NixOS Linux 17.03 Installation with KDE Plasma 5 on VMware Workstation

Heya! Today, I was going through Pinterest, and I saw a pin which led me to some questions on Quora (BTW, check out my profiles too! 😉) on which people were giving links in their questions and asking people what they thought was wrong about it because they weren't able to get visitors. I took a look at all of them, mine, and the blogs and websites of other successful people. There were many major differences, many that even I overlooked. I have fixed up my blog and today, I am writing this post so that you can do the same!

Take a look at this very special infographic I prepared for all of you. You can read it and understand the basic purpose of this post or you can also continue ahead after reading the infographic to understand every point better with extensive detail.

First of all, how did you feel about my infographic? Do you think that you can relate? No need to feel ashamed, these are some problems and mistakes that most bloggers commonly face when it comes to blogging and blog establishment.

MISTAKE #1 - Hobby vs. Business

If you really want results from your blog, whether it is to generate income, or if it is to spread a message, to gain popularity, or to do your part generously, no matter why you blog, what you blog about and what you expect from it all, you will not be getting any results at all if you treat this as a hobby. 

Many people have hobbies, they draw, the skate, they play, they design, they write, and some even blog. But the people who keep blogging as a hobby, do not expect results from it. If you are actually expecting something for it, then do it like a business. 

I want to share with you, my story, I am a student. Every day I felt bored in my spare time when I was done with my school work. I would even bug my parents by asking them what to do, in fact, I was even bugging myself out. I started to draw, then thought it was just waste of paper, neither is this going to ever come to use for me, nor do I really feel interested in it. In the same way, many hobbies came and went.

One day, I stumbled upon an article which was talking about ways a child can pass some time, sharpen some skills and maybe even profit out of it. There was a point about blogging which caught my eye since I love to write, share my views and actually help people. Plus, who doesn't like a little pocket money?

So I did a little research and started a blog. Frankly, it was lame. I started with Tumblr, then Zoho, then I came to Blogger. Even my first blog on Blogger was lame. I didn't even try to work on my previous ones though, but on Blogger, I had to experiment a little which was when I found my true calling. This! Now, this is my life goal, that I will be among the successful bloggers and will make a difference. First with this blog, then maybe some more.

Now, this was my story. Were you able to understand my point? My point was that the none of my hobbies lasted. I even treated a few of my first blogs like hobbies and they ended up like garbage. But in this one, I am adding effort and trying to work on this every day and I am seeing results. I have set goals and I have the enthusiasm to achieve them. So should you. Have enthusiasm and dig up those excuses and reasons to work on your blog. And treat it seriously. This can turn into something big for you if you try. 

Just like when people try to set up their own business, some of them are multi-millionaires! 

Blogging is no less than a start up business leading to something equally great, at least it can be if you think of it in such a way.

MISTAKE #2 - No Planning

I am sure that no matter what you have heard about blogging, you must've heard the phrase 'Time is Money'. Whether you apply this in your daily life, work or blogging, this policy is a hard core fact!

If you do not know how to manage your time, it can have a very bad effect on both you and your blog. You need to be consistent, timely and live up to your promises. The best thing is to prioritize, for example, if you are a 9 to 6 worker, then you can prioritize your extra work, family time, rest and blogging schedule accordingly. You can blog on the weekends or at night when you have some alone time. 

If you are a stay at home parent, then you can finish off your hard day of doing household chores, take care of your family and do the blogging once a week or twice if it deems fit for you. And if you are a student like me, you can go to school, play, do your homework and study. And if you have a few hours allowed to use your computer, then use them productively instead of Facebook and Whatsapp. 

Tip - Weekends are the best times for everyone to write, but the beginning of workdays like Monday or Tuesday are the best time to publish and socially share.

So, I hope you understood that I am trying to tell you that you need to work on a timetable. Not only to blog but as I stated in the tip, to socially share as well. This brings me to another point. You need to have a social standing on the internet. Work on some public profiles like on Pinterest and Quora. Also, try your best to maintain Twitter and Facebook profiles and pages too. You need to plan out some specific times to promise to deliver content to your viewers and also to be social.

You need to wisely manage your time to get the most out of both blogging, and your life. Include all the important stuff whhich you need to do first. And make sure that, if you want to get results, you include blogging too.

MISTAKE #3 - Do you even know what you're doing? 

What is your niche first of all? Are you someone who shares family pictures and tells people about the fun stuff you did or are you the type of blogger giving people knowledge about something? If you give out knowledge, give tips and tricks, give out advice, remedies, ideas or anything which is a part of a niche, then answer me this, 'how well and hard do your research before you write?'

Now, I know that many of you might already be very knowledgeable in your areas of expertise, but you guys and all the rest including me should never give out any information before cross checking the facts we might know, to make sure we are not giving out false knowledge. We don't want to be the cause of someone else's failure, right? Nor do we want to make a fool out of ourselves.

Imagine that a person very knowledgeable already or influential wanted to read what your blog has to offer. What if you have written some statements that the knowledgeable person knows is false. 

You don't want that person to laugh at you and your blog. What if multiple people figure out the same. It would ruin your chances of getting loyal readers and it would also ruin your reputation leaving your blog as a joke and afterward, no success in that field for you.

Along with gathering facts and information, it is much more important to be able to deliver a clear-cut answer to this, 'what is your blog for?'

Now, you might have an answer that is something like mine, which is 'my blog is to help people become better bloggers.' That is it. A clear cut answer. If you do not know what value your blog is providing to the society, or what problem it is solving, or what you are trying to promote, then quite frankly, you are just wasting a domain name that someone else might want.

Your answer could be something like, it is for "entertainment, education, safety, this product, that problem, our band, fashion opinions, promoting health", or at least something related. You need to know which purpose you serve so people know what to expect from you. 
You may also be a multi-niche blog, maybe like a news site or an 'I just wanted to share something new I learned' type of blog. But don't try to post things that are too random because it is much harder to attract audiences that way because people won't wait for months before you get back to a topic they liked, they'd rather visit sites that are primarily focused on that problem.

After reading this, I am sure that you understood the main things you should do and know. First of all, know your blogs basic purpose, what you are trying to do, how you are going to do it and makee sure that everything you write is right. No false information should be included. You can always chek the internet for corrrect answers.

MISTAKE #4 - SEO & Keywords

There is one major thing you need to take care of when it comes to attracting viewers. If you are newbies to this world then I will try to explain this to you as easily as possible. Where are people going to come to your blog from? Search Engines, right? Well, also from social media sources, but nobody will share on Facebook or Twitter unless they originally visit your site through a search engine.
And to be able to attract people to your blog, you need to be visible on search engines. Do you understand? Like, when you search something on Google, you are most likely to click the most relevant post or site on the 1st or 2nd page, and in the same way, everyone else does that too. This is where SEO comes in. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is when you make basic changes and follow certain steps to have a better standing on search engine pages. Here is a link which can help you understand a bit more about SEO and it should also give you a sneak peek about the topic 'keywords'.

Read - Guest Post - Beginners Guide to Seach Engine Optimization

Now we are going to talk about Keywords. Keywords are basically just words that get you traffic. What I mean by that is whenever someone makes a search on a search engine, the words they use like, "blogging, blogging tutorials, fashion, health, how to change a bulb" are keywords. And you have to use keywords while forming a post to drive more traffic to your blog. 

We recommend for you to use services like WebTextTool for playing around with SEO easily. It is a tested and recommended tool designed for all beginners.

How does using keywords help drive traffic? Well, that is because when you write a post, you include words, and if those words are used multiple times, it is more likely for a search engine to rank you higher than some other blogs and sites for the proper use of that word or phrase along with some rich, long and useful content. 

This is very important because this drives people to you search engines to your blog, which leads to more viewers, social shares, more viwers and eventually, a successful blog.

MISTAKE # 5 - Nothing Official

This mistake is very common. If you are creating a blog or a site and want to actually be able to reach people either for promoting products, sharing content, displaying and earning from ads, spreading a message for any of your own purposes, then remember this, people look for things with high authority. The officiality of your blog or site reels people in.

For example, when you go shopping, would you prefer to buy something that is branded and comes from people that know what they are doing or would you buy something that has come from a brand that is newly launched, doesn't have a name and people have barely heard about it? You would obviously choose the brand because you know and trust it's officiality and if the authority of the brand is great too, then it is always the ideal choice.

That is also kind of what happens when it comes to blogs and sites. Blogs that keep posting might be right and helpful, but many people do not feel comfortable unless you can prove the fact that you are right and you do know what you are doing. You can do that by creating an official image for yourself or for your blog. And how can you do that? Something that looks official is paperwork, but since you are an online blog and you are not going to be sticking your viewers with paperwork to drive them away, the closest thing to it which looks the most official is to have some important pages for your site along with a few extra important tools too.

You should always include an About Us page to share your story, your mission, why and how you can help, and everything you think you need to add because when people get to know your and your side of the story a little bit better they also feel comfortable.

A Privacy Policy page and Terms of Service page should also be added. This is because they can work for you in many ways. Like I have repeated many times under this topic, these pages give an official look, and if you carefully make them, it can prevent misuse of your blog and content. If someone does something bad and claims they didn't know about it, you can say that you already gave out the rules, warnings, and conditions, it is then the other person's fault for not reading them.

A Contact Us page is even more important than the others. You can add either a contact form or tell your viewers your email addresses and phone numbers for them to reach you. You need to have this page not just because of the official feel, it is because people feel that you want to listen. People can tell you their problems without letting other people know by commenting it on your blog, they can ask you something, and if you are really able to help them, then you may just get another real fan.

You can optionally even pages especially about the author and whatever roles you have divided in your blog, or pages specifically talking about a product, if you have any, and add as many pages that you think are important because people will also think you are organized.

This is a common mistake because people sometmes only focus on content, but people are sometimes scared to trust someone and what they advise. That is why you need the official look, give some backstories and show them that you know what you are doing to build trust.

MISTAKE #6 - Bad Posts

When I am talking about a bad post, I mean bad in any way possible. Whether it is in relation to looks, fonts, colors, keyword usage, SEO, images (low quality, no alt tags, etc.) or anything else. Let me explain in detail.

When you open up a post in any blog, you might be like me, scrolling up and down a bit to see how long the post is, how many images there are and sometimes, our attention even goes towards the looks of the post. By looks I mean, the font used and if it is readable or not, the font size because we do not want to squint to be able to read (the ideal font size is normal and large in blogger or 11-16px for text and 20-35px for headings), and even if colors are used, because colorful words are actually not that appealing unless it is kept near a dark gray or black shade. 

Alongside colors and fonts, images are a big part of posts. Visual information has been proven to have had a greater effect on the viewers' minds! For example, if you are reading this, then great, but you might not be able to remember everything that I am teaching you in this text, but you will surely be able to remember much more from the infographic itself. This is because images not only give briefs to understand topics, not necessarily but even long and large amounts of texts can also be remembered because, in images, the flashy content and vibrant colors and the charts and everything else works together perfectly and sets itself in one's mind for a long term. 

But images are for the appeal of viewers, getting back to SEO, as I've said before, you also need to make sure you are satisfying the search engines with your images. When robots are sent to read out your content, they can not actually view your images, that is why you need to tell them what the images are about by adding ALT tags to them. This will have a great overall impact on your blog.

Font and images are the major factors influencing a post, but what about the post itself? The content in the post is what all of this is actually about. Long content is great, but if it is all meaningless then there is no use of it. Short, understandable and readable content is also great, but details are important and the search engines are also in love with content that can perfectly explain topics. That is why you need to try to aim for content that is long, but also make sure that every line has value. 

Try using a common, every day, enthusiastic language to engage your viewers while being able to explain everything. The content should be long but the lines should try to be a little shorter and briefed. Ths is a little hard for any if trying to write short lines but in total, a lot of content, but keep practicing and you will get there, make sure to use a lot of punctuation too, to break content into understandable pieces. And everything should also be original and 100% you, meaning what you would say in real life.

Try to highlight important things with underlining, bold or italic text. And keep on providing links to different posts or different sites and examples and proof to support the rest of you content. To make your content look even more attractive, try adding multi-media, buttons and the most creative things you can think of. Ask every question you can think of and deliver answers to your viewers. 

All of this is not only important, but it is what every reader expects from you. So be sure to write content that is appealing in a way with elegant writing, understandable languages, clear images with ALT tags, and even so external and internal links to help out people even more.

MISTAKE #7 No Email Lists or Sign Up Forms

Just like a hunter that catches an animal, first, you have to lure in the animal and then trap it! What is the point of luring something in you are you are going to let it waltz right out? 

Now that is the reason you have to set up multiple ways for people to sign up for something on your blog so that you can keep on reminding them about yourself and your blog. When a visitor visits your site and likes your content, you should not just let them get what they need and leave because then, you are back from 1 to 0. 

You need them to sign up for something like an email subscription for new posts and updates, or for a newsletter subscription, or if you offer a different service or an online portal, then to sign up for the service. It should just be something that you can continuously remind them about. 

If you want to send emails about the new content that has been uploaded to your blog, then you can use Google's Feedburner.com, and then, if you're using Blogger.com, then you can use a blogger powered blog gadget for the email subscription which can be designed with CSS like the one I have on this blog. It is fairly easy and after the setup, all you have to do is publish more posts, and without even 2 seconds of an interval, the post update will be delivered to your subscribers out of which many might come back and visit your blog or maybe just read the post in the email itself.

Now is the time to talk about newsletters. If by chance you do not know what they are or what the difference between newsletters and post updates are, then let me tell you that newsletters are the extra content you write especially for your subscribers. This content is not taken from your posts and you have to write it separately. This can easily be one with the help of Mailchimp.com.
Many people have even found a way to profit out of this. You can charge for subscriptions, advertising inside the newsletters, include affiliate links, display special products to sell with a special coupon for just the subscribers and many more things according to the creativity you have. 

Read - HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH MAILCHIMP NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIPTIONS

The thing about newsletters is that you can make people feel special. You can offer them extra juicy stuff. And the thing is, it is much easier to write a newsletter email than actually writing a post. "How?" you might ask. That is because, when you write a post, you have to write a lot of content, fit in images, do hard research to keep filling in text, and you have to be extra professional, but luckily, when someone subscribes to your newsletter, you can welcome them in as family if you prefer to do so and you can talk a bit more comfortable with them. Talk short and simple, get straight to the point, maybe 1 or 2 images at max required and that is it. It would hardly take 5 to 10 minutes and that too once or twice in a week, and according to the email service provider, you can even add a beautiful template to your emails to look even more professional in maybe just 1 extra minute! Plus, no worrying about SEO, page rankings or any of that stuff because it is going to reach the same amount of people. All you have to do is email regularly and try to attract new subscribers.

So, the important thing to work on here is a way for interested fans to sign up for a service that is linked to your blog which keeps them entertained, reminds them continuously about your blog and build your base audience.

MISTAKE #8 - No Effort

Before I continue to say anything else, everything is the result of the effort you put in. So, now let's begin to discuss this part of the post. Whenever you create a blog, you need to make sure it is actually good, better yet great! You need to work on every aspect of your blog if you are expecting any result from it. As I have said before, this should not just be a hobby, it should be treated as a business, and as a part of your life. And, in businesses, you have to make sure that every part of the business simultaneously moves together like a smooth machine. 

If you are a guy with no skills but put in as much effort as you possibly can, then you will shortly begin to start seeing results, even as a beginner, but if you do not put any efforts or interest in the field and are still expecting some results like income or a huge fan base in a few days then that is impossible. I will explain what I mean here easily with an example.

Imagine that some guy or gal goes to Blogger.com and creates a blog and enters a goofy name and URL for the blog. Immediately, he/she publishes a post in a weird niche or in no niche and maybe just a bit about a boring day he/she had by copying the first few images he/she sees on Google and by using a weird, unprofessional language that only his/her friends could understand. Now, that person signs up with some ad network, surprisingly gets accepted, and displays the ads. He now publishes 1 or 2 posts in a month, using no professional template, SEO or anything that is important towards the growth of the blog just because of short-term laziness. 

Do you think he will see any results?

Of course, that person wouldn't see any result, because of many reasons. Firstly because he does not care to learn about the interests of the common viewers, because of not wanting to design the blog template in an appealing way for the visitors, for not trying to actually compete against others,and mainly because of just being in the business for income without wanting to put any effort in, to actually achieve anything.

It is not necessarily always about income, sometimes a person wants to get some kind of a personal achievement, get recognition, spread a message or anything they want to do, but the common mistake is that they do not even try to take out some time and energy to build something beautiful, instead they have high expectations without wanting to try to do anything.

By now I am sure that you understood the concept of this section. Now, let me tell you what exactly you need to do. By effort, I mean that you have to make sure that you have completed all the necessary steps for making an attractive blog.

I recommend that you work on your post writing technique. You short be resourceful, well researched, use evidence and examples, keep it limited to two or three easy font sizes like for normal text, and headings, and I would advise you to use the least amount of colored text as possible.
When it comes to putting effort into a blog, you need to do everything on your own or if you have a team, the even easier, distribute it all with them. But no matter who does what, everything should be your own. The images should be designed by you, the content should be 100% original, so you need to work hard on your writing and grammar skills too. You need to do formatting. You need to try your best to stick to the timetable. There are so many things that you need to take care of and let me tell you, this is not all just a piece of cake, definitely not!

Keep on working on simple improvements to your blog to give it a more comfortable feel to the viewer and keep on trying hard whenever you do anything on it. Hard work will give the best results.

So, overall this means that you need to continuously work that too, hard on your blog by making sure it is not lacking behind in any aspect especially if you are expecting any results.

MISTAKE #9 - No Knowledge

No knowledge? No point. Simple as that. You see, if you are writing a blog, plan to help someone, or try to inform someone about something, then you need to know how. Learn the basic protocols for the thing you do. 

Even this post, the one I am writing here, can help you gain more knowledge about blogging. That is exactly what you need to do. It is not really hard, just try and take out 5 to 10 minutes from your long day and sit back with a phone or laptop and browse a bit. 

Search for articles on how you can do better in blogging. How you can help others. What people like to see in a blog. Or try to search particularly about the niche of your blog, for example, if it is health related, then search about the latest healthy trends, in fashion, you can search for the latest designer dresses. Now matter what you niche is or what your searching about even, just keep on staying up to date on the topics you find necessary.

The best places to do this type of searching is in Quora, Pinterest, and Yahoo Answers because they are the biggest communities filled with people sharing their interests, problems and everything you can use to build up things on your end. 

How? This is because whenever people ask questions, you can find out what answers you should deliver on your blog and as a bonus, you can even answer their question and maybe give a link to your blog or a specific post you have written which will also benefit you.

If someone asks a question of which you don't know about, decide whether or not that the answer to that question can help you and if it can, gain that knowledge too.

On social networks like Pinterest, millions of people pin the things that they are interested about or something that they found useful. You can use this information to find out the interests of the common viewers and also try to figure out the thing that was so appealing about that certain post and then trust me, that knowledge can really help you especially if you are able to implement the same on your own. 

Whenever you are out and about on the internet, try to notice the small details. Whenever you might visit the blogs of successful bloggers, try to learn from them how they did so well. People like Niel Patel can surely help you out there too. Try asking the influential people what techniques they use, try asking for help from time to time, clear all you doubts and just keep on learning about the everything from the basics, gradually to the advanced stuff.

This means, in short, that you should be confident about what you ae doing, and to do that, you need to be sure. And again, to be sure, you need to know stuff, so keeplarning about everything that can be somehow useful in what you are doing.

MISTAKE #10 - No Style

If you read what I said in the Infographic for this last part of the post, then I am sure that you already understand what you need to do. If you work on a blog hosted by blogger.com, then I am sure that you have seen the very small amount of templates it offers, luckily a few more were added a while ago, but it still is not enough. The templates it offered before used to be so plain and simple that you would actually never go for it, and the end result would be like a 2 or 3-year-old's drawing, you know if they can hold colors or a pencil.

Now, what is your comment on this image a 3-year-old's drawing? sometimes, one's template can get as messy (no offense to the drawer though, it is great for one at such an age 😅). You have to make sure that the template you install, and the gadgets you use are not overkilled or even under-kill.
You need to make sure to use as many gadgets as necessary, the least number of ads possible. Completely avoid pop-up ads if you can and try going for a theme. Maybe a business theme, a crafty theme, a beautiful and colorful theme or whatever you want according to the niche your blog revolves around.

Firstly, you need to make a list by picking out the basic reasons why your blog might be avoided or unattractive including the basic things like the name and address of the blog, the colors, the posts, the templates and gadgets in them, too many ads, etc.

Make sure that you have chosen your primary colors. For example, mine are black (#000000) and Orange (#f88c00) and I know them so well them I have the color codes memorized! You can choose a single primary color, two or even three primary colors, but it is not recommended to choose more than 3.

Now, according to your primary colors, design or choose an excellent template from Blogger template providers if you have no experience in how to build one. You can check out my other blog, the one I am working on - Template Monstrosity. I currently have a limited catalog of templates, but you can check them out because I offer versions of the template with copyrights. Otherwise, you can check out other great template providers like Templatism, BTemplates, GoyaabiTemplates, etc.
After installing the templates, you can add extra widgets, change the links, and completely even personalize the template as much as your coding knowledge allows you to do!

Now, if you compare the before and after for your blog, you are surely going to love the 'after'. Now, let me tell you that the beauty and attractiveness of the blog or site does not lie just in the design, the elegance or the writing, the beauty of the text, the amazing content which can pull people in and not allow them to go before they reach the end, that is the beautiful part! Also, in relation to this entire section, let me remind you that you design something for others, you can not design it only keeping yourself in mind and since you are designing it for others, then you have to keep close tabs on the preferences of the specified audience.

So, finally, this part of the post was to tell you that in the blogging and site designing world, beauty does matter, both of the overall blog/site and of the content underneath it all.

So, that was a lot to take in, I guess. But I do hope that you implement these very important points because they are going to be the most helpful things in your entire blogging career which you may only actually be able to build up with them.

Well, that was a lot of typing for today, tell me how this post helped you out and stay tuned for even more awesome posts that you will not want to miss! TTYL!