Blogger Rookie Mistake #1: Falling for Flattery
A good majority of cold-pitches you will receive will have some form of "I love your blog" nonsense contained within the opening paragraph. Don't buy into it. They didn't read your blog, and they didn't read anyone else's either. To them, you are just another email that might actually post something for free if they can trick you into believing that they love your work. We all want to be people-pleasers and make friendly with the people who claim to "love" us and our writing, but trust me, these aren't the type of folks you want to bend over backwards for.Blogger Rookie Mistake #2: Thinking Free Posts Will Bring You Readers
Look, if posting a bunch of pre-written nonsense for free could bring you a high-level readership, PR agencies would be making US pay THEM. But that isn't how it works. Sooner or later you're going to hear "Our company was recently written about by <Insert Name of Famous Publisher Here>!!!" What they want you to think is that this subject is hot news and you should be posting it to attract readers, but what you should be thinking is that if the random Googler searches for this company, guess who is going to pop up in the top of the search engine? That's right. It's not you, it's Mr. Big-Time-Publisher. The only thing you're going to earn by posting freebie content is a few readers that are wondering why you're posting junk they couldn't give two figs about.Blogger Rookie Mistake #3: Posting a Press Release Without Thinking it Over
Press Releases are bad news for bloggers all around. First off, if Google sees you (and a ton of other bloggers) posting the SAME duplicate content over and over they are going to penalize you because it goes against their duplicate content rules. Lots of publishers don't realize that duplicate content (like press releases and giveaways) need to be NO-INDEXED so that the Google bots don't consider their site to be spam. And because everyone makes these rookie mistakes in the beginning, guess what? There could be hundreds of bloggers that accidentally posted the SAME press release without no-indexing, and that puts YOU at risk if you posted it with a no-index as well! To top it off, most of these press releases contain links that aren't coded with the "rel=nofollow", and that means that Google can further ding your site - or even remove you from Google's search results altogether!!Blogger Rookie Mistake #4: Working With Companies That Don't Live In Your Country
This is a tricky one. There are lots of legitimate companies out there who pitch every day to bloggers who don't live within their country. And if you accept a job with an overseas company, or even one that lives in the next country over, it can go great. But what about the times it doesn't go great? Unfortunately, there is little-to-no recourse available to you (or your readers) if it turns out the company is shady. An additional point to think about is that there's also a good chance that Google is not the search-engine-of-choice for the country of the company that is pitching to you. And that leads to repeated requests for those illegitimate DO-follow links that Google will penalize you for. The company pitching to you likely won't care about Google's rules because they want high rankings from a different search engine, like Baidu or Yahoo. If you're a blogger that wants those Google rankings though, tread carefully. And if you don't include those do-follow links after they've asked you to, there is a good chance they will choose to deny payment, put in a complaint via PayPal to get their money back, or even charge YOU for the review product if do-follow links aren't received. (If you really think that a job is too good to pass up, type in the company name along with the word "scam" in a search engine to see if you can find a red flag.)
Blogger Rookie Mistake #5: Working For Peanuts. (Or Less Than Peanuts.)
Remember that one time when you went to the doctor and were seen for ZERO dollars? Or the time your lawyer won you a case and charged you ZERO dollars? What? That never happened?!? Perhaps it is because people don't work for ZERO dollars. When you're just starting out as a blogger, just getting noticed can seem like a treat. I remember thinking, "Oh wow, this agency found and picked ME!" Earth to Self: They didn't pick you. They emailed hundreds (maybe thousands) of bloggers and laughed at the ones that were suckers enough to work for free or next-to-free. Unless you are the World's-Fastest-Reviewer-And-Writer, you need to figure out how many hours it takes you to complete a post and then follow-up any requests with a counter-offer that reflects a decent wage for your expertise level.
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