15 Real Reasons Why Your Blog Is Not Making Money

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While professional bloggers started their blogs out of passion, they always want to make money from them.

When a person gives most of his quality time to a particular work, asking for the returns is an obvious thing.

Almost every full-time blogger wants to make money from his blog.

Yes! We ALL!

In the recent few years, blogging has got tremendous importance as a content marketing strategy for online businesses as well as a career opportunity for solopreneurs who want complete freedom in their work.

The surprising fact is that around 96.95 million posts are published on the WordPress network worldwide in September 2022. (Source)

So today, having a blog is a widespread thing, and most of you may already have at least one.

However, getting extremely profitable returns from blogging as a business, or making reliable income as a blogger needs quality time, in-depth knowledge, an experience in the subject, and the right promotional techniques.

Many bloggers may be working hard and still not making a significant amount of money from their blogs.

What’s going wrong with their blogs?

Let’s start with a short story.

Several years ago, I began my blogging journey as an enthusiastic learner who was passionate about blogging, but I was completely new to WordPress.

After three months, I got my first paycheck. That was $50 of an affiliate commission for referring the web hosting service to one of my friends.

Then, I understood that I could definitely make money from my blog.

And, the journey is extremely wonderful so far.

Today I’m making my living out of my online earnings.

Where one of my blogger friends started her blog a few months earlier than me and has written more than 1200 blog posts, but still, she has not earned any significant income from it.

Truly disappointing…

Some people make hundreds or thousands of dollars per month while the rest of the people are hoping to earn their first paycheck.

Why does this happen?

Though I keep learning new things every day to improve my knowledge as well as skills, there are a few things that have helped me to get success as a blogger.

I can replicate them to make my strategies for my upcoming blogging projects.

If your blog is not making enough money, then you are definitely doing something wrong that you should improve to make your blog a MONEY-MAKING MACHINE. 

Do you want to know the top 15 reasons why your blog is not making money?

Note: Read this article very carefully, and you’ll find the things you are doing wrong and how you could improve or things that you must do to start making money from your blog.

Top 15 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Not Making Money

I have mentioned here the top 15 aspects that you need to focus on to make money from your blog.

Check whether you are making the same mistakes or not.

And, how you could start making money by avoiding these mistakes.

1. You Don’t Have Blogging Goals

When you start money blogging, you must have definitive goals and a clear timeline to complete every task.

Right from the niche selection and choosing a domain name to create the content and promoting them across various channels should be planned.

No matter whether you are publishing a single post per month or writing content daily, you should create a tentative blogging schedule for content creation, optimization, and promotion.

This point is actually very simple but overlooked in most of the cases that ultimately result in failure or lower earnings.

2. Improper Niche Selection

A successful blogging journey begins with a profitable niche selection.

Here’s the secret of successful niche selection for blogging.

If you are publishing content similar to that already published, you may face fierce competition in the search ranking to get loads of traffic because people might be knowing about the particular subject you are publishing.

On another hand, if you are writing about a topic that has not been covered by other bloggers or commercial publications and has a significant search volume, then people will eventually land on your page. It’ll be definitely a winning situation for you.

But how could you find that niche?

Market research with the use of professional analytics tools is the best way to start a profitable niche selection.

Apart from that, your passion, expertise, knowledge, and professional skills will help you to convert your niche blog into a MONEY MAKING MACHINE.

You can also refer to my previous blog post: How to select a profitable niche for your blog?

3. Wrong Theme Structure

The blog design plays a vital role in the success of your blog. If people are not loving your blog, the theme layout might be one of the major reasons.

Organizing all blog components at the right places and making users easy to navigate may influence them positively and help you to get the desired conversion. It also reduces the bounce rate so you can see significant improvements in SERP ranking.

No matter whether you are using a free blogging platform like Blogger, WordPress.com, Wix, Weebly, or a self-hosted blog, attractive and standardized blog design will always stand you ahead of your competition.

According to research conducted by Northumbria University (UK), people judge the quality and trustworthiness of a particular website based mostly on its DESIGN… not CONTENT.

Surprising, isn’t it?

Yes, it’s true because the human brain gives more importance to visual image appearance rather than plain text.

So, having a great blog design can really impress first-time visitors and make a considerable impact on your CVR.

Here are a few design elements people may not be loving on your blog:

• A Clumsy Theme Layout (Cluttered Blog Design)
• Content Placement
• Alignments
• The Fonts, Font Size, and Styling
• The Navigation Bar and Placement of Menus
• Social Icons
• Theme’s Footer
• Sidebars & Widgets
• Advertisements
• Other Design Elements

We are living in a world where people judge you within a few seconds, and the same rule applies to your blog too.

So you should always remember the first impression is the last impression and before presenting your blog in front of your audience, you must be fully satisfied with your work.

If you don’t like to see unmanaged and cluttered blogs, then how could your readers love your blog with a clumsy theme structure?

If you know how to code, it’s far easier to make the changes to improve blog conversions. Otherwise, you can choose a beautiful theme from a reputed theme club or web developer having high converting and SEO-friendly design.

4. Slower Website Loading Speed

You might already be knowing how website loading speed affects its conversion rate.

More the time your site is taking to load, the higher will be the bounce rate, which negatively affects the organic ranking and the conversion rate; thus the total blog earnings.

Even Brian Dean from Backlinko says that Google penalizes the slow-loading sites after analyzing millions of websites worldwide.

The following infographic will clear you the importance of loading time in the blogging and the e-commerce industry.

5. You’re not Writing Honest Product Reviews

Well-researched and honest reviews of products or services related to your blog niche and promoting it to the right audience is the best way to make money from your blog.

Writing a product review is an art, and you must be knowing copywriting, SEO techniques, and the earning potential of the product you are going to write about.

Using the product or service on your own will help you to find the pros and cons as well as write a better review article that convinces readers to try that particular product.

But when you’ll write such posts, be genuine and true to your opinion.

Don’t just write content because advertisers have paid you or you are going to get money in the form of ad revenue, affiliate commission, or sponsorships.

Always write product reviews by keeping you in the shoes of the buyer and just because you are helping people to choose the right product.

Think about the problem a person is facing. It may be hair loss, weight loss, or excessive weight gain if you’re working in the health niche.

You can take other examples too, like finding a cool place to spend summer vacation or selecting the best mobile or laptop under 30K for Travel and Tech Gadgets niches respectively.

If your article itself can convince you and your close friends to buy the product you are promoting, then unknown people will also definitely convert.

Put your energy to explain everything about the product so your reader need not go anywhere else.

And, don’t forget to add negative points about the product if any that make the review article more convincing.

Even Darren Rowse from ProBlogger says transparency is key to success in money blogging.

6. You are not Listening to Your Audience

If you are blogging about a particular subject for many days but not addressing the problems of your audience, you should do that now.

People search the web mainly for two reasons, either for getting some information (Learning intent) or for commercial interest (Buying intent).

1. Learning intent

Here, the person searching for any keyword wants to collect information about that particular subject. Still, sales are possible for information products.

2. Buying intent

When a person searches for a commercial keyword that clearly shows his buying intent, then most probably you can convert him with minimum effort.

As a blogger, you can leverage both types of intent and make money out of your blog.

Before that, you should hear what the audience means, what keywords they are searching for, what problems they may be facing, and what things they want to buy to solve their problems or fulfill their dreams.

Keyword research tools, industry trends, forums, and most importantly, the comment/message section of your blog or social media are a few tools you can use to find your blog topics.

Replying to genuine comments/messages/emails and calls if possible, is the best way to engage with your followers.

Today Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Twitter or WhatsApp chat, etc. alternative methods you can use to connect with many people at the same time.

It’ll be a parallel channel for communication as well as blog promotion if you can use it wisely.

7. Missing Convincing Elements & Social Proof

Without a good readership, your blog is similar to the millions of other blogs struggling to get their first paycheck.

Though your promotional strategies help you to get traffic to your blog, some elements create authority and trustworthiness among people and make them follow your blog.

Your Achievements and Social Proof are a couple of the best convincing elements that let people love your site and visit it regularly.

Here is one great example of how Matthew Woodward has used convincing elements in the header area to show blog authority.

Here are a few convincing elements you can use on your blog.

• Your Awards and Achievements
• Your Social Media Reach & Followers
• Your Guest Posts
• Your Best Posts/Popular on Blog
• Your Online Earning Proofs (Pat Flynn from SmartPassiveIncome.com)

8. Your Writing Style Sucks

“I’m writing two blog posts every day; still, my blog doesn’t give me any money.”

Are you complaining like this?

If yes, then most probably your writing style sucks.

Yeah. You heard me right.

Not getting any benefits after writing a couple of articles daily means you’re writing like an Article Spinner or a BOT.

You are just rewriting the existing content by changing some context without adding any value and without targeting the right audience.

If you are updating your blog with CRAP, just because your blogging schedule demands some content and you want to fulfill it as soon as possible, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

I have never seen any pro blogger writing such crap on their blogs; even they can write a ton of blog posts or hire a bunch of freelancers to work for them.

They just write a few authority articles and provide insane value throughout each piece of content so that people can find some value and solve their problems.

I was a bad writer in the initial days of my blogging (I’m still), but I kept learning new things about copywriting, SEO, and content optimization.

Even today, I follow industry-leading publications, including CopyBlogger, and ProBlogger, and try to implement a few hacks myself.

There is a big misconception among people that publishing a blog every day will increase traffic to their blog, which is not 100% true.

Practicing will surely improve your writing or research process, but you must follow the right path to get satisfactory results, whether you write daily or weekly.

If your blog post is worth reading, then even once a month is much better than writing daily and people will definitely share it with their peers.

9. You are not Investing in Yourself

You must be knowing that Blogging is pure business when you want to make money from your blog.

And, to achieve great results and positive ROI, you should invest in yourself much more than anything else.

The success depends on the content and readers but more than that on the squad behind it.

So, you need to know everything right from how to pick a niche, how to create content, SEO, and promotion as well as monetization strategies.

However, a newbie blogger may not be an expert to handle all of these tasks, and he/she needs the guidance of an experienced pro blogger who has already achieved some great results.

If you think that investing in self-improvement is a waste of time and money, then most probably you are pushing success miles away from yourself.

I was making the same mistake, but when I realized it, I started learning new things, connecting with influencers, and giving time to update my blogging skills. Still, I’m doing that regularly because learning is a never-ending process.

If you want to become a pro blogger and earn a ton of money, then you can try the following courses to update your blogging knowledge and skills.

1. SEO
2. Copywriting
3. Social Media
4. Improve Blog Traffic
5. Blog Monetization

10. You are not Using Blogging Tools

Using blogging tools could be really a great way to get quick and fruitful results.

Doing a lot of manual work just because of saving a few bucks is not a good idea. You should use some useful tools to improve your productivity as well as to automate all possible tasks so that you can scale your blogging business to the next level.

Here are a couple of examples of how blogging tools can save time and give a better ROI.

1. Using Keyword Research Tools to Find Profitable Keywords

When you plan a new blog post, you need to pick a focused keyword and a few LSI keywords to target.

If you try to find these keywords manually using Google Autocomplete or the Related Search feature, you may need to invest much more time in analyzing the results and picking your keywords.

Or, you can use any free or premium keyword research tool to find those keywords in a minute.

2. Using Email Autoresponder

Email Autoresponder tools are quite popular these days. Sending personalized emails, analyzing open rates, CTR & CVR, segmentation and lead nurturing, etc. tasks can be automated at a minimal price instead of doing that all manually.

Not having your email list may cost you a very big in blog revenue.

You may ask, “But what about the cost of these tools and performance, especially for newbie bloggers?”

The price can’t be an issue.

Most of the blogging tools have free trials where you can test their performance for a week or month and decide whether a particular tool is working for you or not.

The reviews from some authority blogs will also help you choose the right products and services.

11. You are Obsessed with the Blogging Tools

Contrary to the previous point.

“How could be this possible?”

If you think that blogging tools alone can get you quick success without doing anything, then you are following in the wrong direction.

You must have a working strategy that already makes money from your blog. You can use tools to automate and scale your work to earn more.

The blogging tools are not a magic wand that starts making money once you buy them.

Many bloggers start looking for Blackhat techniques after reading the success stories of others and want to achieve similar results using the same tricks and cracked tools which may help for the short term only or in the worst case; it can ruin your blogging career completely.

There are some great tools in the market that definitely saves time and effort, but being obsessed with tools and relying entirely on them is not a good idea.

Remember, there is no better tool than the human brain, and you must keep it active so it can produce great ideas and give better results.

12. Using Old-School Promotional Techniques

You might have heard the 80:20 rule of blogging where an average of 80% of your blog revenue depends on your promotional techniques and only 20% on your content.

Social channels and directory submission sites are the go-to way for blog promotion for most bloggers.

Actually, social media is a great way to promote your content, but spamming the same link too many times can be detected by SPAM filters, and you will not be able to share it again on similar that particular social media websites.

So, next time, when you’ll think to pollute social media groups, don’t forget what I have said.

And if you’re doing so, then STOP is right now.

Another common mistake is comment spam to get a BACKLINK as well as the attention of fellow bloggers.

But if you are not reading that article or not taking the effort to put a personalized comment that adds value to the original content or appreciates the work of the author, then you should not expect to get your comment approved.

Almost every WordPress blog uses a spam filter. So commenting with the same email ID and IP address too many times will start pushing your comments into the spam folder.

Instead of that find the blogs with the CommentLuv WordPress plugin installed on them and start a genuine conversation and put your blog link so you can get a clickable link back to your latest blog post.

Getting a few web 2.0 links, genuine guest blogging links, and high-quality profile links will increase your authority as well as help you diversify your link profile.

In today’s world, you should use out-of-the-box promotional techniques including Point-Blank SEO, Live Videos and podcasts, being active on less popular Social sites, content marketing as well as some paid promotion to boost your results.

13. Using Every Money-Making Method on the Same Blog

Every blog is not the same, and you can’t use similar monetization strategies for all blogs.

Some blogs can perform well with CPC/CPM Ad networks while some with affiliate programs.

In some cases, selling your own products or in other words, using the blog as a marketing channel for your own business may be a good strategy.

Take a simple example.

An entertainment blog having a few thousand visitors per day can earn well with CPC ad networks like Google AdSense or Media.net. Alternatively, you can use CPM banners where you can predict your earning potential.

Failing to choose the appropriate monetization method eventually leads you to less earnings with the same efforts than using a better money-making way.

14. Not Interacting with Fellow Bloggers

Networking with experts and fellow bloggers is a top secret for successful bloggers who make thousands of dollars from their blogging business.

However, it’s not going to be an easy task to interact with other bloggers and influences in your niche. It’ll take your time as well as energy but is worth doing.

There are only a couple of ways – either you take action and start interacting with people online/offline or just sit back, hoping for a miracle to happen in your life.

You are free to choose any of the options mentioned above.

Not interacting with other people in my niche was one of the biggest blogging mistakes I made.

I was only thinking about myself, my blog, and my money. (You are also doing the same thing).

I was obsessed with my blogging journey, so I used to share only my content, thinking in my mind, “Why should I promote other people’s work on my timelines?”

But I realized that I was doing wrong and started promoting quality posts from others so my audience could get a ton of useful content.

After that, I started getting more followers as well as other people appreciating and sharing my work too.

Win-win situation!

15. Don’t Have Patience

When you sow a seed, it does not give fruits the next day. You need to nurture it and wait a few years to see the outcome of your efforts.

The same rule applies to the blogging business. You should be putting honest efforts to grow your blog into an authoritative one and wait for some time before getting actual results.

However, some people don’t understand how blogging works and want to get the results the next day by doing everything as quickly as possible.

Suppose, you have created a niche blog and you’re checking the rank of your keywords the very next morning.

It means you’re not only wasting your valuable time on unnecessary things but also FOOLING yourself.

Remember that patience is the key to success, so believe in your efforts.

If you want to experiment with something on your blog, then ask your peers as well as some seasoned bloggers who have already tried such things.

Sometimes, you may need to wait for their reply, but suggestions from experienced bloggers are worth your patience.

A single wrong step in the initial day of blogging can make a huge negative impact on your career and take an enormous time to get back in action again.

Conclusion

These are the major reasons your blog is not performing well and giving significant monetary benefits.

But don’t worry!

Once you start putting effort, fixing your mistakes, and treating your blog as a business that helps people to solve their problems, you are going to make HUGE SUMS every month.

Still, if you are facing any problems, feel free to ask questions here or on our social handles. I’ll definitely read every query and try to reply to them asap.

On another hand, if your blog is making a good amount of money every month, we would appreciate your comments if you can share what money-making strategies are working for you and where you have improved to get the current position.

Remember, you are the creator of your destiny, so put some honest efforts to make your blog a MONEY MAKING MACHINE.

Best of luck!

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