HUGE Mistakes I Made My First Year Blogging

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Are you feeling frustrated, tired, confused with tech overwhelm, and getting absolutely nowhere? I’ve been exactly where you are right now. That is how I spent my first year of blogging. Yelling at the computer, googling problems that no one else seemed to be experiencing, and feeling completely lost.

Are you struggling to come up with content? Or do you find yourself creating great pieces of content that you KNOW someone would benefit from, but your words are falling on deaf ears? Been there too.

Blogging is simple, yet complicated. You hear about all these people who are making thousands of dollars per month blogging and getting millions of subscribers, yet no one seems to want to share HOW they’ve made their success.

That’s what I thought too until I found Create and Go with Alex Nerney and Lauren McManus.

After completing their course, relaunching my blog, and finally getting traffic on Pinterest, I found out EXACTLY what I was doing wrong on The Enchanted Aunt.

To prevent you from making the same mistakes that I did my first year blogging, I thought it would be helpful to share with you exactly what I did wrong. Stop what you’re doing now and read through this massive list of mistakes. Create a successful blog by learning what NOT to do.

Here are the HUGE mistakes I made my first year blogging.

1.) I went with a free theme

Everyone wants something for nothing right? I did too. I wasn’t ready to take blogging seriously at first. Actually, I wanted to take it seriously but at the lowest possible cost. 

What cost does that sound like? FREE!

What was the outcome? Frustration!

Here’s the thing about free themes. They’re great if you want to blog for as a hobby, but they’re not a good idea if you want to create a blog that’s fully customizable and that operates with the greatest amount of ease.

Say I just gave you a house, no holds barred. This is your house to raise your family in, rest your head at night, and to do with it as you please. Sounds great, right? A house for free?

What’s the catch? It was built 80 years ago, the appliances aren’t up to code and could catch fire at any time, and the taxes haven’t be paid on it in the last 10 years.

That’s an extreme example of what it’s like to operate your blog with a free theme. Unless you know how to code and fix problems to get things up to speed with current technology, free isn’t always the way to go. Rather than solving your problem, it leads to more headaches.

You won’t find much support on how to customize them because no one wants to work for free. Trust me, I looked.

The solution?

I ditched my free theme. After reading about different themes and asking other bloggers, I decided to go with Divi from Elegant Themes. It was moderately priced with a money-back guarantee if I was unhappy. Though they have other themes to choose from, Divi was the most popular because of how easy it was to use. I was told it’s very customizable and that you don’t need to know coding. They weren’t wrong. That’s exactly what it is.

Not only is it extremely easy to use, but it also comes with a lot of support from its developers. I dived into Divi University and got my blog looking like something I was proud to share.

2.) I tried learning how to blog from Google

Google is great for getting answers to very specific questions. However, what I wanted was broader. Asking google how to start a blog gave me the very basics on how to blog like creating a domain, setting up hosting, and picking a platform to create the blog on. That’s not what I needed because I already had all of that. What I needed was a teacher to show me how to create a decent looking blog and get people to read it.

There’s a lot that goes into building a blog and so Google wasn’t giving me what I needed this time. I’d find one helpful article which then led me to google other things and so on and so on. Around and around I went looking for answers. It wasn’t the best approach.

3.) I turned to Udemy for mentors

Since Google wasn’t cutting it, I took another cheap approach by buying a $30 course on Udemy for how to start a blog.

It sounded great since they were offering the course at such a low discount, but the results didn’t yield the same effect. I will say that I did learn from the instructor on the basics of the backend of blogging. However, a lot of his information was outdated.

The trouble with buying deeply discounted courses and turning to YouTube and Google is that the information isn’t necessarily up to date. Also, though I had an instructor walking me through the steps, there wasn’t a place where I could raise my hand and ask a question about something that he just went over.

Dare I say I got what I paid for?

4.) I used Facebook for traffic

This is where everyone gets all of their information from nowadays right? So since I got just enough information from Google and Udemy that I could start blogging, I did just that.

I’d write a post, post it on Facebook, and it would be seen by maybe 4 people. If I didn’t post it at a time when people were most active, it wouldn’t show up in anyone’s feed. Also, it’s a one and done situation. Since Facebook isn’t a search engine, people weren’t looking for the content I was creating.

The other option was to take out ads. However, there’s a lot that goes into that and I knew I’d be wasting my money if I just set a budget and entered my credit card number. So that option was off the table too.

Facebook is not the best place to share content because of how the algorithm is set up. Sure, it’s a good idea to share your content with friends and family. Don’t stop doing that! However, even today, of the 8,000+ (and growing) visitors I got last month, only 150 were sent there because of Facebook.

The Solution?

Where do I get nearly all of my traffic from? Pinterest. I used the system laid out in the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course from Create and Go. They taught me the basics of Pinterest SEO, and I applied their methods to my blog and got results! The BEST thing about their course is it’s UPDATED constantly to reflect the new changes in the algorithms.

5.) I was soooo slow

There was very little content on my blog during the first year. I struggled to find the time to sit down and write. On top of that, once I did create a schedule for myself, I’d overthink everything and got nowhere. I was averaging one post per month. It was taking me that long just to think of, create, and edit content.

Don’t be me. If you want to get results, throw perfection out the window and just start writing. The only way you’re going to find your voice is if you start using it.

There are plenty of free tools like Grammarly or Yoast that’ll help you with spotting typos and offering insight into the readability ease. It’s possible to make mistakes even with these tools, but that’s okay. If can always go back and correct your errors. You’re human. It happens.

6.) I had 0 confidence in myself

Since I had been blogging for a few months and wasn’t seeing results, I was deflated. I didn’t think that anyone cared about what I had to say.

Also, I was embarrassed by the look of my blog. Do you want people to come to your house when it looks like you haven’t lifted a finger to maintain it? That’s how I felt about my blog. My free theme was preventing me from having a clean layout. It was scattered and ugly.

7.) I made it about ME instead of about my audience

I honestly didn’t know why people blogged in the first place. My original thoughts were that it was an online journal for people to cry into. I was wrong.

Tons of people told me to start blogging because I wanted to launch an online product. So I started out by just telling stories about my life as an Aunt because that was my only expertise. However, no one cared about my stories. Like most people, they wanted to know HOW to do something. They wanted to know how to achieve the same results. I was missing my mark.

People read blogs because they’re looking for help. They want to learn from others that are in the same spot as them. If you know a lot about a topic, you could become an expert in that field just from your blog.

8.) I didn’t invest in a real course

I did buy the $30 Udemy course, but I don’t think it really counts. I’m not saying that because of the price. However, I am saying it because of how thin the material in it was. It was the bare bones of what you needed to know about blogging. I had something, but I didn’t know how to use it.

I also relied a lot on YouTube, which I love but it was the Swiss cheese of blogging tips. There’s a lot of hole in the content out there.

9.) I didn’t trust anyone’s advice

I kept trying new things that I was hearing from other people on YouTube and from reading other people’s blogs on blogging, but it was a lot of fluff. No one was being flat out honest about results. No one took screenshots of their success. There were just too many scam artists out there to really trust anything. It led me not to trust.

However, I found Alex and Lauren about a year into blogging and that’s when I started making real changes. They earned my trust through their transparency. The information that they put out there spoke to me. I found that I could learn from the people that were actually in my spot at one point. That’s why I ultimately invested in their Six figure blogging course.

10.) I didn’t use Pinterest the way it’s intended.

After I had watched a few of Alex’s YouTube videos on Pinterest, I thought that I knew all there was to know about Pinterest. Boy, was I wrong.

I didn’t know about the importance of SEO on Pinterest, what group boards were, why you have to pin all the time, or what Tailwind was all about.

You have to spend hours pinning manually if you don’t use Tailwind. It’s pretty cheap, only $15 per month. Check out Tailwind and try it out for FREE with my referral link! It’s a game-changer.

I was getting some readers from Pinterest. In fact, nearly all of them came from there, but it was only 1-10 per day. There’s a lot that goes into building a following. You can read my view of Pinterest Traffic Avalanche to learn more.

11.) I compared myself to EVERYONE

Since I was learning from others, I was comparing myself to them too. Don’t do that.

It’s important to remember that everyone starts at the bottom and knows nothing, but eventually you find your way. Comparing your results to a veteran blogger won’t lead to success. You’ll start to get frustrated that you’re not already where they are 1 week into blogging.

12. I didn’t treat it like a business

A business needs to be tended to. It needs to be worked out continuously in order to get ahead. Success doesn’t happen overnight. And if it does, it’s because hard work was put into which lead to that turning point. You can’t publish one post, insert one affiliate link, and think you’ll see any results.

You have to shift your mindset and treat your blog like it’s a living thing in order for it to grow and prosper. You have to experiment with different content, wait for results, analyze your efforts, and make adjustments accordingly. Hardly anyone gets it right the first time.

Even though now know that the choices I made were mistakes, I still learned a lot in the process. Yes, I could have saved myself a lot of time and energy if I had just invested in a course earlier, but I realize that the knowledge that I acquired from my mistakes will help someone else.

If you fall into any of the following categories:

Want to start a blog but don’t know what to blog about

Want to start a blog but don’t have any technical experience

Have already started blogging, but are struggling with traffic

Have traffic, but are looking to build a greater audience

Have a great blog, good traffic, but aren’t sure how to monetize

Have a successful blog, but don’t know how to create and sell your own products

You should invest in one of the many courses from Create and Go.

With the help of Lauren and Alex, I have successfully rebuilt and relaunched my blog, started gaining significant traffic, viewership and subscribers, made affiliate sales, and now I’m onto relaunching my own product with them.

I realize that I could have gotten to where I am now faster had I invested in the beginning, but hopefully, my mistakes will help you build, launch, and monetize your blog faster and with greater ease.

I am now an affiliate for them not because I earn a small commission (at NO extra cost to you), but because they have truly helped me. Much like you, I was struggling to move forward and spread my messages, but after completing their courses, I have grown tremendously in a very short period of time.

Please feel free to reach out to me if there are any additional questions. about my experience with Create and Go.

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