The Biggest Beginner Blogger mistake and how to Fix it
Blogging can be long, hard and sweaty.
Long hours doing research, writing content and formatting it to perfection can really take a toll on you
This is so especially when you’re starting out and don’t have a team.
On top of that you have to build an email list and keep them engaged. Not to leave out promoting and being active on social media.
If you're more established, even keeping up with your content calendar and managing your team can feel like chaos. It can turn into a hot mess really quickly!
When you hear you must invest in your business to grow, what comes to mind?
Money ofcourse. Purchasing a theme, plugins, graphics, tailwind for Pinterest.
While these are essentials, there’s one angle most beginner bloggers miss entirely.
And that is paying for things that save you time and stress
They miss out and skimp on the one thing that may uplift their business the fastest.
And that is their website
Don’t believe me? Google Page Speed Insights Industry Benchmarks reveals that a website’s bounce rate wildly increases every second longer your website takes to load.
Having a slow website could be small hinge that swings that big door in your business
And its something the pros know very well never miss!
You may ask how does this affect me.
Very well
Here are the cons of a slow website
Bonus: Download your "No Fail Blog Startup Checklist" to make sure your blog succeeds today!
The cons of a slow website
High bounce rate sends negative seo signals to search engines
Google is getting smarter. Not only do they rank the best quality and freshest content, they rank based on your website speed too. It's part of the user experience.
If many visitors are coming and bouncing from your site, it simply implies that your content isn't relevant or viewers don't enjoy what they see. And your rankings will suffer
Less Revenue
Money loves speed. Attention is becoming harder to grab and keep.
People simply don't wait for your page to load because they have options.
With the hottest news, Facebook cat videos, celebrity gossip battling for their attention, they'll gladly close that tab and never come back
Backlinko conducted a recent study that showed over one million search engine results and found that the #1 common factor between top sites was the website speed
Also Google's new page speed insights benchmarks further proves this. They found as the load times goes up the bounce rate does on average
Bonus: Download your "No Fail Blog Startup Checklist" to make sure your blog succeeds today!
Factors Affecting Website Speed
Number of http requests
Imagine a swimming pool party. A lot of friends are partying and having a good time.
They're all in there and its packed. You have to carefully tiptoe and struggle to get a spot that isn't occupied
When your website loads many installed plugins and scripts have to talk to each other
The high number of http requests can dramatically increase your website load time and slow it down
This is typically solved by reducing the number of plugins used to a minimum and what's necessary
Size of files loading on the page
You put a lot of effort into your blog content. You took hours and even days carefully selecting the perfect theme even purchased quality images or took them yourself for your posts
But here's one thing you never consider that's hugely important, your page size. All that fancy stuff adds weight to your website and your pages take longer to load.
You need to ensure you use a theme that's light, cleanly coded and optimized and a plugin to compress your images as you upload them
No CDN
I know a content delivery network sounds fancy. Think of it as roller skates for your website
People from around the world visit your website. Depending on where they're from, it doesn't load as quickly.
A CDN preloads your images and heavier files in their location to smoothen this speed difference out. I recommend BunnyCDN.
Poor quality web hosting
The grand daddy of factors and mistakes that bloggers make is using poor quality web hosting
It's like having high end furniture in a straw house or wearing an Armani suit with flip flops on a date
It just doesn't cut it.
None of the previous points will help if you're using dial-up, Flintstones hosting
Personally I've tried them all: Namecheap, Bluehost, Siteground, A2hosting, Network Solutions and a few lesser know options. While Siteground and A2 are may be just above average, the real devil is using shared hosting
Just imagine from the previous example a swimming pool of friends and everyone farted in it.
With Cloud Hosting or a Virtual Private Server (VPS) you own your dedicated resources with much better performance.
Your own fresh and clean swimming pool
I've tried a few of them as well. My recommended provider is Cloudways
Why Cloudways for new & Experienced Bloggers
Ability to create new websites without a domain
One of the more fun things about this service is that you can quickly create a new wordpress website (application) in just a few clicks and use the server IP as a custom URL.
The staging feature allows you to make changes to your website and test them before pushing to your live install.
This comes in really handy if you want to test a new plugin or update your high traffic site and would lose money if it went down for even a few minutes
Cloudways CDN
They also have their CDN for $1 per month which is quite affordable if you're looking for that extra umph in performance
Budget friendly
Their minimum package as of writing this is $10 per month. For all the perks that you get it is well worth it.
And if you're starting out or just think that this is too expensive, think of how much money you're losing when even one potential buyers gets impatient and runs into the
arms of your competition.
Plus shared hosting rates are disguised cheaply to reel you in. These are around the normal renewal rate anyway. For example Siteground's Growbig and Gogeek package renews at 19.95 and 34.95 respectively.
And the performance and overall comparison between the two services isn't even close!
With that said, here's how you get started on Cloudways
How to Get Started with Cloudways
Visit the following link: https:craigehardel.com/cloudways.
(Disclosure: this is an affiliate link. If you choose to buy through my link, I will get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you so much for the support if you choose to).
Free: BONUS
To get you to take action and actually start your website, when you use my referral link above to get your new hosting account and email your receipt to ([email protected]) I will send you a free 52-page training tutorial to help you get more done and be happier. After you sign up, it’s pretty simple to get your website up and running, and you can do it in under 5 minutes. Here’s how with below.
Step #1: Create account and enter coupon upon signup
Step #2: Activate your Cloudways account via email
Step #3: Verify your account via SMS or Call
Step #4: Choose your WordPress application and server
Step #5: Select Launch now at the bottom of the page (process takes around 5-7 minutes)
Your first migration is free so reach out to support for it
If you prefer to do things on your own they have a Cloudways Migrator plugin you can install on your website and migrate it yourself
Enter your Cloudways app details in here into the plugin settings for the transfer
When you’ve confirmed your new migration works well go ahead and point your DNS over to Cloudways
Step #6: Add your SSL certificate
If you’re having any problems along the way, just reach out to `support. They’re extremely helpful
Conclusion
Whether you blog professionally or simply use your website to attract business, speed and performance is ever so important.
The biggest mistake I see new bloggers and website owners make is being cheap on hosting and skimping on quality. The money is nothing compared to the time savings and less stress you'll gain and put into your business
For 5 years I was one of them and don't want you to be. Especially when your livelihood depends on it
