Big Mistake when Making Blog Firstly

In the past several years, I have been a part of a large number of successful blogs, and have advised hundreds of new bloggers on how best to start and run professional blogs. There is one relatively consistent theme that I see with most bloggers that has the potential to seriously derail their future blog earnings.

That theme is focus, and it plays out with two related mistakes.

The Blog Topic is Too General

Many new bloggers have a topic in mind when they begin their blogs, but the topic is too broad. For example, health and well-being is a very broad topic. Colon health would be an example of a good alternative.

They Spread Their Branches too Far

Inevitably, new bloggers hit a wall with ideas for blog posts. Or sometimes they get wrapped up in the excitement of blogging, and start posting about unrelated ideas or topics. While it seems relatively innocuous, it has long-lasting damaging effects.

Why is this Lack of Focus a Mistake?

First, to attract loyal readers, you must provide them with depth of coverage, not breadth. They have likely found you because they had a specific information need that you filled. You must stay specific to keep them.

Second, if you ever want to monetize your blog, you will need your blog to be as tightly focused on one topic as possible. This focus will improve the rate of clicks you get on contextual advertising, will increase your contextual advertising payouts, and will enable you to target better performing affiliate offers. This is huge!

In my experience with hundreds of blogs, I've found that this focus can increase a blog's performance four-fold over a general blog with similar traffic patterns. So don't ignore focus and tightly-defined niches: doing so could kill your subscriptions and earnings before you even make it out of the gates.