My Dreadful Mistake (and how I fixed it)
Today, I'd like to share my dreadful mistake. I've been doing blogging full time since October 2010. Along the way, I've done many things wrong and a few things right. Here are 47 of my worst blogging mistakes.
I'd like to share one big mistake I made that cost me a lot of money, and then share what I did to remedy it.
I used to spend all of my time writing content HOPING that the search engines would eventually fall in love with my site, rank my website high and send me a ton of traffic.
Because of this "hope" I would write for hours and hours and hours seven days a week. My two blogs have more than 3,000 articles combined.
I discovered that having hundreds of articles, even if they were high quality, did not guarantee a good income. While talking with with a trusted seven figure mentor of mine I asked him what I could do differently.
He told me to spend more time MARKETING and PROMOTING my content. For every hour I spent writing, he encouraged me to spend FIVE hours promoting and marketing that content.
Out of ignorance I followed his advice. Since then, things have exploded. Once I started spending time and money promoting my content, my blog traffic and income began to grow and eventually became VERY profitable (five figures monthly).
If I knew then what I knew now, I would have written less content and spent more time getting my content noticed.
As an entrepreneur, we get paid to sell. We get paid to PROMOTE ourselves and our businesses. Don't be so obsessed with writing 99% of your time that you forget to MARKET and SELL your content.
There has to be a balance: great content and great marketing. And while you are at it, make sure you build your email list!
Learn from my mistakes and successes to shorten your own learning curve.
Recent Comments
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Thanks for the insight, Chuck! I still need to focus on the promotion aspect. Most of the time I am doing more writing.
I guess your lesson learned is also my lesson learned. I keep forgetting that it doesn't do any good to write without promoting what I am writing about.
I guess I better get more active on my social media.
I wish you well!
Bob
Social media is just one approach. What matters most is you have some type of marketing plan written down that you can follow whenever you publish a new piece of content.
Yeah, well... something I need to work on. I guess that will be my plan for the morning...that’s when I do my website work.
Chuck,
This was one of the wisest suggestions I've seen to build ones affiliate marketing business. I always wondered about this. Relying on the search engines to do the marketing for you for traffic is only one part of the equation.
Have you written a blog post on what approaches you have used to promote your content?
Thanks for sharing your words of wisdom. You always load your posts here with great value. You're the MAN!
Cheers.
Edwin
Every post I write I spend several hours promoting it on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, PPC, blog comments, forum comments and more.
Hi Chuck:
Can't agree more that there has to be a balance between content and marketing.
Your previous business strategy could be compared to having a store with lots of wonderful products, but located in a part of town where no-one visits. The result: no or very low sales.
That's where marketing comes in: letting the public/the world know such "goodies" are available.
It was good you realized and made the necessary change.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Chuck,
Great article and you are right it's all in the marketing. You can write 40 books but if you don't market and promote them no one is going to read them. One thing I think a lot of the writers seem to think is that if they write wonderful content and publish it people will come. This is so not a career where you can "Build it and they will come." Great post and some really great info!
Susan Boston
ebbandflowmoney.com
Susan, that is absolutely true what you're writing.
But I just wanted to notify you that in Wealthy Affiliate, it is not allowed to promote our own websites here. You can place a link to your website on your profile page in WA, in the links section. But please don't place a link to your site on your posts in WA.
Please read this: Spam is a NO NO!
Having a great book or great content is helpful, but not required. The best-selling books are not always the best-written books. They are just the best marketed books.
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Thank you Chuck. Great advice. I have been doing the same thing. Writing a lot of articles, although not near as many as you did, and only doing a small amount of marketing. I know now I need to change my focus to the selling and marketing aspect instead of just writing. Thanks again, Tom
I agree with that! 💲👍✨💥⚡🔥
If content is the Queen, then marketing is the KING.