My Blogging Failure: 11 Lessons From 5 Failed Blogs

I started over 5 blogs in the span of the last 4 years which led to the massive grind of my current blog.

In this article, You’ll discover behind the scenes of mine, craving out for blogging success.

My Blogging Failure

The story started in 2016 when I watched a video on youtube where the guy was explaining, ‘How you can make money on youtube. From that day, I started publishing videos every single week.

Long Story Short, I shifted my focus from being a Youtuber to a blogger. This is how my journey started as a blogger. First, I started a blog named CTM Technical

CTM Technical was a kind of personal blog, I thought I will run the tech blog instead of that I started documenting my journey in this blog.

Here are the things I learned from this blog;

Lesson #1: Have a domain

I was using the Google Blogger platform for hosting this blog. I wasn’t using a custom domain for hosting this blog. Instead, I was using the default domain provided by Google.

This blog is still live: https://ctmtechn.blogspot.com/

Note: I didn’t own this blog. I gave it away to a guy who randomly reached out to me on messenger. Seems, He never made any progress.

You can use services such as NameCheap or Dynadot for your domain registration. It costs less than 10 bucks.

Lesson #2: Research on the domain before purchase

After realizing that, I’ve to move to a custom domain I purchased the domain CTMTechnical(dot)com, My Bad!

CTM Technical is a trademark of a textile company. Luckily, I removed the domain before they find about this.

You can head over to Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) to check the registered trademark.

Lesson #3:‌ Create Proper Monetization Plan

Going Forward to the story, I lose out on my first ever blog and, I realized that I suck at English. I started a blog in Hindi (National Language of India)

I got little success in this blog, I made money out of it.

After publishing about 30 posts, I realized that Monetization is not proper on this blog. The only source of income was Adsense, Sponsored Post.

I tried affiliate marketing, consulting, and numerous ways to monetize this blog. Nothing worked for me.

Sponsored Posts were out of my control, the only source was Adsense Ads.

I can’t rely on one income source. If the adsense backed out, I’ll be ruined. Due to this fact, I decided to start a new blog named Blogging Fire (Now rebranded to this blog).

Here are lessons learned from my Hindi blog

Lesson #4: Be Consistent

When I left my Hindi blog, the traffic started growing. My blog got recognized in the community.

Since I actively guest posted on industry blogs. I was a recognized writer for the audience. If I spent more time on it, It’d be on the next level today.

I’d be working on Internet Jankari. Consistency is the key to your blogging journey

Lesson #5: Diversify your traffic sources

SEO was the only source to drive traffic to my Hindi blog. Since I was using adsense I need mass traffic to make profits out of my blog.

My only source was SEO. It was very risky because you’re receiving free traffic from google. You’re not paying a penny to them. Why they should care about you?

They only care about user satisfaction. If your blog is not having user satisfaction, you’ll suck to rank on the first page.

Not only that, their frequent algorithm updates (aka Animals) such as Panda, hemming bird, penguin were also a big thread.

With one slap of animal, your traffic will start fluctuating. Not only that, many competitors will fight for the first position rankings.

The good lesson I learned from it was, Diversify your traffic source. If you look at this blog’s traffic sources, You’ll find that I’m having a perfect diversification for all sources.

As you can see, I’m not depended on single traffic source.

By the way, here are the possible traffic sources you can opt for:

• Guest Posting
• Podcast, Video Interviews
• Advertising (PPC)
• Creating Youtube Videos
• Blog Commenting
• Quora (QNA Sites)
• Giveaways

Lesson #6: Creating Too Much Content

On InternetJanakri, I spent most of my time while creating content. Here is another mistake, I should invest most of my time to promote the existing content rather than creating a new one.

As other experts suggest, I’d suggest you spend 80% of your time in content promotion, 20% in creation.

If you’re starting, Publish at least 3 blog posts before jumping into the promotional game.

Continuing the story, I fixed this mistake in my next blog: Paintball Mind

Lesson #7: Art of writing for a different audience

While running blogging fire, I started a blog in a sports niche named PaintballMind.com. To be honest, I didn’t know anything about this blog. So, I started binge-watching paintball tutorials

As a result, I published about 6-7 articles on it. When this blog was making me $10-$15, I sold this blog for $300. Here are the lessons learned from the paintball blog.

I learned the skill of creating audience avatars which helped me to write for different natures of audiences aka lovely readers.

Lesson #8: Competing with other SEO pros

Paintball wasn’t an easy industry. Due to the lack of sites, I was unable to build links for this blog which means I’ve to rely on on-page SEO to compete with other competitors.

This was a great experience to optimize various factors of my blog. Going from Page speed, LSI, and some advanced optimization for user satisfaction.

Lesson #9: You can skip things up for hyper-focus

After selling the paintball blog, We (Me and my friend) started working on coffeecane which was another blog to make income from Amazon affiliates.

I never paid much attention to it because I was focusing on building my own brand. I was focusing on SurfSaaS (Another Blog) for expanding my horizon in lifetime saas space.

Around 6 posts are published on coffee beans. As of now, this blog is inactive. Maybe, we will continue this blog in the future. Here are the possible lessons, you can learn from them.

I totally skipped this blog to build my brand. If you’re having multiple blogs, You should decide which one is important for you.

For me, I want to grow into the SaaS industry. As a result, I started developing skills such as video making, advertising, networking, etc.

Lesson #10: Niche of Non-Interest

To be honest, I don’t know anything about Coffee Beans. I started this blog for the sake of making money.

I hired a writer, did SEO, starting doing outreach. To be honest, everything was feeling like a job. Even so, My blog partner was also someone who didn’t like working over the blog.

In the end, We ended up closing this.

Lesson #11: Discover, What is working for you

Currently, I’m working on SurfSaaS which is a blog that helps people to validate lifetime deals for thier business. I earn from affiliate marketing, sponsored reviews, etc.

I love to check out new software every single day (SaaS Addict). So, I started this blog to share my experience with the tools. To niche it down, I selected the area of Lifetime Software Deals.

Here you go, I just started by investing 1-2 hours into this brand where I started sharing my experiences in the form of audio, video, and text.

Since people love to see live demos, Videos outperformed everything. Besides that, Blog also brought in sales.

I never felled SurfSaaS like a job. I come along make a video in the first take then upload it to youtube.

Being a Youtuber in past, I was knowing the youtube algorithm which helped to provide maximum reach to my videos.

Slowly and steadily this brand started making money for me. I’ve covered everything in-depth inside surfsaas income report.

Bonus Mistake‌:‌ Create your email list from day one

Owning your traffic is a major pillar of a successful blog. You should build your own list. You can start with convertkit free plan (Upto 1000 Subs) then you can become thier paying customer.

The above link is my affiliate link which means I’ll earn a commission for qualifying purchases without any extra cost to you. This is one of the ways to support my blog.

You can offer a free value-able item to your readers in exchange for thier email. This free item is known as a lead magnet.

Checkout this blogpost where i shared best email optins examples

Your Lead should contain these features

• Actionable
• Easy to Digest
• Adds immense value

When you have the email of your reader. You can send them your content, affiliate offers, resources to their email inbox.

Recommended Read:

• List Building: My Quick n’ non-techie Strategies

Tip‌‌:‌ Always treat your email subscribers as humans, not as ATMs for making money. It’s a long-term game. Else, They will simply subscribe from your email. You’ll then trust what they have for you.

Bonus Learnings for end readers

• Write for readers not for search engines (Did in past)
• Always Nofollow your affiliate links
• Always keep SEO in mind while publishing content.
• Create a Community (Facebook Groups)
• Do a regular audit of your site
• Be Consistent

Conclusion

Doing mistakes is good but, Learning from mistakes is also very important. Even from others’ mistakes, Like you did today. Proud of you, Tiger or Tigeress!

There is no end, Even I started rose and fall multiple times. Never Quit!

if you’ve any questions or doughts, Feel free to ask me in the comment sections.

Meet you in comments,

Shehraj Singh