10 Reasons Why Your Blog Isn’t Making Any Profits and How To Fix It
After months of effort, your B2B blog still struggles to increase generating new leads. While recent studies show that 69% of marketers will increase the use of B2B blogging in their campaigns, some business owners wrestle to find an effective strategy. How to make money from your blog?
In this article, we will analyze why your strategies aren’t effective. Let’s go through the primary 10 reasons why your blog isn’t making any money and how to fix it!
10 reasons why you don’t make money from a blog and how to fix it
1. You write for everyone
Ideally, the scope of a blog post is to reach as many people as possible. But when it comes to monetizing virtual ventures, you can’t write about what you like covering all possible arguments. You need to know who you are writing for to get your audience. What are their interests, and their questions? You need to define your target audience and create content for them to catch their attention.
Especially if you have a new B2B blog, you need to focus on key topics to start building your community of readers over time.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy
There are two core steps to improve your blogging strategies and define your target audience. First, you need to picture at least three fictional readers of your blog corresponding to your buyer personas. For example, you run a business selling skincare and homemade products. Your first reader/buyer persona is a teenager struggling with skincare, looking for advice and less aggressive treatments. The second reader/buyer persona is a mother with two young daughters looking for more sustainable products for the whole family without spending a fortune. The last one is a guy looking for an original present for his girlfriend. These fictional readers have different lives but one common interest: skincare and homemade products. This common interest makes all of them an ideal buyer persona for your business. So, they will browse your blog, but how do you keep them reading considering their different interests?
This question leads to our second step. You need to create ad hoc content for each reader – ideally organizing content in categories on the menu bar. You can target your content based on your fictional readers/buyer personas, writing about skincare advice, affordable and sustainable products, and funny/creative ideas for presents with homemade products and kits. And, separating your content, you will truly reach your readers, growing your audience and generating new leads.
2. You talk only about your product
Another common mistake for B2B bloggers is talking only about their products. It’s important to promote the quality of your services and products. However, when people browse a blog, they seek new ideas or advice, not another form of advertisement. The goal of a B2B blog is to identify your audience’s needs and provide effective and creative solutions.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy
The point of writing a story or a blog post for a business is to share something people need or can relate to in their daily life. For example, you own an online business selling construction tool kits for amateurs. Browing your blog, they seek advice to do some jobs in the house. They will be more attracted by an article about tricks to use plaster than reading about why your products are the best for the job.
You will generate new leads by convincing your readers with your expertise on the topic, rather than up-selling your products. Of course, you can add your opinion or explain why your products are better than the competition, but it can’t be the only thing your write about.
3. Your content isn’t optimized
Some people tend to think that good writing means complex sentences or intricate phrasing. When we speak about B2B blog content, good writing means readability and optimization. Google Search Engine tends to prefer clear and concise content, that immediately answers users’ questions.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy
You can use several tools to help your content team optimize content – WordPress Yoast Plugin or Hemingway App are two common tools for marketers and bloggers. Generally speaking, avoiding overcomplicating phrases or adding a long introduction is important. Storytelling can be a good strategy to engage with readers. But you always need to answer the question of your title and use active voices to improve fluidity.
4. You don’t prioritize SEO
The first point strongly connects to this one. Without a defined buyer persona and audience map, it’s hard to target the right keywords to reach the audience you want. Hence, you don’t bring enough traffic to your blog to increase your authority and build partnerships and collaborations – that monetize your content and generate new leads for your products. There is a reason why high-income bloggers are 4.3 times more likely to use keyword research before writing than low-income bloggers.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy
A clear focus makes it easier to use the right keywords and creates content that matches your audience’s search intent. Your marketing team should combine content marketers with SEO experts to analyze your competitors and create content around trending topics. Let’s take the previous example of a skincare business. If you want to reach teenagers with skincare issues, the angle of your content has to follow the same bottom line. Instead of randomly listing products, you can group them around topics like ‘best beauty routine creams’ or ‘best organic makeup for skin diseases.’ Once you have a clear focus and audience, you can target the right keywords to ensure your content gets to your audience.
5. Weak monetization strategy
Another reason you aren’t making money blogging is that you lack an effective monetization and marketing strategy. Indeed, 21% of bloggers focus more on marketing and monetization than content. A B2B blog format opens different options to monetize your content depending on the topic.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy
How blogs make money depends on the content, topics, and products. Generally speaking, bloggers and marketers increase their venues with these types of strategies:
- Affiliate marketing
- E-commerce with physical products
- Selling digital products and services (Like building online courses or offering downloads)
- Offering services
- Publishing sponsored content
One way doesn’t exclude the other, but you need to select your strategy based on your audience. For example, you can’t earn significant money from ads without high traffic. In the case of the beauty skin blog, you can publish sponsored content from pharmaceutical companies promoting innovative products or treatments. Or, you can run parallel e-commerce selling specific products and free consulting for the best beauty routine based on the skin type. All these activities will bring you income while increasing your traffic and authority.
6. Lack of relevant partnerships
A solid monetization strategy for your B2B blog allows you to create better partnerships. If you want people to spend money on your content and products, they have to trust your brand – and who you are working with.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy
Using the same example, once you have a clear focus, you can pitch relevant sites for collaboration and partnerships or start an interview series. For example, you can contact doctors and researchers to share advice on treatments or promote a holistic approach illustrating successful cases and inspirational stories. Creating relevant partnerships widens your audience and builds trust among your followers. In the long run, these partnerships will connect you with other types of audiences generating more leads.
7. Bad user experience
High-quality content isn’t enough without user-friendly interfaces and coherent design – especially if you are using blogging strategies to promote products on your eCommerce. If readers get lost looking at your categories, they will leave your website going to one of your competitors. And most likely, they will purchase the same type of product from their platform.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy
Do you remember when we were discussing organizing content on the menu bar? That’s the first step to creating a clean and smooth interface for B2B blog. With platforms like WordPress, you can organize your content on the main page and keep the same design for each post. The aim is to make your readers’ experience as easy as possible, valorizing your content through your website layout.
In addition, visuals and videos play a crucial role in guiding your readers throughout your content and topics. 90% of bloggers add images in posts, 34% of marketers recorded better results with videos. For example, you can use videos and tutorials for educational content related to skin diseases and care advice. You can use images and pictures for posts about products and original present ideas. Your readers will immediately recognize your blog and look for the topic they want using pictures or colors.
8. Shallow research
Over one-third of high-earning ($50,000 annual average), bloggers say that demand for high-quality content has never been so high. On the flip side, 34% of buyers make an unplanned purchase because of quality content.
Accuracy and research are crucial to growing your authority and making money blogging. After you isolate the topics to reach your audience, the next step is to conduct in-depth research to provide useful information to your readers.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy
You need to double-check and back up your claims when you write a blog post, especially promoting products and services. As we mentioned earlier, people don’t want your opinion on things. They want an angle to enrich what they already know and eventually make a final purchase. So, when writing about skincare, it’s important to research medical statistics on skin diseases, previous case studies, and updates on existing treatments. In addition, you can include interviews and collaboration with authority magazines to show the accuracy of your content. The aim is to illustrate to your readers how data and valuable partnerships support your content and claims.
PS: Spelling and grammar are also crucial to gaining trust among your readers. Readers associate wrong spelling with bad content. Writing tools like Grammarly or ProWritingAid are a great support to edit your writing and keep a fast workflow for your marketing team.
9. Inconsistent schedule
Often, beginner B2B bloggers underestimate the importance of a regular schedule. Consistent content production is crucial to growing your blog traffic and followers.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy
If you can’t share content daily, rearrange your monthly framework. For example, if you want to target three buyer personas, you can publish a post for each of them once a week. In this case, less is more. To your readers and Google attention, it’s better to publish less but regular and consistent content than posting one week every day and very little the rest of the month. Your readers won’t see your blog as reliable because they don’t know when to get the information they need. And Google will struggle to see when your content appears.
10. You can’t stand out
Finally, you need to stand out from competitors to convince readers to buy your products and make money with your blog.
💡How to improve your blogging strategy:
Here, the best strategy depends on your blog, topic, and personality. Unlike SEO or research, you have to find out how you make your content unique. You can explore innovative and original ways to present your content and research based on your subjects, engaging your readers with funny and accurate stories. The only advice you should remember is to try not to be someone else. It’s impossible to say something that none of your competitors have already said. The point is to communicate the content in a way that readers wouldn’t expect. Play with images, interviews, tutorials, and test what works better for your blog and brand image.
Last thoughts
How to make money from a blog depends on a lot of factors, especially for online and B2B businesses. You should never forget to do quality research, keep your schedule consistent, target the right keywords, and organize posts in a clean and professional layout. After that, focus on promotion and building partnerships. If you produce quality content, your readers will start to follow you – and purchase from your platform because they trust you!
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