Make Money Blogging: Why a Self-Review will Help
We’ve been talking a lot about how to make money blogging, and one of things I’ve stressed, along with creating great content, is that the overall look of your blog needs to be professional. So what does that mean?
Obviously, professional can mean different things to different people, but there are some common things that everyone can agree on. If you want brands to take you seriously, you need to present a certain look that will make them trust you. In addition, your readers will appreciate a fast, pretty, and easy to read website. It will improve your traffic, your bounce rate, and, in the end, your revenue.
I suggest that you do a self review of your blog to make sure that you have that professional look. You can also have a friend or another blogger take a look and give you an honest opinion (more on that below). Here are some steps you can take to do a review of your blog and increase your opportunities to make money blogging.
Overall Look
Go to your home page. Take an objective, critical look at your page. Put aside your love of bright pink and purple, fancy fonts, and flashing badges on your sidebar. What do you see? How do you think your readers see it?
Is it Clean? What does that mean? To me it means plenty of open space, white preferably, that is easy to read and to navigate. The background color, if any, should be light and pleasing to the eye. If you use a background image, it should not distract from the readers experience (skip the chevron or polka dots). Think twice about have ads running in the background. As a reader I hate really dislike this. It’s annoying, and, I think, downright ugly. Your color scheme should also be attractive. Too many varied colors is distracting.
Check your sidebar. Is it cluttered? If you’re like me, your sidebar starts to get pretty full, with ads, badges, pictures, etc. First take a look for anything that is outdated. Still have that coupon code from a year ago? Get rid of it. Everything that you do allow in your sidebar should be up-to-date and attractive. A pet peeve of mine is when items in the sidebar aren’t aligned. Does it look jagged? Does it overflow onto your post? Clean it up!
Is it Fast? When you open up your blog page, it should snap open. A study from 2008 showed that a website should open in three seconds or it will lose customers. While you may not be selling anything, the point is that blog readers have certain expectations of speed when it comes to the internet. There is nothing more frustrating to readers than to have to sit and wait for those beautiful extra large pictures to appear.
Is it easy to navigate? Your navigation buttons should be easily visible as soon as your page opens. The names of your pages should be logical and easy to figure out. A search bar is an important tool for your followers, so it should be easy to find.
Is it easy to share? Sharing buttons are one of the most important tools that you can use to increase your readership and grow your blog. At the minimum, you should have buttons for all the major social media sites at the bottom of each post. You can also add them on the side (but more about that below when we talk about mobile), and at the top of each post. One of my favorite sharing tools is Click to Tweet, which you can personalize and place within your post to make it easy for your readers to share exactly what you want them to say.
Are you easy to follow? Your Follow Me buttons should be right at the top, either in your header (or above it), or at the top of your sidebar. Make it easy to follow you! Your Subscribe form should also be right near the top, either in your sidebar or at the very top of your page. Be careful about popups. I personally hate them, even though I have one. I do have it set that it only pops up once, and won’t come back for the same reader for about a week.
Now Take a Look at Each Post
Are there mistakes? There are several things you need to do before you hit publish. The first is proofread. The second is proofread. And probably, the third is proofread. You should read your post over at least three times for: misspellings, grammar mistakes, broken links, general flow. If you have someone else that you trust, have them read your post too. My point is, if you want to look professional you need to be professional. No typos or grammar mistakes, links that work, and words that flow. I think that I’ve made myself clear (and I really hope that I have no typos, grammar mistakes, or broken links in this post!).
I understand that mistakes will slip through. I’m a pretty good proofreader, but I’ll read an old post once in a while and be shocked to find a huge typo that somehow slipped by me long ago. You can only do your best, but your best really needs to be your best. Here are a few common spelling and grammar mistakes. Make sure you’re not making them.
Check your fonts and justification. Writing that is left justified (ragged right), not centered or full, makes for much more natural and comfortable reading. The font should be a large enough size that readers can see it without grabbing their glasses, and the typeface itself should be an easy to read font. Save the fancy stuff for your pinnable images. Think about the color as well. Light colors are difficult to read.
Ads mid-content? This is something that seems to becoming more popular: ads directly in the middle of the post. I’d advise you to think twice about this, especially if you’re using Google ads or others that have varying content. As an example, yesterday I was reading a lovely freelance article by one of my favorite authors. It was about losing her father and sharing that loss with her family. The ads that were placed within the content were for Gymboree. I’m sure they were random, as they are different today when I checked back, but you see my point. Do you want your heartfelt writing disturbed by an ad for panty liners?
Readers love photos! Pictures definitely make a blog post look both professional and reader friendly. Depending upon your topic, you should have several large, good quality photographs within your post. Remember, as mentioned above, that large pictures can slow down your site, so make sure to edit them before uploading (not to mention that they can take up tons of space on your server). There are lots of free and inexpensive options for photo editing. I use both Picmonkey and Canva a lot.
The Mobile View
Finally, take a look at your blog on a mobile device. By checking my own analytics, I found out that almost half of my readers use a mobile device for reading my blog. That means that it had better be mobile friendly or they won’t stay around long. In addition to that, Google now uses mobile-friendliness in its rankings, so that is another reason to make sure that your site looks good on mobile devices. Not sure? Check here.
Don’t take that for granted though. First take out your phone and navigate to your site. How does it look? If it is mobile friendly, everything should fit properly on the screen, with no overlapping photos or ads. There may be a menu tab for navigating, or your regular navigation buttons might just be reduced in size. Because of the small screen size, your sidebar contents will probably be at the bottom of the page, below your blog posts. Sometimes they may not be displayed at all, depending on your blog theme or the plugin that you use. All in all, your page should be easy to read and navigate.
Don’t stop there. Now pick up your iPad or tablet (or borrow one for testing purposes) and open up your blog. How does it look there? It still should be easy to read, in a mobile-type format. If it is, you’re done. If not, read on.
I’ll use two of my favorite blogs as examples. They both look great on my phone. However, I read and comment on a lot of blogs from my iPad. And both of these blogs drive me crazy. On the first, both left and right sidebars are right alongside the post. On my small screen, that means various ads poke out from the sides, blocking the words. If I scroll up, the ads scroll too, so I can’t read what is written.
On the other, the font is so small and light that I simply can’t read it without pinching it larger. When I do that though, I have to scroll from side to side to read the text. That is annoying (and if I didn’t love that blogger I probably wouldn’t bother).
One of my current pet peeves has to do with the popularity of sharing buttons that are on the left side of a post and scroll up and down as one reads. I mentioned above that you want to make it easy to share, and that is true. But these particular buttons cover up a few letters of text on the left side of the page on my tablet. In order to read them, I have to scroll them up a little, then continue to do that as I read down the page. Hugely annoying. I actually removed mine because an honest reader brought this to my attention.
For any of the above instances, I can (and do) put my mobile browser in reader mode. I just don’t think I should have to. I know that I want my blog to be easily readable on any mobile device without my reader having to make accommodations. They will have a better reading experience, stay around longer, and come back more frequently.
Blog Review Linkup?
When Jill Conyers and I were at Blogfest, we discussed starting a linkup for bloggers who wanted to participate in peer reviews. These would be honest but postive reviews that would allow us to get objective opinions about the look and feel of our blogs. If this is something you’re interested in, please say so in the comments, and stay tuned as we figure out how this can best be completed.
What is your biggest blog reading pet peeve? Do you usually read blogs on a desk or laptop, or on a mobile device? Do you have a suggestion to add to the self-review? Do you disagree about any of my points? Did you find any typos?
My weekly linkups! Please stop by and check out all of the great recipes, workouts, and information that all these awesome bloggers share every week!
Meatless Monday with Tina and Deborah
Meatless Monday with Annmarie
Inspire Me Monday with Janice
Anything Goes with Marilyn
Bonnie, the Pin Junkie
Tip Tuesday with Debbie in Shape
Wild Workout Wednesday with Annmarie, Michelle, Sarah, and Angelena Marie
Wednesday Wisdom with Nanna’s Wisdom
The Blog Booster Party with Kathleen
Friday Fitness with Jill
You are on fire with these blog tips. I can’t stand slow sites and pretty much will not comment or pin ( my big social media platform) from site that take too long to load. I feel that might be one of the best tips you give someone… check you speed.
I agree! Though I did recently switch to Chrome instead of Firefox and I’ve found that some of the problem was my browser. Everything is much faster, but still. slow sites drive me crazy!
I definitely have some things on my blog I would like to update/take care of and I am currently going through a huge blog audit to clean up everything BEHIND closed doors (yipes, who would have thought!)… But I am really thinking I need a site design again, it’s been awhile!
I always tend to get tired of my blog design after a year ago, but this last time I just changed a few thing around and it felt fresh, pretty, and it was a lot less expensive 🙂
Again great tips, Debbie.
Thanks a lot for sharing them at #TipTuesday.
Thank you Debbie. Thanks for hosting the linkup.
All great tips! I learned pretty early on what set apart a ‘good’ blog from a ‘bad’ one. I basically just looked at the blogs of the women who were doing really, really well in the field and tried to find what they had in common. What they had in common was all of the tips you gave here!
Thanks Erica. That was a smart way to do things. I started out with a brightly colored Blogger blog. It took me a while to learn 🙂
This is a wonderful resource and I plan on sharing all these ways to self review. Keeping my sidebar clean is such a task sometimes!
Thank you. As you can see, I have the same trouble with my sidebar 🙂
I have thought about having someone do a review of my site for me. I am not sure a self review would help me because I love things they way they are.
I actually have your blog page open right now on my iPad. It looks good. The print is a little small, but I can increase it without having to do the scroll thing :-). It is hard sometimes to be objective about the things we love,
Great advice, especially important now more than ever to make sure that your site is optimized for mobile devices.
That’s true. I find it interesting that just because it looks good on a phone doesn’t mean it looks good on a tablet.
Can I just tell you how much I love you and this post? As always, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I just spent last weekend cleaning up my sidebar. I added click to follow buttons–initially, I had the floating ones, but after playing with them, I decided I didn’t like them! I don’t have ads because the popups that so many people have are not only annoying, they slow my computer down. Finally, small print really bugs me. Being of a certain age, it’s annoying that I can’t always read those posts without my glasses. I put up with it most of the time, because I like the blogs, but if it’s a site I don’t normally follow, I don’t bother.
I’d love to participate in a peer review. I’m all about quality.
Thank you. I think it’s a good idea to remember the things that annoy you the most when you plan your blog. If more people did that there’d be a lot fewer pop ups and ads :-).
My blog needs a total over haul, It’s been the same since 3 years ago when I created it. This time I think I’m going to hire a company I need more useful SEO and link- features. Plus more pretty less bland!
It’s smart to hire someone who knows what they’re doing (unless you’re a crazy experimenter like me 🙂 ).
I love these tips for a self review I think it’s so important! Saving this for later!
xo Bree
http://bree-west.com
Thanks! I’m glad it’s useful for you.
Jen (Pretty little Grub) and I were also discussing doing a blog review group. I would like to get a redesign done first, but then I’m totally in!
I think it would be fun and helpful to do it.
I agree with all of your tips. I find bold backgrounds to be difficult to read through. And ads in the background?! The worst. Ads in general, can be very , very annoying. I love clean sites with beautiful pictures. The pictures keep me interested. I will say that 10 shots of the same thing from different angles isn’t ideal. 3-4 beautiful pictures is more than enough.
I wanted to let you know that one of your sidebar ads is horizontal and it widens out your whole sidebar. Just sharing in case it’s in error!
See! That’s why it’s good to have someone else check too! I don’t even see that on my computer. Which ad is it? Thanks for telling me. It’s already past time to clean it up anyway (I said it gets cluttered!).
It looks like it’s been fixed! Perhaps it was an error with my browser?
I don’t know! I hadn’t done anything to fix it. I try to keep my ads and other things fairly consistent in size and centered (though I know I have too many right now).
Excellent tips! It’s easy to let the blog housework fall by the wayside. As for ads in posts, I get really annoyed with those especially the ones that popup full page as you’re reading the post. I try to be smart about placing my ads and keep in mind the user experience.
Thank you. I agree that it’s wise to remember the things that bother us about other blogs when we’re designing our own. I’m sure there wouldn’t be so many popups if everybody did that. Or video ads that start making noise when you open the page (hate those!!!).
These are great tips. We need to do a self review on our website.
I think everybody should do one from time to time. Things get cluttered over time (I know my blog does!).
These are some great tips. Every few weeks I try to clean up my sidebar, double check plugins and the speed of my site. I use to have a very cluttered site years ago and now I keep it to the bare minimum.
Good for you! I have a hard time keeping my sidebar clean (as you can see 🙂 ), but I try to to keep the rest of my site pretty neat. It looks so much better!
These are all really great tips! :] I definitely need to do a self-review of my blog sometime soon! (It’ll likely have to wait til applications/interviews/all that goodness are over though!)
I know. There are only so many hours in the day :-).
GREAT INFORMATION!! Thank you! This is a like a self guided course on how to improve your blog.
Thank you! I’m glad you find it helpful!
I would definitely be interested in peer reviews Deb. I look at my website and think it ticks all the boxes you mention but sometimes another eye (maybe you?) can see things clearer. Thanks for another great post in this series on blogging and sharing with us at #WednesdaysWisdom.
I think your blog looks good! It loaded quickly, it’s pretty clean. Maybe too much stuff in the sidebars, but who am I to talk? It looked good on the iPad too. I prefer white as the background, but that’s just me.
I read blogs on my phone, on my Ipad, & on the desktop.
Those share bars that cover the text are really, really annoying.
I probably read about 3 or 4 today that had those share bars. They really are annoying.
Great post… it really helped me to look at my blog constructively. I am trying to decide between keeping my current theme (which I love but doesn’t have a sidebar) to switching to a theme with a sidebar for my readers… I can’t decide if the sidebar is functional enough to warrant a change or if I’m just making excuses because I love my current theme! Haha! I’m going to ask some blog friends to take a look keeping in mind your tips.
I’ve been waiting to reply until I had a chance to look at your blog on my laptop. It looks great on my iPad. On my computer it feels like a lot of wasted space on the left side (I’ve changed my theme a couple time because I like a wide screen look). Plus, if someone comes straight to your blog post (instead of your home page), they don’t see your share buttons or your subscribe form, so you could be missing out on followers.
Thanks for taking a look Debbie! I’ve come to the same conclusion… as much as I love my current theme it’s got to go. I’ve started looking around and will hopefully make the switch soon… it’ll be interesting. I’ve had the same theme for my whole first year of blogging so I’ve never had to switch before! Or shop for a theme for that matter… the one I have is a free version I picked when I started on wordpress.com!
I had a free theme too for my first few years. Fortunately, themes aren’t that expensive.The hard part is, once you decide to buy one there are so many choices. I found a blog that I liked the look of and got the same theme.
I’ve really been enjoying these tips you’ve been posting the last few weeks. I am always interested in how to improve my blog. I did the mobile test and it’s good thanks! I would certainly be interested in peer review if you organize it please let me know. Thanks!
I will let you know. I think it would be fun and very helpful. Sometimes it’s hard to look at your own blog and be objective.
Great tips that everyone can find something useful and relevant to their blog from! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Thank you. It never hurts to take an objective look at our own work.
Excellent tips! I keep all of these in mind when designing new sites. My biggest pet peeve is when a site is very slow to launch, and it is usually due to all of the ads and videos that are sitting in the right hand column of a person’s site.
Guilty! I have this tendency to stack my sidebar, then I get disgusted with it and empty it out. Only to start the process over again.
It is always good to review. I learned long ago not to follow the trends and remember why I blog.
Good for you. That’s what is important.
I love all your tips! I find I’m constantly wanting to change themes, but I keep trying to put it off.
Sometimes you can make tweaks to your current theme, then it feels fresh and new. I’ve moved my sidebar around, changed theme colors, and done a few other things. I actually love my theme, but I think it’s normal to get a little bored with it after a while.
First off, great article, I agree with all points! I need to know what sharing tool is best, has nice looking buttons and is free. What do you advise? Also, really interested in a peer review link up, sounds like lots of fun! Thanks for sharing all your knowledge, really appreciate it!!
Thank you. I’ve switched around with my share buttons, but I’m currently using Shareaholic. They are free, and you can customize to a certain extent. I actually just got an email from them that you can even change the colors of the buttons, but I haven’t done anything with that yet. I put them at the top and bottom of my posts. As I said in my post, I avoid the side buttons because they’re so annoying on my iPad.
Whether you’re blogging to make money or not, these are awesome tips for bloggers. Everyone should do this regardless. It makes your readers enjoy your blog more.
I agree. Making money is fine if that’s what you want, but I think that everyone wants more readers.
((((uh oh))))
runs to self-check on ipad.
Lol. Your blog looks fine on my iPad. It’s one of the ones I read very early in the morning. 🙂
Although now that I think about it, you used to have those side buttons. They’re gone now :-).
I feel the same way you do about the sliding share buttons on the side bar. I’m not really a fan of those at all!
They are annoying. I really don’t even like them on a regular computer but at least they don’t block my view.
great tips on how to self review our blogs…by the way your blog looked so nice 🙂
Thank you! I acknowledge that I am a sidebar stuffer. I’m trying to work on it :-).
I love the idea of a link up! It’s hard to make the time to do this regularly, but so important. I think the feedback would be especially useful – sometimes it’s hard to take an objective look or see things that could be better – it’s like you get used to seeing it and the areas for improvement no longer stand out as much.
I think a linkup will be fun and good for all of us. It is hard to be objective about your own blog. Yours looks great by the way. The pictures are so much better than they used to be (I didn’t mean that as a back-handed compliment…they just really look great now).
LOL! I really appreciate it. I started actually editing them, though I still can’t convince myself to do more than an iPhone pic.
I really love these tips, last week my friend asking how to improve her blog and this ist, this is the answer for her question. I pass this to her
Thank you! Even more experienced bloggers need to keep an eye on the look of their blog (me included!).
Such great tips. I definitely need to clean up my sidebar. I’m also working on a new header, and thinking of getting rid of the green background for something more clean and soothing. Thank you for all the help for us new bloggers.
I just took a peek (and read about your boys <3 ). Your site looks great on my iPad. Yes the sidebar is a little messy, but who am I to talk?
Thank you for these wonderful tips. I love reading blogposts and leaving comments, but I just don’t have the patience to wait for sites that takes eons to load.
Slow sites are such an annoyance. Since I published this post I’ve gone back and removed a couple of my slow-loading ads. Taking my own advice :-).
These are indeed great tips for old and new bloggers. I think it is a great idea for bloggers to check each others blogs out and give their honest opinions about each others blogs. Blogging is like an amazing community which I hope to be a part of very soon. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you found the information helpful.
You always have so many great tips regarding blogging and how to better ourselves, many thanks for sharing!
Why thank you Adriana! I’m glad you find them helpful.
This is super helpful. I keep meaning to set aside time to really spruce up my blog!
I understand how challenging it can be to find time, but it is worth it in the long run.
This is great info for people starting our, and those of us the ate fully and need to do some clean ups 🙂
You’re welcome. I’m glad you find it helpful.
I’ve been blogging since 2011, and I still make changes and improvements all the time! Blogging really is something you are constantly changing for better! There is a lot to it!
That’s good. I’ve been blogging for a long time too. I do get in ruts sometimes, but I tend to refresh my blog fairly often simply because I get tired of looking at it 🙂
These are all great to do! I just recently went to a WordPress weekend seminar and need to work on polishing up everything you mentioned here already!
Ooh, a WordPress seminar would be fun! Though probably completely over my head! 🙂
I think I agree with every single one of these tips, Debbie! I am also guilty of a couple of them, but they are on the list to be corrected. I am definitely interested in the peer blog review; I plan to completely rework my site in September from the ground up! #TipTuesday
I will certainly make an announcement when we’re ready for that peer review. Good luck on your re-working!
Great tips…some of which I really need to check on, on my blog! 😉
Thanks! I’m glad you found them helpful.
These are all great advices! I do this self-review from time to time, even now I am in a rebranding and “declutering” proces.
Regards,
Sinziana
That’s good! It’s really important during rebranding since you want to present a new clean look.
So important to double check yourself and give your own critique. Improvement starts with yourself!
This is a fantastic post! I particularly like the tips of reviewing older content. I went back and reviewed some of my first posts and realized there were a lot of formatting errors. I also love the idea of a linkup!
It’s hard to take the time sometimes to go back because who actually has extra time. I fix things up as I bump into them, so to speak.
Excellent tips!! I learnt a few new points to keep my blog clean. Bookmarking your page as well 🙂
Thank you Vidya. I’m glad you found it useful.
Thanks for the practical tips. I just removed an out of date banner from my sidebar before I read this. LOL. I have got plenty of other things to do though.
Bringing practical helps to Fridays Blog Booster Party #10 is what we love.
Kathleen
You’re welcome! It’s an ongoing process to keep a blog looking good.
I love trying to look at my blog from another reader’s eyes. You are so right – it can give you great insight and make you think!
It’s hard sometimes to be objective. Obviously we love our blog and how it looks, so it is hard to see it through the eyes of a random visitor.
These are some great tips that every blogger should know. The overall look of your homepage always plays a major role as that is the area which decides if your visitor is going to stay & visit more pages or just close & move on. And I agree easy sharing options are so important as well.
I get frustrated with bloggers that don’t have sharing or follow options. Don’t they want their stuff shared?
I always forget the sidebar. Then like you said, it gets cluttered or worse outdated. Yikes.
My sidebar is my downfall. {Sigh}
Great tips Debbie. Seriously some of the more original and interesting I’ve encountered and I write for a Monetization blog myself. One thing I would add is if you want to look professional back yourself up with data. What I mean is if you find yourself discussing a topic show data that supports it.
Thanks Jason, it means a lot to me coming from you. As far as data, it happens a lot in the blogging world. I see it in fitness blogs (which is my real niche 🙂 ). Bloggers present themselves as experts but don’t present the data to back themselves up.
I am absolutely interested in a blog peer review. I’ve been thinking about asking someone to do one for a while. I’m also not a fan of ads mid post, they are extremely distracting!!
Sometimes those ads like like they’re part of the text. I’m always like, ..what?
Some great tips; thanks for taking time to share them. This could make a great check list for reviewing another’s blog as well!
Thank you very much for joining Tip Tuesday Link Party.
It is a pleasure for me to inform you that your blog was the most clicked last week and that you will be featured next time!
Congrats, Debbie!!!
Thank you for these great tips. I know that mine is in big need of an overhaul. It’s still just what I have put together and learned over the last year. At this point, I’m ready to invest in a designer, but haven’t commited because I haven’t prepared all the components I want and need! This has truly helped me think through several of those! I’m so glad I found you on the #SitsSaturdaySharefest!
Blessings and smiles,
Lori
I love this post! I do this about ever other month or so in conjunction with submitting my blog for a peer review in a few Facebook groups. And about every six months I try to take the By Regina 30 Day Creative Business Cleanse challenge.
Thanks so much for sharing this!
– E
http://www.eae-design.com/
Great tips. I, too, am very annoyed by the left hand page social sharing buttons that cover some of the text. It drives me CRAZY! I did Elite Blog Academy where we reviewed each other’s blogs using many of the tips you posted and it was very helpful! I think this is an ongoing task- every six months or so- clean up and keep it looking good!
Super tips! Thank you! I’m the worst at proofreading. I know I know.. Always in a hurry!! I do find that if the commenting isn’t user friendly on a blog I tend to move on. Do you think that a hot pink background is a bad idea if the actual written content is white?
Wow, there are a lot of comments on this post. I kept scrolling and scrolling… Good thing, right?
Hi, Debbie. My first thought upon reading this is it would make a great checklist as a free download. It also might be helpful for your Linkup party. Actually, a Google Doc. might be helpful for that so your participants can then share their thoughts with others. BTW, I’d be interested in joining you ladies. ^_^
I’m another one who is annoyed by the large share buttons on the side. Even on my laptop, they block the first few words (or letters) making it difficult to read the post. I’ve mentioned it to a few bloggers and removed them on my own blog. Mobile friendly share buttons are a must and reviewing your page in mobile browsers is good advice.
Google has a Mobile Test app https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ so you just need to enter your URL to check if it is mobile friendly.
Studio Press has a responsive viewer. Again, just enter your URL and view on phone or tablet. (make sure the devices option is ticked in the right top corner)
Here’s the StudioPress link to check your site on mobile devices http://www.studiopress.com/responsive/
That’s some great tips! Thank you for sharing.
Great tips Debbie. Stumbled
Thanks for bringing your post to the Blogger’s Pit Stop last week.
Janice, Pit Stop Crew