As of 2021, there are apparently 1.86 billion websites in the world, with less than 600 million of those blogs active. Needless to say, the world wide web is a host to an enormous market of online content creators. New and small bloggers or blogging businesses have to struggle and compete with 200 million active websites.
A lot depends on the niche, effort, money and time invested in a blog. Let’s look at some of the key challenges that bloggers need to overcome to create a successful site.
The Difficulties of Growing a Blog
The fact that there are so many websites online does not mean that blogging is so saturated that the market is already packed with every bit of information we can imagine. It just means that information value has altered and expectations have gone up, where quality content is king.
Narrowing down a Niche
There are two key challenges when trying to build a website in a specific niche. Most first time bloggers have a lot of topics and it’s hard to combine everything into a single set of ideas. When looking through keywords to pursue and fill them up in order to generate more traffic, most bloggers go off-tray and talk about all kinds of topics. While it is completely normal for larger sites to go after different topics, its important to stay within a niche.
Why? Because organic page visitors tend to associate websites with specific topics. Thinking of the top websites, we can categorize them into tech, finance, medicine, law etc. But going more in depth in terms of topic, is what makes a blog stand out. This is the first challenge.
The second one is if the niche is too narrow or saturated by high domain sites. This is where alternative informative content comes into play. It may not seem interesting, but in order to grow a blog in a specific niche that is keyword competitive, a blogger must cover topics he or she would normally not be interested in.
Lack of Traffic
Probably the most disheartening result for every blogger is to build content that is in vain. Spending hours upon hours on research, content writing, content optimization, PR and the results are not coming in. One of the key mistakes is focusing on money instead of an audience.
Google core updates can be a blessing or a curse in disguise. But one thing that remains useful in every industry is self-promotion. Besides working on new content, bloggers can write guest posts and link back to their sites, buy an ad spot in a similar blog, make a special effort to write on the trendiest subjects, optimize your website’s performance or make friends with influencers to get a shoutout. But none of these will work out that well if you don’t work on your site’s SEO.
The main takeaway is to spread the word through self-promotion and deliver value to readers and random internet browsers interested in your topics.
Monetizing a Site
The last and perhaps most important part of blogging is consistently building revenue and having sufficient funds to keep up with expenses like web hosting, themes, plugins, accessories and other tools.
Just like any market, usually the top 10% make just enough to support their websites and around 1% who actually become rich through their content.
One of the most widely used methods of monetizing a blog is with the help of CPC and CPM ads. But there are actually a lot more to think about. The more income sources a blog has, the better its chances are to grow its revenue over time.
Perhaps affiliate marketing, donations through Patreon or online courses are not the best way for everyone. So why not use less traditional methods such as guest posting that charges a small fee for do-follow links. Or creating a separate sub-menu where others can hire you to write sponsored content for them. For smaller blogs, passive income is difficult to achieve at first. This is why offering your services as a writer, publisher or consultant in your niche is a better way to maximize profits and land better customers.
Conclusion
Blogging is any man’s dream who wants to achieve financial independence and recognition in their field. But the journey from developing a site to building niche relevant content to monetization is arduous. Some of the main challenges would include finding the right niche that you’re an expert in and exploit your knowledge to help grow and monetize a blog.
I found that the biggest challenge I faced was defining my target audience. It’s clear to me now but when I started, that whole concept was so alien to me. Thank you so much for your post. Your insights have been very helpful.