your blog just because you put up a blog in the first place. You’ve got to give this thing around six full months of effort, produce great content, and otherwise keep on top of it.

5. You don’t have a solid plan
Having a plan is the crux of your operation. Having a plan and sticking to it. A lot of people who are new to making money from their blogs don’t realize that they need to have a plan in place for it to work. What I’ve found is that the more detailed the roadmap for success, the more chance that the success will happen.
Planning starts with the decision to make your blog into a business and a money-making operation. Once that is in place, then you can build the social media platforms around it, the methods that you are going to advertise, the content pages in your killer sales funnel, and other tactics which are designed to make you money.
Maybe your plan is to make money through having an online store of goodies. Do you have the plan in place ready to advertise them? Do you know what you’re going to do with those products, whether you’re going to create your own? What about your demographics? Who are you going to target with your goods and services?
The planning process that you go through should be fairly comprehensive. And, the plan can be molded to suit your company’s needs. It can adapt to when a new piece of software comes to the market. It can still be implemented when other things happen. One of the things that my one-on-one counseling does is help you create a rock-solid blueprint for success on your own blog.

6. You don’t have guidance
I was lucky when I first started this. I had someone who stepped right in to guide me along the road, telling me what information was good and what didn’t work. I didn’t have to do as much testing as some have to do. When I started talking with John, though, I was nearly at the end of my rope. It had worn on me.
Mentors will provide you with guidance, but they won’t actually do the work for you. They’ll be happy to weigh in on what’s necessary. What they’ll also do is help you hash out a rock-solid blueprint of how to make money with your blog. With all luck, that person has been where you are.
Now, I completely understand if you’re shy. You don’t have to get a specific person to guide you into making money online. You can take a few moments and join a LinkedIn group which is dedicated to success and ask questions there.
You could also take a course about affiliate marketing which is recommended by someone you trust. Nothing is stopping you from receiving guidance if you’re willing to receive it.

7. Your product isn’t right for the target market
While you might be trying to discover the next steps for your breakout market, there are some ideas which likely won’t work. It takes a really savvy marketer to sell ice to the Eskimos or SEO services to an SEO marketer.
One of the biggest parts of my best-selling Profit Blogging Blueprint Program revolves around keyword research and intimately knowing the target niche, but there are some times where even the best marketers in the world call it wrong.
I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that making money blogging is the easiest thing in the world that you’re going to do. There’s a lot of hard work involved, and it requires a lot of patience, persistence, planning and passion.
Once the building blocks are in place and you’ve corrected any major mistakes that you’ve been making, it should be smooth sailing to make money on your blog.

Your Turn
What strategies are you using to make money with your blog ? I’d love to hear from you, scroll down and leave a comment or question below …