15 Avoidable Mistakes That Every New And Amateur Blogger Makes [Update 2024]

It is very obvious for new and amateur bloggers to make blogging mistakes in the initial days while they are still learning it.

Amateur blogs look not only ugly but also are substandard and unprofessional.

If you are a new blogger, you need to avoid these amateur blogging mistakes to become a professional and successful blogger.

Some of these blogging mistakes not only cost you time, but some of them could cost you money and reputation also, which is very serious for your blogging business.

Sometimes, newbie bloggers are not aware of the do’s and don’ts of blogging and make some awful and serious mistakes that can end their blogging career even before it starts.

Blogging can be a very profitable business if you do it correctly. Many people start blogging after just reading or watching some pro bloggers’ success stories without knowing what it takes to be a successful blogger.

In this article, I have highlighted 15 common blogging mistakes and pro tips to avoid them:-

Table of Contents

1. Selecting The Wrong Niche

This is one of the common mistakes that new bloggers make and fails at the beginning of their blogging career.

The niche you choose for your blog can make or break your career as a blogger. So the niche selection needs to be done very carefully.

It is always profitable to write on a specific topic rather than a general topic or a broader category.

Selecting a niche means you can write for a specific audience, and by doing so, you can create your authority and brand in that particular niche.

You might be passionate about something, and you may be skilled in your topic, but there might not be a market for your niche, or that may not be a profitable niche.

Some of the newbie bloggers read or watch the success stories of some successful bloggers, and they start following and doing the same thing without having any interest and skillset in their niche.

That’s the reason they run out of ideas to blog about in a short amount of time and fails.

How to Avoid This Biggest Blogging Mistake?

• Create a niche blog rather than writing everything about anything.
• Select a niche in which you are passionate about & skilled, and at the same time, there should be market demand for your niche.
• You need to be interested in your niche so that you can write or talk about your topic tirelessly. Lack of interest causes Writer’s Block. You need to avoid Writer’s Block.

Also Read: 5-Step Formula To Find Your Profitable Niche

2. Choosing Free Blogging Platform

Choosing a free blogging platform (like Blogger.com or WordPress.com) with a free domain name (like abc.blogspot.com or xyz.wordpress.com) is one of the biggest mistakes every new blogger makes when they start their blogging journey.

I am not an exception and also started off on free platforms to learn, but that was not the right decision.

Most of the new bloggers begin on a free platform thinking to save on the initial investments; however, that is wasting time, as you will not get the features and exposure you are looking for. Even though you put all your efforts and hard work, you will not get the results you deserve.

Why should you NOT use free blogging platforms?

♦ Ownership: You do not own your blog and do not have full control over your blog: Your blog will be owned by a blogging platform (like blogger.com or wordpress.com). If you are doing anything against their policy, then the domain provider can delete your domain /blog without warning, and you would lose all your content data.

♦ Branding: All professional bloggers and businesses use the custom domain name (Companyname.com or Yourname.com) to represent their brands. Free blogging platforms are not suitable for branding your business. Did you notice any business or pro-bloggers using these free platforms? No, because they treat blogging as serious business and are very concerned about their brands.

♦ Customization: There are minimal customization options available with these free blogging platforms. It has limited templates, themes, and plugin options.

♦ SEO: It is even more difficult to index the blog in search engines and create some quality backlinks. These blogs are not SEO friendly.

How to Avoid This Common Blogging Mistake?

Sometimes it is difficult for new bloggers to initially invest, as they are not sure that their investment will be worth it.

If you are really serious about blogging, I recommend you purchase a custom domain name and choose WordPress.Org (Self-Hosted WordPress) as your blogging platform.

You can read the below posts to compare various blogging platforms and select the best one (My recommendation is WordPress.Org). And you can create your own WordPress blog from scratch.

Also Read: How to Choose the Best Blogging Platform

Also Read: How to Create a WordPress Blog From Scratch

3. Choosing Cheap & Low-Quality Hosting

If you are using free or cheap Hosting, then you are not serious about blogging.

You need to understand that your Hosting can make or break your blog/ site. So, don’t spend your money on these cheap web hosting to save some money.

If you want to blog for some side hustle or as a full-time blogger, you treat it as a business and make an investment mindset.

Advantages of using a good hosting provider:

• Good storage and bandwidth
• Excellent Support
• 99.9% Uptime
• Automated backup feature
• CDN /SSL addon features

How to Avoid This Blogging Mistake?

I can understand that if you are using cheap Hosting, then you have a low budget. 

But there are some excellent web hostings which are providing the best Hosting at a very affordable price. 

The best part is that many of these hostings are also providing monthly payment options.

I would recommend you to move on to a good hosting provider. For beginners, I recommend Bluehost or GeenGeeks and for pro-bloggers WPX hosting is the best choice. 

You can read the below article and select the best hosting provider for your blog.

Also Read: How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting

4. Using Free And Nulled Themes & Plugins

As a beginner, new bloggers may not have a budget to purchase premium themes and plugins, or they do not want to invest initially, and that’s why they end up using free or nulled themes, which makes their blog terrible and vulnerable.

If you are also using a free or nulled theme due to a low budget or just for trying it out, that means you are not serious about your blogging business.

Nulled themes and plugins are pirated or cracked copies of premium themes and plugins distributed unethically on the internet. And you need to avoid using such themes and plugins, as it can break your site completely or harm you in the future.

Disadvantages of using free or nulled themes:

• The majority of these nulled and free themes are embedded with malicious code and spammy website links. Because of this, your site becomes vulnerable to security threats and can be hacked easily.

• Generally, free themes and plugins are poorly coded, which can increase your site loading speed. And due to this, your website ranking will be affected.

• Free themes have minimal customization options and have limited functionalities.

• Free and nulled themes will not get updates. It means the add-on functionalities and security updates will not be available to nulled or free themes.

• Due to the limited customization options, free themes don’t look cool. It’ll affect the UX (User Experience) of your site. UX is another Google ranking factor for your site.

These are a few reasons you need to avoid using free and nulled themes.

How to Avoid This Terrible Mistake?

Invest in premium themes and plugins if you are serious about blogging.

If you still in doubt as to how premium themes will help you, then here is some more reason why you need to invest in premium themes:

• Premium themes have add-on features and functionalities that free themes lack. These features make the premium theme look professional, and your blog will look attractive.

• Premium themes get updates automatically so that your theme is updated with the latest features.

• If you have any questions regarding the theme customization, You can ask for their support and resolve your issue in no time.

There are so many premium themes available which you can use, but the Pro bloggers and I personally use and recommend the best WordPress themes for bloggers. These are-

#1 GeneratePress Premium Theme: GP Premium is one of the best WordPress themes recommended and used by most pro bloggers. I’m am also using it on this blog. It is lightweight and provides lots of features and customization options. 

GeneratePress is a completely SEO optimized and responsive theme. If you want a premium theme that gives you everything a blogger needs, then you can go for it.

#2 Astra Pro Theme: Astra Pro theme is also as good as GeneratePress. It’s also a lightweight theme and has lots of features and customization options. The best part I like is the customizable header, like a transparent and sticky header.

Now let’s move on to the one more biggest mistake that almost every amateur blogger makes when they just started.

5. Copying Content From Other Bloggers

This is a very common mistake that most beginners make without knowing what plagiarism is and the impact of copying the articles that are already ranked on the search engine.

Plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves stealing someone else’s work and lying about it by claiming it as original work.

If you copy content from another’s blog, which is already ranking in Google and publish it on your site, this will treat as plagiarism content, and Google will punish you for it. You may end up losing google indexing or even completely ban from google search.

How to Avoid This Worst Blogging Mistake?

New bloggers copy content from other blogs because they think it’s tough and time-consuming to write an article.

Your blog should echo your voice instead of others. This gives a personal touch to your blog, which you can’t deliver by copying others’ blogs.

Getting an idea from another’s blog is absolutely fine as we use it while doing competitors’ analysis. But copying ideas and content will not help you in the long term.

If you use some part of the content from another blog, then take permission from the content owner and mention them in the article.

You can get various content ideas from:

• Quora
• Google Trendz
• Google suggestions
• Buzzsumo
• AnswerThePublic
• Reddit
• Social Media (FB groups /Comments)
• Ubersuggest
• SEMRush

You can also check for the uniqueness of your article using various plagiarism tools:

• Grammarly
• Plagiarism Detector
• DupliChecker
• Small SEO Tool

Now move on to the next most common mistake that new bloggers make.

6. Using Copyrighted Images

New bloggers download the image from Google by using Google’s creative commons licenses filter. But these CC-licensed images have many incorrect listings.

It could be a legal case if you get caught for copyright infringement.

Even images with creative commons licenses have specific rules and clauses to use in the public domain. You never know what “fair use” means.

Beginners also copy images from other blogs and use them in their blogs without taking permission or giving credit to them.

Sometimes new bloggers use low-resolution or watermarked images in their blog, which looks like an unprofessional and amateur blog.

How To Avoid This New Blogger Mistakes?

• Create images on Canva
• Buy stock photos from a website like Photo Dune.
• Hire a graphic designer on Fiverr or Upwork.
• Learn graphic designing and DIY.

7. Publishing Thin Content

It is another crazy mistake that almost every amateur bloggers make. When new bloggers start their blogging journey, they start writing small posts to increase the number of articles on their blog. They think that they will publish 500 to 800 words articles and it’ll begin to rank in Google.

They are crazy about publishing posts very frequently and focus on quantity rather than the post’s quality.

How to Avoid This Common Blogging Mistake?

If you are also making the same mistake, I’ll recommend publishing a detailed and value-packed article instead of multiple thin articles.

You can publish a detailed article instead of numerous small articles posting frequently. For example, you can publish a detailed post once a month instead of publishing small posts every week.

You may be thinking that what should be the ideal word count for any article?

There is no fixed number for this, but the idea is to make your article value-packed and better than your competitors’ article.

To get an idea of how long should be your article, do the competitor analysis and follow the below steps:

• Enter your target keyword or content idea on Google.
• Make a list of the top 8-10 articles’ URL
• Count the words of each post using word counter tools 
• Take an average word count of all ten posts.
• Now write an article with a word count of 50% more than the average word count. For example, the average word count of 10 posts is 1000 words; then, your article should be 1500 words long.

According to the SERPIQ analysis of the top 10 search results, the length of content directly correlates to the ranking or position in the search results.

Articles between 2000 to 2500 words have a better chance of getting in the top 10 search results.

8. Unprofessional Blog Structure And Layout

It is one of the awful blogging mistakes that new and amateur bloggers make.

New bloggers try hard to get traffic to their blog but fail to retain the visitors due to unprofessional blog design and layout.

Visitors leave early due to confusing blog layout and structure. This increases the bounce rate of your blog and your search ranking goes down.

Here are a few unprofessional blogging design practices that amateur bloggers make:

• Using default sidebars
• The author display name as ‘admin’
• Using the ‘uncategorized’ category
• Non-consistent colors, or too many colors.
• Not optimizing permalinks
• Not having essential pages.
• Confusing Navigation.
• Over Monetizing- Too many Ads and Popups.

How to Avoid This Awful Bloggers Mistake?

• Remove or customize default sidebars.
• The author’s name should be your name.
• Use consistent color across your blog.
• Group posts into different categories.
• Use a minimum menu to navigate your blog.
• Create essential pages like About Me, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer)
• Use minimal Ads. Keep in mind that visitors are coming to your blog to read your post, not to see Ads.
• Use permalink as ‘post name.’

9. Thinking That Traffic Will Come Automatically

This is one of the most common blogging mistakes that almost every amateur bloggers make. They think that traffic will come automatically to their blog as soon as they publish the post.

This should not be the case. They should make their post visible on search engines and social media platforms to get visitors to their blogs.

How to Avoid This Awful Blogging Mistake?

If you are making the same mistake, I’ll suggest you avoid this mistake by following the below steps.

Follow the quick checklist to improve the SEO of blog posts to get loved by Google. It will help you with:

• Plan Your Content with Proper Keyword Research
• Write a Catchy Blog Post Title
• Add a Meta Description to Your Blog Post
• Add Images and Media to Your Blog Posts
• Make Your Articles Structured and Readable
• Link Internally When Possible
• Make Sure Your Blog is Responsive
• Optimize For Featured Snippet
• Use Google’s Search Console
• Improve Your Site’s Load Speed
• Optimize Current Post and Update Old Posts

After following the above checklist of on-page SEO, do the following to get a good amount of traffic to your blog:

• Share your article on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media.
• You can also create a pinnable image and pin it on Pinterest.
• Use Quora and other question-answer sites, find some relevant questions in your niche, write the answer, and add your new blog post link naturally.
• Mention professional bloggers in your article and inform them about it to share your post with their audience.
• You can also do a roundup post with bloggers in your niche.
• Comment on other blogs in your niche and add your new article link in the website URL field.

Also Read: 11 Effective Ways To Optimize Your Blog Posts For SEO

10. Building Backlinks Like A Ninja

Yes, backlinks are an effective way to rank your sites in Google. But it doesn’t mean that you should start building backlinks from day-1.

Newbie blogger has a misconception that for ranking a new site, you have to make lots of backlinks in the starting.

Building tonnes of backlinks for a newly created blog with only a couple of posts will not be effective.

The other mistake that every amateur blogger makes is that they only focus on building the do-follow backlinks for their website, which is a wrong approach.

How to Avoid This Bad Blogging Mistake?

During the first 6 to 8 months of your blog, you need to create great content only. Once you have a fair amount of detailed articles, around 50 posts on your blog, you can start building links.

Not just create dofollow links on any site like crazy, but build 2-3 dofollow backlinks initially by gest posting, and get 20-30 no-follow backlinks by regularly commenting on the blogs in your niche.

• Always make backlinks on the relatable website.
• Avoid creating links on the same anchor text.
• Balance ratio of no-follow or do-follow backlinks
• Make backlinks on blogs that have a spam score of less than 5%. (You can check this on SEMRush)
• Try to make backlinks on the main keyword or your brand name.

Once you have a handsome amount of good articles then you can start building more whitehat backlinks through Blogger Outreach, and Guest Posting.

11. Avoiding Email List Building

List building is important to drive quality traffic to your blog instantly.
Most of the new bloggers are making the mistake that they don’t focus on building their email list.

Beginners think that list building and email marketing are an advanced technique that they will learn and build later.

But remember, if you are not building your email list, then you are not building your business.

Even experts have done the same mistake and later realized it.

You are just losing your returning visitors if you are not converting them to your audience from day one.

Here are some amazing benefits of email list building:

• Instant Traffic: Whenever you publish a new article, you can send an email to your mailing list about it, and you will get quality traffic instantly.

• You Own the Traffic: You don’t have any control over Google & Social media traffic. Google can penalize your blog or your social media account can be deleted or disabled if you break any of their terms & condition. But the traffic through your email list is the traffic you own.

• Offer Product & Services: If you have any product or service, then you can offer it to your email subscribers.

• Email Marketing Funnel: You can create automation and sell your product or affiliate product totally in automation through the email marketing funnel.

How to Avoid List Building Mistake?

List building is ignored by most of the new bloggers, but it is essential for the success of his /her blog.

If you are making the same mistake, I’ll suggest you avoid this mistake asap.

Please do not wait until you get huge traffic on your blog; start building your email list from the beginning itself.

List building has basically two parts:

The first part is,

Lead Capture /Lead Generation– You can capture your blog visitors’ email and name through some signup form. If you do not want to invest in lead generation plugins like Optin Monster, Convert Pro, or Thrive Leads, then you can even create a signup form using the Elementor plugin.

But, by just adding a signup form to your website or blog, visitors will not start subscribing to your list. This will not happen until you give some value in terms of a Free ebook, course, or any service. And the second part of it is, Email Marketing- Once you captured the email of your visitors (now lead), the next part is to send the emails to your leads. For this, you can use any of the email marketing tools based on your requirement and budget. For beginners, I will suggest using GetResponse or AWeber, which gives you a free trial for 30-days (Without Credit Card), and that can integrate and automate with your lead generation tool. 

12. Lacking Consistency

Another common mistake that almost every new blogger makes is that they are not consistent in writing and publishing the posts.

New bloggers initially write a few posts, and then they stop it if not getting the desired outcome. But this is not the correct way, as you can not expect an immediate result with a few posts.

It’s pretty simple, the more you blog, the more traffic you get, and the more leads and eventually, the more customers you acquire.

A case study by HubSpot shows the same in the below chart.

But writing articles with the same pace and publishing in the same frequency can be very tough for beginners.

So, What is The Solution For This?

The solution is simple- schedule and publish your post consistently.

But how to do that?

You may be wondering how to get ideas to write those many blog posts and publish them regularly?

So, you can get blog ideas from HubSpot’s blog idea generator and  Thehoth’s blog topic generator.

I recommend getting the content idea from the SEMRush SEO Content template, which analyzes your competitor’s content and gives you ideas to write winning and SEO optimized content.

You need a SEMRush account to use this. You can create an account and get SEMRush 7 days Trial for Free.

Now that you’ve got your content ideas, you need to schedule your content so that you can create and publish it consistently.

You can use a various editorial calendar to schedule your posts. I recommend using Google sheet and Google Calendar for beginners.

WordPress plugin for the editorial calendar can also be used to schedule and publish your posts.

13. Ignoring Affiliate Marketing

New bloggers think that Google Adsense is the only way to make money from the blog. They do not explore other means to monetize the blog.

They are crazy about AdSense approvals and sometimes buy them from someone unethically.

They do not know what the potential of affiliate marketing is?

If you are making the same mistake, you need to stop this and learn about affiliate marketing.

You can make even10x more money from the same traffic if you are doing affiliate marketing with the correct strategy.

Pat Fynn, Mathew Woodward, John Chow and many pro bloggers generate millions of dollars in revenue by just doing affiliate marketing through their blogs.

How to Do Affiliate Marketing?

Follow these simple steps-

• Join Affiliate Programs in your niche: Be aware that these affiliate programs (like ShareASale, CJ Affiliates, Amazon Associates) follow the approval process to maintain the quality of the affiliate network. New bloggers may face rejection if they do not fulfill their requirements. So to avoid rejection, you need to avoid the blogging mistakes mentioned here.
• Find a product to promote: Once you get approval from the affiliate programs you joined, the next step is to find the relevant product in your niche you want to promote.
• Create a value-packed content around your product: Once you choose your product from the affiliate marketplace, the next step is to promote your product to the right audience. Research about your product and write a good post around the product and promote it to your audience.

Also Read: What Is Affiliate Marketing & How Does It Work 

14. Scare To Invest In Their Blog

It’s one of the most common mistakes that almost every amateur blogger makes.

I also started my blogging journey on a free platform with free tools, as I had begun just to learn blogging and not as a career option.

But that was not the correct decision, as after investing lots of time and effort, I could not make it profitable.

Even if you are starting it just for a hobby or learning purpose, and you may not have plans to make money blogging right now, however, it’s better to make sure you have the option to do so in the future.

How To Avoid This Blogging Mistake?

I know, new bloggers might have a limited budget to invest or are afraid to invest initially. They might be confused about which tools they should invest in.

Here is a list of tools where you should consider investing:

⇒ Invest in a good Hosting Platform- (Bluehost is the best hosting for beginners and also recommended by WordPress)

⇒ Invest in a lightweight & high-speed Theme -(GeneratePress is the fastest theme and used by pro bloggers)

⇒ Invest in Blog Desing Plugin -(Elementor is the best blog and landing page design tool)

⇒ Invest in good Writing Assistance -(Grammarly helps avoid grammar and spelling mistakes in your articles)

⇒ Invest in the best Image Optimization plugin -(Short-Pixel is best to optimize your blog image and speed up your blog loading)

⇒ Invest in Social Sharing Tool -(Social Snap is the most popular social sharing plugin)

⇒ Invest in the best SEO tool -(SEMRush is the best All-in-One SEO tool that helps in ranking your page in Google)

So if you are serious about blogging, then treat it as a business and make an investment mindset from the beginning itself.

15. Quitting Too Early

Everyone wants to make money online, and they start thinking that blogging can make them rich overnight.

But blogging success is not an overnight journey. It is also not as easy as it looks. It takes lots of hard work and patience to be a successful blogger.

Here are a few reasons for early quitting:

• Expecting too much too soon.
• Not willing to put in the hard work.
• Few comments, social media shares, and engagement on blog posts.
• Slow or no traffic growth.
• Spending too much time but not having an investment mindset.
• Searching for shortcuts and free stuff all time.
• Afraid of investing in self-education.
• Thinking to make money without giving any value to readers.
• Procrastination.

How To Avoid This Amateur Blogging Mistake?

• Patience is the key to success.
• Share values, success will follow.
• Avoid overthinking.
• Understand your audience.
• Avoid the robotic approach- create a user persona and write for them.
• Engaging with your readers.
• Read other blogs in your niche.
• Invest in learning and tools.

Over To You

It’s easy to start a WordPress blog. But it takes a lot of hard work and patience to make it a successful blog.

In this post, I tried to highlight all the common mistakes that every amateur blogger make when they just started their blogging journey.

And I also shared how they can avoid these blogging mistakes to be a successful and professional blogger.

If you are making any mistakes from this list that I shared, then you need to avoid it right now. Because it will not help you to grow and your blog will look like an amateur blog.

If you found this article helpful then, please let me know via comment below and also add if I missed some points to cover.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Cheers 🙂

Related Articles