Are You Exaggerating Things As An Amateur Blogger?

No matter where we stand today, the fact is, we all once started as Amateur Blogger.

When we are in the Amateur Blogging phase, to have quick success, there are a few things we tend to overplay and become a victim of failure.

In this article, I will communicate some simple but important things that I feel you will be inclined to overdo as Amateur Blogger.

A few days back, I was talking to one of my friends who is an aspiring blogger. His main concern was, he wasn’t getting enough blogging success, no matter how hard he tries.

I was curious to know about his approach towards blogging so I asked him a few questions. During our conversation, I quickly realized, he is making all his efforts in the wrong direction. To some extent he was overdoing things which I believe, he doesn’t require at all.

It wasn’t shocking for me as I knew this is very common with amateur bloggers. When you first start blogging, you read a lot and gather as much knowledge as you can. The web helps you a lot in this aspect however, there are many myths about blogging that go alongside the helpful information.

I don’t say; the information provided by experts is wrong, but as an amateur blogger you may easily get confused about how you should implement it. Even if you have a clear strategy to apply it, you may not be sure to what extent you should go to make good use of it.

In simple words, the information you get from the experts, you do not absorb and fulfill it in the correct manner.

As a result, you carry-out whatever information you get without realizing that by doing so, you are wasting your precious time.

Never Overdo These As Amateur Blogger

If you think Blogging is an easy money making option, then be very clear, you are wrong. Blogging is like any other full-time career and like many other professions, it is not an easy one.

You must give your 100% effort to flourish and grow as a successful blogger. A lot of time, thoughts, skills, and decision-making revolves around it and any wrong move can downplay your efforts. You should never treat blogging as a side income source. If you blog with that hope, you are not likely to succeed.

On average, you must give at least 5 hours of your daily time to blogging. Having said that, it’s also essential to utilize this time wisely. Imagine working at an office and spending 2 hours of your daily time just doing useless meetings. Work meetings are important but too many of them can be a pain as then, they don’t do any good but only become a time-wasting element.

Similarly, a lot of the things that I will address in this article are the most important part of your blogging journey but as an amateur blogger, devoting too much of your precious moments to these activities will only cause wastage of time, efforts, and money.

As an amateur blogger you must be very careful of these things, so, without wasting too much time, let’s jump into the list.

1- Having An Obsession With Blog Theme

During the conversation with my blogger friend, one point he mentioned was, he created a beautiful website and spent over 2 months designing it. He still makes continuous efforts and works on the design to keep improving the look of his blog. He claimed that his blog is one of the most beautifully designed blogs but still doesn’t get enough clicks.

Being an amateur blogger, he didn’t realize that it’s not the blog design that makes it a hit but there are many other factors involved. In an attempt to have a perfect blog design, he was throwing away a lot of his precious time.

I quickly realized that he is a victim of “blog theme obsession”. It’s not unusual to get over-involved in designing your blog and even I used to do it at the very start. 

I started my first blog, worked hard on it day and night to make it look beautiful. Changed the fonts, adjusted padding added attractive colorful images, and spent over a month. Finally, I was happy to have a professionally designed blog.

It went like this for a few days until I came across one blog which I liked a lot. To have a similar design, I started all over and again spent one more month. I was foolish not to realize that it only cost me time and effort and resulted in nothing.

It was only a year after when I started following other bloggers; I realized that with too many changes, I have made my blog design a mess. I got amazed to see how simple, plain, and neat designs other successful blogs have. So, in the end, all my blog designing measures caught me stupid.

I never say you don’t need a good design for your blog. Having a professionally designed blog surely helps but I believe, spending too much time on your blog design is a waste of time when you are an amateur blogger.

So, What Should You Do Instead?

Many (not every) blogging experts will advise you to invest if you want to be a successful blogger. I don’t deny the fact, but what I believe is, you may incur some initial cost but you must avoid unnecessary spending.

In my opinion, the only useful primary investment is to have a custom domain and self-hosting. I consider, purchasing paid themes, paid images, having expensive plugins, putting up sales funnels, purchasing advanced email marketing software, running Ads, and paying for sponsored posts as unnecessary expenditures.

I am a firm believer that as an amateur blogger; you don’t need any of these unnecessary expenses and should altogether avoid them.

So, What Should You Do Instead?

• Only invest in a custom domain and self-hosting. Forget every other expenditure which many experts advise. These have hidden affiliate links only to disguise you.
• Go with free WordPress themes and do not look for costly paid themes.
• Never purchase plugins as good free themes come preloaded with vital plugins.
• Do not purchase stock images as there are plenty of free images available on the internet. You only need UnSplash that gives you unlimited images for free.
• Do not invest in expensive email marketing software. Use can use MailChimp for free till you cross 1000 subscribers.
• There is no need to have expensive sales funnels as initially, you won’t get any sales.
• There is a big no to Ads for promoting your blog. The ads will only boost the traffic till the time they run (not guaranteed though). Once you take off the ads your blog traffic will get back to normal. You should rather look for free social media promotions.
• The same applies to write sponsored posts. These can bring some traffic but are not worth the amount of money you spend on them. You should rather look for guest posts.
• Never look for paid video hosting websites to host your videos. Initially, you only need YouTube.

Must Read: Haven’t You Heard Of These 20 Best YouTube Alternatives? 

3- Devoting Excessive Time On Social Media

Of course, social networking is important but it’s also a bit distracting and demotivating factor for many amateur bloggers when they see other bloggers updating about their awesome trips and expensive cars. As an amateur blogger, you feel miserable, distraught, or low-morale.

I agree, social media has a positive impact on the authority of your page and gets you closer to your target readers. It spreads your blog across your audience so being on social media won’t hurt you, but it’s not an essential element of your blog.

Constant social media updates can be very distracting and unhealthy as they can steer you away from the goals you are trying to achieve.

So, What Should You Do Instead?

• When you are an amateur blogger, don’t waste too much time on social media, instead focus on tasks that will bring you targeted results.
• Use social networking sites to create real-life connections and with the right set of people. Use your time to learn from them rather than getting influenced by their lavish lifestyle.
• Don’t focus on what everyone else is doing and stop comparing yourself with them. Rather, have an emphasis on your own goals and keep a targeted approach.
• Never use social media only for sharing links and creating backlinks. If you are depending to build your blog’s DA and PA by this method, then sorry, it works no more.
• Instead of focusing on other established bloggers, concentrate on people new to this field, and want to learn more.

4- Diving Into Advanced Topics

Many amateur bloggers dive in too early writing the advanced topics without having prior understanding and knowledge and that results in poor quality content.

For example, my friend wrote about SEO and wasn’t happy with the comments he was receiving. The reason is obvious, his content quality was not up to the mark and readers felt unhappy.

When you are an amateur blogger, how can you even think of touching the SEO topics when you are new to it. A better and easy idea would be to cover the topics of “How To Write Impressive Blog Post Titles”.

To create interest in readers, you must first engage them and this can only be done with quality content. Creating superior content requires an in-depth understanding of the topic before you write it.

So, What Should You Do Instead?

• Plan a content strategy from the basics to the most advanced topics.
• Follow other successful bloggers in your niche and look for the topics they started with.
• Check if have you already covered other topics leading up to your current topic.
• When you create blog content with affiliate links, make sure you have already written related topics on it.

5- Posting Too Many Blog Posts

Being a blogger, you’ve probably come across the advice to blog every day. This concept of posting frequency has grown rotten and works no more. Ten years ago, there weren’t too many quality blogs around, and readers were eager and used to wait for the content. The idea to post frequent content used to work then.

However, today, with millions of quality blogs, the readers get abundance for high graded content. If you post content too often, your readers would quickly get burnt out or would have no time to give attention to it.

This also applies to pro-bloggers and over the past few years, there has been a continuous shift in the blogging world about the frequency of posting.

More and more prominent bloggers are moving away from daily posting and assuring their readers don’t get more content than they can absorb.

As an amateur blogger, you want quick success and may get inclined to post too often. This is the worst thing you will do to your blog. By writing too many posts you can never create rich content.

However, posting once or twice a week will let you write in-depth and well-constructed posts. This way you can focus on SEO and there are lesser chances for your posts getting repetitive.

So, What Should You Do Instead?

• Only post high-quality content once or at-most twice a week.
• Save your time for doing SEO.
• Devote more time to spreading your blog on social media and other marketing channels.
• Spend time commenting and creating backlinks on other authority blogs.
• Spare your time to write guest posts.

6- Designing Images And Graphics

Having pictures on your blog post is good to put breaks between the text content and make it visually appealing. Images are also helpful in implementing SEO strategies.

However, spending too much time designing your pictures can be another time-wasting factor and as an amateur blogger, you want to avoid it completely. If you unnecessarily lose your time in this task, it’s not acceptable.

Also, using too many non-optimized images, reduce the performance of your website.

So don’t waste too much time designing or editing pictures and graphics. Only use them when they are an absolute necessity and always keep the design simple so it saves time and energy.

So, What Should You Do Instead?

• Use a max of 5 images per blog post (This is not a set rule though).
• Always create a template and use it across all your designs. (Use Canva)
• If your topic needs more images to explain the idea, try using infographics instead.
• Optimize the images before applying them to your blog post.

Must Read: The Simplest Ways To Know What Are Infographics?

7- Writing For Search Engines