Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it?
While I’m the kind of guy that spends more time looking forward than dwelling on the past – I’m a firm believer that from time to time it can be a worthwhile exercise to look back on our experiences and let them help shape our future.
So today’s reader question asks you to do just that:
What do You Know Now About Blogging that You Wish You Knew When You Started?
Perhaps it’s some method of finding traffic, perhaps it’s about your writing style, it could be more about how you interact with readers, maybe it could even be something to do with a blogging tool that you’ve discovered or it could even be that you wish you’d never started.
I guess another way to ask the question would be – name one thing you’d do differently if you could start over?
Looking forward to your answers either in comments below or as a post on your own blog (if you do post it – just leave the link below so we can check it out).
I wish I would have known how hard it was to make $$$$. would have maybe started another kind of blog.
Just started a while. I got a long way to go and learn marketing techniques. As of now, I have zilch income but blog with a passion. I guess that is important for starters.
Not to ever worry what friends and family think!
Basically…
I wish I would’ve known straight from the beginning not to be scared to blog about certain subjects. I was very worried when I started my blog to write about subjects like shamanism & personal experiences about taking psychedelics.
I was so worried about family seeing these posts and now, for the greatest irony, after ‘coming out’ with my blog, I was shocked to learn that no one in my family even visits it, save for that one and only initial visit, their response of which was “Wow, this is a REAL website.” (Followed by an Unspoken thought: “And I don’t have time to read it.”)
Like Vincent in comment 51, I wish I’d used a better permalink structure from the beginning. I accepted the WorPress defaults and have post URLs like:
domainname/wordpress/archives/118
If I were starting again, I’d set defaults to something more meaningful and search-engine friendly like:
domainname/title-of-blog-post/
I know it can be changed during the life of a blog, and there’s a plugin to redirect old links, but it would have been much better to use a better structure from day one.
The one thing I’ll do differently if I could start my blog all over again is to get my own domain name and host the blog on wordpress instead of my current blogspot platform, with subdomain name.
Blogging with subdomain will always be a poor cousin to blogs with own domain name, no matter how “killer” your blog posts are.
Have a Brand Identity to your Blog.
…and make sure that the brand (name) you choose is conected to your blog´s theme.
Leo Pallotta
1. Have a catchy name for my blog. Due to the nature of my blog (rock music), a funky (maybe some sarcasm) name will rhyme a lot better in the rock music sphere. Only my 2 cents.
2. Identify and further understand my niche market before jumping in.
i wish i knew how to make my comments “do” follow when i started. and i wish i knew how much this would encourage other bloggers to link up to my postage and participate in discussions on my blogs.
Took me months before I knew how to turn on and use trackbacks.
If i had to start again. I’d go with wordpress, and from day 1 dedicate time to leave valuable comment on blogs that i liked or visited. Visiting a blog and not leave comments is unproductive. Becoz 50% productivity comes from the social aspect of blogs and another 50% for knowledge building.