50 Reasons Why your Blog Isn’t Making (Enough) Money

I believe we bloggers have experienced this at least once in a while where our blog simply is not making enough money to buy the bananas we crave. We have done everything we could, yet our AdSense earning is so pitiful that it’s easier to just cut our losses, pack up and go.

But after years of blogging, I visited my old blog and realized all the mistakes I’ve been making that led me to abandon my sweat and toil for greener pastures. But one good thing came of it. I was able to write this article based on my experience.

Yes, I’m going to tell you 50 reasons why my blog sucked at making money. Why should you read this? The question is why wouldn’t you? If there is a reason your blog isn’t making money, and you can identify with any of the 50 reasons here, that means that there is still a chance to salvage it!

So stop feeling sorry about yourself. Buck up and learn from your mistakes, and turn all that wondering into working for a better blog, and a better tomorrow. Here are 50 reasons why your blog just couldn’t prosper.

The 50 pitfalls of a failed blog

Essentially, your blog isn’t making money because…

#1

It’s a fact that 99% of bloggers are not making money. So you are in the majority. Stay strong, comrade.

#2

You have more ads than content. When was the last time your visitors actually saw your content?

#3

You use advertising networks that never pay you. Not to be confused with $0.01 AdSense earning.

#4

You create content for marketing, but not content worth marketing. Think about it.

#5

Your marketing campaign is not impressive, making it easy to forget. Write to impress!

#6

You put too much time on social marketing, especially those “Share me & I will share you back!”

#7

You hired a bad marketer. If he promised 1 million views per month, why is he working for $100?

#8

You didn’t establish your brand well enough, and don’t even think about parodying the greats.

#9

You’re poor at blogging your niche. Web design is not about saving JPG to PDF to DOC.

#10

Your niche is hardly profitable. Well, there’s your problem: who is going to pay to advertise on your meme blog?

#11

Name 5 of your friends that are in your niche. Money is attracted to crowds, start networking.

#12

If it wasn’t for the post date, I would’ve thought you updated your blog years ago. Blog about the latest.

#13

Your content is not viral. Photo that looks nice? Meh. A photo that moves? Holy, Mother of Instant Share!

#14

You copy other people’s content. We do not need yet another 9gag.

#15

Your content makes people’s life harder. Stop making WordPress themes that get people hacked! You know who you are.

#16

You blog about complicated things (that 99% of your readers don’t understand nor care about).

#17

Your content is too common and boring. Your reader will run away faster than you can press Publish.

#18

Your ramble off-key too much. If your Photoshop blog appears in the results for “Dirty Politics”, restrategize.

#19

You post too inconsistently. Cry less, update more.

#20

You chose to twist the truth, “as explained in this free e-book which costs only $9.99. Click here Now!” … NO.

#21

Your grammar is so terrible that Grammar Nazis flock to your articles with their “guns” ready and still ran out of ammo. Sometimes less is more.

#22

You use too much internet slang. Would you have paid for a product that “has swag”?

#23

You use profanity for your adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions. Only teens and trolls love them, and in an average blog, they both contribute almost next to nothing in terms of monetary value.

#24

Your content format is insane. Too many colors spoil the palette.

#25

You spend too much time counting visitors than trying to keep them coming back to your blog.

#26

You took your basketball game to your blog, and made no effort to stop bounce rates. (Ok, that was a bit lame.)

#27

You treat your readers like they are your ex. “Take it or leave it, honey.” Oh no, you didn’t.

#28

How many marketers does it take to promote your blog efficiently? Zero, get your readers to do it. Love your readers.

#29

Your blog has too many commenting trolls. But did you give them a reason to troll you?

#30

You need to wink (hint) constantly to get your readers to look at your ads. *wink*

#31

Your blog loads too sl… ow…. *buffering*… … *buffering*…ly. That does it, I’m outta here. Optimize.

#32

You have too much cheesy animation on your blog. YouTube treats your readers nicer anyways, and that’s where they will go.

#33

Your blog design is too dark and it’s painful to read. My eyes! They burn!

#34

You make questionable decisions with your blog design. What the… is that an animated GIF?

#35

So you want to earn money from mobile readers but need them to scroll everywhere to see ads? Deploy a mobile site with mobile ads.

Another 15 more to go..

#36

If content is king, then keywords are the queen. Make sure you have 3 keywords for every webpage.

#37

You hired a bad SEO specialist who ignores your content. Hire a “Content Strategist” instead.

#38

You went too complicated with SEO. All you need to get Panda & Penguin love you is great content.

#39

You sell text links. Don’t destroy your lifetime income for $10 a month, $50 a year, $150/forever.

#40

You care too much about SPAM: Site Positioned Above Mine. And please, don’t spam them.

#41

You care too much about SEO. Enough with that 46th meta keyword, make proper content. See #36.

#42

If you google your site name and your site doesn’t appear in the results (aka Google hates you), keep quiet, and sell the site.

#43

Blogspot is your site’s middle name. With just $15 you can buy a domain name, and credibility.

#44

You feel like the title of most blogs – Just Another Blogger Blogging. Develop your style & inspire.

#45

You didn’t set an income goal for your blog. Imagine playing soccer without the goal net – you will never score.

#46

It’s not making money because you are just blogging. Use your traffic to sell one hell of a great product, or service.

#47

You try to cheat readers. “I don’t care what you did, but if I can’t trust you, I ain’t coming back.” Can you blame them?

#48

You think more about making money than blogging. You make decisions that are motivated by money more than blogging.

#49

You spend too much time worrying and crying. When life gives you lemon, make lemonade, bottle it up and sell it!

#50

You spend too much time reading articles like this “50 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t making Money”. We kid. But for reals, don’t just sit and wait. Do it. Act now.

What’s your Reason?

So which of the 50 sins listed above did you commit? I consider myself lucky to have made some money from selling my old mistake-cluttered blog but it is a lot easier to start afresh than to clear up all these mistakes. But that’s just me. What do you think could be a reason that your blog isn’t making money?

Share and share alike.