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This is yet another “share your problems and solutions” (SYPS) post. This time, it’s the blogging problems that we’ll share, discuss, and seek solutions to.
If you’re a blogger, then you’re likely to face blogging problems. In fact, every aspect of life too has problems, isn’t it?
However, every problem has a solution, and finding it depends on your attitude, qualities, and skills, and of course, awareness.
If you’re determined and hopeful, you’re more likely to find the solution to your problems.
Similarly, when you face problems blogging – you need to first accept the problem, understand it, have patience, make efforts, and take help from other bloggers.
Remember, this too shall pass. No problem can hold its ground if you’re determined to root it out by using the right ways.
The Aha!NOW blog community is there to help out. You need to resolve your blogging issues to make your blog successful.
I suggest that you share your blogging problems with all other bloggers and that will have a multi-purpose end result:
1) Probably you’ll get to know that you’re not alone and others too face the same problem. This will give you hope that your problem will get solved.
2) Others who have faced similar blogging problems will tell you what they did to resolve them. Probably doing the same, you too can solve the problems you face.
3) All other bloggers will become aware of such problems, and they can be on guard and adopt preventive measures so as not to suffer from the same problems. This way you’ll be helping other bloggers.
4) It may so happen that what you considered a problem was actually a mistake that you were making. Other bloggers might point that out to you, and you can bring happiness back to your blogging.
I have also come across blogging problems, which I think can be categorized into different heads.
Types of Blogging Problems
Categorization and classification help us understand things better. It will also help you define your problem and seek solutions.
I find that there are 8 types of blogging problems that any blogger can face. However, there might be many more, so feel free to mention them in the comments when you share your problems.
Most bloggers face conceptual, design, ethical, financial, legal, marketing, search traffic, and technical related problems.
Conceptual Blogging Problems
Blogging starts with a concept or an idea. The very first problem that a blogger faces is deciding the blog niche.
I must confess, I had this problem, which continued for a long time in my blogging journey.
It was only recently when my lovely blog readers affirmed through the blog readership survey, that they liked my blog as it is and wanted me to keep it multi-niche!
Sometimes the trouble isn’t only about deciding the niche of your blog, because you many a times also struggle with post ideas. Don’t you?
You just can’t make out what to write next, and if that happens, you just write anything and your content quality suffers.
My friend Theodore wrote a post on this issue. I believe a blog plan helps you resolve this issue.
This year, when I wrote my post on life plan, I also made my blog plan. It gave me a direction, guidance, and helped me mark out my post dates as well as post topics schedule in advance.
Planning is crucial for your blog’s success, and if you don’t do that, then your blog could be in a pool of problems.
If you’ve any blog problems related to planning, then share it – and the ever helping readers of Aha!NOW might give you the solutions that you need. 🙂
Design Blogging Problems
Even if your content is good, it helps if your blog looks good too, isn’t it? Though many do not see an unattractive blog as a blogging problem, but it affects your blog in many ways.
It’s not only the readers but also Google that wants your blog to be user-friendly in terms of layout, colors, navigation, images, and fonts, which are all aspects of design.
You may not know how to design your blog properly. However, you can seek help from experts like my friend Angela, who is a website designer.
I think it’s good if you let your blog be easy on the eyes of the readers. It should not be congested, rather have nicely spaced out content and a feel good factor. 🙂
I think some of the things you should do to provide the readers a better experience on your blog are:
● Not confuse the reader with a flood of categories!
● Not fill up your blog with Ads, especially in the above the fold area. Google might penalize you, as it recently rolled a specific update just for that.
● Have more content in the above the fold area and have more text than the html code.
● Not have fonts that are too small or too large – keep them the usual ones you read online.
There could be several other factors and tips that need your attention, if you’re facing design problems on your blog.
A poor blog design can affect your search rankings, duration of the visitor’s stay on the blog, bounce rate, and even conversions.
Do you have any blogging problem related to the design of your blog? If yes, then share them in the comments and seek honest feedback!
Ethical Blogging Problems
What is right and what is wrong? This is a question that bloggers should ask themselves.
You create your image by the things you do, and the image you create among fellow bloggers is something you need to care about.
Some unethical ways I know of are –
● Copying the content or plagiarism.
● Adding the affiliate or third party links where they are not supposed to.
● Writing biased and manipulated sponsored posts and reviews.
● Spamming the post or comments with irrelevant link.
● Commenting just for backlinks by leaving 1 liner comments.
There can be many other examples. These are some blogging problems that the blogger needs to be aware of it, realize its harmful effect on the blog, and stop such practices.
Remember, you can’t fool people all the time. Especially when it comes to Google –if you wish to rise in ranks and revenue, just be original.
Always play by the rules. I expect my guest bloggers to follow my guest blogging rules to the “T”, and I too would do that anywhere I guest post.
Do you have any doubt whether what you want to do is ethical or not?
I read a post that gives a 10-point guide to ethical blogging. What are your thoughts on blogging ethics? To what extent would you go to promote your blog?
Shoot out your questions and let the bloggers give you their opinions.
Financial Blogging Problems
You want to start blogging or are already blogging and you feel the finances are low – now, that’s a major problem. I’m sure most of you can relate to that.
But hey! If you can’t raise the capital, you can choose the cheaper or free ways to blog until you make some money.
If you really want to have a good blog for your readers, then it does cost money. There’s no end to what all you can invest on, unless you decide to go the frugal and minimalistic way like Leo Babauta!
You can have the best web host, best plugins, premium themes, paid services, and most effective email marketing software etc.
But if funds are an issue presently – you need to adjust and make do with what you’ve and your present financial resources and conditions.
Similarly, as mentioned earlier, don’t try to fill your blog with ads just because you think you’ll make a lot of money this way.
Such a plan may backfire. Even the experts say that having fewer ads will get you more clicks, and it’s definitely not more the merrier case.
Did your blog get rejected by Adsense? Well, you still have a chance and all is not lost.
Making money blogging online is an art and a skill that you need to learn and it’s not a problem doing so. My friend Enstine wrote a guest post for me, and he can guide you too.
Tell us your financial blogging problems, maybe we can help out with some fresh ideas!
Legal Blogging Problems
Blogging is fun, but this can even put you in trouble if you’re not careful and not aware of the legal problems of blogging.
Practicing wrong techniques and implementing illegal ways to manipulate search engines will land you in trouble. Here are some examples:
● Some bloggers do not credit the images they use on their blog.
● Some even go to the extent to use entire posts that they copy from the blogs.
I see it as an offence when I find that people don’t follow my copyright guidelines.
In such cases, I’ve a right to complain to Google or other search engines. Remember, you can be penalized by Google for this.
Similarly, companies can sue you for illegally using their products or property. Besides giving credit and having a copyright policy advertised on your blog, you should also have the following:
● Have a disclaimer on your blog when you give any advice or have guest posts. It’s more important if you‘ve a medical or health related blog.
● Some European countries require you to let visitors know if you use cookies and other tracking systems. You should’ve a privacy policy as well on your blog.
I have a couple of posts that give examples and tips for legal issues, here and here. Hope they help.
Be very careful of the legal aspects and implications of whatever you do on your blog. Failure to comply with legal conditions will turn your blogging pleasure into blogging problems.
Did you ever face any legal problems while blogging? Share your experiences and questions.
Marketing Blogging Problems
Conceptualizing a blog is not easy, making a good blog is bit difficult, creating great content is even a harder task, but when it comes to promoting your blog – it almost seems like an impossible task, isn’t it? I can see you all nodding there 🙂
Perhaps reading my recent guest post on blog promotion on Jane Sheeba’s, the way I do it, might help you.
I know many bloggers, who feel that blog marketing is the biggest blogging problem that they face because it has become so diverse now.
Here are some of the blog marketing or promotion woes:
● The number of social platforms are increasing every year, but not the time that you’ve in your hand!
● Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ were enough to take your breath away. Oh, did I forget Pinterest and LinkedIn!
● But then you’ve the social bookmarking and sharing sites too like Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, Blog Engage, Biz Sugar, Klinkk, Do Splash, Kingged, and so on.
● Twitter has its own entourage in the form of Triberr, JustRetweet, Tweet Low, and others.
I must say that with regards to social marketing of your blog, it’s more the merrier. But what all can you possibly do in the little time you have in a day!!
There’s more – blog commenting, which for me takes most of my time. How about you? You need to reply to the comment on your own blog, and visit other blogs to comment as well.
Did you say you don’t get comment on your blog?
My friend Babanature wrote a post recently on this issue and what you can do about it. Even I wrote a guest post on blog commenting some time back that may help you.
Too much to do is also a problem, because it becomes difficult to manage. Do you’ve such blogging problems regarding promotion of your blog?
Are you confused about which marketing strategy to follow or how to go about it? Well, just ask – and we’d help you out. 🙂
Search Engine Blogging Problems
Getting organic search traffic is a BIG problem for most of the bloggers. How do you get high search engine ranking positions if you can’t use keywords?
Is SEO dead? Do we need keywords just as we did earlier? What’s the latest on SEO and search engine rankings?
● Well, who said you can’t use keywords. It’s just that you need to pick the seed keywords and grow a tail to it, like you sprout a gram or seed.
● Make efforts to collect other phrases that have similar meaning, and use them in the post that totally revolves around the seed keyword. You’ve to adopt the semantic approach now.
There’s more to optimizing your post for search engines, but you can just write great content and forget about the SEO.
I get about 35% organic traffic, and I don’t know much about SEO!
However, you can still ask your query and some expert may generously give you the tips, though different people have their own opinion in matters of SEO.
But organic traffic is strong and if you can’t tap it, you’ve a problem. Did you say you don’t get enough traffic on your blog?
Well, voice it out here and someone will help you out with useful suggestions.
Technical Blogging Problems
Technical problems that a blogger faces are wide and galore. You can have problems with:
● plugins
● codes, CSS, HTML
● web hosts
And all that technical stuff on your blog. I honestly DREAD those!
Sometimes the technical blogging problems are grave and beyond your control that some of my blogging friends recently faced. When your webhosts start giving you problems, you got nowhere to run.
Though my webhost is good for me, I did have my share of problems when my CPU resources and processes increased beyond limits and my site just vanished from the screen.
You might even make silly typing mistakes while writing or copying php, html, or css codes and find that your blog now only shows a line of code error and nothing else!
One of my biggest blogging problems is how to reduce the load times of my blog. As Google considers this as one of the ranking aspects, every blogger needs to worry about the speed factor.
What technical problems do you face while blogging? When you’ve them, you’re just frustrated and mad. But then who do you ask or call?
Share it all here!
Share Your Blogging Problems on Aha!NOW
Do you have any of the above blogging issues? If yes, then feel free to share them here. The Aha!NOW blog community has many bloggers who can help you deal with your problems.
What you need to do is share your comment in the provided format:
Title of the problem:
Description of the problem:
Also, make sure:
● When you want to reply to the problem, kindly do so by click on “Reply” directly to the problem comment put across so that your comment remains in the same thread and the original commenter gets the notifications too.
● You can even subscribe to all the comments to the post and be updated with all the questions that are asked by other bloggers. Being aware of problems is one way of safeguarding yourself, isn’t it?
I hope you’re able to identify your blogging issues. You can write them in detail so fellow bloggers can relate to their own blogging experiences and help you here.
I’ll list all the problems stated by the readers in my first comment and keep updating it so they are easier for you to find, read, and offer your help or opinion.
Let’s help out each other to make our blogging lives easier, happier, and simpler. 🙂
Over to you –
How long have you been blogging and what all problems did you face? Do you have any blogging problems that you’re facing? Share your blogging issues in the comments.
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