Launch Phase: Blogging Mistakes to Avoid When Setting Up Your Blog
Before you start your blog, there are a few key blogging mistakes to be hyper-aware of as you begin making big decisions that come with potentially long-lasting consequences.
I’ll go through each of these early blogging mistakes, and show you how to avoid them up front and what to do to fix them if you’ve already made one of these mistakes.
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1. Using Wix, Squarespace or Weebly Instead of WordPress
Mistakes New Bloggers Make Not Choosing WordPress as a CMS
I get it, starting with a blogging platform like Wix, Squarespace or Weebly might sound easy (and you’ve probably heard of them before). These blogging sites have strong marketing campaigns and there’s a good chance that you’ve seen their ads on YouTube, through fellow bloggers or on your favorite podcasts.
And to be fair, sites like Wix and Weebly do offer free plans that make them enticing to new bloggers. On the flip side though, how much it costs to blog these days is getting more and more affordable—about $65/year for your basic costs.
While these kinds of platforms do have their perks—namely that they’re free and easy to use—they also have a lot of limitations and drawbacks. If you’re using the free hosting plans from sites like Wix and Weebly, you’re also dealing with their ads and branding on your site. It doesn’t create a very professional feel, and the free plans don’t give you much room to grow your blog.
As you grow your blog, you will undoubtedly outgrow Wix’s capabilities (even with a paid plan). Squarespace and Weebly share the same issues. These platforms are fun to play with and even develop your writing style, but they’re not a good long-term choice. To complicate matters, it’s not easy to migrate your blog from one of these platforms over to WordPress if you want to get serious about turning your blog into a business the future.
Instead of using these website builders, I always advise new bloggers to start their sites using self-hosted WordPress.
Self-hosted WordPress is completely free-to-use content management system (CMS) that more than 34% of websites in the world run on. Your only costs for maintaining a WordPress blog are the purchase of a domain name and web hosting plan. Even if you’re on a tight budget that requires going with cheap hosting plans or low cost shared hosting plans—you’ll still own your own blog. You can also buy great plugins and themes to extend the functionality and features of your WordPress-powered blog, but your upfront starting cost is extremely low with this route.
Most importantly, choosing WordPress will give you so much freedom with controlling the future of your blog—hence why not using WordPress is the #1 blogging mistake here on this list.
When using WordPress, you can monetize your blog with no restrictions, customize it endlessly, promote your blog content and do anything else you want with it. It includes HTML coding capabilities for even more customization, and you can bulk up your site with plugins that keep it running smoothly and looking sharp. I’ve used WordPress to manage my blog since I got started.
Launch Phase: Blogging Mistakes to Avoid When
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