No One Reads My Blog and What To Do About It

Last updated on June 6th, 2020 at 06:00 am

No one reads my blog is the number one complaint made by all new bloggers. Heck, I’ve made that statement more than once several times. Today, we’re going to take a look at 11 possible reasons no one is reading your blog and what you can do to change it.

But first, I want you to know that…

Success Doesn’t Happen Overnight

It amazes me when I see people’s posts in Facebook Groups that say, I started my blog two months ago and it’s still not making any money. There are so many misconstrued conceptions around blogging.

Maybe you read someone’s income report that talks about how much they are making. So you decide to get hosting and set up your own WordPress blog, thinking that in 6 months, your life will look totally different.

I get it, after all, I started this blog to earn passive income and create financial freedom for Karen and I. There have been plenty of times when I have gotten frustrated, because no matter what I did, I wasn’t growing.

I would wake up early and work hard on my blog and check my Google Analytics only to see that no one was visiting my blog.

It’s not easy to spend your first 16 months or so of blogging without any traffic. No one wants to spend time writing for a ghost town.

There were many times when I thought about quitting, but I knew that wasn’t an option for me. I’m getting older my goal is to make enough money from my blogs to support us financially.

Thankfully, I’ve learned from my mistakes (well most of them) and I’ve been making huge progress this past year. I know that as long as I keep going, I’ll keep growing.

I finally had over 19,000 page views in January, which is the first month ever this has happened.

I also started a second blog and I have cut back on this blog so I can focus on growing that one. It’s nice to see this blog continuing to grow because I sat down and did all the hard work for the past 2 years.

Why No One Reads My Blog?

The one thing that I can tell you is, there’s a lot that goes into whether or not a blog will be successful.

I’m not going to get into those details today, but I can tell you that once I started writing articles focusing on low competition keywords, my traffic and email list started growing.

If you’ve been blogging for awhile and still not getting any traffic, I’d take a look at the keywords you’re using. This keyword tool has totally changed the way I write posts for both of my blogs.

If you’re struggling and thinking about giving up don’t! Keep putting one foot in front of the other, remember nothing great ever came easy for anyone.

Just because you’re NOT getting traffic today, doesn’t mean things can’t change for you. I wasn’t getting traffic to this blog for the first 16 months or longer and now, I am finally starting to see the fruits of my hard labor.

Stop reading those income reports and spending so much time in Facebook Groups. Spend more time on your business, that’s the only way that it’s going to grow.

Here are 11 BIG reasons why no one is reading your blog and how you can fix them to increase your traffic, email list, money, happiness and most of all your sanity.

11 Reasons No One Is Reading Your Blog and How to Fix It

#1 You Make It About You

Most people who start a blog usually end up treating it like an online journal. They share stories about what they did that day, what they ate and other things about their life.

No one really cares about you, I know it hurts, but it’s true. While it’s okay to start a journey blog and share your progress of how your achieving specific goals.

But no one wants to hear about your personal stories. Before you sit down to write a brand new article, ask yourself, does this really help my readers?

If NOT, then don’t waste your time and energy writing it.

The Fix: Start writing content that actually helps your readers. It’s okay to share personal stories if you can tie it into the actual article. People love reading about the mistakes you made and the things you did to fix it.

Plus sharing your personal lessons will help you build some trust with your audience. Why do you think those rags to riches stories always do so well?

We love reading stories about people who worked hard or pushed past those struggles to achieve their success.

#2 You Haven’t Created A Posting Schedule

If you’ve decided to use content marketing to earn money, you’re going to need to write a lot content. It doesn’t matter if you write once a week or 3x per week.

The most important thing it to do is to create a blogging schedule that works for you. When I started this blog, I was posting 2x per week, then I started posting 3x per week.

Now that I am focusing on multiple blogs, I am cutting back to once per week. This blog now has over 300 articles so I feel good about being able to slow down on my writing.

The Fix: Set a schedule that works for you and start creating content. If your blog is brand new, focus on writing as much high quality content as you can.

Once you have 30-50 blog posts published, you can slow down on your writing. I’d recommend publishing at least one new post per week.

#3 You Don’t Promote Your Content

I love writing and I could sit and write all day long now that I have a standing desk. But if your blog is brand new, you need to be out there hustling to get your content in front of people.

Now this doesn’t mean you should try to be on all the social media platforms. I’ve done that in the past and I didn’t accomplish anything.

Now that this blog is a little over 2 years old, I’ve finally figured out what works best for me. I currently use SEO, Pinterest, email, and sometimes YouTube to help me drive traffic to this blog.

I know that a lot of people will say that I am losing a lot of potential traffic because I’m not on Twitter, Facebook or etc. But I’m only one person and I don’t have time nor the desire to work 24/7 just to grow this blog.

The Fix: Start with Pinterest to help you get traffic to your blog. There are a lot of niches that do well on Pinterest and it can help you get a quick boost of traffic while you wait on your SEO to start kicking in.

I recommend using an automation tool like Tailwind to free up your time. Of course, if your blog is new and you’re not ready to invest in any money yet or don’t have a Pinterest strategy, this eBook will help you use your time to pin manually.

#4 You Waste Time On Things That Aren’t Important

If you want to create a successful blog that earns you passive income, you need to focus on content. It amazes me when I see people asking which theme they should use, how their logo looks, or what colors they should use for their blog.

Look, I get it, no one wants an ugly blog. But the one thing that I’ve learned is the most important thing that will make or break a blog is the content.

If your content is amazing and your blog is ugly, guess what, you’ll be fine. You may not win any awards for the most beautiful blog.

But if your content actually helps people and they find it helpful, you’ll be fine. You can always go back and fix the ugliness of the blog later.

The Fix: Focus on writing amazing content that actually helps people. Don’t waste a bunch of time on those tasks that aren’t actually going to help you grow.

If you don’t believe me, read this article 6 Ugly Sites That Make Millions. It will have you thinking differently about your blog and where to spend your time.

#5 Your Not Writing With Specific Keywords

There may be a good chance that you’re not taking the time to find the right keywords for your blog. One of the biggest things that held my blog back for over a year was I was writing content keywords that were too competitive.

A new blog that doesn’t have any authority will have a hard time ranking for certain keywords. Since I’ve started using keyword tools like KWFinder, Jaaxy, and SEMRush I’ve started noticing my blogs starting to grow.

Finding the right keywords will give you a chance to actually start ranking. Writing a high quality blog post takes a lot of time, make sure that you’re finding the right keywords that will give you the best chance of success.

The Fix: Start using the right keyword tool to help you uncover the competitiveness of a keyword before you write. Focus on the keywords that don’t have too much competition.

It’s okay to write some posts on high competitive keywords, after all, your blog will grow in authority over time. But most of your content should be focused around those long tail keywords without a lot of content.

Check out this post where I share the steps I use to find the right keywords for my blog.

#6 You Don’t Have Enough Content On Your Blog

I’ve seen some people who get frustrated with their blogging results. When you dig deeper, you find out that they have only written 20 blog posts.

Yes, it’s possible to get some results on Pinterest with 20 blog posts, I’ve seen some people do it. However, if you’re hoping for some organic traffic (which is the best type of traffic) you’re going to need a lot of content.

As I mentioned earlier, I currently have over 300 published posts on this blog. I continue to write new posts on a weekly basis, because I know that every post I write is like planting a seed.

Eventually, that new blog post will send me traffic. The more seeds you have planted, the more gateways you have for people to find your blog.

If you go back through the archives of some bigger bloggers, you’ll notice that they have written hundreds of articles.

The Fix: Spend time writing new posts on a weekly basis for your blog. Don’t worry about how many posts you have, just keep planting new seeds.

Just know that the seeds you plan today can take around 6 months to start bringing you some traffic.

#7 Your Headlines Suck

You’re not the only one who is writing content and trying to grow your business. There are 10 organic spots on the front page of Google and if your headlines suck, no one is going to click on your post.

One of the most important things you can do is focus on writing great headlines. I’m not the best at this, but I always use CoSchedule Headline Analyzer to help me brainstorm great ideas.

I know that I should be split testing different headlines, but I just don’t do that.

The Fix: Check Google Search Console to find out what your Average CTR is and see if you can improve it. This article will help you take some steps to improve your CTR.

Remember, it took you hours to write the article, you need to make sure it entices people to click through to read it.

#8 You’re Not Writing Popular Content

One of the things that I learned when I reached my first 11,000 page views ever was the type of content you write, is huge. This is a great strategy if you want to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog.

You need to find out what other people in your niche are writing about that is working. Then use those topics and ideas to help you come up with your own unique content.

People in the Internet marketing niche call this Piggybacking or The Skyscraper Technique. You can read more about this technique here.

The Fix: Spend a few hours using Buzzsumo to help you find some popular topics in your niche. Once you find some topics that you can make unique and create amazing articles, put those ideas on Google Drive.

Then sit down and start pumping out those articles and promote them on Pinterest. If you do a great job with the article, there’s a good chance that you’ll get a huge boost of traffic.

Just make sure that you’re not copying and pasting someone else’s content on your blog. That’s NOT cool and you’ll just find yourself in a bunch of trouble.

#9 You’re Not Interlinking Your Content

If you really want people to spend time on your blog or decrease your bounce rate, make sure you’re interlinking your content. There’s a good chance that a lot of your content is related or relevant to other blog posts on your site.

When you write a new blog post that is related to another blog post, make sure that you’re interlinking that content. I’d also recommend adding some “related articles” at the bottom of your blog posts.

I do this with my blog and helps people read more of my blog posts. Which helps them spend more time on your blog which helps Google think that your blog is popular.

Not only that, but it will increase the chance of someone clicking on your affiliate links and possibly even signing up for your email list.

The Fix: Start interlinking all your related blog posts. Go back to some of your older blog posts on a regular basis and make sure that you’re linking to relevant content.

I’d recommend going back at least once every 6 months to make sure that your linking to your relevant content.

#10 You’re Trying to Do Everything for Free

No one wants to spend money on a new blog that may or may not make money. I get it, but running a blog is not as expensive as you might think it is.

Yes, you can get started for free on a platform like Blogger or the free version of WordPress. But the truth is that starting on a self-hosted blog is much better.

Related Articles:

With your own blog, you can monetize anyway you want, without anyone telling you that you can’t do something.

No you don’t have to spend a fortune on courses, in fact, I recommend that you don’t. It’s so easy for new bloggers to think if they buy this course or that course, they will see success.

This is known as shiny object syndrome and it’s so easy to get on that train and hard to get off. I rode that train for several years and finally found my way off of it.

There’s no magic bullet or magic course that will help you get overnight success. It’s okay to spend money on a course and do a deep dive on a specific subject you’re trying to learn about.

Just make sure that you’re taking action to complete and do everything that course teaches you.

The Fix: If you’re buying a bunch of courses or products because you think you’re missing something, STOP! I’ve purchased tons of courses and the one thing that I can tell you is that there is NO secret to blogging success.

You can create a successful blog if you have the right content, a monetization strategy, and traffic to your blog.

#11 You Haven’t Given It Time

No one wants to be told that they will have to work for free for 6-12 months or longer. I realize that some people have quick success, but that’s not the norm.

For most of us, it is going to take time to grow a blog and actually learn how to build your own little corner on the Internet. We end up working for free for a long time before we finally figure out what it actually takes.

Some of us tend to believe that blogging is dead and end up quitting in the first year or sooner. The truth is that most of us are looking for overnight results.

The Fix: Stop reading those income reports or doing those things that are making you feel discouraged. If you’ve chosen a niche that is actually profitable and you know how you want to make money, then keep your head down and keep writing.

If you do the right work today, just know that eventually you will see the results. Stop expecting overnight results, there’s nothing you can do to speed up the results.

Well there might be something you can do, but you don’t want to put your business at risk to do something shady.

Instead, focus on creating amazing content and if you’re doing your keyword research correctly. I have no doubt that you will start to see the fruits of your labor in the future.

Focus on what your blog is going to look like in the next 5-10 years. This is what is going to keep you motivated to keep going when you’re not getting any readers at the beginning stages.

Final Take Away

There are no tricks to increase blog traffic, at least none that I know of. I’m sure there are some ways to do it faster than what I’m doing like building backlinks.

However, I’ve stopped doing that and am just focusing on writing helpful content. I’d rather not put myself in a position where my site can get penalized when an algorithm update comes along. (I’ve had a blog penalized before and it isn’t fun)

If you focus on writing great content that answers people’s questions, you will start to see some results. If you want a closer look at what I’m doing to grow the traffic to this blog and my new blog, check out my JumpStart Blog Traffic ebook.

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What did you do when your blog had a dry spell? Are you still going through one? Let us know in the comments, I’d love to hear what you did that finally made the change for your blog.