It’s time for a reader discussion/open thread and today’s question is:
What is the Biggest Mistake That You’ve Made as a Blogger?
What in your time as a blogger do you look back on with regret, wish you’d not done or wish you’d done differently?
About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
My main two are:
Not realizing the full potential of blogging as a business.
Starting too many projects and letting them fall by the wayside.
No mistakes. Just lessons.
Believe that blogging was just about writting was the real big mistake. 1 – Blogging is about writting and knowing all devices geeks/nerds like and that all professionals – from areas that are not IT related – do not know. It is easy for me to have ideas and to write but it is a hell to understand what is CSS and so on. They tell blogsphere is friendly but it is not for whom who does not know all these IT stuff. It tooke me hours and hours without sleeping, and a good part of the energy I used to dedicate to other studies to understand them better. 2 – Blogging is about building relationship. You have to be the factory (that produces) and also the distribution channel (that sells – fighting for space, comments, hits, robots and so on). It has been a tough journey since I began 6 months ago. My name is now on 10 pages of Google but still no comments. It seems that the journey will be long.
No regrets.
Moving my blog around to start with, not settling on a blog host from the outset and sticking with it. but my main regret is from a time when I had a period of success with my blog, a post became very popular and everything spread out from there. my regret is that I panicked and didn’t make the most of it, my posting got sloppy and my new sexy readership dropped off. I guess I was afraid of success and I haven’t been able to recoup the numbers since.
Getting dooced FTW!
My biggest mistake was treating my blog as a dumping ground for all my shit and then expecting the people around me to automatically cheer me up after reading it.
It proved disastrous.
It wasn’t direct and there were too many unsaid expectations. Needless to say, I stopped blogging for a long time after that. Now, I’m just beginning to learn from my mistake.
Fara – http://www.pickmeuptoday.com
The biggest mistake I’ve made is DELETING my blog…
The story begins when I published a post blasting the medical students fro their imbibing, no, drowning in drunkenness. And afterwards these offended students were searching here and there to find out who I was.
So t’was to save my own scrawny hide that I had to delete it with much misgivings ( see cerno.wordpress.com for details.) Now, I’m so sad and down that I deleted it. I can’t bring all the posts I had back on it.
SOB.
Started my blog on blogger.com…
Also I failed to stick to any particular niche! :-(
The biggest mistake i did is i cannot insert the comments from visitors in my site (i did know how to write the script..) to enable me and other visitors communicate the idea in my site.
My Biggest mistakes are my many learning experience. One of
those was starting late,miss out many opportunities which can obtain from blogging.
http://www.pickmeuptoday.com
Two biggies for me:
– Relying solely on advertising for revenue
– Letting blogging lead me to insomnia: http://www.backinskinnyjeans.com/2008/03/can-professiona.html
Waking up really angry one morning, reading the wrong blog and posting a really F***ing stupid comment, not thinking about the consequences and submitting it!!!!
Here endeth the traffic for this blog!!!
My first blog had a different title than url because I changed my mind in midstream of setting it up. My friends and clients were able to find me, but I didn’t develop the level of traffic I wanted. I was reluctant to turn away from 3 years of archives, etc. but recently changed to a blog name that coincides with my company name, is simpler to remember, etc. The jury’s still out on whether my content will bring a larger readership, but I’m glad I made the switch.
not following https://problogger.com in time i guess.
Biggest mistake was to read your blog, because I am now addicted to it :)
From personal experience biggest mistake was reveling other bloggers my top keywords! But hey I was newbee blogger.
I have done everything perfect. I am glad and excited, and looking forward to a greater and extraordinary success!! Cheers!!!
My mistake: didn’t start earlier. My advice: If you don’t have a blog and you always think about starting one: DO IT NOW!
A big mistake I’ve made is that the subdomain name on WordPress is too long.
Choosing a cheap webhost. I learnt from that mistake when my site went down for 10days.
Breaking my WordPress blog early on and switching to my providers’ blog software. What a mistake! Worse blogging software I ever used. Now I’m back with WordPress and making up for lost time.
Giving up to soon.
I’m quite new at this, but I my biggest mistake so far has been 2 reviews I purchased for a total of $80, my biggest advertising expense thus far. I DIDN’T RECECIVE A SINGLE CLICK-THROUGH! I was shocked. Not a one. Ah well. Live and learn, I guess. ;)
i started the blog in mid july and received over 2000 hits. by october i had received 74,000 hits for the month. i went a way in november, to europe and on the road as a musician and my posting became a little spotty. december was 18,000 hits. now i know that the holidays pull people away, but i’m convinced that i lost a lot of folks who figured that i wasn’t serious about the blog. since then i have posted every monday wednesday and friday and i’ve gotten it back up to about 1400 a day. you must make and KEEP the commitment to the blog contributions.
james lee stanley
The biggest mistakeI might have made was taking the advice of the author of a how to make money blogging book. The advice was to “ready, fire, aim,” by just sign up with a free blog platform and start blogging in five minutes.
I knew how to write. Period. But knew nothing about linking, social networking, or monitizing. However, I’ve been learning many aspects of the blogging business as I went merrily along.
I said earlier this might have been a mistake because I wonder if I should have had my ducks in a row — a plan or more knowledge of what to do — before jumping in. Did I waste time doing it this way.
However, the book’s writer did say when people take time to plan, they might not get a project off the ground.
My biggest mistake has been writing in fields I’m not really interested in. If I’m not passionate about the posts, why would anyone else be?
Also, not simply starting up blogs for the general research and information that I used to keep offline. If I have a file full of that stuff, stands to reason at least one other person in the world could benefit.
Didn’t use the traffic and PR for monetizing at first.
The biggest mistake I’ve made as a blogger?
Stopping.
Reading too many blogs about blogging, SEO, etc. Information overload gave me too much pressure when blogging, because I almost forgotten why I started blogging in the first place.
oh i have a great one. the second day i launched my blog i could of had my main viral video featured on the youtube frontpage! I had set a filter up in gmail to put youtube emails in a folder and skip the inbox. I did this because at the time I was getting tons of youtube email from users. Well the youtube editor had sent me an email saying he wanted to feature my video and I had no idea because it never came to my inbox. At the time they used youtube in their email address, so it got filtered out. So instead I got featured a few days before my deadline ended. So I would of had a ton of traffic 2 days after launching the blog :( haha oh well. I learned a lesson and that is to keep a really good eye on all email.
My biggest mistake? I feel like I’ve not put as much work into it in my first year as I could have – I tended to get sidetracked with so much information coming in. I also think it’s an energy drain to spend too much time checking stats instead of spending that time on writing or researching!
The biggest mistake I made was to ask for little help when I had started. I was new to it and had no idea; more so because this line is totally different from the line (education) I am in. The only thing I received as help was advises and advises and advises… nothing constructive.
Launching my first blogs on TypePad. No one tells you that when you have hundreds of posts on TP, Google’s spam squad thinks you’re up to something because of duplicate meta data.
Using blog themes that smacked of the 1990s. I’m still a unix kinda of woman, but did manage to update all of my subsequent blogs after being slapped upside the head.
Barbara
Waiting until 2007 to start my own blog. I knew how to code in PHP since 2004, so setting up something like WordPress. Silly me, I dabbled too much into creating and tweaking my own blogging systems that I failed to put any actual content.
just started my first blog using wordpress on the subject of scuba diving, http://www.hititrunning.com.
My biggest mistake was not speaking to other bloggers sooner – they are full of useful and helpful ideas and my knowledge has increased hugely since joining sites like Twitter
I used to always mess up my links that I added on my site. I am now doing my best to learn as much as I can about blogging, monetizing my blog and generating traffic to my blog.
waiting so long to take my blog serious
not being sure on my blog topic
choosing dodgy domain names that are not a strong brand
I’m still learning the ropes of getting readers to visit my site. My biggest mistake to date has been ignoring interaction with other bloggers and social media. Sites like Shoemoney are a great resource.
So far: posting blogs that I had written before the new year with the old year’s date of them so that my 1/2/08 post was up as a 1/2/07 post for over a month before I fixed it! I felt pretty dumb about that.
The worst mistake I made as a blogger was not realizing the responsibility that comes with blogging. You must create a following by constantly keeping original content so your readers can keep coming. I was not keeping my audience captivated.
Going to a site that had the wrong type of content and writing a truly inspiring comment to find it later in the wrong place
well not truly about blogging – I wrote an article called “fishing for leads” and hey, well its now on about 10 fishing sites!
I was one of the earliest authors online to break this so-called news story about a celebrity couple, only to find out that it was just a rumor. That is something that I would have done differently, with the difference being ignoring that particular bit of news.
Since it came from a popular newspaper, I figured it to be truth. Later on, I read interviews with the two celebs who said that the “news” was false and that gossip started building after someone misinterpreted a particular action taken by one of them. Since my blog is not primarily focused on celebrity gossip, rumors, or anything related to what would be shown on primetime entertainment news shows or posted on TMZ, I should have ignored that bit of news.
I posted it because I had a feeling that not many people knew about it and since they were popular, it would bring a lot of traffic to my blog, which it did. Even to this day, this one post is still one of the popular posts on my blog, despite the fact that I re-posted the real news and made it clear that what was said initially was false. While it has become a popular post, the outcome of that has influenced me to change the way I approach news about celebrities and also how I approach attracting readers to the blog.
I am no longer in much support of what many people call “celebrity news” if it has to deal with the personal lives of celebrities. Therefore, it is not reason to post it on a blog. No one should really care about what celebrities are doing in their personal lives and who they are dating, where they party, etc., etc.! It doesn’t matter. What should matter when it comes to celebs are which movies, music or TV shows they are working on or have appeared in.
Unfortunately, our society is so nosey that it seems like celebs will always have a lack of privacy. While I may be the author of just one blog that is not an extremely popular blog or in the Technorati 100 for that matter, I still plan on having one of the blogs in the blogosphere that focuses less on the private lives of celebrities and more on their work and art.
My biggest mistake ever was thath I started a blog on Blogger, and not WordPress.
I’ve just started a blog about my exploits making money from the internet, I’m trying not to make mistakes but they’re inevitable I guess! I really like it if you could check it out and let me know any beginners errors I’ve made. Feel free to leave a comment!
http://freemoneymine.blogspot.com
In the beginning… i started to blog, i was so curious and eager and started so many blogs. Thats the biggest mistake. And later things got out of my hand and i deleted the blogs one by one.
Now i have only 2 blogs and concentrate extensively on them and make posts regularly.
What i advice new bloggers?
Do not have many blogs. Start, work and end with one.
I bashed all my old links when I switched from a ‘normal php site’ to the wordpress blog. Lost a lot of traffic because my site was linked to the old structure. No 301 redirect. But now i’m getting traffic back slowly. Still good index google rank for my keyword ;-)
Stupidity. I had only been blogging 40 days and I messed up royally. Didn’t read a service agreement, infringed on someone’s copyright, posted things I had no business posting, and did not not take enough time to learn the medium, read about blogging and such before I tried it. Understandably and deservedly got me into trouble and my reputation attacked. I’m still in recovery mode, pulled the blog down and haven’t put up another up yet as the incident is still fresh. I am back in learning mode and reading, reading, reading.
The biggest mistake was not taking up several bloggers on the offer to write guest posts due to having a self doubts about the quality of my writing. Passed up a few good opportunities to network with some excellent bloggers.
Spending too much time on the blog design and didn’t even focusing on the content.I think that is what i regret till now and many more new blogger will.