Blogging Challenges Deciphered in 2021 | Not Everything is Sweet In Blogging World

Blogging Challenges– You must have started your blog with a lot of excitement. But after some time, you realize that there is something or the other that is always standing as a challenge in letting you take your blogging career ahead.

At such times, I know that the easiest solution is to think of giving it up altogether.

However, you should never forget that there are many other bloggers too who have dealt with the same situation.

Many of them have successfully steered their wheel through all of these problems and have gone way ahead.

And if they can do it, you can do it too. In today’s post, I will tell you about some common blogging challenges every new blogger faces and the ways to solve it.

Blogging Challenge No 1: What To Blog About?

The first and the most challenging task for every new blogger is to decide what to blog about.

In other words, their first challenge is to find the perfect niche. You must have heard or read this hundred of times.

But trust me, your blogging career will go nowhere if you fail to choose the niche that truly interests you.

By choosing a niche that you are not passionate about, you are only wasting your valuable time and effort.

You might come up with some brilliant topics in the beginning but after a point, your mind will start running dry and you will not know what to write about.

You will stop generating ideas and will eventually not be able to provide anything valuable for your readers.

Your lack of interest and passion about the topic will start reflecting in your words too and your blog will slowly turn into a victim of isolation.

Solution To This Challenge

It is very important that you be doubly sure about the niche that you choose for your blog before you take the final leap.

But how do you know if the niche that you have chosen will work for you or not? To know that try answering a few questions.

• Are you passionate about the niche that you have chosen?
• Will you be able to write interesting posts on this topic for the next 6-9 years?
• Will you be able to spend endless time researching, learning and generating new ideas in this niche?

If your answer to both these questions is a yes, then you can consider it to be the right pick.

But wait for a second!

Is this much enough for you to choose a blog niche?

If you want to blog only out of passion and money is the last thing you would care about, then you can probably accept this yes as your answer.

But if monetizing your blog is also a thing that you want to consider then there are more questions waiting for your answer.

Before restlessly rushing all the way to choose your niche, take some time to analyze if your niche offers you enough opportunity for monetization.

At such times always be realistic about your goals.

Common Blogging Challenges And Their Solution

There is no shame in accepting the fact that you are blogging for money and that you see blogging as your full-time career. So make sure that your niche is profitable.

There are several ways to monetize a blog.

Besides using the Google Adsense program, you can also write product reviews, use affiliate programs, etc to make some money. (Towards the end of this post, I will tell you about the different ways to monetize your blog).

Platforms like  Amazon Associate Program and ShareASale are great sources to sign up for affiliate programs. You can check out if these platforms offer monetization options for your niche.

You can also brainstorm other ideas to make some money on your blog.

One way to do that is by selling your own products. But the question here remains the same.

Are you passionate enough about your niche to develop a product of your own to make money? This product can be anything related to your niche.

For eg., if you are blogging about cooking, you can come up with an e-book of your own recipes, or you can make your own secret spice that you can sell on your site.

Blogging Challenge No 2: Creating Quality Content Consistently

Creating quality content consistently for your readers is another very important thing that might throw in some major challenges to you.

If you really want to serve your readers with valuable posts that are engaging and informative, then generating new ideas for such posts is one art that you will have to master.

You may not be able to do that instantly. But you will definitely learn how to do it with time and practice.

Solution To This Challenge

The main objective of creating a post should be to make it as informative as possible. Your post should answer every single question that arises in your readers’ minds.

In order to write a great post for your readers to start with a well-researched layout. You cannot just pick a topic and start writing about it unless you have proper knowledge about it.

Platforms like Medium, Quora, Twitter, LinkedIn are great sources to find relevant information through posts shared by others.

Do a thorough research and read posts shared by others on a similar topic. See if they know something that you did not know. Read similar posts written by other writers too.

Make a list of all the new things that you learn from them. Now see if you can use them in your post. This will make your post more informative and readers love such content.

You can also start your post with a fun fact, an intriguing question or a positive hope. This might make your readers cling on to the post till the end.

But remember, your headline is one of the most important elements that decide whether to attract readers or irk them away.

The attention span of a normal human being lasts for not more than 7 seconds.

If the heading of your post doesn’t strike your readers within these 7 seconds then chances are that they are not gonna click on it to read.

So try making your title as quirky as possible. It should have the ability to arouse so much curiosity that your readers have no option but to click.

So spend all the time you need to come up with the most irresistible heading for your post.

You might want to use free headline generators like FatJoe for inspiration.

Also Read: The Secrets Of Being A Good Writer

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Blogging Challenge No 3: How To Design The Blog

The next challenge for many new bloggers is designing the blog. Not all bloggers are skilled web designers.

And it’s not even important for you to know how to code from scratch to design a blog.

A good design does not only mean how appealing your site is.

But it also means how well your site can be navigated, how good your functionalities are, how user-friendly it is, whether it is compatible with different browsers and a lot more.

The solution to This Challenge

1. Choose A Good CMS

Before designing a blog, be sure which CMS you want to use as your blogging platform.

There are tons of CMS available for bloggers and you can choose from one of them if you do not want to code your site from scratch.

WordPress, Squarespace, etc are some of the platforms you can start with. But out of all these, my personal favorite is WordPress.

With WordPress, everything becomes so easy and you seriously need no coding knowledge or professional assistance to build your blog. The themes(for appearance) and plugins(for functionalities) take care of everything for you.

2. Keep It Simple and Clean

It is important that you make your site look presentable to your readers.

The best approach to this is to keep it simple and minimalist. A clean and simple design with intuitive navigation will help your readers stay focused on your content without getting distracted.

The color scheme of your blog is another important thing that you should pay attention to. Do proper research on which color you should use to attract your target audience.

Do not use colors that can be too overwhelming for your visitors.

It is a good idea to use not more than 2 colors on your site. Also, see if your color blends well with your niche and the overall layout of the site.

Your blog design signals people about the overall quality of your company or brand. So take this challenge seriously.

3. Work On The Loading Speed

Research shows that if your site does not load in 2 seconds, it is likely that your visitors will abandon the site in the 3rd or the 4th second.

If you do not want that to happen to your site, make sure you have a good loading speed.

Your site can be slow for various reasons. Try doing the following to enhance your site speed.

A. Remove Heavy Images: If you are using a lot of unoptimized images, its time you stop doing it. Such images use up a lot of your server resource making the site slow and heavy.

Tools like WP Smush can help you optimize your images to make your site load faster. An alternative can be to use CSS based icons instead of images.

B. Check Bad Server: Features like compression and HTTP Keep-Alive if disabled by your vendor (run multiple sites on a single server) can be one of the reasons for the reduced loading time of the website.

To improve your performance always make sure that your Keep-Alive feature is enabled. This will help you receive many HTTP requests with the same TCP connection.

C. Stop the Excessive Use Of CSS Files and Java Scripts: Increased use of Javascript and CSS files can be another reason for the slow down of your site. Minimize the use of such scripts for a higher speed.

Tools like cssnano and  Closure Compiler can help check such problems.

D. Deactivate Inactive Themes and Plugins: Deactivate all themes and plugins that are not in use. They will unnecessarily slow down your site and hamper its performance/

4. Navigation and Functionality

Your site should always be easy to navigate.

If your visitors want to look up for something they should be able to find it without any problem. So make sure you pay proper attention to it.

Adding a sitemap to your blog can help you solve this problem.

Sitemaps will help you streamline the navigation by eliminating unnecessary or underperforming pages on the site.

The functionality of your site may mean many things.

Whether your site is serving all the functions that are meant to enhance its user experience and your business needs are some of the things that come under the site’s functionality.

So make sure you check for any broken links, whether your contact forms, feedback section, subscription form, etc are all working well.

Blogging challenge No 4: Creating Quality Images+Videos

A blog post without images and videos can be boring and tedious for your readers.

To make your posts interesting and engaging, you need to add some engaging and relevant images and videos to the post.

But adding irrelevant and low-quality images can degrade your site’s value.

Many new bloggers do not know how to create good images and videos for their posts. So they randomly pick images from google and add it to their posts.

If you are one of them, then stop doing it.

Such an act can land you in some serious trouble especially if you do not acknowledge the site from which the images were picked.

Solution To This Challenge

The best solution to this problem is to visit sites where high-quality images are available for free.

One such site is Pixabay. You can also check out Canva (free tool) which allows you to create some really cool images, infographics, Twitter heads, etc.

While uploading your images on your site it is very important that you maintain a specific size for all your images.

This will make your post look uniform and you will also save your site from being unnecessarily too heavy and slow.

To make some good videos for your website you can check out Biteable.

Although you will have to spend some money to buy it, it is totally worth every penny.

Blogging Challenge No 5: Getting Little To No Engagement

This is the scariest challenge that most bloggers face in the beginning.

For the first 5-6 months, your site may have very little to no engagement at all. But this is not something to be worried about.

This is a common scenario for almost all new blogs.

Solution To This Challenge

It has been proved that if your site has interesting and valuable content, then it is likely that your traffic will always show an upward graph.

By valuable content, I mean content that answers people’s questions or teaches them something new.

Anything that adds value to their life in return will add value to your blog too. Because these visitors who just got to know how useful your content is to them are sure to come back again very soon.

This will gradually increase your traffic and help you convert your leads.

Content is one of the key elements to decide whether your site will attract traffic or not. So invest in your content.

Although the content has always remained the king, there are many other factors too that Google considers before diverting the traffic to your blog.

But somehow or the other it is your content that comes into the picture. Let’s check out some of them.

• Firstly, Google considers the time a visitor spends on your page. This is done to check whether you are being able to engage your readers.

The longer they stay on your page, the better your reputation is in front of Google.

So if you want to rank higher in search results engage your visitors and seduce them with your content.

• The second thing that Google considers is the bounce rate of your site. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that navigate away from your website after viewing just a single page.

In a way, this is related to the content of your site too.

If you have a higher bounce rate, Google assumes that the information on the landing page(the page through which the visitors enter the site) was irrelevant to the readers.

In order to have a lower bounce rate, you will again have to work on your content.

Keep your content simple, informative and engaging.

Another thing you should work on for a lower bounce rate is your layout. Make your layout user-friendly so that people do not find it difficult to navigate through your site.

• Thirdly Google loves it if you are attracting your readers directly through search engines instead of social media platforms.

This makes Google believe that people love your content and trust your site.

Getting more visitors directly from search engines helps you get improved SEO performance in the long run.

Therefore it is important that you drive organic traffic instead of indirect traffic.

• The fourth element is link building. Google keeps a stern eye on whether you are getting mentioned on authoritative sites.

Google tracks you across different platforms to check if people are talking about your site.

To be on the good books of Google you can make use of different social media platforms.

These platforms are great to get your content shared and gain traction. Here too the only way to get social media engagement is by creating amazing content that people would love to read and share.

The featured image that you use for the post to be shared on a social site also has a huge impact on your readers.

Research shows that many people on social media share a post just by looking at the featured image.

If you look into the statistics you will see that the clicks on these posts are way lesser than the number of shares it has received. So make smart use of this opportunity.

• The fifth element is whether your site is responsive to mobile devices.

The world today has been taken over by mobile devices. And it is the mobile phone where people spend most of their time surfing the internet.

In such a scenario, a website that is not responsive to mobile devices can irk away all its visitors.

So Google started considering the responsiveness of websites as a major factor for search rankings in 2015.

It is very important that your site is responsive to mobile devices.

If you are using WordPress make sure your theme is a responsive one. You can check if your site is mobile responsive or not by visiting Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

Blogging Challenge No 6: SEO Problems

As a new blogger, you might think that it is okay not to pay attention to SEO at the initial stage.

That is one of the biggest misconceptions that many new bloggers hold which come might pose a major threat in the future.

SEO is the process of optimizing your blog to make it visible in top search results.

By doing so, you can drive more relevant traffic, leads, sales, and ultimately revenue and profit for your business.

The first step of SEO is to determine what is the topic that you are optimizing for.

This is called determining the keyword. The term keyword is used to define the phrase or word that people are looking for in search engines.

Obviously, there will be hundreds and thousands of things that people will search for in your niche. This makes it tough for you to determine your keyword.

Solution To This Challenge

The term SEO is a vast one. And if you are new to this, it will take some time before you get your basics cleared.

But do not worry. I have a solution for you. You can start optimizing your site by working on the on-page SEO.

It is also a good idea to work on the off-page SEO of your blog.

My post on Learning the basics of SEO can help you optimize your blog posts for better results.

But before you optimize your posts, you will have to figure out which topic can drive traffic to your website.

As I have already mentioned before, you can know that by doing proper keyword research. Tools like Google Keyword Finder can help you determine your keyword.

In order to get the best results, try finding out the search volume of your keyword.

The higher the volume the more the audience and vice versa.

However, this also means that the higher the search volume the higher is your competition. So try checking out for keywords with a lesser search volume to start with.

By doing that it will become easier for you to get a better search ranking because you are competing with lesser competitors.

Blogging Challenge No 7. Failing To Monetize Your Blog

Not every blog is set up as a hobby blog. Many of us do it as a full-time profession too. So monetizing the blog is one of the most significant steps for many bloggers.

But it is not uncommon to find it challenging to materialize this step.

Do not be disheartened if you fail to make money instantly.

This will take time and you will have to be patient before you receive your first check (which might be just enough to cover your bills).

Solution To This Challenge

Different people use different methods to monetize their blogs.

Some methods work while others don’t.

Although it is very unlikely that you will start making money as soon as you launch your blog, there is no harm in trying to do it. But I would say, you should make your blog strong enough to be able to show results.

It might sound cliche, but your blog is like an infant that needs constant nurturing and care.

If you can give nourish it properly when it is still young then it will surely mature into a powerful blog very soon.

And once it does, you will see no short of opportunities to make money from it.

It is always good for bloggers to know different ways of monetizing their blogs.

According to Neil Patel, if your content provides value, you’ll find that 8% of your traffic will generate 41% of your revenue.

So work on your content, build links, promote your site and create a brand name.

You can then earn through various forms. Publishing Sponsered content, Paid Reviews, selling your own products are just a few examples.

Here are 45 Legit Ways to Make Money Blogging for Beginners by Jay Trivedi.

Blogging Challenge No 8: Technical Problems

The last problem that I am going to list here today is the technical problem.

Although it is said that you don’t need to have any professional knowledge of codes for blogging, it cannot be denied that having some coding knowledge can only help you in the long run.

As newbies, there are hundreds of bloggers who choose WordPress as their ideal blogging platform.

Sure it makes things easier for you.

But did you also know that just like the WordPress market is flooded with tons of amazing goodies, it is also not short of products which come in with a lot of broken tags, hidden CSS, and all manner of foul codes?

When you use them on your site, it only affects your site negatively.

Besides that, a new blogger may not know basic things like how to get the blog pages indexed by Google, etc.

Solution To This Challenge

Different bloggers might face different technical problems, the exact solution to which can be offered depending on the situation. Here are a few things that bloggers need to do on the technical side of their blog.

• Create HTML and XML sitemaps. You can use the Google XML sitemap plugin to have a sitemap that can be crawled by search engines. After creating the XML sitemaps for your blog, you need to submit them to Google Search Console and Bing Webmasters Tools.

You can do this in Google Search Console, simply by going to “Crawl > Sitemaps,” and add all of your sitemaps (one at a time), using the “Add/Test Sitemap” button in the top right.

Now go to Bing >Sitemaps navigation panel and enter your sitemaps.

• Another thing that needs to do is double-check your themes and plugins before you install them.

Check for reviews and see what others have to say about the products.

Blogging Resources

Here are some resources from our blog to get you started on blogging

1. Blogging challenges– Not everything about blogging is sweet
2. Choose A Domain Name – the first step in starting a blog
3. How to start a blog-  A simple no-nonsense article to get your blog live
4. Blog Post Ideas–  Our article to get you some ideas to start

Over To You

I hope you have found a solution to some of the problems that you have faced as a new blogger.

The problems listed in this post are some of the common blogging challenges that every new blogger faces at some point or the other of their blogging journey.

I have faced them too.

Did any of these bother you in any way? What are the other blogging challenges that you have faced so far?

Let’s discuss it in the comment section below.