When I started my first blog, I believed everything you can find online – that you could make thousands of dollars just by writing about what you love. You know that “Build it and they will come” mindset? Yep, that was me.
So when things didn’t go as planned and I found myself spending more time Googling how to fix problems than actually writing, reality hit hard. Maybe this blogging thing wasn’t going to be so easy after all.
I think every new blogger hits this point. And when you do, you’ve got two choices: walk away and try something else, or dig in and really learn how to do it right.
I chose to dig in. I decided to figure out how this digital world actually works (‘cause it’s just so much fun!), how to manage my time, and how to work with a clear plan instead of winging it.
That frustration and overwhelm? It’s just part of learning.
I’ve made a lot of blogging mistakes along the way. Some cost me time, others cost me money, and most of them cost me peace of mind. But every single one taught me something valuable.
If you’re just starting out, I want to share those lessons with you. So you can learn from my mistakes (and make your own ☺️ ). Because that’s how we grow.
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1. Underestimating How Long It Takes to Make Money
I honestly thought I’d be making money within a few months of launching my blog. I had a vision of writing a few posts, sharing them around, and then the money would just roll in. Yeah…no.
The truth is, blogging can absolutely lead to income. But it takes time, strategy, and consistency. There are so many moving parts: content creation, SEO, email marketing, building trust with your audience, and figuring out what to actually sell.
For a while, I felt like I was working so hard with nothing to show for it. I was just missing the full picture.
Once I stopped chasing quick wins and focused on building a solid foundation, things slowly started to shift. The traffic came. My email list grew. And the income? It followed.
If you’re in that early stage where it feels like you’re putting in a lot of work for very little return, hang in there. This part takes patience. Keep learning, keep testing, and most importantly, keep showing up.
2. Not Realizing How Much I Needed to Learn
When I started, I thought blogging was just… blogging. You write some posts, hit publish, and the rest takes care of itself (pretty naive, I know…now). I didn’t realize I was signing up to be a writer, editor, website manager, SEO student, social media strategist, and email marketer all in one.
And it felt like every time I figured one thing out, something new popped up that I needed to learn.
I spent so much time bouncing between free tutorials, YouTube videos, paid courses, and blog posts trying to piece it all together. Some of it helped, a lot of it confused me even more.
What I’ve learned is that you don’t have to know everything right away. But you do need to be open to learning and give yourself permission to be a beginner. The sooner I accepted that this was going to be a learning journey, not an overnight success story, the less frustrated I felt.
If you feel like your brain is constantly in learning mode, that’s not a sign you’re failing. It means you’re on a journey. Accept that you are a beginner.
Here’s what I tell myself when I feel overwhelmed: “I don’t know how to do this…yet. This is just the beginning of a learning curve” 😊
3. Believing in the Myth of Passive Income
One of the biggest myths I bought into was the idea of “passive income.” I thought I’d write a few great blog posts, add some affiliate links, maybe create a digital product, and boom, money would roll in while I slept.
Let me tell you, it doesn’t work like that.
Yes, those cha-chings can happen while you sleep. But what most people don’t realize is how much active work it takes to get there.
You need a beautiful, functional website. You need to drive traffic, build trust, set up systems, and market your content consistently. It’s not passive at all. It’s hours of hard work behind a screen.
Unless you have a team of writers, a social media manager, a graphic designer, and someone running your email marketing and Pinterest… you’re probably doing it all yourself. And that’s a lot.
But here’s the good news: the effort adds up. Once you put systems and automations in place that quietly run in the background, you finally get to focus on the more important – or more fun – parts of your business.
4. Not Having a Clear Monetization Strategy
At first, I thought I’d make money from ads. Easy, right? But once I actually put them on my blog, I hated how cluttered everything looked. The ads slowed down my site, messed with the user experience, and honestly, the income wasn’t even worth it (especially since you need a lot of traffic to make anything decent from ads alone).
So that strategy went out the window.
Next, I created my own digital products. But guess what? Those didn’t work either—until I learned how to set up tripwires, email sequences, and systems to actually sell them.
I also thought slapping a few affiliate links into a blog post would do the trick. Nope. I had to learn how affiliate marketing actually works. How to choose the right products, write content that converts, and build trust first.
And even when I figured that out, it didn’t work on my first blog because I was living in a different country than my target audience, and I was promoting physical products that couldn’t be shipped internationally. Total fail 🤦♀️
What I learned is this: not every strategy will work for every blogger. You need to test, adjust, and find what works for your niche, your audience, and your situation.
5. Not Sticking to a Plan
I’d make a content plan, feel super organized for about a week… and then completely ignore it.
I kept getting distracted by new ideas, changing direction every few days, or giving up on a plan too soon when I didn’t see instant results. I’d jump from writing blog posts to redesigning my website, then decide I should focus on Pinterest instead… you get the idea.
The result? I made a lot of progress in a lot of directions – but not enough in any one area to actually move forward.
What finally helped me turn things around? I trained ChatGPT on my business. Together, we created a plan that actually works for me. One that respects how much time I can realistically spend, and that I can easily adjust when my kid gets sick or we decide to go on vacation.
For me, batch creating and having one main focus each month made all the difference. That might work for you too. Or you might ask ChatGPT to help you build a plan that fits your brain – something more flexible, especially if you’re neurodivergent or have ADHD. There’s no one-size-fits-all.
The key is to find a plan that works for your real life. And stick with it long enough to see results.
6. Falling for Shiny Objects
Every time I saw a new course, tool, or “must-try” strategy, I felt that pull… I wasn’t even looking for shortcuts. I just genuinely love learning. My brain is like a junkie, but for information. I wanted to learn everything… at once… right now…
So I’d buy the course… and then never open it. I’d sign up for the webinar… and forget to watch the replay. I was drowning in “learning” and not doing much with it. And worse, it was distracting me from the plan I should have been sticking to.
And those emotional sales pages? Yep, I know exactly what they’re doing and why. I know the tactics behind them… and sometimes I still find them hard to resist.
The lesson? Learning is amazing. But without action, it’s just noise. Now, I only buy (or try to buy) what I know I actually have time to use, AND I make sure to schedule time for both learning and implementation. That way, it supports my plan instead of derailing it.
7. Putting All My Eggs in One Basket (Hello, Google)
When I started my first blog, I focused almost all my efforts on SEO. I thought if I could just get on the first page of Google, everything else would fall into place—traffic, subscribers, sales, all of it.
And for a while, it was working. My blog was growing steadily, and I was gaining more traffic each month.
Then the Helpful Content Update rolled out… and my traffic flopped. I went from 10,000 monthly active users to just 1,200 almost overnight.
I had no real backup plan, except a Pinterest account that was slowly gaining traction. I wasn’t building my email list, and I had barely touched social media. Basically, my entire blog relied on Google, and I paid the price for that.
Now? I treat Google as a nice bonus when it sends me traffic. I still do SEO research and optimize my posts, but it’s no longer the core of my strategy. My focus is on creating content that serves my audience across multiple channels. I don’t try to do everything perfectly. I just make sure I’m not depending on one platform to carry my whole business.
If you’re putting all your energy into one traffic source, ask yourself: What would happen if it disappeared tomorrow? The answer will tell you what to focus on next.
8. Ignoring My Email List (Big Regret)
For way too long, I didn’t focus on building an email list. I was so caught up in writing blog posts, tweaking my website, and chasing traffic that email felt like something I could “get to later.”
But here’s what I learned: your email list is the one thing you actually own. Not your Instagram followers. Not your Pinterest reach. Not your Google rankings. Your list.
When my traffic dropped after the Google update, I realized I had no way to connect with the people who had been reading my blog. I couldn’t let them know about new posts, products, or even just say, “Hey, I’m still here.”
Now, my email list is at the center of everything I do. It’s where I connect with my audience, share tips, promote offers, and build real relationships. And it’s so much easier to make sales when you’re talking to people who’ve already said, “Yes, I want to hear from you.”
If you haven’t started your list yet, don’t wait. Even if it’s tiny at first, every subscriber is someone who chose you. That’s worth more than a thousand random clicks.
Btw. here’s mine if you want to get weekly blogging tips and monthly updates and free goodies ☺️
9. Not Optimizing My Images
This one might seem small, but trust me, it caused a lot of headaches. In the beginning, I had no idea that uploading huge, uncompressed images could slow down my website and hurt my SEO.
I’d grab a beautiful photo from Unsplash or download an infographic from Canva, put it on my website, and call it a day. It looked great – until my website suddenly got really slow.
Then things got worse.
My bounce rate increased, and my rankings were going down. On top of that, I hit the limit of my SSD space on my hosting plan and had to upgrade just to keep the site running.
So I went down the rabbit hole. I spent hours Googling how to optimize a website for speed and performance, and eventually found out that my images were the main culprit. I spent the next week learning how to properly optimize images for the web and went through every single one on my site.
The results? Two weeks of my life gone… but my site was back in the green for Core Web Vitals, and I was able to downgrade to my previous hosting plan.
If you want to save yourself time, money, and stress, optimize your images before you even upload them. Here’s a Image Optimization Course I put together that walks you through the entire process step-by-step.
10. Not Securing My Website From the Start
This is one of those things I pushed to the bottom of my to-do list because it felt “too techy” and not urgent. I figured, I’m just starting out – who would want to hack my little blog?
Later I thought I had my website security covered. I was using a strong password, had a good free security plugin installed, and figured that was enough. Yeah, well…
One morning, I opened my site and everything looked… wrong. Images were out of place, blog posts weren’t showing, and my sidebar had vanished. I checked my security plugin, and sure enough, there was a red warning in the audit log – some files had been modified.
I tried to fix it myself, but it was way beyond what I could handle. Thankfully, my hosting provider was kind enough to restore the site from a backup (which I didn’t even know how to do myself at that point).
After that? Yep, I started Googling again (because if you run a blog, apparently you’ll spend a lot of time Googling 😄) and I quickly realized just how lucky I was that I didn’t lose my entire website.
It was a huge wake-up call. I spent hours fixing things I could’ve prevented with a few simple steps. And honestly? It was stressful. There’s nothing fun about realizing your content, your hard work, could disappear overnight.
If you haven’t set up proper security yet, don’t wait. I’ve got a beginner-friendly WordPress Security Online Course that walks you through everything you need to protect your site, without the tech overwhelm.
If you’ve made some of these mistakes already – welcome to the club. Seriously. Every blogger I know has stumbled through at least a few of these. It’s part of the learning curve, and it doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re doing the work.
Looking back, each mistake I made taught me something that ultimately helped me grow. I’ve wasted time, money, and plenty of energy… but I’ve also built a business I love, on my terms.
And if you’re here reading this, you’re already doing something right: you’re learning from someone who’s been through it.
My biggest advice? Don’t let these bumps in the road discourage you. Let them guide you. Tweak your plan, keep showing up, and give yourself room to grow.
And hey, if even one of these lessons saves you some stress, time, or money, then this post was totally worth writing.
Let’s keep learning and building – one step at a time ☺️
