Being a self-published romance writer can be an exhilarating experience. It can also leave you feeling like you want to bang your head against the wall. By blogging, in addition to penning novels, we double the opportunity to deal with writer’s block, failure, and frustration. So, please, let me help you learn from three of my biggest blogging mistakes to help you get through this.
After all, if you blog, you have your hands more than full. Why not get a leg up?
Learning my Lesson the Painful Way
Last month I discontinued Maddy’s Blog, my weekly Thursday blog post. I did so after failing to post several times and struggling to come up with content ideas. I was embarrassed to announce the demise of my blog on Facebook, but more humiliated that no one seemed to notice or care. This led me to evaluate what went wrong with Maddy’s Blog. I share the results here with you – three mistakes you can easily avoid.
Blogging Mistake #1 – Overcommitting
I started blogging to connect with new readers, to increase the loyalty of existing readers and to sell books by building a mailing list. That meant that traffic was a critical indicator of success. More blog posts would increase traffic, or so the experts, and other bloggers told me. More is better.
When I began blogging, I remember reading repeatedly that I needed to be frequent and consistent. Some experts said I needed to blog as often as possible, but everyone stressed consistent. Readers needed to know when to find me and what to expect once they did.
I evaluated my ability to create content, to take time and attention from my novel writing without putting crushing amounts of pressure upon myself. Blogging one day a week seemed doable.
Each Thursday I wrote about my personal experiences with writing, with romance, with life but the traffic didn’t come.
Someone suggested borrowing traffic from other bloggers by writing and hosting guest posts. That sounded reasonable and gave me an excuse to expand my author networking efforts. I added Tuesday’s Maddy’s Romance Madness to promote the works of other romance writers. Traffic increased, and I thought I was on the right trajectory.
Still, the viewers remained distant, they didn’t engage much and failed to join my mailing list. I decided I needed to do more.
Making a Bad Problem Worse
Last year I added Wednesday’s “Tours and Treats” blog to share information about promotions and book tours. “Tours and Treats” began as a spillover of my Tuesday “Maddy’s Romance Madness” but gained a life of its own. I felt sure that romance readers would appreciate information about book promotions or contests, and I was right. Traffic increased – slightly.
Finally, this year I changed the direction of my business to connect more with authors as well as readers. So, of course, I added another day of blogging to target indie romance authors. I began blogging about what I have learned in my quest as an author, and sharing the knowledge of experts and influencers every Monday. That is what you are reading now, my Monday blog for writers.
Sounds good so far, right? More content equals more traffic, according to the experts. I was, however, running into several problems. First, my traffic was not increasing nor were signups to my email list. My novels were being pushed to the back burner to make room for these new deadline-driven posts, so I had little chance to write, let alone sell more books. I was failing on all my goals, and I was working more than I intended to when I decided to blog.
Blogging Lesson #1: Do Your Homework
Digital marketing guru Neil Patel offers excellent advice in his post “5 Simple Steps That’ll Help You Determine How Often You Need to Blog.” This article, crammed full of charts, statistics and data, boils down to these five factors to consider when determining the frequency to select for your blog.
- Your Blogging Goals
- The Number of Posts that Already Exist
- Your Traffic Channel
- Audience Demand and Your Resources
- Experimenting Until You Find Your Sweet Spot
My mistake was not knowing these steps before I increased my blog to four days per week and not knowing what my audience wanted and needed. In the end, I did find my sweet spot here; I canceled the Thursday blog with little fanfare, my tail between my legs.
My goals were not reflected in the content I was sharing in these Thursday posts, only in the articles I was sharing on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. I had the requisite backlog of posts, and active traffic channels. But without asking what my readers wanted, and ignoring what Google Analytics was showing, I continued to pound out anything that came into my mind every Thursday.
Neil Patel will tell you content is king. I never considered how I would create quality
In his post “Exactly How Important is Consistency to Your Blogging Strategy” John Bonini tells us, “When it comes to creating an impact with your blog, consistency means everything. In fact, there’s a direct correlation between how often you’re blogging, and how much traffic and leads your website is generating.”
It may be true, that more is better. I certainly thought so before. But here’s the lesson to take away from this assumption: better is better. And if consistency means readers know when to find you and what to expect, I was missing on both. I had no regular format or theme and, worse yet, I had stopped showing up with anything.
Creating quality content for Thursdays had become a burden. I was digging for topics, going to the wire to get posts published. Why were the rest of the posts working but not on Thursdays? Maybe because my content was all wrong?
Blogging Mistake #2 – A Blog is Not a Diary
One of my new favorite resources is TheSheApproach.Com. The focus on the website is to make us smarter, money-making bloggers. As the owner, Ana, says, “If you’re only planning to blog for yourself and you don’t care who reads it or who you can help, I would suggest saving your money, time and effort and putting it all in a diary or starting a free blog. But if you actually want to reach out to people, build your brand or help someone face a problem that you previously solved, narrowing down who your dream audience is can be crucial. So think about it for a minute!”
When I thought about, as Ana suggested, I realized that my fourth blog day, it turned out, was more of a journal than a blog post.
Unclear why I was writing it, I was sharing my life with friends. My audience was not the readers I had hoped to reach, so I was flailing about what to write to reach them. Specifically, what could I post that didn’t belong in a Facebook post instead, or even a personal email? I had no business purpose for Maddy’s Blog, which meant It had no direction. It showed.
I failed to hone closely to my purpose because I had none. I forgot about why I had decided to blog – to increase discoverability, encourage people to join my email list and to offer value to my readers.
This basic advice about sharing online from Laura Spencer’s post “Oversharing: Your Blog is Not Your Diary” is spot on. Laura may focus on oversharing, but her point tackles my second mistake – I blog for my business, not for myself, and that means every single post needs to address how my work can improve the lives of my readers. Once I remember that I am here to provide value, themes and topics produced with quality writing, all else follows.
I was having no problems with content on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because I understood how they helped my readers. Sadly, I simply stopped delivering that fourth day of each week. I dropped the ball. So I cut my losses and learned my second valuable lesson. Last month, I announced I would no longer post on Thursdays. It was a little embarrassing, but necessary
[click_to_tweet tweet=”3 Lessons to Learn from My Blogging Mistakes: I was embarrassed to announce the demise of my blog on Facebook, but more humiliated that no one seemed to notice or care. #blogging #amwriting” quote=”I was embarrassed to announce the demise of my blog on Facebook, but more humiliated that no one seemed to notice or care.”]
Blogging Mistake #3 – You Don’t Blog for Fun
Some bloggers do a blog just for fun, with no purpose in mind but to satisfy themselves. I did this myself the last time I traveled to South Africa. I wanted a record. I kept it in a blog not caring who read it.
But I would venture to guess that none of you who are still reading this post blog strictly for fun. You blog with a purpose, a business purpose.
“Blogging enables you to reach the billions of people that use the Internet. Blogging can help you promote yourself or your business. Blogging works as a method for attracting an audience because it provides something of value to them before asking for anything in return.”
In his article “10 Reasons You Should Start Blogging” Michael B. Fishbein provides a comprehensive list of reasons we might choose to blog. Here is the complete list:
- Attract an Audience
- Establish Authority
- Build Rapport and Engagement
- Create Opportunities
- Organize Thoughts and Learn
- Tell Your Story
- Meet New People
- Stand Out
- Validate Expertise
- Make Money
Not sure of your purpose when faced with so many options? I tend toward one, three and ten, none of which were being met by Maddy’s Blog. With the help of my coach, Jen Snyder, CEO of Women Winning Online and the entire Society of WWO, I found the courage to walk away from my useless posting day and focus on what mattered.
Blogging Lesson #3: Committing Murder
I reevaluated my blogging efforts. Or as Neil Patel would say, I went looking for my sweet spot. Mondays offered me networking, learning and sales opportunities. Those were important to me. Tuesdays were allowing me to reach new readers. I was getting the most traffic here and email signups as well. Wednesdays were generating traffic and providing value to my readers. All of these efforts aligned with my mission for blogging. Thursdays did not. I shot Maddy’s Blog right through the heart, killed it, learned my lessons and promised myself to spend the time writing books and making my blog profitable..
A “survey…of 1,500 ProBlogger readers who said they’re trying to make money by blogging, found that 9% make between $1,000 and $10,000 a month and 4% make over $10,000 a month. But the vast majority makes less than $3.50 per day. (Most of these were blogs less than two years old, though.)”. There is an opportunity here to finance my books through my blog, and I intend to take it.
The Society of Women Winning Online has a course “Making your First $1K” that I am digging through now. I am becoming more committed to affiliate marketing and providing real value to romance readers and writers. If the value is there, the traffic will come, and so will the dollars.
What’s Next for You?
Now that you have read my story don’t make my mistakes. Learn from the experts.. Know your audience, know what they want and need and how often they want it. Don’t commit to more than you can handle. Blog without sacrificing your primary job, writing romance novels, unless you can make enough money blogging – and you love it enough – to forfeit writing books.
After all, blogging is hard work; too hard not to make it count.
Gems of the Week/Resources
Want to start making money with your blog. Try using several of the resources I reference in today’s blog:
The SheApproach.COM: Ana begins at with the basics in this free course that is fast – I did it all in one day – but you focused on the right stuff as a business blogger. For some it will start out too basic, covering setting up a website for example. But after three years of blogging, I found it useful to revisit determining my audience and goals. When Ana lays out how to structure a blog post for maximum effect, the benefits kicked into high gear for me. I took advantage of the add-ons to help understand how to build more traffic, but you can decide whether to spend the extra dollars or not. https://thesheapproach.com/how-to-start-blog-2018/
My Adapatable Career. You will want to discover Emily McGee and MyAdaptableCareer.com. Emily is my go-to when I am feeling overwhelmed. She always has something I can use to get back on track. Enrollment for her fantastic course, “Planning for Success,” opens TODAY. Find out more about this comprehensive course here. If you prefer, complete her free five day “Work Less, Earn More” challenge before starting the course, and get extra bonuses when you enroll in the “Planning for Success” course. This option gets you pumped for the course and more bang for your buck.
Blog-cab-u-lary Plus: If you have a bit more money to invest, pick up a copy of “Blog-cab-u-lary Plus,” by Nataly Llanes, an ebook that will become your bible. Nataly’s information on affiliates and her resource list alone make Nataly’s book my bible for all things blogging. With over two hundred pages of detailed suggestions and processes, including screenshots, “Blog-cab-u-lary Plus” has saved me hours of trial and error.
www.womenwinningonline.com Have even more money to invest in doing this right? Become part of a network that feels more like a family, and learn from over 100 women who are making a living online. Most are young moms, but they have welcomed this childless retiree with open arms. There are a wealth of resources with expertise from email to Pinterest Their Facebook group, weekly calls, and shared files more than pay for the cost of the society.
Affiliate Disclosure
I want to disclaim the fact that this blog has occasional affiliate links, and if you purchase through such links, I will receive a small commission (at no extra cost for you).
Writing, be it novels or blog posts, require a lot of work and time on my part. Here is one way that you can support my efforts. If you are not comfortable using my affiliate links, that’s fine too. Just Google the resources or products I mention, and you can buy it directly. Just a reminder, I would never recommend anything that I don’t believe in 100%.